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Comment by malfist | Hacker News Reader

The "worlds best employer" is horribly mismanaging this layoff. It's all hush hush, and nobody is admitting anything until suddenly you have a meeting at the end of the day with a bigwig and HR.

The severance is a pittance. 60 days garden leave like twitter where if you find employment external you give up remaining severance. If you're unable to find another job, you get a week of severance per 6 months of employment (min 4 weeks, max 20).

Oh, and we're being told to use those 60 days to find a job internally at amazon....during a hiring freeze.

World's best employer my ass.

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> World's best employer

This is the first ever that I hear this label attached to Amazon. Do they claim it? I've never seen them in the #1 spot on any top employer / best place to work ranking. I just googled again just to make sure, but perhaps I missed something.

"World's best employer" was added to our leadership principles April 2021.

It's 100% bullshit.

So far the actions they've taken to be the worlds best employer has been....changing the password reset cycle to be one year instead of 90 days.

You can't be world's best employer while frugality reigns supreme.

I see. Looked it up (https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles), says "Strive to be Earth's Best Employer".

Did Amazon perhaps add it to the list because of lackluster workplace quality, and so this is still early in the journey?

They added it as one of the two new leadership principles last year I believe.

https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles

When I interviewed there in 2018 the recruiter specifically asked me to memorize all the leadership principles because I will be tested on them during the on-site interview. I feel bad for the candidates who now have to memorize two more of them :(

So if you don't find other work, max severance is like 28.5 weeks? Or is 20 the cap? If it's the former, almost 7 months of runway to find a new job is pretty great.

The pulling of severance on job acceptance is a cheap move by Amazon, but not unexpected given their "frugality" in all aspects of their comp and perks.

If at the end of the 60 days, you get a lump sump payment of 4-20 weeks of base pay, no sign on bonus or RSUs included.

Amazon famously caps base pay, so most people, even super senior people will not be making more than 160k/yr unless they were hired in the last year.

If you find employment externally during those 60 days, all payments stop and you get nothing more from amazon.

To get the 7 months of pay you'll have had to be at amazon 10+ years. That's like 3 people. Turnover for all roles is >100%, tech is something like 50+%

Amazon doubled their base cap last year, so is this still true?

That's why I had a disclaimer about being hired this year.

If you weren't hired this year your base is likely still around the 160k

Data point of one and all that, but I got a decent bump in base and have been with the company for more than a few years. I assume that's true for almost everyone else based off the Blind posts.

Couldn't you, y'know just get a new job offer and not tell them about it until your 60 days have elapsed?

There are reporting agencies that can be used to determine who employs a person. That's not including some other shady shit I wouldn't put past the company getting up to (i.e., bribing recruiting firms to tattle on former employees). Plus, I bet there's clawback provision if you don't tell them and they find out about it.

But yeah, I'd take that gamble and just keep a low profile online. Or one could slow walk the hiring process: land a job then push your start date back out 61-x days.

Similarly could you tell your new employer "Hey don't officially hire me for another 3 more weeks - I'll still work for you now but Amazon will pay my salary - deal?"

I'm not sure why anyone would play this weird game of defrauding Amazon and working for a company for free when they could instead just do: "Hey I need some time, can my start date be X days from now", where X will probably be 30 or so days (given it takes time to apply to new jobs, go through the various stages of interview, etc).

>"The severance is a pittance. 60 days garden leave like twitter where if you find employment external you give up remaining severance."

Could you or someone say how this works or is enforced? Once you are no longer working for Amazon how do they know you have found external employment elsewhere? Is this a legal gray area?

Perhaps they use The Work Number or one of the similar employment verification services to monitor you.

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