Looks like Kivin was surprised when HR told his manager that he requested to be transferred. His manager then used this information against him, by putting him into a 'performance improvement program' which blocks transfers to any other group for some period of time.
Let me let Kivin and any one else working for a company in on a little secret. HR is not your friend. HR is not there to protect you and your career. HR is there to protect the company AGAINST you.
To the extent that your goals and the company's do not conflict, HR can be helpful. (Need some help with your health insurance or your 401k? HR is awesome!)
But if you're going to HR about an issue that could be damaging to the company, HR will gladly listen to you sharing confidential information while quietly working with the leadership to build a case against you or protect themselves. If you're caught in a situation that could potentially lead to a legal dispute with the company (serious conflict with mgmt as seen here, discrimination, etc), make sure you document EVERYTHING, put as much in writing/email as possible and tread carefully before sharing too much info with HR. They won't be in your corner when shit hits the fan.
"HR is not your friend" needs to be standard career advice.
My experiences with HR:
- Often staffed by aggressive, yet very sociable and smiley people. They would nail you to a cross if the directors demanded it.
- Even a basic knowledge of labour laws is not a pre-requisite for a career in HR. That is because there is little regard for them by the C-levels.
- Try and avoid them. Do not go running to HR. Sort it out yourself or work it out with your boss. If the problem is your boss, it's likely that they're much friendlier with HR and treated with much more respect than you. If you do go to HR, think hard about how you are respected and viewed at the company.
While working at Apple I made the mistake of thinking HR was going to be helpful. I was offered a new position there and took it but only on the grounds that I would not have any duties related to my old position. I was told that was acceptable. Three Weeks after starting my new role they started giving me my old duties back. I complained this was against the agreement we had on me accepting my new position. The HR ref played dumb and would only say "Well Apple has invested a lot of time and money into you, do you expect them to not utilize the you as a resource?" I had one additional encounter with them regarding a manager who had been, as I saw it, mistreating me. I was assured the conference between is was confidential. An hour after that meeting I was called into a room to sit and face three managers who grilled me about why I was dissatisfied with them. It was one of the most uncomfortable meetings I have ever had. I had no clue how to react and realized then and there my days were numbered. HR is definitely not your friend.
"Even a basic knowledge of labour laws is not a pre-requisite for a career in HR."
This is the surprising thing to me. My wife works in HR, but is also an attorney and her boss and boss's boss are also attorneys. They run their department substantially more in line with federal and state laws than just about any other I've encountered. When we're talking with friends and other people who work in HR, she usually later tells me everything they're doing wrong and it's interesting how far off-base many companies are.
You should take a look at some of the organizations involved in the HR field. They seem to be designed to sell training (someone reads you a powerpoint) and certifications while providing nearly zero real value. The companies that they refer people to for services can be of dubious quality. It seems like a market that is ripe for disruption.
It seems that way, but remember who's writing the checks for HR services. As long as cost of legal settlements < benefits of using HR to suit management, there's no incentive to buy into compliance-driven HR providers.
Others have pointed out in this discussion that keeping cost of legal settlements low is arguably the number one benefit management is looking for from HR, so if they're not getting that right, there's probably not much benefit to employing them at all.
I wasn't terribly surprised. Being ignorant of labour laws that empower employees (or at least appear to) is a convenient excuse for treating staff horribly in certain situations.
Of course I've been in situations where HR don't know the laws and others where they chose to ignore them or denied their existence.
I worked for a company that knew enough about labor laws to fire half the maintenance staff and then make the remaining supervisors all salaried "assistant managers" so they could keep them on-call 24/7 and work them as much overtime as needed. Manipulating the position requirements and duties on paper to make it seem like they were more white-collar than blue-collar was easy.
When it comes to saving money, HR departments educate themselves rather well in regards to the law.
What that company did was not legal. One of the requirements for classifying an employee as a "manager" is that they actually manage subordinates as part of their duties. If everyone was an assistant manager, none of them were, and they would have been entitled to overtime. (And the company subject to heinous penalties for labor violations.)
This is where a little bit of knowledge is very dangerous. Companies read a small part of the laws and think it's very simple to reclassify hourly employees to salaried employees. It's not.
And US government units really care about this because among other things, you're not getting paid overtime, and they've not getting their cut in taxes on that.
Is your thesis there really that individuals in the federal government (beyond those at the IRS specifically charged with being concerned with it) are so concerned about tax compliance that it is one of their primary motivations when doing their job?
In the US, at least, if the supervisors pursued legal action, they'd have a case if their job duties were closer to those of non-exempt employees than exempt ones.
Also, this is why labor still organizes in the US, even if organization is down substantially over what it used to be.
Unfortunately, the state that this occurred in has considerably defanged unions. There is one for the workers of this company, and its a subset of a national union, but they have no power and the company merely humors them just for good show.
And yes, if the workers had pursued legal action, I think they would have had a case, but these people were somewhere around lower middle class or poverty level and they were very afraid of losing their jobs. Knowing them, and others who are in similar situations, I completely understand and sympathize. When you're treated like crap, but given the illusion that you're respected and needed, you'll convince yourself that everything is "good enough." I myself did it for many years.
I'm self employed now, so take the following with a grain sf salt - it worked for me though. When I was dealing with HR, I made sure to growl a lot while talking, and stand in front of the only exit. There's a kind of sociopath that will only act with some consideration if they realize that their skeletal integrity is at risk, because they're the sort of people who would do that to others if given the chance. I don't beat up people at random, but you can bet that at least some sociopaths would if they thought they could get away with it - use it against them. Not to mean that all HR folks are sociopath, but you do get quite a few.
That's a bit dicey - the kind of thing that may work delightfully well and be justified and appropriate in maybe like 1% of cases, and be excessive and likely to backfire horribly in the other 99%. But then, there's the issue of having to be like that pretty much all the time for it to be really believable and effective. Use at your own risk.
Actually it's because I realized that I could make three quarters of the money while working less than half the time :) I'll never be rich, but I'll always have time to tinker and do a bit of volunteer work. Also, no commuting, that's a good 10 hours a week I'm gaining for myself right there.
That's awful! You should never even insinuate physical threats like that. You're putting yourself and others at risk by doing so and permanently harming your own reputation.
Look, I'm not hopelessly naïve (most of the time) and understand very well about standing up to what's right, but there's a way to do that without acting like this. Even if the person you're dealing with is a sociopath, even if they're terrible human beings, there are ways around them that don't rely to threats, real or implied.
Negotiation takes a lot of nuances, verbal and physical, but you can achieve a lot diplomatically without being intimidating physically.
I understand where you're coming from, but I disagree completely.
Edit: Also, I didn't downvote you because what you brought up was still interesting and allowed me to voice my opinion.
The last time I hit anyone without provocation I was 9 years old, I got such a thrashing from my dad that my grandchildren will remember the lesson, trust me.
That said, some people can only think in terms of who can kick who's ass - for them might IS right. The stupid ones become muggers and extortionists, the smart ones get a system (legal, corporate, etc) to fight their battles for them.
I see no moral problem with presenting them with a simplified model of their worldview, it's their choice, I am just showing that I am willing to make it manifest.
Totally agree. When I was young and foolish I reported harassment to HR. I was friends with a female colleague and we'd go out to lunch every now and then. Our mutual boss would call her in and say things like.. "What did he ask you about at lunch? You know, he's just trying to act like your friend so you tell him secrets." It happened several times, and finally one day I went to HR about it. I was asked to resign literally the same day.
It turned out, as it often does, to be a blessing. And it absolutely taught me the role of HR.
I'm surprised so many people have negative experiences with HR. Perhaps I've been lucky, or perhaps it is because we have a different culture in Scandinavia, but my experiences are almost entirely positive.
As the parent said, in situations like asking about benefits, they're great because to me it's like talking to a sales team.
Have you ever, for example, had a contract change forced upon you, benefits taken away/downgraded, had long-time overtime policies changed, experience blatant discrimination? It's been my experience in cases such as those, you find out who HR works for.
> Have you ever, for example, had a contract change forced upon you, benefits taken away/downgraded, had long-time overtime policies changed, experience blatant discrimination? It's been my experience in cases such as those, you find out who HR works for.
A company trying that in scandinavia would be committing suicide, they'd get smashed by their union reps and would get shunned by other companies (Nordics have a labor model similar to germany, cooperative and regulated by collective bargaining agreement at multiple levels, generally starting at the "economic sector" level and filtering down. A company trying to break labor agreements which others have to follow in such a way would be seen very badly)
I've had long-time overtime policies changed for the better, actually! It was great. We had went from not getting paid for fixing servers on xmas eve, to a clear and well paid system of who was on call.
I have less than great experiences with HR as well, sure, but I don't agree that it's as horrible as many here describe it.
I've also had only good experiences with HR. I've always worked in pretty small companies where I have good relationships across the board. I feel truly sorry for folks who have demons working down the hall from them trying to take away their benefits. I wonder, why stay?
My wife is from Sweden and I spend a lot of time there. I'm moving there in a couple of years. Scandinavia definitely has a culture that does not tolerate the kinds of things we have in the States. It is definitely a cultural difference.
> Even a basic knowledge of labour laws is not a pre-requisite for a career in HR.
This might be a US-centric view. In the UK if you don't know employment law you're no use as an HR professional. Your line managers almost certainly don't so HR are often the only people who do.
But junior hr generalists probably will know very little in my experience ha done in BT who was oblivious to exactly what the division she was nominally assigned to did and who the employees where.
It's only up at the more senior legal end that hr will know much about the legal side of employment or how to handle things profesionaly when they go pear shaped.
1. Performance improvement plans are not for performance improvement. They are for firing employees. Management already formed an irreversible negative view. It is too late.
2. You cannot win a case against the company. Because a) companies have more resources and b) even if you do win then other companies will mark you as a troublemaker. Getting hired is going to get a lot harder.
3. If you insist on fighting then do document everything. Supposedly you need a few months of notes. In other words, being called a slur once or twice does not make a hostile work environment. If HR is unaware then the company is not liable, but if you share your notes then you won't win the case anyway. There are a few narrow forms of discrimination that are claimable but the best option is to keep your head down and find a new job.
4. Do not document anything on company software or networks. My friend got to learn what Data Loss prevention software really did.
5. HR has zero legal obligation to keep your secrets. Their job is to identify threats to the company. They literally get paid to share your secrets.
Bonus anectode: I went to HR and asked "Are you legally required to keep things I tell you confidential? For example, if I tell you I want to leave then will you tell my boss?"
Her answer to my second question was no, but guess what my boss and I talked about the next day!
> even if you do win then other companies will mark you as a troublemaker. Getting hired is going to get a lot harder.
This isn't really true. Most businesses don't do thorough background checks and the frequency of people claiming fake degrees w/o getting caught is proof of that.
I've known two people who successfully sued their employer. One had no trouble getting a job after that. It was the second suit that they lost that caused their issues (they looked like they were paranoid and had mental issues based on the company's successful defense). Even tho they are a friend of my parents, my parents and I both agree that they weren't acting all there at the time and that likely came across in interviews.
The other one only had trouble because the area was so small it was literally the only member of that industry within 300 miles. No one wanted to pay for relocation for non-management positions during a recession. Once they relocated with their own money, they had no issues.
I've never heard of an instance of someone being "blacklisted" outside of a failed lawsuit where they were shown to be deceptive and/or mentally unstable.
> This isn't really true. Most businesses don't do thorough background checks and the frequency of people claiming fake degrees w/o getting caught is proof of that.
That depends more on how well the hiring decision makers at the companies you apply to network. Even in a large metro area like Los Angeles chances are that if you are in management at a software company you will have a second degree connection with someone at an applicant's previous employer. You might not get blacklisted from "software," but you might be blacklisted from companies funded by a particular VC firm, or where managers attend the same CTO meetups, etc.
Answering unsolicited reference requests is supposed to be an invitation to defamation lawsuits, but in my experience it's the norm and not the exception.
Not true. My sister won a LARGE (over half a million dollars) sexual harassment lawsuit against her employer. In fact, it wasn't an ongoing thing but one incident and the way HR handled this incident. After she left the company, she went back to school and got a job afterwards at a large hospital. She hasn't ever had problems finding employment even though her name is easily Googeable and shows that she won a large settlement against her previous employer.
If everything you state is true, then your sister is the exception to the norm. My wife works in HR and pretty much everything mentioned above is true. There is a very large, fortune-5, company going through a name & blame game with another very large supplier over an ignition switch problem and the PIP process mentioned above is what I've seen too. HR folks are not your friends.
Yes, in many incidences finding another job is not impacted. But if you are in a city with only a handful of tech start ups then chances are you won't work for another one any time soon. I imagine more HN readers work at tech start-ups than hospitals.
As for winning cases and payout sums: your anecdotal data point is your sister. My source is the EEOC. Each field offices investigates hundreds of claims per year but only a few are accepted. The odds of an individual claim being winnable is small.
Winning half a million dollars also sounds made up. According to the legal award limits it is not possible. Then again IANAL.
Man, you folks are cynical. Having done a stint in a people management role at a tech company I can attest that things aren't always this straightforward.
- PIPs are definitely the tool you use when you want to fire someone, but they're also the tool you want to use to get someone's attention when all else has failed. I had to give a PIP to an employee who just could not get his head in the game. I had absolutely no desire to fire him.
- I have definitely witnessed HR stand up to managers and push back on plans to fire employees who haven't had adequate time to fix their conduct and turn things around. You can argue that they're protecting the company from wrongful termination liability, but I know at least one of the HRfolk involved and that was definitely not his primary motivation.
I get thinking that big corporations are only driven by profits and are therefore always going to be selfish/evil (though I don't really believe it) but I don't get thinking that blanket statements/accusations about individual people in these organizations could possibly be true. There are well-meaning HRpeople in the world, and managers who mean what they say. Maybe not as many as there should be, but still lots.
1. Performance improvement plans are not for performance improvement. They are for firing employees. Management already formed an irreversible negative view. It is too late.
In my experience it's not quite so clear cut.
When you are put on a PIP the company has decided what outcome it is seeking, and you have little-to-no control over that, but it might not be planning to fire you.
I've see all three of the following:
1. You are being "managed out". You are expected to resign, or the company will document enough performance issues to fire you. You will not win.
2. The company wants to make you conform to their expectations. They've done a cost-benefit analysis and decided that "fixing you" is going to be cheaper than getting rid of you and hiring in someone else with the necessary skills. This usually happens when you have a history of good performance and they just want you to "return to prior performance levels". However, if you don't conform to their expectations you will be fired.
3. Your job is safe, but you did something that embarrassed someone senior and they want to remind you that they have the power and such behaviour will not be tolerated. The PIP is all for show - so that you don't forget your place.
> Performance improvement plans are not for performance improvement. They are for firing employees. Management already formed an irreversible negative view. It is too late.
While this ends up mostly true in practice, I have known people who were able to turn things around after being put on a PIP.
> You cannot win a case against the company. Because a) companies have more resources and b) even if you do win then other companies will mark you as a troublemaker. Getting hired is going to get a lot harder.
There is a flip side to this. The company wants to ensure it has a water tight case against you, to ensure the complaints are dismissed before going to court. Otherwise, if there is any merit to your complaint, despite the company having more resources than you, they do not wish to be tied up in legal entanglements. This is why HR and Management document everything heavily.
I don't have the source handy, but in the US workplace legal disputes is the number one costs to companies.
Labor tends to be one of business' largest costs as well, so labor-related legal being the largest category of legal costs is (if true) not unreasonable.
> I have known people who were able to turn things around after being put on a PIP.
I'm one!
It took a few hours of introspection but I applied a new focus and drive to aligning my personal goals with the company's goals. Have not looked back since.
> even if you do win then other companies will mark you as a troublemaker. Getting hired is going to get a lot harder.
This. If you're ever suing a company for a grievance, make sure the potential winnings are enough for you never to work for another company again. It's illegal but you will be black listed.
1) Very few of us suffer from the legal definition of discrimination. (Being mistaken for the secretary sucks but it's not illegal.) The book gives us realistic options.
2) Most of the time we just deal with an unfavorable boss or upper management. The book gives more actionable options there.
Are you sure the answer provided was only for the second question and not the first? Did HR provide one answer after you asked both of those questions concurrently? If so, that answer was for the first question and no answer was provided for the second.
I know you say that was her answer to the second question, but the way you frame your quote it looks like you asked them consecutively before a response from her in-between. As they say, the devil is in the details.
> 1. Performance improvement plans are not for performance improvement. They are for firing employees. Management already formed an irreversible negative view. It is too late.
As just about any manager on here will tell you, this is complete bunk. Being on a performance improvement plan obviously isn't good, but I've had many people complete their plan successfully, and not only that, but go on to long & successful careers.
Obviously not everything of this sort is the same everywhere in all cases, but the parent statement is largely true. It's also exceptionally true in high turnoff corporations like Amzn.
Even in the corner cases where the manager/HR was acting in good faith, the employee will be under the thumb of his superiors; even if someone manages to survive intact the PIP will be a mark on someone's record they can do without. It's something that will come with every promotion discussion, transfer, etc.
It's quite rare for anything good to come of doubling down, for the employee at least.
I had exactly the same revelation during a protracted encounter I had at $NAME_WITHHELD - huge admired company - after working there for several years, and coming into an ethical and legal conflict against my division director.
It was made abundantly clear that the goals of HR do not align with our notions of HR being champions for the workers.
I appreciate this sounds blindingly obvious and almost forehead slapping to anyone who hasn't been on the sharp end of this, but let me assure you that when you are on the sharp end, this will be driven home with fervour.
You know, I was sad that the most upvoted link today was this story and not the awesome picture sent by the comet probe. Do people here really think this is today's most significant event ? And I was thinking that the same story about $NAME_ALSO_WITHHELD instead of Amazon would never have made it to the front page.
So I was curious if $NAME_WITHHELD and $NAME_ALSO_WITHHELD was the same company and looked into it. Took me one minute and apparently it was...
I have mixed feelings on this; on the one hand this is indeed a 'gossip news site' flavour article, and the reactions of the commenters in this thread largely follow the regular human response of 'burn the witch'. I'm not interested in the minutia of the case, nor am I interested in damning the manager lady who is not having her just day in court right now.
However, I do believe this is somewhat Hacker News worthy in that it serves as a cautionary tale. As someone who has been in the industry for 20 years, it's weird to think of myself as an old-timer who has been around the block, but a significant demographic of HN readership are very young and inexperienced graduates; it likely serves them well to be aware of these complex organizational issues and how they sometimes manifest.
The landing was the significant event, not the first photo.
The landing is also available on a vastly larger number of news sources, which dilutes the amount of focus it gets on any particular site. Upvotes are a proxy for the number of people paying attention to the story through HN, not the number of people paying attention that are on HN.
Well, I think it's more important to point out that our culture has devolved into something that endorses and promotes backstabbing mobs of cowards conspiring against anyone who displays ethical behaviour. Landing on a comet isn't going to save mankind from anything. And everyone has heard about the comet landing already ffs I've had enough of it.
This is all true. But what I haven't seen in this thread is advice on what employees should do, instead of going to HR.
My experience is that it can be invaluable to make personal connections with one or more management-type folks outside of your team. This is sometimes called a "mentor," although I think that term is pretty cliche at this point, and puts too much pressure on the relationship.
The point is to have someone a bit more versed in the internal politics, with whom you can have informal conversations before doing anything dramatic--like going to HR or emailing your boss's boss's boss.
They can help you predict the likely outcomes of those actions. And they might also be able to end-run around the "bad layer" in your management. For example, they might be able to go to another senior person and informally pass along the word that a key issue is not being addressed...without naming names.
How to build those relationships? Take people out to lunch or coffee. Have a conversation. Ask them how they got to where they are, what they wish they'd known earlier, etc. Often you can figure out pretty quickly whether you get along with them or not.
It's not even that HR is allied with the company as such. They are their own little political unit, and sometimes those politics lead to situations that benefit no one at all other than HR themselves.
As a manager, I'm frequently helping the personnel on my team work to overcome the barriers that HR erects in their way. HR seems to just have an innate love for policies, the more the better. Even when those policies do nothing to protect the company or the employee, and actively interfere with our efficiency, HR will stick to them. I think it's just because having to back off a silly policy makes the other policies appear weaker.
So I see that employment law in the USA makes HR specialists important in a company of any size, but that doesn't mean that they very much improve things beyond that domain.
BINGO how do you think stack ranking and PRP got push so had so some hr director can get a bonus never mind you destroy morale and force all your good people out.
HR doesn't even have a useful offensive role in most companies. In theory they should identify staffing requirements, find great people, create competitive benefits packages to attract them, and run snappy business processes to get them in the door.
Usually they wind up mangling the staffing requirements provided by the managers, farming applicant discovery out to headhunters, cutting corners on benefits to boost profits, and put new hires and their target teams through byzantine processes.
You're totally right. I thought HR was at minimum a neutral party - at Amazon your HR rep is called your "HR Business Partner". That's complete baloney. She was basically there to do whatever my manager and the VP wanted her to do. Things I told her in confidence (like having two transfer opportunities) were immediately relayed to my manager. It is such a betrayal of trust. I would hope that other HR departments in other companies are different but I think that's overly optimistic.
> Looks like Kivin was surprised when HR told his manager that he requested to be transferred. His manager then used this information against him, by putting him into a 'performance improvement program' which blocks transfers to any other group for some period of time.
I learned this one the hard way myself. The change wasn't motivated by any grief or frustration, I was simply looking for career growth since my role wasn't offering me any new opportunities. Instead of what I thought would happen, my boss identifying I could offer the company more in that new role, he was offended I'd ask to change teams and retaliated. I ultimately left the organization soon after because he had made it an absolute nightmare.
> HR is not your friend. HR is not there to protect you and your career. HR is there to protect the company AGAINST you.
This was very shocking to me to realize early on in my career, I'd always heard that HR was on my team. I quickly learned that they're just there to keep the assembly line happy and functioning.
As in many things in life, the people and organizations that are actually on your team are perfectly obvious, and they never feel the need to tell anybody how on your team they are.
The only people who feel the need to tell you how on your team they are would be the ones that are not on your team at all, and expect to get some kind of benefit for the people whose team they are actually on by convincing you otherwise. I.E. by screwing you over.
I'm surprised that HR was immediately on the manager's side. I'd expect HR to protect/defend management that is above their work group, they write the checks after all. However, there is no incentive to protect anyone on the same level or below their reporting manager.
HR exists to defend against litigation and conspiring with Kivin's manager worked directly against that purpose. Their actions resulted in a fat public lawsuit where winning won't matter. The findings related to the ethics of Amazon's ad platform are damning, their corporate customers would love to recoup misappropriated advertising dollars with their army of attorneys on retainer.
It's long standing Amazon policy to engage in "fat public lawsuits" over employment. So while we might argue the wisdom of that, HR not worrying about that prospect is in alignment with the higher levels of management.
HR is there to protect the company from all staff - yes you but also your manager and his/her ignorance of employment law.
Maybe it's just a European thing but I've seen more HR professionals despair at the actions of managers than staff. Yes, they may help him/her get rid of you but what they're really terrified of is his ill advised actions which open the company up to a massive liability.
> Maybe it's just a European thing but I've seen more HR professionals despair at the actions of managers than staff.
Its a power-balance thing. Managers have more power vis-a-vis HR staff than line staff do, thus are more likely to be able to get away with persisting in things that HR staff doesn't like. So, more likely a source of HR staff "despair".
Employees -- unless backed by a manager -- are more likely to meekly acquiesce.
I think what Tyrannosaurs meant is that, because of stronger employee protection, a rash manager in europe can very easily open the company to huge liabilities. One of the primary HR jobs (if not the primary one) is to avoid the company being liable. The prospect of facing a labor board and finding the company be 100% at fault is likely to make them despair.
On the other hand, when speaking about US/EU differences, I don't think many EU countries have laws to grant enormous $$$ in punitive damages.
Germany certainly hasn't - when you win, you typically get your legal fees and damages (as in: what the court decided you _actually_ lost). So there isn't _that_ much of a liability - the main concern for companies is probably that they'll have to stop mistreating their other employees, too.
OTOH, there's a separate branch of jurisdiction especially for employment related issues which is generally employee friendly and for the employee a lawsuit is free and doesn't require legal representation on the lowest level.
My personal view from my interactions with HR (as a manager looking at redundancy, poor performance, sickness) is that they're best viewed as the Employment Law team.
This is a constant sentiment I hear over and over. If there is a company that wishes to change this situation they would probably have to take the question of "ethics" completely out of HR's hands and into it's own department that provides obligations and confidentiality promises to employees (that can be enforceable to whatever extent is possible).
Hell, we do this and my company has annual revenue under $1MM for 2014 and just around $1MM for 2015. It's ridiculous that this doesn't exist for larger companies; we pay basically NOTHING to have this on retainer for external clients and internal processes. We've never used it. but I am so happy it's there.
How's this for an idea: by law, many/all HR duties in corporations larger than X, must be conducted by independent, outside firms hired by the original corporation. They would be like tax auditor firms or credit card security auditors, but more involved.
This way, HR would more likely be incentivized to work for both employee and employer (because they are audited themselves), except in extreme corrupt cases. HR practice would also become a lot better, as it became more competitive and profitable. People with more knowledge of labor law and history would thrive. Yes, there would still be stooges working in these outside HR firms, but at least they would stooge for the real laws in place rather than corporate policies.
People who know who their real customers are, serve their customers. I don't know how effective it would be in the end.
Also the cases you cite, they're go-between firms where the power relationship is obvious. Big government tells smaller corp to do x, or big credit card firm tells smaller firm to do y. For employee's, the power relationship isn't there unless you have unions, and union organizations would be ones you would go to in these cases.
I think this depends where you work. I've been at places where they were so scared you would sue them for something, that it was near impossible to get fired. HR would make it extremely difficult for managers to put people on a performance improvement plans. However, this was in California where it may be different than other companies. I've even heard managers complain that HR was not on their side when they wanted to fire a employee that was terrible.
This just can't be emphasized enough. My view is that this view should be expanded to include most of management. They are in a different social class, because they are employees the company values more than the employees who do the work of the company (e.g. produce products, maintain software, whatever). HR is valued more for all the reasons listed. Management serve a similar purpose, but in a more front-line kind of way, and also are guardians of the only resource that matters in a company (direct and indirect expenses).
I suppose it makes me a cynical person but my view is that unless I have a pre-existing personal relationship, I assume that anybody in management views their employees as tools to use for their own political ambitions within the company, whether they need a scapegoat to cover their own incompetence or a proxy to claim glory and credit for jobs well done.
Seen this repeatedly in multiple corporate settings. The sooner you learn it, the better you may fare. (Including sometimes making decisions to "get out", preemptively.)
Once you understand it, it can also help explain some of the staffing and personalities you will encounter in HR departments.
P.S. I'll add that, in my experience, this extends to most performance reviews. Their primary function is to reenforce top-down policy and decisions. They are not really, primarily, about assessing you and planning (real) improvements. They are about laying the paperwork for whatever Management decides.
Perhaps this sounds overly cynical. And for favored employees, these processes may align more with their own interests. Even then, favored one year may not extend to the next year.
I learned this lesson the hard way. I worked for a company that had a huge culture problem. I made the mistake of telling the truth to HR about it, and suddenly I started going from beyond excellent performance reviews to strangely poor performance reviews about my "personality" without any explanation (and even resistance when I tried to ask about it). They were slowly documenting enough negative evidence to let me go. Unfortunately New York is an "at-will" state, so I could never file a wrongful termination suit. The power is one-sided.
It would be in the interest of the company to catch problems as early as possible and difuse the situation. Seems that Amazon has failed on multiple levels to understand the situation.
I don't know how big of a "secret" it actually is -- I think it's just that most people make assumptions about what HR does and why they exist. It's less that the information is hidden and more that people just don't bother looking for it.
My wife is an attorney who works in HR and labor relations. HR existing to protect the company was one of the first things she learned in either an HR class or employment law class.
It's a "secret" because the manuals that HR produces contain explicit or implicit statements to the effect that HR is there to help the employee with things like benefits and conflicts with other employees or managers. Most people aren't ever caught up in a tangle in which HR's true purpose was exposed to them, so HR gets away with these little lies and maintain the illusion that they're there to help employees.
of course not, that would be the worker's council and the union.
you silly Americans :)
HR employees can be fired, hence are under pressure, hence are on the side of the company. Works council members in developed nations are protected, cannot be fired on a whim and get fully paid while fighting for you.
As a European working in the US it feels like time travel when it comes to work, health, banking. Just had a discussion about why Google Health has failed - while Austrian citizens already enjoy an electronic health record, tracking their medication across doctors.
So many patriots here will defend the US as the greatest country, no matter what - but actively oppose the very fabric of this nation, the government, with its rules and regulations to protect the people. Very hard to wrap my head around this.
You know the government is supposed to be representatives of the people, right? Of the people for the people. I'm worrying for the US and the world, because Americans are so anti government. Peoples rights aren't being respected.
The government is supposed to be of the people, and for the people. The government should be subservient to the people, not the other way around (at one point in history, a novel concept).
The concept of the "American people" predates the current American government. It will survive the current American government (plenty of developed or developing countries have had multiple governments in the past century, without interrupting the notion of that country as a group of people. In the more distant past, consider France. France remained a country of the French, despite several dramatic changes in the nature of French government in the past 300 years). The people are the "fabric of America", not the government that the people have created. That government is just an imperfect tool used by the people.
Speaking as an anti-government American, I'm against the current form of American government because it has strayed so far from the limited government principles on which this country was founded. It's literally impossible for a government this large to be representative.
Oh you mean the Articles of Confederation which were so poorly thought it the country was imploding after 10 years so badly that they had to start from scratch and write a whole new document called the constitution to fix the mess of constant rebellions?
Is that the founding principles you mean? Because George Washington had nothing good to say about them after having tried them during his terms in office.
Not saying that I agree with GP, but the US was much less centralized during the early days of the Constitution than it is today. Part of that is practical - fast communication makes it easier to centralize.
But over many years through a combination of Supreme Court decisions, legislation, and executive decisions, authority has become more concentrated in the hands of the Federal government than in the state/local government, or left to the individual.
That's not to say that it's all bad - civil rights, for example was a hugely important movement only made possible by moving some power away from the states. But to deny that it has happened isn't right either.
You mean the tyrannical power grabbing centralized monstrosity all real Americans hated? Because that's what the Constitution was to the real Americans who founded this country and not the jack boot licking, spineless cowards who could look true freedom in the eye and made the federal government the hydra that it is today.
(the tone of this post has been set by the federalist and anti-federalist pamphlets that lead up to the Constitutional convention, some words have been changed for clarity)
>while Austrian citizens already enjoy an electronic health record, tracking their medication across doctors.
And if you understand why Austrian citizens' tracking doesn't extend across all of the EU, maybe you'll also understand why it doesn't happen across the US.
What feels like time travel is going to Europe and having to use cash everywhere in Portugal because cards are so rarely accepted outside of big chains. Felt very backwards.
So governments are to be rejected while profile-building credit card companies are something to aspire to?
While CC companies have no means to jail you, locking down your credit card access in a mostly cash-less world can be a real pain - and unlike governments, they have no (somewhat) independent appeals process.
Borders between states are hardly the same as borders between countries, and Portugal is not representative of Europe. Europe is a region with multiple cultures, languages, countries, and governments.
Well that's the point that he/she is trying to make isn't it? States in the US are more like to countries within the EU. That's in part why I think a lot of people from the US refer to 'Europe' as a cohesive entity, because in many ways it is. Different states and different countries are at different levels of progress.
States in the US =/= Countries within the EU. Europe is really not a cohesive entity. Different languages, different history (stretching back a thousand+ years), completely different value systems, cultures, etc.
Trying to insinuate that the degree of differentiation between states is the same as between Europe countries is utter absurdity. Clearly, trying to track healthcare across different governments with different languages and different cultures is much harder than trying to track healthcare across different states with the same language, the same national government, and a very similar culture.
Culture and that other stuff you mention are important, but so is size and distance. In the same way that someone who moved from Austria to Scotland would be tolerant of differences in official services, so is someone who moves from Seattle to Orlando.
because rules and regulations are links in the chains that bind you. rules and regulations created the corporations, rules and regulations tax you, rules and regulations throw you in jail for imbibing in herbs...
The US has a proud history of leveraging criminals for discrediting unions. And the legacy in popular culture is that unions lead to organized crime. Good luck in your reciding, sorry "recovering", economy.
It was partially sarcastic, partially not. In 2014, its about as relevant as complaining about links between the Mafia & Unions. They used to be connected in places but it was relatively small scale (e.g. local) and not on the scale people like the parent claimed.
This is correct advice in some situations - and I have had this experience, but certainly not universally.
I know people that say that about their IT departments. Or legal. Or marketing. Sales.
I know a lot of very high performing HR teams. The best growth companies in SF/SV have amazing HR teams. They're responsible for a whole lot more than your 401k.
If you're in an org where X is not your friend - then you're probably in a large, politicized organization. Best advice is to either accept that and adapt, or get out and find somewhere that fits your ethos.
Not entirely sure why I got downvoted. I guess people don't like HR teams.
A great HR team?
Showing up on your first day and having everything you need. A laptop that does what it needs, a pass, someone to induct you, materials that get you started. Making you feel welcome. Being productive and part of the team. Sure, your manager and team are part of that, but HR facilities this (In most cases, teams are woeful at doing this).
A great office environment. Making sure people have the right skills. And not just technical - managerial skills and support. Encouraging teams and cross-functional discussion.
Coaching hiring managers on the best ways to interview. Making sure people are greeted properly. Interviews are kept. Presenting an employee brand that makes people want to work at the company.
Having a performance review system that doesn't suck and gives people the feedback they need to get better. Sure, people hate then, but people also crave feedback.
An office environment that suits the culture and makes people productive. Making sure people are getting the emotional support they need.
Ever had a co-worker who's depressed, suicidal? Someone that has committed suicide. Or a death in the company? Someone that has a family tragedy? Organizing counseling for the team? HR steps up. It's easy to brush over these things until they happen. You appreciate a professional when it does.
Ever needed someone walked off the premises because they are threatening? Sexual harassment? Health and safety violations. Easy to say, meh, these aren't important – but, no, they are. Blocked fire exits kill people. Toxic cultures sink companies.
.. And yes. Making sure people get paid. That the health insurance works.
There are plenty of examples where this doesn't work. There are plenty of sucky implementations. Performance reviews generally suck. But I can assure that the growth tech companies wanting to kick goals are getting these things right.
Interesting and pretty damning. Some key excerpts:
> Amazon gave me their final offer: 4 weeks of severance for 18 months of adhering to the broad non-compete that would not allow me to earn a living in my field, and further explained that if I didn't accept their final offer, Amazon would sue me for tens of thousands of dollars in relocation expenses.
Employee complained, was fired, Amazon insists s/he can't work for another 1 1/2 years (I know that's legal in the US, but it's still asshole-ish behaviour).
> What we found was that there were tens of thousands of Kindle e-ink owners, the vast majority who hadn’t even seen the promotion details (as customers had to click on the ad to see the details), were qualifying for the $10 Gift card because every day, there are thousands of customers who own a Kindle and already have Discover set as their 1-click default card, that buy a digital good on Amazon in the ordinary course of their activity.
> Meanwhile the promotion continued to run and within a few more days we had gone over the $500,000 budget.
Discover Card pays $500 000 for a campaign that gives $10 to each user who switches default 1-click card to Discover. Amazon gives $10 mostly to users who already have Discover as default. Munira, the manager, lies to Discover about that.
> Munira was forced to admit under oath in deposition [...] that she falsified her educational record on her resume to Amazon and all her previous employers - claiming to have earned a Bachelors and Masters degree in Computer Science from Stanford when in fact she earned no degrees at all.
Munira is a liar/cheater, and still employed at Amazon.
> Munira is a liar/cheater, and still employed at Amazon.
That's not the best part. The best part is that somebody who directly reported to Jeff Bezos essentially told the team to go ahead and keep lying to the customer in order to "maximize free cash flow for the device". Which isn't something you can spin into yet another "rogue employee" case in which "we'll review our policies".
I didn't really interpret it that way (although I understand the author did).
The division head asked something like "are we doing the right thing here?", and also said something like "we need to make money".
From the transcript provided it sounded like he didn't have the complete information about how they were screwing Discovery over: it sounded more like he was told that the campaign was costing Discovery more than Discovery had expected, but the plan was for Amazon to tell Discovery that they wanted to use money Discovery had already budgeted (and spent?) with Amazon but hadn't received a complete campaign for.
I've seen that kind of deal done before, and there isn't anything wrong with it provided both parties are transparent about it.
> The division head asked something like "are we doing the right thing here?", and also said something like "we need to make money".
That's not the message I get from "At the end of the day, you should do what you need to do to maximize free cash flow for the device." The priorities are clear.
And the sane, ethical response to that is, "I'm told Amazon takes the long view, and the long view here is that we will maximize FCF by not betraying partners and not doing anything we wouldn't want to appear on the front page of Hacker News."
Because, you know, that could happen... 'some day'.
He didn't encourage anyone to lie. He said he would leave it up to his direct reports to figure out how to maximize cash flow. If a subordinate then decided to lie, that was the subordinate's decision.
Whenever you think your boss is telling you to do something wrong, the best possible thing you can do is to write them a letter (and keep a copy) explaining how you think it's wrong, and that you want them to confirm that they want you to do it. If they refuse to confirm it, don't do it. People do actually have free will, you know.
Hey Folks, it was pretty clear he didn't want us to share sales data because it would make less money for the device. This was a separate issue from Discover. On the black & white e-ink Kindles, we had added a feature where users could buy from the device. The data was really bad - most advertisers paid thousands of dollars in minimum spending, and would sell a fraction of that spending in product sales. Amazon doesn't share that data with advertisers, and the SVP was basically telling the team not to share sales data because nobody in their right mind would buy a $10K or $20K ad if they ended up only selling $500 in product.
> He didn't encourage anyone to lie. He said he would leave it up to his direct reports to figure out how to maximize cash flow. If a subordinate then decided to lie, that was the subordinate's decision.
You forgot the part where, after all that is said he goes "wink, wink".
Right -- just like they have the "free will" to decide to keep their jobs (and stay on the fast track). From the context, it's pretty darned clear what JB expected his subordinates to "freely decide" in this case.
I don't know about the "open to interpretation" part. He clearly knew about it according to the transcript. Anything else than telling them to go to the customer and explain the issue is complicity of fraud.
Not really. The company can add any stupid clause it wants to the contract, but in the vast majority of states which allow NCA at all for employees they're heavily restricted in time and space, and must not prevent employees from earning a living.
In Washington State, NCAs are enforceable if they're "validly formed and reasonable" (Racine v. Bender), although a big issue there is you have to go to court to see whether this specific NCA is enforceable or not. I would guess it's not (because it's completely unreasonable), and Amazon's behaviour is not entirely dissimilar to SLAPP.
> When Amazon learned that Mr. Powers joined Google, it first engaged in discussions with Google about Mr. Powers' employment. Following those discussions, Amazon sought injunctive relief through a Washington state court. After Mr. Powers successfully removed the case to a Federal District Court in Washington, Amazon moved for a preliminary injunction against Mr. Powers to enforce the non-compete restrictions.
> The court denied most of Amazon's requests, and upheld the non-compete restriction only to the extent that it prohibited Mr. Powers, for a period of 9 months from the date he last had access to Amazon confidential information, from servicing any customer as to which he had obtained confidential information* during his employment at Amazon (this restriction was essentially the same restriction as the one Mr. Power voluntarily agreed to upon joining Google).
> […]
> With respect to the validity of the non-compete restrictions, the court next determined that the restrictions were enforceable only to the extent that they sought to prevent Mr. Powers from working with his former Amazon customers. The court also determined, however, that Amazon's attempt to uphold the more general "worldwide" ban against competition — i.e., not tied to specific customers — was unenforceable because it was unreasonable and Amazon failed to show how such a restriction was necessary to protect its business.
I'm curious if you're aware of any precedent on how NC clauses hold up when the company terminates contract (such in this case as a firing). Typically I see the enforcement matter more when the employee voluntarily leaves, not when they're forced to.
To me the entire requirement of 'consideration' falls flat on its face where they've essentially webbed a case of ruining someone's livelihood by preventing them from finding work after termination all the while giving a plainly inadequate severance.
Totally unacceptable and as much of my company's ~$4,000/mo spend with Amazon as possible is going to disappear if Munira isn't terminated. I've also passed this post along to someone I know at Discover possibly in a position to do something about it, though I can't imagine they're not already aware of it.
Very interesting - do you have a quotable source for that? Because she's still claiming to be a Stanford alumni in her LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/munirarahemtulla
If you read the letter it has a deposition transcript with her admitting it. Page 19.
"Munira was forced to admit under oath in deposition, several months after my termination, that she falsified her educational record on her resume to Amazon and all her previous employers - claiming to have earned a Bachelors and Masters degree in Computer Science from Stanford when in fact she earned no degrees at all."
Also an interesting commentary quote from the page 21 of the letter:
"And in fact, even after finding out about Munira’s lies regarding her educational background and other issues I raised before my termination, Jeff Blackburn represented in his deposition that Munira was given a promotion, even though according to Amazon’s policies, falsification of personnel records is a Tier 1 offense likely resulting in immediate termination"
The letter reads awesomely, totally like a good book.
This is made stranger by the fact the Jeff Blackburn says he knew she hadn't completed the degrees, and hired her anyways. And he went to Stanford. For an MBA. Honestly this looks really bad for Amazon, partly because it's obvious how expected and systemic this behavior is
> At the end of the day. You should do what you need to do to maximize free cash flow for the device. Do what you need to do to make more money
"I know she hasn't completed it yet" - this guys words are 100% weasel.
Well, yes, we assume you would be aware that she hadn't yet completed a course (her Masters) she couldn't enroll in yet because she had not completed her undergraduate.
This is something my step-daughter could understand, especially with her education as a lawyer (not yet completed, as she is seven years old).
Maybe her profile has been changed now but it's only showing that she's following Stanford and in a Stanford group - There's nothing in the experience and education sections at all.
It seems like she claimed that she had both a Bachelors and Masters degree from Stanford when indeed she did not have both. Can she be pursuing a Master's degree when she had not completed a Bachelors?
If she were a Stanford student, she could have been in the coterminal BS/MS program for Comp Sci yet dropped out before getting either. The nice thing about the coterm program is your ability to get classified as a grad student early (once you get 180 credits) and start paying your way through college using research and teaching assistantships, which provide tuition and stipend.
I can't speak for Stanford, but I pursued a BS and MS simultaneously at Cal Poly. Cal Poly's computer science department has a 4+1 program that lets you start taking graduate courses while you're finishing your undergraduate degree. The program also drops the senior project requirement for the BS and combines it with the master's thesis required for the MS.
Both of those things are false (she said as much in the deposition), but "attended Stanford" could mean that she dropped out before going for a Bachelor's degree, so may not be a lie.
It seems I didn't look thoroughly. "Stanford Alumni" was listed in one of her groups, and Stanford itself was listed in the "follow" section on her page - sorry, you're right!
Does finding a public linkedin profile count as doxing? I don't know much about the topic, but I was under the impression that there was more to it than that. it was a black-hat hacker thing, that it involved getting past some kind of access control.
Doxing is when you find very personal information, such as place of residence. In can involve information about the workspace, Linked-in profile or so forth - but only in the case that the victim is operating under a pseudonym and have not disclosed their true identity themselves.
Why are you down-voting this person? They are not trolling. They're only advising a little restraint.
Honestly, calling this doxing is pretty accurate. Before that user posted her LinkedIn profile, she was an anonymous figure in this dispute which, frankly, was all that was relevant to HN. Now, through LinkedIn, she will potentially receive hate mail and, with an identifying image, is more likely to be pinpointed on other platforms which may reveal more personal information about her.
People should remember that there is a lot about this situation that they don't know. This man who was fired from Amazon may have a legitimate grievance and he may not. Things might look one way when described on paper, but could have seemed quite different in real life. We could be (and probably are) missing out on a lot of important details that only eye-witnesses could be aware of.
> Discover Card pays $500 000 for a campaign that gives $10 to each user who switches default 1-click card to Discover.
Actually, no. This is the key twist that changes the whole picture. It is only his editorializing that claims the point of the campaign was to convert 1-click defaults. But he is the only one claiming that. He himself notes that the campaign was not set up that way. It was set up to promote Discover card by rewarding all 1-click usage. Furthermore the response from Amazon notes that they reviewed the progress of the campaign with Discover and Discover was cool with continuing, provided it was narrowed to Fire users and capped at the original budget. [1]
And who claims otherwise? From the article you referenced:
> Business Insider reached out to Amazon and Discover, neither commented.
I, personally, find it quite hard to believe that Discover would be gifting users $10 without any apparent benefit, not even branding! Also, if what you're saying is true, why hasn't Amazon shared the detailed statistics with Discover? Why have all his superiors acted in such shady ways (judging from the emails)?
Also, if anyone is doing shitty editorializing, its BI:
> He decides to stay home sick for the rest of the week
Because people decide to get sick, right.
I don't really see a point in providing BI as a reference, as it has no other sources than the original source.
Actually BI cited other sources, namely Amazon's response and further email evidence from the lawsuit, which was somehow omitted from Kivin's document. In it the Amazon SVP statement notes that the campaign was set up to pay $10 as a reward to Discover card users, not tied to 1-click conversions. He also notes this was reviewed with Discover mid-promotion and they elected to continue within budget.
There is of course some promotional benefit to that, and it's not unusual in the card industry. While some card benefits are conditionally offered to new signups (e.g. promo APR), most are offered to the entire class (e.g. cashback rewards).
I think BI and the author were implying (or outright stating) that he refused to be involved in the issue and said "I'm 'sick', and won't be in. I need closure on X, Y, and Z issues", so it was fairly evident to all involved what was meant.
It doesn't sound like part of the deal was for 1-click defaults to be changed. It sounds like there was an assumption this would happen implicitly by giving it to everyone, but they underestimated how many Discover card users were already on 1-click:
The promotion was structured in a way where anyone with a Kindle, who used their Discover card to buy a digital good (e.g. mp3 or movie), would get a $10 Amazon Gift Card. The reason the good had to be digital is because to buy a digital good you need to use your 1-click default card, and Discover’s primary objective for this promotion was to get users who had a Discover card, to make it their 1-click default so Discover could be the card of choice for holiday shopping over the course of the fourth quarter. That was the only way Discover could justify spending $10 when someone ordered a $1 .mp3 music file.
It looks like Munira attended Stanford as an undergraduate, as she is an alumni of the Mayfield Fellows program [1]. However, it is not clear whether she graduated.
Munira is a liar/cheater, and still employed at Amazon.
I'm still a little disturbed as to why I'm seeing her dragged through the mud on a top link on HN. We aren't a gossip site, so why is this "confidential" letter being shared amongst the community at this time? What context am I missing?
The story is compelling because Amazon's treatment of Kivin is a relevant warning to HN readers, who sympathize with technical employees who are victimized by their employers. In this respect, it's similar to posts about the massive collusion between Google, Apple etc to suppress wages.
The use of Munira's real name isn't even necessary. S/he is just the hand of the corporation. It valuable for each HN reader to think about who Munira might be in their work place, and defend themselves appropriately.
I disagree, too many of these articles leave the wrong-doers unnamed and unscathed. I am happy Kivin is taking names and calling the whole thing for what it is. Amazon gave a 4-week severance and 18month non-compete clause, which falls even below than unfair.
This appears to be a lot deeper than Munira. It appears to indicate that there is serious culture rot at Amazon. That is an issue worthy of discussion on HN in my opinion, for numerous reasons. Such culture rot type discussions have occurred surrounding a lot of other companies, including Microsoft, IBM, HP, and so on.
You misunderstand. This isn't culture rot, this IS the culture at Amazon. The only way to get ahead is to step on the neck of your teammates, because at review time the group is graded on a curve. Somebody's getting a bad review (even if the entire team is doing well), so you had better make sure it's not you. (source - worked at Lab126 for 18 months)
I agree. It shouldn't be certain to anyone that there is a clear good side and bad side here. We weren't there, so we're probably unaware of a lot of important details in this dispute. If anything, the discussion should be about the principles represented by the situation and not about the people.
It's a bit more complicated. A non-compete is enforceable in CA if you own any equity of value that constitutes a loosely defined partnership (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause#Exceptions_-...). Further you may be blocked from selling the equity for years after leaving, resulting in years of legal non-compete enforcement. It's a messy case, but I've been advised by actual lawyer that when he sees equity structured in certain way it's for no other reason but to make this case.
Amazon should be smart enough to know they can't put in a clause that's too far-reaching and preventing people from working anywhere in the world. I view it as more or less of a threat and nothing more. They wouldn't come after you if you walked across the street to Microsoft, Yahoo, or Apple. It happens all of the time.
Amazon added a 12 month non compete clause to my 3 month long internship. Since I was planning to get another internship the next summer, it worried me that they'd think this made any sense at all. The HR recruiter essentially told me not to worry about it, it's never enforced.
I know you have limited negotiating power as an intern, but the best response to "don't worry, it's never enforced" is "If you don't plan to enforce it, then there's no point in me signing it".
Just to follow up on that (and agreeing that as an intern this probably wouldn't fly), but when I started at my current job the employment agreement had some intellectual property clauses that simply wouldn't work, since I do occasional client work on the weekends and contribute to open source projects. It was most likely because I was the first full-time software developer hire (previously, software was written by contractors). I simply told them I needed to make a couple of changes to protect both of us, crossed off the offending sections, and attached an amendment to the contract using some standard boilerplate I found online that protected both of our interests fairly. Everyone was cool with it, we signed it, and everything is copacetic.
> Amazon should be smart enough to know they can't put in a clause that's too far-reaching and preventing people from working anywhere in the world.
Actually, they can put in such a clause. There's a difference between "unenforceable" and "illegal". There's nothing to prevent Amazon from including such a clause in the contract, even if it is clearly unenforceable. The worst case scenario, from Amazon's perspective, is that a court simply rules that the clause is unenforceable (as happened in the example masklinn gave https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8600939 ).
The best case scenario is that Amazon can frighten an ex-employee with the threat of legal action if he accepts a job with a competitor. Even if the ex-employee knows that a court will likely rule the clause is unenforceable, he has to decide whether he wants to go to the hassle and expense of fighting Amazon in court.
Amazon could also use the clause as a pretext to dissuade potential employers from hiring the ex-employee. Again, while the potential employer might realise that the clause is unenforceable, they have to decide whether they want to take the risk of hiring someone who will then be sued by Amazon (while it may not affect the potential employer directly, the new employee will inevitably be distracted by the court case).
I would never recommend that anyone sign an employment contract with a non-compete clause, even if it's clearly unenforceable. Even setting aside the potential legal hassle if it goes to court, you want to think about why they've included such a clause in the contract. Either they don't realise that it's unenforceable (in which case you have to question how competent they are), or they know it's unenforceable but don't care (which suggests that they plan to use it to frighten/bully you, as described above).
Recently, I turned down a job because the company included a clause in the employment contract under which I would have been prevented from engaging in "any activity" that competed with the company (or its related companies), anywhere in the world, for two years after I left the company. In the relevant legal jurisdiction (Switzerland), non-compete clauses are legal but "must be appropriately restricted with regard to place, time and scope such that it does not unfairly compromise the employee’s future economic activity". This one clearly wasn't. Effectively, it would have prevented me from working in banking or fintech, which is pretty much all that I've done for the last 14 years. I consulted an employment lawyer, who confirmed that it would definitely be thrown out if it ever went to court, so I pushed back.
I have zero problem with clauses that prohibit me from poaching clients or hiring other employees but if a company's hiring me for my expertise and experience that I've gained before going to work for them, I don't think it's reasonable for them to try to prevent me from using that same expertise and experience at another company if I leave them.
In the end, they refused to remove or alter the clause, so I turned down the job.
In finance non-compete clauses are enforced with an army of lawyers. It doesn't really matter to them if they lose in the end or not, you may be in court for years. The flip side is that you get paid for this time.
One of my friends left a major hedge fund with a two year non-compete and hold me he would never even think of crossing their lawyers as they would stop at nothing to ruin his life as an example to others. The law real only helps you if you have the resources to use it.
There's a difference between non-compete clauses (that prevent you from working for a competitor after you leave - and are no longer being paid by - your now-former employer) and gardening leave (where you're still employed and getting paid, but you're sent home for the duration of your notice period). The idea behind the latter is that, by the time your gardening leave is over, your knowledge of clients, etc. is out of date and/or (in situations where you've been the primary point of contact or managed the the relationship with the client) you've been replaced.
In most EU countries, non-compete clauses require compensation. In Germany of Belgium, comp' must be at least half the gross salary, for the entire extent of the clause (limited to 2 years in Germany, 1 in Belgium)
And the NCC may still be done away with for being "unreasonable" e.g. it can not cover the whole country and prevent the former employee from working in the field.
I'm sure it does, it does everywhere else. But I think things are a bit different and higher stakes with executive level folks like the the one in question here. 18 months is not an eternity if one can "afford it". Ironically, that's what probably gave him prodigious free time to pursue legal action.
My experience with Amazon HR is this: my ex-girlfriend had an internship with Amazon in the summer of 2013. While there her manager friended her on Facebook then sent her some messages suggesting that if she slept with him he would make sure she got a full time offer and explicitly describing his fantasies about her.
She ended sleeping with him and true to his word he got her the full time position. About a month later I found out about the whole thing and broke up with her.
I submitted the transcripts of their conversations to HR. They conducted an investigation and he admitted to everything. The guy got to keep his job. They transferred him to another group and wanted her to sign a statement saying that nothing improper happened. They strongly suggested that her full time offer might be rescinded is she didn't sign the statement.
She signed and has been working there the past 6 months.
If what you're saying is accurate (I'm not suggesting that you're lying; but if there are no important omitted details that might cause us to draw different conclusions about what you've said so far), then do I hope she has the courage to come forward with the FB transcripts -- especially all the explicit fantasies the hiring manager was stupid enough to post in conjunction with an explicit quid-pro-quo in the same channel. Along with copies of any ridiculous statements she was forced to sign.
These companies just won't stop behaving badly until their behavior gets vividly exposed often enough for them to start thinking twice. In the case of sexual harassment, the more incontrovertibly damning material that comes out (provided it is done with the express consent of the victims), the better.
The "victim"? Please. She weighed things and decided that a fulltime job right out of the gate was more important than a one-nighter and cheating on her ex. Not justifying the manager and everyone involved in the cover-up but this sounds more like a consenting adults agreement than a poor victim exploitation.
Or you can look at it that if she was a guy she would have just been offered the job. In this scenario her manager thought "hmm, she fits in well here and I can also get laid!" In that case, she had to have sex with somebody to get a job that somebody else would have got without question.
I don't understand this... I would imagine anyone smart enough to obtain an internship with Amazon would realize that they could sue Amazon and settle for enough money to never have to work again in their life. How could she possibly take that offer?
I feel there may be more to the story, especially as you are her ex and I feel we should all take this with a grain of salt....
They strongly suggested that her full time offer might be rescinded is she didn't sign the statement.
This is shitty, but there is a certain logic. By signing the statement, she repudiated the narrative by which she had earned her position by having sex. If she had not denied that, Amazon would have been employing someone who had a radically incorrect understanding of her duties as an employee.
Please don't blame the victim. How would you feel if you applied for a job, and worked there for three months, and then your manager told you that you'd have to have sex with him to get your job, regardless of your merit for the role?
Whilst there is despicable behavior on behalf of the manager, I feel it's not as clear-cut as that.
She worked there as an intern. She had not applied for a job.
He told her he'd make sure she'd GET an offer if she slept with him, not that she would have to do so to get a job.
She then did so, and hid it from her (ex partner). She also agreed that "nothing improper" happened (which is problematic for numerous reasons, and not without the threat of authority).
She worked there as an intern. She had not applied for a job. He told her he'd make sure she'd GET an offer if she slept with him, not that she would have to do so to get a job.
You're splitting hairs. From the point of view of the law, it was a quid-pro-quo specifying preferential consideration in matters of employment (or promotion) in exchange for sex. That's what matters.
She then did so, and hid it from her (ex partner).
Completely irrelevant to the sexual harassment issue.
She also agreed that "nothing improper" happened (which is problematic for numerous reasons, and not without the threat of authority).
She signed a statement, under duress (and implicit threat of termination) about the subjective import of what happened. Which in no way changes or diminishes the physical reality of actually did happen. Which for Amazon, appears to be quite damning on its own merits. Quite damning, indeed.
Not blaming the victim, definitely blaming the manager. And though was likely damaging to sense of self-worth and measure of merit, its unfortunate that she didn't take the chance to punish her manager or find a job elsewhere.
Unfortunately this is all too common, especially in SV. There are just too many "forever alone" types with hiring power, and girls who will do anything to be a successful "young professional."
This situation certainly wasn't your fault, but that manager raped your girlfriend -- using a threat of employment loss to extract sex from her. He put her in a very tough position that few people would be able to overcome.
Discover Card, which spends ~$15M/yr advertising with Amazon, wanted to give a $10 gift card to Kindle users that changed their default Amazon 1-Click purchase settings to use a Discover card. Instead, Amazon gave the gift cards to everyone that used Discover for a 1-click digital purchase, the vast majority of whom already had Discover as their default 1-Click purchase card. Discover's $500K budget was predictably drained in rapid fashion, and they barely got any of the actions they had agreed to pay for. The author of this letter was encouraged to hide this fact, pitch it as an overwhelming success of the campaign, and to ask Discover to expand the budget. He was fired after complaining about being uncomfortable with participating in obvious fraud against their 2nd largest advertiser, and is now suing Amazon.
The failures here occurred in every department. First, at a fundamental technical level, I don't understand how this could happen in the first place if it wasn't intentional. This was a simple CPA campaign. When someone changed their default card to Discover, they got a gift card. So it begins with their "ad execution team". Second, the moment the problem was discovered, they should have simply credited the campaign such that they were only charged for the actions they agreed and intended to pay for. Third, any employee actively involved in encouraging fraud, let alone fraud against their 2nd largest advertiser, should be fired. Their engineering, marketing, legal, and HR teams all failed miserably on this one.
I don't envision myself ever having a need to run a CPA campaign through Amazon, but based on this I would stay away from them as much as possible. They had to have multiple internal discussions about whether or not they should commit a crime against a multi-million dollar advertiser. That's certainly enough to scare me away.
Is there any evidence Discover agreed to that? As far as I can see he is the only one claiming the sole purpose of the campaign was to convert 1-click settings. That is his editorializing. Everywhere else it's mentioned, e.g. in Amazon's response[1], the campaign was not tied to that goal specifically. He even notes this himself:
"The promotion was structured in a way where anyone with a Kindle, who used their Discover card to buy a digital good (e.g. mp3 or movie), would get a $10 Amazon Gift Card."
Amazon in its reply noted that they reviewed the progress of the campaign with the customer and Discover agreed to proceed with some minor adjustments and capped to the original budget.
If you read the email from Jill Losser (ad buyer at Discover) on page 10 you can see she is pretty pissed off about the problem and also uncertain on the details of what happened because Amazon managers have been holding back data on exactly where the discount monies went. When you cite the line about 'the promotion was structured in a way...' you're taking his description about how it operated in practice while ignoring his statement on how it was supposed to operate (laid out in the next two sentences). I agree that this is editorializing on his part and it would have been better, if possible, to include the text of Discover's ad buy request - but when you look at the email from the Discover ad buyer it's pretty clear that she's unhappy about the way the promotion has turned out.
The best interpretation you can put on this is that Discover may have failed to be sufficiently specific in the terms of its ad buy and that Amazon misinterpreted this lack of specificity to mean that Discover wanted to give $10 to any Amazon customer using a Discover card as their 1-click option, rather than incentive customers who were not doing so to change that behavior.
Mind, I'm not commenting on the overall merits of Varghese's letter but on the likelihood that he accurately represented Discover's expectation.
The problem she was pissed off about was lack of visibility into the performance data of the program, not its structure. There is no mention of a problem with how it is structured; in fact, there is a reference to another promotion, "free holiday shipping", which very conceivably would be structured the same way. Offer a promo to Discover card users, promote Discover card without going so far as to tie it exclusively to conversions.
The Amazon's subsequent email, cited by BI, notes that they resolved this visibility problem with Discover and they approved continuing the program within its original budget. That really goes against the notion that Discover had a different impression about how it was supposed to operate.
I disagree. In the first paragraph she says 'in the first two weeks we have over-delivered on the impressions allocated for the entire campaign'. Varghese argues that the issue was not one of excess impressions, but promotional monies being used up without any impressions being delivered at all, ie to Kindle e-reader users who already had Discover cards as a default and got a $10 rebate for just using their e-reader as they normally would, without ever having been served an ad in the first place.
There's explicit discussion of new vs existing defaulted Discover cards in her request for data, and a request for information on 'how [Discover] will be made good', which would not be meaningful if they did not consider any funds misallocated. In fact that's mentioned twice, the second time saying that they will still 'need to be made whole'. You don't ask to be made whole unless you've suffered some sort of economic loss, such as not getting what you thought you'd paid for.
Of course we can't draw conclusions on the basis of cherry-picked emails, but this one does clearly suggest that Discover felt itself to have been short-changed in some fashion besides a lack of analytics information.
there is a reference to another promotion, "free holiday shipping", which very conceivably would be structured the same way
Conceivably, but not necessarily, and even if it was structured the same way that doesn't mean Discover should have had any expectation about it. If was was in the habit of ordering apple pie from you and one day added an additional order for pumpkin pie, I would not be happy just to receive an additional apple pie - not because I had lost my taste for it, but because of the failure to fulfill my order for something different.
The Amazon's subsequent email, cited by BI, notes that they resolved this visibility problem with Discover and they approved continuing the program within its original budget.
That is itself a bone of contention - Varghese is suggesting Paul Kotas shares responsibility with Munira Rahemtulla for the whole situation and helped her obfuscate the issue. So without endorsing Vargheve's position, that email could be entirely consistent with it.
> There's explicit discussion of new vs existing defaulted Discover cards in her request for data... which would not be meaningful if theydid not consider any funds misallocated.
That's not really true. Cards run promotions like that all the time where the benefit is offered to all cardholders. One goal may be to drive adoption, but it also drives other goals like retention and brand value. It's false to assume that the only reason they'd be pissed about lack of data on campaign performance is that they had only the one specific campaign goal in mind.
Selectively editing my quote so as to exclude the primary point (about Discover's insistence on being made whole) forces me to doubt either your reading comprehension or your honesty. Whichever is to blame, I see no point to continuing this conversation.
Re: reading comprehension, being "made good" was specifically in reference to the distribution of Fire vs e-reader impressions -- which was in fact made good by subsequently restricting the campaign to Fire (see BI story). That's 100% consistent with Amazon's SVP statement on the matter.
There is absolutely nothing in there that states that by "made whole" Discover meant the campaign should solely target 1-click conversions. That is pure speculation and runs counter to all the email evidence.
I was just condensing what I read in his letter. It does appear though that their intention though was to incentivize people to change their 1-click settings. It wouldn't make much sense to give gift cards to people that were already doing what you wanted them to do.
> Amazon in its reply noted that they reviewed the progress of the campaign with the customer and Discover agreed to proceed with some minor adjustments and capped to the original budget.
He appears to be alleging that Discover made this decision based upon false or very creatively spun data. During a meeting about this, a Senior VP said: "Are we hiding something? This doesn't feel right". The reply was "In this case we're hiding that it doesn't perform well". Instead of showing them that their $500,000 got them ~100 additional purchases made with Discover cards (an absurd CPA of $5,000), someone suggested that "We can show indexed sales (on device + on site) vs. a control group that didn't see the ad". That sounds intentionally deceitful (not to mention quite evil). They tried to hide the ill effects of their colossal mistakes.
> "The promotion was structured in a way where anyone with a Kindle, who used their Discover card to buy a digital good (e.g. mp3 or movie), would get a $10 Amazon Gift Card."
That's how it worked in practice obviously, but solely based upon his letter, it appears that this was not Discover's intention. Some of the emails he quoted in his letter also appear to be pretty damning evidence that they knew that this was wrong, and essentially didn't care.
Well it's not only solely based upon his letter, it's solely based upon his editorialization. The email evidence we have shows that Discover was aware of how the promotion was set up. Kivin is relying on an appeal to logic to support this notion that there's no purpose outside of 1-click conversions, but if you think about it, there are other benefits. Plenty of cards run promotions and rewards that apply to current customers, even though the aim is ultimately to bring more people over. And that's exactly how it looks this one was set up.
They gave additional $10 gift cards on each purchase. So not only was this not based on conversion, it wasn't even based on uniques. Even if Discover okay'd the design of the ad campaign it seems pretty clear that everybody dropped the ball on ensuring it reached it's intended targets.
Not 'solely'. I think it's fairly unambiguous even from Kivin's superiors that they knew that the effect of the promotion was unexpected and unintended, and that there were "numerous concerns" from (as far as I could see) Amazon Marketing, Accounting, and Business Development about "what the hell happened, how did this go live with no or near no oversight from these business units - we need to tell the customer /what went wrong/" - their emphasis.
That's right he didn't. The OP didn't quite do the TL;DR right, really the letter goes something like this:
Part 1 (How I made my manager hate me):
I insisted that we have better performance and everyone told me to f* off, so I went above my manager and now she hates me. (This is reasonable of her)
Par 2
She asks me to commit a crime and I raise it with HR, etc.
So you are an Amazon board member and you receive this letter.
The letter is said to be directed to you in confidence. It is not. It is openly published on scribd for all the world to see.
The letter is said to be written by an ex-executive of the company. It is not. Or, if it is, it is written in a style that has "lawyer-written" stamped all over it.
The person making the claims is saying he is doing this to uphold company values but is far from disinterested. If he was fired for whistleblowing, that is wrongful and he gets large damages. Otherwise, not. So, maybe it is sincere and maybe not. But who knows?
The person also waited two years to write this letter. Does this undercut its premise that its goal is to correct wrongdoing? Or was it now put out opportunistically to further some litigation goal instead? Again, who knows?
Ditto for a complaint being made just now to the Washington agency responsible for fraud. Why now and not earlier if the problems were serious and pressing?
Then too, the alleged victim (Discover Card) is hardly a naive consumer, knows how to defend itself, and had known enough about this to ask questions going as far back as 2012. Is there, then, less than meets the eye concerning the claims of its having been overtly cheated?
Everything stated in this letter may be true and damning as it appears. I don't know what happened, nor do I know the people involved. But I do know when something is framed insincerely and this letter is framed insincerely. It may all be true but its style and timing do not ring true.
This has to have another side to it, in my view, and it is wrong to take it as self-evidently true without hearing that other side. What we have now is only a one-sided story that is heavily slanted in its presentation.
Certainly if I were a board member to whom this was purportedly directed, I would be highly skeptical. I would assume instead that I was not even the intended audience for the letter. And I would probably be right.
Way to stand up for the little $145B company. Who, by the way, have an army of lawyers and PR professionals who write everything that comes out of the corporation. Regular employees are banned from speaking on behalf of the company.
Aren't you a lawyer? Are you the only lawyer who tells clients "go ahead and speak for yourself, it's not my place to help you word your thoughts effectively"?
Who, pray tell, do you think writes the "Letter from Jeff Bezos" that occasionally appears on the website?
The litigation goal, you may recall, is to compensate the aggrieved for losing his job over failure to join a criminal conspiracy.
> The litigation goal, you may recall, is to compensate the aggrieved for losing his job over failure to join a criminal conspiracy.
So, that's what the document claims. 'grellas makes the point that this isn't just a normal letter, it's probably written by a lawyer and has legal implications. In this case, we have some very serious allegations within the context of a legal battle. The next step, which should clearly be within the legal system, is discovery/investigation. Saying "there must be another side to this" is pretty reasonable -- I'm not lawyer, but most courts allow both sides to speak before making up their mind.
Why would you think that this snarling reply would persuade anyone on HN, let alone George Grellas? Who would take seriously a comment that opened by suggesting Grellas was sticking up for Amazon? Hey, way to stick up for the $30Bn credit card company, by the way.
This is the first interesting top-level comment on the thread, but is weighted down by the fact that it spoils the outrage tourism fun to be had at tl;dr'ing the letter and gawking at the few interesting details.
You'd think a nerd message board would reward critical thinking. Instead, the replies to this comment all seem offended by the concept.
This, I know, is not a helpful addition to the thread, but oh well, I'm just as bad as everyone else here.
Helpful tip: George Grellas has never, in the entire time he's been on the site, written an unhelpful comment. One good way to read HN is just to start with Grellas' comments.
I mean it: go look, you won't find a single bad comment. It's spooky.
Most thoughtful comments that get downvoted soon get voted back up by other users. That's one reason why it's against the HN guidelines to comment about downvoting. At least half the time your comment is soon obsolete.
Instead of posting comments like this, please just upvote and trust your fellow users. If you (or anyone) think a comment has been treated particularly unfairly, you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com.
It wasn't thoughtful; the very premise of it (that this was sent to the rest of the planet before it was sent confidentially to the boardmembers) is factually incorrect.
I gingerly suggest you put some work into identifying the "very premise" of comments, because that was not the "very premise" of Grellas' comment.
Grellas' is raising the point that this letter concerns a two-year-old dispute between two gigantic American corporations, one of which is a credit card company, but frames itself as an urgent public policy concern.
You can believe that concern is irrelevant, but you can't pretend that it's something it's not.
Off topic: Why does Scribd have a perfectly functional mobile site that allows me to read half the PDF before rudely graying out my screen and insisting that I download their app to finish? I was reading with my phone rotated to landscape so at first I couldn't even see the pop up, the PDF just went gray. I call that borderline psychological abuse. At the very least I'm going to subconsciously associate the Scribd brand with that horrible experience.
I believe it used to be quite useful when your only option to read PDFs was Acrobat which was slow and would often lock up your browser while the plugin loaded.
Now that both Firefox and Chrome include built in PDF readers and we've also got other options like SumatraPDF, I see little value in Scribd any more.
The software used to put an additional link to Scribd after each pdf link, but we stopped that a long time ago. I assume that's what you're referring to, because there was never (and isn't) anything else along those lines that I know of.
Some years ago, while helping a relative out, I saw this first hand with a bunch of Joomla documentation that had been removed to behind its paywall.
(Not that I hadn't already reached this opinion, on a more general basis.)
P.S. I would welcome a non-Scribd link to the letter. I've reached the point where I refuse to run/use Scribd. The monetization is one thing; the horrible UI and my lack of trust in it is another and is the basis for this decision.
I've always associated them with horrible experience. I groan whenever I see Scribd instead of just a link to the PDFs. I have a good PDF viewer, thank you. In fact, I have several.
You must have a much lower expectation of "Hacker News" quality than I do. Has scribd ever had a good user experience? I've come across them once in a while for years and never liked it at all.
For years I've been avoiding Scribd. They are like experts exchange or quora: doing anything they can to get you to sign up and become beholden to their well furnished cage. Many times I've been in search of an odd PDF, found it on Scribd, only to have 99% of it unreadable.
Scribd is a terrible service and never once in my life have I said "oh good a Scribd link!". Every modern browser has a PDF viewer built in and I would hope people on HN are using updated browsers. It continues to baffle me as to why people use Scribd.
Perfectly functional? Not for me [1]. I had to open the document on a laptop because all I got on mobile was pixelated half-rendered gibberish. Attn: dang, HN should pop a dialog recommending against a submission to scribd.
There's also weighing that against getting the content onto HN if scribd is the only place it is found.
[1] Android 4.2.2, Firefox Android 33.1, Opera Mini 7.6.1
> Scribd is "Hacker News" quality. They're one of the HN venture capital funded companies.
I agree with @nsomaru that it would be great to submit PDFs rather that Scribd links, especially since the HN guidelines say the original document should be submitted. On the other hand, I'm not sure if HN wants to bypass a YC-funded company.
I don't think it should make any difference what relations the companies have. Scribd was less bad than Adobe plugin lockups. Scribd is more bad than current solutions. They can improve their experience, or not. Right now, I don't see the usefulness.
I opened it on my desktop, and I for one thought the 720 point font was a lovely and refreshing departure from the standard web-presented text so many sites seem to lazily impose on us. :/
What a fascinating insight into the guts of a MegaCorp. Their scale (Discover alone paying $13MM/yr for ads), politics and inner workings. Very well written, too.
The most interesting aspect to me, apart from the main plot, was how far detached from reality everyone is operating.
Someone discovers a fatal flaw (5 second latency) in a multi-million dollar ad campaign.
You'd think this is a no-brainer; file a bug with the engineering team and have this fixed, right?
Instead, at Amazon, it eventually escalates into someone desperately "asking for the contact information for the person that manages latency for amazon.com". That alone is the stuff that comedy TV shows are made of.
Stories like these make me feel real pity for the little engineers all the way down the food chain. The ones who had to implement and test this adserver. The ones who likely weren't happy at all with 5 second latencies either.
I wonder if their voices were squelched by management in the same way, or if there's just an established culture of resignation and nobody cares anymore.
With every new team and new layer of management, the agents' incentives drifted farther away from the organization's leading into a gray zone entirely focused on self-promotion and detached from fundamental business ethics.
What I didn’t know at the time was the the HR Business manager was a good personal friend of Munira, and in what seems to be a betrayal of trust, informed my manager that I was trying to get a transfer. At my next 1:1 meeting Munira explained “You think you’re going to get a transfer out of my group? I’m putting you into a Performance Improvement Plan which prevents transfers for 12 months”.
This reads like it came from a dystopian MegaCorp sci-fi story. Is this for real?
When I was working at Amazon, I once had dinner with a couple of HR reps who noted that this exact behavior is extremely common.
PIPs aren't just used at Amazon to tie people down, it's also used as pre-firing. To my knowledge almost no one gets off a PIP after being put on one, and management will go out of their way to have you "fail" to accomplish to the terms of the Performance Improvement Plan, and thereby give legal cover for your firing.
I personally know someone who was the victim of this exact mechanism - one of the smartest people I've ever worked with and who has been well-liked everywhere else and even well-liked within the company.
PIPs are a disgusting, spineless tool used by disgusting, spineless people.
Side note but somewhat related: I've worked at a lot of companies, Amazon is the only one where I can't help but resist writing a snippy note when their recruiters come knocking. It would take a supernatural amount of force for me to consider working there ever again.
At one previous job the team I was on had a business analyst who was hired as an 'executive' referral. He was clearly unsuited for the role, no business background, and no real professional experience. The guy had a bachelors in communication iirc. So, the manager was forced to hire him, HR literally wouldn't accept no.
He was a nice guy, but did not flourish, and his peers did not help at all. I remember one analyst berating the new guy because he asked the same questions over again, when this particular analyst asked me the same crap all the time. Very annoying and disingenuous. I complained to my lead, which was a mistake. I, a developer was tasked with helping the new business analyst, when his role was totally different than mine.
To the point; he was put on PIP and eventually let go, and I had a couple of bad reviews due my involvement. I switched groups soon after, then left the company. I had worked with my lead and manager for 5 years before that, I thought we all got along great. Little did I know how tenuous my good standing was, and how I endangered myself for standing up for someone else.
> PIPs are a disgusting, spineless tool used by disgusting, spineless people.
PIPs are often required by HR to get rid of even terrible employees. They suck, but it's a cover-your-ass tool so that the company has explicit proof the manager communicated problems with the person and tried to get them to change their behavior.
In most companies it's actually pretty difficult to fire someone unless they do something obviously illegal.
PIPs are absolutely not required - I've seen people more people fired without them than with them.
A Performance Improvement Plan is not the same thing as documenting an employee's misdeeds. Yes, you need to document to protect yourself legally, but what you don't need to do is put them on a rigged "plan" that is intentionally engineered to fail.
Collecting evidence to fire an employee is one thing - a PIP veers into manufacturing evidence to fire an employee.
Petty, bullying and evil people live in the world. If they spend most of their days at work, they're going to make their work petty, bullying and evil.
They say that money doesn't change people, it just reveals who they are. More generally, circumstances will often allow someone to express who they really are.
>"Amazon gave me their final offer: 4 weeks of severance for 18 months of adhering to the broad non-compete that would not allow me to earn a living in my field, and further explained that if I didn’t accept their final offer, Amazon would sue me for tens of thousands of dollars in relocation expenses."
It's because of stories like this that I'd never work at Amazon. They have a history of suing their own employees soon after parting ways.
I've been contacted twice in ten years. The positions were interesting, but their reputation preceded them even back then, so I never seriously considered it. I personally (and possibly unfairly based on hearsay) lump them with Dish as dysfunctional employers.
I have also been approached by recruiters for Amazon. The first time, I asked a few specific questions about the work culture there, and the response did not answer a single one directly. It was 100% evasion and redirection.
Among the specific questions:
- Under what circumstances would I be required to repay relocation assistance?
- Would a non-compete agreement be required?
- Does Amazon use an employee evaluation system similar to Microsoft's old "stack ranking"?
- What is the median employee tenure (a.k.a. how bad is the turnover rate)?
The first recruiter pleaded ignorance for some of my questions, so I helpfully provided him with some links to articles still available on-line from nationally-known business publications. These claimed (with references and fact-checking) that Amazon had the second-worst turnover of all companies where that statistic could be calculated, it does employ a variant of stack ranking, and that Amazon frequently pursued former employees for their relocation and NCA after leaving, even when it was Amazon's decision to fire them.
As I already knew all this, my goal was mostly to help convince that guy to stop being a recruiter for Amazon, and go take an easier job recruiting for someone else. I didn't exactly consider that the company would probably sue him for leaving, or maybe even fire him for not getting me to apply, then sue him for getting fired.
Always do your research on the prospective employer, kids.
Interestingly, their stock grants vest over 4 years at 5%/15%/40%/40%. 18 months means you see a tiny fraction of the big sum that draws you into the company.
Are they still doing that? Geez, it's a wonder they get hires at all.
Honestly, any vesting schedule that is non-linear is just a plain ripoff and should be laughed out of the room - or at the very least approached with extreme caution.
Haven't heard of any lawsuits but gonzi25 is correct: all code you write for anyone else is subject to approval, including open source.
Amazon ostensibly "supports" open source contributions, but all open source work (inside or outside of work time) must be approved by a committee that evaluates OSS projects to ensure they do not compete or conflict with Amazon.
In reality though, since nobody wants to be the one that signed off on an open source project that later becomes a pain or a competitor, the committee veers extremely conservative in approvals (read: they don't really approve much).
So the net result is that, as an Amazon employee, your ability to work on open source in your own time is severely diminished.
Employee Handbook. A lot of the big tech companies have something similar but it's pretty bad at Amazon. You cannot write any code in your personal time and submit it without being approved. I mean anywhere, homework questions or telling a person how to write a bash script that copies a file each day.
I was a dev on a partner team (but have since moved on....) and there is a bit more backstory. Kivin wasn't an exec at Amazon, he was 1 of 4 product managers at the time. Only Pinsky remains from that group still on the team. Kivin wasn't my favorite person to work with, but he also clearly had different expectations about the job and responsibilities than what he actually did. He often was frustrated and felt dejected.
Munira has retaliated against others, and it's my understanding she has had "high" churn in her org over the years. Hence throwaway/AC.
For those who want to see the advertisement creatives, they are available here:
Also, note that while the copy on the ads talk about "Receive a $10 gift card when you spend $20 on your discovery card", it was widely understood that the actual goal was to get customers to set their discover card to 1-click. This was the working assumption across the team.
You'll note in the description of the campaign, below, the excellent designer confirms this understanding:
"Their main objective was to get customers to change their default payment method on Amazon.com to Discover."
This aligns with what Kivin contends.
Amazon Payments privately objected since Discover cards cost more to process than other cards, and so they contended that the advertising campaign would be a net loss for the company since the $500k or so in ad spend would not be made up by the $1MM or so in increased merchant costs. Since Amazon Payments and Amazon Ads are in different orgs and have separate budgets, only someone at Jeff's level or at Discover would see the net... and hence the reason Amazon Ads and Discover would do the deal.
The whole amazon ads program is one unmitigated disaster, both in terms of tech and business. It's a shame. So much of the rest of the company is really good, but it's the few bad orgs like this that tarnish what otherwise could be a neutral employment brand.
> Munira had falsified her educational record on her resume to Amazon and all her former employers - claiming to have both a Bachelors and Masters in Computer Science from Stanford when in fact she had earned no degrees at all.
There is more detail on this issue and Munira’s pattern of ethical lapses and misleading and deceptive practices later in this letter.
Why is this person still employed, let alone have any responsibility?
Ongoing internal investigation? Or -- and forgive me, I don't know a universally inoffensive way to broach this subject -- because her being a gender/ethnic minority in her line of work makes Amazon reluctant to terminate her?
> Ongoing internal investigation? Or -- and forgive me, I don't know a universally inoffensive way to broach this subject -- because her being a gender/ethnic minority in her line of work makes Amazon reluctant to terminate her?
It's possible, but thus far there is no evidence to suggest that is the case(unless I missed something). Suggesting that, 'maybe they didn't fire her because she's a minority' is exactly the kind of unfounded bias that underrepresented groups have to deal with all the time. If Munira were a white male no one would be saying, "Well maybe he didn't get fired because he's a white male, in a white male-dominated environment."
Jumping to the accusation that this is about race is exactly the kind of thing that makes it difficult for underrepresented groups in tech.
She put herself in a position where someone higher up in management knew that her Stanford degrees were fake, but nobody else knew. So that someone totally owned her - they could use her as the "dark hand" for literally anything (putting inconvenient people on PIP, fudging inconvenient metrics to advertisers / business partners / executives / etc).
That is probably why she was not fired. If this is actually true, it suggest extreme disfunction in management as well.
Employers being reluctant to fire an employee because the employee is a member of a minority is pretty much a myth - particularly in jurisdictions such as the US where employees generally do not have much by way of job security. At best it will just make the employer double-check to make sure they have dotted the Is and crossed the Ts before pulling the trigger.
Also, forgive me, I don't know a universally inoffensive way to broach the subject, but people expressing a fear that minorities are receiving unjust benefits are often racist?
It's not a myth. Legal and HR will explain to you how easily the company can get sued in those cases. It can be VERY hard to let go an employee who is member of a minority (I speak of experience).
not if you have been properly documenting things for everyone you fire. Amazon fires enough people that they should have procedures in place that make this trivial.
For people not familiar with the way things work in the USA, "properly documenting" here means that you need at least a few months of written warnings, an "improvement plan" that then "failed" and such before you can fire someone who just isn't working out at all.
Who the hell documents anything well? I thought we were all programmers here.
Documentation of anything is the most difficult task, the most disliked task, and the most avoided. That's gotta be true no matter what anyone's job is, programmer or not.
LOLOLOLOLOLOL. I feel the number of top stories on HN are steadily moving away from programming, and that it is more about Entrepreneurship/VC/Business Management these days.
Do you have any sources to back up the claim that it's a myth? I'm genuinely curious because my personal experience in the industry for 10 years says otherwise. But that's just anecdotal, and I've never come across a study on it.
> People expressing a fear that minorities are receiving unjust benefits are often racist?
This type of thinking in our industry needs to STOP. There is far too much evidence that women are treated like absolute shit pretty much across the board (don't bother pointing out your handful of CEOs and other execs, if you can't face this fact then you're part of the problem).
If it happens to women, it happens to others.
You sound like you've got some pretty sweet white, male privilege. If you aren't a member of that majority, well they've certainly got you on their side.
And you sound like you can't read - I was arguing the opposite ;) Or rather, I was putting out there the idea that people that whinge about minorities receiving advantages are racist. But as I was aping the intellectually dishonest argumentative technique of the GP, I didn't actually make that claim, I merely suggested that this was a possibility.
For the record, I'm female, and member of a discriminated against minority, that has previously been fired for membership to said minority. And no, I don't think management in that case paused for even a microsecond worrying about potential backlash from firing a member of a minority (they stated quite clearly in the termination letter that this was actually the reason they were firing me - nice). If they were at all concerned about that, they certainly hid it well...
You're getting downvoted because you've misunderstood the original comment. Antimagic seemed to be pointing out that claiming that Munira was still in employment because she was a member of a protected class was quite probably racist. You replied saying that kind of thing needs to stop, because it's mean to women.
The only sane conclusion from this is you've misread antimagic's original comment.
"Member of a protected class" is probably a more accurate term (if applicable). (IANAL) And if she's a member of a protected class in the US or her state, then yes, any company has to consider the consequences of being involved in a protected class employment suit.
Although companies need to worry when firing members of a protected class, and we can debate whether that level of worry is underblown or overblown, lying about your educational record is a smoking gun that would make it trivial to dismiss the employee on the spot if the company wanted to do so.
One of the reasons I don't like anti discrimination laws. However, I am for allowing the EEOC, anti-trust or similar to order particular sets of companies to stop discrimination for a period of time if necessary, as I mentioned before.
I think your biases are getting best of you, I have seen sufficient number of people of similar ethnic background laid-off and fired. I do not think that is the basis of her employment's continuance. Its very likely that she is willing to do the dark and dirty work, some higher-ups do not want to do.
There is level fascination to mis-direct the causes, let me assure you if people of ethnic backgrounds are so protected - we would not be scratching and clawing at the lower rungs of corporate ladder.
With respect, I don't think you're reading my comment closely enough. I'm not saying that being a member of a protected class protects someone from being fired. I'm saying that a company is likely going to be more careful, and there is an added burden, to be able to demonstrate that that person was not fired in connection with being in that class.
It should be noted that everybody is a member of a protected class by virtue of their race, gender, etc. It's not something that only applies to minorities, and I wish people would stop perpetuating that misundrstanding.
A company as large as Amazon has an HR policy that allows for dismissal upon proof of fraud on the job application. Unless the company was worried about how many other people they'd get asked about why they hadn't canned.
(NB: I'm still uncomfortable with how we're discussing her employment as if we were a gossip site, but this is a general policy.)
as a desi female, we are not included in eeo, tbh. tell me the last time you looked at any one of us and thought, "man, s/he could use a break." never, that never happens. honestly, to me, this circumstance in the letter to the board is the opposite. some idiot desi set-claims herself as a stanford grad and nobody bats an eye. again, no way to prove this to you, but I am desi. i can promise you, everywhere i work, without fail, if there's some random question that involves a degree, they always run to me. i'm always saying "wait, i went to law school, though, i don't get how the urethra works." yeah, no, my take: they just didn't care to check. she probably has dirt on someone or who knows. all we know is they're all a bunch of sleaze regardless of race or gender, iffffff all of this is true and wasn't doctored.
I agree. If well played, she could probably unleash a social justice hell on Amazon, and with current media climate it wouldn't even matter if it was fabricated or not.
After the final analysis, and internal reports, and court cases come by, one person will be found responsible and a few (likely one) who 'did not know everything but perhaps could have stopped things' will be identified. They will both be gone... one of them will be Munira... not sure who the other one will be.
She is still employed for sacrificial purposes. Not saying she is innocent or guilty... just saying that she needs to know, regardless of what happens, the target is on her. She comes across, based purely on the article, as a deceptive/cover-my-butt person who tried to fleece one of their top customers. Easy PR shot for Amazon.
Lots of people lose jobs over falsifying credentials. The higher up the ladder you go the worse it gets for example Yahoo CEO's computer science lie. It's a good idea to even make sure your resume is month accurate to avoid misunderstandings. Degrees shouldn't be required for most jobs but people shouldn't make stuff up.
Devil's advocate: She may be as high as she is because of those false credentials, and Amazon might keep her because she's profitable. Falsifying credentials may have a greater average benefit/cost than actually getting the degree.
IMO it isn't more unethical than what big businesses typically do, like take advantage of unfair tax loopholes. Someone else pointed out that requiring a degree is illegal; if so, I'd say it's ethical for people to lie about their credentials when businesses engage in unlawful behavior by screening for them.
Like I was writing above, she put herself in a position where someone higher up in management knew that her Stanford degrees were fake, but nobody else knew. So that someone totally owned her - they could use her as the "dark hand" for literally anything (putting inconvenient people on PIP, fudging inconvenient metrics to advertisers / business partners / executives / etc).
Now that this is public, things will change for her, for sure ...
"At my next 1:1 meeting Munira explained “You think you’re going to get a transfer out of my group? I’m putting you into a Performance Improvement Plan which prevents transfers for 12 months”."
I remember michaelochurch making almost exactly this point about PIPs on HN in the past - that it was far too easy for them to be used a tool for employee abuse & finding yourself under a PIP was a strong signal that should move on as soon as possible, regardless of the professed reasoning behind the PIP.
In Germany, you would be laughed out of court for trying to enforce an 18-month noncompete clause, at least if its too broad - that would be equal to an occupational ban. Is this really standard practice in the US?
UK here. The current company I work at tried to get me to sign one. I took the contract to my solicitor who just crossed it out and said hand it back and tell them to accept it or fuck off.
Or alternatively get them to commit to paying you for the period of time. "Gardening leave" of a couple of months is common in many areas, especially sales / marketing driven - but being compensated for it is expected.
I don't really want that. It's a PITA getting a job lined up for when you've quit plus the garden leave time. It's easier when there's just notice to consider.
Gardening leave means you still have a fully paid job, you just don't need to do any work. So you could for example do an MSc while getting paid a salary. Assuming you have the tiniest modicum of self discipline needed to do something productive in that time, it's the best thing ever.
Sure, but if you're trying to have another job lined up, it's a lot harder to find one before you quit. "We need someone right away, can you start in two weeks?" "Sure, I'll put in my notice tomorrow." is going to be a lot more common than "We're completely sure we need someone new starting 6 months from now, go ahead and quit your job."
It depends on where you are. In Germany it is by default a month, but your contract could specify for example 3 months notice for both parties. In places like that, everyone knows this, so a company trying to hire will account for this. Also it's been my experience that most of the times when companies are hiring for "NOW", the start times ends up slipping for months.
If you're in California, where you can leave your company and start working in the next one in a matter of hours, there'll likely be an expectation by the company hiring of a fast start.
At the same time, depending on the company, the hiring process can stretch for months before getting an actual offer.
I want to believe that most employers you'd like to work for are understanding that "life" might happen and you can't start two weeks from the moment you first met them.
Well, if you're unhappy with your job, then you quit and use the 6 months to look for something new. I guess it doesn't really help when seizing opportunities that come along (that may be better even if you're not unhappy).
If you can absorb 6 months of not getting paid, yeah. Not everyone can, and while I've seen a lot of advice saying you should demand to be paid for the duration of a non-compete, I'm pretty sure that's not typical.
Plus there's the uncertainty of not knowing whether or not you'll be able to find a job with comparable pay.
This entire subthread was specifically talking about a 6-month severance package, so talking about not getting paid for 6 months is an odd thing to bring up. Quoted from above:
> Gardening leave means you still have a fully paid job
I'm thinking that people that can't afford to get paid their current salary for 6 months while not actually working for the company are in the minority, unless I'm missing some angle to this.
If it's 18 months it's not so bad. A nice long holiday you can actually use to brush up your general skills and CV, or retake that side project you never had time to finish. You're still officially employed so it doesn't count as a hole (and if asked, you could not work during this period).
I've done that in the US. There was a ridiculous non-compete, and a ridiculous "we own everything you produce, 24/7" clause. I crossed them both out, and signed. Nobody said a word about it.
In France, a noncompete clause is only enforceable if the contract provides adequate specific compensation for it... Often it doesn't and ends up unenforceable.
Germany also requires a comp' (a significant fraction of gross), FWIW. And has a hard-limit to 2 years, and a number of restrictions. Much like France.
It depends on the state. In California non-competes are unenforceable except in very narrow situations, like if you sell goodwill to a company or you are part of a partnership that has gone through a dissolution. Certainly, this guy's non-compete is unenforceable in California.
It'd be really nice if some hacker would put together a comprehensive map/list of non-compete status per state (or if they have) since there are a few states outside of California too. Wikipedia seems to do OK in this regard, but it seems like there should be a lot more info out there.
The only non competes I have heard of personally are ones that deal with clients. A few people I knew were not allowed to use their existing clients if they went to work for a competitor.
Sometimes companies will make you sign a noncompete if you accept a severance from them.
A family member asked his new company if they would match the severance so he wouldnt have to sign a non-compete. The new company agreed and he was able to keep his clients and got a signing bonus!
1) Most people accept them because they never actually read their contracts fully.
2) They are told that it is a non-negotiable condition of employment and they really want the position.
3) They are aware that non-competes are unenforceable in their jurisdiction (assuming they are in a jurisdiction where non-competes don't stand up in court).
4) They assume the company is unlikely to spend the money required on lawyers to actually come after them if they violate the non-compete in the future.
I find this too. When we were acquired we (group of employees) had lawyers come in (to a bar) to go over the agreement the new company required we signed. The lawyer basically said not to sign it because they could probably enforce it. Ultimately the company made it seem like we were making a big deal out of something they would never try to enforce but still insisted everyone had to sign it. A few people refused to sign. Other signed and then left for competitors anyway. A majority signed it and still work for the new company.
1) This makes sense as an answer, I don't understand why people wouldn't read the contract for something that they rely on for their livelihood though.
2) Something like that should be a dealbreaker. No matter how much you want the job, it's effectively saying that you can never leave.
3) In the case of the letter here, he tries to negotiate it after he was fired. If he knew it was unenforceable, then he could have quite simply said so.
4) On their part this is a stupid assumption. You should always assume that a company is willing to back up their threats. Especially a company the size of Amazon.
This isn't to attack your answer, just to put my views on those points.
"2) Something like that should be a dealbreaker. No matter how much you want the job, it's effectively saying that you can never leave."
Based on your username I'm going to assume you're not used to conditions in the US. In my experience, working for 2 megacorps and a startup, this is pretty standard. So if that is a deal breaker good luck finding a job without moving to California. I think I read a story on HN a few weeks ago that said Jimmy Johns was enforcing non-compete agreements. The last one I signed basically said the company owns all work I do, even work I do in my own time (OSS, side projects, etc). I also am required to get permissions to contribute to OSS projects should I want to do that. I also cannot work for competitors (which is like everyone in the industry). I signed it because I don't think it is enforceable and I don't think the company would waste resources trying to enforce it on me.
There needs to be a federal law limiting the scope of these agreements. Preferable modeled after the CA laws.
Because you're young and enthusiastic, because the job sounds awesome and because you don't want to employ a lawyer every time you apply for a job?
Sure, it's a bit naieve not to read a job offer carefully enough, but on the other hand you'd kind of assume a company as large as Amazon, employing so many knowledge workers, would not offer their applicants extortion rackets disguised as job contracts to begin with.
A number of new-hire engineers at Amazon are straight out of college. Looking at it recently, no numbers purely anecdotal, this crowd is being dominated by Asian immigrant graduates.
These people are students who just finished their graduate or under-graduate studies and have most likely taken huge education loans in a currency which is weaker than the dollar. In that situation one really just wants a well paying job at a company which is recognized by the general population (especially your parents and peers) as a good one. Given that, the person signing the contract is unlikely to give the non-compete too much thought. And even if they did, verbal rhetoric from the HR is good enough to lead them to signing.
The entire letter reads like an allegory about the politics, insecurities, coverups, overinflated egos and outright lies that are commonplace in large companies. Only reinforces my desire to stay clear of big co. "careers".
You can hardly be blamed. This quote just on page 3:
My manager did not communicate to her management chain the positive impact I was having on the product - in fact, she once told me “You’re here to make me look good - you’re doing an awesome job”.
Compare/Contrast: I worked at a startup where I was the only direct report to someone who spent the overwhelming majority of his day watching videos of women exercising (file this under "things I wouldn't have to know if we didn't have an open floor plan"). I spoke to _his_ boss (who sat two seats down from me, because it's a startup), who said the reason I had to go through those ridiculous hoops and charades and end up with an unusual workload was because the guy I reported to had been there a long time and, ya know, he deserved his fancy title and direct report.
Don't get me wrong, dysfunction at large companies is disproportionately large most of the time. But man, even smaller bits of nonsense can be extremely frustrating when you see them up close.
The thing about startups is that very few of them can afford this sort of dead weight. Perhaps for a little while, but it's one of the things that results in so high a fraction of them failing. Which has been true in two I've been in that suffered from this.
To be perfectly fair, in any job this is what you're supposed to do -- make your boss look good, who makes his boss look good, etc. That's how you get promoted.
"Make me look good" doesn't mean "do stuff and I'll take all the credit" -- at least not with a good manager. It's about meeting/exceeding your goals, which helps your boss meet/exceed his goals, etc. and makes the organization stronger.
That said, this is not something you would plainly state to your direct report...
> To be perfectly fair, in any job this is what you're supposed to do -- make your boss look good [...]
I find this sentiment horrifying. When I hire people, I don't want them to spend one second thinking about how to make me look good. I want their brainpower entirely devoted to things like serving the customer, improving the company, and helping their colleagues.
Admittedly, give that so many companies are dysfunctional feudal empires, it is often good career advice. But I still find it horrifying.
> I want their brainpower entirely devoted to things like serving the customer, improving the company, and helping their colleagues.
Don't you think all those things make you look good if you are the hiring manager? Conversely, if the employee you hired fails to perform those duties, you look bad.
Again, "making your boss look good" is NOT supposed to mean "do specific things for your boss that will impress his boss", it's supposed to mean that the employee meets or exceeds the expectations of the job which _in turn_ makes the hiring manager look good because his group is meeting or exceeding their goals, and so on up the line.
If those are equivalent to making me look good, then focusing on those should be sufficient. No need to bring my ego into it.
But of course, they're not. This whole mess at Amazon is an issue only because Kivin Varghese chose to do the right thing by his customer instead of making his manager look good. And look where it got him: screwed over and sued.
Regarding your claim that "make your boss look good" really means "do the assigned job well": I don't believe you. If that's what it meant, we could say, "do the assigned job well". What it actually means is exactly what it says. The reason that people say and mean that is that in organizations driven by power and appearance, making your boss look good is indeed a road to success.
I had more esteem for Amazon, after this I definitely view Amazon in a different light. I am glad the only thing I buy from Amazon is books. In a few years when I have more time & money, I'll keep this in mind and maybe go directly to the publishers. I don't forget this sort of thing. Some time ago there was an article titled 'Motorola cell phones are regularly phoning home'. Not that I was too fond of the Motorola brand before, but since then if I know a someone is buying a smartphone, I advice then not to buy Motorola.
I can't speak for everyone else, but I'm certainly at he point where I want an alternative to Amazon. Amazon currently has the infrastructure and resources to crush opposition, but small groups will continue to nip at their heels and one will eventually figure out how to compete effectively and at scale. I believe then that Amazon will wish it still had the good will that it has spent.
When a significant portion of your shareholder value depends on minimizing cost, especially employee cost, as opposed to unquestioned value that can't be had elsewhere, you're at some risk.
If the accusations here are accurate and at all typical of attitudes, and other accounts of bullying publishers (depending on your interpretation), and their at-a-distance treatment of their warehouse employees, then their value may not be as solid as they and others think.
I've been reading recently that Walmart sales are suffering, in part because the shopping experience has degraded due to strict corporate limits on employment. Sales are down, which means, all things equal in a recovering and not absolutely horrible economy, that those sales have gone elsewhere.
That could happen to Amazon too. Anecdote of one, I rarely buy from Amazon anymore, even less often than my going to Walmart. In Amazon's case, stories like this make me queasy whenever I buy there. My greatest interaction with them at the moment is to browse and read reviews, and I then use that information to buy elsewhere. They're a great recommendation service, and free.
The shopping experience has definitely degraded, and it's clearly a manpower issue. For the last year or so they've become quite bad at keeping product on the shelf. In my current lifestyle, I make a monthly trip and it's guaranteed at least one of my staples won't be there, or in inadequate quantities.
And they know it, the cashiers are no longer asking if I could "find everything I needed", and a memo touching upon this has gone public within the last few days.
Amazon still has my business because they're still playing straight with me as a customer, and that's vanishingly rare (outside of small companies that tend to have fragility issues). But I pay attention to stories like this because the potential for losing their customer first culture is there.
It's great if you can remember this, but the general public has a very short memory span. This is why I often think about some sort of site to document stuff like this, but there are obvious practical and legal hurdles. Would it be at all useful though?
Hi All - Kivin here - thanks for the words of support - it really helps. Yes I thought HR was at a minimum neutral. In Amazon, your HR contact is called your "HR Business Partner" which in retrospect is completely bogus. They are there to do what the exec management chain wants them to do.
> Why is this person still employed, let alone have any responsibility?
It should be remembered that this is an accusation, and potentially fabricated or editorialised. It's probably ruined this woman's career by now and doesn't justify a witchunt or personal abuse.
The author, having been fired, has a very good reason to seek revenge, and we shouldn't take his word as gospel.
Given that he isn't employed he is likely his lawyer to take this case on contingency; which means there is at least some truth to what is being said. Remember he is quoting, in places, discovery transcripts; lying to a court is hardly something one does, let alone on a whim.
Going public is a double edged sword, if someone is willing to stick their head this far above the parapet there must be something going on. I'd say both parties have some explaining to do, and a fair amount of it. The evidence is compelling, I wonder if the other parties have evidence that is as compelling?
While true, everything posited so far seems reasonable - there do not seem to be anything unbelievable. The addition of multiple emails adds to that reasonableness. Yes, of course he's possibly forging those emails too, but doing this so publicly means this person has a lot more to lose than anyone else. He's hoping this all goes to court - I'm not sure too many people would bluff this far - I think he's got a lot more truth on his side.
That said, I tend to side with underdogs, and have been in a couple similar situations at large companies - nothing this severe, but none of the behavior seems beyond the pale for mid and sr execs at a large company (sad to say). I've worked with some really good ones too, but just because someone has risen to an SVP position doesn't mean they can't also act unethically (or even illegally).
The accusations are supported by Munira's comments in deposition, along with her emails. It'd be pretty hard to fabricate all of that.
It's not as if they're unsubstantiated accusations. Even if a significant portion of the document is completely fabricated, the bits based on emails & deposition are pretty damning.
I didn't realise that. Are the depositions online somewhere too?
To be honest, I don't believe he's lying. But I also think it's bad behaviour to condemn someone after hearing only one side of the story, which is what some people are doing.
> Amazon gave me their final offer: 4 weeks of severance for 18 months of adhering to the broad non-compete that would not allow me to earn a living in my field, and further explained that if I didn't accept their final offer, Amazon would sue me for tens of thousands of dollars in relocation expenses.
The most interesting part to me is the lack of foresight by Amazon. Obviously this is a pretty big coverup, but with a pending lawsuit, and obvious wrongdoing to Amazon's 2nd biggest ad revenue generator, I'm particularly surprised more work wasn't put into solving/covering up this issue as soon as it started blooming. I know Bezos is crazy in his desire to make Amazon the biggest giant on the block, but it doesn't take a genius (which Bezos probably is) to realize a potentially huge problem when it happens.
However, the fact that this wasn't dealt with in a better way, AND Bezos ignored emails from Kivin [0], leads me to two possible conclusions.
A. Bezos didn't know the full situation, and Blackburn deceived him.
B. Bezos knew the full situation, but chose to side with Blackburn (I suspect Munira didn't even cross his mind) because he values Blackburn more than morality.
Either of these situations show that there was a decision made by Blackburn that this could be covered up cheaper than it could be remedied--a decision I find to be Occam's Razor here. The reason I think it was Blackburn, is I think Bezos is smart enough to just remove Kivin's non-compete just to make it go away without even costing Bezos any of his precious little revenue.
I tend to evaluate companies based on how they treat their employees and if Munira and Blackburn are the typical managers and VPs at Amazon, then I think really find myself not needing Amazon's services anymore. Let's hope this hasn't happened to anyone else.
[0] "I’ve sent two letters to Jeff Bezos (as these are serious issues that I believe he would care about as the founder of the company and keeper of the culture)" (pg 2).
I find it odd that so many in the tech industry idolise Amazon so much, they are just like many other aggressive retailers such as Walmart or Tesco.
Interestingly Kivin sounds like the type of person you ideally want working and managing your product but most corporations are actually staffed by people like Munira and Kotas.
I disagree, Kivin couldn't resolve this issue, jumped ship, and pointed fingers as he fell away.
My assumptions here:
NCA - not relevent. This gets agreed upon in advance (cont...) complaining about this after the fact changes how professional I view the writer.
Discover - Unless Kivin was the owner of this relationship, I don't believe he had enough information to go on here.
Team - Priority on needing to fess up to the client immediately is different from fixing the issue. I don't think these are the same issue.
Departure - Kivin entered negotiations on severeance here. Im
edit: I somehow submitted incomplete response then got distracted.. added (cont..) to denote separator of edit.
How was Kivin supposed to "resolve" this issue singlehandedly? He made attempts to declare what he thought was the direct way to resolve it and it was not only batted away by management, but they backed him into a corner and wanted him to lie about the situation and how it was going to be handled.
Thank you for your reply. I guess i'm separating the person from the issue. I'm not a fan of publicly attacking and divulging information or revealing negotiations, so i'm a bit skewed. I think future employers would potentially see this individual as a liability - regardless of right/wrong.
To me it seems:
He couldn't build consensus within the org around his opinion (critical skill in a Senior PM role). Regardless of the underlying issue, it seems he can't rally people around his idea. That makes me think either A) the idea is no good or B) you can't rally people very well.
He didn't look ahead - His actions and disagreement with his manager led to his departure. We only have one side of the story here but im guessing him and his manager didn't get along often.
After departure( i get that he's bitter) he decided to release this confidential information. Even communications from Discover personnel that have nothing to do with the issue - I have an issue with that and would not trust this individual.
I am not defending Amazon or Management, merely disagreeing with the notion that this is an individual you want as a Senior PM. All in all, it seems this employee/manager relationship failed big time, and I would put some blame on both sides.
I am sure you have heard the bengali version of the phrase that you can bring the horse to the water but not make it drink it. If someone is determined on a path, no amount of evidence or convincing is going to change that. The allegation of 'failed to build consensus' is just plain apologism and an oft used and convenient one, very frequent in abusive relationships, "you should have stopped me from beating you but you didnt, your fault".
It read to me like egos prevented Kivin from resolving the issue, then tried to push him out, and he decided that he wasn't going down without a fight.
I went to Stanford with Munira, she was a few years older but we overlapped, and she was a CS Section Leader (CS198) which means she taught my intro CS class when I took it, and helped me (and others) when I was stuck writing my first programs.
I subsequently became friends with her, and I can personally vouch that she took all the requisite CS classes, and she was pulling all-nighters in the same lab as me, writing code for her classes.
I remember Munira being wicked smart - and an honest conscientious person.
Now, she may not have officially graduated - but keep in mind that she was finishing Stanford in the heady dot-com days, and she was likely a few units short of getting a full degree when Epiphany (a high-flying startup at the time) lured her in, and she never went back to finishing it. Similar story happened to me - i was 3 or 4 units short of required 45 units to get my CS Masters when i was graduating (I did the same co-term program where you get a BS and MS at the same time); and Stanford wanted me to pay the remaining $4k to get my degree. I paid, but quite possible that Munira was in the same boat, went to work for Epiphany and never bothered to finish her remaining units.
I don't work for Amazon, and I don't know the full details of the story - but it sounds a lot like ramblings of a disgruntled employee. I would definitely like to hear/see the Amazon side of the story before I draw any conclusions.
Keep in mind - I'm heavily biased, I was friends with Munira at Stanford and afterwards before she moved to Seattle, but i'm very skeptical to be taking all of the allegations at face value.
Official degree or not, I'd hire her to work at my startup in a heartbeat without any worries.
side note: Munira is not exUSSR from Tajikistan - good guess, but she just worked there for one summer. Nor Bangladeshi either. Either way, it's not in any way material to this conversation. I, on the other hand, am from former USSR, in case that makes any difference.
Wow, Epiphany. Haven't heard that name in a long time. I used to work at IBM above their office in Campus Dr. in San Mateo. I think they went out of business and that space was later occupied by a staffing agency. I might have run into her before in the lobby. Such a long time ago. Man, time flies.
>My manager did not communicate to her management chain the positive impact I was having on the product - in fact, she once told me “You’re here to make me look good - you’re doing an awesome job”
Side note, but Scribd is garbage. Got to page 3 or 4 before it demands that I install their mobile app to keep reading. I don't know why people keep posting on there.
For what that's worth, there's a separate subthread here where lots of people agree with you. The first time I encountered Scribd, I wrote them scathingly critical feedback indicating that it was infuriatingly awkward to use if not nonfunctional, worse than any existing alternative and should be nuked from orbit.
Some readers have pointed out that Scribd is a venture backed by YCombinator. Don't know how significant that is.
Heh yeah, I saw that after I posted... should have looked harder, but it was 5 AM and I wanted to go to sleep.
It started off pretty bad just because their tech wasn't very good, but then it seemed to be getting better as they ditched their flash based reader for HTML. Now they just seem to be actively user-hostile in the name of growing the number of app installs. Naked user coercion is much less forgivable than just sucking.
When it's pretty standard practice not everyone can just turn down the jobs. So I weight the risk versus the reward. Very low risk of them actually enforcing it on a peon like me. Reward is a keep a roof over my family's head. If I wanted to avoid noncompetes I could go to construction or go back to working in retail I guess.
I do believe that if everyone started refusing to work under NCAs then employers would be forced to change them but how many people have the ability to turn down so many jobs?
In this case, the person claimed they had multiple, high quality / high paying alternatives when they took the Amazon job. Makes it that much bizarre the person chose to accept such a non-compete.
the non-compete was restricted to the area he was working in; he was told he would be working on kindle. It was not until he was hired that it was disclosed he was working in this much broader area of tablets (aka the kindle fire). Amazon presented it as a very narrow non-compete in the e-ink reader space before he was hired.
A company can sue you in, e.g., WA state court, and get a judgment based on WA law, that is enforceable in CA.
If you are subject to a noncompete & moving to a state where they aren't enforced, the smart thing to do is to get a summary judgment in that state. Otherwise jurisdiction is a matter of who shoots first.
Sure. Sorry if it wasn't clear, but we were talking about offers from Silicon Valley companies for jobs in California. Even if they put a non-compete into the contract, it is unenforceable.
Pardon my cynicism but according to the letter Discover spends $13MM a year at Amazon. Thus 500k more or less works out to ~4% of their budget.
My hunch is this will at most be a subject of chuckle between Bezos and David Nelms (Discover CEO) on the Golf course.
Bezos might roll some heads, install some "supervision", give them a discount on a future campaign...
Advertising budgets are not an exact science anyway. And Amazon is still the largest online retail site in the world - where else would Discover go to spend their Ad dollars?
That's what I would have guessed too, that $500K is basically a rounding error to a company like Discover.
However, he includes an e-mail from Discovery in the letter, which says "I cannot express my disappointment on how this has been handled, nor can I stress enough how incredibly important it is that we get this resolved as quickly as possible."
It may not be a huge hit to Discovery's bottom line at the end of the day, but somewhere in there is a promo department for whom $500K is a significant chunk of their yearly budget.
I wonder if someone was fired on Discover side for having the idea to run a campaign on the Kindle with such a bad ROI. But I am not familiar with the ad business, maybe the efficiency was in line with what could have been expected...
It was a new platform/venue with an company they were spending 30 times a much on advertising. This strikes me as a "nothing ventured, nothing gained" and "none of us realized they were a criminal organization". Unless all advertising venues are roughly this bad (Neilson has a service where they track advertising to allow companies to confirm they're getting what they paid for...) this one effort shouldn't be such a black mark for those on the Discover side, prior to their learning these ugly details.
Well, the efficiency was as low as it was because of an implementation bug on Amazon's side. It didn't work the way it was intended to. If it had, who knows, it might have done well. The campaign certainly makes sense to me in a vacuum.
Although right now Amazon are pushing Chase, not Discover instead. They have a "5% cash back" banner on the homepage (Chase Freedom card), and are also running the $10 gift card if you switch 1-click to Chase and buy something. You have a Chase card on your account and visit Amazon on any mobile device.
Could be related to this incident, could just be coincidence.
Good luck with the lawsuit Kivin. Sadly I didn't see anything in the letter that I would not have expected to be true at any large company. Given what you know of the company I'm pretty sure you can ignore the non-compete for now, if they want to enforce it they have to sue you, and if they sue you they have to have all of this come out in court. Which they won't, so you're fine there.
Varghese sued Amazon in 2012 following his termination
after seven months on the job. Although he won part of
his case in July 2013 — Amazon waived enforcement of an
18-month non-compete obligation and granted him all
rights to a patent application he’d filed — the trial
for the second part of the suit has been pushed back
until March 2015.
All the ethics principles in the world won't help you if you rock the boat in a company entrenched in nepotism and communal ass-covering. Everyone's happy to do the right thing if their ass (or their buddy's) isn't on the line.
Interesting read. I've had my share of office politics in my career so far and it still baffles me how often it happens that people who add little or no value to the company become so entrenched and powerful. It's like the upper management and/or owners are blind to what happens within the company, despite the clues and complaints from the staff.
Those who focus on their position in the bureaucracy will almost always beat those who focus on the ostensible goals of it. Although in this case there were conflicting goals....
By "democracy" you mean "republic", and it's long been known, and was remarked upon by our Founders, that they only work with a moral people. Which we are clearly no longer. We're steadily transitioning into other forms like empire and oligarchy because of that.
From what I've seen, these people who adding little value and yet climbing the ladder are often people who could add value, but instead use all their energy to play the advancement game. Which makes it all the worse, in my opinion.
They should promote those that speak out about fraud that they witness and not fire them.
If people like Munira Rahemtulla and Paul Kotas are still employed, it suggests to me that advertisers should be very wary about the nature of their advertising relationships with Amazon and whether they're getting good value for their money.
For future reference, it's better do say something like, "Hi, HN. I'm the author and am glad to answer questions. You can also follow me on twitter at @kvargs for future details."
We definitely like participation, but it took me a while to realize that you are the author, and that kvargs is your Twitter account.
Disclaimer: I haven't read through the entire thing (just the first 3 pages or so), but I have been on the receiving end of entirely spurious threats of lawsuit.
All of this needs to be read with some measure of skepticism. However, the complaint provides a fair amount of evidence, not just claims of wrongdoing... that gives it a fair amount of credence in my eyes.
If so, that is very damning of the top-down, strongly hierarchical culture that Amazon is well-known for - but I would argue it is inevitable for any company that has a very hierarchical top-down culture...
You can't make up for the downsides of top-down management with pretty words and values and employee handbooks. Hierarchical, power-based management will always lead to serious ethical lapses like this.
Every year Amazon looks uglier and uglier and I feel worse and worse about buying from them. I've already backed off and it's probably a matter of time before I stop altogether.
Have to say some of the behaviour does appear to come across as psychotic within the upper echelons of Amazon. I'm guessing to get high up in Amazon you have to play quite a vicious game?
Its very disappointing to see that this behaviour continues to exist in organizations, even with a leader like Bezos (I'll optimistically assume he practices the ethical standards he preaches). It seems like a fundamental tension in business. How can mistakes ever be admitted when shareholders react aggressively on any indication of poor management performance? Meanwhile today, in light of this news, AMZN stock is up. How disheartening.
This is a prominent example of how things can go wrong in big companies. That's exactly what happens in the (so globally hated) Greek public sector. The fact that it happens at companies like Amazon (probably MS, FB, GOOG, APPL, SONY, etc. ) says a lot about politics in big corps/orgs.
Unfortunately skills are not all that relevant after all in our modern liberal society.
This isn't the first story of bad behavior from Amazon. Another story [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6104571] from a contract worker appeared over a year and a half ago. I haven't used them since. But I'm wondering what are some good alternatives for book purchases?
The document does not have the image of the ad itself or how it was advertised to customers. What was stopping customers with discover card to temporarily remove and re-add it? Promotions like this are picked up by coupon blogs, with detailed steps to get the deals. This would explain the ad budget getting over before the forecast and also, gift cards being awarded to users, who had not even seen the ad.
The document does acknowledge that the team responsible for forecast "ad execution team", admitting the fuck up and using amazon cash to fund the the remainder of the promotion. Meanwhile implementing the workflow to require ad click requirement.
Given the context that this was a secretive gen 1 kindle tablet project, people should have been working hard to pull it off by deadline. And you have this whistleblower shooting emails to SVP looking for "who is responsible for latency on amazon.com". I am an engineer at an equally big company in bay area, I hate to work with PMs like OP.
Regarding the Bezos quotes, it is striking that instead of saying "we will do X and we will not do Y", he opted for the considerably more weaselly "X is cool and Y is not cool". To those whose careers depend on doing Y, he might as well not have mentioned it, which was probably his intent.
As scandalous as this letter is, the politics, intrigue, and retaliation follow to a T the description of corporate mangers' logic and ethics as written in Moral Mazes by Robert Jackall. I highly recommend it for a better understanding of why people act the way they do in a corporate context.
git it, boo! this is the perfect comment to this entire delicious thread. "oh, sorry, but internet just happened. grab your kids and head to the basement; gonna weirder there, too, now that I think about it."
If I were looking for somebody of his background, I definitely would talk to him.
Obviously, a whistleblower like this is dedicated, passionate, and energetic. The question is whether they do this because of real dedication to the customer and good business practices, or whether they're just the sort of person that likes blowing shit up when they find a good excuse.
Some of the top-performing people on my teams have been seen as "difficult". But I don't particularly want to hire obedient people. I want to hire people who will tell me I'm wrong when I'm wrong.
Did anyone else find the document difficult to read because of the tortuous writing style?
> Though I was assured the internal investigation at Amazon was ‘independent and thorough’, we later found the investigation around the matters I raised while employed at Amazon was directed by the same internal Amazon lawyer that was helping my manager terminate my employment based on the same issues I raised in the internal complaint - so Amazon’s counsel was essentially directing the investigation around serious issues that she had been responsible for handling herself - far from ‘independent and thorough’ and a surprising lack of internal controls for a public company like Amazon.
I'm surprised this story got so many comments (I flagged it, and I rarely flag.) It seems like a minor internal dispute between an conscientious employee and their bad, less-conscientious manager, over a very small amount of money.
I can't detect a larger issue involved here except that when people screw up in a way that loses money, they will sometimes try to come up with a way to cover their ass rather than admit it and attempt to rectify it and therefore show everyone that they messed up.
Whoever posted it has exposed Amazon to a lawsuit, though. When eventually negotiating to fix this quietly with Discover, Amazon will be at a serious disadvantage.
I find this article immensely useful to someone relatively new to the tech industry. While politics isn't the core topic on Hacker News, it is a reality that affects everyone's life! The question we all should ask is "what would we do if it was me?' Very seldom do you see what happens in a big company like Amazon. The shared article offers great insight that you cannot find anywhere else. To pessimizer, just because you don't learn anything new in this article does not mean it is not useful to others. Your flagging it is rather self-centered.
Legal or not, I cannot thank him enough for bringing it up. He did a service to all who are or will be looking for employment. It was certainly eye opening for me.
We changed the title from "Letter to Amazon Board from Ad Exec Fired for Refusing to Lie to Customer" to the largest subset of it that any of us is in a position to confirm is accurate.
Well that's it, I'm done with Amazon. I hope everything goes well for Kivin. As for Munira, I am ashamed of myself, but sometimes I really want certain peaple to step on a landmine.
Wow, this is horrible. Munira needs to be fired. And to be honest, I lost a lot of respect for Amazon and for Jeff Bezos over this. So much so that I sold all my Amazon stocks just now.
There are some odd policies here. There's the crazy non-compete clause (if those are allowed, the former company should pay for however long the clause lasts). Then there's the "Performance Improvement Plan." I don't really understand the purpose of preventing transfers. If an employee truly needs improvement, how does preventing transfers have anything to do with that?
Based off other former employee anecdotes, Amazon is starting to sound like the Walmart of the internet.
"I don't really understand the purpose of preventing transfers."
Managers look like complete shit if an employee leaves. They are judged based on their ability to control and have power over people. You have to understand, some companies have devolved so far that they behave like criminal gangs. If one drug dealer leaves his boss and goes to another boss what does that tell all the other drug dealers about the first boss?
According to this [1] article (dated today) in Business Insider Australia, Kivin Varghese has been camping outside Amazon's HQ until it addresses his complaint.
It also has a more readable explanation of who/what/when than the linked pdf.
First, writing a letter to the board asking for their help while simultaneously threatening that you've filed it with the attorney general's office is disingenuous. While that will call attention to yourself it is unlikely to produce a positive outcome. Which seems to be a pattern at the heart of his difficulties.
Second, the initial incident of 5 second latency with displaying an ad was addressed prior to launch. He was reprimanded for sounding an alarm 3 levels up without first researching a solution.
Third, and most importantly, his central ethics claim re: Discover is questionable. The promotion was to give $10 to people who used Discover. Much of his claim rests on his editorializing of the aims of the promo, specifically that it would be useless and mere "subsidy" unless targeted specifically at 1-click setting conversions. But that's debatable. He's the only one saying that. He admits the promotion was not set up that way, and Amazon reports that Discover was ok with it proceeding as long as it was narrowed to Fire users and capped at the original budget.
It doesn't sound like Amazon's finest hour but when you strip out the one-sided editorializing these break more towards bugs and campaign issues that occasionally arise and get addressed in the course of development / advertising, and he breaks a little bit toward a messiah complex.
The suit and letter were not his first courses of action. IMHO his actions are reasonable and necessary, at this point, to motivate the board to consider the problem seriously.
I have experience with the Amazon advertising platform. Not on the Kindle side but what I'll call "Amazon main". And I can tell you it ain't pretty at all.
I don't know if I should characterize this as fraud. Not sure what the legal designation might be.
Here's a hypothetical example to try to explain the problem:
Imagine you are selling product on Amazon. Products you manufacture. And, in order to drive sales you purchase ads on the Amazon ads platform. You only pay when someone clicks. Ads accomplish two missions: sales and ranking improvement. Ranking on Amazon is important. The closer your product is to the top of page one the more sales you'll generate. Ads can help you accomplish this.
So far so good.
Now imagine someone is teaching a course on how to scam Amazon buyers and make money in the process. The course teaches you to find successful listings on Amazon and, effectively, add your name to the product page as an additional seller. Amazon encourages this. It's ridiculously easy. Once you have a seller account it takes all of one minute to pick a product and list against it.
But, wait, you don't actually make that product. You don't even have any in stock. How do you do this? Simple, when a customer makes a purchase you send them some crap product that is similar enough. If you do your homework your fake product will not be returned and you just made some money.
Here's the problem. The legitimate product manufacturer spent thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars advertising the product on Amazon to get it well ranked and generate enough sales that the product has a good reputation (reviews, etc.). Amazon, in turn, allows ANYONE to list against ANY product and, effectively steal the time, money and effort expended by the rightful product producer in making that product a success in the Amazon ecosystem.
In other words, if you just spent $100K advertising your product on Amazon they allow Joe Blow to come in and take away 25% to 50% (or whatever) of the sales you generate with that ad spend. And there's NOTHING you can do about it.
Imagine Amazon spending millions of dollars to advertise their Kindle tablet during the Superbowl or the Olympics. Now imagine the TV network allowing Apple and Microsoft to display a link to their tablets FOR FREE within the Amazon Kindle ad. Crazy, right? Amazon wouldn't put up with that for a microsecond. They'd say: If Apple and Microsoft want to sell their tablets they need to pay for their own advertising on their own time slot. And they would be correct in pushing for this. The networks would, effectively, allow Amazon's competitors to steal Amazon's advertising budget for their own financial gains. Wrong. Well, this is EXACTLY what Amazon is doing today to every single one of their advertisers.
If you advertise on Amazon your ad budget is very likely to generate sales for competitors. That is wrong beyond description and Amazon seems to have zero interest in fixing the problem. The solution is very simple: A listing that has an active spend budget needs to be locked out from any other sellers. It becomes a single seller listing for as long as the seller is spending even a single dollar a day in Amazon ads. Problem solved.
After reading most of the posted letter I've come to realize that the problems within Amazon are much greater than I thought. You see two faces of this corporation when you work with them as a vendor. The public face looks clean, organized and inviting. The "back office" side is in constant chaos, is disorganized, has ethical problems, is clueless, does NOT have the seller's/advertisers best interests at heart and, it seems, is perfectly comfortable with conducting business in unethical and fraudulent ways, perhaps unintentionally due to dysfunction, yet the consequences to those engaging with that side of the organization are the same.
Where is Jeff Bezos in all of this? It would seem he needs to become very visible and push forward a major reform in a very public way, at least public to their advertisers. Almost like what Domino's Pizza did:
Well, "alumni" implies you graduated, implies you earned a degree.
The correct answer is that that "Alumni card" is for the MFP (Mayfield Fellows Program), a nine-month program within Stanford that gives you some entrepreneurship experience. The alumni card is for that program, not Stanford itself.
Wow, what a terrible experience. The evidence does seem to show that this guy was just trying to do the right job and do it ethically and he was basically tarred and feathered for doing so by his superiors, who are just a rung or two below Bezos.
major launch partners paid $1.2MM each to be part of the launch
Woah! I had no idea Amazon was making that much from advertising on the Kindles at launch (although I guess it's a little unclear what they are paying for there).
Me either. Apparently they have a nice advertising business in general.
"I literally was sickened by what we were doing to Discover Card, one of Amazon’s largest customers spending over $13MM per year in advertising with the company."
> They screwed up the promotion, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars
It's really hard to say from the given context that this was definitely engineering's fault.
You'll note that the various plans for resolving the issue involve updating the Terms & Conditions of the offer. That makes me think that accurate code was implemented against incorrect Terms and Conditions, rather than incorrect code was implemented against accurate Terms and Conditions.
Sorty for the side note, but is anybody else having trouble reading this opened in a browser in an iPad? I don't understand why something as simple as scrolling through a doc has to be impossible in 2014
iPad reader here as well. I couldn't get beyond the first page either. Another example of low quality product (or perhaps outright malicious business model) breaking the Internet.
I feel like coining a new phrase 'Pulling of a Munira', defined as 'Successfully but falsely convincing people of having a degree from a coveted university over a long period of time'
A classic case of goal subordination, a
standard topic in courses in organizational
behavior and/or public administration.
So, the definition of goal subordination is
an employee acting in a way that helps them
but hurts the company. That is, the goal of
helping the company is subordinated to, that is,
made less important than, the goal of helping
the person engaging in goal subordination.
In the case of the OP, it was not nearly just
the fired employee who was hurt but 2-3 levels
of management above that employee, the whole
company, Bezos, and the stockholders.
Gee, some parts of the roll out were not
ready on time! Like this is the first time
in projects? Gee, even for the pyramids,
the project leaders needed enough in workers,
food, stone cutting tools, wood, rope, etc. --
lack of any one of these inputs could stop
the whole leaders whole project. That's
part of what we now call materials requirements
planning, right, MRP. And for getting all
the parts ready on time, there is methodology
for that, in part, an application of linear
programming with critical paths, etc. US
aerospace got good at such things. So, that
little project at Amazon fumbled the ball on
having the ad parts ready? They hired the
people straight out of what, kindergarten?
And, after the project went forward, Amazon
sent in a staff group, in an independent part
of the organization, to analyze what went
right/wrong? In Tunisia, Ike did that after
Kasserine and the other battles in the
Tunisian campaign, and soon Rommel was
permanently back
in Berlin, and the Allies had captured
about 300,000 Axis soldiers and driven
the Axis out of North Africa, from
Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, to
Egypt and the Suez Canal.
Apparently in the US Army, such analysis of what
happened is called an after-action review,
e.g., as at
not nearly new stuff, and Amazon
should be able to do well with
such a process.
Managing, planning, executing, reviewing
projects is not nearly new stuff; Amazon
just blew it. Not so good for Bezos.
The most serious sources of goal subordination
are middle management: The worker bees
don't have enough power seriously to hurt
the company, and the work of the C-level
guys is too visible to the CEO and the BoD.
It's totally dumb for the company to have
HR blindly back middle management possibly
engaged in goal subordination, playing
politics to "look good" while, really,
making a mess, etc. E.g., she was messing
up and reported to a guy who knew her
resume was wrong -- can anyone guess what
might have been going on here? I mean,
anyone who at least went through junior high?
Bezos made it through junior high, right?
Also there needs to be a company culture of
honesty, hard work, good ideas, etc. For
such a culture, need to be sure that a
middle manager won't dump on a subordinate
who does really good work.
A lot is known about how to manage, e.g.,
to reduce goal subordination.
For the employee who got fired, when I get
around to needing a guy to work with
major advertisers, I'll consider him in a
millisecond. "Black list"? Sure, fine
with me; the other companies can black list
him while I hire him!
But he might sue
my company? If my company messed up as
badly as it appears Amazon did, then he
should sue us; if he didn't, that would be
against him. I'd hope that we wouldn't
mess up like that.
Yes, that ad guy might report some really
great successes to me. Okay, I mean, terrific,
if they are
real. Of course, I'd also get independent
confirmation, say, directly from appropriate
people at the company paying for the ads.
If he did really well, then, sure, presto,
bingo, bonus time, say, early in December.
I know; I know; this idea of such a bonus
doesn't go along with the Ben Horowitz
lecture, just yesterday or some such, in Sam's
course, right? Sorry, Ben. The US military
can give battlefield promotions, decorations,
etc., so I'll be willing to hand out a
December bonus.
If the ad guy didn't do so well, then have a project
to understand why and do better the next time.
If he needs to go to a week long seminar
"How to Be a Good Ad Exec 101", and it's actually
a useful seminar, then fine. If he can't really
do the job, then help him learn to do his job.
Why might he not be able to do his job? One reason:
He worked really hard on some of his last jobs
while the world changed. So, e.g., he needs
to get caught up on, say, the business of
mobile ads. Okay;
let him get caught up.
Notice I said he's an "ad guy" and not
an "Ad Exec". I just want him to do his
job and not hang on titles that can cause
problems (here Ben was roughly correct).
And the manager? Largely to heck with
that nonsense: In a good university,
usually a
department chair doesn't get to rule over
the professors as if they were subordinate
worker bees. Instead, the chair does some
coordination, etc., and the job is not
always coveted and not necessarily a
promotion!
Basic fact: Each instance of good work
is first done between just one pair
of ears. Sorry 'bout that. For
a team, all the good work is of just
this kind. What we really want now is
just such good work. For the routine
coordination, etc. can leave that to
managers, but that is inferior work.
E.g., the coordination needed to get
all the pieces done on time for the
big roll out is work that was done
at least back to the pyramids and, thus,
has to be regarded as routine.
Some of this is controversial? Yup.
YMMV. Sorry 'bout that.
Forgive this stupid question, but how do we know the letter as seen on this scribd link is authentic, let alone verify all the screenshots, emails and transcripts in that letter?
Roughly two parts: "I was doing good quality work; that was recognised by my boss; something happened and I complained, and the escalated my complaints; after that my bosses reversed their previous position; I asked to transfer to a different department; they found out and stopped the transfer; I left the company and they tried to enforce a ridiculous non-compete thus I was forced to sue"
"The bad thing: a credit card company had a big promotion with specific rules. We mis-reported the success of that promotion which cost the advertiser a lot of money. I raised it internally, and escalated it, but nothing was done."
What's this case about? An employee who had a dispute with his supervisor. As in most cases, the supervisor won. The employee's future with the company is destroyed. The supervisor is protected by the company. The employee sues.
There may or may not be long-term collateral damage. The alleged victim, Discovery, isn't talking and may already have settled with Amazon outside the context of litigation. The supervisor's fraudulent resumé is now a matter of public record. She will be kept on at least until this lawsuit is over because Amazon needs her as a witness. After the case is resolved, she will resign.
Could this matter have been resolved any other way? Probably not. It's sad to see that legacy companies are just as bureaucratic as legacy ones. Jeff Blackburn is culpable for not censuring Munira R. after Kivin V. brought this matter to his attention--after all, he was the one who insisted on a fix. Kivin should have tried to convince Munira R. to go with him to Jeff Blackburn. If she said no, then he would have to weigh her probable reaction. Clearly, Kivin miscalculated. He didn't realize how powerful Munira R. is at Amazon and what allies she had--and I say had because her time at Amazon is numbered. A person in Munira's position, who has to keep a secret, must weigh the possibility that secret will get out. Her miscalculation was thinking that Kivin would get fired and go away and her secret would remain hidden.
Matters like this are clearly not serious enough for board intervention. It's for that reason that you have management in the first place. The board does not manage day to day affairs of the business and relies on management to do so.
For Amazon, this squabble is a distraction that harms the company. What happens when companies get sued is that they circle the wagons. Whatever you might say about throwing attorneys at a problem, those attorneys know that because of Munira, their case is vulnerable. Munira's lies will be Exhibit #1 during her cross-examination. Indeed, her own attorneys will have to bring out her c.v. falsification--and not through the weasel-worded, "she had yet to complete the degree" nonsense spouted by Jeff Blackburn during his deposition. He was poorly coached by Amazon's attorneys. He should have simply admitted that she lied. Otherwise the follow-up--when you drag in twelve strangers off the street and make them sit together and call them a jury--will be, why can't you admit the obvious? Are you trying to hide something? What might that be? Amazon was probably blindsided by Munira's lies: as a top executive under a clear policy to tell the truth and an HR department that could easily have followed up, Amazon's general counsel and attorneys could not have expected that she would have lied. If you think you can't lose a case because a single witness lied about an unrelated matter, try rewinding the OJ tapes and listen to the cross of Mark Fuhrman.
So what now? Amazon's smart move is to ignore the sit-in because all an arrest or eviction will do is bring more unwanted attention to the case. They may ask the judge in the case for an injunction preventing the sit-in because it is arguably an unethical settlement move not provided for by the Rules of Civil Procedure, and Kivin agreed to follow those rules by filing suit.
Amazon has already backed down from the non-compete clause. I'm sure they would love to settle the case. But guys who camp out on your doorstep are usually difficult to settle with. Maybe Kivin sees millions of dollars--an executive paid $250k/yr. with thirty years of work, plus injury to reputation, plus interest would be entitled to a substantial sum. My guess is that Kivin doesn't want to settle. He feels hurt, wants to prove he's right, wants his day in court.
My advice to both sides: settle. Kivin: take less than what you think they owe you, get them to agree to give you a glowing reference (though in the publicity-heavy context of this case I don't know valuable this will be immediately) and agree not to disparage Amazon. Amazon: despite the fact that your lawyers have told you this is a winnable case, it will only get worse. You have nothing to gain.
To both of you: don't you guys watch Star Trek? Don't you remember the lesson of the Kobayashi Maru? Litigation is like that test that only Captain Kirk ever beat: the only way to win is not to play the game. If you win, you still lose heavily.
This sort of behavior at Amazon does not surprise me. If you are a third-party seller, they will eventually use your own sales data to go around you, buy whatever you are selling at bulk, and put you out of business.
This past September, they had major server issues, which cost sellers lots of money in sales. They refuse to admit it.
As a seller, you also don't own your customers (you are given the privilege of selling to amazons customers). Which means that at any point in time, Amazon could take it all away and all of the hard work you put into pleasing the people buying your products goes to waste. They have been recently making it more and more difficult for the average user to even continue their business. So many people that have been selling for years are prevented from continuing without paperwork from distributors (which as I've seen in the past, is just a trick to find out where they can compete with you)
With thaw business practices, they should have been out of business years ago.
What about this is frivolous? Maybe he's just more willing to stick his neck out than others are. We need more people willing to do this and less fawning over tech companies.
Totally agree! I have found very few individuals will
speak up, or do anything when their career, or money is involved. Oh sure they will speak online, but
actually calling out a superior, or questioning a professor
in school; they shrink into their seats. I haven't figured out if they are scared, or just in denal. I often wonder if
I would have been one of those people who administered the
high voltage in the Milgram experiment, but I don't lose sleep over it because I walked away from too many jobs, and
ripped apart a Professor or two. That said--I'm not successful and have a spotty work history.
I get your point but this whole story is very interesting for anyone that has not been desensitized by widespread corrupt and unethical behavior. We should never unlearn how to feel outraged at bad things.
Incorrect. This is a prevalent yet still poorly understood phenomenon that has an impact not just on those in the tech sector (as many of us on HN are), but also on society at large. Philosophers and activists have repeatedly tried to explain this type of behaviour, but we still have no answer. I find it very curious.
I have not followed the course because a lack of available free time but I am sure it is really interesting, a relevant to the Amazon case : Unethical Decision Making in Organizations [0]
A dutch whistle-blower commited suicide, because he was slandered while trying to bring out similar problems at his company. Afterwards, his findings were brought to the major public which created a big stir and caused for in-depth investigation.
It takes a lot of guts to speak up on a huge company like Amazon, this should be valued. It shouldn't be dismissed with "well, it's a former employee, so of course he's not happy.."
> "well, it's a former employee, so of course he's not happy.."
Of course, if he was an employee at the time of filing the lawsuit (the act of filing it would presumably get him sacked immediately afterwards), it would be dismissed with "Well he doesn't feel that strongly about it if he kept working there"
I thought it was well-written, calm and thorough, carefully backing up each point and not descending into hyperbole. It's a difficult line to walk and I think this letter does a professional job.
I am sorry for sounding dismissive. I read through 20 pages and all of it looked like someone having email disagreements with their coworkers. I'll read some of the commentary and try to understand the moral issues here better.
I wouldn't call it "whining ramblings". But I find it odd that this letter, dating back one month ago, emerges two years after the news of the lawsuit. What I would like to know: what happened between those two years?
It would seem that the outcome doesn't look so peachy for the litigant and they may be interested in the scorched earth path. Going into the holiday spend season, maybe trying to give Munira a bad winter? Oddly, for Amazon, it's easy to restore any ill will in this case. They know how to lever up positive emotional feelings for their consumers. While 10's of MM is money, if Discover is the second largest with <20MM/yr, that's small beans in the revenue stream there.
So, if consumers and other revenue streams are vastly more important, I'm not sure that the impact of ad sales due to a bad actor crossing someone who doesn't understand political acumen - come on, a desperate email to your bosses boss?? WE NEED THE MILLISECONDS!!! - is all that important. Easy enough to bump Munira (right thing), give Kivin shut-up money (right thing and expedient), and move forward steamrolling online retailing...
Let me let Kivin and any one else working for a company in on a little secret. HR is not your friend. HR is not there to protect you and your career. HR is there to protect the company AGAINST you.
To the extent that your goals and the company's do not conflict, HR can be helpful. (Need some help with your health insurance or your 401k? HR is awesome!)
But if you're going to HR about an issue that could be damaging to the company, HR will gladly listen to you sharing confidential information while quietly working with the leadership to build a case against you or protect themselves. If you're caught in a situation that could potentially lead to a legal dispute with the company (serious conflict with mgmt as seen here, discrimination, etc), make sure you document EVERYTHING, put as much in writing/email as possible and tread carefully before sharing too much info with HR. They won't be in your corner when shit hits the fan.