>"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.
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.