Public protest against Amazon - _zsm0
======
forgotmypw3
I want to preface this comment with a statement that in no way am I trying to
blame the victim here, only to point out what can be learned from this
situation.

This is certainly not the first time I've heard of Amazon being a shitty place
to work at, and I don't see much reason to doubt the story of a vindictive
boss doing everything they can to make an employee miserable after learning
that the employee submitted bad feedback against them.

The two lessons I can extract from this post for myself are.

1\. Never submit negative feedback via "anonymous" or "confidential" feedback
processes at work, especially against a particular person, _especially_ your
boss.

It's been covered on HN before how these things are never really anonymous and
confidential, and it should be kind of obvious to figure out if you think
about it.

2\. If you are at your job as part of your Visa process, you are essentially a
slave with a slave's rights to match, and you are better off not rocking the
boat if you want to complete the process.

~~~
morley
Re #1: I realize this is the safest option for your own self-preservation, if
you don't give negative feedback, how do you expect your work environment to
change?

The way I see it, if you're in a bad situation at work, you have two options:
try to change it, or leave. If you're going to leave anyway, why not at least
try to improve your situation first so you give yourself the best chance of
success? And that way, the company has the opportunity to remove or remediate
a bad manager.

Basically, my reaction to your #1 is that it helps you avoid getting hurt by
the worst possible scenario. But personally, I think it's a better strategy to
maximize your chance at a good scenario.

~~~
halbritt
Pro-tip: never expect your work environment to change. The chances of a report
overcoming the whims of a shitty manager are very, very small especially in
the context of a company that tolerates the shitty manager in the first place.

Generally speaking, the best thing to do is to smile, appear to do reasonably
decent work, and begin looking elsewhere.

~~~
noitsnot
I second this. You'll almost never convince upper management the smooth-
talking buddies they promoted could ever possibly be terrible to their
employees.

~~~
rurban
Well, you could. It sometimes works. The problem is when the manager who
manages your shitty manager moves away, and you get a new one. Good managers
always get promoted or move away, only the terrible ones stay. The shitty
manager will start afresh to get onto you.

------
ownagefool
I had a manager that took over from a previous person when I was working
remote. There were a few issues, but the one that stands out is they flew me
down to London for a week, set me up in a hotel, and had me take taxis back
and fourth to the office and expense food etc.

After returning home, he rejected my expenses because of variance of costs of
the taxis, despite me pointing out that I was using the stipulated vendor and
the difference in cost was between me leaving the office at rush hour and me
leaving the office around 9-10pm.

Not only did he reject the taxi expenses, but the hotel, the flights, the
food, etc. The guy was obviously a class act in his 50s, rejecting the
expenses of a fairly underpaid 25 year old employee living in Scotland.

Super illegal but ultimatly I quit, because life is too short to work for
horrible people.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I was recently offered a job by a software company, work from home, paid
monthly. I presently work in metal fabrication.

Not only was their offer $30,000 below my current income, their deal was I
front cash for expenses and submit claims monthly.

Is this standard in the software world?

Because from my perspective there’s only one possible answer to paying
expenses out of pocket and having to claim them back: No.

~~~
avinium
> Is this standard in the software world?

This is standard in _every_ world. Corporate credit cards are usually reserved
for senior executives or people who travel/entertain a lot (e.g. sales reps).
Cash advances aren't a thing outside of small companies.

~~~
nostrademons
Huh? Google made it super easy to get a GCard, you just request it on a web
form and it arrived a few days later. It was pretty common for L4 engineers
(that's the level below senior) to have them.

~~~
deathanatos
I am also a former Google employee. I also had a GCard, and it is exactly as
easy to get one as described.

Google is the exception here, IMO. _Every_ other employer I have had has
generally required the employee to front the cash for expenses, and used
something like Expensify to get reimbursed. There are some exceptions, such as
hotels or airfare, which I've booked through corporate booking systems; these
only let you see "approved" flights/hotels, and once booked, is charged direct
to the company.

------
flatline
Welcome to life in practically any large US corporation. Most employees will
never complain to HR, they may need some routine services that HR provides and
that’s the extent of their interaction. But there are a few who do complain.
If these are peer-related complaints, HR will work with the employees managers
to resolve the issue. But let’s say someone has a problem with their manager.
Maybe no one else has complained about him before, or if so the complaints
appear to be isolated incidents. Let’s say he has a lot of positive feedback
from _his_ peers, manager, and other subordinates.

Now you, the complainant, are the problem. And oh boy you have some special
life circumstances - yikes, you are like a loaded bomb dropped in the lap of
HR. They are not in any position of power, they can’t set the policy for your
department (rightfully - they are not in the know), so your boss holds all the
cards. HR won’t dig to the bottom of anything, and a manager is more important
that a developer. At best it’s he-said-she-said and ignored, at worst you are
shown the door after some minimal make nice by the company to avoid future
liability.

I think it takes a strong top-down initiative to avoid cultural issues like
this at an organization. At some place as large as Amazon there are bound to
be isolated incidents but to all indications this behavior is, if not
encouraged (in some cases it appears to be), not actively discouraged and is
hence tacitly approved of at Amazon. I’ve seen what it takes to get a bad
manager moved or fired by their subordinates - it requires an outright coup.
Rarely does such a thing happen and it’s not guaranteed to succeed. Whereas, a
conscientious and capable manager can walk in and straighten something like
this out in fairly short order, with minimal drama.

~~~
freddie_mercury
> Welcome to life in practically any large US corporation

This is a common refrain, especially on HN. But it is a bit misplaced:

Small companies are just as bad and often worse.

All you have to do is look around at the average small company where nepotism
is the default (doesn't matter how good you are, the owner's son will be the
next CEO) and where many owners see staff as personal servants.

Some of the things I've seen in the past year with friends & acquaintances who
work at small companies:

\- An office admin being told to arrange the owner's wedding (without pay).

\- A nail salon worker being told to go pick up the owner's dry cleaning since
there weren't any customers in at the moment.

\- The owner of a small hotel telling staff they were all working on Saturday
to cater a party at her house. (If you say no, you are fired.)

\- A company owner taking $40,000 out of the company bank account to pay for
his family vacation to Croatia and then missing payroll that month. It ended
up being two weeks late.

Many small business owners treat their business (and by extension their staff)
as their personal fief and property.

Plus, the people who own and run small businesses aren't going to listen to
ideas for feedback and improvement any more than big company managers. They
always fall back on -- well, I've succeeded so far doing it my way.

~~~
r00fus
> They always fall back on -- well, I've succeeded so far doing it my way.

Put more simply: "My way or the highway".

I wonder if there are probing questions you can subtly ask to ferret out these
kinds of managers/workplaces so you can avoid during interviews or early on
the job?

------
Scramblejams
Amazon employee here, though I do not speak for the company.

At any big company, your management chain is the #1 influence on the quality
of your culture. My experience at Amazon has been extremely positive, but then
my org head is a great guy, so it's all been in line with my expectations.
I've also left critical feedback through the Amazon Connect survey for my
immediate manager and not suffered for it. That manager, as far as I can tell,
made no effort to deanonymize the feedback, and addressed the issue fairly in
a team meeting.

So, YMMV, but I would certainly encourage skilled devs, artists and designers
to come help us make great games. :-)

~~~
taurath
That's always been the argument to people who are on the fence about Amazon:
"I've heard some bad things, but haven't seen it in my department". Amazon,
and the people that work on the "good" teams never seem to be terribly
concerned about horrific reports, and I frequently wonder why that is. In
companies I've worked for, had I heard about people crying at their desk and
being forced to choose between their child's health and their job I'd want to
know how the company is putting a stop to it. It seems that everyone believes
that the people complaining are doing so for attention, but from the outside
it seems like there's been a lot of reports that are credible - and this is
the white collar stuff, not even warehouse worker things.

Its hard to know: Is everyone indoctrinated? Are they addicted to the
paychecks? Is the sense that there are bad things happening but its being
handled properly?

~~~
whoisjuan
That's because Amazon doesn't work like a cohesive monolithic organization.
Two teams that seat next to each other may have complete different cultures
and ways of working.

By design, Amazon is an aggregator of many small "startups" with different
budgets, different issues, different approaches to solving problems.

The connecting tissues are the leadership principles, the infrastructure, the
resources, the mobility and the top-down strategic guidance on how and when to
tackle different opportunites.

This is also probably the reason why many Amazon acquisitions like Twitch
thrive under them. They get integrated into the Amazon ecosystem and get all
the efficiencies from the larger machine but they don't get consumed into a
strategic vacuum. They're left to figure out all the potential synergies and
paths to move forward themselves. They don't need high C-level leadership to
help them figure and execute on all the internal collaboration opportunities
and increased efficiency. They just do it because the system allows them to do
it.

All the data and mechanisms are there. Most impactful innitiatives start with
a six-pager that almost anybody can write, and they exist mostly just to
unlock budgets. That's basically what Amazon leaderships does: "Someone is
saying that we should throw money and resources into this? Should we? Will
this make the company stronger? Will this generate more synergies and
opportunities?... Yes or no? ...Move on"

So it's not that people don't care. It simply feels too foreign, too
abstracted from your own personal reality and day to day. It's almost feels
like if those claims were coming from a completey different company that
happens to have the same name.

~~~
jimmy1
Exactly. I work at a very similar place on the East Coast -- very startup like
culture unified by leadership principles. I had one so-so experience, followed
by an absolutely horrible experience, followed by two terrific experiences.
For the bad experience, I worked weeks on end, lots of times throughout the
night trying to deliever, in many cases, unreasonable feature requests all
while trying to maintain production systems. Sometimes dysfunction happens.
You live in an imperfect world with imperfect people. In the end, sticking
through and using the horrible experience to learn and grow ended up paying
off long term.

Bezos has corporate principles that led to his success. Many people respect
that. I personally do no -- I lose respect for any man who cheats on his wife,
no matter the reason, but I digress that what he does do in the business world
has worked with immeasurable success.

(My final random point -- I find it kind of ironic that a man who stresses so
much that his leadership team have skilled writing and memos instead of
powerpoints let his security team autogenerate a security bulletin about a
serious docker CVE. I mean it's very obvious to me that this was written by a
bot [https://aws.amazon.com/security/security-
bulletins/AWS-2019-...](https://aws.amazon.com/security/security-
bulletins/AWS-2019-002/) \-- I think it's a tad tacky to be using a bot to
generate your security bulletins)

~~~
btilly
_I lose respect for any man who cheats on his wife, no matter the reason..._

That's some sanctimonious bullshit.

There is zero public information indicating any cheating. We know that there
was a trial separation. We don't know what agreements there were. We do know
that the divorce is being presented as being amiable.

My attitude is that if his soon to be ex wife is not upset, then random
strangers like yourself have zero business being upset on her behalf. You
aren't part of or privy to his relationships or agreements. It is none of your
business.

Unless you have non-public information indicating that he violated any
agreement with MacKezie, the best information available to you is information
in places like [https://www.tmz.com/2019/01/09/jeff-bezos-lauren-sanchez-
div...](https://www.tmz.com/2019/01/09/jeff-bezos-lauren-sanchez-divorce-
cheating-affair/) \- which indicates that the relationship began after both
couples separated, and was known by both ex partners.

Which would indicate that this isn't cheating. No matter how much it offends
your sensibilities.

~~~
vxNsr
I thought Bezos admitted to cheating in his medium post.

~~~
gjm11
If you mean the "No thank you, Mr Pecker" one, then it doesn't look to me as
if he does any such thing.

(He certainly implicitly admits that he is in a relationship with Ms Sanchez.
But, at least in my book, that's only _cheating_ if it happened before his
"trial separation" with his wife, and I don't see that he's admitted that it
did.)

------
mothsonasloth
I used to think big tech companies like Amazon and Google would be different,
however now I see they are just becoming like any older traditional
corporation with a HR department functioning like the stasi and the ability to
oppress through mass policies and hiring contracts.

We are lucky as developers to have a fairly easy way of life but I still
follow my Grandpa's advice from years working in the shipyards of Glasgow:

* Never be loyal to a company unless its your own

* When things are good, think about leaving

* Keep your mouth shut and don't gossip

~~~
napo
"* When things are good, think about leaving" => Wait what? So what do you do
when things are bad?

~~~
8ytecoder
Likely - leave when things are still good. Meaning look for early signs. Some
people stay and hope for the good old days - they almost never arrive.

------
amzn_throwaway7
I agree with many of the comments here about how ymmv based on your management
chain. My experience at Amazon has been very positive, but I do want to call
out some major issues with the Amazon Connections tool reference in this post.

This tool is pitched to employees as an anonymous way to provide feedback
about their team via daily questions. The reality is anything but.

* Responses are not anonymous, they are viewable by anyone on the Connections team, and individual responses are shared with managers in many cases. The Connections team will deny this because it is technically against their policy, but I have seen Connections case managers share information with managers many times.

* Feedback results are not viewable by employees, only managers (this is in contrast to the yearly tech survey, which anyone can view). This leads to data being conveniently left out, or entire orgs simply not reviewing the data.

* The questions are incredibly poorly constructed and there have been multiple internal tickets about propaganda and insensitive questions. A few examples off the top of my head are "Did you know that Amazon was voted the best company to work for 5 years in a row by xyz organization? (Yes/No)" and something to the effect of "How do you feel working with foreigners?" (The wording was _significantly_ more sensitive, but this was the undertone and caused a massive uproar internally.)

These issues have been brought up repeatedly internally and in almost two
years, nothing has been done. The Connections team has essentially disabled
all feedback channels surrounding the tool. If anything comes of this, I hope
a serious look is taken at how the Amazon Connections program is implemented.

~~~
hbosch
FWIW I have heard that org leaders can manually insert questions, deny some
default questions, and generally tailor the Connections to the types of things
they want tactical feedback on. I contracted for a different Amazon team and
saw plenty of Connection. They were often bland, “How many hours a week do you
spend in meetings?” “True/False: when I begin a project goals are outlined
clearly” “When was the last time you sought direct customer feedback for a
decision?” Etc. nothing like what you mentioned.

------
org3432
This kind of retribution is pretty normal from the companies I've worked it,
it's clumsy that it ended up in writing here and a bit more vicious than usual
with a child involved. Normally it's done offline in private conversations or
simply as something that's understood between like minded managers with
passing comments.

One manager I had was pretty candid about it, he said he couldn't find another
job and was looking to retire so he was going to give me a bad performance
review despite actually being the top performer so he wouldn't be affected. He
was otherwise very apologetic that his hand was forced.

~~~
jcrites
> One manager I had was pretty candid about it, he said he couldn't find
> another job and was looking to retire so he was going to give me a bad
> performance review despite actually being the top performer so he wouldn't
> be affected.

How would he be affected by giving you a well-deserved good performance
review? I don't understand.

------
docker_up
I had an horrible experience with a terrible manager about 10 years ago. We
didn't get along at all, and he tried to throw me under the bus for a project
that he mismanaged. He basically wrote lies about me on my performance review.

I fought it via HR. The HR rep couldn't care less about it, but I kept
persisting, and I had my coworkers vouch for me that what our manager said was
false. He ended up rescinding the entire performance review, and I changed
teams and left the company shortly afterwards.

But I was lucky. I was well-liked by my peers because they knew I worked hard,
and they were willing to go to bat for me against our manager. And my manager
was utterly stupid because he wrote lies that could be refuted by my
teammates. It was basically the perfect conditions in my favor. Had I not had
those favorable conditions, I'm pretty sure HR would have done nothing to help
me, and I would have gotten fired. Even if managers write lies about you, it's
very very difficult to fight back.

~~~
selfselfself
Have heard many Amazon stories around review being used by managers as a
revenge tool. A true incident - a friend of mine and his coworker (same level)
didn't get along. Their manager left and this coworker was made the manager
since he had longer tenure. My friend received a PIP in 2 months flat and
ended up leaving the company rather than put up a fight.

~~~
JimboOmega
A similar thing happened to me outside of Amazon. When the person I didn't get
along with was made my manager I immediately went outside my reporting chain
to find a place to transfer (though I considered quitting on the spot)

It didn't really work out though. New team was better but my past followed me
and I let the whole experience get me down.

------
curiousDog
Word of advice, never work for Amazon. Out of the FANGs, it is quite easily
the sleaziest place to work. As someone who worked there, I can believe OPs
side of the story. At this point, most of the people who tolerate working
there are indentured Indian H1-B employees because they’re stuck in the Green
card queue. Even amongst them, the good ones left for greener pastures a long
time ago!

~~~
amztawy_1190
Which team? Before I joined I spoke with a few friends who work there (after
reading the NYT article and comments like yours) and got positive feedback. I
work here for the past 3 years and so far touch wood nothing even near this.
Pretty happy all in all. It’s like people talk about a different company. I’m
at AWS, Sr SDE, any teams the above warning is more applicable to? Asking for
myself in case I want to switch a teams to know what to avoid but also since
we are hiring, I’d like others to know if it’s a specific team / department to
avoid... Also, all of us in “good teams” should take ownership and figure out
how to systematically fix the issues others obviously experience in other
teams. If it’s a specific branch or department, I’d like to see all amazon
employees protest to eradicate any toxic bosses / culture in these teams. I
just have no way in knowing which ones are, it’s a huge company

~~~
selfselfself
Since you mentioned you want to protest, are you going to join Oleg? Seems
like a good starting point.

~~~
amztawy_1190
I’m not located in Seattle, but if I was there, and got the details, and was
convinced Oleg is right I’d try to mobilize some like minded people, make sure
there is no clause forbidding me to do so as I like to have a job, maybe give
my boss a heads up (maybe he would even join) and I’d be happy to join his
protest. But I believe this should start internally, it will look better to
leadership if some of us for example write a one pager on this amazon good bad
discrepancy and that the fact many teams are happy doesn’t cover the fact
there are apparently some toxic ones. I love my job and I hate the fact the
same company can cause others have the opposite experience, it hurts them but
also much to lesser extent, hurts all of us at Amazon. Ego hurt, can
intimidate candidates, lost prestige. Small problems but still should make us
all concerned and driven for action to fix it.

~~~
StudentStuff
> make sure there is no clause forbidding me to do so as I like to have a job

You realize that any retribution would be a violation of the Fair Labor
Standards Act, right? You can't sign away your right to protest, unless you
work for the government as a critical employee (read: firefighters, police).

------
madrox
Disclaimer: I currently work at Amazon as an SDM (I do not speak for the
company). I've also worked a lot of other places. In my experience, bad
managers can happen anywhere.

I'm not going to take sides since all we have is a story told by an ex-
employee who has every reason to be spiteful toward his former employer. The
other side of this story is one we'll likely never hear.

I do want to comment on the visa aspect of this (sounds like he's on an EB3).
I have worked with and managed visa-holding engineers who've been passed over
for promotions or otherwise discriminated against because of their visa status
(not at Amazon). Certain kinds of promotions can run the risk of a visa holder
getting their visa rejected. Many things a company might do to improve the
circumstances of a regular employee runs the risk of triggering a visa re-
evaluation. More often than not the company will play it safe so the employee
doesn't run the risk of getting deported. That can involve denying them
promotions or "unofficially" giving it to them (all the responsibility but no
title). It's systemic discrimination, and the worst part is it has the "best
interests" of the visa holder at heart.

Personally, I tried to counter this kind of discrimination by making the
employee aware of the situation and the risk, then asking what they would like
me to do. Usually, though, my influence is limited and I get blocked by HR and
legal.

If this story didn't happen to a visa holder, it would be a simple story of
"just go somewhere else," but I can understand how helpless these people must
feel.

~~~
vviktor
WTF? Why it can't be simple "just go somewhere else"? Well, just go to some
other country.

I'm not saying it's easy, but why bang your head against the wall. Go
somewhere else, and, if you really want, come back another time, through a
different company or on different terms.

~~~
madrox
Imagine being in their shoes. Are you prepared to move to the other side of
the globe on a moment’s notice if you’re unemployed? Do you have the funds to
do that, such as moving your precious items, and breaking your lease? If you
have a family, are you prepared for the impact it will have on them (this
guy’s child has health care concerns)? What would you be prepared to put up
with in order to avoid that?

Also, many just think of the US as home despite not being a citizen. Many who
worked for me went to college here on a study visa. This is the only home
they’ve known their adult life. They wouldn’t know the first thing about how
to live if they went back to their native country.

------
Consultant32452
My recommendation is to NEVER leave negative feedback on an employee survey.
The BEST outcome I've seen from them is incredibly painful meetings that only
seem to make the matter worse.

My speculation on this is two fold. The first is that putting things in those
surveys is a "permanent record" or at least "yearly review" issue for your
manager. So you are (justly or not) harming them, and they will tend to
respond to being harmed. The other is that, if you think about it... if your
manager is not a person who you can talk to about a problem in a non-anonymous
way... doing it anonymously is not likely to help, it's probably better to
just quietly leave.

~~~
TallGuyShort
This guy I know, we can call him Jim, left a large tech company and was honest
in his exit interview about why he was leaving, and it was mostly his manager.
He was later asked to apply for a job with a different team after his manager
left the company years (and promotions) later. HR blocked the hire because he
was "disgruntled" in his exit interview. As far as I know, they did nothing to
recognize or fix the problem. But they held it against him because his
feedback was negative. Unfortunately, a company that views employees as the
enemy will find it a self-fulfilling prophecy. They kill the incentive to try
help fix problems, and create a situation where you like it or you leave.

~~~
whatshisface
"I'm leaving because your company is too good."

~~~
mikeash
It's the inverse of the ubiquitous "why do you want to work for us?" interview
question. "Because you give money to your employees and I require money for
food and housing" is somehow never what they're looking for.

------
joering2
Abusive managers... after all the years I need to thanked them because they
forced me to start my own company.

My "favorite" was a CTO that I worked for in NYC.. horrible human being with
few ex wives and an eye for girls that barely turned 18. My favorite line was:
"if you have family, don't work here" when I was complaining that he really
didn't need me at the office on Sunday 9pm to "monitor" system I could
remotely connect in case all the way from home.

He also did the same to me - everyone came at 10, he wanted me at 7. Everyone
left 5pm, he wanted me to work on extra project at 7pm. Those projects never
came and I was just sitting there bored. Of course I questioned his reasoning
few times but he just said "you're the most important person in the company
you need to be here earlier and leave the last in case". At the same time I
was making the lowest salary in the corp... on time asked him about raise he
told me: "remember you are on McDonald sales guy salary here.. you are not an
exec".

Fun times looking back at 15 years ago when I was young and naive...

~~~
graphememes
>you are the most important person in the company >you are not an exec

I'd have come back with

>yeah but I'm the most important person here so either my time changes or
money

------
huhtenberg
This really needs the second half of the story before we all get our trusty
pitchforks and start making a shish-kebab from this Khan person.

~~~
the-pigeon
The problem with this story is that it's more about an abusive boss at Amazon
than Amazon.

Any large company is going to have abusive individuals in it. I think the real
issue this story illustrates is that when people are brought over on work
visas they have no leverage with their employer.

As an American citizen software engineer my boss knows that if I'm unhappy I
will just leave. But the boss of someone on a work visa knows they can do
pretty much whatever they want to them and the employee is just stuck.

So we need to change the work visa system so those employees aren't in such a
vulnerable position. How exactly? I don't know..

~~~
smattiso
But isn't that why companies hire employees on visas to begin with? I would
venture to guess for every 1 truly pioneering mind that is working in the US
on a H1-B visa there are 100 people working on CRUD software at Amazon or
Microsoft.

~~~
int_19h
Depends on the company. Companies like Tata and Infosys (which, until recent
changes, had something like 80% of H1B quota), sure. Companies like Amazon and
Microsoft do not do this as a matter of policy (which is why they sponsor most
of their H1B employees for green card); but individual managers are still
aware of the kind of leverage this gives them, and some of them try to use it.

------
lewisinc
I feel like I should point out the value in surrounding yourself with people
like Oleg here who 1. Have a completely different socioeconomic perspective
than someone like myself, and 2. Feel (rightfully) entitled to voice their
opinion on anything and everything that the judge to be of enough importance
to voice such an opinion.

If anyone in the Seattle-area values an engineer who will voice such opinions
on ethics and morality above their own career-oriented self-interest, perhaps
extend an invitation to an interview. Because surely there is no safeguard in
place that will save this man and his family from being fired and then
deported.

~~~
john_moscow
The truth is that nobody hires whistleblowers.

------
abbracadabbra
Which came first, the post or the lawsuit?

Churyumov v. Amazon Corporate LLC (2:19-cv-00136) District Court, W.D.
Washington

[https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/14528071/churyumov-v-
am...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/14528071/churyumov-v-amazon-
corporate-llc/)

~~~
john_moscow
Yuck,

>Self-Represented Plaintiff Oleg Churyumov.

This won't end well for the guy.

~~~
MattyRad
He's self representing himself for the case? Does anyone know if there is any
reasoning behind this? Even lawyers aren't recommended to represent
themselves... going up against Amazon's lawyers with- no offense to the
author- imperfect English, sounds like it would be more of a firing squad than
a lawsuit.

~~~
john_moscow
As a fellow Russian, the impression I got from the original post is that the
author has no idea how PR, legal system, juries, diplomacy and workplace
politics work in the U.S. Kinda sad because those things are orthogonal to
your software development skills.

------
dqpb
> _Khan made me single parent._

I've been downvoted here before for "victim blaming", but I'm going to say
this anyway because someone has to.

It's your responsibility to be in control of your life. There is no grand
order of things that will take care of you. There will always be things
working against you. Entropy, competition, environmental hazards, psychopaths,
etc, are everpresent.

You need to have the confidence to walk away from situations that aren't in
line with what you want, and not just throw up your hands and say - I guess
this is my life now.

~~~
freyir
Easier said than done you’re on an H1B visa and HR hangs you out to dry.

~~~
6nf
If you are on H1B and you have a family in the country I think you need to be
very careful about how you behave at work, and if your work situation sucks
you better start looking for a new H1B sponsor. You can always complain later.

~~~
rishav_sharan
Wouldn't getting a new sponsor just reset your position in the queue?

------
14CharUsername
Amazon's leadership principles may have a lot to do with this.

These must be memorized for any manager at Amazon and are part of the
interview process.

[http://whartonmagazine.com/blogs/learn-from-amazons-
leadersh...](http://whartonmagazine.com/blogs/learn-from-amazons-leadership-
principles/#sthash.Mnj0iEw1.dpbs)

Choice quotes.

"Leaders are right a lot."

"Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit Leaders are obligated to respectfully
challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or
exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise
for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit
wholly."

~~~
deanCommie
Amazon Leadership principles are for _all_ employees at the company not
managers.

"Leaders are right a lot" isn't indoctrination to trust your manager
implicitly because they are right. It's "Be a leader. Have good judgement.
Work to improve it. As a result be right a lot"

Backbone one is also misunderstood: "Don't succumb to do the easy thing. Push
back when you know when it's the right thing to do even if it's harder. BUT if
you are overruled, and the group decision goes against it, don't try to fight
it and undermine the decision, commit to the path."

------
bitL
It's funny how you often notice bullies getting promoted - is destruction of a
low-level person a rite of passage for a middle manager to get ahead at many
US corporations these days? I can imagine if they select for some dark-triad
characteristics and going all-in, demonstrating cold/calculating/cruel moves
while keeping paperwork clean signalizes the right person?

~~~
galaxyLogic
Bullies are often beneficial to the person they work under. That person can
delegate unpleasant bullying-work to the bully and the bully will never bully
his boss.

~~~
abawany
Agreed. Have seen plenty of 'kiss up, kick down' behavior at larger tech
companies. It is at times amusing and a small break from the suffering to see
the person transform rapidly during interactions with the kissee or the kickee
in short order.

------
thorwasdfasdf
Besides H1Bs, and fresh graduates (who don't have any choice), I don't
understand how Amazon can still higher Software engineers. I understand that
Amazon teams are diverse, but as a candidate with any other possible option,
how could anyone even consider amazon considering everything that's been
written about the company already.

~~~
hwj6etsd90lb
How about because Amazon develops some of the most interesting and innovative
products out there? AWS, Alexa, Go Store, to name a few?

I've worked on several AWS services, and I'm very proud of being a part of
them and of AWS in general. I bet there are very few other places where I
would find problems this interesting or of this scale.

If you have some experience, you probably know better than just look for a job
at company X - you probably choose specific role in a particular team or
product. And Amazon sure does have a lot of great products with very
interesting positions.

~~~
itslennysfault
There are plenty of companies that have interesting projects and don't have
such a toxic culture. GCP and Azure are the exact same technical challenge as
AWS without all the Amazon BS.

~~~
hwj6etsd90lb
I was answering why choose Amazon over "any other possible option" \- because
Amazon has awesome projects. If cultures at Microsoft or Google are less toxic
is an unrelated topic.

------
nojvek
> One Amazon employee said when her father was dying, her boss told “you are
> the problem” and prevented her from visiting the father. Another Amazon
> employee saw his unborn child died during pregnancy when he was under
> oppression by his manager. There are a lot of cases like that. Amazon is
> built on blood.

Holyshit. This sounds like modern day slavery. Isn’t this bordering on crime
against humanity?

~~~
i_am_new_here
Miscarriages are very common and not much talked about and I am sorry she
couldn't see her father that day.

------
femiagbabiaka
Workers need unions, plain and simple. The addition of an impartial arbitrator
at any step along this process could’ve helped so much.

~~~
alecco
I used to believe that. But I saw very close how an IT union was taken over by
old school, corrupt fat union guys. And they just pander to the lowest common
denominator. They go against meritocracy.

I'd rather pay attention and vote with my feet.

~~~
maximente
"divided we fall" is a cliche but may have some merit here, especially if this
will be filled by another starry eyed immigrant visa holder who can be treated
as such. the information asymmetry gap is just too high imo.

there's other opportunities for organizing labor that don't include old-school
unions. screen actors' guild is one example that, e.g., mandates various
"newer" members get roles on films and seems to be really well regarded. a
guild could serve techies as well.

read up on some of michael o church's old blog about his ideas about organized
labor in tech, but be careful espousing the same views as it very well might
get you into irredeemable trouble.

~~~
8ytecoder
Agreed. But the fight to keep management in check shouldn't devolve into a
fight to keep the union leaders in check. What's the guarantee that won't
happen?

~~~
maximente
i don't know, my first reaction is introduce democratic elements to the system
as opposed to seniority but perhaps that's been done.

"worst system but best we've had" and all that - at least labor would have a
fighting chance

~~~
dragonwriter
> i don't know, my first reaction is introduce democratic elements to the
> system as opposed to seniority

Unions are almost invariably democratic; where seniority rules are adopted by
a union (and this is far from universal), they tend to be adopted
democratically,and not to replace democratic control of the union, so these
are not opposed concepts.

------
ex__atlassian
Its unfortunate but at the same time its the bitter truth. The visa
restrictions/dependency create a slavery system within the software industry
at-least in US as far as I have seen personally. The person fighting must have
received his green card by now I guess which is why he is able to come forward
like this. On the other hand if some one is on short leash (PIP) like this
with a H1B visa, they would spend their time and energy on finding another job
before their status becomes illegal. I have personal experience of a PIP which
was personally motivated and I was naive enough to think that I had all the
evidences to prove my case. At one point of time I was thinking whether to go
to court or focus my energy to find a better job. As some one said earlier the
HR is not for the employees, they are for the company. The management chain is
more interested to protect one of they own, even if there are evidences.

------
vkaku
I hear you. I know this has happened to many other people and they've told me
everything that has happened to them. I say - focus your energy on getting a
better boss next time.

There are laws against workplace harassment and it needs lawyers to enforce
them. In this specific company, complaints of such harassment would go only to
dead ears and further lead to retaliation.

If there are enough cases (and I bet there are), it would mean a class action
against such practices. Get some lawyer friends and have a few beers with
them.

Once again, I hear you.

Addendum: If you wish to put your SDE skills to good use, develop a social
shaming browser plugin with anecdotal evidence tying to a person's
professional profile, say, LinkedIn. That will ensure that bad managers are
automatically flagged when people visit their profile.

------
halbritt
There's been much discussion in this thread about the role of HR and corporate
processes in these kinds of situations. I would encourage anyone that works in
a BigCo to read the book "Corporate Confidential".

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62085.Corporate_Confiden...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62085.Corporate_Confidential)

------
mindfulplay
Sorry to be pedantic as this is often incorrect: King county was NOT named
after MLK Jr, but rather changed recently from referring to Rufus King to MLK
Jr. I had mistakenly believed this too before I learnt about our history.

But Washington State is indeed named after George Washington.

~~~
dbg31415
"Recently" like the 1986 Macintosh Plus came out recently.

* Toledo Blade - Google News Archive Search || [https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=hw4VAAAAIBAJ&sjid=2AIE...](https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=hw4VAAAAIBAJ&sjid=2AIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5259,1151250)

But, just to be clear, Edgar Martinez Drive was named after Edgar Martinez. (=

~~~
mynameisvlad
Considering King County has been around since 1852, 1986 should be considered
quite "recent" in its history.

As with everything, context matters. Just like how we would consider homo
sapiens as a whole "recent" in the scale of the geological time scale.

------
gridspy
I sincerely hope that this public blog entry and protest leads to some labor
reform. Good luck bro.

------
Tehchops
I hope this guy gets help with his issues, because they seem to extend far
beyond "working at Amazon".

~~~
sdinsn
And it also seems to not be ' _Amazon_ ', it seems to be his immediate manager
that's the larger problem

~~~
Tehchops
>it seems to be his immediate manager that's the larger problem

Not discounting this, but someone that thinks comparing to Jeff Bezos to Adolf
Hitler is either legitimate _or_ merits public attribution is bringing their
own issues to the table, and is _likely_ not telling us the whole story.

~~~
metacritic12
Now I know an ad-hominem is ipso facto against HN's rules, but look at not
just the Hitler comparison, but the writing style.

Disconnected sentences. Run ons. This is more than a case of someone who's a
bad writer or a non-native English speaker. I've written in non-native
languages before -- organization, paragraphs, and spacing transcend language.

To not mince words, this blog post seems 50% in the format of one of those
crazy political ranters that show up in your inbox, or Timecube (
[http://timecube.2enp.com/](http://timecube.2enp.com/) ).

Inference-wise, is there a good (>20%) chance this guy's story is legit and
he's really just a very, very, jumbled writer. Yes. But is there also a good
(>20%) chance this guy is kinda off his rockers? Also yes.

This is not meant as an ad-hom itself. It's merely statistical inference (like
inferring someone writing about Python but mispelling it as "Pyton" all the
time is probably not that proficient at Python)

------
ameister14
Just wanted to point out that he's currently suing all of these people and the
company for discrimination.

~~~
lxe
As intense these allegations are, someone on the Internet once said that it's
best to keep these things offline until investigations/lawsuits are done. Is
that true?

~~~
komali2
Well, yea, you can only hurt your case, not help it.

~~~
taurath
If your goal is a payout then best to keep quiet, but if your goal is an
actual change in policy public shaming seems to be the only thing that works.

------
rubyfan
The company employs something like 300,000 people. I’d imagine many stories of
bad management just at that scale. Since it’s Amazon it always gets an unfair
level attention.

~~~
nojvek
IBM has a ridiculous number of employees. So does Google and Microsoft. They
are all behemoths.

I have heard pretty horrible stories from x-amazonians as well.

------
gbraad
Basically making an employee a single-parent, as it feels by wrath/broken
promise, is heart-breaking! These managers likely do not have children...

------
ardit33
Former Amazon employee here (worked at Lab126, on the original Kindle
devices).

While I didn't have a bad manager there (my managers were actually nice
people), it is Amazon's corporate culture that turns the place into a 'dog eat
dog', arse-hole driven, development. Managers have to run around and cover
their arse, as in the first or second misstep, they are out. This pressure
filters down to employees who are often thrown against very tight deadlines
without much corporate support (ie. basic training on new tech, or even clear
coding review standards, and more). Code reviews usually turned into: "Who
screams the loudest wins".

Amazon tends to be notoriously 'cheap/frugal', to the point of lacking basic
things that most work places take for granted. (I am not talking about cheap
coffee and lack of perks, but not even throwing a Christmas party, even though
the Kindle was a huge success and sold more than then even the more optimistic
prediction). The company will not show/give a basic token of appreciation,
even though the team is performing well. Hence, employee morale was not high,
but people saw it just as a job. If you are 'young' and still learning and
want to grow as a person, you will hate an environment like that.

But the worst abuse was done to H-1B folks like me.

1\. Amazon abuses on people that are on H-1B and need their greencard
application going to stay in the country. They delay your application at every
step, to the point that you realize that something that should take 1 year, it
will take 3-4 years at the given pace, or maybe not even done ever. They
dragged their feet, and played with your life as a simple leverage tool. (even
after talking to the VP of HR, and while getting: 'Yes, it will be done',
nothing got done, and things got dragged out anyway).

2\. Amazon abuses on people that need some flexibility (due to family
reasons). I remember really as at some point I had to pick up the project of
co-worker as she had a mental break-down at work. (crying and all). Reason?
She needed some time off due to children/family reason and she couldn't get it
as 'we were on a tight deadline'.

My first week at work there, there was a 'goodbye' party at my team, where one
of the managers/lead engineers was leaving. The reason: Burnout. (I learned
that part later).

3\. Their back dated options, (i.e. you get most of your stock compensation
only on your 4th year), are done in purpose, as they know you probably will
not put up with it until then, and leave the money on the table by leaving.
Most people stay 1-2 years and move on.

So, yeah, I think Amazon is a bad actor/employee to even software engineers
(who tend to have options). I can't imagine their warehouse and lower level
employees.

When the NYTimes article came out, I thought it pictured a very accurate
portrait of the company. Perhaps things have changed, perhaps they are still
the same, but I usually do not recommend friends to work there. They fully
deserve their bad rap, and I am glad NYC didn't subsidize their abuse.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-
amazon-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-
wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html)

~~~
thegayngler
Everyone I've ever known in real life to actually work there (it is more than
just a couple of people) has told me that its not a place a person should want
to work. I've never heard of literally everyone I know who works for a company
has nothing good to say about it at all....especially from other engineers. So
I always ignore the recruiters when they send me linked in messages and
emails.

~~~
krinchan
Same. I try to keep in mind that anecdotes do not evidence make. However, when
my sample size is in the high thirties and I still do not have one positive
opinion, something smells.

There is long standing evidence that Amazon actively manipulates social media
to try to paint working in the warehouses as a great job.

HN tends to have an outsized representation of prospective H1B candidates.

Added up, it's really hard to take any of the positive comments from "Amazon
Employees" seriously in this post.

------
sixdimensional
This sounds like retaliation. I am not a lawyer, don't know the details, and
this is not a pleasant process to go through, but it may be illegal in your
state. For example, here are some of the laws in California[1].

[1]
[https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/HowToFileLinkCodeSections.htm](https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/HowToFileLinkCodeSections.htm)

------
mrhappyunhappy
Someone talented enough to work at Amazon has the option of going out on their
own. This was the best decision I’ve made and now I have all the time in the
world to spend with my child. There was an excellent post on how to be a
consultant and charge good rates. It doesn’t matter where you live or your
accent if you do it right. Sucks for the poster to be treated the way he was,
these companies need to be held accountable for human suffering on all levels
but at the same time it’s hard to sympathize when the company is that large
and the chance that the CEO can control what one asshole supervisor does is
tiny. Bezos probably has no clue about this or has few reasons to care. He
rightfully stated that he is making others rich, hence all the more reasons
not to keep doing it at other places. Russia is a beautiful country where
highly paid developers can live comfortably. I’m not saying he shouldn’t live
where he wants (US) but there are means of doing well outside of working for
behemoths like Amazon, google or Facebook.

------
m0zg
>> Amazon HR protects company from employees

This is true of _any_ company, _especially_ if you happen to be a straight
white male (i.e. not a minority in any way).

Go to HR only if you're 200% sure you can make the company suffer if they
don't listen to your complaint. I'm talking _documented, corroborated_ sexual
harassment, or _very heavily documented_, strictly illegal discrimination of
other types. It is best to also take a medical leave if you're being hazed
like this, that way you will have what passes for evidence should they try to
sweep things under the rug, which they almost certainly will (and truth be
told, after the abuse described in the article, I'd probably need to take a
leave for real).

And of course do not under any circumstances go to HR if you're an H1B without
first rounding up another job in a 100% guaranteed fashion. If you don't, it
becomes very easy for them to get rid of the problem by simply firing you. By
law, you have to leave the country in 2 weeks. They know this.

------
evgeniysharapov
Not to be snarky but, I think, a lot of commentators and the original poster
would benefit from Gramarly subscription. The stories are compelling and make
me quite sympathetic to Oleg (to the extent of helping him financially or in
some other way) and everyone else, but, my God, it is very hard to read typos
and grammatic errors.

------
thetruthseeker1
While Amazon’s work culture doesn’t surprise me(similar experiences from
multiple sources), while I feel sympathetic to the author’s struggles, I do
feel the author went a bit too far with his invectives against his previous
manager. The reason I say that is, we don’t know the manager’s side of the
story and may be it wasn’t exactly like how this guy characterizes it.

While people working on visas don’t have as much freedom as people who don’t
need sponsorship, I don’t think this problem is present in every company that
has lot of immigrants. Part of the problem is Amazon’s culture and I think
this problem is trickled top down.

It seems like people at the top management of amazon work hard and there is
probably better than linear returns for their extra efforts. But it seems like
they push that even on the lower rungs where it seems like it is not
justified.

------
goldenkey
I had a similar horror story from 2014-2015 Seattle Amazon. But I opted to
quit rather than being subjected to further abuse.

I had a really bad manager whose name was Maulik Patel. He had the worst
attributes you could ask for in a manager. Unsupportive, jaded, and
emotionally draining. He kept threatening to fire me but never would...for
something like 4 months until I said fuck it and quit. His main reasons were
that I wasn't fast enough despite finishing the tickets in my sprints pretty
much all the time. He had a vendetta against me for being hired to do the job
he couldn't. He had flat files of libraries like jQuery and KnockoutJS and d3
committed into our repo. He used the synchronous ajax call flag to download
language files...freezing every page for a quarter of a second. There was no
way to upgrade all our libraries or fork them properly without undoing all of
his mess.

I put us on Bower for web packages and rerolled everything. He was pissed
about that. Pissed I fixed his mistakes. He would say things like I am level 4
so I need to pull tickets from the next sprint when I am done with the current
sprint. Fundamentally he did not understand what role management had in
planning and how to do it properly without antagonizing individual
contributors.. Maulik attacked team members including me with qualitatives
like slow and fast. He would spread his hands like he was showing a quantity
and say you are here but need to _here_ [moves hand higher.]

It was his first time as a manager. When I took the job Jeff Grote was
actually signed on to be my manager..but Jeff pulled a bait and switch early
into my start..sticking Maulik as a middle manager under himself. Coulda all
been avoided if Jeff did me proper.

When I left I sent an email to the team explaining my grievances which I felt
they deserved but which is for sure unprofessional. I probably shoulda went to
HR but I had heard bad things about HR at large companies. Couldnt have been
worse than not getting severence or unemployment. Live and learn... Care to
share any similar stories? Would probably make me feel better to hear how
someone else dealt with a bad manager scenario. If not its fine.

Here's an email I had sent to Jeff (his manager):

Jeff, I'm coming to you about Maulik's behavior. Literally, it's so bad that
even when I come home, or I'm off on weekends, I'm thinking about how to deal
with the guy. It's totally unsuitable for job satisfaction. My job
satisfaction isn't even reflecting the tickets I do anymore, it's literally
tarnished, shit on, by the passive-agressive comments Maulik makes on the
regular, he usually sticks a smiley face at the end of his insults as if that
makes them less offensive.

When I came onboard, the javascript and front-end workflow and ui, and code,
were absolute chaos. I am not one to cry over spilled milk. I fixed 90% of it
and did not insult Maulik, because I understand that it isnt productive to do
so.

However, I don't know why Maulik feels the need to stomp on me for what
amounts to the smallest kind of things. If you look at my ticket resolving
rate, I'm like a speed demon, Ashley can vouch for this. So I'm getting my job
done.

But either Maulik has a personality or managerial deficit, he is somewhat
envious that I am doing a category of task right (front-end) that he only was
shoddily able to do. Or he has no idea, is oblivious, and thinks his unelegant
and critical behavior is conducive to being a good manager. And it isn't, I
can tell you, based on my satisfaction and willingness to do good work. He's
going against that with his continued vitriol.

For example, this timezone issue. He has 100 other issues to deal with. And he
chooses to spend 20 minutes researching and finding a library (Which he may
not have found...20 minutes could end up empty handed..) Just so he can trump
me.

And it's a habit with Maulik. He ended up saying "This kind of reserach is
what is expected from an Amazon engineer."

All too common for me to talk to him, and then he ends up using corporate
culture rhetoric to crap on me. "Andrew, most people don't last long here. A
lot of people get fired. Amazon culture, you need to learn it" Intimidation
tactics, dismissal of my concerns, and basically abusing the idea of Amazon
culture to avoid taking personal responsibility.

I really need you to step in here and deal with Maulik. He's a new manager and
is showing it. A good manager is supposed to improve the teams efficiency,
correct? He's actually making me not want to work, because of the amount of
vitriol I get for performing well. It's anti-correlated. It's negative
reinforcement.

------
amztawy_1190
Word of advice to anyone. Don’t complain about your boss, in any company, very
few cases it will end up in your favor. Second, never complain to HR. As Oleg
said, HR is to protect the company, not you.

I’m very saddened it ended up this way. I don’t know the full story so I can’t
judge. But if even half of what he says is true, everyone involved should be
fired.

Having that said, I work for AWS and pretty happy but I’m very concerned I
keep hearing cases like this in the media. Maybe when the dust is settled I’ll
try to take apply to his team and this will give me an excuse to see their
culture from first hand. So far all employees I personally know didn’t have
similar issues, but maybe I’m just lucky.

------
amztawy_1190
Sounds terrible and hope justice prevails. I’m not familiar with the case but
in case anyone wondering or caring, I work for AWS and never heard of any
similar cases in any of the teams I’m working with. It’s a big company and
there are some bad bosses apparently. I wouldn’t have taken that approach
personally even if I was in his shoes but I’m not in his shoes and don’t know
all the facts. I hope this gets resolved but this is far from my own
experience (3 years in AWS as a Sr SDE)

------
akerro
Worst protest for them would be when a lot of people left at the same time.
Project would be slowed down, they would have problems hiring, people who stay
would be overwhelmed and left later.

Protesting against amazon and still working there means nothing, because
you're still doing job for them, which means you accept the state of things,
despite not tolerating it at the same time.

------
pmiller2
This would be disability lawsuit waiting to happen, if he has the means and
didn’t sign an arbitration agreement.

------
oarabbus_
>To somehow improve its reputation, Amazon manipulates public opinion on the
Internet! Amazon pays to its employees for posts in social networks! Don’t
believe? Google it!

I couldn't be the only one who found some irony in this statement.

------
agoldis
No matter who was right, no company should allow such kind of escalation to
happen.

------
sidcool
What makes people, especially managers, to act so shittily with people working
'under' them. I can't begin to imagine how crappy a person has to be to abuse
power. Humans seriously cannot handle power.

------
MichaelMoser123
amazon managers used the data from internal feedback system against their
subordinates. I think this shows exactly how we the customers(some say the
products) can trust them with our data. Very vivid example that is.

------
jmspring
Given the abuses mentioned, even in WA, if there was legitimate documentation
of things like “be in by 7am”, HR would have worked with the situation -
shitty manager or not.

~~~
hbosch
I’ve heard at Amazon, if you are on a PIP, if you manager tells you to juggle
bananas on a unicycle and you don’t make a damn good attempt you can be fired.
Probably hyperbole, but still.

------
dbg31415
My experience with Amazon was extremely positive.

The author of this article seems very junior / immature, and honestly feels
like he's got some mental health issues going on. Airing this much dirty
laundry is not likely to get you what you want, and is likely going to make it
hard for him to get hired by the next company.

Always talk to your boss 1:1, face to face. Never give shitty feedback over an
online system. If you can't work out your issues, or you don't get along well
with your manager, best to just move on and look for a new job.

~~~
UnFleshedOne
What is the purpose of an online feedback system then?

------
lstroud
Hate to tell him, the job of every HR department is to protect the company,
not the employees.

------
ajhurliman
This seems like a tiff with a particular manager, not all 600,000 people that
compose Amazon.

Also, I'm not sure if he ever learned this, but his manager doesn't control
whether he can transfer or not. All he needed was a hiring manager to say s/he
wanted him on the team and he could've just left.

------
ignoramous
Mgrs block transfers of engs they don't think meet the performance bar. Apart
from official channels to 'block' transfers, they block them by asking other
mgrs to not hire you (You're marked as needs-improvement and put on a 'dev-
plan' at the sole discretion of the mgrs participating in your OLR process,
post which you'd need a VP approval for transfers; you can't contest a 'dev-
plan'. Oftentimes You're not even told abt it. When you're told the
justifications are vague: You're told the mgrs have got written peer
feedbacks, but you're never shown any. You're told you didn't do enough
because there weren't enough commits or enough issues resolved depending on
which ever metric suits them).

Mgrs treat engs like puppets and engs are okay with it cause the pay rise and
sometimes even the job is at stake through this dreadful OLR process. Folks
who readily sacrifice their work life harmony are the ones that get the
plaudits. This is unsustainable long term, but Amazon doesn't care abt your
long term, ironically. It isn't uncommon for "top tier" and "least effective"
talent to work for their mgrs on weekends, late nights, be involved in
important meetings in different timezones. On several occasions, I've seen
engs work on vacations because there was an emergent issue, or because they
were due a promotion and couldn't say no.

Mgrs have their favourites and shower them with best possible work, best
possible compensation, best perks (like overseas travel to attend conferences,
attend re:invent, fly for recruitment drives). In one instance, I saw the pay
gap was 3x between equally tenured folks at the same job level. You'd usually
find these "top tier" engs defending their mgrs, the work culture, the
processes, the policies to death.

The HR department is the worst and complicit in all of this. The new peer
feedback system is a hog wash and isn't even considered for OLRs. The
promotion process is now less bureaucratic but puts too much power in the
hands of the mgrs who decide who should get good enough work and just enough
responsibilities to get promoted. OLR process and promotion alike is basically
'how to lie with statistics (only when your mgr allows it)' if you get what I
mean. Mgrs can lie or argue either way depending whether they like you or not.
I've seen mgrs reject negative feedbacks for engs they are looking to promote.
The reason usually is a terse 'Inappropraite' with no further explanation. The
mgrs are known to seek negative and positive feedback depending on how they
want to build a case for or against you from their "yes men" who are usually
the "top tier" engs.

God help if you've got personal or health issues. At least on one occasion,
one of my friends was told by his mgr to be worried abt their performance
since they've got mortgage to pay. And on several occasions, employees asked
to leave because they broke some Amazon code of conduct or policy, but the
actual reason to put them to sword in the first place could have been
anything, ranging from personal prejudice to revengeful mindset to "let me
show you who's the boss"

Multiple mgrs doing 'amazon things' can mean only one thing: It isn't because
of a few bad apples... The whole basket is rotten.

Despite all of this, it's amazing so many good engs I know work there. But I
also know that they'd give up that job at Amazon for Googles of this world in
a heartbeat.

------
gigel82
All that reads like the ramblings of a frustrated (probably mentally broken
down), extremely self-entitled, combative individual. He needs help, but not
of the legal variety... of the psychological variety. I truly hope he seeks it
out and accepts it.

------
jondubois
It's just too big as a company. It cannot be fair. With all those layers of
middle managers, talented people are bound to get ignored and fall through the
cracks; suppressed by managers whose only interest is maintaining the status
quo.

~~~
SahAssar
I'd say this isn't about "talented people", this is just basic decency that an
employer should have to extend to an employee, regardless of that employees
position or talent.

------
Ericson2314
We must end the H1B.

------
rajacombinator
Very delusional and poor writing by this guy. I have no doubt Amazon is a
miserable gulag to work at, but I have no doubt this guy has made his
situation much worse through his behavior.

------
iamsaitam
Just don't work for a big corporation.

------
frgtpsswrdlame
Unions aren't just for raising wages.

------
baumy
In case people don't realize, the linked site has one blog post per day going
back the past ~2 weeks all about this protest. Some choice excerpts:

> I am sure in the future Mr Bezos will be placed in one line with Adolf
> Hitler as an example of genocide.

> There are 2 most difficult parts in the rally:

> \- to get courage to start

> \- to make a banner

> Courage is easier. Few YouTube videos about Martin Luther King, AC/DC song
> "Thunderstruck" and I am ready to fight.

> To be honest, in the morning fear of public shame almost caused symptoms of
> bed wetting.

> But Deadpool told me how to manage this fear. [embedded youtube video from
> the deadpool movie here]

> They can argue citing last words: Once a decision is determined, they commit
> wholly. Why didn't I commit? I ask: decision taken by whom? If my manager
> and his managers all the way till Bezos support oppression, should I respect
> their opinion?

> Then the only authority here is God. I say: Once a decision is determined BY
> GOD, I commit wholly. But God didn't ask me to stop protesting yet.

> Thus, most of NYT Amazon examples are really cruel and inhuman. Employees
> are punished because their parents are dying, their children are disabled
> etc. I hear shaking Hitler in his coffin. These are not single examples of
> "bad" managers. This is a company culture. Official company policies support
> the CULTURE worse than genocide. During the genocide, Jews were not treated
> in that way.

> If I don't find printer today, tomorrow nobody will know about horrors of Mr
> Bezos.

> How can I do leafleting without printer?

> Where are all these librarians?!!!!!!

> Btw - got to library. The one near of UW was open even during the "storm"...
> How can you call this nice Christmas snow a "storm"? I thought the storm is
> when Dorothy flies in her house through the sky... In Russia we have such
> storm 9 months a year with a temperature of -22 F.

> Anyway I printed almost 300 sheets of dirt about Amazon. Tomorrow 300
> Amazonians will know the True. Jeff, I am coming.

> I was thinking I am afraid of people. But then I realized: in fact people
> are afraid of me. Now I feel I am more powerful and more free than anybody
> else. Amazon employees are restricted in their freedoms: they are forced to
> spend most time of their lives to do the work they hate. They are restricted
> to speak.

> I am free to speak and Jeff Bezos with all his billions can't close my mouth
> and can't prevent me from walking on the street with my banner.

> I like that. Like a student who lost virginity. I mean, well, you know.

> But today it will be incredible day. I am going to Whole foods store at
> Denny way. If Spheres s a heart of Amazon, Whole foods is its stomach. This
> store is always full of people and engineers. God bless me.

Before the outrage machine gets going, probably worth reading that and asking
how reliable of a narrator this is.

~~~
chrisco255
It is interesting to see the mindset of the person who wrote this post. He's
obviously been triggered by some internal politics and then he's extrapolated
that all the way up and down the corporate chain of command. Amazon has
613,000 employees. I can imagine there's going to be a few bad managers in
that mix.

------
wheelerwj
another brilliant post about the QOL of Amazon.

------
amznburner0219
I don't doubt that the author had a negative career experience at Amazon, but
his account doesn't present as credible. The associations he makes between
action and intent do not compute in many places. There are things that are
misunderstood or factually wrong.

\- "Amazon Connect." The program is called Connections. Every employee gets a
multiple choice question every day. You never submit specific comments about a
manager. It's truly high level stuff. "Does your manager help clear obstacles
for you?" "How many teams do you need to work with to get something done?"
"Are you achieving your career goals" "Are you accruing tech debt?". Responses
are anonymous and the results are not shown once the population gets below 4
or 5 total responses.

Maybe some rogue Connections employee is sharing data--they should be fired if
they are. But it's wildly against policy and the idea that a manager would
care enough to go find out what an individual employees response is seems off.
Who has time and the individual data points don't matter that much.

It's just good macro level data. It's great to have a pulse on what's working
in a team and what isn't. It's actually a great way to find where teams aren't
happy with their manager. Call it a bad manager locating device. That
Connections is the triggering point seems improbable.

\- His manager asked HR how to prevent them from receiving immigration
benefits. Seems very off. Individual managers do very little w/ respect to
immigration. Employees interact directly with the company's immigration
department and lawyers. Managers approve green card sponsorship and work with
employees where they have immigration challenges like renewals or home country
returns. His manager didn't ask HR how to do this unless he was seeking his
own performance problem.

\- Transfers. With few exceptions, Amazon has one of the most liberal transfer
programs you can find. Don't like your job on your first day, you can apply to
a new one. You cannot link transferring to any conditions involving spouses or
other external factors. You can be blocked from transferring if your current
manager has flagged you as having an active performance problem, and you can
appeal that block itself. You cannot be prevented from transferring for any
other reason than performance. If the author was blocked from transferring to
another role, it's only due to performance.

\- Working from home. Amazon's a pretty in-person culture, but people work
from home. Some teams have different norms. A manager might discourage an
employee who was struggling performance-wise from working from home, if, for
example, they had done so previously with limited results. It's not a rule,
but people use common sense when people are scuffling, particularly if them
being around others will help them avoid getting stuck.

\- Pivot is a process where people who have been identified as having
performance problems can appeal this determination. If you lose the Pivot
appeal, you then go through the usual performance improvement plan dance that
most companies use. An employee's case is heard by three peers (people in the
same job role) or a manager who manages people in that job role. Which appeal
choice is up to the employee. Most people choose peers and more people win
their appeal than lose. Three independent peers agreed with his manager that
he had performance problems. That's the only way you lose a Pivot appeal.

Bottom line, it seems likely the person in question was not performing at the
level needed. They don't see that and don't agree. Most people who aren't
performing don't agree. They began having the expected performance management
interactions with their manager and it sounds like many wires were crossed
along the way. Did they have a demon manager? Maybe. Some level of Dunning-
Kruger seems like a more likely cause. It's a big company with lots of great
jobs and people who enjoy them, ymmv.

------
SolaceQuantum
" I left a negative feedback about my manager Uwais Khan in the daily “Amazon
Connect” survey. Amazon Connect team sent to me the report showing how my
manager can calculate my answer. At our 1:1 meeting, Khan prohibited me to
leave feedback in the system. Since then oppression started. Khan asked me to
work on weekends. Then he asked HR how to prevent me from immigration benefits
(not informing me about that)."

"My 3 yo daughter has a development delay and I need to bring her to therapy.
For that, I asked Khan for work from home once a week like everybody else in
our team. Khan prohibited me to work from home. Moreover, he asked me to come
to office at 7 am and sit there alone. All the other team members came to
office at 11 am and worked from home without restrictions. And their children
were not disabled."

 _Holy crap_ is all I can say, honestly.

~~~
BucketSort
Manager: I have altered the deal, pray I do not alter it further.

Basically.

~~~
chrisco255
Say what you will about Darth Vader, but he was a pretty effective manager.

~~~
r00fus
Exactly! I sure bet the lifts ran on time in the Death Star...

~~~
EpicEng
Unfortunately he wasn't trained in mechanical engineering and failed to spot a
serious error during design review.

~~~
pault
Eh, I don't know. Why bother securing exhaust ports when someone can just jump
to hyperspace and destroy your whole fleet?

~~~
EpicEng
Fair point! All that time and money wasted on weapons systems.

------
auslander
This is happening in every big org, especially in banks, people are people.
Politics, games of thrones. I would never join any big org, tried twice :).

------
hemantv
Amazon is a great company as consumer very shitty company to work as an
employee.

Source: Ex-Amazon employee.

~~~
itslennysfault
> Amazon is a great company as consumer

as long as you love monopolies and anti-competitive behavior.

------
jpatokal
> _I am sure in the future Mr Bezos will be placed in one line with Adolf
> Hitler as an example of genocide._

The guy may have a case somewhere in there, but this kind of hyperbole isn't
doing it any favors.

Stripping out the fluff, the concrete concerns seem to be:

\- Denied permission to transfer

\- Denied permission to WFH

\- Placed on PIP and eventually fired

The author's hypothesis is "manager is evil and this is all retaliation", but
this is not easily distinguished from "author did not perform well", and the
only evidence of performance we have is one "nice" performance review.

~~~
gpm
\- Left negative feedback for manager -> Prohibited to leave feedback by
manager.

\- Required to work on weekends.

\- Denied some form of immigration benefits behind his back.

\- Told that his wife having a job has anything whatsoever with him being able
to transfer.

\- The above being a lie.

\- Required to show up 4 hours before everyone else.

\- Punished for using sick days.

I don't think any of the concrete concerns I listed above are subject to the
authors interpretation. Short of the author lying they appear to be valid
complaints.

~~~
alexandercrohde
I hope he has written email records of all of these claims. If so I'm quite
confident he'll have a strong court case.

~~~
kokokokoko
A strong court case for what?

Washington is an "at will" employment state. You can be treated poorly and
fired for any reason unless it is for a protected class(race, sex etc). Amazon
and his manager could have fired him because they put a bunch of names on a
dart board and his was the one hit.

I do think the treatment was incredibly unfair and unjust. Unfortunately, in
"at will" employment states in the US, this appears to be perfectly legal
behavior. As shameful as that may be.

~~~
ashelmire
[https://hkm.com/seattle/retaliation/](https://hkm.com/seattle/retaliation/)

Most US states are at will; and people still win lawsuits against their
employers quite often for just run of the mill toxic behavior, and not just
for things as cut and dry as bigotry (although, being a visa holder, he may
have a case for, especially since it was a part of these discussions -
national origin and immigration status are protected classes).

~~~
kokokokoko
From the link

 _> Retaliation is defined as any action taken against an employee for daring
to file a discrimination or harassment claim_

And then for harassment: [https://hkm.com/seattle/hostile-work-
environment/](https://hkm.com/seattle/hostile-work-environment/)

 _> Harassment in the workplace is a form of employment discrimination.
Unlawful harassment is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of
1964 and as such is illegal. Unfortunately harassment can come in many forms,
both verbal and physical and can be based on any of the following forms of
discrimination:_

 _> Race, Color, Religion, Sex, Sexual orientation, Age, Disability (mental or
physical), Retaliation_

See above about "Retaliation"

Is there something I'm missing in there? Because that again appears to only
protect one from a protected class. It does not mean if your boss is being
mean or insulting to you for things outside of those protected classes. But
again, am I missing something in there that is different? Do you have an
example of a civil or criminal case won by a plaintiff for "toxic behavior"?

I'd be very interested in that, as that would mean the advice I've recieved
from two diffent legal counsels I've contracted for advice. If you are
correct, it appears I may have a civil claim against those attorneys.

~~~
gpm
I mean one one thing your missing (but probably also the person you're
replying to) is that in the actual lawsuit he alleges racial discrimination
with some credibility.

But also disability discrimination with regards to his kid.

Anyways, here's the brief he filed (unfortunately pro se)
[https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.269265...](https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.269265/gov.uscourts.wawd.269265.1.2.pdf)

------
bitL
If my manager asked me to come to office at 7am, I would ask for 6am instead,
so that I could be gone at 2pm and have a life, with a bonus of avoiding
traffic jams. Choose your punishments carefully, aspiring middle manager!

~~~
itslennysfault
But this is Amazon so you still need to stay until 8pm.

------
simplecomplex
You’re a software engineer. Quit and move on. So your boss is a dick. Invoking
civil rights and Martin Luther King Jr.!? Melodramatic and offensively out-of-
touch with reality.

The only thing you should have done was tell your boss to fuck himself and get
another job. That’s it. No need for a 2000 word blog post. No need for a
“protest”.

------
dpcan
This may seem mean, and feel free to argue with me and prove my statement
below wrong.

Well, which was it? Was he taking his daughter to therapy or working from
home? If his daughter requires additional care, he needs to care for his
daughter, but that can't interfere with work. If your kids are not disabled,
they may not be interfering with your work, and therefore, when you are
working from home - you are, in fact, "working" from home.

Why is this person entitled to being paid to "work at home" when he's not
actually "working" while at home, he's actually caring for his daughter?

People are confused. Working from home still means "working". It doesn't mean,
be at home and do what I want but get paid, or not work as hard.

Maybe he thinks it should mean: I'll get the work done on my own time. But, if
the work needs to be done that day, he still needs to be WORKING from home -
and not doing something else.

~~~
SilasX
Thank you. I've seen a lot of abuse of the term. One time I worked with a
recruiter [1] and said I was feeling really bad that day and took the day off
from work and was resting at home. She replied, "ah, gotcha, so you're working
from home today". And I was like, "no, I'm resting."

(With that said, it could still be a good-faith usage here -- like, he
legitimately does work from home, and the therapy is relevant here because all
the back-and-forth pickups would otherwise eat up much of the day.)

[1] Yes, I know -- never again.

~~~
dec0dedab0de
I have been working from home for almost 5 years now, and one thing that I
learned in the first 18 months was that it is important to take sick days. In
the beginning I would just sit at my desk and try my best to work even though
I was sick, but not be able to concentrate and ultimately not get anything
done. Then I would stress about it and work extra time, which would just make
things worse. Now I take off any time I think I would have if I were in an
office.

~~~
mnm1
Unless you don't have sick days or your company cuts PTO in half. In that
case, in front of the computer or in bed, that's still working from home. Fuck
them for not providing sick days and cutting PTO in half. Fuck them for no
raises in half a decade. This is the way one can get more money in the same
time from the same company without a raise. The less I work, the more money I
make per hour, so my incentive is to work as little as possible while still
getting the minimum amount of shit done. It's management that sets the
incentives. Welcome to the idiots of corporate America. Sure they could give
some raises sometimes or increase vacation or add sick time or really do
anything whatsoever to show employees that they are appreciated and that their
salaries are not going down each month due to inflation. Instead, they try to
force extra work like trying to squeeze water out of stone. In the office,
it's no different. People waste time in other ways. I'm just shocked that
corporate executives and managers are so fucking oblivious to the incentives
they create and the empty praises they try to placate their employees with.
Fuck them. This isn't a situation where one should be ethical. The cards are
stacked against employees and employees need to use any dirty trick to get the
most out of their shitty employers.

~~~
seem_2211
This sort of attitude does not help. I'm sorry that you've had bad management
experiences, but things don't need to be like this, and part of that is the
attitudes of both parties.

~~~
mnm1
Ball's in the employer's court. It's their turn to make a move. The employee
(me) can only react. Therefore as long as the employer continues to be like
this, I have no choice in how I respond because I'm a human being with dignity
and I deserve to be treated as such. On the other hand, this is the best
job/employer I've ever had out of dozens in the industry. This is nothing
compared to not getting the health insurance promised, being physically
assaulted, having to work weekends/evenings for no reason at all and the other
bullshit employers feel entitled to do to their employees. I couldn't disagree
with your statement more, however. My attitude is one of responding to things
out of my control. If my employer wants to fix this and improve my attitude,
they just have to make good on the promises for a raise I was given multiple
times or give me back the vacation time they cut in half. It's very simple and
extremely easy for them. By saying that I should change my attitude, you're
blaming the victim and implying that the employer is right to treat their
employees like shit, without a shred of respect, perpetuating this bullshit
forever. Nope, I will not accept the blame for their failing to be decent
human beings who keep their promises and respect their employees.

