I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

Re:I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was see... by Taikonerd on Thursday November 30, 2023 @09:11AM (#38473720)

> ... had explicitly described the compensation cliff and how a lot of people in the good years were proactively leaving, cooling off, and then coming back to reset the compensation instead of going over the cliff.

Could you explain this a bit more? I thought that it was the opposite -- you have stock that's going to vest in X years, so you really want to stay.

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Re:I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was see... by steveBK123 on Thursday November 30, 2023 @09:25AM (#38473870)

There was something of a cliff at certain levels if you didn't get promoted around the third year. Something about the offer package would subsidize your base pay for a limited number of years until your stock started to vest, to smooth out your pay. However on the third year that subsidy would go away, and depending on the stock performance, your future stock grants could adjust down as well. In practice because the stock had been running up so much pre-2022, by the time the stock vested it was up a good amount.

So if your stock grants & stock price performance after the third year weren't "just so" you could see your TC slip because the salary subsidy went away.

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Re:I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was see... by izacus on Thursday November 30, 2023 @09:30AM (#38473923)

Yeah, but once X passes, your comp drops significantly - "down a cliff".

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