Amazon rescinding the offer while I am on the notice period
I already resigned from my current post after obtaining the work visa for the new location on November 30th. I asked their affirmation before resigning.
Right now, I cannot relocate and my current visa became void since I resigned. I also cancelled my rent agreement. In a month, I will be on streets, without a job and visa.
In every step I tried to behave ethically and high trust. Guess I did wrong. Are all places like this?
Ps: sorry, I forgot to add. the new location was Canada. My current location is in EU.
Ps2: some background about me:
Amazon offer was for Sde2. I have 5 yoe. I have worked in several projects spanning from embedded software for airplanes to scalable cloud based data heavy backend applications.
Java/C++98 were the primary stack.
I had turned down an offer from Meta to join Amazon. I think my system design and general ds&a ability is okay. I am a good team player and perform well in friendly environment.
189 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 214 ms ] threadFamily companies are the worst in my first- and second-hand experience. Blood runs thicker than water, and outsiders are often reminded of that fact come promotion/major decision time
If you didn’t experience it yourself it’s solely due to a mix of luck, never being at places that struggled and being hard to replace, that’s it.
Offer letters never provided much of a legal protection. We just treated them as if they did.
Amazon et al wouldn't rescind them by their thousands this year if that created a strong legal case against them.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
I hope you can get yourself out of this bind.
Still try to enjoy your Christmas if possible.
Eat crow, mate.
I for one do not want the Federal Government controlling my employment, I dont want the federal government doing anything other than national defense.
So no I do not want EU employment laws here in the US.
In Western Europe, if a contract has been signed, it's very hard for an employer to do what OP suffered through.
We need a list of companies who act this way and boycott their products.
My experience the sweet spot is privately held corporations above 200 employees below 1000-2000 employees. Privately held is a key part, all publicly traded companies suck IMO
You have to focus on actual value, and empire-building is kept to a minimum.
I've also had some good experiences at bigger companies, but the issues tend to be different.
I've heard this in relation to banking (FATCA), and perhaps also regarding non-reciprocity of driving licenses.
So I'm guessing they'd be even less interested in the plight of a non-voter.
I mean, this seems to be self-contradictory.
"We don't want to have rules around hiring and firing! We just want companies to be good!"
If there are no rules against particular abuses of labor, large, unethical companies will commit those abuses, especially if it makes things more convenient for them or someone can argue that it saves 0.03¢.
It should not be considered to be OK to hire and fire at will.
USCIS released (somewhat relaxed) guidance on the current environment for non-citizen workers. You can find a list here https://twitter.com/debarghya_das/status/1605392365325205506...
In summary, all the “gray zone” escape hatches like the 2 month grace period or the B-2 status change are considered “in the clear” per this guidance.
Edit: Feels like something that governments should tie to individual company's ability to use the visa program. Rescind a visa-tied offer (for no-fault-of-applicant reason), and we yank your right to use the program.
It's not extra shitty, it's just as shitty as any other situation. It sucks for the person involved but the alternatives are not better.
At least someone that got their offer rescinded can sue for promissory estoppel.
Amazon as a multi-national, multi-billion dollar company can absorb the expense of employing him. I’m the worst case, they can lay off an existing low performing employee to compensate.
Training new employees is not a worthwhile investment if you are in the situation where you're already firing thousands.
There are countless other ways they can compensate for the cost of hiring him. A couple quick examples are delaying promoting and giving a raise to some people, or removing another open position they were looking to hire.
The result of not just sucking it it up and doing the right thing here, which was to actually hire him as promised, is 1) a terrible public image affecting future ability to hire talent when people are weighing Amazon vs CompanyX, and 2) increased chance that future new hires will read about this kind of bs behavior and not think twice about accepting an Amazon job offer and then rescinding their promise to start employment, at the very last moment.
That is a very charitable opinion. The idea that because a company is large enough, or profitable enough, that it therefore should be compelled to hire indefinitely, or never shrink in size.
Let me ask, is it your opinion that economies only ever grow forward, that companies in the economy never shrink?
Also, "extra shitty" seems obvious to me. You're not only not hired, you likely have to leave the country. The company rescinding the offer knows this.
The fact that you rescinded an offer doesn't mean that suddenly local people are suitable, it just means this position isn't needed anymore.
If they can't do simple things like not hiring people they don't need, maybe they should employ this guy as HR manager.
I moved countries within Amazon and it took 3 months, for an external applicant the bare minimum will be 4-6 months.
It's the same idea as European worker protection employment laws compared to the US: they sound good, but the effect is that companies have to be slower to hire when firing is that much harder.
It would put the additional costs they create to be visible. This is as it should be, since visa users do cost more than hiring domestic.
However, it would not be much more. And if amazon deems it to be too expensive, then other companies which are more efficient can take up the spare visa users, just as the free market intends.
Sounds like EU labor policy causes a set of effects resulting in a kind of equilibrium, perhaps a Nash Equilibrium.
Which is good. Nobody wants a work environment that changes every five minutes.
I keep thinking one might want to have some sort of international organization where people in each country reciprocally lobby for better international workers rights for each other's citizens.
Maybe something like this already exists, but I haven't heard of anything like it?
The above is not a substitute for the advice of an immigration attorney, which you absolutely must consult.
More generally, I wonder if post-2022, offer letters are going to matter at all. 2022 exposed the fact that their protections was always a sort of a "gentleman's agreement". Your case is a great example of that: your only recourse is suing Amazon, a near trillion dollar corporation.
My understanding is that your legal case would be shaky. The offer letter never provided much of a legal protection, we just liked to assume it did, and operated as if it did - hence why the typical advice on tech forums for employees was never to rescind our acceptance of an offer letter.
Because it was never level sound, we saw the sanctity of the offer letter violated en-mass in 2022. It was exposed as an empty promise.
So you’re literally making the same point :)
Jokes aside, I think your details are a little biased. Plenty of European tech hubs pay competitive salaries. And I know many Americans view tax as a net loss but Europeans do actually get a bunch of services for free because of taxes. Stuff Americans have to worry about on top of their daily daily lives.
It’s not really possible to compare two counties as a like for like in the way yourself and the GP were attempting to. And my point wasn’t to say Europe is better or worse than America. Just that plenty of people in European tech hubs have a very decent standard of living too. You don’t have to work in America to earn a decent wage.
Which is the point that I’m making. There is a general correlation* between wages and cost of living.
* please note that I’m making a generalisation about a correlation and not saying that the relationship is precisely even across all geographic locations nor domains within IT.
They typically make more offers than roles they have available, as they have fairly good analytics around what % of offers will not be filled post acceptance (ie someone simply never shows up for day 1 of work).
Now, fast forward to today, and as you've heard in the press, and from Amazon directly, they are slowing hiring and may even do cuts in the new year. I think what you're seeing is in some areas they may be over running offers, and need to pull back and kill some post acceptance to correct based on the new reality of hiring forecasts.
Still sucks and is a shitty situation.
I have experience a few times new employee's not showing up on day 1. I would NEVER even consider extended multiple offers to people just to ensure one of them shows up. That is more than just "shitty" as you say.
2022 exposed the fact that in the US, with its at-will employer, offer letters never offered much of a protection if they were offered in good faith, and then rescinded.
There are times when you read something that conveys real depth of knowledge, sharp execution, and competence, but a complete lack of consideration for whether the thing done was right to do in the first place.
It does suck and it is a shitty situation, and it is probably a good idea to keep that framing in mind, as there is no recourse against a company the size of Amazon behaving like this towards someone without much power and influence.
But let's not lose sight of the fact that this is was an unethical action to take. If your forecasts include some risk, and your potential hires are taking that risk on (as H1Bs, no less), don't lie to them and tell them it's safe to quit their previous job when it's not.
If Amazon are doing this, they should be paying the full cost of their error, which is more than a month's salary.
Jassy knows how easy it is for engineers who passed the Amazon bar to find new jobs. He's going to think "Welcome to The Jungle, kid" and move on
If you ask me. OP dodged a bullet here. Amazon has turned into a toxic swamp
Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer Leaders work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher performing, more diverse, and more just work environment. They lead with empathy, have fun at work, and make it easy for others to have fun.
Hey Amazon, I am having no fun!
Sidenote: EAs are just as good. Having been on the end of an EA to a CEO telling me to fix something I can tell you it's not a place you want to be. They can, in a limited way, invoke CEO power.
It's never a sure thing but it doesn't hurt to try either.
Also Werner Vogels once popped into a hacker news thread I posted about my AWS account having leaked keys and a bill run up by a "hacker" (this was before it was common)[0][1].
[0]: https://vertis.io/2013/12/16/unauthorised-litecoin-mining/
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6911908
Stayed with that company for another 4 years (7.5 in total). It'll vary based on a lot of factors. Very few employers would begrudge someone going for a huge pay rise FAANG opportunity, and the fact that they got the role means they're good material.
As always it's going to depend on a huge number of factors. It doesn't have to be negative though.
Highly depends on their behaviour and value to the company and colleagues. If they're valuable and well liked it could be an option.
Our industry is not small but we all know people in rival companies (semi-conductor, EU) and a lot of management have left to work for competitors at one point and returned. Unless you work for a seriously petty manager or an unprofessional family size company that holds grudges, leaving and returning should not be a big deal.
I only know one major US tech company with an explicit “do not rehire” policy (unless you are someone exceptional) and you probably don’t want to work there, no matter how shiny the brand is.
If you left on good terms, because you wanted to develop your career and your employer understood that. Jobs for life aren't a thing anymore, no one can seriously expect their employees to faithfully remain loyal until they get made redundant.
Hell it could even be good as it shows that the op is serious about moving up.
Now you could be right, but the op still has options to get out in that eventuality anyway.