I don't get how they keep anyone more than 6 months?
What the hell are they dangling over people that makes them stay?
What the hell are they dangling over people that makes them stay?
As opposed to the industry standard which is linear vesting.
They also have onerous clawback clauses on signing bonuses and relocation, and I know of one instance where the clawback stipulated that the signing bonuses would be paid back pre-tax (e.g., $10k signing bonus, of which you got $6k after tax, but if you quit you have to cough up $10k) - meaning you are actually in the hole if you leave.
They also have a habit of putting 2-year clawbacks on their bonuses rather than the more common 1-year, so leaving even in your second year at Amazon would result in substantial financial loss.
Even in this environment I know multiple people who left before their 1-year anniversary, that's how bad it is in many parts of the company. I personally know multiple people who suffered substantial financial loss in order to leave.
so if you get fired then you don't have to pay it back?
Strategically getting oneself fired might be a way to avoid the clawback, though it would probably have other consequences.
I doubt IRS will kindly sympathize with you and say "ok plonh, let's make that check a deduction to help you out".
I left a company within six months once and they sent me paperwork about that to forward to the IRS. Though I refused to pay back the bonus and left that paperwork in a drawer...
Several years later and I still get an annual nastygram demanding I pay them back.
Pretty interesting. I had no idea this was a common enough thing for IRS to have a special exception for. I looked it up and there is thing called "Claim of Right" aka "Section 1341" in the IRS code. But involves the tax payer to not have an actual "right to" the income in the year the income happened. Which in this case it seems like they did have (in other words the bonus paid in that year wasn't an accounting mistake of some sort). But then maybe the employment contract applies retroactively and it turns out the employee now didn't have the right...