The factory transformed into Amazon, but I was forced to work for half a year for nothing

It has been several years since I graduated and joined Amazon. I am very grateful to my former employer for giving me the right training and trust. During the four years at my former employer, I worked my way up from an ordinary operator to a department manager.

I decided to resign from my previous employer after much consideration and struggle. Due to some special reasons, it was basically difficult for me to make further progress in my previous employer. For the sake of future development, I had no choice but to resign and seek a higher goal.

At that time, I also talked with my boss for a long time. He said that he understood my ideas and even recommended me a few good places. There are really few bosses as nice as him, which is why I have followed him for so long.

After repeated selection and communication, I hit it off with a relative of my boss who runs a factory. His factory usually does B2B business. After seeing our boss' success, he was very eager to build a complete Amazon team. He also said that I had some experience and achievements in building a small team, and that I was recommended by an acquaintance, so he was very confident to let me do it.

In this position, I can also realize my dream of being in charge of the entire Amazon department. When it was just finalized, I was even fantasizing about leading the Amazon department to take off.

I didn't expect this to be the beginning of a nightmare

The most terrible thing is habit

After resting for a while, my new boss and I started talking about how to proceed with the work. We talked a lot about product details, development direction, recruitment and division of labor, etc. The first time bomb was planted when we talked about my salary.

Originally, I expected the salary to be the same as or slightly lower than that of my previous company. However, my new boss showed his extraordinary ability of talking, and used a fancy salary structure such as team performance and bonus to reduce my base salary to half of the previous level.

Here I would like to remind you again that basic salary is really a guarantee of life! Even if you plan to take a low basic salary and high commission, you must keep enough for living. If your boss tells you that the salary structure is too long to be written on a piece of paper, resign decisively!

I didn’t have such a lesson at that time, because the salary structure of my previous company had been adjusted step by step, but the base salary had never been lowered. I still thought too idealistically about the future situation of the department, and after a simple calculation, I decided to accept this salary structure, which started the first step of the nightmare.

After I officially joined the company, I had to start my own store from scratch, put products produced by the factory on the shelves, and recruit people to expand the team. Because of the recruitment requirements, I had my first conflict with my new employer.

Because I am an employee myself, I know very well the salary level of local Amazon operations, but my boss was very stubborn and wanted to use the standard of his own factory (which was much lower than the salary I suggested). I also bluntly told him that this salary could only attract some newcomers, graduates and other inexperienced operators. As a result, the boss was quite happy to recruit newcomers and train them himself, which would increase their loyalty.

After all, I was not the one who paid the money. After arguing for a long time, I finally hired a few new people who had just started working for me at a level lower than I expected. I started a period of time where I had to lead people and run my own store. I was very busy every day, and I was often annoyed by the newcomers' brilliant operations. More importantly, the newcomers' new store had no sales for the time being, so I was just taking the basic salary and the commission from my own store, and my life was very miserable.

When I worked hard to run a store with a few new people, I didn't expect that the next landmine was waiting for me.

The genius algorithm made me work for nothing

About half a year after joining the company, the new employee's store had basically started to make a stable profit, but not too much. At this time, I talked to my boss about the team performance. He suggested that we calculate the performance of the few months after Primeday together. Thinking that the amount to be paid would not be less, I agreed to this proposal.

During Primeday, my store and the new store were both very popular, and some SKUs were even sold out. So throughout July, I was looking forward to the next month's paycheck, hoping to give myself a reward for all the hard work I had put in.

Unexpectedly, on payday I found that it was much less than I expected. After I argued with my boss, I found out that he had deducted the base salary and commission of the new employees from the gross profit. As a result, the team performance I received was two-thirds less than I expected.

I found it very strange, so I talked to my former boss about this issue and asked many friends on the forum before I confirmed that I was cheated by my boss's genius algorithm. However, the detailed algorithm of the gross profit margin was indeed not clearly stated in the contract. After thinking it over, I decided that it was better to suffer a short pain than a long one, so I just resigned and left.

The six months I spent here were like the factory boss hiring me to set up a small team with a salary far below the market level. This was a big blow to me. I hope everyone will pay attention to fancy salary structures in the future. The more complicated it is, the more cunning the boss is. It is very likely that he will show off in the future work. It is better to stay away from such places.