No worries - in academia, the number is a lot higher.
Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers
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Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers
#12I always have to wonder at what point does this just result in lower productivity if you know you're going to have to leave a company within a few years to another company and go through the whole process again? I understand that some folks don't learn or catchup all that much but at some point GOOD ENOUGH should be GOOD ENOUGH. Instead, we have entire corporations who predicate their HR culture on the idea of consta…
A fact that counters your hypothesis: Amazon is obviously one of the most productive companies to have ever existed.
*Edited: Turns out I have been misusing the word "counterfactual" for quite some time.
Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers
#13Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers
#14I always have to wonder at what point does this just result in lower productivity if you know you're going to have to leave a company within a few years to another company and go through the whole process again? I understand that some folks don't learn or catchup all that much but at some point GOOD ENOUGH should be GOOD ENOUGH. Instead, we have entire corporations who predicate their HR culture on the idea of consta…
If you backload RSUs this process saves you a ton of money actually.
Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers
#15I don't think this is news to anyone. Yes, Amazon has an "unregretted attrition" target. The only surprising thing was this: > The company expects more than one-third of employees on performance improvement plans to fail, documents show I assumed it was much higher.
I was under the impression that a PIP was nearly always a "here's your chance to get another job" warning, and never really an earnest chance to improve. Does anyone understand differently?
I was put on a PIP at Google and kept my job afterwards, they basically put massive training wheels on you. I had a director checking in with me 2-3 a week to put the pressure on, even doing some pair programming which was interesting. They really are trying to figure out why you aren't working well and see if you are a lost cause.
Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers
#16This isn't news, but what they don't mention is managers will set up their own "private" PIPs to frighten workers into doing what they want.
It's not news that the big-A wants its software engineers working 60 hours per week. I interviewed for a principle engineer role and everything seemed to be going well. But when the offer came it said "Software Engineer II." I asked about that and they said... "Oh, don't worry. We have to hire you in at a lower grade 'cause we can only hire so many principal engineers per quarter. you'll get automatically promoted at the end of the next quarter." The money was still pretty good so I didn't think anything about it.
Eventually I figured out that they had stiffed me on typical stock options. The whole bait-and-switch thing was their way to try and hire Sr. people for Jr. engineer's option grants.
Of course I wasn't automatically promoted and my boss mentioned, "oh yeah, you have to do a Dev III project to get promoted to Software Developer III first." And they expected me to do that project on my own time. sigh
Then in the middle of doing a software project for Amazon on my own fucking time I get moved under a different manager. The first thing he does is say I've been underperforming and he was going to put me on a PIP (I had perfect reviews the year before.) How the hell can you review my work two weeks after I start working for you?
About this time I bumped into a former-coworker who mentioned how happy he was after leaving Amazon. So I say to myself "f** this sh*" and quit in a couple weeks after getting a decent offer from another company to do consulting.
About two months later our HR rep returns from vacation and calls me up asking why I quit and I tell her it was clear I wasn't Amazon material, having had perfect reviews for a year and then being put on a PIP. She then asks "you were on a PIP? that's news to me," and another friend I knew in HR tells me managers will do this slimy thing to get more performance out of people during the holidays where they tell them they're on a PIP, but they really aren't. If you're on a PIP, HR will be involved.
Amateur ass-clowns. Everyone talks about how much dosh you'll bank at AMZN. Not really. I now make about the same amount in salary, but have a significantly higher equity stake in a smaller company.
It might be okay for your first or second job (it's not all negative, there's plenty of opportunity to learn about computing at scale.) But you're going to be working 55-60 hours per week to be promoted and told you're on a PIP just before Thanksgiving.
Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers
#17I always have to wonder at what point does this just result in lower productivity if you know you're going to have to leave a company within a few years to another company and go through the whole process again? I understand that some folks don't learn or catchup all that much but at some point GOOD ENOUGH should be GOOD ENOUGH. Instead, we have entire corporations who predicate their HR culture on the idea of consta…
A fact that counters your hypothesis: Amazon is obviously one of the most productive companies to have ever existed. *Edited: Turns out I have been misusing the word "counterfactual" for quite some time.
By what measure of productivity?
Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you heard of hire to fire? When there's an incentive to game a metric, the metric gets gamed.
Valid point. The system can be gamed.
Not can, actively is. If you as as manager know that you have to fire x% of your employees no matter how good they are as a whole, you are always going to hire certain people just so you can fire them in order to protect your most valued people.
Also, because each hire costs thousands of dollars, the company is literally wasting millions each year because Bezos had this dangerously ignorant and dehumanizing idea that people - except himself of course - are lazy so they need to be terrorized into being productive by firing a certain percentage of the employees.
Ultimately, it damages not just Amazon's brand as a employer, it reflects poorly on Amazon employees and managers for going along with this charade.
Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers
#19I don't think this is news to anyone. Yes, Amazon has an "unregretted attrition" target. The only surprising thing was this: > The company expects more than one-third of employees on performance improvement plans to fail, documents show I assumed it was much higher.
I was under the impression that a PIP was nearly always a "here's your chance to get another job" warning, and never really an earnest chance to improve. Does anyone understand differently?
I was "put on a PIP" by my boss at AMZN, but it turned out it wasn't really a PIP (i.e. - HR wasn't involved). It was just my boss trying to pressure me to work 50 hours per week during the holidays instead of the typical 60.
Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
A fact that counters your hypothesis: Amazon is obviously one of the most productive companies to have ever existed. *Edited: Turns out I have been misusing the word "counterfactual" for quite some time.
By what measure of productivity?
Almost any mainstream business metric. Here is a brief and incomplete sample:
Revenue, net income, employee head count, customer satisfaction, customer retention, customer lifetime value, return on invested capital, end price reduction for customers, stock price and market capitalization, SKUs available for sale, new products/services launched, etc etc.