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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

#141

Post by renewiltord »

startup_excuse wrote: post #125
renewiltord wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems pretty well-optimized, right? The employees value the money more than they value well-being, and the company values the money more than it values their well-being. That is pretty good alignment. Also, why wouldn't you just work elsewhere and buy AMZN stock if that's all you want. Work at GOOG, sell your stock, buy AMZN stock.

The reason you wouldn’t work elsewhere and invest is the following: you get hired at Amazon with a total comp of 500k (180 base + 320k in RSUs). You have been in role for 2 years and are completely burnt out. However the stock has doubled, and your total comp (without any raises) is now 820k. That is too much money for people to walk away from. If you leave for GOOG you will get in at the current stock price with no…

That makes sense. I wasn't sure if SDEs get x units or y dollars worth of stock units each year. The former is most common, but everything about AMZN is unusual, including the vest schedule.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#142

Post by birdyrooster »

todd_t wrote: post #80
birdyrooster wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you elaborate on the "interesting" aspect of pairing with the director?

I guess it shows that they weren't just going to take a manager's word it and that multiple levels of management engaged in a PIP. Especially with how busy this director was typically, it was a use of their time that I didn't expect. Also, having a director be competent enough as an IC to pair program was something I hadn't experienced or expected.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#143

Post by rightbyte »

sokoloff wrote: post #76
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can make great money working in tech without subjecting myself to a work environment where 6% of my colleagues will be forced out. So, in a competitive market where tech talent has its choice in the best employer... why Amazon? I've seen more articles written about Amazon being a dog-eat-dog place than any other large tech company.

I've been at several places which would have been improved by higher levels of management-directed firings. It's not at all obvious to me that the success rate at Amazon should be expected to be significantly over 85% of hire-to-performing employee. Given that, what should they do with the 15% who don't turn out to be performing employees (for whatever reason that isn't itself protected class membership)?

> I've been at several places which would have been improved by higher levels of management-directed firings.

If management hire the wrong people they will likely fire the wrong people too. In my opinion it is better to keep apparent low performers around since it is so hard to rate programmers in a fair non game-able way. Especially from the managers' viewpoint where they don't work side by side with someone.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#144

Post by mulander »

lakevieew wrote: post #111

I had joined Amazon as my first job out of school. I was super excited and would not mind working the long hours as the project was interesting. I enjoyed working with my team and manager. Just near the end of the year, my manager quit. The new manager ran my performance review and assessed that my performance didn’t meet expectations. I was not put on PIP. Instead, there would be a development plan that I had to com…

> had fewer commits and SLOC compared to my teammates

Hope this makes you feel slightly better: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Li...

It is impossible to measure someones productivity using metrics like commit counts and SLOC. There are times where I don't commit for weeks and provide actual business value by solving direct client issues without even a ticket being present.

At one time at my second IT job, I had a manager reprimand me (yelling over the phone) that I was away from my desk. I was remotely supporting a bank fixing consortium credit contracts (substantial amounts) after a migration. I was told to stop doing that. So, I told the support tech that my 1-up blocked this. He told the people at the bank; this went up the chain at the bank to the main accountants which resulted in a nasty call from the client to the skip manager of my manager. He called me back and asked me to resume what I did almost crying on the phone. Later that year I was selected employee of the year mostly because of that client constantly sending positive feedback on my help.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#145

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

0zymandias wrote: post #120
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'll get automatically promoted at the end of the next quarter Unless it's in writing, you should never, ever, ever take a statement like this at face value.

Another tactic that Amazon recruiters use a lot to convince you to take a shitty role: "You are coming in at level X, but this role is actually scoped at level X+1." In reality, it means nothing and you can get promoted in lots of different ways. It is just a trick that unethical recruiters and managers play.

That statement implies, in no uncertain terms, that the expectation is more work for less pay. It's a flowery way of telling the candidate they're getting a bad deal. If you the scope is X+1, and you pay me X+1, we have no issue.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#146

Post by TFortunato »

civilian wrote: post #121
EarlKing wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the stock goes from 200 to 3500 in 10 years, and consistently goes up and to the right, you won’t find too many of the workers complaining no matter how bad the job conditions are. Tell that to the guys in logistics who don't get any options and bear the brunt of Amazon's bad management.

So, elaborate on your model of the world. Shouldn't the logistic employees already be leaving in droves since they're not getting stock? Why aren't they?

On top of what other folks said, the warehouse folks not getting stock is a fairly recent development (2018, when minimum wage was raised). They do have a shockingly high turnover rate, but not sure if there is much that can be said about that relating to stock price currently, given how soon it's been since their stock comp went away, combined with the general strangeness of the Covid-19 pandemic

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/03/amazon-hourly-workers-lose-m...

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#147

Post by thanhhaimai »

startup_excuse wrote: post #125
renewiltord wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems pretty well-optimized, right? The employees value the money more than they value well-being, and the company values the money more than it values their well-being. That is pretty good alignment. Also, why wouldn't you just work elsewhere and buy AMZN stock if that's all you want. Work at GOOG, sell your stock, buy AMZN stock.

The reason you wouldn’t work elsewhere and invest is the following: you get hired at Amazon with a total comp of 500k (180 base + 320k in RSUs). You have been in role for 2 years and are completely burnt out. However the stock has doubled, and your total comp (without any raises) is now 820k. That is too much money for people to walk away from. If you leave for GOOG you will get in at the current stock price with no…

That logic applies when you joined a while ago. However, with the stock sky high (P/E 66, double GOOG 33), joining Amazon right now may not give you that potential upside anymore. Your managers and long time careers will get a larger portion of the upside. It's already evident by the stock growth of GOOG compared to AMZN in the past one year/quarter. The P/E of Amazon is high, compared with the growth potential vs others in FAANG. Picking a company to join is also akin to pick a stock to invest. Low P/E is not everything, but it's an important part of the equation.

For non-Staff level SWEs, my opinion is that joining a FAANG with lower P/E is better for your future earnings.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#148

Post by sokoloff »

rightbyte wrote: post #143
sokoloff wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been at several places which would have been improved by higher levels of management-directed firings. It's not at all obvious to me that the success rate at Amazon should be expected to be significantly over 85% of hire-to-performing employee. Given that, what should they do with the 15% who don't turn out to be performing employees (for whatever reason that isn't itself protected class membership)?

> I've been at several places which would have been improved by higher levels of management-directed firings. If management hire the wrong people they will likely fire the wrong people too. In my opinion it is better to keep apparent low performers around since it is so hard to rate programmers in a fair non game-able way. Especially from the managers' viewpoint where they don't work side by side with someone.

Hiring is often based on around 4 hours of interviews, which seems like it necessarily creates an incredibly noisy signal even for the best interviewers and management chain.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#149

Post by throwme1234 »

discodave wrote: post #73
joshe wrote: post #43

The problem with stack ranking at places like microsoft was twofold. First small team managers were forced to rank their reports, and each manager had to get rid of the bottom 10% each year. If you had 20 employees you had to fire 2 employees each year. But statistics doesn't work like that, there were many microsoft teams with all productive employees. And there were probably teams where 30% of the group should have…

In my experience at Amazon, line managers (5-20 people) still often act as if they have unregretted attrition goals. It's up to the Sr managers and directors if they spread the 6% goal around all their teams, or let one or two teams "implode". But the line managers know that their team either needs to outperform other teams or that the performance management buzzsaw is likely coming for one or more of their reports.…

My impression is that most teams have high enough natural attrition that it doesn't really matter and some teams even seem completely immune to any sort of real change, even if they do extremely poorly on their deliverables. I know a few teams that other teams actively avoid working with, even preferring to reinvent some of their solutions, yet, more or less the same people have been working on these underperforming teams for several years.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#150

Post by RobRivera »

nkssy wrote: post #52

If you can get fired because of some messed up policy like this then you don't need to take ownership for being fired anymore. Also, why show initiative if you're going to be fired randomly anyway? Why even work hard at all? Why show loyalty or goodwill? Just show up, do the work, participate in the general workplace nonsense purely for appearances and have your parachute always ready. Not sure I'd care if fired from…

adopted this life policy for 2 years now. QoL sign. improved
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