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Amazon Pip Horror Story

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Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#111

Post by ngc248 »

BossingAround wrote: post #10
greatpostman wrote: post #3

I’ve worked at Amazon. I made it a few years, but was almost pipped in the first few months. Management dropped a huge project on me, a brand new tier 1 service, with full dns resolution, api, database, distributed system, along with micro services. The deadline was three months. Brand new tech stack. When I was struggling to meet the deadline, we started having “performance conversations”. I ended up switching teams…

Maybe a silly question on my part; did you manage to learn a lot? In the past, I thought of putting myself in positions like these to increase my understanding in short time, at the short term expense of personal life. I wonder if that's just a stupid thought that leads to nothing but burnout, or actually a viable short-term strategy to get up to speed with some of the tech stack you know but haven't really used in p…

You may/may not learn, but living in situations like the OP was put in is horrible. Every day feels like hell, and if you burn out it may take years to recover.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#112

Post by deltaonefour »

sage76 wrote: post #101
slt2021 wrote: post #48

Quoted post unavailable.

As an Indian, I am starting to notice a pattern of terrible Indian managers from all the stories I hear from my friends. I really hope that these stories make up a biased sample.

I'm from China, I've had only good experiences with Indians. Most of the people I would deem as ass hole level on the scale of Ganesh were in fact white.

It would be idealistic to think that all races have an equal portion of ass holes though. I will say that a large portion of SDM's are Indian so your sample is indeed biased.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#113

Post by MattGaiser »

udbhavs wrote: post #98
tgv wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That first post, is that the acceptance speech for a Nobel prize?

I'm also curious about that. I'm just starting out in industry and am confused if most people are expected to do that. Do future recruiters go through your old linkedin posts for stuff like this? Or is it just a general update for their personal circle - basically the corporate version of instagram stories.

Recruiters won't even read my programming languages. I have gone to so many interviews where they didn't even check that the skills they wanted were on my resume.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#114

Post by rendall »

cerved wrote: post #89
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's not the point, but how/why did you have $100 worth of pizza in the refrigerator? Edit: I'm trying to imagine scenarios where that could happen, I have two so far. You ordered pizza for a meeting that got canceled, and the office refrigerator was huge. Or you ordered from a fancy pizza place that had waygu or something as a topping. I'm sorry, I don't know why this is bothering me so much.

it's clearly a lie! The value of pizza is inversely correlated to the time it's been out of the oven. Once it's in the refrigerator it's worth max 1%

Maybe original cost had been $10,000?

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#115

Post by hhmc »

deltaonefour wrote: post #13

Why are people who do this never named? They should be named. This type of behavior perpetuates because despite this employee revealing a company issue.. the individual perpetrator can still hide behind anonymity. CALL these ass holes out.

It's possible (although maybe not likely) that this guy really _did_ deserve to be put on PIP, and the team transfer request is completely incidental.

Unless we can know for sure, or at least from a less biased source, we probably shouldn't doxx the manager?

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#116

Post by rendall »

goldenkey wrote: post #49
yrral wrote: post #8

Is it really so dysfunctional there that if this happens to you (manager puts you on PIP upon being notified you're doing an internal transfer) there's no one to talk to to make this right? Maybe his manager is a piece of shit, but I can't believe there's no one to report to above him that can see this for what it is and make it right?

HR at Amazon is a shit show. I had $100 of pizza stolen from the fridge at Amazon and I mentioned it casually to HR, as something notable but not too important. And HR then decided to tell my manager without my knowledge. The manager then berated me over communicating about a "trivial matter." So yeah, wouldn't put much stock in HR at Amazon.

Maybe manager stole the pizza.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#117

Post by ngc248 »

cabirum wrote: post #16
greatpostman wrote: post #3

I’ve worked at Amazon. I made it a few years, but was almost pipped in the first few months. Management dropped a huge project on me, a brand new tier 1 service, with full dns resolution, api, database, distributed system, along with micro services. The deadline was three months. Brand new tech stack. When I was struggling to meet the deadline, we started having “performance conversations”. I ended up switching teams…

No idea how things work at Amazon, but why did you accept such a tight deadline? Have you provided your own estimates for dev time?

In big companies, there is program management which comes up with the overall schedule. There will be buffer time, but you still have to work within the given time whatever challenges there may be.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#118

Post by oceliker »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #66
goldenkey wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HR at Amazon is a shit show. I had $100 of pizza stolen from the fridge at Amazon and I mentioned it casually to HR, as something notable but not too important. And HR then decided to tell my manager without my knowledge. The manager then berated me over communicating about a "trivial matter." So yeah, wouldn't put much stock in HR at Amazon.

I know it's not the point, but how/why did you have $100 worth of pizza in the refrigerator? Edit: I'm trying to imagine scenarios where that could happen, I have two so far. You ordered pizza for a meeting that got canceled, and the office refrigerator was huge. Or you ordered from a fancy pizza place that had waygu or something as a topping. I'm sorry, I don't know why this is bothering me so much.

Maybe it was paid for with bitcoin, like the infamous case: https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/cryptocurrency/bi...

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#119

Post by Hokusai »

murderfs wrote: post #85

Stories have two sides, someone on blind posted the following, and no one's challenged it so presumably it's true: > The guy made 24 CRs in his entire career at amazon, all in just one CDK package. > 50% of his CRs are merged without approval. > So, yeah, there you go !

> no one's challenged it so presumably it's true

Amazon is well known for training employees to defend the company on-line. Aren't you being too generous with an anonymous comment that you provide no link to? Is not possible that is just Amazon propaganda?

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#120

Post by deltaonefour »

hhmc wrote: post #115
deltaonefour wrote: post #13

Why are people who do this never named? They should be named. This type of behavior perpetuates because despite this employee revealing a company issue.. the individual perpetrator can still hide behind anonymity. CALL these ass holes out.

It's possible (although maybe not likely) that this guy really _did_ deserve to be put on PIP, and the team transfer request is completely incidental. Unless we can know for sure, or at least from a less biased source, we probably shouldn't doxx the manager?

Yeah that's true. We really need some service like blind where people can anonymously review and score managers. We need votes to prove that a manager is an ass hole. One anecdotal story isn't enough.

Maybe the service leaves the manager anonymous until the review amount crosses a certain threshold... 3 to 4 guys calling him out?

Submit this to ycombinator!

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