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Amazon Pip Horror Story

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Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#151
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you not on Linkedin? This self-aggrandizing cringe is 95% of the content in the feed, I'm always amazed people can write this with a straight face.

It’s normalized on the platform because that’s how people higher up the food chain speak like. Eg when a VP switches companies. Most of the time these things are written by a PR person to be as grateful and inoffensive as possible. But then it caught on because everyone loves to humblebrag.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#152

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.

Because then they could defend themselves, perhaps?

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#153

> Since it is performance review season at Amazon, he quickly sent me into a dev plan (PIP) I think the lesson of this story is to apply for another role after the performance review season.

> I expressed my intention for an internal transfer to my manager at my current AWS team.

Or to not express intention to transfer to current manager?

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#154
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?

The issue with Amazon is that due to its size, working on a team is essentially like working for a separate company. If you are moving across big orgs, you are just a blip in the system should something like this come up. And just like a group of startups, some are going to be run worse than others.

Additionally, because of the internal transfer policy and teams frequently switching out members, a lot of work is designed to be picked up by a new person, especially at the SD1/SD2 levels, so people are generally replaceable. Couple that with the fact that the interview process only tests for academic knowledge, without really proving that you can set up infra and services in production. And even more on top on top of that, Amazon gets a never ending candidate pool. So you get a combination of both poor performance that actually need to get PIPed out mixed in with poor teams that are ran like crap because managers themselves are not really technical and end up not delivering and then having to PIP people out.

That being said, because of this sort of structure, if you know how to make moves and "read the room" so to speak, Amazon is the best company for finding that sweet spot of maximizing revenue/actual hour worked. If you are a talented software engineer, not just a developer and generally know how to navigate around managers, you can hit senior engineer or manager levels quite easily, and then cruise control your way at $300k a year, and with an added benefit of lots of remote positions right now (since wfh is a big selling point in order to not get rejected by good candidates). From talking to people at Google/Facebook, those kind of moves are a lot harder to do.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#155
post #89

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%

I mean ... one of my guilty pleasures is leftover pizza straight out of the fridge. Something about that chilled, congealed fat and sugar ... mmmmmmmmm

So to me it makes perfect sense that it's $100

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#156
post #139

This comment killed me : Will Ye Will Ye Engineering @ Cohere (cohere.io) 5mo Back when I worked at Amazon as a software engineer, the CRAZIEST thing happened to me. Here’s the story… I was working from home with my girlfriend (at the time), when suddenly I get an urgent ping from my coworker: “Our service is experiencing a SEV 2! We need all hands on deck!” Uh oh, our team’s application has gone down! However, as I…

I've read this before, it's likely not by "Will Ye Will Ye" ;)

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#157
And in case anyone thought this was an isolated incident, I have heard from 3 different people about this happening to them. As soon as they try to transfer they get put on a PIP.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#158
post #21

How it started - https://i.imgur.com/7Cyia1U.jpeg How it is going - https://archive.fo/pdYHy#selection-525.105-525.423

His post 5 months after joining was a repost of someone criticizing Amazon. And then he ended up getting PIPed recently. His linked profile is all over the place too with work experience, he never held a job longer than 4 months. Dunno if I would automatically side with his story from that.

I would expect him to not have worked anywhere longer than 4 months considering he just graduated and those were internships

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#159
post #21

How it started - https://i.imgur.com/7Cyia1U.jpeg How it is going - https://archive.fo/pdYHy#selection-525.105-525.423

The second post in your second link is shocking too: > One night, when I was a dev manager at Amazon, another dev manager in Seattle sent me a 20-page design document at 11:30 pm and told me that he wanted me to get him feedback by 5:30 am the next day. How fucking rude is that? It’s indicative of an absolutely staggering level of toxicity. Honestly, what a waste. Imagine how much better Amazon could be if they didn’…

That’s when you CC (don’t BCC, you want them to know) yours and theirs managers on the email that says that says plainly, “If you expected this to be done by 5:30 am, you should have sent two days before. Perhaps this can help you be more efficient with your time.” and include a link to a YouTube — or better yet, an internal training video — on effective time management or setting deadlines.

Seriously. You publicly stick the knife in for this shit.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#160

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.

Stop with the needless hate.

We are talking about people in the top 8% of the income bracket in US. Not a single engineer in Amazon that has or is getting PIPed is losing their livelihood. If you have Amazon on your resume, no matter what, you will have no issues finding another job, because the acceptance rate by itself to Amazon is The biggest drawback of something like this is maybe having to wait an extra few months before buying that sweet BMW M3 that you wanted.

If anything, this kind of stuff should be viewed as games, because that's all this is. Supply/demand of labor mixed in with a few political and psychological things. The manager is not even close to being an asshole, he is just playing the game like all the employees are. Lets not pretend that the majority of people wanting to work at Amazon care enough about changing the world, they just want that MAANG salary.

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