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Amazon Pip Horror Story

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Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#191

Post by flr03 »

makerofthings wrote: post #108
xorandor wrote: post #50

(dare I ask what a dev plan (pip) is?) quick google check... Development plan is a regular plan which you do with your manager, where you are focusing on your career progress. You focus on your strengths and weaknesses. Based on this plan you will get tasks which will utilize skills you are good at and also help you to improve skills you want to have improved. PIP is a plan which is assigned to employees with unsatis…

It’s how you fire people in tech companies. You put them on a PiP, give them some tasks to do and then fire them when they don’t deliver. Obviously nobody survives the PiP because for an engineer not on a pip, taking 9 weeks on an 8 week project is pretty good, but on a pip 9 weeks for an 8 week project is a failure to deliver and you’re out. Obviously this is evil bullshit, but I’ve been in this industry for a very…

That's not how you fire people in tech companies. Not all tech companies are Faang/American. I've been working in several "tech companies" in Europe and it was not a thing. Let's not normalise this awful, inhuman process like there is no other alternative.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#192

Post by southerntofu »

pm90 wrote: post #141
mytailorisrich wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But was also scarring, I have huge trust issues with management now This is the normal approach. You are experienced and wise now.

Is it really? Seems an unnecessarily stressful way to get experience. I kinda agree with the OP, I would have a lot of trust issues with management if they pulled this shit on me.

> I would have a lot of trust issues with management if they pulled this shit on me.

You should have trust issues with "management" in any corporation because these people have the interest of the shareholders at heart, not of the workers. It's just sad some of us have to go through a traumatic burnout to learn this lesson.

Of course, what i said doesn't apply in a self-organized workers cooperatives where management is the workers.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#193

Post by rocqua »

1ef211383f1e92e wrote: post #164
MattGaiser wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be nuts to treat it as anything other than loading the bullet into the gun that terminates you. All it is is to make sure that the bullet is legal.

You should try to consider it from the company's perspective as well-- hiring an engineer is very expensive, takes a long time, and any new engineer has takes time before they can start to fully contribute to a codebase. If you're a manager in a situation where an employee has a problem and aren't meeting the job requirements, you'd probably much rather that they fix the problem and contribute to the team than fire t…

Whilst I think you are right, being put on a PiP should still be seen as a big warning. Especially since there are many ways to help someone improve in performance. There is little need for formalization in a benign pip. The main reason a pip is formalized is to prepare for firing.

I don't think being put on a pip means firing is certain and imminent. I do think being put on a pip means firing is on the table and a serious threat. In that sense the analogy of 'putting a bullet in the chamber' is accurate if maybe a bit strong.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#194

Post by vaughandroid »

hughrr wrote: post #188
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…

A side effect of working for asshole companies like that for years is I’ve slowly developed a zero fucks attitude and an immunity to threats and carrots dangled in front of me. I can sit there as a project is falling over the edge of a cliff with total inner peace. My interest stops at the pay cheque and by the clock.

I imagine that's a good place to be, but I don't know if it's possible without going through a lot of trauma and building up substantial mental scar tissue.

Getting on 15 years into my career and not sure I'll ever get there. On the other hand, I actually work on a project I care about and for a company that treats me like a human being and not a "resource". Think I'm OK with that.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#195

Post by square_usual »

hughrr wrote: post #188
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…

A side effect of working for asshole companies like that for years is I’ve slowly developed a zero fucks attitude and an immunity to threats and carrots dangled in front of me. I can sit there as a project is falling over the edge of a cliff with total inner peace. My interest stops at the pay cheque and by the clock.

> I can sit there as a project is falling over the edge of a cliff with total inner peace.

This is what I'm (slowly) learning as well, even though I'm not entirely sure I want to. Working on projects where you care but almost nobody else does does that to you, but I'm afraid I won't be able to make it back to a position where I can care for projects.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#196

Post by bartvk »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #42
greatpostman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll be honest, I learned an absurd amount. Like more in those six months than in four years if previous work. It was real software development, with actual distributed systems problems. But was also scarring, I have huge trust issues with management now

> But was also scarring, I have huge trust issues with management now This is the normal approach. You are experienced and wise now.

Are you serious, or sarcastic? I can't tell.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#197

Post by hiyer »

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 !

24 CRs can be huge in Amazon, depending on the team. It can take months to get a single CR approved and merged.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#198

Post by square_usual »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #107
transitory_pce wrote: post #6

This is a phenomenon common to all low grade/incompetent dev managers: When a dev asks for a team change they view it as a slap in the face because it has happened to them so often in the past and they take it as a personal offence. The fact is they are lousy managers and usually incompetent and nobody wants to work in their team. So they go on the offensive and try to manage the dev out before senior management real…

Then senior management should be wondering why so many low performers are ending up with certain managers...

TFA mentions a PIP quota and implies that OP was used to fill the quota, so I'm pretty sure upper management won't blink at this happening. They expect people to get PIP'd, and they have no visibility on the actual internals, so to them OP is just as good as anybody else who got PIP'd.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#199

Post by dininski »

dedoussis wrote: post #5

> I only have one humble request, if I submited 51k lines of code in January and my whole team submitted 68k, do not call me a "Least Effective". $ npm update

Funnily enough Amazon has its own internal repo, including NPM. And it can be a pain in the ass to add anything to it, especially npm packages. So sometimes you would have to spend 5 minutes, or sometimes an hour, to import a single existing public NPM package into the internal repo.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#200

Post by octagonal »

hughrr wrote: post #188
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…

A side effect of working for asshole companies like that for years is I’ve slowly developed a zero fucks attitude and an immunity to threats and carrots dangled in front of me. I can sit there as a project is falling over the edge of a cliff with total inner peace. My interest stops at the pay cheque and by the clock.

I was lucky enough to experience a 2 year long project in which everything that went wrong was blamed on the developers. Project managers breathing down your neck, feeling so pressured you barely dare take a bathroom break, the whole shebang.

Quit working for them and now I'm a freelance dev.

They asked me to get back on the project and I said fine, that'll be €700/day. After some grumbling they realized they had no other option so they agreed.

The project is still failing due to bad management but I no longer care. I believe to now feel the same sense of calm around chaos and failure like you do.

A lot of developers have real mental scars from bad projects like this, because they get duped into thinking it's a matter of personal pride to see it trough.

It's not. Your primary concern should always be personal health.

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