After many years at Amazon I figured out that although managers were mostly engineers at one point and could still talk like engineers, they are first and foremost company bureaucrats playing a very different game to what you and I do.
Amazon Pip Horror Story
401–410 of 771 posts
Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the justification for an attrition target? It seems such a weird thing to want your staff to leave.
The devils advocate answer: Statistically, some of your employees probably aren’t good enough to be worth employing. But managers are human, hard conversations are hard, there are lots of incentives to not manage those people out. By having an attrition target and forcing people to cut the bottom 10%, you basically skip over the soft fuzzy human factors keeping people around, and instead fall back to the statistical…
That only applies if the bad employees are uniformly distributed amongst all teams in the company. Otherwise it makes more sense to chop the worst 10% teams.
Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have a hand of cards you want to optimize it makes sense to keep discarding and redrawing your worst cards. At the beginning your worst cards are probably below average, so any new replacement is statistically likely to be better. But even when you reach the point where all your cards are above average it can make sense to keep redrawing a small percentage, since that's the only way to get more aces. Of course…
I kind of see that, but it completely ignores the cost of hiring (financial and in lost productivity in the team that has to onboard the new hire) and the loss of knowledge and experience from firing as well.
That’s why you hire to fire. Then your shortest tenure employee is the one you know you’ll be terminating and minimal knowledge is lost. The only downside is that it’s disgusting, soulless behaviour.
Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story
#404[deleted]
Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the justification for an attrition target? It seems such a weird thing to want your staff to leave.
The devils advocate answer: Statistically, some of your employees probably aren’t good enough to be worth employing. But managers are human, hard conversations are hard, there are lots of incentives to not manage those people out. By having an attrition target and forcing people to cut the bottom 10%, you basically skip over the soft fuzzy human factors keeping people around, and instead fall back to the statistical…
And as a nice side effect you begin to collect exactly the types of people willing to fire 10% of their workforce every year.
Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the justification for an attrition target? It seems such a weird thing to want your staff to leave.
The devils advocate answer: Statistically, some of your employees probably aren’t good enough to be worth employing. But managers are human, hard conversations are hard, there are lots of incentives to not manage those people out. By having an attrition target and forcing people to cut the bottom 10%, you basically skip over the soft fuzzy human factors keeping people around, and instead fall back to the statistical…
I can't really imagine a normal work environment where 10% (or any significant percentage) is actively harming the company.
Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Full stack developer and ML engineer seem like full positions, considering he listed internships specifically in his prior experience as explicit internships. Also he has a background in bio, and managed to land a full stack and ML engineer positions, implying he is self taught, and therefore should be already fairly intelligent...but he decided to go get his MS in CS, without even doing any research project and…
I don't have an MSc (just something similar) but I have no idea what GTA and GRA means in this context. Also none of my CS BSc+MSc friends ever mentioned a research project (or do you mean the thesis?) Also I haven't seen where the person in the original post was studying, but this might be kinda different per country?
I'm assuming GTA = graduate teaching assistant, GRA = graduate research assistant, i.e. project track vs research track Masters degree.
Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Full stack developer and ML engineer seem like full positions, considering he listed internships specifically in his prior experience as explicit internships. Also he has a background in bio, and managed to land a full stack and ML engineer positions, implying he is self taught, and therefore should be already fairly intelligent...but he decided to go get his MS in CS, without even doing any research project and…
> he decided to go get his MS in CS, without even doing any research project and just opting for the GTA instead of GRA route. Could you elaborate more on this? I'm assuming this is a detail of the US education system of which I don't know anything :)
I'm assuming GTA = graduate teaching assistant, GRA = graduate research assistant, i.e. project track vs research track Masters degree.
Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have a hand of cards you want to optimize it makes sense to keep discarding and redrawing your worst cards. At the beginning your worst cards are probably below average, so any new replacement is statistically likely to be better. But even when you reach the point where all your cards are above average it can make sense to keep redrawing a small percentage, since that's the only way to get more aces. Of course…
I kind of see that, but it completely ignores the cost of hiring (financial and in lost productivity in the team that has to onboard the new hire) and the loss of knowledge and experience from firing as well.
I could imagine Amazon finding some success with that strategy for their fulfillment workers (where those costs are low and team work isn't required), leading someone to mindlessly apply the same strategy everywhere else.
Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story
#410The idea that there are KPIs that can be used to objectively measure the performance of an SE and that the worst performers will be fired is an illusion. In reality, the direct manager has it in his hands: If he wants to get rid of one of his employees, he will find means and KPIs to do so. It is a political and human decision, KPIs only serve to justify his decision.