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Amazon Pip Horror Story

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Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#421
post #394

Earlier 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.

For sure. It's a good example of POSIWID: The Purpose Of the System Is What It Does. If the system ignores things like financial costs and productivity, then the purpose of the system is something else.

What it is good for in my view is making managers look and feel tough and establishing a culture of fear that is so necessary for hierarchical power structures. Power/status hierarchies are a common trait for most primates. So my shorthand for this sort of it-doesn't-make-sense situation is, "Primates gonna prime."

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#422

Some people meet this with a healthy level of scepticism, which is great. However I used to work at Amazon, working on the performance evaluation and HR tools used within the company. It was a couple of years back, but I am fairly certain that the same tools are still used, given that all of them were developed from scratch. At the time it was in line with the company's PR of removing its toxic work culture. It's wor…

Some people meet this with a healthy level of scepticism, which is great. However I used to work at Amazon, working on the performance evaluation and HR tools used within the company. It was a couple of years back, but I am fairly certain that the same tools are still used, given that all of them were developed from scratch. At the time it was in line with the company's PR of removing its toxic work culture. It's wor…

Found the guy who does formatting for BBC.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#423
post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

At Amazon, the target was between 4 to 6% when I was there, but it was applied at the larger department level, not individual teams. It was perfectly fine to have a team of 10 where nobody was on a PIP (yes, such things exist!), but when it came to my entire 250-person department, all of the managers were in a room together ranking every employee they had and using "data" (peer reviews and results delivered, mainly) to fight over which employees got into the top and bottom tiers.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#424
post #359

Earlier 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…

There is a gap in this reasoning though. "X% of employees are not worth their salary" does not imply "mandatory firing X% employees is good for the company".

In particular quotas flow down into teams with zero percent of people who should be fired. The effect on the remaining 100-X% employees morale is negative.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#426

Does anyone have any insight into what the culture for Product Managers in AWS is? Currently interviewing with them, and it’s impossible to determine the culture from their interview process. For example, I asked how large the team was, and the interviewer responded that he couldn’t tell me that information.

You’ll have to change your username if you end up working there.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#427
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’…

Better for who? Probably not the shareholders.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#428
A good lesson I've learned over the years: there are 2 sides to every story, and on the Internet you usually get just one.

Not saying this guy is wrong, his manager is right, or vice versa. I'm saying you don't know by this post, and by many of the pitchfork comments I'm reading, a lot of folks feel an unwarranted sense of surety in their outrage.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#429

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 !

Is CR a merge/pull request?

Yes. It’s taken me a while to say PR instead of CR. At least I’m not quoting LPs at my girlfriend anymore

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My apartments fire alarm went off during my virtual on-site with Amazon too. There was about 10 minutes left and the interviewer said I should go and he had what he needed. Got an offer the next day!

Amazon vs Amazon on Blind

Exactly. I’ve been here for two years, not a long time by any means, and I don’t personally know a single instance of anyone getting pipped.

I’ve never felt pressured to work overtime, haven’t had to race to meet an unreasonable deadline, and I’ve been rated exceeds on both of the performance evals I’ve been though.

The Amazon I’ve experienced is much different than the one I read about before joining.

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