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Amazon Pip Horror Story

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Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#571

Post by khazhoux »

arcbyte wrote: post #310
khazhoux wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 50 LOC is industry average Sorry, I wasn't clear. I'm talking about 50 LOC every 2 weeks or so. Like, seriously low LOC of seriously low-complexity (sometimes trivial) code. I don't actually have a numerical target people should hit. Not at all. It's more like this: on several occasions now (all too common), I've taken over management of a team, and in our initial team meetings and 1:1s, some developer talks about…

LOC isn't a meaningful metric. Flat out. You can think it is, but it's such a toxic, nonsensical concept that you deserve to get pushback for mentioning it. It's a waste of time in the presence of actually useful criteria product/project-related metrics. Teams of people build things. LOC don't add up to a hill of beans.

When that one person on the team barely commits any code, and isn't busy with design docs or anything else, they just don't commit hardly any code, taking a week to land 10 lines that adds a new argparse option that you could have written in 5 minutes, then I'll be curious to understand how their tiny amount of LOC isn't relevant.

I think maybe you haven't seen how unproductive some people can be. And one hint of their productivity, is that they don't have much code to show for. If someone can explain to me how they're writing significant amount of new software with less code than this comment I'm typing right now, I'd be interested to learn how they did it.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#572

Post by mistyislands »

the_amzn_race wrote: post #353

I've been an Amazon SDE and an Amazon SDM. I enjoyed my time as an SDE, luckily free from these horror stories. After having been an SDM, I understand how these horror stories can form. Generally, Amazon has two minds about performance management. In written documentation, it's all about whether your reports meet the role guidelines. The written documentation is solid. They share how to evaluate people objectively an…

Also an Amazon tech manager. I confirm that this is also my experience.

Managers don't like to put people into Focus or Pivot (unless the employee is absolutely terrible, which is rare). But we all have URA quotas to fill, mandated by HR.

This is absolutely terrible for team cohesion and morale; while also being the largest source of friction and inefficiency.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#573

Post by renewiltord »

Jasp3r wrote: post #134
nickm12 wrote: post #60

I feel for the guy—taking the post at face value, it sounds like he had a shitty team and a shitty manager. At the same time, this post does not make me want to hire him and in fact quite the opposite. He seems to be fairly junior, but even at that level I cringe at measuring ones self in terms of lines of code written (though lines of code deleted is a metric I can get behind).

His job history agrees with you. It has been less than 2 years since he graduated, in which he has held 4 jobs. 3 months at his first job, then 4 months, 5 months and 10 months at Amazon. I would not take his given statement at face value.

People usually call those internships but he's gone and described them as full jobs. Unfortunate. The timing lines up for a winter and then summer internship / coop role.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#574

Post by [deleted] »

asdfman123 wrote: post #570

At this point, I'm not sure why anyone would choose to work at Amazon over other companies. What do they offer over their competitors? Same work and pay at other big tech, but you don't have to worry about potentially crazy hours or getting fired for no reason. Or any of the other great companies outside of big tech. Good pay, good impact, no PIP culture. Recruiters from AMZN are trying to lure me away from Google (a…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#575

Post by bambataa »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #453
coliveira wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every group is different. It depends on the manager, the priorities, the projects, etc. But I imagine you'll be thinking different in a few years.

So, here's an interesting question: I recently got an email from a recruiter for Amazon saying I could interview for whatever org and whatever team I wanted. What are some sane, reasonable teams? Which teams are the most insane and unreasonable?

Also keen to know this!

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#576

Post by BeetleB »

notyourwork wrote: post #561
BeetleB wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a very readable comment. I'm reminded of the times I've posted here about "If it's 3 paragraphs or longer, my coworkers won't read it" only to get responses like "Must be poor writing on your part!" I wish to thank you for proving my case.

Sounds like I'm not the only one who found the reformatted version worse, not better.

My guess is it's a mobile vs monitor thing.

It looks totally fine on a monitor, but because of the narrow width on cell phone displays, a paragraph can extend beyond the display's height, and it psychologically has an impact on people.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#577

Post by pm90 »

vanusa wrote: post #559
the_amzn_race wrote: post #353

I've been an Amazon SDE and an Amazon SDM. I enjoyed my time as an SDE, luckily free from these horror stories. After having been an SDM, I understand how these horror stories can form. Generally, Amazon has two minds about performance management. In written documentation, it's all about whether your reports meet the role guidelines. The written documentation is solid. They share how to evaluate people objectively an…

I feel bad for the LinkedIn poster here, I think he had a lazy manager. That's funny, because from the other things you said: There is an intense pressure to force a certain amount of attrition each year. As an SDM, I wanted to maintain the illusion of great Amazon culture for my team. It sure looks like this wasn't the case of a "lazy manager" at all -- rather, that manager was doing exactly what they were told: to…

I read this as the manager being lazy because they were giving in to the unwritten pressure from their manager to force attrition (less work) rather than trying to help their team members by protecting them (more work).

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#579

Post by patch_cable »

i_love_limes wrote: post #230

I have a question for other former/current employees of Amazon. I worked there for 4 years on the AIV / Prime Video platform across a few teams (2012-2016). Obviously we had performance reviews every year, and I did ok. I transferred 3 or 4 times (within AIV), never a problem. I never heard of mandatory quotas to fit in the under-performing category, I didn't hear my colleagues talk about it either, "under-performing…

I was at Amazon for almost 10 years and my experiences echo yours. The few people that I saw PIPed were people who were under-performing. I never saw people who were performing their job be forced into a PIP category.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#580

Post by abeppu »

wongarsu wrote: post #381
zelos wrote: 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.

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…

> If you have a hand of cards you want to optimize it makes sense to keep discarding and redrawing your worst cards.

But this makes sense _in a game with a fixed hand size_. But a company's staff should grow over time. So shouldn't one have an ROI-based criteria where you want each team member to help grow generate meaningfully more revenue than they cost to employ. If my "lowest" performing team members still make meaningfully more money than they cost to employ, they still increase my ability to hire more.

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