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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.
URA?
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…
I smell bullshit > 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" Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he works 10 hours 6 days a week. Of course he takes no bio breaks, doesn't eat or drink and is not required to attend any standups or status meetings or design reviews. This nets you 15600 minutes to code. S…
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As it happens, many years ago I worked for Amazon and encountered a small microwave fire in the break room. I dealt with it myself, but I realized I had no idea what the appropriate way to notify somebody about a fire. I inquired and discovered that in the event of a fire, the correct behavior would have been to return to my desk and file a Sev-2 incident with the Facilities team. This should in theory page someone w…
If anyone's curious, the correct response to a fire, presuming you couldn't immediately extinguish it, is to pull the fire alarm and evacuate the building.
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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).
Then by definition, it is the directives of senior management that are at fault.
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Those managers were definitely lazy. The parent commenter is not. As an Amazon manager you have tremendous power to screw over your reports and take credit for cutting out low performers. Not going that way and actually investing to "hire and develop the best" is the right and the hard thing to do. I think the hire and develop lp is the one which is enforced the least at Amazon and that's due to lazy management.
> As an Amazon manager you have tremendous power to screw over your reports and take credit for cutting out low performers. You can call it lazy, that doesn’t make it any less of the goal or KPI Amazon created.
I smell bullshit > 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" Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he works 10 hours 6 days a week. Of course he takes no bio breaks, doesn't eat or drink and is not required to attend any standups or status meetings or design reviews. This nets you 15600 minutes to code. S…
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“ eventually leaving him the only person competent enough to make changes to it” erm, this makes it sound like he was a not a very good engineer. Your code should always be written so that if you get hit by a bus one day, the rest of your team could pick right up where you left off
This doesn't sound like something a good engineer would do. I try to work with people competent enough not to walk in front of buses.
Sounds like if you work at Amazon you might choose to walk in front of a bus one day...
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…
Common experience, someone is told shortly before review time that they are doing an acceptable job, then two weeks later they are signing the PIP.
The assumption is their boss had to fire someone, and the PIP victim just happened to be the one who came up short. For whatever reason: short tenure, doing OK but not spectacular, their tasks of lower priority, said something that pissed off a Director, I'm sure we can think of many more possibilities.
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…
> As a manager, you get verbal (never written) lashings from your manager and skip manager to put the lowest performers on performance plans that ensure that any attrition counts. As soon as you capitulate, your lowest performer is now considered a low performer. Clearly, I'm preaching to the choir here, but... I am constantly amazed at companies that do this. Effectively, they're incentivizing their workers to sabot…