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Amazon Pip Horror Story

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Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#671

Post by operatingthetan »

bdlowery wrote: post #150
vultour wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you not on Linkedin? This self-aggrandizing cringe is 95% of the content in the feed, I'm always amazed people can write this with a straight face.

After grinding leetcode for months, and going through 4 interviews, you feel like you’ve “finally made it” which is why people post cringey posts like that.

Because they've finally transformed themselves into the husk of a human and are now ready for their new soul crushing dev role at Amazon? More seriously most linkedin posts I see are recruiters feeling sorry for themselves despite their bad behavior and looking for social support because of their plight.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#672

Post by bambataa »

ActorNightly wrote: post #154
yrral wrote: post #8

Is it really so dysfunctional there that if this happens to you (manager puts you on PIP upon being notified you're doing an internal transfer) there's no one to talk to to make this right? Maybe his manager is a piece of shit, but I can't believe there's no one to report to above him that can see this for what it is and make it right?

The issue with Amazon is that due to its size, working on a team is essentially like working for a separate company. If you are moving across big orgs, you are just a blip in the system should something like this come up. And just like a group of startups, some are going to be run worse than others. Additionally, because of the internal transfer policy and teams frequently switching out members, a lot of work is desi…

At the risk of sounding like someone who clearly doesn’t have the skills you’re talking about, what do you mean by “reading the room” here? Knowing when to push things, when to drop them, being trusted enough by management that they don’t blame you for failing to meet absurd requests?

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#673

Post by antisthenes »

heleninboodler wrote: post #593
nickjj wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true, a lot of tech companies will give you very good medical coverage without pay period fees but at the end of the day this boils down to money. Your salary is adjusted based on the company paying whatever rates they pay to offer you great insurance. When doing contract work, you might be paying $500 / month out of pocket for medical insurance but your hourly rate is likely higher than your hourly rate as a W…

Here's how you pick dental insurance: it doesn't matter much because it isn't insurance at all. It's just a maintenance plan. The purpose of insurance is to buffer you against sudden large costs by having the insurance pay them while collecting enough of a premium from everyone that they come out ahead. The purpose of a dental plan is to pay for typical costs and completely bail on you if your costs go over a fixed a…

The way you pick dental insurance in the USA:

Pick the air carrier with the cheapest flight to Mexico.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#674

Post by broknbottle »

subsaharancoder wrote: post #670
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…

> Amazon uses rating and calibration mechanisms to learn who you think as a manager are your lowest performers. Meta also uses calibrations where I'm told managers present their direct reports performance reviews and essentially "duke" it out with other managers. Disclaimer: I work at Meta but I'm not a people manager

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Amazon

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#675

Post by antisthenes »

urthor wrote: post #232
pm90 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm convinced human beings are naturally designed to operate at 120% for 6-12 week long periods. \ Hunter gatherer survivalist genes just kick in. YMMV, but I consider it a healthy thing for, at least for some part of your career, to work "Amazon hard." Aka, all the reasons that people list when they say you should really try working for a startup. When you push yourself to your limits at your profession, a lot of st…

> I'm convinced human beings are naturally designed to operate at 120% for 6-12 week long periods. \

The only thing worth working 120% for is raising your newborn child. Or maybe making a civilization-altering breakthrough in the natural sciences, like Fusion energy.

Everything is simply 'meh' in comparison and not worth sacrificing your health for. And I say this as a person who doesn't even particularly like or want kids.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#676

Post by AtlasBarfed »

throwbigdata wrote: post #623
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It assumes that you have perfect measurement. Anyone who knows corporate politics, middle management machiavellianism, and inability to properly instrument development, requirements, scheduling knows this is a fantasy. That means people will devote SUBSTANTIAL amounts of their day-to-day labor in jockeying and positioning. People will be hired (wasted money and time) explicitly to be fired/PIP'd. The jockeying will r…

To wit: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

It's even worse than that. The Office at least had people do their jobs and keep their heads down, cooperate to get things done, ride out the management bullshit.

Amazon management practices will breed sociopathy at the root worker level.

I agree that is kind of the average-stage evolution of an enterprisey company. Amazon is worse.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#677

Post by efitz »

graycat wrote: post #587
efitz wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the statistical truth that the worst 10% probably are negative value employees. Why is this a statistical truth? In a large, Gaussian distributed population MAYBE this is true (but hiring isn’t random, is it?). But the thresholds are not applied to large populations anywhere I’ve worked. It’s pressure applied to management at all levels.

> In a large, Gaussian distributed population Where do we get one of those? The central limit theorem doesn't give us one of those. Not even the Lindeberg-Feller central limit theorem. Neither does the strong law of large numbers. Nor the weak law of large numbers. Nor the martingale convergence theorem. There is some old material, from about 100 years ago, in schools of education that given a performance measure and…

> "Low performers" in need of a "performance improvement program" (PIP)? Start with the managers who believe in a Gaussian distribution. Then move to the managers who believe that the "bottom 20%" are always low performers.

HAHAHA well said.

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#678

Post by arendtio »

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…

Sounds a bit like Jeff asked Jack how to win.

Explanation: Jack Welch wrote a book called 'Winning' in which he describes a system for rewarding the top 20% and firing the bottom 10% on a regular basis to foster a performance culture. From Wikipedia [1]:

> Welch popularized so-called "rank and yank" policies used now by other corporate entities. Each year, Welch would fire the bottom 10% of his managers, regardless of absolute performance.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#679

Post by Manuel_D »

deltaonefour wrote: post #130
rendall wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Aren't there websites that do this? 2) I remember during the #metoo era there was a Google doc spreadsheet of bad men going around where people could add names anonymously. It got to be thousands of names long, and at least a few of the men didn't deserve to be on it.

I think blind does this. But it's mostly like a forum. I don't think there's a review website that specializes in reviewing managers at companies. Reviewers would have to register by company email of course to make sure they're legit. >It got to be thousands of names long, and at least a few of the men didn't deserve to be on it. I think there needs to be a voting process to make sure it's not a smear campaign genera…

And this voting process is assumed to be legitimate? Internet polls are incredibly unreliable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiTqIyx6tBU

Re: Amazon Pip Horror Story

#680

Post by arendtio »

urthor wrote: post #223
octagonal wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

700 a day??? Why did you undercharge by so much. I know the EU dev market isn't great but those are rookie numbers for "danger money." Three of the "retired, then handed enough money to unretire" COBAL guys at my old place were doing 2500 a day.

It depends on the country/region. In eastern Europe 700€ is okay, in western Europe it is rather cheap.
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