761–770 of 771 posts
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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?
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Maybe I missed your point, but qualitative phenotypes caused by interactions of many genes that are measureable, like height, are gaussian distributed.
At best, only approximately Gaussian. Height cannot be Gaussian if only because height is never negative but every Gaussian density is positive for all real numbers, including negative real numbers. "interactions of many genes that are measureable" The interactions of many is commonly used to justify a Gaussian assumption, but there is no such theorem. The main theorem to get a Gaussian density is the central limit t…
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> The whole performance review thing feels like a proxy for something else I can't quite put my finger on, but feels creepy nonetheless. Stack ranking is one thing, but you're against performance reviews? How do you know if you're doing well or poorly in your job? Or does it not matter because firing is so difficult?
Performance reviews are garbage. They are not needed. They exist as a way for the capital-owning class to remind workers that they are seen as subhuman and will be thrown back on the streets the minute they are no longer seen by their masters as productive. If someone needs to be fired, you don't need to put them through a humiliating process. Explain what happened and why, give them a decent severance and a good ref…
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(I work at AWS) I personally know multiple people who have been on the PIP before and are still here and happy. No idea the percent of people who accomplish this though.
Are they doing well or just getting by, though?
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At best, only approximately Gaussian. Height cannot be Gaussian if only because height is never negative but every Gaussian density is positive for all real numbers, including negative real numbers. "interactions of many genes that are measureable" The interactions of many is commonly used to justify a Gaussian assumption, but there is no such theorem. The main theorem to get a Gaussian density is the central limit t…
I am not really disagreeing with you, but for a first order approximation, treating human height as a bunch of iids is the simplest approach. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41431-021-00836-7 . "At the same time, it is well-understood that additivity of effects and normal distribution of residuals is only an approximation to the distribution of height in human populations. .... However, up until now, no evidence for…
Sounds fine.
If you treat heights as some i.i.d.s, then can use the central limit theorem to argue that in the limit for large samples (we get convergence in distribution) the probability density distribution of the sum of heights expressed as a z-score (mean 0, standard deviation 1) has Gaussian probability density distribution.
But that does not mean that the probability density distribution of heights is Gaussian. Indeed, if include both males and females, then for the density likely get two peaks instead of just one. If also include children, then get a left tail longer than the right one.
So, net, we cannot expect that heights are Gaussian. And we will have a tough time finding a large population that is Gaussian. z-scores in the limit for large samples Gaussian -- sure, can get that. A large population Gaussian, not much chance.
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…
However, I was part of the Retail org between 2018-2020. I strongly back the PIP horror stories here. I don't want to share more details, because I'm still not brave enough to publicly bash an employer on the net. But I want to emphasize what I think others have also mentioned here, which is that, due to Amazon's size, there was definitely no one "Amazon culture" to speak of. The variance between orgs (and sometimes, between teams in the same org) was bafflingly huge.
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> The issue with Amazon is that due to its size, working on a team is essentially like working for a separate company. Not really; esp when the processes and priorities are alike across the company (with exception of few organizations that are experimenting newer processes at any given point in time). > Amazon is the best company for finding that sweet spot of maximizing revenue/actual hour worked. I don't think a si…
How are other companies setup that make them distinct from Amazon?
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No.
Could you elaborate? What do you learn from a success where everything you did went right? How replicable is a success like that?
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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…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/07/17/h...
I also want to point out that a lot ppl who suffered or even lost their lives during such period were actually sabotaged or framed by their peers (neighbors, coworkers), rather than the authority.
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Hold on, 700€ x 215 days worked (you don't count vacation time when freelance) = 150 500. Now, give it half to the taxman, and you're left with 75 250€ / year. And that's without the expenses, extra healthcare coverage, insurance etc. So pretty average when you considering that junior developer salaries are within this reach in EU capitals.
> junior developer salaries are within this reach in EU capitals. Junior developers make 75.000€ after taxes? They make about 50 - 60.000€ BEFORE taxes.