61–70 of 80 posts
Is PIP just an American thing? I don't think they could do it in Europe, right?
So, you are European, and you hire a dev who is clearly not contributing or pulling their weight. Maybe they lied about their experience on their resume. It doesn't matter. What do you do? Just let him coast forever, collecting a paycheck while wasting company resources and dragging the team down?
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So, you are European, and you hire a dev who is clearly not contributing or pulling their weight. Maybe they lied about their experience on their resume. It doesn't matter. What do you do? Just let him coast forever, collecting a paycheck while wasting company resources and dragging the team down?
You know it's possible to fire people in Europe, right?
Amazon had an “anonymous” internal Slack channel where you could discuss pay by using a bot to post on your behalf. It was called #pay-equity and there was another one called #pay-equity-discussion. I’m surprised anyone is crazy enough to try to work through a pip. They give you the choice of trying to work through an impossible, subjective list of requirements or take a severance that’s one month severance for each…
I fought through a PIP once just because I'm a stubborn idiot. Survived the pip and found a new job shortly after. It's not something I would recommend.
It was my second job I had after starting my recovery from “expert beginnerism” where I had been at my second job for nine years.
I knew I had to learn how to place nice with people to get to the next step in my career and I also knew that I could get a job quickly - it was 2014. On top of that there was project I was leading I wanted to finish.
I’m glad I did work through it. It was a great learning experience.
Honestly the focus period at AWS made me step my game up and prepared me for my current architectural leadership position at my current company.
I’ve never had to lead an initiative at this scale before inside a company and they wouldn’t have trusted me to do without AWS on my resume.
Is PIP just an American thing? I don't think they could do it in Europe, right?
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If you're looking for a serious answer, not everyone has the extreme privilege of being as in demand and finding another job quickly, particularly in this economy. People may also have financial situations where they need to hold on to whatever hope they can of a job because it is less scary than taking the money and then taking the leap. I generally agree a company who has pipped you is effectively saying they want…
I worked as an average CRUD developer in Atlanta and first landed at AWS (ProServe) at 46 years old. I never did a coding interview in my entire life and didn’t do one for that job. That was my first job at any company of note. I had only opened the AWS console two years prior. When you get a PIP at Amazon you might as well give up. Would you rather give up $40K+ or $20k 6 weeks later or $7K when your appeal fails. I…
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There are a lot of managers who would never fire someone for what I’ll call “routine underperformance” (to distinguish from harassment, job abandonment, etc.) If a company thinks some non-trivial percentage of the employee population is likely to be underperforming to the extent they should be fired, they probably should implement a URA target (or “rank and yank” or similar). I’m with you in disliking such policies,…
How much damage does a routine underperformer cause vs. creating a very toxic corporate culture where routine underperformers learn that it's easier to slow others down and those same managers now hire underperformers on purpose?
Neither pin is a good place to be.
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You know it's possible to fire people in Europe, right?
If only there was a structured process for that. Maybe we could call it a "performance improvement plan," or PIP for short.
It seems you have accepted that PIPs are just a tool to fire someone but still think calling it a PIP is perfectly logical and desirable to the point that you snarkily suggest that this is what it should be called.
Can anyone at Amazon confirm how PIP works outside the United States? In countries like Japan it would be illegal.
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I worked as an average CRUD developer in Atlanta and first landed at AWS (ProServe) at 46 years old. I never did a coding interview in my entire life and didn’t do one for that job. That was my first job at any company of note. I had only opened the AWS console two years prior. When you get a PIP at Amazon you might as well give up. Would you rather give up $40K+ or $20k 6 weeks later or $7K when your appeal fails. I…
How did you get in without a coding interview? How long was your tenure there, and why were you paid so little compared to new grads? I have a lot of questions sorry.
My specialty is I don’t have a specialty. I can talk to and work with developers and teach them just as easily as I can work with the database folks, operations, etc
They assume you can program at the simple level required by enterprise apps. The questions they have are have you demonstrated being able to do at scale and know how to think on a systems level - security, availability, disaster recover, throughput, etc. I had to walk through my previous system design work.
They also want to know whether you can navigate the complexities of large organizations and you should be just as comfortable talking to CxOs or “the business” as developers.
My interview was all behavioral.
I didn’t say I was paid little compared to new grads. I said new grads five years out of school, I was a mid level consultant. Which was fair. I had only opened the AWS console two years prior and the startups and small IT companies I had been an architect with before had about the overall revenue of one “work stream” in a large enterprise implementation.
I was still making 10% less than an equivalent SDE. I was also working remotely.
Now, after leaving, I’m doing what would be considered L6 level work at my current job (without the L6 level compensation).
There is also a clear road for me to get back to Amazon level pay either at my current company, by changing jobs or if I really wanted to deal with the hassle, going out on my own.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked as an average CRUD developer in Atlanta and first landed at AWS (ProServe) at 46 years old. I never did a coding interview in my entire life and didn’t do one for that job. That was my first job at any company of note. I had only opened the AWS console two years prior. When you get a PIP at Amazon you might as well give up. Would you rather give up $40K+ or $20k 6 weeks later or $7K when your appeal fails. I…
How did you get in without a coding interview? How long was your tenure there, and why were you paid so little compared to new grads? I have a lot of questions sorry.