Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 618 posts

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#161

Post by CalRobert »

orwin wrote: post #135
rand_r wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on your perception, x.get is either error recovery (good) or a silent failure (bad). One is not necessarily better than the other; it depends on what you want. In my experience, x[] is usually the better choice because failing fast makes debugging easier. I hope no one is recommending x.get as a general practice, because that is pretty naive.

You're right, but actually... If you're a very junior sw engineer reading this, who hasn't done a lot of python, use x.get(). Almost always, so for you, always. This doesn't apply if you're a scientist or mostly writing small scripts, but if you are doing SWE, always use x.get(). Once you've understood python you can use x[] in limited cases. Never in your unit or functional tests. I code using x[], but later on I re…

For what it's worth, I only use x.get when having a missing key is a normal and expected part of the process. If I need to be able to expect a key to be in the dict then I'll use x[] so I can get a useful exception for debugging. Though really, this should only happen with validated inputs, and as Python adopts more type hinting dealing with this should get easier over time.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#162

Post by hotpotamus »

aylmao wrote: post #97
gumballindie wrote: post #60

The mindset is that you can always find new factory floor operators to push buttons on keyboards and operate ci/cd pipeline interfaces. Software "engineering" is the new factory work. To be automated soon so y'all can be freed to work on important things.

> Software "engineering" is the new factory work. I always found interesting how this has always been true, but a lot of people seemed to not notice, behind the high-pay and benefits of past. Software engineering has always been just labour. Relatively scarce labour, but we were never "in control".

I’ve been telling people on this forum for years that when Jeff Bezos looks down at them from on high (literally from space at one point), he sees them as barely differentiated units of labor. The talk about passion and innovation quickly struck me as just another part of a system to keep employees from thinking too hard about what the job really entails.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#163

Post by fusslo »

intunderflow wrote: post #59

> My manager was super mad and asked me when I was leaving. I said two weeks. Serious question for Americans as maybe this is cultural: They're an at-will employee, seemed to already have a new job lined up and the company seemed to have burned all goodwill with them, why not resign effective immediately?

You can, and I have, but it's customary for 2 weeks so there is time for finishing tasks, writing docs, performing knowledge dumps, etc. I've left a toxic job effective immediately. But, if it's an "ok" job that I'm leaving, giving 2 weeks is a good way to keep a positive relationship. I've left just for more money, or to have a shorter commute. In which case, I'd like to keep a positive relationship with those companies in case I ever want to go back. Not giving 2 weeks is a red flag for our HR friends

Also, as an employee, those two weeks are easy-street. Leaving early and long lunches are the norm.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#164

Post by nemo44x »

Although I think mandatory rankings and assuming the bottom x% should be exited isn’t great approach, I also don’t think it’s a company or managers job to coach you into being a productive employee.

Yes, they should have direct feedback but overall you are expected to be a professional. This means you are accountable for your work - you do what you say you will. That you express concern early and not late in the process. That you deliver quality outputs that your peers respect. That you assimilate to team culture and participate it and that you are a net positive to morale - your team wants to work with you.

Managers lay out expectations but they aren’t babysitters. Not all managers are good of course. A good one should be able to nudge you back on course and build a rapport, but they can’t be expected to make you a professional.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#166

Post by FirmwareBurner »

boffinAudio wrote: post #160
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I have asked, and only got ghosted. Even by Austria's biggest telecom company in Vienna too ;) 90% of the time the feedback is "sorry, we can't move forward because we have better candidates in the pipeline" and asking for details leaves you ghosted. You probably live in a different Austria. Or maybe because I'm a foreigner with dark skin :)

Well, I live in Vienna and have never had an issue with getting good feedback on why I didn't pass an interview - except from Qualcomm, who responded "we have no comment on the interview process, we just didn't feel it was a good fit", which actually just made me feel relieved to have not passed their criteria. Never been ghosted, either. So I dunno, our subjective experiences differ. I'm also a foreigner, but maybe…

It could also be the cultural differences between companies that are engineering driven first, versus companies that are primary sales/management/consulting driven first and the engineering part is a distant second.

And the likes of QCOM and all these international big-tech pay so much above the low Austrian market rates, that they can afford to treat candidates as disposable commodities as they have virtually unlimited applicants, so it could be a problem of scale besides the culture and liability concerns.

>What I have found is that Austrian companies will interview you even if they don't intend to hire anyone for the position

But how could you tell they weren't intending to hire anyone when interviewing you? I doubt they straight up told you that. :)

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#167

Post by suoduandao3 »

andybak wrote: post #73
bsenftner wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How Amazon's behavior here, clearly mandated as official corporate policy, is not an instant class action lawsuit demonstrates how far we are in our "late stage capitalism" and economic slaves, not free, not by half.

> demonstrates how far we are in our "late stage capitalism" and economic slaves, not free, not by half. I'm not sure what earlier periods of history you're comparing it to that were utopian in comparison but I am fairly certain they were pretty limited in range both geographically and temporally.

There was a brief moment in North America where almost every worker belonged to a union but employers hadn't figured out offshoring yet. The adjustment definitely was hard on American workers, but the fact that it came with a huge benefit to developing country workers is conspicuously overlooked by most of the 'late stage capitalism' narrative.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#168

Post by OnACoffeeBreak »

capableweb wrote: post #68
intunderflow wrote: post #59

> My manager was super mad and asked me when I was leaving. I said two weeks. Serious question for Americans as maybe this is cultural: They're an at-will employee, seemed to already have a new job lined up and the company seemed to have burned all goodwill with them, why not resign effective immediately?

That's like a cultural quirk they have over there, where even though it's not stipulated by law, people need to stay at the place they're leaving for two weeks, no matter what, otherwise the optics are really bad, for whatever reason. But it only works one way, if you get fired you usually get fired immediately, no two weeks to find something else. In my mind, it just looks like employees have been getting the short…

Oftentimes companies that lay employees off (i.e. fire them) offer a severance package where the company continues to pay your salary and offer some benefits for a period of time after you no longer work for them. Just like the two-week notice, it is not mandatory where I live in the US. I just wanted to highlight that a company paying severance as a reciprocal perk to the employee giving a two-week notice.

Of course, severance is not universal, but, in my experience in the tech sector, having survived five lay offs at three companies and having been laid off once myself, it has been the case.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#169

Post by jeremiahbuckley »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #87
capableweb wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the person interviewed is lying then, you claim? Inflating the number? > I got to the point where they offered me a job, and I was going to quit. But I had a huge stock investment coming up. So there was no way I was going to rock the boat in any way, shape, or form just trying to get to this date. > If you walked away during the Pivot or anytime before you had your investment before it was there for you, you woul…

No, she isn't necessarily lying but just making it seem as if she would have received $200K over a single vest while it would have likely happened over at least 2 years and 4 vests. I have £110K coming up if I look on the stock portal, but it's over the next two years, so 25K at a time, and I don't consider it as money I already have.

Good eye, and accurate original observation.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#170

Post by mlac »

saiadarsh99 wrote: post #134
murphyslaw wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the job offers: at Cisco they have (or had) only 6 months to fill a "req", i.e. the permission to hire someone. If not filled by then the req got taken away. So what you do is, you find someone, then open the req, then wait a while and hire the person you already selected. Internal hiring websites are for show only.

> If not filled by then the req got taken away. I've known teams that badly need junior devs, but the req can't be approved due to a lack of the business unit's budget. Hikes, promos — all depend on the budget. Flawed.

I’m not sure I follow - if there is no budget to hire a junior dev, or hiring a junior dev would further lose the company money, why would a company do that?

A company can’t give promotions and hire new people if it isn’t a profitable thing to do.

Post reply on HN