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

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

#291

Post by pyrale »

steveBK123 wrote: post #204

One underlying problem with these PIP type programs at FAANG seems to be that they have very high barriers to entry in the interview process, and then act like 30% of the company is underperforming and subject to an annual 6% cull. There are industries & companies that have grown fat & lazy and could use a few annual 6% culls, but you eventually run out of fat. If you have a very competitive interview process and hig…

You're mistaken in that you believe that the goal of culls is to cut underperformers. Stack ranking doesn't assess performance, it checks whether you're willing to do a little more to be ahead of your peers.

The real goal of culls is to motivate people to work more, to be more accessible to their managers' requests, etc. so they make it "to the next round". It's a pressure tool, not a performance control tool.

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

#292

Post by scarface_74 »

jzb wrote: post #239
ballenf wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In earlier times, they'd just fire you without any kind of PIP process. Are you saying that PIP vs. immediate firing is worse?

Generally yes. Being PIP'ed or otherwise softly managed out is worse than being immediately fired. Being fired: Happens quickly, they either give you a reason or tell you "your position has been eliminated." Sucks, but rips the Band Aid off and done is done. PIP: I've seen this happen to good and bad employees. Bad employees - it just drags out the process and provides a lot of friction and anguish, for the manager a…

I went through the process there. The process gave me months to prepare for another job and by the time the official PIP happened, I was more or less waiting on it to get my severance.

I could have quit anytime during the process and had other opportunities waiting for me. I was offered another job before my 10 days of paid time off elapsed let alone my 3+ months severance and I survived through a vesting event.

At almost 50 years old and Amazon being my 8th job out of now nine, why would I wrap my esteem on my job? It was just my 8th time to exchange labor for money to support my addiction to food and shelter.

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

#294

Post by badpun »

steveBK123 wrote: post #204

One underlying problem with these PIP type programs at FAANG seems to be that they have very high barriers to entry in the interview process, and then act like 30% of the company is underperforming and subject to an annual 6% cull. There are industries & companies that have grown fat & lazy and could use a few annual 6% culls, but you eventually run out of fat. If you have a very competitive interview process and hig…

There’s plenty of people who lose motivation to work hard and want to just coast while taking very high salary. Happens in professional sports teams, happens in tech.

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

#295

Post by me_me_me »

aestetix wrote: post #54
me_me_me wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PIPs (at least in europe) are a way for company to prove employee was fired because they are incompetent. We tried to help employee X, see the paperwork? But they are not good enough. Its a system to shield company from local laws and lawsuits. Its not a sign of cowardliness or incompetence. Its cold calculation and foolproof process, that on scale protects corpo from multi-million settlements I have only heard secon…

But the point is, would a similar employee who made a good faith effort be able to graduate out of the PIP? If you give an employee guardrails for success and they flounder anyways, then it seems the employee was not a good fit for the role. It says more about the employee than the process.

I would say it depends, if employee was set to be fired - there is nothing that they could do to avoid it, decision was made to downsize team, or they were assholes, had personal clashes with leaders etc.

There are probably cases where pip is used to give a good person who is slipping a kick. That was probably initiated by their manager to motivate them back on track. However, a good manager would have a serious talk with that employee, rather than use formal HR process.

So thats why (I think) pip is mostly used to get rid of people.

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

#296

Post by Firmwarrior »

scarface_74 wrote: post #256
steveBK123 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, some people interview better than they work, and vice versa. But do a huge flood of bad employees really make it through these very difficult gates and merit 30% of employees being marked underperformers every year?

Do you realize how relatively easy it is for a CS grad with time and motivation to “grind leetCode” enough to pass an interview at Amazon? I didn’t go into AWS as a developer. I worked there in Professional Services. I shadowed a few coding interviews and conducted a few system design interviews of software devs while there.

The problem is that forced attrition doesn't create a dynamic, competitive environment full of go-getters. It creates an environment full of treacherous bums who work as little as possible, and spend all of their efforts making sure they look good and don't take the blame for any failures.

You can see the results of this in Amazon's consistently poor companywide performance in every arena. They're even managing to lose ground to Microsoft in cloud computing. It's pathetic.

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

#297

Post by M2Ys4U »

aestetix wrote: post #11

This seems common in American companies. I wonder how much of this is a result of lawsuit culture. For example, American companies won't tell job applicants why they get rejected, lest they get sued by the rejected candidates. And perhaps this has carried into feedback for actual employees. It sounds like the author wasn't even he was on a performance improvement plan, he had to infer it and pull it out of his manage…

>I wonder how much of this is a result of lawsuit culture

Or a lack of union protection.

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

#298

Post by coredog64 »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #46
unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #16

> 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. So the employer has a financial inventive program to encourage people to stay in the organization long term, and some hyper-rational VP repurposes that reward as a kind of tenure cliff forcing people out just ahead of it? All the pieces are in the article, just wa…

Amazon's stock vesting schedule is 5% - 15% - 40% - 40%, so you're not new anymore by the time you reach any significant number of stocks vesting.

The last two 40% chunks vest at 6 month intervals. Amazon’s RSU comp also vests in 6 month intervals (May and November). If you’re in year 3, you could be waiting on a vest that includes signing bonus comp and regular comp RSUs.

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

#299

Post by lmz »

underdeserver wrote: post #268
djha-skin wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about liability management I think. The company can show a judge that "they did all they can" while like the same time gathering a paper trail on the employee.

In the US, at least, you don't have to show a judge anything.

Unless the employee sues you, which is discouraged by practices like these.

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

#300

Post by ochronus »

vasco wrote: post #281
ochronus wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, having been on both sides of PIPs. Not all PIP reasons are about not being a certain level of engineer. Sometimes it's about behaviors or the lack of them. In some cases, the forcing function of a strict timeline with high stakes attached is what people need. Usually not, but sometimes yes. Anyway, it's a tool that's to be used as a last resort, 99% of performance cases should have a much lighter solution…

If you told them clearly about the behaviors and you need to start a PIP, I assume you took a few weeks to tell them and waited at least a few more weeks until you started the PIP, and if the behavior kept going for all this time, again, I can't see how the PIP will help anything other than being "this is what we do before we fire someone".

The PIP does two important things:

1. Raises the stakes

2. Involves a 3rd party (yes, yes, we can argue that HR is not your friend, etc.), which _can_ help with the trust (it's not just you & me anymore, you not knowing how I twist my story of you)

I get all the skepticism. I simply have different experience.

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