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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

#401

Post by selectodude »

steveBK123 wrote: post #237
Kon-Peki wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 6-30% are failing year after year after year, you can't blame the interview process. You could blame the leadership failure that didn't fix the interview process, though.

Really it's indicative of Amazon treating their employees as disposable. They have enough employment market power still to attract enough great talent to burn through individuals in 2-3 years. Eventually they run out of meat or they soften the process. Of all the FAANG, I almost admire Amazon for chewing up & disposing of their white collar work force the same way they do their blue collar. The other guys are all pre…

Bezos cut his chops in finance at DE Shaw. That’s how every bank treats their employees.

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

#402

Post by fatnoah »

belval wrote: post #371
linster wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Canadian, “better than Exceeding” sounds like an American construction. I’d imagine the scale to be: 1. Not Meeting Expectations 2. Meeting Expectations 3. Exceeding expectations

It is probably a way to give workers fake kudos without actually giving them anything. A lot of north american modern management theory seems to think that praising your employees is the best way to get them to perform. By telling someone who's good but not great a "You got exceed expectations!!" they'll feel like they are valued.

> It is probably a way to give workers fake kudos without actually giving them anything.

It's actually the opposite. The ratings themselves are associated with multipliers for your annual bonus and stock grants. IIRC, the full spectrum of ratings and multipliers was:

Meets None (0.0) -> Meets Some (0.5) -> Meets Most (0.85) -> Meets (1.0) -> Exceeds (1.25) -> Greatly Exceeds (2.0) -> and Redefines (3.0)

Ignoring the company multiplier, which was always a value slightly greater than 1.0 when I was there (that may not be true now), for a Senior Engineer (L5) with a $175k salary, 15% bonus target, and annual stock grant of $110k vesting over 4 years , the value of the rating to them at each exceeds level would be:

  Exceeds: ~$12k / year 
  Greatly Exceeds:  ~$53k / year
  Redefines: ~$107k / year
The top 2 buckets only account for about 8% or so of employees, but the number for Exceeds was around 20% of employees during my time.

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

#403

Post by hobs »

cornholio wrote: post #282
anyoneamous wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The manager wasn't the one doing the forcing - the overall stack-ranking system was, and the manager was just employing the required level of doublethink to convince themselves the employee was both suitable for firing and also worth trying to retain.

I disagree, this is not some junior manager drinking the company cool aid. They are a middle manager with hundreds of indirect reports - in HR, no less - fully aware of what they're doing and with a metric to hit. So they lined up potential candidates, made them the same deal and tested their level of docility and loyalty to himself. Some of the candidates demurred and they got the boot, the author played the loyalty…

So, good? The employee recognizes that the employer is just screwing around with everyone, seems like a FAFO situation; I hope Amazon has this happen endlessly.

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

#404

Post by jejeyyy77 »

scarface_74 wrote: post #277

My perspective: I was your everyday ordinary CRUD developer in 2020 with leading a few projects under my belt at mostly unknown companies who had two years of AWS experience and was 46 years old. A recruiter from Amazon Retail reached out to me on LinkedIn about interviewing for a software engineering position. At 46 years old there were a number of problems I saw with that “opportunity”: - I hadn’t done a real codin…

lol yeah, I'm not even willing to commute 30 mins to a local office let alone relocate. Maybe for a mid 7 figure pay day.

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

#405

Post by regularfry »

aylmao wrote: post #117
regularfry wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming your last paycheck includes those two weeks, that's (almost certainly, in context) an $X,000 difference in what you walk away with. I could probably stomach hanging around for an extra fortnight even if X was quite small.

I guess it depends. Personally, if it's a job I really dislike, I don't mind losing the extra $X,000. I've discovered through the years my mental health is worth a lot more. Once you leave a high-paying job for one that pays less, or even to just take a break and earn nothing, you start thinking about these sorts of little extras as inconsequential at best. If the next job pays more than the last one, you could say i…

Having the end in sight is a huge factor. Two weeks of just more grind in a terrible job? No thank you. Two weeks of counting down the days until freedom? Definite maybe. But yes, NPV of the first couple of weeks of the next job might be important.

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

#406

Post by benlivengood »

belval wrote: post #371
linster wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Canadian, “better than Exceeding” sounds like an American construction. I’d imagine the scale to be: 1. Not Meeting Expectations 2. Meeting Expectations 3. Exceeding expectations

It is probably a way to give workers fake kudos without actually giving them anything. A lot of north american modern management theory seems to think that praising your employees is the best way to get them to perform. By telling someone who's good but not great a "You got exceed expectations!!" they'll feel like they are valued.

It's a way to correct under-leveling rapidly. Google at least aimed to hire at the level of fully demonstrated and sustainable competency; if there was any doubt you'd be hired at the lower level. That can be corrected in a ~year with greatly exceeds or redefines ratings. There was a bit of step function in yearly raises depending on the rating as well but promotion was a substantial raise.

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

#407

Post by tpolm »

xivzgrev wrote: post #304

Why does anyone choose to work at Amazon? Given all the stories of PIP, it sounds like a not great place to work Go to other fang, or other tech. Lots of companies that pay just as well. Amazon would be my last choice - my job search is going awful, gotten rejected from most big tech companies, and I have well paying Amazon and a long tail of little shit companies that don’t pay that great (think of the equity!!)

Money

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

#408

Post by psunavy03 »

diracs_stache wrote: post #386
psunavy03 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been a Navy officer for 20 years active and reserve, one of the other overlooked flaws of the stack rank is that it's a vehicle for cultivating egos. When the only way up is through many levels of being "1 of X, Early Promote," it's fascinating to watch a bright-eyed humble flight student turn into a condescending jerk of an instructor over the years. Turning the performance review system into "winners" and "l…

As a flight attrite who ended up running a division on something grey, the Navy knocked me down more pegs than I was thought possible. Appreciate the forced opportunities to grow, but there's got to to be some better ways. Sounds like you're doing some good Sir.

I retired at 20 to make my way in my civilian tech career. I looked at the amount of effort you'd need to put into make Captain or above, and the knock-on effects on your civilian career, and said "nope." Tried to do the best I could. One of the best officers I worked with in the reserve dropped on request from helo training due to family issues, and ended up making a career as a support guy for the reserve Naval Special Warfare folks.

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

#409

Post by kjkjadksj »

giantg2 wrote: post #235
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…

One thing about fat that I think is overlooked is how fat today might be muscle tomorrow, and how little companies try to convert it. Maybe a person is in a bad role, on a bad team, or simply doesn't have experience or skills fitting the specific requirements of that single point in time. I've been a high performer in the past. Now I'm a low performer (I'm slow) after the company has changed the way it treats teams/w…

This is just how companies operate today. Burn furniture to heat the place for a quarter. Sell your property to a for profit entity you lease from instead to save a line item today and no doubt get screwed when its time to renegotiate the lease (long after whoever made this decision has left the company I’m sure). Fire staff and rehire instead of retrain. Its all myopic thinking that you’d find in any MBA program sold to you as the best practices in modern business.

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

#410

Post by electrondood »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #381
pyrale wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Meh. Going to a FAANG is like joining an Olympic sports team; it's not a place you'd want to be if you aren't hell bent on going for the gold. The irony is that the pressure cooker works; an unhealthy degree of ambition, competitiveness, and willingness to work their tails off are all assets in the business world. I know a, at least to me, surprising number of people who successfully navigated these environments who…

> Going to a FAANG is like joining an Olympic sports team; it's not a place you'd want to be if you aren't hell bent on going for the gold.

Not according to everyone I know working at a FAANG company. This is mythology. You're at a FAANG because you did the LeetCode grind and passed the interview.

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