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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

#421

Post by Arelius »

closeparen wrote: post #368
steveBK123 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed that what is left unsaid in a lot of performance conversations is the person-role match. Someone isn't a high/low performer globally, just at that time in that role. Wall St firms I have worked at typically try to find different roles for people before marking them as at risk of a layoff. Not sure FAANG behaves the same, but from all these PIP discussions it seems not.

Leadership was asked why not find new roles for people getting laid off due to project cancellations at a time when we were still hiring like crazy in the immediate run-up and aftermath. The response was “we need to move fast.” They encouraged those laid off to apply for open roles. But of course it read to employees as a monumental “fuck you.”

Well, but to mention that once, at least at amazon, you enter the pip processs. You are no longer able to move teams. And if you get removed. Not able to apply to return.

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

#422

Post by fatherzine »

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…

The point is to instill fear through humiliation. Bonus if you quit on your own, so they don't have to pay severance.

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

#423

Post by Arainach »

steveBK123 wrote: post #228
philipwhiuk wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have a very competitive interview process and high compensation to attract the best talent It's a big assumption that the competitive interview process is sufficient to identify only the top talent. Every other week News@YC has posts complaining that every type of interview process doesn't identify talent well.

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?

Obviously this depends on the company, but after 15 years at multiple FAANG, I'm leaning towards no. It might have been true at 2010-era Microsoft but the painful transition where they fired all the SDETs got rid of most of the people who "made it through" and after that I never felt this to be the case.

Google, for instance, has a slow tedious hiring process with a lot of false negatives, but in my experience those who made it through were absolutely qualified and great to work with. There certainly wasn't 30% to cull. In my opinion there wasn't even enough people to fill the percentage quota that need to be given ratings lower than satisfactory - before the layoffs. After them, the fact that they're still enforcing these quotas on teams is absurd cruelty that kills morale.

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

#424

Post by coin »

JohnFen wrote: post #338
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.

This sort of thing is one of the big reasons why I would never work for a FAANG company. I prefer to work at a place that encourages good work rather than a weird cutthroat arena combat thing.

Not all FAANG are like this. Google and Apple are known for being easy going. This of course depends on the team.

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

#425

Post by zug_zug »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #146
intunderflow wrote: post #58

I've heard so many terrible stories about working at Amazon that I'm not sure I would ever work there, both in the media and from friends who were severely mistreated. It's a shame, because some of the tech they work on (like S3) is super interesting and high scale, but I do not want to acquire a mental health crisis from work.

That's the draw for me. Now that I've adequately licked my wounds from a life where I just never quite had the stability I needed (and got that stability too ofc), I now really want to work for Amazon just to see how hard I can push myself. I've told my wife the current plan is, once she has her degree finished, I'm going to crowbar my way into one of their software engineering departments by any means necessary.

Seems like a weird way to push yourself.

Like what if it turns out you join a team that ranks you more based on politics/caste/luck than any sort of talent or motivation and you just feel trapped in a weird game?

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

#426

Post by yodsanklai »

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…

> 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's no contradiction. No interview process can avoid low performers. There will always be unmotivated people, people who are difficult to work with and so on...

But yes, this isn't cool, but at least, people working there have very high compensation and know it's a competitive environment.

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

#427

Post by steveBK123 »

ep103 wrote: post #337
JackFr wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have posted this before, an argument in defense of stack ranking I had heard from a friend's father who was a long-time manager for a large industrial conglomerate from the 60's through the 80's. Simply put it was that they were far more willing to hire non-standard candidates on gut and hunches, knowing that if it didn't work out, it didn't work out they would be gone in 1-1.5 years and it would not be a ding agai…

Stack Ranking was pioneered by Jack Welch who was operating in an environment where labor was the dominant party in the labor-capital relationship, and he was taking over companies that had had decades of labor growth and power while capital was stagflating nationwide. Introducing stack ranking was a way of trimming excess fat from decades of build up within companies, while reasserting capital in the relationship wi…

Jack Welch also mostly made his mark by juicing earnings via both financializing the whole company going into the GFC, and by doing various forms of (probably illegal then, definitely now) accounting tricks to smooth earnings to always make his number.

GE was run into the ground by his tenure.

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

#429

Post by mjr00 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #411
mjr00 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Management actually needs to do what they get the big bucks for and make strategic decisions about what business lines do/don't need to be staffed rather than culling arbitrary %s everywhere. The performance management process and 4-6% "unregretted attrition" (to use the technical term) target at Amazon is totally independent from figuring out project resourcing and headcounts. An employee who is fired for performa…

Yes, that is my point. Past a few iterations, there is not a lot of value in doing this company wide over and over.. versus making hard big picture decisions on resourcing departments properly.

I don't understand what you mean. The 4-6% URA target is for continually managing out low performing employees. It may not be the most effective way, but that is the intent. It has nothing to do with resourcing departments properly; that's a totally different process and conversation.

Again, I think you are confusing layoffs, which are a reduction in headcount for a department/team, with attrition, where the people themselves are let go but the headcount remains so you can hire to replace them.

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

#430

Post by PeterisP »

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.

Doesn't it depend on the state?
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