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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

#451

Post by JohnFen »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #431
JohnFen wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I did a DiSC (corporate Myers-Briggs-esque personality test) assessment and dominance was listed as one of the core motivators for people. I'm not sure I actually believe that; it feels like that was retconned into truth so it'd get past the decision-makers who may actually have that tendency. But maybe it is! However, on the bright side, it is kind of nice that FAANG attracts the type of people who actually think th…

I do appreciate that FAANG companies are a bit like fly traps, collecting those sorts of people somewhere else so I don't have to work with them personally.

But understand, I am not asserting that FAANG companies are places nobody wants to work. I'm asserting that they are places I am not willing to work at. It's because I would be utterly miserable in that sort of working environment, and there is no amount of compensation that could make that tolerable to me.

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

#452

Post by scarface_74 »

dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #435
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…

So no leetcode if you join AWS Professional Services?

ProServe has different specialities - security, DevOps, mainframe migration, call centers (AWS Connect), ops, migrations etc.

Not all of the specialties require coding. Mine happens to be “application modernization”. Which really means that I had no specialty and that I could meld application development/architecture with cloud technology and jump into anything if needed on a high level and bring in specialists when needed.

There are some areas of AWS where I was really good and one specific niche where I’m objectively the best in the industry when it comes to automating a very complicated service - I worked with the service team to beta test the APIs and I did and open sourced the reference implementation around it.

My interview process was all behavioral. The “system design” portion was my walking through real world implementations I did and explaining choices and tradeoffs. Heck one of the interviews I spent the entire time discussing an earlier Hashicorp Nomad/Consul and Mongo based Master Data Model project that had nothing to do with AWS.

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

#453

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

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?

That's an interesting question camouflaged as a boring question.

The assumption is that though interview processes are acknowledged as imperfect, they're largely considered to measure something like productivity or worker value.

Under that assumption, then it should be exceedingly difficult to "cheat" the interviews such that a person could do great at an interview, and be of low "worker value". Not impossible, but difficult. And I'm just pulling stuff out of my ass here, but if we were to do a survey here on HN, the most likely consensus on how difficult that is would be something like "it's actually more difficult to fake it in the interview than to just be good enough at what you say you're good at".

Imagine if you were one of the fastest sprinters in the world, but to be "hired on" to the Olympic team they decided to interview you for it. Sure, they'd probably ask in the interview what your latest 100M times were, stuff like that, but after the interview they'd all talk privately about whether or not you were a good "culture fit", and whether your smile was sincere or fake, whether you were too nervous or smooth and a "real go-getter". In such an environment, the Olympic team might well have 30% of its members that could be safely culled. The only jobs interviewing is even a good process for are those jobs where the actual work itself resembles interviewing... sales positions, PR, being the "public face" of an organization (news anchors, I dunno). The reason we use interviewing for technology jobs is because that's what the big bosses know works for their jobs, a CEO is the public face of the organization.

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

#454

Post by scarface_74 »

jejeyyy77 wrote: post #404
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.

At this point in my life, I can honestly say there is no realistic amount of money I’m willing to give up for my lifestyle.

It’s not my dream to make a lot of money. It’s my dream to do exactly what my wife and I are doing right now:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36767599

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

#455

Post by JohnFen »

callalex wrote: post #445
englishspot wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised it hasn't spilled over to the rest of the industry, unlike their hiring practices.

It has. I went through this exact same PIP process with subjective improvement goals at Twilio. It was extremely stressful and I met all the goals but got fired anyway. In hindsight it was just a layoff.

I've never been through a PIP, but based on what I've seen with people who have, if I were put on a PIP that would be a strong signal that I'm not wanted there, so I'd just quit and save everyone the aggravation.

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

#456

Post by closeparen »

roncesvalles wrote: post #324
scarface_74 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>CS grad >time and motivation to grind >pass an interview Let's be honest, what more are we looking for?

Ability to deliver the projects? Be a pleasant, reliable collaborator? Teach, learn, critique, take feedback, adapt?

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

#457

Post by pierat »

commandlinefan wrote: post #305
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…

My ancestors were coal miners in Tennessee. They tried to reason with their employers for a long time to establish reasonable working conditions. When it became clear that their employers were not going to listen to reason, they found other ways to establish reasonable working conditions.

Well, yes. And lets expand that.

The coal miners' solution was to get a bunch of guns and/or gasoline, and either pump bullets in the bosses' house, or to torch it with gasoline. Usually both.

That was responded to by bringing in the Pinkertons (private military), along with the US military. These got horrifically bloody.

And it got to a point, that by the 1920's, the USA had a strong representation of US Communist Party. 1927 really cemented that they were right in the long run. However, FDR sold the Communists out with "labor reforms" that paled in comparison to what the Communists wanted.

Now, FDR's reforms lasted until the late 60's and 70's. Capital was able to get enough property and money, that they ended up *buying* the governmental reforms one politician at a time.

Well, perhaps heads will have to roll again, to reset Capital. They're not going to willingly cede property/money/power. And this time, they bought government. And it's obvious that the NLRB and the DoL is going to do diddly. But whatever it is, I hope it's peaceful. But knowing labor history through the ages and US specifically, it will be anything but.

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

#459

Post by ZoomerCretin »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #185

We should normalize tech companies vesting monthly. Everything else is a scam to pretend like you have good wages when you really don't. I get at startups - there's some artificial need to keep the number of people on the cap table low. I'm not sure why one of the cap lines can't be "EMPLOYEE EQUITY" which is a company (like a VC company) where the shares are distributed by that company to the employees in accordance…

I think Amazon's 4-year vesting schedule is 5%/15%/40%/40%, so monthly vesting wouldn't help much.

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

#460

Post by Terr_ »

throwrhpip wrote: post #419
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…

I was put on a PIP at Red Hat that was quite farcical and very much about personality disconnects between myself and my manager (and made much more annoying by the fact that he had told me before the PIP that multiple other managers had let him know that they would be interested in me being on their team if I was looking for something different - instead he went the PIP route). There was room for improvement (isn't t…

Oof. I wonder if the outcome could have been different if someone from legal had been on the line. Hostile work environment, constructive dismissal, etc.
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