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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

#491

Post by jiveturkey »

linster wrote: post #348
fatnoah wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. FWIW, when I was a manager at a FAANG, the numbers were closer to: Underperforming: ~12% Meeting or Exceeding: ~80% Better than exceeding: ~8% As for my own anecdata, for the roughly 100…

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's a bit logarithmic. the upper end needs to be 1% 0.1% 0.01%, for the same kind of reasons we went from "MTS" to staff, sr staff, principal, distinguised, fellow.

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

#492

Post by ochronus »

vasco wrote: post #369
ochronus wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes I agree it does does 2 things, but remember my argument was to qualify that in the cases I mentioned I didn't think a PIP was passable. It doesn't mean you don't still have to do it, and yes, I guess in some extreme cases this raising of the stakes could be the thing that finally makes it "click" for the person that this is important. I just have seen enough PIPs and their pass-rates over a few years that I doubt…

I appreciate the context, and I definitely wasn't trying to say you're not right with your experience! We simply seem to have different experiences, I probably got luckier a bit.

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

#493

Post by Cheezewheel »

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…

It is naive to even imply that being a hard worker is going to insulate you from getting culled or laid off.

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

#494

Post by nerdbert »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #246
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.

How can they be maintaining these completely antithetitical interests, like wjy do they want to arbitrarily fire the person at all if they have already evaluated that person to be worthy of retention? Why is this even on the table in the absence of any failure to meet whatever metrics? Is it just a big power play that keeps rolling in the expectation of bottomless/infinite talenent and pepetual inflow/attrition?

I assume there are different competing priorities at play that converge in particularly dumb ways sometimes.

Some stakeholders latched onto the idea of churning some % of staff each year in an effort to, I guess, eventually filter the entire human population for the best possible employees.

Some people want to make it look like their HR team is doing a lot of useful stuff.

Some people want to boost their own department's metrics.

Some people want to work with a team to achieve actual business goals.

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

#495

Post by geodel »

marcus0x62 wrote: post #315
steveBK123 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Amazon's only management stick is to mark 30% underperforms & cull 6% every year, then they need to send their managers to manager school.

Their stated goal is for each person they hire on a team to be better than 50% of their peers. For a company that professes to think a lot about the long term, I'd suggest they need to go to math school before they go to manager school.

Well you are right. But reality here is company is printing boat load of money with their cloud infra monopoly. So what to do? Blabber non sensical bullshit that no one will question because again everyone is making money and if they are so smart to challenge leadership dictates why wouldn't they just leave and apply their ideas some place else that needs them.

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

#496

Post by pyrale »

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

I guess, if the discipline is corruption. My company doesn't feel the need to tell me how to avoid discussing sensible topics with my teammates on group chat.

Yeah, because technical merit isn't the only way you get ranked in the stack. For instance, would you say no to an ethically questionable order if you're on a PIP?

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

#497

Post by steveBK123 »

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…

Tts almost the opposite. Olympics has a bunch of objective measures of performance. For individual sports its winning, for team sports theres various scoring/assist/defense/etc metrics that can be used.. plus if your team wins.

In tech, good luck. It's all vibes.

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

#500

Post by Firmwarrior »

capableweb wrote: post #488
Firmwarrior wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you need to go touch grass, or at least check out some real numbers and think about them https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/berlin-... https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/san-fra... How many years are you going to have to save up to retire at $240k/year vs $80k/year, do you think? Would you rather grind 10 months a year until you're too old to do anything but sit around and…

> How many years are you going to have to save up to retire at $240k/year vs $80k/year, do you think? Would you rather grind 10 months a year until you're too old to do anything but sit around and watch TV, or would you rather grind 12 months a year for 5-10 years and then do whatever you want for the rest of your life? This is the mindset difference I'm telling you about. The rest of us don't want to "grind" at all,…

You're going into a bad, boring place for 8 hours a day. You're pissing away your precious time on earth while lying to yourself that it's a "balance" and you're happy about it.
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