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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

#511

Post by Ancalagon »

orwin wrote: post #135
rand_r wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on your perception, x.get is either error recovery (good) or a silent failure (bad). One is not necessarily better than the other; it depends on what you want. In my experience, x[] is usually the better choice because failing fast makes debugging easier. I hope no one is recommending x.get as a general practice, because that is pretty naive.

You're right, but actually... If you're a very junior sw engineer reading this, who hasn't done a lot of python, use x.get(). Almost always, so for you, always. This doesn't apply if you're a scientist or mostly writing small scripts, but if you are doing SWE, always use x.get(). Once you've understood python you can use x[] in limited cases. Never in your unit or functional tests. I code using x[], but later on I re…

Can you explain why?

Non-python dev here.

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

#512

Post by margorczynski »

francisofascii wrote: post #212
pixelmonkey wrote: post #156

Many years ago, when I worked in high finance, it was common knowledge that 3-5% of the staff would be fired every 1-2 years, all at once. This created a lot of tension every time rumours swirled that the "culling" was coming up. But, when you were fired, you were simply given a phone call, out of the blue one day, told to come to an office, and then offered a severance package based on your years of service, and esc…

If you are put on a PIP, at least you have some time to start looking for a new job. The takeaway seems to be, one on a PIP, put all your effort into finding the next job rather than trying to keep your current one.

I guess there's also a chance of someone snapping and doing something bad in bad faith as an act of revenge. Especially that from what I understand PIP/Pivot basically means you're out.

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

#513

Post by creativenolo »

impute wrote: post #477
gangstead wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The manager was probably mad because they wasted a PIP on someone else. From other accounts here I've seen that if your manager gets any inkling that you are leaving they will throw a PIP on you to meet their quota.

So you mean when they resign instead that PIP no longer counts towards the manager's quota and they have to find someone else?

You put the people leaving or who have left down as the low performers over the quarter. You have your quota of low performers. No pip show required.

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

#514

Post by whynot-123 »

Ancalagon wrote: post #508
shivtherust wrote: post #444

A certain Y Combinator startup (two-sided labor marketplace in healthcare and nursing homes) requires that its frontline managers PIP or fire at least half of their team each year and sometimes more frequently. "If you're average, why are you here." And the managers do because they are terrified about losing their jobs. It has one of the worst cultures, and code bases, in the world, because nobody knows how things wo…

clipboard? edit: can we just say the company names, this site is anonymous lmao

that would make sense - they've reached out to me frequently over the years - seemed a bit desperate. Stopped the interview process the first time after learning what their PM salaries across a couple of levels were from an acquaintance who had recently interviewed there and realized they didn't value engineer's time.

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

#515

Post by anyoneamous »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #420
anyoneamous wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it just a big power play that keeps rolling in the expectation of bottomless/infinite talenent and pepetual inflow/attrition? This has always been my interpretation. The "everybody is replaceable" mindset comes from Amazon retail warehouses, and bled into the rest of the company.

Even Bezos?

"Everybody" meaning "the normie plebs who work for a living".

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

#516

Post by rescbr »

Arelius wrote: post #421
closeparen wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> And if you get removed. Not able to apply to return.

Having been past the PIP/Pivot process, certainly I don't want to return.

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

#517

Post by Aurornis »

tanjtanjtanj wrote: post #469
Aurornis wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> here are industries & companies that have grown fat & lazy and could use a few annual 6% culls, but you eventually run out of fat. I've worked on many high-performing teams where you couldn't find 6%, or 1-in-18 of people who shouldn't be there. However, I've never worked for an entire fast growing company where I couldn't readily pick out 1-in-18 people who were clearly underperforming and everyone knew it. Hiring…

If you work for a company that lays off 6% of the "fat" every year and then still continues to have 6+% of the company considered "fat" then the issue isn't the 6% of the people, it's the structure, culture, and practices of the company.

> If you work for a company that lays off 6% of the "fat" every year and then still continues to have 6+% of the company considered "fat"

Most tech companies I've worked for in the past years have had about 30-40% new people every year through a combination of natural turnover and growth.

You're right that if a company never grows and nobody ever leaves yet they still try to isolate 6% to fire every year, that's a bad practice.

However, nobody gets hiring perfectly right. When you're hiring hundreds of people every year into a department, you're going to get a couple people who don't work out.

I think people on HN get nervous around these discussions because they imagine companies as static collections of individuals, but at a high growth company you actually have a lot of new people coming through all the time.

It's also bad when companies never fire anyone. If you just let everyone stay until they quit, you accumulate a lot of people who aren't working out while their high performing coworkers get frustrated and leave. I've seen this situation too and it's not good.

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

#518

Post by mattkrause »

mk67 wrote: post #79
aestetix wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I chose the example I have experience with. I don't have experience with other EU countries, so I can't comment on those. I also don't have experience with massive large companies, so maybe this is a problem of scale rather than culture. Although it does seem like smaller American companies have the same problems.

When I interviewed at IBM in Germany in the late 00s I was rejected and got crystal clear feedback on why - and that is a big American company in Germany.

Same but in the US (NYC) -- and I've thought a little better of them ever since!

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

#519

Post by rad_gruchalski »

giantg2 wrote: post #346
away271828 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've absoluttely been in a position where the ground moved under me. I went from doing (based on evaluations, RSUs, etc.) from doing a very good job to bouncing around a bunch of managers and groups in roles that I wasn't really suited for and didn't have much real interest in. The only saving grace was that I was pretty close to semi-retiring anyway.

I've been bouncing for about 5 years. Have about another 20 to go. Not sure how I'm going to handle that.

Consider a different job, and pick up some responsibilities.

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

#520

Post by pvtmert »

xyzelement wrote: post #438

I never worked at Amazon, but I did work at other companies known for toughness and "places you can get fired from" - most notably Bridgewater (from where I did get fired...) These places are not for everyone, but there are very good reasons why people consciously join a place with an "elevated risk of a PIP." Most notably, these places execute very well. Amazon is crushing it in vastly unrelated fields from Retail t…

> Amazon has chosen letting good people go

I work at Amazon and I can tell that it depends on the organization and politics.

Of course nobody is untouchable when it comes to the layoffs, but quite many people have made their spot pretty much resistant to firing. They are crucial for business to continue. (Again, maybe my organization)

Also, it is very common at Amazon; Nobody is doing the job they are hired for. As a developer, you are responsible for anything and everything. Management only deals with PIP and crunching out weekly/monthly/quarterly documents where their management doesn't give a damn about except the summary part.

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