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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

#531

Post by ClumsyPilot »

moate wrote: post #357
IKantRead wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way and would also never work at a FAANG. That said, I suspect this is would be viewed as a benefit of the process since I'm fairly confident Amazon and the like don't want people who feel this way working for them regardless of the talent of those individual people.

Exactly this. “Are you willing to kill another human? No? Sorry, there’s no place for you in the infantry”

The question should be the other way round, is there a place for them in civilised society.

Maybe their executives should stick to peeing in bottles.

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

#532

Post by ClumsyPilot »

landemva wrote: post #490
pierat wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 P…

There was serious labor abuse in past years, and capital doesn't have as much power in the new info-WFH-open source economy. Mineral rights and office space and expensive yearly software support contracts are gone. Stop waiting on government regulators for action on white collar issues.

> capital doesn't have as much power in the new info-WFH-open source economy

Seriously? 30% of the population believes whateber chatgt-bot tells them is true on twitter

> Stop waiting on government regulators for action

I think the key is that there is likely to be violence. Look at how clinate protesters are treated.

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

#533

Post by 93po »

scarface_74 wrote: post #485
93po wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this feels like I'm diminishing your accomplishments, but it's nice to hear your advancement out of CRUD development in your 40s. I'm mid 30s now and have always struggled to get out of this web development rut and jobs that pay $100k despite having 8+ years experience (which is admittedly lackluster) and multiple senior titles.

No not insulted at all. I am very transparent about my career here and on Reddit (same username) about my career. I’ve also talked about how I transitioned. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37446115 It was because of a manager who was “irrationally benevolent” who I’m still friends with now.

Thanks for link - it sounds like you had some good non-CRUD experience to be able to discuss that intelligently with him.

Honestly I wish I could find a place to work where I felt like I was friends with people there. I've never had a coworker that was a friend :( But I also work at pretty small companies and they've tended to not have great culture. I'd take a $100k coding job there

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

#534

Post by ClumsyPilot »

leetcode5ucks07 wrote: post #360
steveBK123 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I can tell you Indian new graduates interview very well. They grind years on these DSA puzzles. But have very little engineering knowledge or skill in general. It's all about gaming the system here. I have literally seen people justifying lying on the resume, by feeding the job description to ChatGPT and let it come up with a resume. Yet, there's not much influential software coming out of India, where leetcode hards…

> have literally seen people justifying lying on the resume

> prolific open source contributors...struggling to get a job

The market selects the best, if it's best at lying, who are we to tell the invisible hand that it's wrong? /s

I've seen environments where a certain amount of manipulating the truth is expected. Individuals eventually figure out what's expected of them.

You know it's not the truth, they know it's not the truth, and you know they know.

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

#535

Post by gangstead »

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?

Yes. In the story it sounds like they talked their manager out of putting them on Pivot (aka PIP):

> I wasn't put on Pivot. My manager wanted to work with me a little bit to see if I was going to commit to the job. So they sat me down and said I could go on Pivot and leave right away, or they would work with me

So the manager probably put someone else on Pivot to meet their quota and when the author left now they are down two people. If they knew the author was leaving they would have ranked them dead last, put on PIP, and then part of their quota is met.

Also this quote shows the farce that Pivot is. It sounds like the manager did a PIP-before-the-PIP because they actually wanted them to stay and Pivot is just CYA performance for someone on the way out.

I've never worked at Amazon but people talk about Pivot coming with severance, but the author chose to leave for free. Maybe there's some disadvantage to accepting the severance? Not eligible for future rehire if you accept? Maybe it's just too hard to time getting a new job right at the conclusion of the PIP?

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

#536

Post by scarface_74 »

geodel wrote: post #489
scarface_74 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have the scale of Amazon, you don’t need a lot of go getters. Just a relatively few and a lot of grunts. One CS leetCode grinder at the L5 level is replaceable with another.

I think this is really important point. Somehow lot of folks are missing it. As if each engineer is responsible for launching a new Amazon service every year. I have heard and met many current Amazon software engineer. Most of their job description sound rather crappy routine work even for me earning 1/3rd salary of Amazon. I surmise large number of engineers there are just collecting bounty on Amazon monopoly on clo…

That’s not just true of engineers. It took years for a friend who worked there as an L6 in the finance department for Amazon Retail to match his compensation after he left and it took him becoming a director at a manufacturing company.

Another former coworker who was a project manager (engagement manager) got maybe 60% of their compensation and is doing more work.

Myself personally, I was an L5 at AWS and now I’m doing at least L6 level work and I’m still making 15% less than I was making at Amazon.

It’s going to take a couple of years at the company I’m at now and building out an entire specialty practice - L7 level work - to get to my L5 compensation.

I have a roadmap I designed with my manager to do it and it’s a straightforward process, it’s just going to take time. I’m excited about doing it. It’s the scope/impact level of work I did to get into AWS on a much smaller scale at a startup.

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

#537

Post by ClumsyPilot »

pyrale wrote: post #291
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…

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.

> It's a pressure tool, not a performance control tool.

This, exactly. The world is full of lies, lies people honestly believe.

For example, have you seen a situation when parents feed a child, and try to get the kid to eat a bit more even when the child is full? What do they tell the kid - eat some more, it's good for you. Why do they really do it?

Because kids get hungry more often than adults, it's annoying / sometimes not possible / practical to stop to feed them as often. So we lie to them.

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

#538

Post by uptownfunk »

firstSpeaker wrote: post #501
uptownfunk wrote: post #384

It’s a terrible place to work but not for the reasons people think. Being green and fresh is priceless, you can take on any challenge because you don’t yet know the reality of it, and once you get in it, your only way is out, which can be really powerful if put to the right uses. Amazon puts a good price on that to juice the best years of your life. Please don’t squander your best years to go from L4 -> L5 or L6 -> L…

How about L7->L8?

That’s not my point. It’s nothing to do with the number.

It’s just not worth the best years of your life, unless you think it is, in which case maybe you should do it, or.. maybe you are undervaluing yourself.

It’s all the same recipe, take on more work, grow L(n-1) under you, be lucky, kiss up to management, and.. be lucky. Even then it’s 4 years at a minimum of grueling work.

I’m not against grueling work, but why not put that effort in for yourself? What are you going to get as an L8, maybe 1M? Is that worth 4 years+ of your prime time life ? Are you really learning all that much? Are you really having all the impact you want in the most meaningful way?

If you think your ultimate purpose is playing the games to get the L(n+1), maybe it’s the right place. But if not.. maybe not?

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

#539

Post by tempnow987 »

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…

I'm often confused by folks going to great lengths to "prove" stuff to HR. Why? HR works for the company / manager.

Focus on yourself. Your greatest power is not in arguing with a boss who doesn't like you. You can do things like switch teams internally - just put in for a switch. Start interviewing and work for another company and find someone who does like working with you. Maybe even go work for yourself.

Even when working for yourself, this actually still holds. When it's miserable working with a client, don't "PROVE" to them they are idiots. Do you really want to keep working with someone you've had to do this with? Again, move on.

I've had this happen a few times where the previous boss / client remembers me fondly - and I don't hate them either at the end of it.

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

#540

Post by scarface_74 »

93po wrote: post #533
scarface_74 wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No not insulted at all. I am very transparent about my career here and on Reddit (same username) about my career. I’ve also talked about how I transitioned. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37446115 It was because of a manager who was “irrationally benevolent” who I’m still friends with now.

Thanks for link - it sounds like you had some good non-CRUD experience to be able to discuss that intelligently with him. Honestly I wish I could find a place to work where I felt like I was friends with people there. I've never had a coworker that was a friend :( But I also work at pretty small companies and they've tended to not have great culture. I'd take a $100k coding job there

That startup I spoke about in the link had 60 people who officially were employed by the company.

I was the CTOs 2nd technical hire. Most of the technical work had been done by an outside firm.

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