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Amazon tells bosses to conceal when employees are on performance management plan

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Re: Amazon tells bosses to conceal when employees are on performance management plan

#101

Post by mataug »

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #97
mataug wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A toxic culture of fear is the intended effect here. People at amazon love to discuss the flywheel effect[1]. The flywheel here is the culture of fear that keeps employees on their toes. Bezos believes that employees are inherently lazy[2], and it seems like fear is tool the S-team have chosen to solve the problem of lazy employees. This has a lot of unintended consequences[3], but the executives with the power to ch…

Do you think that this culture will shift with his retirement, or do you think that this culture is so embedded within the fabric of Amazon itself, that there is no separating this kind of behavior from the company without a dismantling of the corporate structure itself?

Andy Jassy used to lead AWS before becoming Amazon's CEO.

AWS has a reputation of being a difficult place to work, even more so than Amazon's other divisions.

So no, I don't think anything will change.

https://www.newstatesman.com/business/companies/2021/02/he-l...

Re: Amazon tells bosses to conceal when employees are on performance management plan

#102

Post by mkl95 »

patch_cable wrote: post #83
mkl95 wrote: post #67

What makes Amazon employees so eager to work there? Is it purely because of their salaries? I have worked at large companies where none of this dystopian stuff happens.

There are teams building cool things, used by large customers, where you're paid decently. It's not really all that dystopian.

Thanks for the info. I come across more and more of these articles that paint a grim picture of Amazon's engineering departments. But as an outsider I get the feeling that's it's better than your average mid sized startup where you will be lucky to make 1/3 of what an Amazon engineer makes, while working more hours and getting your performance reviewed by equally sociopathic middle managers. I still wonder how it compares to other FAANG companies though.

Re: Amazon tells bosses to conceal when employees are on performance management plan

#103

Post by lazide »

chris11 wrote: post #87
handmodel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem crazy to me on the surface. You say you are worried about "toxic culture which breeds stress" but I think you could equally say that constantly getting notes that you are a below-average performer would be just as bad.

Discovering that I misunderstood the seriousness of an issue is more stressful than being told something explicitly. And a major misunderstanding decreases trust. It would be much better to explicitly be told I'm on a pre-PIP plan than to assume it's a less serious issue and find out when I try to change teams.

I’m pretty sure they won’t let someone change teams, and many of the people on this list aren’t expected (and for some managers, maybe not even allowed) to improve.

Re: Amazon tells bosses to conceal when employees are on performance management plan

#104

Post by r00fus »

ozzythecat wrote: post #25

> “Should I tell an employee that I entered them into Focus?” the question reads. The response: “Do not discuss Focus with employees. Instead, tell the employee that their performance is not meeting expectations, the specific areas where they need to improve, and offer feedback and support to help them improve.” The headline is editorialized. IMO whether you’re told you’re in Focus or not is irrelevant. If your manag…

> If your manager is telling you you’re not meeting expectations, that’s plenty of signal of what’s going on.

Isn't this the part that's not being made transparent to the employee?

Asking the employee to constantly read the manager's mood to guess if you're on the "list" or not is incredibly stressful. What if your manager is just having a bad day?

Re: Amazon tells bosses to conceal when employees are on performance management plan

#105

Post by decafninja »

Guest42 wrote: post #55
f6v wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d be surprised. Do they pay well? Do they have cool products? “I’ve done a lot more for a lot less” - The Office.

I think a common approach is “I know this job is garbage but if I can last 18 months, my resume will look much better”.....or.....”maybe my manager will be alright and the bad stories will be less relevant”

Another factor might be that there are many companies just as bad, but without the prestige of Amazon. At least the Amazon name will pad your resume. The names of many other bad companies won't (or not to the degree of Amazon).

Re: Amazon tells bosses to conceal when employees are on performance management plan

#106

Post by r00fus »

ta984332444 wrote: post #65

The article is conflating two concepts at Amazon. There is "devplan/focus" and there is performance improvement plan (PIP). You are not fired while on focus. Despite what one of the people indicates in their comments, you cannot be on a PIP and not know. The PIP is an agreed upon plan with a specific output between HR, management and the employee. Firing happens through PIPs, not focus. Though focus is what leads to…

In many companies, the "freeze from moving within company" is the same as PIP.

So Focus is PIP-lite for Amazon.

Re: Amazon tells bosses to conceal when employees are on performance management plan

#107

Post by trhway »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #79
trhway wrote: post #5

Another goodie from AMZN - hard cap on max of years of experience for a position. Nice way to filter out the old dudes like me. I suppose the trend will naturally spread through the industry. Edit: it is max cap in hiring requirements. The requirements are directly from AMZN recruiter (AMZN email address, etc). The max is bullet pointed together with the min. The max is also additionally clearly stressed in the descr…

I didn't experience this while working at Amazon and I'm an old fart.

I guess you didn't represent us, old farts, well enough if the management now tries to limit intake that way :)

Re: Amazon tells bosses to conceal when employees are on performance management plan

#108

Post by lazide »

temp8964 wrote: post #38
potatolicious wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read OP's comment as "performance issues should be publicized within the workforce" and more "performance issues should be known to the individual employee" If management thinks you're doing a bad job, it's not needed to make it known to the entire team - but you should know.

I don't think you should always know. I also updated the language.

Doing something about a problem generally requires someone is aware that a problem exists right?

Otherwise it’s just marking them for future termination without telling them, which seems like a waste of everyone’s time.

Re: Amazon tells bosses to conceal when employees are on performance management plan

#109

Post by decafninja »

yupper32 wrote: post #76
quickthrower2 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 500k? Yeah I’d do it even for a year, working on the most dullard shit then have 3 years off.

Other Big-N companies have comparable pay with way less stress.

What I see being touted is F & N > G > A & A for TC?

Obviously there are many factors in play so that might not always be the case.

Also per my other comment on this thread, sounds like Netflix really blows away all others because there is no shenanigans around RSUs, cliffs, unexpected appreciation, etc.? Correct me if I'm wrong since I am definitely no expert at this game.

Re: Amazon tells bosses to conceal when employees are on performance management plan

#110

Post by mattkrause »

vorticalbox wrote: post #71
mattkrause wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic math too. Suppose “ability” is normally distributed in the population and in your initial team too. Replace people when the new candidate improves the team’s median ability (supposedly what Amazon’s “Bar Raiser” checks). I kicked together a simulation of this process. The first replacement is pretty easy (50/50), but the hundredth hire on a team of ten often takes tens of thousands of interviews, and sometimes…

Would love to see this code if you don't mind sharing. Mostly interested on how you even create a simulation like this.

Mine is super-dumb, but let me walk you though it.

First, you need to a way to generate candidates of varying abilities. There are all sorts of tough questions related to measuring intelligence, but let's side-step those and make something like IQ. By construction, IQ is normally distributed with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15.

    function generate_candidates(;n=1)
        return 100 .+ (15 .* randn(n, 1))
    end
With that, make the initial team and find the "bar" for a new hire:

    team = generate_candidates(;n=10)
    bar = median(team)
To replace a candidate, you just sit in a loop, "interviewing" candidates until one exceeds the bar.

    candidates_seen = 1
    while (new_candidate = generate_candidates(n=1)[1])
Once you find that person, you kick someone out of the team and replace them with the new candidate. I did it at random, but eliminating the lowest performer only exaggerates the effect.

    team[rand(1:length(team))] = c
Having done that, you need to recalculate the now-raised bar:

     bar = median(team)
We repeat this process a small number of times to simulate turn-over within a team. Since it's random, you want to repeat the entire process a number of times too. Complete code: https://gist.github.com/mrkrause/e33c589b901b4b8c96f940ea0a4...

I had a hunch this process would be exponential, and it certainly looks that way if you plot the results. This was meant as a quick-and-dirty way to check that: there are some tricks that might speed up the simulation and it might even be possible to do the whole thing analytically (but it's Friday afternoon).

FWIW, I highly highly recommend this sort of noodling around for building intuitions. At work, we recently spent a year and $$$ collecting some brain data, and a dumb model like this was the key to figuring out what was going on.

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