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Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

businessweek.com

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Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#21

Post by AsymetricCom »

the_hangman wrote: post #6

I think the most interesting part of the article is when it mentions that anecdotes about an employee's performance most-often dominate these OLRs. It seems that a company with as concrete of a business goal as Amazon's would have the ability to use a more objective means of measuring employee performance.

The nice thing about knowing everything going on in your company is being able to judge it easily when it exceeds expectations. The shitty thing about standardized metrics is gaming those metrics.

Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#22

Post by vladimirralev »

pothibo wrote: post #16

Maybe the problem is promotion altogether? Work your ass off for 1 year and then, you may or may not win the promotion lottery. I guess a more flexible style of salary increase could be created? Work on a project for 3 months. If it attain its goal, everyone on the team receives 0.20% increase. This way you want to make sure your team will succeed. I'm just thinking outloud here. It could be a rubbish idea.

Much more simple than that. Just take a cut from the profits your project generates or supervises. If the project doesn't generate or supervise anything just get a cut from the overall budget which is allocated based on how valuable the project is to the company.

Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#23

Post by Kapura »

I think that there's a lot of subtlety that gets lost talking about the corporate structure in Amazon. The levels were more or less correct, so far as it goes, but it's not the full story. For instance, a senior developer could be level 6, while his manager might be level 5. That doesn't mean that the dev gets to override what his manager says; they're different promotion paths.

This is key. If you want to work as a dev at Amazon, you'll go from level 4 to level 7 as a dev. I don't know if devs are ever integrated into the corpocracy, vice presidents and so on. I suspect that they generally aren't; at least, I've never heard of it happening.

A manager's levels are different. I'm not and have never been a manager at amazon, but the responsibilities at each level are different from the dev side.

Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#25

Post by ajiang »

vladimirralev wrote: post #22
pothibo wrote: post #16

Maybe the problem is promotion altogether? Work your ass off for 1 year and then, you may or may not win the promotion lottery. I guess a more flexible style of salary increase could be created? Work on a project for 3 months. If it attain its goal, everyone on the team receives 0.20% increase. This way you want to make sure your team will succeed. I'm just thinking outloud here. It could be a rubbish idea.

Much more simple than that. Just take a cut from the profits your project generates or supervises. If the project doesn't generate or supervise anything just get a cut from the overall budget which is allocated based on how valuable the project is to the company.

Favors near term profits far more than long term growth, which you could argue is not good for the longevity of the company. Plus, there would be competition over the seemingly most profitable projects. And there are projects that don't generate any profit, but has benefits that are very difficult to quantify.

Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#26

Post by phillmv »

taude wrote: post #18
oh_sigh wrote: post #13

Ex-amazonian here. Another problem is if your manager doesn't want you to get promoted. For whatever reason, sometimes people don't click, and I've seen the careers of some extremely talented developers be hampered by a bad or non-relationship with their manager. It didn't matter that their entire team, and other teams viewed these people very highly, and sought out their advice and consultation on a number of matter…

I feel this same thing happens at almost all companies I've worked for. I had to leave one of my favorite jobs at a company doing really well because I was never going to get to work on what I wanted, in the group I wanted...

It's amazing to me how much money companies can waste hiring new people - albeit a not unwelcome redistribution of profit from shareholders to developers - yet once you're hired you're stuck in that role unless your manager signs off irregardless of other internal opportunities.

I wonder if having a more liberalized internal labour market wouldn't be beneficial; it's destructive in so far that being undermined by more popular projects keeps siphoning off your best talent, but if the alternative is "quit and find another job" it strikes me that keeping that person within the organization may be more beneficial overall.

Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#28

Post by AsymetricCom »

This article is poorly sourced and fails to establish any evidence for it's main point, that it's "difficult to climb Amazon's corporate ladder," which is probably true considering it's a Fortune 100.

Instead, the article paints a picture that Amazon as a place ruled by fiefdoms and popularity contests, but again without any actual evidence, no you have to buy the book for that.

I have a feeling that if I read the book, that I would find that there is nothing here salacious, but that's not how you sell a book.

Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#29

Post by bethling »

nsxwolf wrote: post #20

There's a strange gap between levels 4 and 5. 4 is for new graduates, and 5 is for product managers? What about experienced engineers?

That's not really accurate. 4 are usually college hires, at 5, other job families can split off. Engineers, Managers, TPMs, Product managers, etc. they're all in parallel. So you have Level 4,5,6,7 and higher engineers as well.

Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#30

Post by mrjatx »

oh_sigh wrote: post #13

Ex-amazonian here. Another problem is if your manager doesn't want you to get promoted. For whatever reason, sometimes people don't click, and I've seen the careers of some extremely talented developers be hampered by a bad or non-relationship with their manager. It didn't matter that their entire team, and other teams viewed these people very highly, and sought out their advice and consultation on a number of matter…

I worked for a fairly large company that previously required your team manager to approve of you moving to another team. You could spin wheels all you wanted, but if they didn't like you for whatever reason they could immediately stop any lateral movement. This wound up pushing a lot of employees out, they'd eventually quit because they were miserable. Couldn't get shifts they wanted, bootcamps, training, unfairly poor reviews, etc.

It was one of those "who.. thought of this?" ideas. I believe they recently removed it.

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