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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

#281

Post by ozzythecat »

xienze wrote: post #56
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…

> The discussion in this thread is written more as if Amazon is pushing out capable talent. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they have a stated goal of cutting the bottom 10% every year? I gotta think that can't go on forever without hitting the "capable talent" unless managers are hiring sacrificial lambs on purpose. Hmm, I feel like I've heard about that somewhere... https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-manager…

I’ve only read about that online. I’ve never seen this happen in my six years at Amazon. In my experience we have the opposite problem. There are a lot of folks who are extremely talented in interviewing and whiteboard elegant solutions. But they fundamentally can’t or won’t deliver results. And what I’ve seen on Amazon is it’s really difficult to let go of someone once they are hired. But in my experience a lot of managers struggle at having hard and difficult conversations. And so you’ll see an engineer on the team who doesn’t pull their weight but the rest of the team picks up their slack.

I fundamentally don’t believe that Amazon is letting go of talented engineers. Can some individual manager be terrible at their job and screw up? Yeah absolutely. But as a company, it’s extremely hard to find talented individuals. And then once you bring them in you have to invest in them and ramp them up.

Having said that I worked on really hard problems at Amazon. Not everyone can or wants to solve those kinds of problems. I was successful because I enjoyed it. That’s where my priorities were. And there were other times where I struggled. Sometimes trying to solve a particular kind of problem or sometimes not having enough clarity, or realizing that we haven’t broken down a problem.

But then there are individuals who just don’t have the ownership. If you have a not my problem kind of attitude, I don’t think you’ll last at Amazon very long. Eventually you’ll be let go and then you will be bitter about it.

As an aside, you won’t ever hear about all the engineers at Amazon who enjoy doing their work, who enjoy the teams that they’re on, who have a really good relationship with their leadership teams. But you’ll hear the most loudest and vocal feedback from the people who are the wrong hires or they had a bad manager who messed them up. In the latter case I don’t think it’s a systemic issue. And to be honest, the positive stories don’t get the Readership or drive the outrage

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

#282

Post by wheelinsupial »

jp42 wrote: post #207
tlogan wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked as a manager in a mega-corp. One of tricks I was told by other managers is to put your best employees on the ‘focus’ list (grade 3) so they cannot leave for a better position/team in the company. But they would get bonuses because the bonuses were per team and HR was not aware who gets what. Of course the ‘focus’ list was a secret list :)

Thats evil. Blind is littered with posts of amazon employees who are mentally destroyed. It's ok to put on pip for genuine performance issues, but why destroy those who are performing well.

Other companies, including where I work, are able to lock employees to teams by requiring manager approval to interview and move internally.

I would be very surprised if this isn’t a common occurrence throughout many organizations.

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

#283

Post by arcticbull »

mannykannot wrote: post #256
arcticbull wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a plan, and the manager will hold employees to it, the difference is they aren't proactively saying "if you don't complete these steps, you can see yourself out." At that point the manager has usually already, for better or worse, flipped the "bozo bit" on the employee and is very unlikely to attribute any successes and instead over-index on the failures. The vast majority of employees put on a PIP do not su…

I see you are completely avoiding the issue of what effect the nondisclosure aspect of this plan has on the employees who are not on it. You yourself raised the negative aspects of not knowing if every day will be your last.

I seriously doubt every employee every day fears that day will be their last, if they do, they need a new job ASAP. It’s not proactive disclosure, that’s all. They’re still allowed to be told they’re doing a great job. Or a bad job.

I can see it both ways to be honest and appreciate your thoughts.

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

#284

Post by alanlovestea »

qqtt wrote: post #13

I never understood the secretive nature of these Amazon "devplan" / "FOCUS" lists. If an employee has a performance issue, they should know. Period. If they are on a formal list, they should know that too. The only "positive" here is that it can affect the individual's moral to know you are not meeting expectations - but that has to be communicated regardless. If it's understood it has to be communicated and there is…

It's a government regulation.

An employee can perform terrible for many reasons one cannot control. For example, intro team communication.

In order to avoid future lawsuit, Amazon has to set up an independent project without any external dependency for the person under PIP and document all the progress. So that the person being PIP cannot sue his employer inthe future.

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

#285

Post by CamTin »

temp8964 wrote: post #252
CamTin wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Management effectively does know the truth, for the trivial reason that they get to decide what the truth is. They are the ones who get to decide what counts as performing and underperforming. It's not as though there is some objective way to determine who is and isn't a desirable employee.

Not sure what you mean "truth". There is a discovery process, before they form their opinions.

Yes, I was mirroring your own use of the word "truth." My point is that performance reviews are simply the result of management's opinions. You asked the question "Why do you assume the manager always know the truth?" and the answer is that truth is irrelevant (or perhaps even nonsense as a concept) in this context. Only opinions matter, specifically the opinions that make up your performance review, which are the opinions of management. There is no objective way to measure your performance or, if there is, management likely is not doing so unless you work in a field with very easily measurable output (billable hours or something like that).

As in many or most aspects of social activities like work, objective reality effectively does not exist. Only the consensus reality matters.

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

#286

Post by temp8964 »

CamTin wrote: post #285
temp8964 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you mean "truth". There is a discovery process, before they form their opinions.

Yes, I was mirroring your own use of the word "truth." My point is that performance reviews are simply the result of management's opinions. You asked the question "Why do you assume the manager always know the truth?" and the answer is that truth is irrelevant (or perhaps even nonsense as a concept) in this context. Only opinions matter, specifically the opinions that make up your performance review, which are the op…

That is not true. Performance evaluation is not totally subjective.

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

#287

Post by dilyevsky »

tdeck wrote: post #259
dilyevsky wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s just income on your w2 same as rsus and salary. You’re thinking of long term cap gains which is entirely different matter

Bonus fits into the category of "supplemental wages" which Google suggests has a special 22% tax rate. However that rate also apparently applies to RSUs most of the time.

This is a “withholding rate” (how much tax your employer will deduct from your paycheck) not an actual tax rate that you will owe

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

#288

Post by comp_throw7 »

fridif wrote: post #239

I mean this in all sincerity: don't treat an Amazon interview seriously. If you must, use it for practice. Employment stability is much more important than what I call "alleged compensation". They hire you promising $160,000 base and all this stock, and 6 months into stringing broken libraries together you are suddenly getting the feeling you won't be welcome at the company anymore.

Amazon compensates for backloaded equity via large sign-on bonuses which "vest" monthly and don't need to be paid back if you leave. Annualized compensation is roughly stable over the first four years, assuming you believe their stock growth estimates (which are silly, but that actually gives you higher compensation for the first two years than years 3 and 4, not lower).

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

#289

Post by fridif »

comp_throw7 wrote: post #288
fridif wrote: post #239

I mean this in all sincerity: don't treat an Amazon interview seriously. If you must, use it for practice. Employment stability is much more important than what I call "alleged compensation". They hire you promising $160,000 base and all this stock, and 6 months into stringing broken libraries together you are suddenly getting the feeling you won't be welcome at the company anymore.

Amazon compensates for backloaded equity via large sign-on bonuses which "vest" monthly and don't need to be paid back if you leave. Annualized compensation is roughly stable over the first four years, assuming you believe their stock growth estimates (which are silly, but that actually gives you higher compensation for the first two years than years 3 and 4, not lower).

Assuming you last at Amazon and are not hire to fire and can navigate safely through their codebase and you have a good manager and...

I've had my fair share of good and bad gigs-- I am willing to trade a considerable amount of Amazon's upside in exchange for employment I can predict.

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

#290

Post by greedo »

kergonath wrote: post #262
greedo wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GE was famous for this under Jack Welch?

That is not really an excuse, though. “But Jack did it before” wasn’t even an excuse in pre-school.

And? I was pointing out who was one of the first to pioneer this business practice.
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