Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

seattletimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 300 posts

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

#291

Post by CamTin »

temp8964 wrote: post #286
CamTin wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree then. To me it's obvious that performance reviews aren't and cannot be objective. You may disagree, but this will inevitably lead to dissonance when you your boss's assessment of your performance doesn't line up with what you think your "objective" performance is. This will eventually happen if it hasn't already. If you get a bad review while you think you're knocking it out of the park, the attitude I've outlined here has two benefits. First, it helps you realize that this supposedly objective review of your worth to the company is in fact largely bullshit. Second, it helps you realize that you need to spend some time learning whatever it is that your boss thinks is valuable and optimizing for that instead of whatever you're optimizing for now.

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

#292

Post by comp_throw7 »

fridif wrote: post #289
comp_throw7 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, I'm not saying anything about the culture or WLB, just that there's no risk of "losing out" on compensation if you get fired before your backloaded equity vests.

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

#293

Post by vladTheInhaler »

grayfaced wrote: post #172
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…

Imagine suffering from imposter syndrome in an office with this fear culture. People will work themselves to the bone trying to fix personal perceived inadequecies. Then they burnout and quit. I guess if workers are considered expendable than that's a positive. Corporations need to be more accountable to their workers welfare and not solely stockholder's welfare.

My understanding is that some systems, for instance in Germany, have a system like this. The employees have elected representatives on the board of directors, giving them a direct say in corporate policies.

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

#294

Post by lazide »

temp8964 wrote: post #233
lazide wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn’t that investigation happen before they are considered a performance problem and put on the list? Giving the employee a chance to rebut any performance problem assumptions would be an important part of this, and would also require they know.

Yes. At some point the employee should know. But there is a process, and I don't think they should inform the employee right from the start.

How much experience do you have managing people?

In my 15+ years doing so, I’ve never heard or seen a situation in a reasonable organization where someone gets on a list like this (intentionally, as compared to their manager screwing up by not having a conversation with them before it is clearly a huge problem to everyone else) without knowing they are going to get on a list like this if they don’t improve.

I have heard it at many places that are flogging employees or using scare tactics to get every cent worth of value they can put or people before they burn out and get thrown on the rubbish bin.

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

#295

Post by fridif »

comp_throw7 wrote: post #292
fridif wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, I'm not saying anything about the culture or WLB, just that there's no risk of "losing out" on compensation if you get fired before your backloaded equity vests.

Wait, what? I'm actually genuinely interested in clarifying this for myself.

If Amazon gives me a contract on day one that says they will give me 5 shares on day one, 15 shares on day 366, 40 shares on day 732, and 40 shares on day 1098...

... you are saying that even if i get fired on day 90, i will still have all 100 shares paid out to me on those days?

because that is not how it worked at other places ive been at

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

#296

Post by comp_throw7 »

fridif wrote: post #295
comp_throw7 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I'm not saying anything about the culture or WLB, just that there's no risk of "losing out" on compensation if you get fired before your backloaded equity vests.

Wait, what? I'm actually genuinely interested in clarifying this for myself. If Amazon gives me a contract on day one that says they will give me 5 shares on day one, 15 shares on day 366, 40 shares on day 732, and 40 shares on day 1098... ... you are saying that even if i get fired on day 90, i will still have all 100 shares paid out to me on those days? because that is not how it worked at other places ive been at

No, Amazon structures its compensation such that you get a large cash "bonus" split up monthly over your first two years to offset the backloaded compensation. A senior (L6/SDE III) offer might look something like this:

160k base salary

350k sign-on (195k first year, 145k second year, split up monthly)

120 shares (@ 3720/share): 6 shares Y1, 18 shares Y2, 48 shares Y3 & Y4 (24 shares vesting every 6 months at that point)

So in the first year you're taking home 160k base salary + 16.25k bonus each month, none of which needs to be paid back if you leave.

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

#297

Post by rejectedandsad »

decafninja wrote: post #254
rejectedandsad wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably true, but socially Apple seems like it gets a better reception/superior people. Folks at Amazon are pretty normal. Disclaimer - I’m very average and work at Amazon

Not sure if this is the reason, but I've heard Apple (and also Netflix) give individual teams much more autonomy on how they select, interview, and hire candidates, so maybe the fit between each person and their team is better? i.e. you may even not get leetcoded depending on the team and hiring manager. Versus Facebook, Amazon, and Google having a more one-size-fits-all approach to hiring.

Amazon, until recently, also hired most SDE2 and up with a team specific approach, with the SDE1's effectively interviewed by an algorithm (via coding interview etc).

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

#298

Post by thor24 »

wanderer2323 wrote: post #229
thor24 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be absolutely clear, comp is not based on stock appreciation. You get your grant (aka no. of stocks/RSUs) that vest at some cadence. By the time you vest a tranche and share price has increased is an added bonus (though generally people in tech think 4x in 4 years is their birth right.) As for Netflix, they do give you option of choosing to split your salary every year i.e all cash, all options, some cash and some…

When you negotiate with amazon they do try to bring stock appreciation into it. It went like this: I asked for X comp, say 100K total for 4 years, including stock. The recruiter calls me back, says she got the total I wanted, I write down the numbers and it totals to 90K. I ask her why the math does not check out and the answer was that the 'missing' 10K is the projected stock growth. Haven't seen anything like that…

This is particular to amazon and is a dick move any way you put it.

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

#299

Post by thor24 »

decafninja wrote: post #182
thor24 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be absolutely clear, comp is not based on stock appreciation. You get your grant (aka no. of stocks/RSUs) that vest at some cadence. By the time you vest a tranche and share price has increased is an added bonus (though generally people in tech think 4x in 4 years is their birth right.) As for Netflix, they do give you option of choosing to split your salary every year i.e all cash, all options, some cash and some…

Is the added bonus of increased share price required for the comp to be similar to an all-cash Netflix comp though? Or is it still competitive without taking such appreciation into account?

I think still competitive without the appreciation. Amazon is the only employer which takes appreciation into account. Most others don't.

Please correct me if I am wrong here.

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

#300

Post by ozzythecat »

tolbish wrote: post #274
ozzythecat wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It would have been appropriate…” I don’t think I did anything inappropriate, which is what you seem to be implying. My other comment about working at Amazon is in this same HN discussion. And you can see that I work for Amazon from my post history. Performance management is a necessity in any company, but whether you’re in “Focus” or not is besides the point. There’s no company policy that managers cannot or should…

You're talking in circles a bit. The point the GP was trying to make is there's no real downside to letting employees know they are on FOCUS and that a structured plan in place for tracking, rather than telling employees something vague like their work "needs improving". It is the most basic level of transparency and just seems like a decent thing to do. For some reason your comments keep avoiding that point. I wonde…

It’s not a lack of transparency. If your manager tells you your performance isn’t up to the bar, that’s a clear enough signal.

Some people will complain no matter what. There’s no way around it.

> I wonder if this is the effect working at Amazon has on everyone.

I think I have a decently written response (to which you replied), but without disagreeing with anything specific, you decided to resort to a personal attack.

Maybe that’s how people engage at YOUR company, but I’m not going to bother engaging with you further. Good luck.

Post reply on HN