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

Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

seattletimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 385 posts

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#311

Post by astrange »

maybelsyrup wrote: post #179
rejectedandsad wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poor fellow at Amazon can always go to Zillow or Microsoft not really the same as deaths of despair here.

Yes, correct, but he isn't -- and I'm sure he knows he can leave to some other firm. He isn't leaving to the point of being hospitalized. Which is unbelievable to me!

Interviewing is probably too hard to contemplate if you're depressed. Especially if you've been around long enough to remember Google-style torturous brainteaser interviews (whether or not those were real.)

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#312

Post by qigtyofhp »

silexia wrote: post #302

This whole article is framed as if Amazon is doing bad things. My impression is that this is a fair and pretty easy on the employees way to manage employee reviews.

It's not. Managers lie about performance of their employees in order to either save themselves or save their favorites in the group. I'm a current Amazon employee.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#313

Post by labcomputer »

paxys wrote: post #59
joshe wrote: post #43

The problem with stack ranking at places like microsoft was twofold. First small team managers were forced to rank their reports, and each manager had to get rid of the bottom 10% each year. If you had 20 employees you had to fire 2 employees each year. But statistics doesn't work like that, there were many microsoft teams with all productive employees. And there were probably teams where 30% of the group should have…

It did not work like that at Microsoft at all. Stack ranking happened at an organization-wide level, so the total pool was hundreds of employees. It was perfectly normal for one team to be full of high performers, and vice versa. And being ranked in the bottom bucket didn't mean you were going to be fired. In most cases it wouldn't even lead to a PIP. It was simply a lower bonus, that's it. I have no idea about Amazo…

> Funny enough the move away from stack ranking was very unpopular at Microsoft

I would imagine that nearly every change in performance review structure at nearly every company is unpopular:

People who were let go (or who left voluntarily of low bonuses/raises/refreshes) aren't there to complain!

Everyone who is left, who knew how to game the system (or was so good they didn't need to) now has to optimize to a completely new metric.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#314

Post by vorpalhex »

aranchelk wrote: post #102

I recently reread The New Economics. Deming talks about a factory worker screwing up on the production line, ruining a large quantity of product, and getting punished for it. He makes the argument that the design of the line, company policy, etc, have a far greater impact on workers’ productivity than the intrinsic qualities of those workers. I told this to a colleague and she said “well yeah, I can see how that woul…

It depends entirely on what you're doing. I've worked in shops were I helped setup a golden way of building software.. and it worked great. We could take in junior engineers with no clue how to code and have them writing really good stuff in like two weeks, basically impossible to screw up. The tradeoff was that all of our tasks were.. basically the same kind of task. It was rare to do "revolutionary" work.

I work now in a situation where every single case that comes across my desk is actually unique. I still have a toolbox, but I need a really big variety of tools and picking the wrong tool is very easy. Suddenly instead of a golden way I'm actually focusing on testing designs quickly and in isolation to make sure we're picking the right tools for some given design.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#315

Post by astrange »

asdfman123 wrote: post #106
jokethrowaway wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can pass Amazon's interview you can pass any other fang's interview which will give you the same CV prestige with probably less hassle. The only people I know who went to Amazon picked it just because it was the only fang they passed at and they didn't want to bother doing another round of interviews or wait for the cooldown period. Sure, other fangs have similar internal politics nightmares - but Amazon seems…

I failed Amazon like three times in a row (along with other smaller companies). This last year I expanded my search and got into Facebook and Google, despite failing Amazon again. Plus there are lots of smaller companies that are as prestigious within the valley as Amazon. I mean, if you had to hire someone, would you really consider ex-Amazon superior to Uber, Snapchat, Microsoft, some random startup, etc.? If I wer…

Amazon's culture is nothing compared to the stories I've heard about Microsoft's Mac software teams. I can't repeat them all but supposedly they weren't allowed to read any sample code including Stack Overflow questions.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#316

Post by unethical_ban »

acituan wrote: post #307
plank_time wrote: post #55

When the stock goes from 200 to 3500 in 10 years, and consistently goes up and to the right, you won’t find too many of the workers complaining no matter how bad the job conditions are. I have a friend up in Seattle who is suffering, to the point of being hospitalized for mental health issues, but refuses to leave. So HR and leadership believe that their system “works” but it’s really that their employees are willing…

> I have a friend up in Seattle who is suffering, to the point of being hospitalized for mental health issues, but refuses to leave. I'll be blunt, I am not worried about your friend's mental health as much as I am worried about them being a person who will not refuse being part of an operation despite being hospitalized for it. I am scared of the possibility that they could be made to do anything as long as they are…

Oh, come on.

The person is doing the damage to themselves, not to others (in their own mind, which neither of us can really enter). This isn't a prison experiment.

Bonus, I don't think the parent comment was trying to represent his friend's actions as something to replicate.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#317

Post by astrange »

spoonjim wrote: post #98
dimitrios1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By those metrics, IKEA fits the bill as well. But at what point do we qualify productivity with some measure of quality? You'd be hard pressed to argue IKEA produces quality . For all the laurels and new features and gadgets and gizmos have produced, very few AWS offerings or new Amazon products are considered best in class.

IKEA produces excellent quality for the price. People who think it's low quality usually don't glue it together or attach it to the wall when appropriate.

The particleboard on the back of Billy is not that high quality, but maybe it's fine against a wall.

On the other hand, I have all Ikea furniture and it's survived 3-4 moves and only gotten stronger - my last mover's hobby was repairing furniture and he fixed everything with his pile of spare parts.

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#318

Post by astrange »

frumper wrote: post #62
void_mint wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "productivity" of a company by these definitions is almost totally unrelated to the productivity of its employees. Amazon could downsize by 90% and most of these would still hold up.

If Amazon downsized by 90% then they couldnt drive by my house two to three times a day so I can quickly get my prime widgets.

Those aren't employees, so it's ok as long as they keep the capital assets. (I think.)

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#319

Post by Cosmin_C »

acituan wrote: post #307
plank_time wrote: post #55

When the stock goes from 200 to 3500 in 10 years, and consistently goes up and to the right, you won’t find too many of the workers complaining no matter how bad the job conditions are. I have a friend up in Seattle who is suffering, to the point of being hospitalized for mental health issues, but refuses to leave. So HR and leadership believe that their system “works” but it’s really that their employees are willing…

> I have a friend up in Seattle who is suffering, to the point of being hospitalized for mental health issues, but refuses to leave. I'll be blunt, I am not worried about your friend's mental health as much as I am worried about them being a person who will not refuse being part of an operation despite being hospitalized for it. I am scared of the possibility that they could be made to do anything as long as they are…

It has been known for a while that there is a link between leadership and severe mental health issues [1]. Unfortunately this is how a lot of organisations are being built and how they are fluorishing.

And the higher the position, the worse it is [2].

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2013/04/25/the-dis... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniesarkis/2019/10/27/seni...

Re: Internal Amazon documents shed light on how company pressures out office workers

#320

Post by astrange »

crackercrews wrote: post #126
weimerica wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work for a public utility... lack of talented employees was stated explicit in the interview.

I once heard it said: government jobs are welfare for the middle class. IMO it's not 100% accurate but it's better than 50%.

They're useful if you're self-employed because you can marry one to get the benefits.
Post reply on HN