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I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

businessinsider.com

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Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#321

Post by neilv »

This looks like raw material for quotes that would be sprinkled throughout a normal piece of journalism.

Why was this person talking to BI (instead of, say, the NYT or a major metro area news org)? And why did BI publish this sometimes unclear monologue, rather than do more journalism?

(Did BI not want to allocate resources to do a proper piece? Did the source talk to multiple news outlets, and BI wanted to be the first to publish anything at all from it? Did the source insist that BI do this as a condition, and BI didn't tell them to take a hike?)

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#322

Post by amznburn »

I personally enjoy the number of times Amazon's PR has to call out the tens of thousands of complaints from tech and non-tech employees as "not representative of the experience of the vast majority of our employees."

The other employees are too scared to speak up, else lose their job. Or, they are sociopaths.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#323

Post by fatnoah »

steveBK123 wrote: post #204

One underlying problem with these PIP type programs at FAANG seems to be that they have very high barriers to entry in the interview process, and then act like 30% of the company is underperforming and subject to an annual 6% cull. There are industries & companies that have grown fat & lazy and could use a few annual 6% culls, but you eventually run out of fat. If you have a very competitive interview process and hig…

> One underlying problem with these PIP type programs at FAANG seems to be that they have very high barriers to entry in the interview process, and then act like 30% of the company is underperforming and subject to an annual 6% cull.

FWIW, when I was a manager at a FAANG, the numbers were closer to:

  Underperforming:  ~12%
  Meeting or Exceeding: ~80%
  Better than exceeding: ~8%
As for my own anecdata, for the roughly 100 person cohort where I was part of performance management, there would be 1-3 people each cycle that were in the "cull" bracket. That said, people with a couple consecutive cycles of not meeting expectations were likely to be put on a PIP. I managed 4 people in that group, and all were able to successfully exit the PIP.

All that said, every company and even org within a company have their own goals, targets, processes, and flows, and my experience was pre-COVID, so I'm also sure that any needle movement has been in the direction of harsher evaluations.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#324

Post by roncesvalles »

scarface_74 wrote: post #256
steveBK123 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, some people interview better than they work, and vice versa. But do a huge flood of bad employees really make it through these very difficult gates and merit 30% of employees being marked underperformers every year?

Do you realize how relatively easy it is for a CS grad with time and motivation to “grind leetCode” enough to pass an interview at Amazon? I didn’t go into AWS as a developer. I worked there in Professional Services. I shadowed a few coding interviews and conducted a few system design interviews of software devs while there.

>CS grad

>time and motivation to grind

>pass an interview

Let's be honest, what more are we looking for?

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#325

Post by [deleted] »

giantg2 wrote: post #235
steveBK123 wrote: post #204

One underlying problem with these PIP type programs at FAANG seems to be that they have very high barriers to entry in the interview process, and then act like 30% of the company is underperforming and subject to an annual 6% cull. There are industries & companies that have grown fat & lazy and could use a few annual 6% culls, but you eventually run out of fat. If you have a very competitive interview process and hig…

One thing about fat that I think is overlooked is how fat today might be muscle tomorrow, and how little companies try to convert it. Maybe a person is in a bad role, on a bad team, or simply doesn't have experience or skills fitting the specific requirements of that single point in time. I've been a high performer in the past. Now I'm a low performer (I'm slow) after the company has changed the way it treats teams/w…

[deleted]

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#327

Post by away271828 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #250
giantg2 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing about fat that I think is overlooked is how fat today might be muscle tomorrow, and how little companies try to convert it. Maybe a person is in a bad role, on a bad team, or simply doesn't have experience or skills fitting the specific requirements of that single point in time. I've been a high performer in the past. Now I'm a low performer (I'm slow) after the company has changed the way it treats teams/w…

Agreed that what is left unsaid in a lot of performance conversations is the person-role match. Someone isn't a high/low performer globally, just at that time in that role. Wall St firms I have worked at typically try to find different roles for people before marking them as at risk of a layoff. Not sure FAANG behaves the same, but from all these PIP discussions it seems not.

I've absoluttely been in a position where the ground moved under me. I went from doing (based on evaluations, RSUs, etc.) from doing a very good job to bouncing around a bunch of managers and groups in roles that I wasn't really suited for and didn't have much real interest in. The only saving grace was that I was pretty close to semi-retiring anyway.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#328

Post by awill »

steveBK123 wrote: post #204

One underlying problem with these PIP type programs at FAANG seems to be that they have very high barriers to entry in the interview process, and then act like 30% of the company is underperforming and subject to an annual 6% cull. There are industries & companies that have grown fat & lazy and could use a few annual 6% culls, but you eventually run out of fat. If you have a very competitive interview process and hig…

To play devil's advocate, the flaw in your logic is assuming that because someone passed the interview at a FAANG, they must be good.

No interview process is perfect. Companies, no matter how 'high the entry barrier' make mistakes when hiring. This is how they've decided to correct it.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#329

Post by itsboring »

giantg2 wrote: post #267
no_wizard wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should file for disability accommodations. That is completely legal to ask. Sometimes you need to back it up with documentation, but i suspect that won't be a problem. They can't discriminate against you for this.

I have documentation. They don't care. HR said to just work with my manager on accommodations. My main problem is dealing with ambiguity and context switching. That's something they can't change given their chosen work model. The old model of working was that you supported 1 main app and maybe a smaller 1 or 2 that were related. These were usually in 1 stack and well documented. The new model is that teams are typica…

I don’t have any (diagnosed) neurological disability but I would do poorly in that situation too. Excessive context switching is a major source of stress: adrenaline, fast heartbeat, high blood pressure. Makes it almost impossible to stay focused and motivated.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#330

Post by torton »

xivzgrev wrote: post #304

Why does anyone choose to work at Amazon? Given all the stories of PIP, it sounds like a not great place to work Go to other fang, or other tech. Lots of companies that pay just as well. Amazon would be my last choice - my job search is going awful, gotten rejected from most big tech companies, and I have well paying Amazon and a long tail of little shit companies that don’t pay that great (think of the equity!!)

Immigration support.

Decent salary.

A big name on a resume that can be leveraged into a better, well paying job.

Remember, people who are content don’t leave reviews. I worked with Amazon a lot over the years. There are people there who have been there for a decade+. It wouldn’t happen if they were treated abysmally.

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