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

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

#41

Post by wil421 »

hef19898 wrote: post #25
thereisnospork wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PIPs exist pretty much solely to create cover for firing someone[0]. Really just an awkward beaurocratic necessity with a deceptive name. [0] Almost all employment in the US is 'at-will' so in principle anyone is fireable for any reason that isn't in a short list of illegal discrimination (e.g. can't fire someone for being black, or for not sleeping with you). In practice having even a flimsy veneer of poor performan…

You what's funny? When this PIP culture hits German labour laws. Then the result is basically pointless bossing, which ultimately results in, for the employer, rather expensive severance packages. Nothing funny about bossing, but funny that employers still want to force their head through a wall, instead of just offering the package they have to pay anyway from the get go.

Large companies just stagnant hiring in one region or another to offset risk. I’ve seen companies hire like crazy in places like the US and India but the same people have been working in the UK/EU for decade(s) without any new hires.

UK/EU companies will do the same and recoup costs by laying off regions like US/India because it’s easier.

You can easily avoid these kinds of companies who are always hiring and firing. I’ve never had to deal with a threat of a PIP.

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

#42

Post by cle »

underseacables wrote: post #3

Amazon seems like a really awful place to work, at the warehouse or at the corporate office. Why do people still work, and want to work, there?

I worked there for 8 years (both retail and AWS) and loved it and never experienced a toxic environment. Consider that the anecdotes that are published by the media may not be representative of everyone's experiences.

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

#43

Post by e40 »

_the_inflator wrote: post #28
aestetix wrote: post #11

This seems common in American companies. I wonder how much of this is a result of lawsuit culture. For example, American companies won't tell job applicants why they get rejected, lest they get sued by the rejected candidates. And perhaps this has carried into feedback for actual employees. It sounds like the author wasn't even he was on a performance improvement plan, he had to infer it and pull it out of his manage…

Senior Manager here. This is common to any large entity and may only influenced by workers' rights and culture. 1. Large numbers In large companies, you have numbers. There are 10000 individuals so to say. There is a difference between individuals and groups. The larger the group, the more HR and controlling tend to use their understanding of statistics. This is the conflict between groups and individuals. Why take c…

I fully agree. Just want to point out that all of this is because of lawsuits. When companies were more transparent they were sued, so they became less transparent.

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

#44

Post by nickd2001 »

I once had a kind, capable and hard-working boss, who hinted that a few years previously he'd been on a PIP due to being out of his depth in the role, and had managed to claw his way out of it. While I was in his team, he got a, IMHO, well deserved promotion. To my mind, the company basically mistreated him, made him wait years longer than he should to get the promotion. The reason he probably couldn't was lack of formal academic qualifications to job hop with, and possibly risk averse because his wife had walked out and left him with 2 kids. Its seems to me in this case, a bunch of game-playing which helps nobody. Also other people will have noticed how this guy was treated, and responded with the amount of "loyalty" that that employer deserved back.

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

#45

Post by mschuster91 »

aestetix wrote: post #36
_the_inflator wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Senior Manager here. This is common to any large entity and may only influenced by workers' rights and culture. 1. Large numbers In large companies, you have numbers. There are 10000 individuals so to say. There is a difference between individuals and groups. The larger the group, the more HR and controlling tend to use their understanding of statistics. This is the conflict between groups and individuals. Why take c…

> Why take care of one person? In sum, it does not pay off. That assessment is extremely short-sighted. The reason it will pay off is because other employees will see how you treat the one person. If they see you give someone who is struggling needed support, they will know that in the future, they might get that as well. Having a stable environment full of people who trust each other will pay off far more in the fut…

> By "officially" do you mean legally?

Yes. Union contracts or in the case of public service actual law... basically, the provisions exist to prevent "backdoor deals" or at least make them really expensive.

In the end, it's all performance theatre.

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

#46

Post by iLoveOncall »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #16

> But I had a huge stock investment coming up. So there was no way I was going to rock the boat in any way, shape, or form just trying to get to this date. So the employer has a financial inventive program to encourage people to stay in the organization long term, and some hyper-rational VP repurposes that reward as a kind of tenure cliff forcing people out just ahead of it? All the pieces are in the article, just wa…

Amazon's stock vesting schedule is 5% - 15% - 40% - 40%, so you're not new anymore by the time you reach any significant number of stocks vesting.

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

#47

Post by iLoveOncall »

miningape wrote: post #21
unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #16

> But I had a huge stock investment coming up. So there was no way I was going to rock the boat in any way, shape, or form just trying to get to this date. So the employer has a financial inventive program to encourage people to stay in the organization long term, and some hyper-rational VP repurposes that reward as a kind of tenure cliff forcing people out just ahead of it? All the pieces are in the article, just wa…

I was thinking the same thing reading this article. In this case it seems it was pretty clearly meant to push this employee out before their stocks vest because its probably a lot cheaper to spend $100,000 hiring a new person than lose several 100's of thousands to a decent worker who has just been at the company for a while. While atrocious its very clear math, but I hope employees keep leaving after they vest.

Unless you're a director you will never come even close to $100K of stock vesting in a single event, and directors are not subject to PIPs.

So that's a nice theory you have here but it doesn't work in practice.

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

#48

Post by me_me_me »

aestetix wrote: post #19
antupis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also if pips are constant it will just create a nasty culture which is very hard to turn back.

Well it seems that PIPs are not actually improvement plans. An honest performance improvement plan would identify key areas that can reasonably be improved, steps to improve in those areas, and a timeframe to achieve that improvement. Ideally with occasional check-ins to ensure the employee is on target for reaching the goals. What I hear about American PIPs is that they are unrealistic or impossible goals for anyone…

PIPs (at least in europe) are a way for company to prove employee was fired because they are incompetent. We tried to help employee X, see the paperwork? But they are not good enough.

Its a system to shield company from local laws and lawsuits.

Its not a sign of cowardliness or incompetence. Its cold calculation and foolproof process, that on scale protects corpo from multi-million settlements

I have only heard secondhand of two cases where pip didnt result in being fired (but cant confirm it, could have been a propaganda stories passed on by gullible)

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

#49

Post by DharmaPolice »

_the_inflator wrote: post #28
aestetix wrote: post #11

This seems common in American companies. I wonder how much of this is a result of lawsuit culture. For example, American companies won't tell job applicants why they get rejected, lest they get sued by the rejected candidates. And perhaps this has carried into feedback for actual employees. It sounds like the author wasn't even he was on a performance improvement plan, he had to infer it and pull it out of his manage…

Senior Manager here. This is common to any large entity and may only influenced by workers' rights and culture. 1. Large numbers In large companies, you have numbers. There are 10000 individuals so to say. There is a difference between individuals and groups. The larger the group, the more HR and controlling tend to use their understanding of statistics. This is the conflict between groups and individuals. Why take c…

On your second point, I've seen this in the UK public sector. Because of a commitment to advertise every job that comes up when someone went from temp to permtheir job was re-advertised and they would have to reapply.

Imagine competing against someone who was already doing that exact job and had been doing it well for two years. I had an interview like this (as the person already in-post).

"Can you give an example where you did X"

"Yes, last week - remember you were there and saw me do it."

What a waste of everyone's time.

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

#50

Post by iLoveOncall »

bilekas wrote: post #26

I will probably get some slack for this, but not ever usage of a PIP is necessarily a bad thing.. The example above and large companies in general do seem to use it as a firing tool or at least pretence. From experience we had one developer on our team who was gradually just showing less and less interest and quality of work was dropping so much so it was effecting the rest of the team. I wasn't involved but he was p…

I work at Amazon and you're right that PIPs are not an issue. But having a certain percentage of people that you HAVE to PIP is.

It simply doesn't make any sense. You can have a team of only high performers and your manager will tell you to fire someone, and if you don't do it it will be you.

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