561–570 of 771 posts
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I wish I had realized your comment was better spaced before slogging through the previous text brick.
That was a very readable comment. I'm reminded of the times I've posted here about "If it's 3 paragraphs or longer, my coworkers won't read it" only to get responses like "Must be poor writing on your part!" I wish to thank you for proving my case.
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> As a manager, you get verbal (never written) lashings from your manager and skip manager to put the lowest performers on performance plans that ensure that any attrition counts. As soon as you capitulate, your lowest performer is now considered a low performer. Clearly, I'm preaching to the choir here, but... I am constantly amazed at companies that do this. Effectively, they're incentivizing their workers to sabot…
>Long term, that seems like a fairly straightforward way to make sure you get poor performance out of your workers. End result being snakes, backstabbers, and sociopaths rise to the top of the chains. Engineering is a collaborative effort so it speaks to the culture of AMZN how they incentivize this nonsense.
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Isn't that simply because you experience failure many more times than you experience success. In fact on your path to success you are almost guaranteed to experience multiple failures. So by that metrics one success teaches you the lessons of many failures.
No.
The pip quota is a HUGE perverse incentive here. Choosing someone to put on pip is hard because it is in manager's best interest to protect their core team from pip. So if someone is too good for your team, you put them on pip. They are going to leave anyway, so putting them on pip does the least damage to your team. The other pathological result is hiring dummies just to put them on pip, again protecting the core te…
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What are your thoughts about when the wives of the EA developers came together and sued EA? “Perhaps they should just be quiet”? When are the abused allowed to speak? Edit: nevermind. Comment history suggests I’ll never get a response.
I wasn't suggesting anyone should "just be quiet", in fact, I'm happy this person was able to express themselves and their situation openly on LinkedIn. My point was simply this wasn't a very pragmatic approach to handling the situation. Some employers may not like to see this type of content on their professional profile and it may hurt their career.
I've been an Amazon SDE and an Amazon SDM. I enjoyed my time as an SDE, luckily free from these horror stories. After having been an SDM, I understand how these horror stories can form. Generally, Amazon has two minds about performance management. In written documentation, it's all about whether your reports meet the role guidelines. The written documentation is solid. They share how to evaluate people objectively an…
Are managers also put on pip? Especially those who try to dodge their teams from stack ranking? Is stack ranking practiced for managers as well?
I've never seen a manager face any sort of criticism. They just lead with impunity. Often they are promoted for miserably failed projects because they took a risk, and in large tech companies with big cash cushions, risks are worth it.
In my experience most of the time managers just maintain status quo. Run standup, do 1:1s, hire, and pass on orders from above. They keep their jobs forever.
While I feel bad that this guy didn't understand what he was getting into when joining Amazon, it is the middle manager at these companies that have the worst jobs. I interviewed for an Engineering Manager job at MSFT and they looked like they had about 35 hours of meetings a week. On top of that they are expected respond to urgent issues from their direct reports and respond from urgent issues from upper management.…
But I agree, I've been considering the shift to management (I like people) but the schedule seems punishing. As an IC only 20% of my time is scheduled, which is hard to give up.
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You should try to consider it from the company's perspective as well-- hiring an engineer is very expensive, takes a long time, and any new engineer has takes time before they can start to fully contribute to a codebase. If you're a manager in a situation where an employee has a problem and aren't meeting the job requirements, you'd probably much rather that they fix the problem and contribute to the team than fire t…
Whilst I think you are right, being put on a PiP should still be seen as a big warning. Especially since there are many ways to help someone improve in performance. There is little need for formalization in a benign pip. The main reason a pip is formalized is to prepare for firing. I don't think being put on a pip means firing is certain and imminent. I do think being put on a pip means firing is on the table and a s…
I've been an Amazon SDE and an Amazon SDM. I enjoyed my time as an SDE, luckily free from these horror stories. After having been an SDM, I understand how these horror stories can form. Generally, Amazon has two minds about performance management. In written documentation, it's all about whether your reports meet the role guidelines. The written documentation is solid. They share how to evaluate people objectively an…
> As a manager, you get verbal (never written) lashings from your manager and skip manager to put the lowest performers on performance plans that ensure that any attrition counts. As soon as you capitulate, your lowest performer is now considered a low performer. Clearly, I'm preaching to the choir here, but... I am constantly amazed at companies that do this. Effectively, they're incentivizing their workers to sabot…
"Sun Tzu then set the women a simple drill and made sure they understood what to do. However, when he started ordering them to perform the drill, the women burst out in laughter. He tried again with the same result. Sun Tzu claimed that this failure of the troops to obey was the fault of the commanders. So, despite the warlord’s pleas, he ordered the two concubines beheaded as an example for the rest of the company. Thereafter, the women did not utter a single sound and performed the drill exactly as commanded."
This is a depiction of Amazon. However, a "simple drill" is not high speed software engineering.
What do they offer over their competitors? Same work and pay at other big tech, but you don't have to worry about potentially crazy hours or getting fired for no reason. Or any of the other great companies outside of big tech. Good pay, good impact, no PIP culture.
Recruiters from AMZN are trying to lure me away from Google (as recruiters do), but why on earth would I leave my good job and risk being a sacrificial fire?