Amazon Pip Horror Story

Post by avisser » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 8:30 PM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #577

vanusa wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel bad for the LinkedIn poster here, I think he had a lazy manager. That's funny, because from the other things you said: There is an intense pressure to force a certain amount of attrition each year. As an SDM, I wanted to maintain the illusion of great Amazon culture for my team. It sure looks like this wasn't the case of a "lazy manager" at all -- rather, that manager was doing exactly what they were told: to…

I read this as the manager being lazy because they were giving in to the unwritten pressure from their manager to force attrition (less work) rather than trying to help their team members by protecting them (more work).

Post by malfist » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 8:35 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #518

matthewowen wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The devils advocate answer: Statistically, some of your employees probably aren’t good enough to be worth employing. But managers are human, hard conversations are hard, there are lots of incentives to not manage those people out. By having an attrition target and forcing people to cut the bottom 10%, you basically skip over the soft fuzzy human factors keeping people around, and instead fall back to the statistical…

Are managers stack ranked too? If not, and assuming the whole scheme works[1], then steady state is accumulation of bad managers, while they keep firing above-average ICs (that are still in their bottom 10). 1. It doesn't work, obviously because they are not in a closed system. Their policies affect their reputation, which will affect their ability to hire ICs who have to contend with an increasingly higher bar to cl…

Post by mistyislands » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 8:37 PM UTC

allochthon wrote: post #604

mistyislands wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also an Amazon tech manager. I confirm that this is also my experience. Managers don't like to put people into Focus or Pivot (unless the employee is absolutely terrible, which is rare). But we all have URA quotas to fill, mandated by HR. This is absolutely terrible for team cohesion and morale; while also being the largest source of friction and inefficiency.

I'm curious why these practices continue despite what seem to be obvious deficiencies.

Post by throw_nbvc1234 » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 8:39 PM UTC

efitz wrote: post #547

matthewowen wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The devils advocate answer: Statistically, some of your employees probably aren’t good enough to be worth employing. But managers are human, hard conversations are hard, there are lots of incentives to not manage those people out. By having an attrition target and forcing people to cut the bottom 10%, you basically skip over the soft fuzzy human factors keeping people around, and instead fall back to the statistical…

> the statistical truth that the worst 10% probably are negative value employees. Why is this a statistical truth? In a large, Gaussian distributed population MAYBE this is true (but hiring isn’t random, is it?). But the thresholds are not applied to large populations anywhere I’ve worked. It’s pressure applied to management at all levels.

Post by abeppu » Fri, Feb 04, 2022, 8:47 PM UTC

pythonaut_16 wrote: post #598

abeppu wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have a hand of cards you want to optimize it makes sense to keep discarding and redrawing your worst cards. But this makes sense _in a game with a fixed hand size_. But a company's staff should grow over time. So shouldn't one have an ROI-based criteria where you want each team member to help grow generate meaningfully more revenue than they cost to employ. If my "lowest" performing team members still make m…

Isn't that the point of the end of that comment?