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

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

#71

Post by titanomachy »

decafninja wrote: post #47
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can make great money working in tech without subjecting myself to a work environment where 6% of my colleagues will be forced out. So, in a competitive market where tech talent has its choice in the best employer... why Amazon? I've seen more articles written about Amazon being a dog-eat-dog place than any other large tech company.

Having Amazon on your resume probably opens many doors. True, there are other companies on par or better than Amazon on many different metrics. Many of them are at least as hard to get into as Amazon though. If my choices are Amazon, or a bunch of lesser known, less prestigious, or lesser paying companies, I'd take the shot at Amazon and do whatever possible to last at least a year so I could put that Amazon name on…

"the kind of rockstar ninja wizard that can glean multiple offers from all sorts of top tech companies"

I don't think this is a helpful stereotype. I know lots of these people and they're quite normal. "Rockstar ninja wizard" makes these jobs sound a lot more unattainable than they really are.

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

#72

Post by sokoloff »

plank_time wrote: post #61
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…

> So a manager might make a bad hire because so they don't have to fire any of the people they like. This is well documented behavior, even in Jack Welch’s book. He was the one famous for cutting 5% every year at GE.

At Amazon*, the "bar raiser" has to approve the hire though, so there's a pretty mechanistic control against the worst form of this.

* - as I understand it; never worked there.

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

#73

Post by discodave »

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…

In my experience at Amazon, line managers (5-20 people) still often act as if they have unregretted attrition goals.

It's up to the Sr managers and directors if they spread the 6% goal around all their teams, or let one or two teams "implode". But the line managers know that their team either needs to outperform other teams or that the performance management buzzsaw is likely coming for one or more of their reports.

Heck, I even saw directors and VP refer to "regretted attrition" and "unregretted attrition" in all hands meetings.

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

#74

Post by random314 »

retrocryptid wrote: post #70
xibalba wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fact that counters your hypothesis: Amazon is obviously one of the most productive companies to have ever existed. *Edited: Turns out I have been misusing the word "counterfactual" for quite some time.

Worker productivity is measured as "amount of goods" over number of employees. If you say "revenue" is the same as "amount of goods" then Amazon gives you: 386.1b dollars / 798k workers = $483,834.58 / worker That's impressive, but... Alibaba: $717.3b / 251k workers = $2.8m / worker FlipKart: $436.2b / 30k workers = $14.5m / worker Texas Instruments: $14.38b / 30k workers = $468k / worker G.E.: $75b / 174k workers =…

436B$ for flipkart? Something is wrong!

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

#75

Post by tinyhouse »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #36
ladyattis wrote: post #10

I always have to wonder at what point does this just result in lower productivity if you know you're going to have to leave a company within a few years to another company and go through the whole process again? I understand that some folks don't learn or catchup all that much but at some point GOOD ENOUGH should be GOOD ENOUGH. Instead, we have entire corporations who predicate their HR culture on the idea of consta…

I can make great money working in tech without subjecting myself to a work environment where 6% of my colleagues will be forced out. So, in a competitive market where tech talent has its choice in the best employer... why Amazon? I've seen more articles written about Amazon being a dog-eat-dog place than any other large tech company.

All companies letting some employees go. Why would companies keep employees who are consistently underperforming? such employees usually have negative impact on the company. If you started a company tomorrow, would you keep such employees? As long as the process is fair I see no problem with it (fair = letting employees know months in advance that they are underperforming and need to improve, offering a decent severance package based on tenure, etc)

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

#76

Post by sokoloff »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #36
ladyattis wrote: post #10

I always have to wonder at what point does this just result in lower productivity if you know you're going to have to leave a company within a few years to another company and go through the whole process again? I understand that some folks don't learn or catchup all that much but at some point GOOD ENOUGH should be GOOD ENOUGH. Instead, we have entire corporations who predicate their HR culture on the idea of consta…

I can make great money working in tech without subjecting myself to a work environment where 6% of my colleagues will be forced out. So, in a competitive market where tech talent has its choice in the best employer... why Amazon? I've seen more articles written about Amazon being a dog-eat-dog place than any other large tech company.

I've been at several places which would have been improved by higher levels of management-directed firings. It's not at all obvious to me that the success rate at Amazon should be expected to be significantly over 85% of hire-to-performing employee. Given that, what should they do with the 15% who don't turn out to be performing employees (for whatever reason that isn't itself protected class membership)?

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

#77

Post by nkssy »

xibalba wrote: post #12
ladyattis wrote: post #10

I always have to wonder at what point does this just result in lower productivity if you know you're going to have to leave a company within a few years to another company and go through the whole process again? I understand that some folks don't learn or catchup all that much but at some point GOOD ENOUGH should be GOOD ENOUGH. Instead, we have entire corporations who predicate their HR culture on the idea of consta…

A fact that counters your hypothesis: Amazon is obviously one of the most productive companies to have ever existed. *Edited: Turns out I have been misusing the word "counterfactual" for quite some time.

They will fail in multiple ways and this will be a factor in what eats them out like a cancer. But it will take decades so really is it an issue for them? Unlikely. They'll still be profitable. It won't necessarily kill them either.

Its the equivalent of the corporation being a person smoking cigarettes. It imparts some benefits and doesn't kill right away but given enough time it still causes disease. They'll start to miss opportunities. They'll run slower.

The metaphor vanishes in a lot of ways though because the corporation can pivot and simply say "we were wrong". Microsoft is a perfect example. It regularly threw away people and this caused damage and various big failures but not enough to scuttle them. They are still successful. Still growing.

Students of history know that Microsoft's story of success hides a lot of messy details including behavior where plenty of law had to get involved. Amazon will go down a similar path. Or has likely already begun.

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

#78

Post by decafninja »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #60
decafninja wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having Amazon on your resume probably opens many doors. True, there are other companies on par or better than Amazon on many different metrics. Many of them are at least as hard to get into as Amazon though. If my choices are Amazon, or a bunch of lesser known, less prestigious, or lesser paying companies, I'd take the shot at Amazon and do whatever possible to last at least a year so I could put that Amazon name on…

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…

How common is it for a candidate to be able to get offers from multiple FAANGs?

I would imagine it isn't common, though I could certainly be wrong.

The FAANG engineers that I know personally all seem to have cracked FAANG with a lot of difficulty, and claim that odds are they would fail if they had to re-interview for the same position.

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

#79

Post by dcolkitt »

Frost1x wrote: post #53
decafninja wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having Amazon on your resume probably opens many doors. True, there are other companies on par or better than Amazon on many different metrics. Many of them are at least as hard to get into as Amazon though. If my choices are Amazon, or a bunch of lesser known, less prestigious, or lesser paying companies, I'd take the shot at Amazon and do whatever possible to last at least a year so I could put that Amazon name on…

>If my choices are Amazon, or a bunch of lesser known, less prestigious, or lesser paying companies, I'd take the shot at Amazon and do whatever possible to last at least a year so I could put that Amazon name on my resume for future prospects. I don't disagree with your assessment, but this illustrates just how broken the software labor market is. If you'd work in a dumpster fire culture as a capable developer just…

Generally, compensation is pretty closely tied to revenue per employee. Not always, but it’s a pretty good rule of thumb.

Companies that can’t afford to pay FAANG wages, typically don’t have FAANG productivity levels. Productivity in software is closely tied to how effective the technology and processes are. Most of those factors are fairly portable across companies.

So, I would say that an engineer working at a high total comp firm is likely acquiring more valuable human capital. Not always, but it’s a pretty good rule of thumb. If a company can afford to pay engineers $300k, they’re probably doing something right, in a way the company who pays $75k isn't.

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

#80

Post by todd_t »

birdyrooster wrote: post #15
everdrive wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that a PIP was nearly always a "here's your chance to get another job" warning, and never really an earnest chance to improve. Does anyone understand differently?

I was put on a PIP at Google and kept my job afterwards, they basically put massive training wheels on you. I had a director checking in with me 2-3 a week to put the pressure on, even doing some pair programming which was interesting. They really are trying to figure out why you aren't working well and see if you are a lost cause.

Can you elaborate on the "interesting" aspect of pairing with the director?
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