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Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

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Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#71

Post by vladimirralev »

dingaling wrote: post #65
vladimirralev wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if that's true then it applies to shareholders and execs as well. Should we change their compensation plans? Yes there will be competition over the profitable projects and that's how it should be. Projects without profit don't exist. If the project doesn't have profit then the company wouldn't allocate budget. If they allocate budget then the project is profitable. It is up to the project leaders to have the figh…

> Projects without profit don't exist. Depends on your industry. In finance there are many, many projects which have to be done for legal compliance. There is no 'profit' for the company; the goal is to be permitted to remain in business. Funds have to be allocated to do the project, but it brings in no new revenue. It might actually incur new costs, such as ongoing storage for audit logs.

Well, any prevented loss can also be interpreted as profit. So depending on what kind of money is at stake you can reasonably claim a cut. You provide insurance and your cut is the price of the insurance policy. It's a well established business.

Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#72

Post by vladimirralev »

vkou wrote: post #38
vladimirralev wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much more simple than that. Just take a cut from the profits your project generates or supervises. If the project doesn't generate or supervise anything just get a cut from the overall budget which is allocated based on how valuable the project is to the company.

How much profit does QA generate? What about internal build/test tools?

QA gets a budget at the price of an insurance policy. Just like an insurer would gauge the risk and ask for a price.

Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#73

Post by vladimirralev »

a_c_s wrote: post #49
vladimirralev wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if that's true then it applies to shareholders and execs as well. Should we change their compensation plans? Yes there will be competition over the profitable projects and that's how it should be. Projects without profit don't exist. If the project doesn't have profit then the company wouldn't allocate budget. If they allocate budget then the project is profitable. It is up to the project leaders to have the figh…

Then there would be no technical support staff - upgrading computers generates $0 new revenues and has significant costs. Clearly there is value in not forcing developers to use 15 year old machines, but it isn't so clear to quantify. Since whomever 'quantifies' this data then has enormous influence as to what projects are worked on, you risk just shuffling around the politics: instead of fighting over what projects…

Unless you discount the expert time saved per year. This is actually a real metric. How do you think they calculate the budget for tech support? They measure time wasted in tech issues, multiply by the expert wage and then start doing a binary search up and down to see what optimizes the cost at average salary increments. Of course politics corrupt the process eventually.

Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#74

Post by ajiang »

vladimirralev wrote: post #71
dingaling wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Projects without profit don't exist. Depends on your industry. In finance there are many, many projects which have to be done for legal compliance. There is no 'profit' for the company; the goal is to be permitted to remain in business. Funds have to be allocated to do the project, but it brings in no new revenue. It might actually incur new costs, such as ongoing storage for audit logs.

Well, any prevented loss can also be interpreted as profit. So depending on what kind of money is at stake you can reasonably claim a cut. You provide insurance and your cut is the price of the insurance policy. It's a well established business.

Not arguing at all that things have inherent value, but the challenge is having an objective way of putting a dollar value to those activities.

For example, does a backup generator add any value if the electricity never goes out? Do you only assign it 'profit' if electricity goes out? How do you calculate the value of the downtime if electricity does go out? Does it encourage people who've worked on setting up a backup generator to 'wish' for outages?

It's a challenge. Even if you do have answers to all of these questions, there will always be levels of subjectivity resulting in politics, and the effort involved will be itself an administrative workload of which the 'profit' would be difficult to assess.

Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#75

Post by vladimirralev »

allritenow wrote: post #11

Article rings true from my perspective as a "level 5" manager in Amazon's fulfillment operation. Remember that Amazon core value to "have backbone" and "don't be afraid to disagree"? This is where that would bite you in the ass. That Senior Operations Manager you disagreed with that one time in a staff meeting in front of the GM? Yeah, they just sunk your promotion during the OLR because your direct manager didn't wa…

Tread lightly :) hehe

But yes, nothing worse than passive-aggressive management.

Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#76

Post by azth »

CodeMage wrote: post #69
jsolson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, Amazon's pay scale is only competitive with other companies in the area if you ignore on-call and only look at starting salary/bonus (including stock compensation).

Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Not the OP. Basically, they expect you to work overtime (go on call) for free. If you take that into account, their offerings are nothing special.

Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#77

Post by KurtMueller »

munificent wrote: post #56
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard that at Google, the team votes for the person they would like to see promoted. This seems to be a pretty good idea from the outside - can someone comment on this? There must be some Googlers lurking...

Googler here. If you want to seek a promotion, you can nominate yourself or others can nominate you. When that happens, a packet is assembled for you. It includes your self-review, and reviews from a number of your peers as well as your managers. That packet goes to a committee likely made up of people who don't know you who then reach a decision about your promotion. That's a simplification, but that's the basic ide…

So if I was a Googler, I'd apply for a promotion just to see what my manager and my peers thought about me - both pros and cons - and use that to improve my performance.

Does that happen in the company?

Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#78

Post by nostrademons »

KurtMueller wrote: post #77
munificent wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Googler here. If you want to seek a promotion, you can nominate yourself or others can nominate you. When that happens, a packet is assembled for you. It includes your self-review, and reviews from a number of your peers as well as your managers. That packet goes to a committee likely made up of people who don't know you who then reach a decision about your promotion. That's a simplification, but that's the basic ide…

So if I was a Googler, I'd apply for a promotion just to see what my manager and my peers thought about me - both pros and cons - and use that to improve my performance. Does that happen in the company?

All the time. Conventional wisdom at Google is that you should always apply for a promotion, because the cost to you was zero and the benefit was potentially very large.

...that said, I didn't apply last cycle, because the form was changed so that promo candidates have to fill out a more in-depth self-assessment and get more in-depth peer feedback, and me and my peers were heads-down on a deadline at the time. I suppose one way to deal with the externalities of everybody always going up for promo is to make the process easier on people who don't.

BTW, there are regular performance reviews at Google - you can (and should) get your peers' feedback without actually going up for promotion. I did every cycle until I made senior, then I stopped caring quite so much. Promotions beyond senior have a large "impact and leadership" component to them, and so you basically know what you have to do to get promoted, you have to lead a major project that succeeds.

Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#79

Post by nostrademons »

bane wrote: post #68
res0nat0r wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd describe AWS pay as "competitive". Most all gigs provide you a decent signing bonus and stock grants. This lowers your base salary as all these items together are taken into your total compensation, which I believe is pretty much the norm up in Seattle for AWS/Google/Microsoft. Your signing bonus is pro-rated and you pay it back if you quit before one year, and your moving expenses are also paid back over two yea…

Yeah, that jives with what I was told. I think the stock grants mature over 4 years? I think the schedule was kind of interesting as well but I don't remember what it was, it wasn't 25/25/25/25 either. To be honest, I think it was a miss-match in positional terminology. I was going for a PM role, which in my current career path is basically the CEO of a specific project or program for part of a company. (These progra…

If they're like PM roles in the rest of the Internet industry, then yes, they are basically CEOs of a specific project or program for part of a company. The problem is that in most large software companies, projects are generally quite small. So a PM might be in charge of an engineering team of 4-6 engineers that are working on one tiny widget on the page. The product as a whole is usually the responsibility of a VP.

Re: Why It's So Difficult to Climb Amazon's Corporate Ladder

#80

Post by jsolson »

CodeMage wrote: post #69
jsolson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, Amazon's pay scale is only competitive with other companies in the area if you ignore on-call and only look at starting salary/bonus (including stock compensation).

Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

What azth said.

I also felt that future compensation was more anchored to your starting compensation than at other companies.

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