Comment by 32mb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 32mb | Hacker News Reader

Not to discourage you, but just so you are aware of what you’re getting into, Amazon is notoriously known for their Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). Every review cycle, you are ranked against your peers, and managers have to “PIP” a percentage of the team. Usually it’s the bottom 10%, though I’ve been hearing rumors that now it’s bottom 15%. Because of this quota, managers are forced to “fire” engineers even if they have a super star team, or unless they hire to fire, which is unfortunate but common thing at Amazon. Amazon is a great company and just like any other company, YMMV, but I, along with several of my friends, had the most stressful, worst time of our lives while working at Amazon. Working 10-12 hour days and weekends was very common. YMMV, so negotiate wisely!

The first part about PIP is bs. No one on any of my teams got pipped and I know of only 1 person that I know who got pip'd (in my 5+ years there). No one is forcing managers to fire engineers. Most teams can't fill their headcount and are constantly short-staffed with the turnover so even if for some reason amazon wanted to "fire" 10% of the people on each team it doesn't make sense for them to do so from a business perspective as none of the projects/goals would be met if they did that.

The only accurate part is the last part where you said that it can be stressful and there are sometimes long hours but working weekends is not "common" unless you are oncall and even when you are oncall on most teams you likely won't even be paged.

Interesting. I think this is the first time ever heard someone talk positively about the place.

I actually know a lot of PiP used. It's not the bottom 10% but it's almost always personal from mgmt to whoever they want out wo getting sued for wrongful termination. The so called get rid of the bottom "10%" is more through natural attrition via retasked to do demoralizing work. Yeah when you work for some bad blood. They will make your life a living hell.

Also not so much long hours bc you do that elsewhere too but it's more of high pressure to get things done even when things that don't work isn't your area to deal it. That's one of their most coveted principles: bias for action.

"Amazon is a great company"

This seems to conflict with every other sentence in your post.

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