Why former Amazon engineers hate the company with a passion?
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One common theme I've heard on both sides is that where you wind up matters a lot. The people and org structure around you can have a large impact. But I'm also convinced that personality is a key part of this as well. My bet is that some people are a good fit for Amazon, and many people just aren't.
They are, in effect, the 10x people. Because of their presence they made things around them far more productive, while they themselves might not be as productive. Most, if not all middle management aren't very good at understanding this.
Type B? Is that an established concept?
And yes, these types of subjective things can be argued eternally but these have been my observations and experience.
I prefer collaborating and building a team. I find people who “like to complete” to be short sighted, and often produce bad work over the long run - they already think they are “the best” and often don’t improve in a broader picture. The cup is already full so to speak.
Almost all paths are for “type A”s in the tech world.
Seems people didn’t learn anything from MoneyBall.
MBTI is debatable, but it tries to be a better measure than just A/B
This would seem to indicate a complete absolution of leadership and responsibility from senior management for how their company is run.
Delegating so much cultural autonomy downwards might mean they can avoid the hard work of building a cohesive org, but the costs are that everyone now knows that if you apply to work there, you're playing a lottery. Worse, if you lose that lottery, then the company won't have your back.
At more well-functioning companies, if you get hired into a team and it's not working out, they'll try and work out where you might be happier (and useful!) and consciously try and help you move teams. But that requires a perspective that doesn't treat staff engineers as a commodity.
I believe this to be true for all large tech companies. For example, most promotion programs require you to have impact outside your team, which means that anyone landing into an infrastructure team is immediately in a better position than 90% of the company when it comes to recognition.
I had made an observation about this in a past comment of mine. [1]
Further, as the stock was going up, there were downward adjustments to the number of shares granted after year 3 (since the dollar value was higher and put you “out of band”) if you hadn’t been promoted in time. Somehow I am doubtful there has been a equal adjustment to number of shares upwards as dollar value in 2022 has gone down.
So it created a cycle of people coming in, working 3 years, then sitting out 6+ months so they could reset with a new offer all over again with the higher cash component plus negotiating their new stock grants...
I mean, if Amazon can use this process to retain people who can work with timeline and pressure (and then rewards them so much they stay) it could be a huge win.
PIPs and the related actions are just a pretext.
They want to force the employees to quit or fire them and the PIP is just a tool to make it happen.
If the leaked memo in https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-wareh... is true (I suspect it is), then Amazon's reputation and practices for employee treatment are catching up to it and could cause problems.
I know. That's why I asked the question.
Getting rid of employees you don't want is a good thing. How well this method works for them relative to other ways to evaluate employees?
It is not a question of whether the employees being PIP'ed / fired are good employees that perform well or not. It is all about meeting the unregretted attrition (URA) quota set by human resources regardless of the employee's current or past performance.
The Twitter thread states: "The URA targets are set at org-level. Most SDMs will not be aware of this: usually director-level target. It’s almost always been fixed 6%".
Employee quote: "I was Focus/PIP'd out after 10+ years of good to great reviews, by a manager I worked under for a total of ~2 months. This system is completely and utterly broken."
"the company is demanding, sometimes brutally so, and it can lose sight of its employees’ humanity — which is neither good nor in its strategic interest. Amazon’s insistence on hitting “unregretted attrition” milestones, to the point that it would push out solid performers, is one example of the culture’s downsides." Source: https://bigtechnology.substack.com/p/standing-up-for-us-pleb...
If you have poor performers, then obviously they should be let go. But if you have a solid team, who do you let go? If you have a solid team with a few open headcount and you have trouble hiring to fill the open headcount, who do you let go?
PIP'ing and firing good employees just to meet a quota is stupid and yet that is the policy.
Yeah, nothing like working your guts out for several years only to be fired to meet a human resource quota.
Sounds like a perfectly fair way to treat your hard-working employees.
Why would former Amazon engineers hate the company when they were treated so well?
A job isn't some bank account into which you are depositing money each day for future withdrawal. The employee does not owe the employer, nor vice versa.
You work hard for the paycheck, and equity if any, not for having a job tomorrow. They are orthogonal.
It's a business relationship, not a personal one. They don't owe you a birthday call after you split up; the paycheck/equity is full compensation.
Fair enough.
However, former employees talk and companies develop reputations based on how they treat their employees.
Amazon should not be surprised when they have difficulty hiring because candidates have other options.
Amazon should not be surprised when employees form unions and demand better treatment and better working conditions.
Actions are not without consequences.
Not so well. Some teams have a high threshold for hiring, some don't, but overall it's been going down because it becomes more and more difficult to find new employees.
The “1000s of jobs” are the enterprise dev jobs. And I’m not judging those. That’s what I did all of my career until a couple of years ago.
If we are talking in the context of software engineers being paid “very well”, I don’t consider those to be a substitution
In which case, point taken re the difference between simply 'well paid' and that very top tier.
https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...