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Comment by goostavos | Hacker News Reader

I've been on 4 different teams at Amazon (now migrating to a 5th). It depends entirely on the team and as well as your current level. Some do loops just like with external candidates. Others barely require more than a conversation with someone on the team -- though this one is a huge red flag. Teams looking for warm bodies are seldom good teams.

Most of the time its somewhere in between. You'll speak with the manager, speak with the team, you each review each other's artifacts, and if everyone's happy, you swap over. The balance of power is pretty nice. I've dropped out of the process many, many times after starting talking with management. Or even just learning more about what the team itself does (I couldn't live with myself if I worked on pre-roll ads, for example. So I noped out of that one).

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I've seen a lot of red flags in my career where managers put people on PIPs -- when in reality it's not a PIP but a personality conflict.

And from what I understand at Amazon, it's kind of the same thing, but PIPs have been aggressively weaponized.

Christ, I wish PIPs were that easy where I work. Some days it feels like the public sector trying to get rid of employees that coast for months at a time before we can work our way through the process to can them.

Pips take months too, they're really not ideal

Isn’t that what a PIP is? A Personality Improvement Plan?

I seems to be used as an advance notice of termination?

The manager isn't required to improve their personality.

I believe you also need approvals from your current manager(s) to switch teams?

Nope no approval required

Interesting, I was told the opposite by my managers...

Unless you’re in Focus or Pivot, you’re a free agent. When Amazon is performance managing you in any sense it isn’t up to your existing manager if you can move, it would be an L10 (VP) exception on the receiving side to allow you to move, even if the hiring manager thinks you’re great.

that can't be right (but i have no idea). In the new group, nobody has any desire to at least do a reference check with the previous group? That would be the first thing as a hiring manager i would try to check for, say "this person is a d-bag that the entire group hated, and we were about to pip him/her anyway"? That would be kind of an equivalent of an approval, even if there is no formal approval.

Yes they do this. I don't know if the other guy just hasn't seen it himself or what

I mean, yes, having your manager say "I will destroy your career if you think about leaving" would be a kind of approval needed, but short of that level of viciousness it sounds like no?

Not familiar with Amazon culture so I don't know if that'd be considered acceptable behavior. I hope not!

have you considered that the manager may rightly have bad things to say? or that is just never warranted.

> have you considered that the manager may rightly have bad things to say? or that is just never warranted.

The manager should put those bad things _in writing_ during performance reviews instead of trying to prevent their employees from leaving by dunking on them after they are informed about the fact.

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