Hacker News Reader

Agreed that what is left unsaid in a lot of performance conversations is the person-role match. Someone isn't a high/low performer globally, just at that time in that role.

Wall St firms I have worked at typically try to find different roles for people before marking them as at risk of a layoff. Not sure FAANG behaves the same, but from all these PIP discussions it seems not.

I've absoluttely been in a position where the ground moved under me. I went from doing (based on evaluations, RSUs, etc.) from doing a very good job to bouncing around a bunch of managers and groups in roles that I wasn't really suited for and didn't have much real interest in. The only saving grace was that I was pretty close to semi-retiring anyway.

I've been bouncing for about 5 years. Have about another 20 to go. Not sure how I'm going to handle that.

Consider a different job, and pick up some responsibilities.

What are you talking about?

I can't change jobs now due to home life responsibilities and having specialized in dead tech.

I have picked up responsibilities. In the past I've filled the role of a senior dev for a year and a tech lead for another. I volunteered to be an ASC. I volunteered for all sorts of other responsibilities.

Perhaps the world doesn't work in the way that you think. It's not possible for everyone to successfully job hop, especially with a disability and home responsibilities. Just picking up responsibilities doesn't mean you'll get rewarded.

> Just picking up responsibilities doesn't mean you'll get rewarded.

I'm sorry, I did not mean to attack, or otherwise offend you. I was attempting to say that one can look for an opportunity to work in an environment where one can feel appreciated. I'd employ a person with such experience as long as they'd know some basics. What's TLS, how does it work, roughly. What's DNS. TCP vs UDP. At least understanding of what problems are solved (or created, if you are in that camp) by Kubernetes. Docker basics. Read open source code.

Those are interesting subjects. I'm sure there is a ton of hypothetical past problems one could attempt to modernize and have fun while doing so.

It's just a free opinion of someone on the internet!

> I can't change jobs now due …having specialized in dead tech.

Then don’t do that?

I’ve been working professionally for 27 years and have been aggressive about keeping pace with technology. I saw what happened first hand when I didn’t between around 2002-2008 and I said it would never happen again.

For reference: I didn’t know “cloud” from a hole in the wall at 44 years old and I got my first and hopefully last job in BigTech at 46 working at AWS in the ProServe department (where I got PIPed see my top level comment)

It is completely irresponsible for anyone in tech especially with a family to not always keep themselves employable and depend on the whims of thier current employer to support their families addiction to food, clothing and shelter.

And how does a disability preclude you from getting a remote job?

And if you “can’t job hop”, would you not look for another job if you got laid off or fired or would you just give up and be on the street - homeless and hungry?

> Just picking up responsibilities doesn't mean you'll get rewarded.

I’m always rewarded for picking up additional responsibilities - if not by the current company by the next. It’s what allows me to aggressively job hop with a family and not be stuck with dead technologies on my resume.

I have responsibilities and problems at home that greatly limit my non-work hour freedom. My disability is not a physical one, but a neurodivergent one, so remote would only hurt me more. I would look for another job if I lost this one, but it would probably pay less - again, no real time to upskill. Sure, I've gotten new certs and other BS over the years and started working with new tech. That hasn't been helpful. I've worked roles above my official position and not been rewarded. In fact, I haven't seen any of my hard work or extra responsibilities pay off after my first promotion about 3 years in. I don't expect another promotion for the rest of my career either. That's just the way it is for me.

Not everyone's life is as easy as you make your's out to be.

Again if you lost your job you would do what it took to get another one wouldn’t you? So what’s the difference between changing jobs when you do have a choice and waiting until you don’t have a choice?

If you don’t make time now to upskill, what do you think is going to happen if/when you don’t have a choice but to look for a job and be stuck with in your words “dead tech”.

"So what’s the difference between changing jobs when you do have a choice and waiting until you don’t have a choice?"

The difference is that if I lost this job I would then have time during the day to look for jobs or study when I would have been working.

I don't really care what will happen. My area is shitty for tech work, my wife won't move, and I'm ill suited to remote work. I'm just coasting now. There's no point in upskilling until I would know what skills the other company would want because there are so many different things they could wanting the tech changes so fast.

That’s not how it works. Given a choice between hiring someone who learned on the side with no real world experience and hiring someone with real world experience - the latter wins.

That’s why you do volunteer for opportunities where you can up skill on the job and while you are still employed you find another job where you can get in based on what you know and then transition

"Given a choice between hiring someone who learned on the side with no real world experience and hiring someone with real world experience - the latter wins."

Lol so I'm in a catch 22 and your precious advice does not apply.

"That’s why you do volunteer for opportunities where you can up skill on the job"

That's not how my org works.

I left a company years ago because I didn't feel I was a good fit for the team/project - skills/goals/etc. But wasn't allowed to leave because it would hurt the image of the team to be seen to have people leaving it for other teams. But... apparently, leaving the company altogether doesn't affect the image (and yes... I've left the team, and people internally knew why, so... how does it really save face?)

Perhaps if the employee leaves the company entirely, all parts of the company get a chance to pretend the deficiency was in the employee. [0]

Like some weird inverse of the "You can't fire me, I quit!" trope.

[0] P.S.: Even if the employee left for a more prestigious role in another company, the social-circles in the old company aren't forced to acknowledge that the same way as if it were an internal move: HR will just say "they left to pursue other opportunities", and that permits the assumption that that the worker--their incompetence discovered--has fallen into ignominious chronic unemployment.

"You can't quit, I fire you!"

Good, gets the unemployment and makes any legal case a little easier.

Yes that whopping $387/week on average. That’ll show them

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-finance/best-and-wor...

Better than 0

Not much better. In my state it is $275 max a week

Not much better is still better.

If I was able to forego the scam of 'unemployment insurance's, and put that cash in savings myself, I could do a hell of a lot better.

In reality, our unemployment insurance is a scam of how pathetic it pays. Again, it's another example of how the middle class gets squeezed both ends, and little care expended on the actual problems.

I can see why republicans get elected - they lower taxes on my bracket so I keep more money in hand. But that's because the very policies that should help everyone don't help everyone cause of shitty means testing.

Now , when I got fired from shitty food service job, unemployment was close to in parity with what I made, so it was useful then. (I just want it useful for everyone, not just low paid.)

Leadership was asked why not find new roles for people getting laid off due to project cancellations at a time when we were still hiring like crazy in the immediate run-up and aftermath. The response was “we need to move fast.”

They encouraged those laid off to apply for open roles. But of course it read to employees as a monumental “fuck you.”

Well, but to mention that once, at least at amazon, you enter the pip processs. You are no longer able to move teams. And if you get removed. Not able to apply to return.

It's surprising companies don't seem interested in understanding their employees well enough to know that the cost of re-hiring and re-training vs trying to find a better fit in the org is not a good idea.

Some industries coach the employee into a different role, or help them exit more openly.

I've even seen articles about how Amazon chews through so many people that they're having trouble finding "virgin" hires. Everyone in their pool is already fed up with them or were PIP'd.

"We need more HB1's.... we already burned the local population"

Interesting.

Explains the cyclical visits from Amazon recruiters on LinkedIn.

IIRC isnt this about warehouse workers?

Those were some of the roles, but they were having roubles with others too.

> And if you get removed. Not able to apply to return.

Having been past the PIP/Pivot process, certainly I don't want to return.

Why the hell would I ever want to return? That’s like going back to an ex thinking it “will be different this time”

This is just how companies operate today. Burn furniture to heat the place for a quarter. Sell your property to a for profit entity you lease from instead to save a line item today and no doubt get screwed when its time to renegotiate the lease (long after whoever made this decision has left the company I’m sure). Fire staff and rehire instead of retrain. Its all myopic thinking that you’d find in any MBA program sold to you as the best practices in modern business.

Modernizing MBA's will have to happen at some point.

I think managers in tech companies are very often just really untalented as leaders. Good leaders create more leaders. Growing talent and getting the best out of people should be the goal for any leader, and I've seen so little of that from the ones I worked with.

After a point it just becomes part of the landscape, a pervasive culture of not recognizing what good leadership looks like, and people filtering out of the industry because they're over it.

I'm actually in a financial company, but I assume it's all pretty similar at this point.

You should file for disability accommodations. That is completely legal to ask. Sometimes you need to back it up with documentation, but i suspect that won't be a problem.

They can't discriminate against you for this.

I have documentation. They don't care. HR said to just work with my manager on accommodations. My main problem is dealing with ambiguity and context switching. That's something they can't change given their chosen work model.

The old model of working was that you supported 1 main app and maybe a smaller 1 or 2 that were related. These were usually in 1 stack and well documented. The new model is that teams are typical supporting 6-10 apps in multiple stacks. I'm slow when switching between apps and stacks, and without consistent exposure to a single app/stack, I won't get faster.

It's funny though - they talk a big game and even hire in Auticon contractors, but then refuse to do anything for existing employees. I assume a least some of those contractors have similar difficulties as me.

I don’t have any (diagnosed) neurological disability but I would do poorly in that situation too. Excessive context switching is a major source of stress: adrenaline, fast heartbeat, high blood pressure. Makes it almost impossible to stay focused and motivated.

The way that Amazon’s PIP works, you are highly incentivized not to fight it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37963423

The risk/reward isn’t worth it unless you’re close to a vesting period.

They can discriminate against you. They just need to make sure it's not obviously discrimination.

Yeah, that was a risk I was willing to take by disclosing my disability. So far it doesn't seem like it made anything worse, but it hasn't made anything better either.

I'd speak to an employment lawyer and see what they advise. A couple hundred bucks for the piece of mind might be worth it. You'd get an opinion on what they can and can't do and what you can do to proactively manage the situation.

Thanks but I don't think I will. The thing about disabilities is that they have to provide reasonable accommodations. What is reasonable is wildly subjective. There's really not much to be done.

So exactly what do you think he’s going to accomplish spending years working with an employment lawyer? A reinstatement of his job at a toxic company? Some monetary compensation that probably won’t be worth the headache?

That energy can be better spent looking for a new job. My granddad use to tell me to never chase after old money or old girlfriends.

Unfortunately, there's a HUMONGOUS difference between "not allowed to" and "can't" when a company optimizes for profit at the expense of human well-being.

What's an ASC?

Application security champion. Basically the Sec part of DevSecOps for the team. It sounds a lot cooler than it is. It's mostly paperwork.

could've picked a better analogy that don't reinforce the fitness myth that fat "turns into" muscle.

fat is fat. muscle is muscle. one does not convert into another. it can be broken down into energy to be used but ultimately each cell starts from scratch.

You're correct and being downvoted. It's funny because it's the exact opposite metaphor than what they want.

Burn fat = PIP bottom 6%

Grown new muscle = Hire new workers