My husband went through the Amazon Pivot process. It was crushing | Hacker News Reader

My husband went through the Amazon Pivot process. It was crushing

businessinsider.com

59 pointsintunderflow39 comments

A majority of big tech employment is bait and switch.

You're leetcoded to death for a job that doesn't require leetcode skills. You're implored to follow some lofty mission statement, that in reality means nothing. Your first day you're love bombed into oblivion, only to be coldly thrown out of the door your last day. You're put on a "performance improvement plan" with no avenue to improve. Every company/CEO speaks in positive euphemisms while actively stabbing every thing and one in the back.

The best advice that can be given is NOT to associate personality or self-worth with employment at these companies. Unless you win the lotto, it is fleeting.

It really is a bizarre form of dishonesty. Employment is usually nothing more than a minor and temporary business deal from the company's perspective, but businesses routinely demand absolute loyalty from employees while showing none in return.

> You're implored to follow some lofty mission statement, that in reality means nothing.

Didn't Amazon adopted its "strive to be earth's best employer" leadership principle right before its massive layoff wave immediately followed by their return-to-office mandate that was also designed to push further people out of the company?

What a bunch of nonsense. Almost by definition a public company can’t be the world’s best employer- what’s good for employees often is not “good” for the shareholders.

When Amazon announced it's new leadership principles, people were quick to note that "strive to be" is considerably different than "is". Also, it's also a cliche for abusive husbands to promise their battered partners that they will try to be good husbands and family men even though they don't change their pattern of abuse.

I’ve been going through a career crisis of sorts lately, and this is exactly where I landed. It’s fine to try to rise or make something out of a career, but you have to be so careful to decouple your success in that from your self worth.

The big machine is fickle and unfair. Loyalty and becoming a corporate cheerleader may feel like it gets you ahead for a while. But when shareholders demand budget cuts, or you go through a hard time in your personal life and don’t quite perform the same, they will not remember your loyalty or enthusiasm. You will be surgically excised and replaced.

Or, sometimes worse, you will be shown a carrot you will never reach and be cheerfully told you’re almost there. It can be yours. If you only give just a little more.

If they could fire every single worker without repercussion they'd do it today. They can't ...yet. The pay is good, but make no mistake - they would prefer you not be there at all. You shouldn't be under the assumption your employment will last long. You might get lucky in that regard and it might last but that's probably not going to happen.

Knowing that would you still sign up? If the answer is "yes", then cool, if the answer is "no", then what are your options?

The entire pip model is a lie, they would never hold themselves accountable, and don't.

Most PIPs are designed to provide a documented reason for letting someone go that can be used to contest any possible lawsuits. They are not necessarily designed to help people. Some are, and some managers believe in them.

Unless you are in an "at will" employment state or otherwise fall under those rules, then the company trots out "at will" (which you signed an agreement to) then the HR DRONES will state "You have no grounds to sue."

In e.g. Texas if they fire you without properly documenting a flimsy non-protected-class-infringing cause, you may be able to draw unemployment. I don't know what the success rate is like for IT workers.

Unlikely tech firms care about unemployment. They care about 10 million dollar sexism/age discrimination/racism law suit

“At will” employment means that you may be fired for any reason or no reason at all, but not for an illegal reason. It’s a fairly meaningless term except insofar as it indicates you aren’t under contract for a specified term.

I am the founder and owner of a business with 270+ employees. I regularly give employees final warnings. The warning always is because of issues directly related to their job (not working their shift, failing at their regular duties somehow), not asking them to do more tasks beyond their job.

If this description of Amazon's pivot process is accurate, then there is something very shady going on there. Probably just the bureaucracy terminating people who disagree with them and making sure they have legal cover for it. Lots of DEI programs pushed by Fortune 500 CEOs require doubling minority employee populations and also unless the company is doubling in size, require the termination of white people. They can't legally say that, so they make up weird programs like this to get to that DEI goal.

Minorities get PIPped too in Amazon.

This is a good example of creating policies to change stats that are measured. Or something teachers call “teaching to the test”. Amazon can say well, our diversity based hiring practices have increased our hiring of minorities by 150% last quarter! Last quarter we hired more people under DEI policies than ever! We are so progressive ra ra ra !

So if the metric is hiring, not retention, not long term employment then they just let those people go next quarter.. and maybe re hire the following quarter to shift those stats again!

Unpopular opinion, hiring people by DEI initiatives is wrong.

You still have to pass the interview to get in. DEI changes the candidate ingress to the interview pipeline, it doesn't change the pipeline itself. You still gotta know your shit and be competent to get hired. Hiring someone below the bar does their demographic cohort no favors.

This is incorrect. DEI initiatives usually change the test and qualifications for admission / hiring. This was most obvious in "affirmative action" where less qualified minority individuals would be admitted to elite schools over Asian candidates.

Blackrock, which controls most of the Fortune 500 boards, mandates hiring quotas for minorities. Recruiters fulfill this by hiring less qualified individuals over those who are more qualified but not of the politically correct race.

You deleted your previous post that was downvoted to oblivion, so I’ll repeat it on this one: This is just racist, dog whistling drivel.

Starts with an appeal to authority with no proof.

Then attempts to make minorities the root cause of problems, which is flawed because:

1) We don’t know the race of the person in question in the article. If you find out they’re a minority, I’m sure we’ll get an “oh but”.

2) Plenty of minorities (blacks, Latinos, Asians, women, people considered minorities in race or gender) are getting laid off at the moment, and from Amazon explicitly. If you don’t know what I wonder how many minorities you actually know. I already assume not many which leads you to this racist diatribe.

3) Amazon cannot be at one time both, ruthlessly efficient in squeezing its workers, but also loose enough to fire so called “good workers” for “evil less good dei workers”.

Amazon, and all other major, hires and fires in this fashion because they are game of thrones style work sweatshops. Nothing more nothing less. In addition any “dei” initiatives they have are window dressing; white peoples are not getting fired at anyone’s expense.

Please go back to Facebook or TruthSocial and terrorizing your 270+ workers. The rest of us would like to be rid of your racist nonsense.

Companies started this crap just after 9/11. I guess I was a boomer IT guy and never saw the point of unions HOWEVER very early in my career I saw that the "company loyalty" mindset ONLY benefitted the company. This was BEFORE the pension reforms and when the company I worked for in NY decided to leave for Chicago they offered me (IT admin) all kinds of benefits to move and folks that had literally MONTHS left to meet their 10year pension were almost to a woman told "goodbye" too bad so sad, no pension for you. 10 years later with the PIVOT crap starting and folks I knew particularly, those at 40 or older getting the shaft I was no longer so anti-union. Im retired now but, there is strength in numbers OR sue them. I sued about 15 years ago. Ended up with TEN times the severance I was offered even after paying the attorney retainer fee (not cheap) but her communications started DIRECTLY with the firm's C-Suite Managing Director Lawyer and NOT the HR drones. The head corporate lawyer was quick to make the pending suit "go away" since they knew they were in the wrong "at will employment" be damned. Join a union if possible and don't take "at will" as anything get a lawyer and follow through with a suit if you have to.

Very few, especially in tech, want to unionize. There’s a lot of fear lately about job security and nobody wants to “fuck up” and be unable to provide for their families.

Of course it’s a tragedy of the commons, but what are you gonna do?

I thought it was common knowledge that a formal “performance improvement” program is no such thing. I bet companies do have some who succeed in these programs but that’s almost certainly to cover the fact that the only reason these programs exist is to give the employee no chance at all to claim unfair termination.

The essay comes off as somewhat naive. A lot of survival in corporate America is understanding what is left unsaid. The example of the boss asking for what the message should be when the person left is a pretty clear sign of where this person is headed, but they soldier on nonetheless.

It sounds like the person in question were a decent performer but had to be let go due to whatever reason. But instead of getting the subtext of the PIP they kept trying to soldier on… that’s just not how it works.

I assume this person reached where they are in life with hard work and dedication, so it's nature that they assumed that it would help them this time as well.

It is extremely disingenuous from an employer to say that your performance is not good while you are kicking ass. In reality they are simply looking for a paper trail to combat any wrongful dismissal claims.

But that is the world Americans live in, and if you suggest any change, they call you a socialist (as if it's a bad thing) and don't wanna hear about it. In Europe we have much stronger labor laws, and feel a bit more secure in our employment.

Three other recent stories from BI on Amazon Pivot:

I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38471744

A Former Amazon Worker Was Put a Performance Plan; Lost a Deposit on a House https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37817021

Amazon shut down a Slack channel where 2k employees talked about PIPs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37960846

Yikes at that guy losing a $110k deposit on a house after he got fired from Amazon. Major metro housing prices are a boot on your neck. When my wife and I bought our house in 2016 it was more than an hour commute each way, but it cost less than our annual income. Next door was an abandoned house with raccoons and a fox living in it. But the other day I was at the local university and saw a basement 1BR apartment (in DC) being advertised for the same as my mortgage on a 3BR house.

He didn’t get fired, he quit. And he lost the deposit because the loan he had taken out to be able to build a house depended on him having a job.

There’s a lot of poor financial (and life) decision making behind him losing that money, and it’s not quite as simple as it looks.

Companies need to address the nauseating imbalance between what they do for recruitment and retention (nice-sounding company values getting drilled at every all-hands meeting, team building exercises, talking about how much they value their people) and the dystopian, liability-paranoid way they cut ties with people they lay off and fire. I understand that letting people go is a part of business. I've had to let underperforming employees go myself. But companies need to understand that they're playing Operation on human lives here. Being laid off or fired, whether deserved or not, is traumatic. Companies should offer their employees the same kind of care and respect they (hopefully) treat their customers with and want to be treated with.

The standard answer is that "your time with the company is a two way business contract; don't treat is as anything other than that." But while companies no longer call it a "family", they do everything in their power to make you feel like you belong when they need to retain you - and then, one day, your manager's manager decides to change priorities, and your laptop is remotely terminated, to be sent in within 7 days. Sorry, pal, it's just business. Then they wonder why "mass resignation" or job-hopping every 2 years is a thing.

It’s unfortunate but I hope everyone understands this was not about the employee it was about thinning a head count or slashing a labour budget in some spreadsheet on some executives computer. Everyone else plays along because they don’t want to be next.

Call a spade a spade and the employee sues, make it about their shortcomings and they usually disappear.

If you are ever in the situation where you are offered a PIP or a buy out, negotiate the Best buy out you can get right away , tell HR their first loss is their best loss, they want you gone and you’re willing to work with them, here are the terms. Letter of recommendation immediately given before you sign anything, 6 months severance, and $100k buy out. Negotiate from there.

The gut feeling is that the guy was working hard but not smart enough. You can achieve positive results with this amount of work hours, but the outcome might not be in line with the teamwork or expected quality.

This. Anecdotal but we don't have both sides picture.

I was dev contractor in a place where everybody worked 5x 9-5 except one full-time person in the team who bragged at the Monday standup what they did over the weekend. Their contribution was very poor, they couldn't really fit into project objectives without drifting away from them each time, work was ball of mud committed every two weeks at most. And that person supposedly has had to be with years of professional experience. It seems they got too comfy in the previous roles as their self-development stopped in some 2000s tech maintenance.

Feedback and hand-holding didn't help, that person had to be laid off in the closest round. I think their spouse would say about 150-200% commitment, but then the other team members had to spend 1/3 of own's 100% to clean up that person mess.

This is why I am always impressed by a person in a position of power who is not a coward and acts honestly and tries to avoid unkindness and being unprofessional. Unfortunately, people like that don't move up much.

Chances are, a middle manager made the decision on this guy and his manager was stuck with the task of getting rid of him.

If they act honestly and fire him, their corruption and incompetence would be seen and their harm to the organization must be addressed. As harsh as Amazon is, they can set high performance targets and fire anyone, anything short of that is a sign of managerial malice and incompetence.

I am seeing this "culture" all over. From return to office and layoffs to day to day stuff. Too many cowards in positions of power, with excuses for thier two faced dishonesty. They are afraid of communicating well because if they fail, they lose their position, that's why they communicate indirectly and dishonestly.

People with families should probably not work at a FAANG.

They have borderline inhuman performance requirements and the politics are absurd.

Even top-notch Engineers can get caught up into some political BS.

While the money is good it's a very unstable place. So with the increased reward comes increased risk.

you would think smart people would create pleasant workplaces for themselves.

I currently and have worked at big tech that is an amazing place to work. The performance bar is correspondingly high compared to comp, but leadership is not toxic like at Amazon.

YMMV depending on team, but that applies everywhere. Your manager will almost always determine your experience.

It’s the equivalent of being a professional athlete. The expectations are insanely high but that doesn’t mean it has to be inhuman.

Which one?

I have friends at Google and Microsoft who are very happy, with families.

> In my opinion, this process is not designed to improve the employee.

Sorry, but no shit. The boss wanted her husband gone. Period, full stop.

Look, no matter how charismatic/great/competent you are, there's always going to be someone that doesn't like you. The article gives no history or indication about how long her husband had worked for his boss or their relationship prior. Maybe the boss is a psychopath, just came in and decided he didn't like the husband and wanted him out. Maybe it's a genuine personality conflict. Being put on a PIP is the way to do that.

Is it fair? Is it good for the company? Of course not, but this is Amazon we're talking about. There are plenty of people lined up as replacements.

Soft skills matter. If you can't please you're boss, if you're not aligned, you need to sense that and start looking for other options. Sometimes, though you'll still get blindsided.

Its not always about whether your direct boss wants you gone. I've seen the decision made from higher up in the org and/or HR based primarily (if not entirely) on compensation. The company needs you gone either because they want to backfill with a lower salaried hire, or you are in line for a large stock vestment.

Absolutely true, too.

As Amazon's sadistic PIP practices are well-documented, I wouldn't immediately blame the employee - or the boss even. The system itself is to blame, and it is working as designed.

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