Im personally not a fan of the new review & promo process. There seem to be some obvious, and some hidden, risks. In my opinion it reduces depth of the content,

Im personally not a fan of the new review & promo process. There seem to be some obvious, and some hidden, risks. In my opinion it reduces depth of the content, breadth of the review, and broader exposure/evaluation inside the org. The "new" transfer policy is actually from 2015 or 2016. Historically transfers in less than 1 year of employment required senior manager approval. New policy is free to transfer after 30 days. As I recall. For details see inside/wiki/ There are also changes in the SDE1 to SDE2 promo process and SDE leveling/coaching/role normalization across amazon. From what I saw of timing and content neither change was strictly related to the nyt article. Source: Principal Engineer in AWS, coming up on 6 years at amazon, a few years doing tech/promo assessments.