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>Seems like you understanding of "doing job" is different. To make it clear - I used to be promoted by helping a business grow - complete activities on time on
by throwawayamzn98 8y ago
>Seems like you understanding of "doing job" is different. To make it clear - I used to be promoted by helping a business grow - complete activities on time on an excellent manner, optimize, reduce costs, propose new features / work on POC.
>Not by writing self-promotional documents.
>> Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted.
>Unfortunately, it is not by "exceeding", but documenting that you have exceeded, and knowing how to document it right, sometimes not really exceeding at all.
You're stating the problem to be documenting. Yes, Amazon, I, and many others think that having concrete examples and data outlined explicitly is a good way to make these important decisions. Otherwise you have nepotism and gut-feeling type promotions for employees. If you thought about this more, would you really want promotions handed out randomly? How else do you show you're "completing activities, optimize, reduce costs, work on POC". Do you want to leave this all up to one person, your manager? What if they have a slight against you? Do you want your manager to do the work of documenting your progression? You still run into the single point of failure problem, on top of your manager's workload increasing for each developer, on top of them usually being already busier. Amazon et. al. constantly seek data on doing these types of things better, but you haven't proposed much of an alternative.
(Disclaimer: Amazon employee, opinions are my own, not my employer's)
- agoldis 8y agoThanks for your comment! And disclaimer. Probably that's the best process that the company at such scale could adopt, but please let me dislike it. Probably it's better than other processes, but still, it has few problems, and I tried to point them out: 1. It doesn't solve "nepotism" problem - especially at the higher levels 2. It puts employee's focus on promotion and the document, but not the actual job
- slimscsi 8y agothe issue becomes alignment of business incentives with individuals incentives. Employees who work just to check the boxes on the promotion doc do better in the system then people who move the business forward regardless if it is necessary for promotion.