3 ms·

I agree with many of the comments here about how ymmv based on your management chain. My experience at Amazon has been very positive, but I do want to call out

I agree with many of the comments here about how ymmv based on your management chain. My experience at Amazon has been very positive, but I do want to call out some major issues with the Amazon Connections tool reference in this post. This tool is pitched to employees as an anonymous way to provide feedback about their team via daily questions. The reality is anything but. * Responses are not anonymous, they are viewable by anyone on the Connections team, and individual responses are shared with managers in many cases. The Connections team will deny this because it is technically against their policy, but I have seen Connections case managers share information with managers many times. * Feedback results are not viewable by employees, only managers (this is in contrast to the yearly tech survey, which anyone can view). This leads to data being conveniently left out, or entire orgs simply not reviewing the data. * The questions are incredibly poorly constructed and there have been multiple internal tickets about propaganda and insensitive questions. A few examples off the top of my head are "Did you know that Amazon was voted the best company to work for 5 years in a row by xyz organization? (Yes/No)" and something to the effect of "How do you feel working with foreigners?" (The wording was significantly more sensitive, but this was the undertone and caused a massive uproar internally.) These issues have been brought up repeatedly internally and in almost two years, nothing has been done. The Connections team has essentially disabled all feedback channels surrounding the tool. If anything comes of this, I hope a serious look is taken at how the Amazon Connections program is implemented.

hbosch 8y ago
FWIW I have heard that org leaders can manually insert questions, deny some default questions, and generally tailor the Connections to the types of things they want tactical feedback on. I contracted for a different Amazon team and saw plenty of Connection. They were often bland, “How many hours a week do you spend in meetings?” “True/False: when I begin a project goals are outlined clearly” “When was the last time you sought direct customer feedback for a decision?” Etc. nothing like what you mentioned.

hbosch 8y ago

FWIW I have heard that org leaders can manually insert questions, deny some default questions, and generally tailor the Connections to the types of things they want tactical feedback on. I contracted for a different Amazon team and saw plenty of Connection. They were often bland, “How many hours a week do you spend in meetings?” “True/False: when I begin a project goals are outlined clearly” “When was the last time you sought direct customer feedback for a decision?” Etc. nothing like what you mentioned.