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Amazon tells bosses to conceal when employees are on performance management plan

• nashashmi 5y ago
  It’s not a “conceal” as it is a lack of discussion. I get that being put on performance management plan can be demoralizing. The article makes it appear unjust. It only reveals the true nature of the concealing AFTER it has narrated the whole story with opinions. This is ridiculous. Amazon is doing it exactly right. However there needs to be transparency at the minimum expected performance. For all employees. And when employees know they don’t meet that expectation, they do whatever they need to do including use corporate resources to get there. But this article is a hit piece
  • tannedNerd 5y ago
    What’s the true nature of the concealing? The fact that some managers flout the guidance that Amazon provides to not tell people they are on a PIP? I’ve never heard of another company doing that, much less would want to work for one where that is the official guidance to managers! If you might label it a hit price, I don’t think it’s that controversial to label you as Amazon apologist.
    • DougBTX 5y ago
      In the small section where they quote Amazon’s perspective, it says: > tell the employee that their performance is not meeting expectations Then the rest of the article is all quotes about employees who are not sure if they are meeting expectations or not. Are managers just not following this guidance, or is there some other rule that says the opposite of this quote?
      • tannedNerd 5y ago
        Not meet expectations is a widely different world than PIP especially if the signals you are getting otherwise make you feel like you are performing well. Managers are clearly told by amazon to communicate as little as possible about underperforming if employees can be on secret PIP for 12 months…
  • tablespoon 5y ago
    > It’s not a “conceal” as it is a lack of discussion. Lack of discussion is concealment. Knowing you're on a formal PIP is to know whatever performance issues your manager might be telling you about are actually serious and that your job is on the line. It's my understanding that formal tracking of performance issues is frequently a CYA step prior to termination.
    • arcticbull 5y ago
      > "Amazon instructs managers not to tell office employees that they are on a formal performance-management plan that puts their job in jeopardy unless the employee explicitly asks, according to guidance from an Amazon intranet page for managers." The fact is the PIP hasn't put their job in jeopardy, it was their not meeting expectations that put their job in jeopardy. The reality is once you're there, it's (a) probably obvious due to your manager's consistent displeasure and (b) almost impossible to get out of either way because even if the manager is wrong the employer will side with the manager. The PIP itself is, as you say, just procedural backside-covering to paper up a decision that was already made. > Lack of discussion is concealment. With that in mind, is it really better to torture an employee with a set of steps you know they won't execute to your satisfaction anyways and dole out false hope? It seems far more humane to let them know it isn't working out and to put their stuff in a box. I bet my lunch money that an employee is far more likely to shape up and deliver in line with expectations when they aren't afraid each day they walk into the office may be their last. I think this gives employees more chance to succeed, not less. More transparency isn't always beneficial.
      • mannykannot 5y ago
        Putting aside everything else, having a formal performance-management plan, in which those put on it will be informed of that fact, normally means that most employees will have some evidence for not feeling afraid that each day they walk into the office may be their last.
        • arcticbull 5y ago
          There is a plan, and the manager will hold employees to it, the difference is they aren't proactively saying "if you don't complete these steps, you can see yourself out." At that point the manager has usually already, for better or worse, flipped the "bozo bit" on the employee and is very unlikely to attribute any successes and instead over-index on the failures. The vast majority of employees put on a PIP do not successfully complete the PIP.
  • void_mint 5y ago
    > Amazon instructs managers not to tell office employees that they are on a formal performance-management plan that puts their job in jeopardy unless the employee explicitly asks, according to guidance from an Amazon intranet page for managers. This is distinctly not a "Performance Management Plan", as the plan involves the employee and provides clear guidelines for success. If you're concealing that they're on a PIP at all, it's not a PIP, it's literally just the declaration that you intend to fire someone you deem low performing. edit And I'll add, I don't think they're legally obligated to tell a person they're not performing to their desired standard, as at-will employment, but it just seems silly to call something a PIP that is actually not at all a PIP.
    • potatolicious 5y ago
      > but it just seems silly to call something a PIP that is actually not at all a PIP. Or it's too good at being a PIP ;) Many PIPs (in my experience: most PIPs) are not good faith attempts to allow a poorly-performing employee to improve. The decision to fire them was made before the PIP was issued, the PIP is just documentation to protect the company in the case of a lawsuit. Amazon's approach here - if correctly reported - seems like it takes the step of embracing a PIP for what it actually is, by making it purely a documentation/justification task and eschewing the (often make-believe) step of letting employees fulfill the requirements of the PIP. Overall I'm very much against non-transparent PIPs. Short of gross behavior, employees deserve to know if they are going to be let go for performance and prepare an exit plan. Not to mention PIPs are often arbitrary and capricious - not every employee on a PIP is actually poorly-performing. At the very least it gives people time to jump ship.
      • void_mint 5y ago
        The silliness is in the pretending its even a pip at all. It's not. Management is just reporting low performance to HR, which is neither a process for improvement nor newsworthy. It's specifically anti-employee, but it's not news. Amazon has always been anti-employee.
      • kjsingh 5y ago
        To correct the point, this is about Focus/Dev plan which an SDM undergoes and all this is pre-PIP. In this case he just highlights the org leadership, not HR.
• nasalgoat 5y ago
  Most successful companies I know are constantly recruiting and trying to keep people onboard - why would they be trying to actively get rid of people?
  • gmadsen 5y ago
    that is for companies without the recruit demand. Amazon has stated before they try to remove the bottom 10% regularly to keep the average performance moving up
    • nasalgoat 5y ago
      Didn't decades of that policy at Microsoft prove that it doesn't work? People then optimize to make sure they only work on projects to keep their score up.
      • tablespoon 5y ago
        > Didn't decades of that policy at Microsoft prove that it doesn't work? People then optimize to make sure they only work on projects to keep their score up. So? It's the kind policy that appeals to the prejudices of an aloof executive with a low opinion of his peons. That trumps facts.
      • mataug 5y ago
        Optimizing for projects is just one of the unintended consequences of a policy of "get rid of the bottom X%". There are many others such as, - "Hire to fire" https://archive.is/3Bdv7 https://archive.is/3Bdv7 - Overworking of employees, especially the ones who are on H1B / L1 visa since they are dependent on Amazon for their visa status. - Code is written and architected with promotions in mind. - Code is reviewed with bring others down since comments on code reviews are considered a negative metric. - No one trusts their manger.
      • mattkrause 5y ago
        Basic math too. Suppose “ability” is normally distributed in the population and in your initial team too. Replace people when the new candidate improves the team’s median ability (supposedly what Amazon’s “Bar Raiser” checks). I kicked together a simulation of this process. The first replacement is pretty easy (50/50), but the hundredth hire on a team of ten often takes tens of thousands of interviews, and sometimes over a million. No one is literally doing this.
• trhway 5y ago
  Another goodie from AMZN - hard cap on max of years of experience for a position. Nice way to filter out the old dudes like me. I suppose the trend will naturally spread through the industry. Edit: it is max cap in hiring requirements. The requirements are directly from AMZN recruiter (AMZN email address, etc). The max is bullet pointed together with the min. The max is also additionally clearly stressed in the description to make sure that there is no misunderstanding (i'd definitely would have hard time believing my eyes if seeing it only once in the bullet points)
  • ozzythecat 5y ago
    I’m at Amazon now. This is not true.
    • imwillofficial 5y ago
      Seconded. Haven’t seen this anywhere in Amazon. Edit: Clarified that I meant within Amazon.
      • tablespoon 5y ago
        > Seconded. Haven’t seen this anywhere. The military has it, and (news to me) it appears common in accountancy and management consulting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_or_out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_or_out
        • imwillofficial 5y ago
          I wanted to chime in the the military part. This is not an age limit on positions to keep old people out, this is to weed out under performers at a time where the military has a glut of highly qualified volunteers. So up or out means “if you’re passed over for promotion twice, you must suck and we don’t want you anymore.” But I have seen old officers in the lower ranks because they were enlisted men, then warrant officers, then finally officers. They were far older than their peers, but still needed to tick the boxes and get promoted. Ref: Military Officer
    • 5y ago
• nine_zeros 5y ago
  Which manager came up with this brainwave of an idea to make themselves appear useful?
  • r00fus 5y ago
    It's probably an interpretation of why Bezos wants (he's been quoted as thinking workers are lazy by default). So it's from the top.
• qqtt 5y ago
  I never understood the secretive nature of these Amazon "devplan" / "FOCUS" lists. If an employee has a performance issue, they should know. Period. If they are on a formal list, they should know that too. The only "positive" here is that it can affect the individual's moral to know you are not meeting expectations - but that has to be communicated regardless. If it's understood it has to be communicated and there is a list specifically including the individual, it's up to the company to manage that communication in a supportive manner. And the consequences of this secretive list are a culture of fear and uncertainty and doubt. Especially with the harsh consequences such as - if you leave while on this secretive list (which you cannot even know you are on) - you are ineligible for rehire. The solution is not to maintain a secretive list of employees who have performance issues - it is to be fully transparent about those performance issues and destigmatize being included in this nebulous secretive list in the first place - through a culture of support and shared success. Honestly it boggles my mind how Amazon managers accept this status quo at the scale that Amazon operates. It is so on it's face a recipe for having a toxic culture which breeds stress, doubt, and only serves to reinforce poor performance outcomes. Out of all the things I've heard about Amazon culture for its software organization - this single thing (secretive lists of employees with performance issues with "never rehire" consequences that employees can't even understand they are on) symbolizes for me all the reasons I would avoid them as an employer. There is no way to have this process without creating a toxic culture.
  • temp8964 5y ago
    Not really. The management team can make mistakes too. In those cases, it is not clear whether it is better for the employee to know. There is no clear cut obvious answer to this, unless you assume everyone is an emotionless robot.
    • potatolicious 5y ago
      I didn't read OP's comment as "performance issues should be publicized within the workforce" and more "performance issues should be known to the individual employee" If management thinks you're doing a bad job, it's not needed to make it known to the entire team - but you should know.
• Zenst 5y ago
  What happens if an Employee of Amazon who is in a country that has a data regulation that allows them to ask for and legally get any data pertaining too them? That would place Amazon to legally disclose if such an employee is on any list or anything else they have on them, be it paper or digital.
  • malfist 5y ago
    Managers are required to disclose focus/devlist status if asked directly. But they're not supposed to tell you without you asking. At least not until you get your PIP papers.
    • mataug 5y ago
      Based on a few anecdotes, managers do not disclose even if the employee asks directly. Apparently managers actively sabotage the employee by telling others to not collaborate with the person on Focus. So many employees find out by either attempting an internal transfer, or getting PIP papers served.
  • zoover2020 5y ago
    Focus/PIP is a lot harder in Europe for this reason, among better labour protection laws
• aaomidi 5y ago
  Meanwhile Amazon recruiters keep spamming me to join their cult. No one *wants* to work for you anymore. You don't need to recruit. If someone is desperate enough they'll let you know.
  • f6v 5y ago
    You’d be surprised. Do they pay well? Do they have cool products? “I’ve done a lot more for a lot less” - The Office.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • Guest42 5y ago
      I think a common approach is “I know this job is garbage but if I can last 18 months, my resume will look much better”.....or.....”maybe my manager will be alright and the bad stories will be less relevant”
      • decafninja 5y ago
        Another factor might be that there are many companies just as bad, but without the prestige of Amazon. At least the Amazon name will pad your resume. The names of many other bad companies won't (or not to the degree of Amazon).
  • quickthrower2 5y ago
    For 500k? Yeah I’d do it even for a year, working on the most dullard shit then have 3 years off.
    • yupper32 5y ago
      Other Big-N companies have comparable pay with way less stress.
      • 5y ago
• master_yoda_1 5y ago
  AMZN is Doomed :)
  • nchase 5y ago
    Did you mean to post this here? I think you commented on the wrong topic :)
    • master_yoda_1 5y ago
      changed the comment :)
  • croes 5y ago
    "The Tomorrow War" is not an Amazon movie, they only bought the distribution rights. It's a Paramount Pictures film.
    • imwillofficial 5y ago
      They sure are making buckets of money on it though
• ozzythecat 5y ago
  > “Should I tell an employee that I entered them into Focus?” the question reads. The response: “Do not discuss Focus with employees. Instead, tell the employee that their performance is not meeting expectations, the specific areas where they need to improve, and offer feedback and support to help them improve.” The headline is editorialized. IMO whether you’re told you’re in Focus or not is irrelevant. If your manager is telling you you’re not meeting expectations, that’s plenty of signal of what’s going on. The discussion in this thread is written more as if Amazon is pushing out capable talent. There’s a more fundamental question - are we saying once you get hired, your job should be permanent, regardless of your performance?
  • xienze 5y ago
    > The discussion in this thread is written more as if Amazon is pushing out capable talent. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they have a stated goal of cutting the bottom 10% every year? I gotta think that can't go on forever without hitting the "capable talent" unless managers are hiring sacrificial lambs on purpose. Hmm, I feel like I've heard about that somewhere... https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-managers-performance-reviews-hire-to-fire-internal-turnover-goal-2021-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-managers-performance-...
    • greedo 5y ago
      GE was famous for this under Jack Welch?
      • kergonath 5y ago
        That is not really an excuse, though. “But Jack did it before” wasn’t even an excuse in pre-school.
        • greedo 5y ago
          And? I was pointing out who was one of the first to pioneer this business practice.
    • 5y ago
• NortySpock 5y ago
  > Amazon instructs managers not to tell office employees that they are on a formal performance-management plan that puts their job in jeopardy unless the employee explicitly asks, according to guidance from an Amazon intranet page for managers. Wait, what's the point of putting someone on a PIP/PMP if you don't even tell them their performance needs to improve (or they need to jump ship)? They aren't likely to change if you don't tell them to change.
  • imwillofficial 5y ago
    Luckily that isn’t what the internal document says. It says not to go into the Focus tool, and refocus (heh) the conversation on the areas needing improvement.
• imwillofficial 5y ago
  As the runt of the litter in my AWS team, I thankfully have avoided such plans. I’ve never been at a company so willing to frame mistakes and shortcomings as chances to grow. Other people clearly are having different experiences.
• koolba 5y ago
  There’s a Heisenberg principle at play here as anybody that knows they’re on the thin ice is going to respond to that knowledge in some way.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• varispeed 5y ago
  Why people go to work to places that treat engineers like some farm animals? Zero respect to the craft. Plus the company is avoiding taxes, so everyone gets paid less thanks to that.
• dbg31415 5y ago
  As far as I know... nobody at Amazon when I was there got taken off "Focus" (whatever it was called in the past). They only ended up leaving the company. But that said, I think Amazon had a very long interview process. Too long. (But I hear it's gotten better.) And so to grow fast, they need an easy way to exit people... that's not a bad thing. Interviews are never a great way to hire people. Working with them tells you a lot more about personality and work ethic and commitment. From what I've seen, I don't disagree with any of the employees that had been on Focus. Like generally speaking, we showed the people the door who needed to be shown the door. For the good of the team, some people just don't fit, or they distract... a lot of it was personality, but a lot of it was really they were lacking the Ownership quality we needed. If you have someone waiting for 12-levels of approval, they just slow down the others. I don't know quite how to say it, but it was a common thing you'd get someone from a big company... and they had various processes in mind when doing anything. We need that "Bias for Action" instead of anyone just looking to do things the way they did them at past jobs. Or we had a guy who thought, "We're Amazon, we print money... let's just solve all our problems by throwing money at them." Oof. Amazon is, silly as it sounds, a startup at scale. And their Leadership Principles really speak to this. Some people just don't get it. https://www.aboutamazon.com/about-us/leadership-principles https://www.aboutamazon.com/about-us/leadership-principles Anyway, my 2 cents, as a former Amazon employee... It's good for any company -- especially one that wants to grow fast -- to exit about 5-10% of their workforce every year. Find the ones that aren't doing what's needed... and encourage them to go work somewhere else where they can add value. I never saw anyone bullied, I never saw anyone put on "Focus" who shouldn't have been there. Playing devil's advocate... given so few people get off "Focus" plans, what's the point of letting people know they are on it? Kind of just seems like a waste of everyone's time. Some conversations just burn hours, no?
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• kube-system 5y ago
  > Instead, tell the employee that their performance is not meeting expectations, the specific areas where they need to improve, and offer feedback and support to help them improve. As long you are effectively communicating performance on a regular basis, I don't really see the point in telling an employee that "we're formally thinking about firing you" other than dropping a morale bomb in the workplace. If you're telling an employee that their performance needs improvement in general, it stands to follow that termination is a possible result. Either people improve when they're told their performance is bad, or they don't. Workplaces without formal PIPs don't tell employees to their face that they're thinking about firing them either. Not sure why the formal paperwork makes any difference. Although maybe I'm missing something, I've never worked at a mega-corp.
  • tlogan 5y ago
    I worked as a manager in a mega-corp. One of tricks I was told by other managers is to put your best employees on the ‘focus’ list (grade 3) so they cannot leave for a better position/team in the company. But they would get bonuses because the bonuses were per team and HR was not aware who gets what. Of course the ‘focus’ list was a secret list :)
    • jp42 5y ago
      Thats evil. Blind is littered with posts of amazon employees who are mentally destroyed. It's ok to put on pip for genuine performance issues, but why destroy those who are performing well.
      • kergonath 5y ago
        The parent comment mentioned why: to extract the absolute maximum amount of work you can from this employee. As you said, evil.
      • wheelinsupial 5y ago
        Other companies, including where I work, are able to lock employees to teams by requiring manager approval to interview and move internally. I would be very surprised if this isn’t a common occurrence throughout many organizations.
• phendrenad2 5y ago
  There are many types of PIPs, and Amazon seems to be trying a new flavor. This one seems to be about managers focusing (hence the name) on floundering employees, giving them the attention they need to get back ok track. And maybe telling the employee "you're getting extra attention" could make them pessimistic and less able to be improved. It's a good theory, anyway. We'll see if it works out. Of course the other, darker possibility is that this is an attempt to take the evil parts of the PIP and get rid of the actual improvement. Keep the "build a case against the employee so we can fire them without a lawsuit", ditch the "actually trying to improve their performance". I prefer to think this isn't the case.
  • chris11 5y ago
    > Keep the "build a case against the employee so we can fire them without a lawsuit", ditch the "actually trying to improve their performance" I'm less optimistic. I see two main uses for PIPS. 1) 3rd parties usually get involved in communicating the performance issues and expectations. 2) It explicitly documents failures if an employee doesn't improve. I'm assuming employees usually only pass the PIP if communication is the major issue. But a manager should communicate performance concerns before starting an official PIP process. I'm not confident that a well intentioned PIP process will lead to a large minority of employees passing it. Documenting failures only helps in firing someone. It isn't a benefit to the individual engineer.
  • vjdingdong 5y ago
    Re. the darker possibility becomes the bias, since the organization (maybe due to its size), with its focus on success, has a low tolerance for an employee who is struggling.
• gigatexal 5y ago
  That Amazon or any company has such a plan is actually laudable. I was under the impression that folks who are not performing just get given a 2-week notice. But it's likely more profitable to rehabilitate or retrain an underperforming employee than to go through the process of hiring and onboarding a new employee. None of this is out of altruism -- it's a cost benefit analysis (see also the scene in the Fight Club movie where the un-named narrator explains the math behind his company issuing a recall or not...)
  • malfist 5y ago
    Sure, if they were only targeting poor performing folks then your statement has merit. The difference is at amazon managers have a 5-10% URA (Unregretted Attrition Rate) and must let go that percentage of their team each and every year. Doesn't take long to chew through poor performers and have to move on to people lower on the political totem pole, or worse at playing the political game/being friendly.
    • rdtwo 5y ago
      The bigger problem is that it discourages formation of high performance teams. The high performers know to stay away from established high performance teams because they risk getting cut
• stevenalowe 5y ago
  What about double secret probation?
• balozi 5y ago
  Obvious irony here is that someone in management failed to keep secret what was supposed to be a secret plan about keeping secret perf man plans. Management should put themselves on a performance management plan.
• posharma 5y ago
  This is a company that is enjoying roaring success with such questionable employee management practices. How does this happen? Does success have no correlation with bad culture? If yes, why are other companies focusing their time and energy on good work/employee culture? What gives?
  • tines 5y ago
    Maybe the case is that "bad" culture (i.e. culture that is bad for employees but good for employers) can "work" (i.e. make the company money) for a little while. And that's all the time that it needs to work for, if you have short-term goals like creating a virtual monopoly. Then you can relax and reform you image afterwards, which is fine with you because you already have everyone's business anyway, and they're not going to go elsewhere.
• ta984332444 5y ago
  The article is conflating two concepts at Amazon. There is "devplan/focus" and there is performance improvement plan (PIP). You are not fired while on focus. Despite what one of the people indicates in their comments, you cannot be on a PIP and not know. The PIP is an agreed upon plan with a specific output between HR, management and the employee. Firing happens through PIPs, not focus. Though focus is what leads to a PIP. I agree the lack of transparency on the focus is stupid (especially since it can prevent you from moving), but you don't wake up one day and end up fired. You will be put on a PIP first and be well aware of it (since you have to agree to the plan or take a payout to leave instead).
  • r00fus 5y ago
    In many companies, the "freeze from moving within company" is the same as PIP. So Focus is PIP-lite for Amazon.
    • kjsingh 5y ago
      Is PIP==Pivot
• mkl95 5y ago
  What makes Amazon employees so eager to work there? Is it purely because of their salaries? I have worked at large companies where none of this dystopian stuff happens.
  • patch_cable 5y ago
    There are teams building cool things, used by large customers, where you're paid decently. It's not really all that dystopian.
    • mkl95 5y ago
      Thanks for the info. I come across more and more of these articles that paint a grim picture of Amazon's engineering departments. But as an outsider I get the feeling that's it's better than your average mid sized startup where you will be lucky to make 1/3 of what an Amazon engineer makes, while working more hours and getting your performance reviewed by equally sociopathic middle managers. I still wonder how it compares to other FAANG companies though.
      • pancaku 5y ago
        I think Amazon is not as bad as people harp on. However, other FAANG's definitely pay more, have better benefits, give refreshers, and also don't have a culture which heavily emphasizes PIPs. Since Amazon interviews are similar to other FAANGs, people who pass an Amazon interview have a higher correlation of passing other interviews. Those FAANGs and associated companies tend to have a higher value proposition so people tend to choose them.
  • orhmeh09 5y ago
    I think there may be some who appreciate certain idealized notions of the company’s operations and competence in engineering and logistics. Few other companies could offer the same mix of software and real-world engineering at scale.
• quickthrower2 5y ago
  Amazon workers should unionise, then collectively every single employee asks their boss “morning boss, am I on the list” every single day. They’ll soon change the policy.
• Sr_developer 5y ago
  Being employed to one of those companies is like working for the mafia without the risk of being killed (at least not directly) part. Expect no loyalty,fairness,open-communication, or just any basic decency from them.
• neonate 5y ago
  https://archive.is/cnJZ7 https://archive.is/cnJZ7
• bencollier49 5y ago
  I assume this doesn't go on in the UK, as it would fail to meet the ACAS code on performance management, and likely lead to successful constructive dismissal or unfair dismissal claims. "If issues do arise, employers should make the employee aware of the shortfall in their performance as soon as possible. The employee should then be given a reasonable timescale to improve. Employers should provide their employee with any relevant support and training in order to reach the required performance standard. They should then monitor and review the employee’s progress throughout the period assigned for improvement."
• wellthisisgreat 5y ago
  What are the effects of this list/Focus on employee? The article mentions performance hell but at the same time says people don’t know they are on the list so they probably don’t really feel the effects? Or is it slower promotion less bonuses that are somehow not obvious?
  • pseudalopex 5y ago
    It's the step before a PIP. And they're blocked from switching teams in most cases. Even when team fit is the real problem.
• MattGaiser 5y ago
  Are performance improvement plans actually genuine in most cases? If I were put on one or got a negative performance review, I would assume that I have essentially been fired but my boss is waiting on key paperwork.
  • crazygringo 5y ago
    They certainly can be. I know multiple cases of bad managers who never clearly communicated job expectations/prioritization and then put employees on a PIP because they weren't meeting their hidden/secret expectations. The beautiful thing about a PIP is that it forces a manger to spell out in excruciating detail what expectations are, and how meeting them will be measured. Once an employee knows what they are concretely, it can make it really easy to meet them, and then no more PIP. In all the cases I know, the employees went on to get "exceeds expectations" and then either left the manager or left the company, because the problem was always the manager. Also, because many times you "game the PIP" -- to meet the explicit expectations you slack off on the stuff that you know matters more to doing a good job, but that isn't being explicitly measured. Write shitty code but deliver the features on-time, and let someone else deal with the bugs. Of course I've heard of PIP's being intentionally vague so a manager can arbitrarily continue to say expectations weren't met no matter what -- but I've never seen that anywhere I've worked.
  • oh_sigh 5y ago
    My experience at Amazon was as soon as someone knew they were on a PIP, they went out and got another job. It's much easier to get a job when you are currently employed, and your PIP doesn't show up in any background checks so it was basically a "please leave or we will make you leave"
    • MattGaiser 5y ago
      Yeah, this would be how I would react to any formal notification about issues with my performance. I would take it as a kind kick out the door.
  • BeetleB 5y ago
    If your manager has been clearly communicating his displeasure with your performance, then a PIP is really just a signal that you need to leave. If I didn't see eye to eye with a manager all this time, his putting me on a PIP isn't going to suddenly make me change. Conversely, if I accepted his criticism earlier, I would have already changed and not received a PIP. Of course, if there are bad actors involved, it's a whole other story.
• mrorbitman 5y ago
  I've never seen anyone on a PIP bounce back. The smart move is to start your job hunt immediately when you discover you're on a PIP. Otherwise it's a long and stressful road to termination. The second the people around you don't believe you can cut it, it's already too late and best to find a gig elsewhere.
  • throwaway48323 5y ago
    I had a PIP at a startup when six months in and several years later I'm the lead now. I saved my job by working during my ~two day vacation (and weekend) and building a bunch of things that I had talked with the non-eng cofounder about that weren't on the official roadmap but that had high value. Turned out the way engineering was organized wasn't very compatible with me (didn't take advantage of my product sense and generally was focusing too much on reviewing things in code that really didn't matter.) One of the people above me on the org chart (VP Engineering) lost his job instead. The lead at the time is now CTO and around that time adjusted the org to better match how I like to work.
    • macintux 5y ago
      I suspect that kind of story is more common at small companies still trying to define a path forward (or with inconsistent management philosophies). Still, impressive turnaround.
  • topkai22 5y ago
    To be the odd man out, I do actually know someone who did and managed to later on advance in his career within the company. We shared a particularly bad manager who was forced out of the company himelf while he was on the PIP, so possibly special circumstances.
  • otterley 5y ago
    I have. I went from being PIPed after my first year due to not getting along with my team, to being nominated for Yahoo!'s Super Star award (the highest honor in the company) a year later. People can and do turn around when they are mentored with care and the will to succeed.
• motohagiography 5y ago
  There is some rationale for this, as why tip an at-risk employee off to what is essentially a foregone conclusion? Napkin math, if your salary is $100k/year - you are necessarily delivering at least $200k in revenue/value, so if you have a rough 6-month stretch, as an asset you are under water. At that point you are a liability and unless someone else can deliver on the other part of that expected $200k value, the opportunity cost is harming the company. The point of a PIP is to create a paper trail to protect the company from incurring further costs and liability risk, so as a purely post-decision defensive strategy, it makes sense to not disclose it. The laws make it such that everyone has to sustain the fiction that a PIP is in earnest, which creates that creepy gaslighting feeling. The supreme irony is keeping it secret could mean a more personally honest and less psychologically harmful relationship for all involved. Reality is, performance in most organizations is secondary to relationships in them (and perhaps credentials) because the reason a (profitable/long-lived) company makes money as a business is because it can operate at scale with interchangeable parts that get along, which means the marginal value of a high or low performer is not as significant to its bottom line as downside risks from a lack of cohesion, so the main thing you need to care about in an organization is your key relationships. If your relationship with co-workers or managers is getting dicey, all you can do is "read the room," keep your CV updated, and your recruiter contacts warm, because unless you deliver some large multiple on performance (product breakthrough they need you to execute, or land a large client, etc), opinion-wise you're done there and it's time to move on.
  • nodelessness 5y ago
    > The point of a PIP is to create a paper trail to protect the company from incurring further costs and liability risk, so as a purely post-decision defensive strategy, it makes sense to not disclose it. The laws makes it such that everyone has to sustain the fiction that a PIP is in earnest, which creates that creepy gaslighting feeling. The supreme irony is keeping it secret could mean a more personally honest and less psychologically harmful relationship for all involved. Are you from the USA?
  • mrRandomGuy 5y ago
    'tip an at-risk employee'? Are we talking about a person who's not doing a good job at his job, or a suspect in murder deemed as a flight risk? Wtf
• ncmncm 5y ago
  At most companies, having ever been on such a list is a permanent mark. Any manager can pull up your record and see the whole history. Thus, any indication that you have got onto such a list is a red warning: find another job somewhere else, and quickly. Do not wait to see if they will change their minds. They might decide not to fire you right away, but they will think of you, forever after, as a "problem employee". If you ever get off the list, you will go back on it the moment the length of your manager's list goes below quota. You may be sure that there is such a quota. This is very much like the notion of "politically unreliable" in the Soviet countries, and in China. Corporate governance resembles nothing so much as Soviet governance. This is not an accident: Lenin was a huge admirer of the Ford Motor Company. Being still-employed is a huge factor in how attractive you are to your immediate future employer. So, it is important to act fast. Part of why they try to keep the list secret is that they want to be who controls when you leave, not you. Managers typically only get points for firing you, not you quitting. (But Amazon's documented notion of "unregretted attrition" suggests it might be defined as somebody leaving who was on the list.)
  • anigbrowl 5y ago
    This is very much like the notion of "politically unreliable" in the Soviet countries, and in China. Corporate governance resembles nothing so much as Soviet governance. But one important difference is that the label equivalent to "class enemy" is not hereditary. Excellent point, though I think the only reason for the hereditary difference is that most corporations don't recruit from a multi-generational population in a fixed location. But I bet there are commercial fishing and logging firms where if the dad was a problem employee, expectations about the son will be correspondingly lowered. Anyway, in both contexts information asymmetries inevitably exacerbate power differentials; while this is to some extent a fundamental aspect of competition, the denial or posture that such asymmetries exist aims to maximize those power differentials, perhaps allowing them to grow in accordance with power laws rather than linearly (pun semi-intentional).
• phkahler 5y ago
  >> But some workers who have been on Focus say they were never told what their performance deficiencies were, or how they could improve. Sounds like therapy. Doesn't really work most of the time. You can't invoke your higher level brain functions without knowing the game being played.
• r0m4n0 5y ago
  I had an ex that was in all honesty was a horrible employee. I feel bad for anyone that ever worked with her. She was always qualified for the job but a nightmare doing actual work. She came to me with some project that her boss asked her to work on looking for advice. This Fortune 500 company was asking her, as a software engineer, to create an Excel spreadsheet budget for her next project. I honestly helped her to the best of my ability (it actually wasn’t half bad haha) but they ended up firing her within a few weeks. They were just looking for a final project to show in plain view that she couldn’t do what was asked of her. Anecdotal but… I suppose they could be protecting themselves from these situations where once they have made up their mind, it’s probably in their best interest to see their everyday work ethic. I think most of us would like the chance to know whether they are doing a good job to improve, but this sounds like once they are on this list, their days are numbered
• dkhenry 5y ago
  I have a very simple rule that I adopted when I first became a manager, and it has served me well. I won't ever fire someone for performance unless I have explicitly said to them. `If you don't do the following things in the given time frame you will be fired` I require myself to explicitly state they will loose their job, and I require to have an explicit list of exactly what needs to be done and a fixed time frame for it to be done. I feel if I as a manager can't do that, then the real issue is a failure in management not a failure in the employee. While I have still had to fire plenty of people for performance even with this rule. I can also say that I have had multiple people actually improve their performance and get off the PiP which as I understand from talking to other managers is not a common occurrence.
• ggm 5y ago
  Can anyone explain how this is not a breach of employment law? It reads like an on-the-face-of-it constructive dismissal case: if your manager has future intent to sack you, has no intention of helping you improve, is kpi rewarded for sacking you for reasons which don't actually relate to your performance and doesn't inform you of your status, surely it's premeditated? I don't understand how H/R and legal can sustain this. (I do understand that they have: I'm not that stupid. So there must be some underlying reason this is legal, but I suspect it's not well "tested" in all jurisdictions Amazon employs in)
  • anonydsfsfs 5y ago
    In the US, the burden of proof in constructive dismissal cases lies with the employee. How are you going to prove that you were placed on a secretive PIP list without your knowledge?
    • ggm 5y ago
      That's just so wrong. It suggests to me the 10% kill list can't be done in Europe or Australia for instance, unfair dismissal law would (I honestly believe) empower asking for the list in the court action. Given this list is known to exist the presumption of evidence is really strong and lying or hiding the list would be a serious offence.
      • ggm 5y ago
        > That's just so wrong I want to be clear I mean I disagree with this policy which is self evidently true, not that I dispute what I replied to. Colloquial English can be misread so easily.
• billllll 5y ago
  I'm curious if any Amazon (ex-)employee have experience with this that they can share. A lot of Amazon's practices get really severe backlash online, and yet if working for Amazon is as bad as they say, how is Amazon one of the biggest employers of software engineers? I personally buy into the hivemind and would not work for Amazon, but it seems to me like there is an incongruity between how bad their practices are and how many talented software engineers are willing to work for them.
  • amznthrow9999 5y ago
    Sure, I work at Amazon. Amazon's HR principles get vilified in the press. I'm not going to claim they are all perfect, but most of these principles presents a position on an interesting tradeoff. Let's focus on the unregretted attrition (URA) notion. Isn't firing 5% a year really high? What about teams of top performers? I promise if you look around at a team of 20 people, there's a high chance one of them is not very good. If you DON'T have a URA target in place, managers may let these low performers stay, especially since firing people is actually quite difficult. This leads to what Bezos would call "Day 2" culture. It's hard to overstate how much damage a single person can cause to a team's output or morale. If you look at Amazon's implementation, it's really not that bad. If you have a superstar team of 10 people under one manager, great, the 5% is resolved at the 50-100 person level, so make a case and keep your team. Or even better, hire some junior engineers so your superstars can lead and teach others. Some of those junior engineers will be bad; others will be great. This isn't hire to fire, rather, hiring is noisy. What if the whole 50 person org is amazing? Umm, this is just statistically unlikely. Everybody I've personally noticed leave after PIP has been, in my estimation, a poor performer. Amazon has one single HR policy that is amazing: you can change teams any time for any reason (unless you're on a performance plan). If your team sucks, get out! I've been able to land on teams with good WLB, smart coworkers, and fun, interesting, meaningful projects -- except for my first team, which I left after 2 months. Lastly, of course there are tons of anecdotal stories from people with miserable experiences at Amazon. Can we at least accept Amazon is a massive employer, and these are bound to happen?
    • ir123 5y ago
• ToxicMegacolon 5y ago
  Amazon is a strange company. After having spent 4 years there I am convinced that they hate their employees. They want you to burnout. Just look at the stock vesting schedule, its 5, 15, 40, 40. First two years you barely get any stock, and I believe the average time someone stays at amazon is around 1.5 years (I don't have latest data so maybe this is wrong) On top of that, you have the pathetic 401k match (50% upto 2% of paycheck). Amazon's contribution to 401k vests after 3 years in the job, so you leave within the first 2 and you don't get anything. Not to mention the base salary cap of $160k. Add to that the horrible WLB, I knew teams who'd get 40 high severity tickets in a week (And there are teams with much worse WLB). You are constantly waking up at 2-3AM in the night, and fixing fires for no extra pay. Many times, Upper Management would dictate a timeline for your project, doesn't matter if it takes 4 months, we need it in 2 so get it done. This obviously leads to bad code. But there is no incentive within the company to fix/improve codebase, every thing is taped together, and On Call is there to tape things up some more so that they stay fixed. Even if you take the time and fix some of the tech debt, the company is not going to care and its not going to reward you. Speaking of rewards, if the company stock grows (which it has for the past several years), and because of this growth you stand to make more than your Amazon decided Target Compensation, then you won't get any base salary increase even if you were the best employee Amazon has ever seen. You might get additional stocks, but those will vest 2 year later. So basically, you did great work for the company in 2021, as a result the company stock grows enough that you are not out of range for your role's compensation, so they don't increase your salary, and they give you stocks that vest in 2024, 3 years after the you did the work. More often than not, I felt that most amazon employees (current and past) hate amazon. I have never seen a company being hated by its own workers with such fervor.
  • debug-desperado 5y ago
    Wow, that 401k match is pathetically low. I'm surprised more number-crunching types don't put an employee group together to advocate for improvement.
    • hbosch 5y ago
      >I'm surprised more number-crunching types don't put an employee group together to advocate for improvement. A union? At Amazon?
• warmcat 5y ago
  Amazon and places like Amazon can go to hell. Life is too short to work in such shitty places. Ultimately everyone is just working to make investors and owners rich. Employees will only earn a fraction of what higher ups earn even after working themselves to death. Having worked in such an environment, I will be honest that I have earned and progressed more than I would have had I stayed in that shitty toxic workplace.
  • wildrhythms 5y ago
    The whole point is to absolve the actual workers of any type of non-negligible ownership, while simultaneously retaining their excess labor value, and whenever this is questioned point to a homeless person threateningly.
• JCM9 5y ago
  One way I look at this all though is do you honestly believe there are not ~5% of employees at your company that really aren’t cutting it and shouldn’t be there? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a place in my career where that was the case… and often the number that should go was usually higher. Thus at some level is Amazon not just solving a problem (albeit probably imperfectly) that other companies just choose to ignore?
• fridif 5y ago
  I mean this in all sincerity: don't treat an Amazon interview seriously. If you must, use it for practice. Employment stability is much more important than what I call "alleged compensation". They hire you promising $160,000 base and all this stock, and 6 months into stringing broken libraries together you are suddenly getting the feeling you won't be welcome at the company anymore.
  • comp_throw7 5y ago
    Amazon compensates for backloaded equity via large sign-on bonuses which "vest" monthly and don't need to be paid back if you leave. Annualized compensation is roughly stable over the first four years, assuming you believe their stock growth estimates (which are silly, but that actually gives you higher compensation for the first two years than years 3 and 4, not lower).
    • fridif 5y ago
      Assuming you last at Amazon and are not hire to fire and can navigate safely through their codebase and you have a good manager and... I've had my fair share of good and bad gigs-- I am willing to trade a considerable amount of Amazon's upside in exchange for employment I can predict.
      • comp_throw7 5y ago
        Sure, I'm not saying anything about the culture or WLB, just that there's no risk of "losing out" on compensation if you get fired before your backloaded equity vests.
        • fridif 5y ago
          Wait, what? I'm actually genuinely interested in clarifying this for myself. If Amazon gives me a contract on day one that says they will give me 5 shares on day one, 15 shares on day 366, 40 shares on day 732, and 40 shares on day 1098... ... you are saying that even if i get fired on day 90, i will still have all 100 shares paid out to me on those days? because that is not how it worked at other places ive been at
• vjdingdong 5y ago
  I recently left my employer after about an year and half. I was on the edge of a PIP - so I thought - and constantly felt like an imposter. Making it past the year-mark surprised me.. and it was getting better when I quit. My manager would insist on the bi-weekly 1:1s that I was not on a PIP. In comparison, I can only imagine what a hell Amazon must be, a soul-destroying place to work for most people who aren't in the top 25% or something like that. As an employer, Amazon sounds like an evil machine.
• zwaps 5y ago
  this sounds suspiciously like something a organization theory / game theory team thought up. Incidentally, we know that amazon hires such people from math and econ departments for big bucks. Attrition is good for exploration and against other "stagnation" phenomena (textbook March/Levinthal early 90's). And if you are willing to throw aboard any ethics, then a "usable period" (pre burn-out) for some percentage of workers is a pretty good boost to performance. A secret focus list is probably some "well" thought out mechanism (as in mechanism design) tuned precisely to kick out x% of people while setting incentives to self-identify (slackers vs. normal workers vs. workaholics) by generating uncertainty or ambiguity, thus generating some ideal workforce distribution: people who are doubtful are incentivized to just leave right away, people who are extremely competent are moderately pressured, people who are willing to grind themselves into dust for amazon do "okay" for as long as they are useful, and "normals" are retained probabilistically to the degree that their contributions are needed that quarter. Much has been written about how these models don't reflect human behavior. Sadly, as a normative forcing function, they work out just fine. edit: in the short run, until such articles as op appear
• busymom0 5y ago
  > The secrecy surrounding performance management is one more reason why some Amazon office employees say the company is not living up to its April pledge to become “Earth’s Best Employer.” Rules for corporations: Actions > Words Rules for politicians: Policies > Rhetoric
• geekraver 5y ago
  Makes absolutely no sense. The main point of a PIP is to give people time to make a graceful exit; sure, in some cases performance can be turned around but that’s not really what it is about. So you should want the employee to know. Supposedly Bezos is going to be focusing on making Amazon a great place to work; here’s some low-hanging fruit for you Jeff.