4 ms·

> 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

> 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.
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
      Targets the employee doesn't know about aren't a plan. The low probability of reversing the bozo bit is why the employee should know when the manager flipped it.
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        A PIP doesn't have targets the employee doesn't know about - not formally, anyways. The targets are the same whether you're on a PIP or not: meeting expectations for your level. At a company like Amazon these are going to be well defined and published. The manager would have also more than likely, if acting in good faith, found you a mentor by this point. If they weren't acting in good faith, then it doesn't matter whether you know about your PIP or not, meet your expectations or not, you're cooked. But yes, I agree, you should pull the ripcord as soon as you get a good sense of what's going on.
        pseudalopex 5y ago
        We were discussing Focus. I can't tell if you're calling Focus a PIP or talking about Pivot. I've read Amazon performance evaluations. The expectations and how they were evaluated were as subjective as anywhere.
    - mannykannot 5y ago
      I see you are completely avoiding the issue of what effect the nondisclosure aspect of this plan has on the employees who are not on it. You yourself raised the negative aspects of not knowing if every day will be your last.
throwaway73851 5y ago
I was nearly put on a PIP when I was at Amazon. I noped out of there and went to greener pastures before that could happen. I was severely jaded by my experience there. When I started, I immediately initiated conversations with my manager about what I could do to make sure I succeeded. I asked the more senior engineers on my team if we could whiteboard about the services we owned and who interacted with them as well as what upstream teams we depended on. The SDE3 told me "I don't know." To this day, I'm still pissed off that an SDE3 who had been on the team for 4+ years "didn't know" who used their services or how the services interacted. And it wasn't that he didn't know - he just didn't give a shit about onboarding newbies. That same engineer, when I asked him for help in debugging an alert that I had put into a system, threw out some bogus answer and took one step back. I told him I had tried his suggestion. He then gave another bogus answer and took another step back. He literally backed away slowly and after three or four steps, just sat down at his desk and ignored me. I recognize I'm an N=1, and I have friends that more or less enjoyed their time there, but I saw far too many bullshit patterns from engineers and managers for me to think of Amazon's approach as anything but intentionally malicious.
- babesh 5y ago
  I think that he was trying to sabotage competitors. I saw this behavior at UC Berkeley. An ultra competitive, almost 4.00 student intentionally gave the wrong approach to another team in our graduate level computer architecture course. My understanding is that the pre-med students at Berkeley engaged in this behavior much more extensively. This unethical behavior is rewarded in zero sum games and systems graded on a curve like most tech companies and UC Berkeley will exhibit this behavior. The student went on to a masters at Berkeley.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  You don't survive 4 years without doing that. Remember someone gets voted out each year. Your goal is not be that person so you can't help a newbie. Someone new has to come in and screw someone else over to stay.
  - andrekandre 5y ago

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.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    Targets the employee doesn't know about aren't a plan. The low probability of reversing the bozo bit is why the employee should know when the manager flipped it.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      A PIP doesn't have targets the employee doesn't know about - not formally, anyways. The targets are the same whether you're on a PIP or not: meeting expectations for your level. At a company like Amazon these are going to be well defined and published. The manager would have also more than likely, if acting in good faith, found you a mentor by this point. If they weren't acting in good faith, then it doesn't matter whether you know about your PIP or not, meet your expectations or not, you're cooked. But yes, I agree, you should pull the ripcord as soon as you get a good sense of what's going on.
      - pseudalopex 5y ago
        We were discussing Focus. I can't tell if you're calling Focus a PIP or talking about Pivot. I've read Amazon performance evaluations. The expectations and how they were evaluated were as subjective as anywhere.
  - mannykannot 5y ago
    I see you are completely avoiding the issue of what effect the nondisclosure aspect of this plan has on the employees who are not on it. You yourself raised the negative aspects of not knowing if every day will be your last.

throwaway73851 5y ago

I was nearly put on a PIP when I was at Amazon. I noped out of there and went to greener pastures before that could happen. I was severely jaded by my experience there. When I started, I immediately initiated conversations with my manager about what I could do to make sure I succeeded. I asked the more senior engineers on my team if we could whiteboard about the services we owned and who interacted with them as well as what upstream teams we depended on. The SDE3 told me "I don't know." To this day, I'm still pissed off that an SDE3 who had been on the team for 4+ years "didn't know" who used their services or how the services interacted. And it wasn't that he didn't know - he just didn't give a shit about onboarding newbies. That same engineer, when I asked him for help in debugging an alert that I had put into a system, threw out some bogus answer and took one step back. I told him I had tried his suggestion. He then gave another bogus answer and took another step back. He literally backed away slowly and after three or four steps, just sat down at his desk and ignored me. I recognize I'm an N=1, and I have friends that more or less enjoyed their time there, but I saw far too many bullshit patterns from engineers and managers for me to think of Amazon's approach as anything but intentionally malicious.

babesh 5y ago
I think that he was trying to sabotage competitors. I saw this behavior at UC Berkeley. An ultra competitive, almost 4.00 student intentionally gave the wrong approach to another team in our graduate level computer architecture course. My understanding is that the pre-med students at Berkeley engaged in this behavior much more extensively. This unethical behavior is rewarded in zero sum games and systems graded on a curve like most tech companies and UC Berkeley will exhibit this behavior. The student went on to a masters at Berkeley.
ipaddr 5y ago
You don't survive 4 years without doing that. Remember someone gets voted out each year. Your goal is not be that person so you can't help a newbie. Someone new has to come in and screw someone else over to stay.
- andrekandre 5y ago