6 ms·

“Standing Up for Us Plebs.” Amazon Leaders Reject Policy to Push Employees Out

53 points by kantrowitz 5y ago

renewiltord 5y ago
Interesting that Amazon still stack ranks. About ten years ago, I think everyone made fun of Microsoft’s stack ranking and here we are.
- pjc50 5y ago
  It's an inhumane management approach that treats employees as a consumable resource, so it's a perfect fit for Amazon. Note that there's a classic case of picking a simple, easy, and wrong metric - number of employees made to leave - rather than the more nebulous "is our staff management policy producing good results", because the latter is hard to quantify.
- Melting_Harps 5y ago
  > Interesting that Amazon still stack ranks. About ten years ago, I think everyone made fun of Microsoft’s stack ranking and here we are. I've never been pro-union, nor anti-union for that matter: I'm just indifferent as I find them to have many pros and cons that ultimately cancel each other out. My limited time with those who were unionized made me see the perils and entitlement that come with certain trades (electricians specifically) and their reluctance to cross train non-union, or their outward antipathy towards anyone who hasn't paid dues to their union has put a damper on my outlook. But given Amazon's influence in the Labor market post-covid, and their lobbying efforts and their ever growing market share in addition to their inhumane actions towards labor, I think it's imperative that Amazon be unionized in the US and AWS be broken up into many companies. Amazon has just too large for it not get away with this behaviour. Anti-trust laws are on the books for a reason, and Microsoft had to reigned in on as well. Just look at this: > To reach it [Unregretted attrition], they’d have to put 111 employees on notice in a performance plan called Focus. The ensuing misery could make many leave on their own...
xibalba 5y ago
Criticisms of Amazon need to overcome a fundamental problem: Amazon has been one the most innovative companies of all time. As a result it has grown explosively and is beloved by customers. All with this policy in place. In other words, this policy appears to work. Or at the very least, it doesn’t hurt. If you don’t like it, don’t work there.
- zanellato19 5y ago
  This is ridiculous because there can be many, many reasons for Amazon being successful while still making a lot of mistakes. You are conflating cause and effect here, how can we know if Amazon couldn't be even more innovative if they didn't do this?
  - xibalba 5y ago
    > Or at the very least, it doesn’t hurt. I think you missed this part of my comment. I don't conflate cause and effect. No do I conflate correlation and causation, which is what I think you meant to write. > be even more innovative So your premise is that the most innovative, productive company in the world could be more innovative?
    - netizen-936824 5y ago
      Are you insinuating that there's some sort of cap on innovation?
      - xibalba 5y ago
        Yes. For instance, natural resources, financial & human resources, time, and physical reality come to mind.
        netizen-936824 5y ago
        So if we consider every single (known) possible permutation of "ways to do something" do you really think that amazon is anywhere near the possible cap? I have my doubts, and this is even thinking we won't figure out some new way to bend physics to our will
reducesuffering 5y ago
I have never seen a major company so vehemently despised from the inside like Amazon. It’s internal ratings compared to 99% of other software companies are abysmal.
throwawaygal7 5y ago
I have a few successful colleagues (former) and friends at amazon. I don't think anyone I know who works there or has worked there liked the culture at all. For most, it's just an aspirational resume building step - it looks great to be a former Amazon employee but I don't think many really see it as a great place to go and stay.
ipsocannibal 5y ago
I have no problem with the 6% number for URA. The problem I have is that the 6% never seems to include managers. So when your manager bad hire bungles the OP1, constantly randomizes the team, and then jets to another team in 18 months the manager keeps their stock grant and the poor pleb dev that worked under those conditions gets the axe for their 'poor performance'.
- cnst 5y ago
  This is exactly the issue with quotas like that. For any action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. What often happens as a result of such policies is that the weaker or newer managers simply become an unwitting separation/firing mill, or the people who have to be managed out are simply those that are inconvenient in some way for the org, or are too new for the team (the infamous hire-to-fire phenomenon). Also, as in this leak, what happens is that in order to reach a 6% URA target, they may have to put 15% of people through performance improvement, and some of these people simply leave Amazon to successfully work for Google and Facebook, defeating the notion that they had unrecoverable performance issues to begin with. At the end of the day, if success in improving performance, is a fail in the metric, isn't that itself a fail? (This in turn provides an incentive for the managers to finish up anyone they put for performance improvement, making the whole process a sham, since it's virtually impossible to get out of.)

53 points by kantrowitz 5y ago

Interesting that Amazon still stack ranks. About ten years ago, I think everyone made fun of Microsoft’s stack ranking and here we are.

pjc50 5y ago
It's an inhumane management approach that treats employees as a consumable resource, so it's a perfect fit for Amazon. Note that there's a classic case of picking a simple, easy, and wrong metric - number of employees made to leave - rather than the more nebulous "is our staff management policy producing good results", because the latter is hard to quantify.
Melting_Harps 5y ago
> Interesting that Amazon still stack ranks. About ten years ago, I think everyone made fun of Microsoft’s stack ranking and here we are. I've never been pro-union, nor anti-union for that matter: I'm just indifferent as I find them to have many pros and cons that ultimately cancel each other out. My limited time with those who were unionized made me see the perils and entitlement that come with certain trades (electricians specifically) and their reluctance to cross train non-union, or their outward antipathy towards anyone who hasn't paid dues to their union has put a damper on my outlook. But given Amazon's influence in the Labor market post-covid, and their lobbying efforts and their ever growing market share in addition to their inhumane actions towards labor, I think it's imperative that Amazon be unionized in the US and AWS be broken up into many companies. Amazon has just too large for it not get away with this behaviour. Anti-trust laws are on the books for a reason, and Microsoft had to reigned in on as well. Just look at this: > To reach it [Unregretted attrition], they’d have to put 111 employees on notice in a performance plan called Focus. The ensuing misery could make many leave on their own...

xibalba 5y ago

Criticisms of Amazon need to overcome a fundamental problem: Amazon has been one the most innovative companies of all time. As a result it has grown explosively and is beloved by customers. All with this policy in place. In other words, this policy appears to work. Or at the very least, it doesn’t hurt. If you don’t like it, don’t work there.

zanellato19 5y ago
This is ridiculous because there can be many, many reasons for Amazon being successful while still making a lot of mistakes. You are conflating cause and effect here, how can we know if Amazon couldn't be even more innovative if they didn't do this?
- xibalba 5y ago
  > Or at the very least, it doesn’t hurt. I think you missed this part of my comment. I don't conflate cause and effect. No do I conflate correlation and causation, which is what I think you meant to write. > be even more innovative So your premise is that the most innovative, productive company in the world could be more innovative?
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    Are you insinuating that there's some sort of cap on innovation?
    - xibalba 5y ago
      Yes. For instance, natural resources, financial & human resources, time, and physical reality come to mind.
      - netizen-936824 5y ago
        So if we consider every single (known) possible permutation of "ways to do something" do you really think that amazon is anywhere near the possible cap? I have my doubts, and this is even thinking we won't figure out some new way to bend physics to our will

reducesuffering 5y ago

I have never seen a major company so vehemently despised from the inside like Amazon. It’s internal ratings compared to 99% of other software companies are abysmal.

throwawaygal7 5y ago

I have a few successful colleagues (former) and friends at amazon. I don't think anyone I know who works there or has worked there liked the culture at all. For most, it's just an aspirational resume building step - it looks great to be a former Amazon employee but I don't think many really see it as a great place to go and stay.

ipsocannibal 5y ago

I have no problem with the 6% number for URA. The problem I have is that the 6% never seems to include managers. So when your manager bad hire bungles the OP1, constantly randomizes the team, and then jets to another team in 18 months the manager keeps their stock grant and the poor pleb dev that worked under those conditions gets the axe for their 'poor performance'.

cnst 5y ago
This is exactly the issue with quotas like that. For any action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. What often happens as a result of such policies is that the weaker or newer managers simply become an unwitting separation/firing mill, or the people who have to be managed out are simply those that are inconvenient in some way for the org, or are too new for the team (the infamous hire-to-fire phenomenon). Also, as in this leak, what happens is that in order to reach a 6% URA target, they may have to put 15% of people through performance improvement, and some of these people simply leave Amazon to successfully work for Google and Facebook, defeating the notion that they had unrecoverable performance issues to begin with. At the end of the day, if success in improving performance, is a fail in the metric, isn't that itself a fail? (This in turn provides an incentive for the managers to finish up anyone they put for performance improvement, making the whole process a sham, since it's virtually impossible to get out of.)