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Leaked documents reveal Amazon’s process to review employees’ worth to Amazon
- tinktank 4y agoAmazon seems like it's in the process of eating itself. Good riddance.
- Madmallard 4y agoSeems the same as it was roughly when I worked there 8 years ago? I don't see what's secretive about this.
- herodotus 4y agoI am not a big fan of Amazon, but this is a silly article that uses inflammatory language ("A leaked trove of documents", "might shed light on the company’s controversial performance review process" and so on) to describe a completely standard way of doing annual employee reviews.
- pizzathyme 4y agoAgree. This is similar at all big tech companies
- krainboltgreene 4y ago> a completely standard way of doing annual employee reviews. For like 20 companies out of thousands. This is in no way standard.
- phendrenad2 4y agoSeems like a pretty standard performance review process. This is only news because it's a "big tech" company.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ryanisnan 4y agoA lot if not all of these performance review metrics are totally fine. Being customer centric, not developing overly complex or overly simple systems, having good judgement, etc. Why is this controversial?
- throwde 4y agoAmazon has a goal to fire 6% every year. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/internal-amazon-documents-shed-light-on-how-company-pressures-out-6-of-office-workers/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/internal-amazon... That's the controversial part, which for some reason this article doesn't really go into.
- karaterobot 4y agoYour employer isn't your friend, or your mom. Of course they want you to provide value to the company in exchange for money. > Factors that can boost an employee’s score include being reactive to customer needs, acting as a mentor, providing new ideas in discussions, and exhibiting a strong and adaptable work ethic. Never mind, this is outrageous. Somebody should put a stop to these monsters.
- vaidhy 4y agoThis is really the amazon leadership principles - customer obsession, hire and develop the best, invent and simplify and deliver results :)
- psi75 4y ago
- Apocryphon 4y agoTech companies posture as families all of the time. But Amazon probably doesn’t, to be fair. The reason why this concerns people is because Amazon’s approach to worker metrics is notorious for all sorts of bad effects, from warehouse staff pissing into bottles to PIP culture among its engineering staff. Is there any sign that these KPIs will be used in a less stringent way?
- redanddead 4y agoThat lack of bathroom breaks really hurt Amazon's reputation
- itsmemattchung 4y agoEx-Amazon here. Leaked documents aren't necessary to know that Amazon — among other FAANG companies — stack rank. But I will say that when Forte (the system used for performance reviews) first rolled out about 4-5 years ago, it was initially intended as a way to solicit feedback from your peers: and it was used that way. At first. But of course, within a few years, the system evolved and was eventually tied to your compensation.
- ArrayBoundCheck 4y agoThe very few people who I known worked there seemed to like it. Is there any particular reason why you left? I know one of them said he only left because they were overworking him
- yftsui 4y agoForte was never a system for performance review, it was for peer compliments to make you feel good. The actual performance rating never use Forte - the performance review always happen before Forte due date.
- throw1230 4y agoIt's not tied to your compensation or ranking. Your forte, when you discuss it with your manager, should give you some growth areas that you should improve. If in your next talent review, you haven't made much progress, that will contribute to your ranking naturally but that's about it
- petra 4y agoAmazon still to be able execute very well. Do you see a deterioration the last few years?
- BeetleB 4y agoThis is only a tad bit more formalized than what most companies use for performance evaluation. This doesn't seem news worthy at all. In fact, it's at least heartening to know that there is some process for evaluation, as opposed to companies I've worked at where it's mostly how your manager and his manager "feel" about you.
- sgift 4y ago> as opposed to companies I've worked at where it's mostly how your manager and his manager "feel" about you. From reading the article that's exactly what Amazon is doing. How does your manager feel about you, how do your coworkers feel about you, what do you think about yourself. Just with more ceremony, so it doesn't look like a bunch of dice rolls.
- closeparen 4y agoIt would be remarkable if the assessments of other skilled practitioners familiar with your work were no better than “dice rolls.”
- JCM9 4y agoCompany identifies its best performers and then pays them more than others. Why is this controversial? Is this the “everyone gets a trophy” generation shocked by how the world really works?
- lijogdfljk 4y agoI imagine because, as i've heard not experienced, Amazon purposefully tries to churn employees. Sounds awful to work for.
- JCM9 4y agoWhy is it bad that Amazon seeks to cycle out the lowest performers? Is that not what any high performing organization does? I’m not aware of any very high performing organization that doesn’t have some form of cycling out low performers. And places that don’t do this, or promote based on silly metrics like years of service, consistently are places plagued with poor standards and performance overall. High performing individuals also loathe the underperformers and want them gone. They drag down standards, create more work for others, impact morale. I’ve seen too many orgs that don’t chase out poorly performing people. What happens? The good performers flee.
- specialist 4y agoSure. But is "Rank and Yank" the best strategy for that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve
- voxl 4y agoPerformance cannot be evaluated in a vacuum, and likely has as much to do with your environment as it does your experience and talent. A _high_ performance company, if such a tech company even exists, would do everything in their power not to lose institutional knowledge. Throwing out a low performer is the wrong tact if you have more products and teams then you know what to do with it, it is much better to shuffle that employee into a new environment a couple of times to see if anything sticks.
- mabbo 4y agoWhat made me upset about the "Forte" process at Amazon was that managers deadlines for submitting their evaluations of their people was earlier than the deadline to submit peer feedback. Managers made whatever decisions they wanted. The previous system, "Evolution" had many issues, no doubt, but it made peer feedback a major input into the evaluations.
- tantalor 4y ago> the potential they have exhibited > employee’s potential—ranked on a scale from one to four Article doesn't explain how "potential score" works. Considering it is 1 of 2 metrics that factor into total score, it sounds important.
- tasubotadas 4y agoYet again chasing clicks and page views got in a way of journalism. Why don't we write a sensational article about that instead?
- pjbeam 4y agoEdit: Had wrong % for LE. Former Amazon SDM here. The actual rating process didn't strike me as something all that controversial. I had to do extensive write ups for all of my reports--this was standard stuff: what went well ("superpowers"), what didn't ("growth areas"), and some actionable ideas for improvement. Then I had to pick numerical scores for "impact" and "potential" that were fed into a black box that resulted in an "overall value" score--this score is meant to be mysterious to the employees but it's the worst kept secret in Amazon at this point. OV ranged from LE (least effort/effective) at the low end, through HV 1,2,3 (high value) which is essentially "meets", and then TT ("top tier") at the high end. ~10-15% of a director org is supposed to be LE, up to 20% TT, and the rest of people distributed through the HV levels. I proposed these ratings to the bigger org that were then agreed to or adjusted by HR and higher management in a formal manager meeting. The infamous URA quota of ~6% unregretted attrition (PIP) is meant to be met through managing out LE employees. The process starts with a PIP-lite called "Focus" and goes to the real PIP at the next stage, called "Pivot". Many people got out of Focus, very few get out of Pivot. The part of the process I had trouble with, which contributed to me leaving, is the curve fitting of ratings for people. I had to do things like trade a HV3 down to an HV2 in order to keep an unpopular but otherwise fine performing engineer from getting an LE. The stories people tell about hire to fire and unfair Pivot are overblown in my experience but not false. From what I've seen, the company will find pliant people and lean on them hard for more and more and more and then manage them out when then start to falter. Lot of nuance to this--I have no love for Amazon and I'm happy to have moved on. It is definitely a meat grinder. That said articles like this are pretty low effort on my view.
- wronglebowski 4y agoI think the main issue is to the more common person that paragraph read like as bunch of complete business nonsense. I have no idea what the vast majority of those abbreviations mean.
- pjbeam 4y agoI missed SDM = software development manager and PIP = performance improvement plan. The rest I think are explicated above.
- alangibson 4y agoThe only way to deal with such systems is to accept that you're in an adversarial relationship and act accordingly. If you're an employee, organize to get some power on your side of the table. IMHO the best way to work in tech is as a partially committed, outside contractor. Your counterparty has little leverage over you because you don't have all your eggs in one basket
- snotrockets 4y agoBut as a contractor you'll get about half the TC of what a full time employee would get for the same amount of work. And there isn't as much leverage as you imply, because there's the non trivial cost of getting new clients.
- civilized 4y agoIn my experience, contractors spend the majority of their time fixing their own foreseeable mistakes.
- firstSpeaker 4y agoI wonder if the leaked documents is real and exist in this case.
- glimshe 4y agoNothing to see here, folks. All big tech companies have similar nonsense, "objective" performance review processes.
- WalterBright 4y agoThe reason for that is straightforward. It's to protect the company from lawsuits about unfair pay practices.
- znpy 4y ago«A leaked trove of documents» ... where would one find such documents ? The author comments about these documents, but how would one proceed to form their own opinion? I'm not sure if anybody should just "believe" on such articles.
- juunpp 4y agoWhere are the documents? These "news" sites never link their sources.
- faangiq 4y agoMiserable sweat shop with low IQ management. Everyone knows this.
- malwarebytess 4y agoEveryone here thinks it's normal because they're within the system. Those of us outside of it can see it's insane and dehumanizing.
- khazhoux 4y agoWhich part do you consider dehumanizing? I've been on both sides (IC + manager), though not at Amazon. As a manager, it's always crystal clear that not every team member contributes equally, often by a wide margin. When it comes time to give out monetary rewards and title increases, how would you propose people be evaluated?
- Underphil 4y agoThe only part that really makes me shudder is the thought of working to align with Amazon's 'principles'. Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
- cardosof 4y agoIt's not all that controversial to me. It's simple and it's been around for decades at least: put all employees in a big bell curve, fire one end and promote the other, try to raise motivation and productivity for everyone else, until the next performance review cycle. Everyone with some sense should hate that, though.
- firstSpeaker 4y agoAnyone with experience about SDM L8 and SDE L7 and how the whole rating works for these levels?