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Edit: 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 u
by pjbeam 4y ago
Edit: 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.
- throwde 4y agoAnother former amazon manager here, I can confirm this. The rule of thumb was %6 URA target and a somewhat larger number into Focus. I never saw any written documentation about the URA goal, HR probably wants to avoid creating a leakable paper trail. It always came down verbally from my L8. I heard rumors that Amazon's HR boss Galetti is the big advocate of the URA goal, but I was nowhere high enough to be part of those conversations.
- dijonman2 4y agoHow were managers rated?
- ignoramous 4y ago
- stainforth 4y agoNo, this is a good question - do managers share in this same kind of analysis
- firstSpeaker 4y agoWhat levels of SDE usually have hire for fire at Amazon? SDE I? II?
- pjbeam 4y agoI wouldn't say it's a "usual" thing at all, but more common the lower your level. L4 or SDE 1 has highest risk for negative personnel actions in general for 2 reasons: there are a ton of people in this level and many of them are early career and don't know how to protect themselves from corporate politics.
- Ternari 4y agoEarly-career person here. How do you protect yourself from corporate politics?
- pjbeam 4y agoThat's an enormous topic that is hard for me to treat here. Knowing that it's a thing you should do is a great first step though. Find more experienced people in your context willing to mentor you and critically listen to what they say.
- mprovost 4y agoThe biggest issue I've seen with new engineers is a mismatch between what behaviours they think the company should reward them for, vs the actual things the company judges performance on. Pay attention to some senior people who are doing well and see what it is that they're doing to be successful. Hint: it's usually not writing the best/most code.
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoOften what is considered success at L6 is different than at L4 so this should be done very carefully. Generally at lower levels writing good code is much more important. I’ve seen new engineers that tried to rush senior eng behaviours and they didn’t do well in performance reviews until they corrected their behavior. You need to prove you can be a baseline contributor before you start dreaming big.
- xerxesaa 4y agoGood summary. This is probably the most accurate and succinct writeup I've seen (in what is otherwise a sea of misinformation about the company). I'm also an ex Amazonian (Sr SDM).
- candiddevmike 4y agoDid they apply this same formula to management or was it just ICs?
- pjbeam 4y agoI believe so, at least through L7 (senior manager). I was L6 and only did a few manager calibrations before I left. Another commenter said they were an L7 SDM, they would know better than I. The sense I had was that things work differently for L8 (director/senior principal) and above but I have no first hand experience or knowledge of that.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- vaidhy 4y agoOnly one nitpick - I remember LE as being around 10% of the org and was strongly suggested to put around 15% on focus so that 6% can be managed out, assuming 50% of people on focus would get out of it. Source: former L7 manager, now happily out.
- pjbeam 4y agoYou're right--it's been a while. Not all LEs were meant to leave.
- firstSpeaker 4y agoSo, would an L7 engineer report to an L7 manager? Or there is a sort of limit on what levels would be direct or what levels?
- pjbeam 4y agoYes, N level managers manage ICs and managers to N level. There are occasional strange cases where there is a L5 manager with a L6 IC report because of a weird org structure (small engineering team assigned to a non-tech org), but that isn't normal.
- iamsomewalrus 4y agoThis is my experience as a line manager but also a manager of managers.
- jorblumesea 4y agoIf you're in the industry and used to this, it "doesn't seem crazy" but it feels completely insane to most other professions. I only realized how completely lord of the flies it was after reading this and thinking about it if I was a teacher, doctor, lawyer, firefighter, journalist... I can absolutely understand how this feels news worthy to those outside of tech. It should be more controversial and the fact that people are saying "hey this is just how it works" is part of the problem.
- oblio 4y agoDo you really think teachers or doctors or lawyers (!!!) or journalists don't backstab each other? :-)))
- anomaly_ 4y agoI'm not sure where you're getting that impression from, law (and many other professions that operate under partnership like structures) often have an up or out system that is significantly more brutal than this. No room for expert operators to stay at a particular level, you get promoted or you leave.
- throw1230 4y agoEverything here is true. And the article is really low effort. LE and URA targets do change by organization and current HC goals. People need to go to Focus but in my experience it was the right thing to do. HR will absolutely help you to improve the performance and retain the individual if you think it's fixable. From my experience, and I'm not saying this is case for all, people in Focus had undeniable performance problems that needed addressing. Stack ranking and quotas suck, and you feel like shit having to abide by them, but I've also seen managers being overprotective about underperforming employees. At some point, you have to do something about them because they'll bring the whole team down.
- buran77 4y agoThe problem with zero sum game performance reviews is that they're not about improving performance but about fitting everyone in the same boxes. And this usually results in ridiculous outcomes, some of which are particularly bad depending on how that "box fitting" is implemented. > trade a HV3 down to an HV2 in order to keep an unpopular but otherwise fine performing engineer from getting an LE. Like this where the company's goal is never to improve "unpopular but otherwise fine performing engineer" but rather to keep the boundary of the boxes. And this despite mounting evidence against such systems, and the known abuse with methods like hire to fire. To me this is always a sign of rotten leadership.
- 3a2d29 4y agoCan't add to Amazon, but wanted to add another example of stack ranking problems. I and some friends worked for Capital One, which does stack ranking (but not the intense PIP that Amazon does). Overall the stack ranking isn't a huge issue, but you get screwed because those boxes are subjective, which I always felt was the big issue with any system like this. I worked easily 9-6 most days and got an average rating, while I buddy of mine in a different org would work maybe 4 hours a day and get the same rating. My org had intense work and my manager saw that as the norm. Again not terrible, but I would be incredibly mad if say this same system conspired to putting me on PIP. Working more and longer hours but not meeting the definition of average for your specific manager and team.
- christkv 4y agoHow can I get hired to be the patsy. I’ll change my name so I can get rehired each year just to be fired. I’ll make it super easy to be the LE. Cannon fodder for hire :)
- Hammershaft 4y agoI understanding stack ranking has its benefits in upping the organizational incentives to cull nonperformers... But holy fuck I have no desire to work in such an adversarial low trust environment.
- JackFr 4y agoA friend’s father who was a manager at a giant US conglomerate in the 1960’s and 1970’s did have this to say about stack ranking — they were more willing to take a chance hiring someone from a non traditional background or with a weak resume but good interpersonal skills. Often times it wouldn’t work out but occasionally they might find a diamond in the rough, but they’d be willing to take the chance because they knew they’d be getting rid of people anyway.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago"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." And you did this because why, exactly? It doesn't matter if someone is performing fine if they're an insufferable ass to everyone around them and breeding resentment, etc.
- pjbeam 4y agoBecause I didn't want someone to lose their livelihood for the crime of being introverted. Further I would not rate anyone being an insufferable ass as "fine performing".
- znpy 4y agoAs an introverted… thank you.
- slillibri 4y agoIt seems to me there could be a wide gulf between unpopular and insufferable ass.
- spike021 4y agoFor Focus and Pivot do the engineers need to sign paperwork saying they are acknowledging being put into the URA threshold/PIP program? What about if someone leaves and they were never officially put into Focus or Pivot? I've heard of someone leaving where their manager never put them through any part of PIP, and then after they left they found out they weren't allowed to rejoin Amazon for a year. IIRC Amazon lets employees rejoin up to 6 months after leaving, maybe longer, usually.
- jamiek88 4y ago‘Unregretted attrition’! What absurdity. It’s distinctly 1984 newspeak. Amazonspeak is wild. I couldn’t imagine a worse company to work for in any capacity. I don’t even want to shop there when I read this shit.
- throw123123123 4y agoReads like anti-newspeak - attrition is a bad word, and unregretted means company doesn't care about the people being fired.
- NaturalPhallacy 4y ago>It is definitely a meat grinder. Sounds like they need a union. Why are there so few software unions?