3 ms·

What's the alternative? Randomly letting people go?

dieselgate 4y ago
Yeah I don’t know, this isn’t to vouch for Amazon’s “planned attrition” quota at all but it seems regular “trimming of under performers” is better than “all at once witch hunt”. If I think about the “under performers” at my workplace I wish they were gone long ago (from a work standpoint, this isn’t a personal stab). But all of the above creates a pretty hostile work environment, probably. And to be a contrarian I have also worked at a place (non eng) that did maintain public (but anonymous) employee rankings (based on “customer” feedback [kind of complicated to explain in brief])- it was still a decent place to work. When it comes to this topic I relate to academic GPA - it’s a flawed and imperfect system but from a business/Org perspective what other options are there? I wouldn’t want to work in that environment myself but what do workers at Meta or Amzn expect?
- legitster 4y ago
  Yeah it's funny. When I worked fast food the workers always kept their own s**list of coworkers they wished would get fired. In a crunchtime environment, underperforming makes everyone else shoulder more load. Ironically it was always the owner/managers who insisted on keeping around the ne'er-do-wells in hopes that their performance would improve. Most corporate places I have worked at have generally done a good job giving me reliable performance reports (I've never been on a PIP but I hear it's incredibly common). Like, no one should ever be blindsided that they are underperforming.
  - picsao 4y ago
omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
Possibly. Maybe managers could shield X% of their reports, and the remaining Y% would be selected from randomly. It's still unfair, but doesn't disproportionately affect a specific group as much.
- legitster 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure this is how most processes work. I think the exception is if an entire division is underperforming they will let go of everyone regardless of individual performance.
guga42k 4y ago
Kind of. Proper word is decimation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(punishment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(punishment) Romans knew what they are doing!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

Yeah I don’t know, this isn’t to vouch for Amazon’s “planned attrition” quota at all but it seems regular “trimming of under performers” is better than “all at once witch hunt”. If I think about the “under performers” at my workplace I wish they were gone long ago (from a work standpoint, this isn’t a personal stab). But all of the above creates a pretty hostile work environment, probably. And to be a contrarian I have also worked at a place (non eng) that did maintain public (but anonymous) employee rankings (based on “customer” feedback [kind of complicated to explain in brief])- it was still a decent place to work. When it comes to this topic I relate to academic GPA - it’s a flawed and imperfect system but from a business/Org perspective what other options are there? I wouldn’t want to work in that environment myself but what do workers at Meta or Amzn expect?

legitster 4y ago
Yeah it's funny. When I worked fast food the workers always kept their own s**list of coworkers they wished would get fired. In a crunchtime environment, underperforming makes everyone else shoulder more load. Ironically it was always the owner/managers who insisted on keeping around the ne'er-do-wells in hopes that their performance would improve. Most corporate places I have worked at have generally done a good job giving me reliable performance reports (I've never been on a PIP but I hear it's incredibly common). Like, no one should ever be blindsided that they are underperforming.
- picsao 4y ago

omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago

Possibly. Maybe managers could shield X% of their reports, and the remaining Y% would be selected from randomly. It's still unfair, but doesn't disproportionately affect a specific group as much.

legitster 4y ago
I'm pretty sure this is how most processes work. I think the exception is if an entire division is underperforming they will let go of everyone regardless of individual performance.

guga42k 4y ago

Kind of. Proper word is decimation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(punishment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(punishment) Romans knew what they are doing!

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]