I haven't worked at Amazon, but my experience with the world of "pip" culture is that it only really appears when value is difficult to define, which is strong

I haven't worked at Amazon, but my experience with the world of "pip" culture is that it only really appears when value is difficult to define, which is strong evidence of bloat. Every time you hear a story of someone at Amazon being pip'd it always comes as a surprise to the IC and, most importantly, they don't know how to avoid it. This doesn't happen in a world where creating value is well defined. For example in the sales world nobody is confused about their performance. Sure there may be unfair reasons for having a poor sales cycle, but the sales person has zero problem identifying how they can create more value to the company: close more deals. But I see lots of comments, both in person and online, of Amazon employees fearing a pip and not knowing the right way to keep their manager happy. This, at least to me, is evidence of the bloat. The high pressure ironically comes from the fact that nobody knows how to create real value, so they are stressed out trying to figure out how the game works.