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I've heard about stack ranking at Amazon, but I've not seen it. Maybe it's because I work for AWS, and I'm not an SDE. But I've worked in three separate organiz

I've heard about stack ranking at Amazon, but I've not seen it. Maybe it's because I work for AWS, and I'm not an SDE. But I've worked in three separate organizations within AWS, each of which have different cultures. And I have never seen any of the horror stories commonly attributed to Amazon corporate in my time at Amazon.

Traubenfuchs 4y ago
If only 0.1% of Amazon employees are very unhappy and vent their horror stories online, you will hear hundreds of bad stories. If 99.9 are "just fine" with it, you won't hear a single story...
agentofoblivion 4y ago
+1. I’ve been here almost 6 years and across 3 different teams. Never seen any of the horrors.
lightbendover 4y ago
There are absolutely quotas for every org over a certain size. If you’re not a manager and not on the chopping block, it would be hard to notice.
Chamix 4y ago
Oh my friend, there is a tool called Lift used in OLR/Talent Review by every single 50+ group at Amazon that quite literally will show your face up on a screen for everyone at the OLR meeting to discuss and rank vs your peers. If they don't have the Least Effective quota hit they will go through each face near the bottom to figure out who needs to be added. The most liberal definition possible of not stack ranking. The simple reason why most don't notice it is people really intuitively overestimate how big 6% feels, especially when a good chunk of the people who leave and satisfy the unregretted attrition quota look just like someone leaving to another company but who were in focus or pivot when they left. To refresh the exact rules for those not in the know: - Amazon requires 6% of employees who leave the company every year to be unregretted attrition aka URA - To be marked as URA an employee must be in Focus aka Devlist aka Devplan when they leave - Talent Review aka OLR must occur at least every 6 months for each leader with >=50 employees under him - Every employee is ranked from Least Effective - High Value 1-3 - Top Tier with quotas being 5:35:25:15:20 % respectively - The 5% rated LE must be entered into Focus - This effectively results in 10% of employees in Focus per year - Around half fail improvement plans in Focus and are presented with Pivot, which 90% results in firing. This is the oft discussed "Pip" - Rest either get out of Focus or leave themselves while on Focus and are still marked URA One of the advantages of Amazon's notoriety is you can know exactly how the process works. At other FAANGS it remains more nebulous and obfuscated to my knowledge. There still is not a concrete answer on who will actually get fired under Google's new GRAD system, and Meta does not seem particularly consistent with how they target double rated meets most. I understand the least about Microsoft and Apple, despite working there.

Traubenfuchs 4y ago

If only 0.1% of Amazon employees are very unhappy and vent their horror stories online, you will hear hundreds of bad stories. If 99.9 are "just fine" with it, you won't hear a single story...

agentofoblivion 4y ago

+1. I’ve been here almost 6 years and across 3 different teams. Never seen any of the horrors.

lightbendover 4y ago

There are absolutely quotas for every org over a certain size. If you’re not a manager and not on the chopping block, it would be hard to notice.

Chamix 4y ago

Oh my friend, there is a tool called Lift used in OLR/Talent Review by every single 50+ group at Amazon that quite literally will show your face up on a screen for everyone at the OLR meeting to discuss and rank vs your peers. If they don't have the Least Effective quota hit they will go through each face near the bottom to figure out who needs to be added. The most liberal definition possible of not stack ranking. The simple reason why most don't notice it is people really intuitively overestimate how big 6% feels, especially when a good chunk of the people who leave and satisfy the unregretted attrition quota look just like someone leaving to another company but who were in focus or pivot when they left. To refresh the exact rules for those not in the know: - Amazon requires 6% of employees who leave the company every year to be unregretted attrition aka URA - To be marked as URA an employee must be in Focus aka Devlist aka Devplan when they leave - Talent Review aka OLR must occur at least every 6 months for each leader with >=50 employees under him - Every employee is ranked from Least Effective - High Value 1-3 - Top Tier with quotas being 5:35:25:15:20 % respectively - The 5% rated LE must be entered into Focus - This effectively results in 10% of employees in Focus per year - Around half fail improvement plans in Focus and are presented with Pivot, which 90% results in firing. This is the oft discussed "Pip" - Rest either get out of Focus or leave themselves while on Focus and are still marked URA One of the advantages of Amazon's notoriety is you can know exactly how the process works. At other FAANGS it remains more nebulous and obfuscated to my knowledge. There still is not a concrete answer on who will actually get fired under Google's new GRAD system, and Meta does not seem particularly consistent with how they target double rated meets most. I understand the least about Microsoft and Apple, despite working there.