4 ms·

Wait a minute: does Amazon even tell white-collar employees they're being PIP'd? I though they just fired people without giving them any reason.

coredog64 3y ago
There’s a secret (to the employees) period pre-PIP where management is either collecting evidence of your inadequacy or setting you up to fail so they can hit URA quota. You’re absolutely notified your in PIP as you can just take the money and run.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  It’s not a secret. They tell you your on “focus”. Let me take that back. I knew I was on focus. But thought I was off since I had met all of the criteria and my manager went on radio silence for a month. I mostly worked with project managers and customers (consulting division) day to day. That’s when my manager was finding things to use against me.
  - oldbbsnickname 3y ago
    Radio silence is generally ambiguous: either you're doing really well or really badly. xD Meta is obsessed with "impact", a illusion of precisely-quantifiable innovation and productivity setting up perverse KPIs to never refactor, never invest in employee career development (because "the year of efficiency" and "we're moving to fast"), and never bother with anything other than looking good. And everything diff has to be reviewed by someone on your team, but if your team doesn't include actually seasoned coders, they're going to nit pick because they don't understand the programming language and take their time, slowing you down.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      so my success criteria in ProSerbe and metrics were simple - stay 80% billable, keep the customer happy and make sure my projects were done on time, on budget and met requirements. No matter how hard my manager tries, they couldn’t get me on those metrics. Mind you that my manager is not involved in my day to day work. I worked witg project managers and other consultants. My previous manager had left and my new manager went hard on me from day one. I had ever had any previous interaction with them. They couldn’t even find anyone to give me bad feedback internally or the customers during the focus periods. The only thing the manager could do was try to keep adding more work on me until I refused or failed.
- oldbbsnickname 3y ago
  Which makes sense. Cool, wise managers would mention the pre-PIP possibility to otherwise good employees informally because surprises are Generally Bad™ for indicating a lack of transparency and mutual understanding between manager-employee. Performance reviews EOY or EOHalf should never be arbitrary or magical surprises, but a stack of accomplishments and positive "thanks" notes for specific assistance.
  - tdeck 3y ago
    We're talking about Amazon, the company where managers are literally required to fire a certain number of people and frequently hire new people with the expectation of firing them to meet that quota. So giving someone a chance to turn their performance around would defeat the purpose.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  > setting you up to fail Wow. Imagine that being legal.

coredog64 3y ago

There’s a secret (to the employees) period pre-PIP where management is either collecting evidence of your inadequacy or setting you up to fail so they can hit URA quota. You’re absolutely notified your in PIP as you can just take the money and run.

scarface_74 3y ago
It’s not a secret. They tell you your on “focus”. Let me take that back. I knew I was on focus. But thought I was off since I had met all of the criteria and my manager went on radio silence for a month. I mostly worked with project managers and customers (consulting division) day to day. That’s when my manager was finding things to use against me.
- oldbbsnickname 3y ago
  Radio silence is generally ambiguous: either you're doing really well or really badly. xD Meta is obsessed with "impact", a illusion of precisely-quantifiable innovation and productivity setting up perverse KPIs to never refactor, never invest in employee career development (because "the year of efficiency" and "we're moving to fast"), and never bother with anything other than looking good. And everything diff has to be reviewed by someone on your team, but if your team doesn't include actually seasoned coders, they're going to nit pick because they don't understand the programming language and take their time, slowing you down.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    so my success criteria in ProSerbe and metrics were simple - stay 80% billable, keep the customer happy and make sure my projects were done on time, on budget and met requirements. No matter how hard my manager tries, they couldn’t get me on those metrics. Mind you that my manager is not involved in my day to day work. I worked witg project managers and other consultants. My previous manager had left and my new manager went hard on me from day one. I had ever had any previous interaction with them. They couldn’t even find anyone to give me bad feedback internally or the customers during the focus periods. The only thing the manager could do was try to keep adding more work on me until I refused or failed.
oldbbsnickname 3y ago
Which makes sense. Cool, wise managers would mention the pre-PIP possibility to otherwise good employees informally because surprises are Generally Bad™ for indicating a lack of transparency and mutual understanding between manager-employee. Performance reviews EOY or EOHalf should never be arbitrary or magical surprises, but a stack of accomplishments and positive "thanks" notes for specific assistance.
- tdeck 3y ago
  We're talking about Amazon, the company where managers are literally required to fire a certain number of people and frequently hire new people with the expectation of firing them to meet that quota. So giving someone a chance to turn their performance around would defeat the purpose.
gumballindie 3y ago
> setting you up to fail Wow. Imagine that being legal.