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"that at Amazon there is a process of blame-finding" Ex-Amazonian here. It's important to note that Amazon's Cause of Error (COE) process is not about blame. I
by SpikeGronim 14y ago
"that at Amazon there is a process of blame-finding"
Ex-Amazonian here. It's important to note that Amazon's Cause of Error (COE) process is not about blame. It is about determining what happened, why it happened, and what concrete steps are being taken so that it does not happen again. Individuals are not blamed as part of this process and that's in the official rules. The goal is to iterate and avoid making the same mistakes again.
- phuff 14y agoI've heard from a lot of ex-amazonian's that in practice there's a lot of blaming as part of the process at least in part because of the compensation/promotional processes. But maybe that's changed recently? Of course, I've also heard that there is a wide diversity of culture between teams, so maybe that plays in to it, too.
- RandallBrown 14y agoI'm sure it depends a lot on your team and your manager. Also, some people see a process like that and automatically assume blame is being assigned even if it isn't.
- SpikeGronim 14y agoTotally happens, even though it is not supposed to. If a dev didn't outright break the rules then they shouldn't be blamed. The rules in this case would be something like "a peer must review before deploy" - if you bring down the site after breaking that rule, you're going to get fired most likely. I've never had COEs come up in my or others' performance reviews. If the boss who owns the COE "gets it" and has internalized the old-school Amazon culture then there won't be blame. The bosses really take the hits here, they do get personally blamed for these things. If they can't stand between the team and the more senior management then they are not doing it right. If you and your boss mutually hate each other (which unfortunately I have seen) then it won't go well.