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> The assumption of stack ranking is that the good people will survive each round of purging. It's my understanding that Amazon does not do stack ranking. Wha

> The assumption of stack ranking is that the good people will survive each round of purging. It's my understanding that Amazon does not do stack ranking. What they do is more insidious. They force people out in a process that consists of promoting people as a pretext to apply harsher performance evaluation criteria while comparing your performance directly with veteran, well established engineers. To make matters worse, you have a limited influence over your career. You are evaluated based on your performance in your role which is dictated by the project you are assigned to. SDE1s are de-facto barred from switching teams, SDE2s can switch teams but can be a liability, SDE3s are few and far in between and have limited career options, and on top of that there's only principal engineer, which is already a role that needs full support and commitment from executives. The rule of survival was move up to SDE2 as fast as you could, and afterwards judiciously switch teams each year or so to a) avoid being held liable for your past work, b) ensure you were working on a team thay was unlikely to be subjected to cuts, and most of all c) do your best to not be considered for a promotion to SDE3 as that would mean you would be held personally responsible for each and every single failure and short-coming of the projects you'd be assigned to. In short, they push people up and out. The average tenure is shorter than 3 years. Let that sink in.

donavanm 2y ago
You are comically uninformed on this topic. Please dont repeat incorrect second or third hand “understandings.” I dont have time to itemize everything, but… its not “stack” as much as “bucket” or “matrix”, but similar outcomes. I never once heard of any sort of “promo to fire”, its prima facia ridiculous. Any FTE can change teams 30 (iirc) days after hire, regardless of job level. SDE3 is “ terminal” in that there’s no requirement to advance, but its not uncommon to move to SDM or PE. Offhand ~10-15% of all SDE are “3”, and ~2-3% PE, maybe 0.5 Sr PE, and a fair few DE. oh and “average” tenure, I wonder what the average might be when the company expands total FTE count by 15-30% per year, and an attrition rate of 10-13%. SOURCE: me, was 13 years at aws including promo up to PE.
- AtlasBarfed 2y ago
  13 years. Lottery winner perspective! Also, I'd guess (I never knew anyone at AWS) that AWS was better than Amazon, especially it's sweet profit margins behind the scenes. Thirteen years implies you probably joined and still had exposure to upper reaches of management, as opposed to ten years later where some new hire is a pissant with 20 layers of management separating them, and 10 years of "raising the bar" or as I would like to call it "upping the hazing" that will impact new and lower levels before the politically insulated.

donavanm 2y ago

You are comically uninformed on this topic. Please dont repeat incorrect second or third hand “understandings.” I dont have time to itemize everything, but… its not “stack” as much as “bucket” or “matrix”, but similar outcomes. I never once heard of any sort of “promo to fire”, its prima facia ridiculous. Any FTE can change teams 30 (iirc) days after hire, regardless of job level. SDE3 is “ terminal” in that there’s no requirement to advance, but its not uncommon to move to SDM or PE. Offhand ~10-15% of all SDE are “3”, and ~2-3% PE, maybe 0.5 Sr PE, and a fair few DE. oh and “average” tenure, I wonder what the average might be when the company expands total FTE count by 15-30% per year, and an attrition rate of 10-13%. SOURCE: me, was 13 years at aws including promo up to PE.

AtlasBarfed 2y ago
13 years. Lottery winner perspective! Also, I'd guess (I never knew anyone at AWS) that AWS was better than Amazon, especially it's sweet profit margins behind the scenes. Thirteen years implies you probably joined and still had exposure to upper reaches of management, as opposed to ten years later where some new hire is a pissant with 20 layers of management separating them, and 10 years of "raising the bar" or as I would like to call it "upping the hazing" that will impact new and lower levels before the politically insulated.