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I don't disagree that reading comprehension is essential to be a good engineer. But empirically, many people with a title like engineer or manager or product s

I don't disagree that reading comprehension is essential to be a good engineer. But empirically, many people with a title like engineer or manager or product somethingrather have poor reading comprehension and blend in just fine. Any process has to take this into account, you can't design a process that only works when competent people participate and incompetent people don't and then blame the incompetent people when it fails. You have to design a process that works despite some number of incompetent participants. Document cultures do this because writing shines a bright light on the merit of an idea. My criticism is that the in-meeting read through does not have a similar effect.

ThrowawayR2 2y ago
> "...you can't design a process that only works when competent people participate and incompetent people don't and then blame the incompetent people when it fails." That reads like something straight out of a Dilbert comic strip. Yes, employers can require that software engineers not be incompetent; that's what they're paying for. If a process reliably reveals their incompetence, that's actually a huge positive because then appropriate corrective measures can be taken.
yazaddaruvala 2y ago
The reality is that competition at Amazon is intense. Amazon corporate is roughly broken down like this: L4: 45%, L5: 45%, L6: 7%, L7: 2.5%, L8+: 0.5% Only the first promotion has guardrails (L4 to L5). Typically you’re expected to be able to write at all. From there many people end their careers at L5. Going from L5 to L6 requires being the best person on your team for multiple years running. Compared with some really smart, focused, and motivated people. You’re also expected to be able to write well, read, and kinda poorly coach other people’s writing. Going from L6 to L7 is very difficult. One of the biggest differentiators really is scale. If you still need help writing docs - that’ll slow you down and you won’t scale. If you’re slow to read and provide valuable feedback again that will hold back scale (many people compensate by adding more time to their work days). However, the funny thing is the doc writing culture at Amazon is built by and for L8+ leaders. Everything else was just training and weeding people out. Going from L7 to L8 is where “in-meeting reads” really start showcasing the differences between leaders. I’ve known smarter people that made better decisions but had their careers stagnate while watching other “80th percentile” decision makers grow because of speed to grok information and deliver valueable feedback 9 of 10 times is more important than the incremental benefit of being right 10 of 10 times. So I get your concerns about in-meeting reads throughs but just keep in mind who and what it is defacto built for.

ThrowawayR2 2y ago

> "...you can't design a process that only works when competent people participate and incompetent people don't and then blame the incompetent people when it fails." That reads like something straight out of a Dilbert comic strip. Yes, employers can require that software engineers not be incompetent; that's what they're paying for. If a process reliably reveals their incompetence, that's actually a huge positive because then appropriate corrective measures can be taken.

yazaddaruvala 2y ago

The reality is that competition at Amazon is intense. Amazon corporate is roughly broken down like this: L4: 45%, L5: 45%, L6: 7%, L7: 2.5%, L8+: 0.5% Only the first promotion has guardrails (L4 to L5). Typically you’re expected to be able to write at all. From there many people end their careers at L5. Going from L5 to L6 requires being the best person on your team for multiple years running. Compared with some really smart, focused, and motivated people. You’re also expected to be able to write well, read, and kinda poorly coach other people’s writing. Going from L6 to L7 is very difficult. One of the biggest differentiators really is scale. If you still need help writing docs - that’ll slow you down and you won’t scale. If you’re slow to read and provide valuable feedback again that will hold back scale (many people compensate by adding more time to their work days). However, the funny thing is the doc writing culture at Amazon is built by and for L8+ leaders. Everything else was just training and weeding people out. Going from L7 to L8 is where “in-meeting reads” really start showcasing the differences between leaders. I’ve known smarter people that made better decisions but had their careers stagnate while watching other “80th percentile” decision makers grow because of speed to grok information and deliver valueable feedback 9 of 10 times is more important than the incremental benefit of being right 10 of 10 times. So I get your concerns about in-meeting reads throughs but just keep in mind who and what it is defacto built for.