6 ms·

Stack ranking may, in a sense, exist at Amazon. But as a developer here, it's invisible to me. I write my reviews of some of my colleagues (I choose which), the

by mabbo 12y ago

Stack ranking may, in a sense, exist at Amazon. But as a developer here, it's invisible to me. I write my reviews of some of my colleagues (I choose which), they write reviews of me. All reviews of me go directly to my manager, who will compile them together with his review of me and my review of myself to build a full year-end review of my performance. Those yearly reviews will factor somehow into my pay, bonuses, etc, but I only see the final result of it. Was I stack ranked?

davidw 12y ago
Do people who otherwise did an acceptable job get canned just because they ranked at the bottom? That's the concern about the practice, I think.
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  Also, many companies make the mistake of making performance reviews part of the transfer packet. It seems like it just makes sense (you have "data"; why not use it?) but it actually fucks up the culture. It's basically never a good idea to have past performance reviews come into play in a transfer decision. First of all, it makes individual workers have their eyes on the scoreboard (reviews) rather than the game, because there's no escaping mediocre reviews; if you get smacked, you're stuck on a team forever. (And, sometimes you have good workers who get shitty reviews to prevent flight.) Second, it slows internal mobility to a crawl, because people getting lousy reviews can't move and people getting good reviews don't want to move, lest they risk getting mediocre scores and showing "negative trend" (making promotion nearly impossible). So, collaboration stops (due to the impossibility of lateral or diagnoal movement) and departmental position becomes permanent and tribal, and you get the "warring departments" dynamic. Even if you don't agree that departmental rivalry is a bad thing, what it tends to mean is that, due to the unpredictable sabotage events, whole sectors of the company become unreliable and upper management finds itself duplicating effort and running "bake-offs", but talented people avoid bake-off projects like the plague, so you get a "Dead Sea Effect". Usually, when people talk about stack-ranking, they're also talking about Enron-style performance reviews (that is, performance reviews that are part of the transfer packet). You can theoretically have one and not the other, but they tend to go together.
- ryanobjc 12y ago
  Yes. That is exactly what us happened. I know a few people who were edged out like that. Make no mistake, Amazon is not a great place to work. Ok place to work maybe. Good if you have managed to fit in. But even after that, they underpay. Friends with literally a decade of time out in are making relatively low considering their wide areas of responsibility.
  - npinguy 12y ago
    You can criticize Amazon for a million things, but underpayment is not one of them.
    - xyzzy_plugh 12y ago
      You're the first person I've ever heard defend Amazon's compensation. What are your sources?
      - npizzolato 12y ago
        Glass door claims $98k for SDE1 and $113k for SDE21]. How much do you expect? [1]: http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Amazon-com-Salaries-E6036.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Amazon-com-Salaries-E6036.ht...
        aroton 12y ago
        I want to point out, this is SALARY only. Don't forget about stock/bonuses.
      - fru2013 12y ago
        Amazon's compensation is not much different than other tech firms in seattle (at least according to glassdoor).
      - Devthrowaway80 12y ago
        Senior people at Amazon that I personally known and worked with have said they were undercompensated compared to offers from other, similarly-sized companies. Most of the good ones no longer work at Amazon.
westernmostcoy 12y ago
Stack ranking is very present and very real at Amazon, but if you have a politically capable manager you will find yourself (as non-manager) able to ignore it. That doesn't mean that you or your manager are necessarily doing a great job though, or that other people aren't being hurt by the system.
discodave 12y ago
It totally depends on your manager. My first manager encouraged me to do good work and make sure I got customer feedback for it. My new manager starts every one-on-one meeting with phrases like "not everybody gets promoted" or "the reality is that you will be compared to your peers"... You can guess which one I prefer.
- Devthrowaway80 12y ago
  A manager I had at Amazon met his new team/underlings for the first time, and decided that a good way to start things off would be to explain in detail the process by which people are fired. I suppose he was trying to "motivate" them? This same manager also later became notorious for angrily declaring that "<productName> has no technical debt!" in a meeting, despite the product being unable to meet any reasonable SLA for years (bad architecture, bad code quality, >100% annual turnover). Not sure I'd use him as an example of management there, but pockets like this certainly exist.

by mabbo 12y ago

davidw 12y ago

Do people who otherwise did an acceptable job get canned just because they ranked at the bottom? That's the concern about the practice, I think.

michaelochurch 12y ago
Also, many companies make the mistake of making performance reviews part of the transfer packet. It seems like it just makes sense (you have "data"; why not use it?) but it actually fucks up the culture. It's basically never a good idea to have past performance reviews come into play in a transfer decision. First of all, it makes individual workers have their eyes on the scoreboard (reviews) rather than the game, because there's no escaping mediocre reviews; if you get smacked, you're stuck on a team forever. (And, sometimes you have good workers who get shitty reviews to prevent flight.) Second, it slows internal mobility to a crawl, because people getting lousy reviews can't move and people getting good reviews don't want to move, lest they risk getting mediocre scores and showing "negative trend" (making promotion nearly impossible). So, collaboration stops (due to the impossibility of lateral or diagnoal movement) and departmental position becomes permanent and tribal, and you get the "warring departments" dynamic. Even if you don't agree that departmental rivalry is a bad thing, what it tends to mean is that, due to the unpredictable sabotage events, whole sectors of the company become unreliable and upper management finds itself duplicating effort and running "bake-offs", but talented people avoid bake-off projects like the plague, so you get a "Dead Sea Effect". Usually, when people talk about stack-ranking, they're also talking about Enron-style performance reviews (that is, performance reviews that are part of the transfer packet). You can theoretically have one and not the other, but they tend to go together.
ryanobjc 12y ago
Yes. That is exactly what us happened. I know a few people who were edged out like that. Make no mistake, Amazon is not a great place to work. Ok place to work maybe. Good if you have managed to fit in. But even after that, they underpay. Friends with literally a decade of time out in are making relatively low considering their wide areas of responsibility.
- npinguy 12y ago
  You can criticize Amazon for a million things, but underpayment is not one of them.
  - xyzzy_plugh 12y ago
    You're the first person I've ever heard defend Amazon's compensation. What are your sources?
    - npizzolato 12y ago
      Glass door claims $98k for SDE1 and $113k for SDE21]. How much do you expect? [1]: http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Amazon-com-Salaries-E6036.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Amazon-com-Salaries-E6036.ht...
      - aroton 12y ago
        I want to point out, this is SALARY only. Don't forget about stock/bonuses.
    - fru2013 12y ago
      Amazon's compensation is not much different than other tech firms in seattle (at least according to glassdoor).
    - Devthrowaway80 12y ago
      Senior people at Amazon that I personally known and worked with have said they were undercompensated compared to offers from other, similarly-sized companies. Most of the good ones no longer work at Amazon.

westernmostcoy 12y ago

Stack ranking is very present and very real at Amazon, but if you have a politically capable manager you will find yourself (as non-manager) able to ignore it. That doesn't mean that you or your manager are necessarily doing a great job though, or that other people aren't being hurt by the system.

discodave 12y ago

It totally depends on your manager. My first manager encouraged me to do good work and make sure I got customer feedback for it. My new manager starts every one-on-one meeting with phrases like "not everybody gets promoted" or "the reality is that you will be compared to your peers"... You can guess which one I prefer.

Devthrowaway80 12y ago
A manager I had at Amazon met his new team/underlings for the first time, and decided that a good way to start things off would be to explain in detail the process by which people are fired. I suppose he was trying to "motivate" them? This same manager also later became notorious for angrily declaring that "<productName> has no technical debt!" in a meeting, despite the product being unable to meet any reasonable SLA for years (bad architecture, bad code quality, >100% annual turnover). Not sure I'd use him as an example of management there, but pockets like this certainly exist.