[HN Gopher] Leaked documents reveal Amazon's process to review e...
___________________________________________________________________
Leaked documents reveal Amazon's process to review employees' worth
to Amazon
Author : firstSpeaker
Score : 141 points
Date : 2022-07-23 16:20 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fortune.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fortune.com)
| herodotus wrote:
| I am not a big fan of Amazon, but this is a silly article that
| uses inflammatory language ("A leaked trove of documents", "might
| shed light on the company's controversial performance review
| process" and so on) to describe a completely standard way of
| doing annual employee reviews.
| pizzathyme wrote:
| Agree. This is similar at all big tech companies
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Seems like a pretty standard performance review process. This is
| only news because it's a "big tech" company.
| mabbo wrote:
| What made me upset about the "Forte" process at Amazon was that
| managers deadlines for submitting their evaluations of their
| people was earlier than the deadline to submit peer feedback.
|
| Managers made whatever decisions they wanted.
|
| The previous system, "Evolution" had many issues, no doubt, but
| it made peer feedback a major input into the evaluations.
| tantalor wrote:
| > the potential they have exhibited
|
| > employee's potential--ranked on a scale from one to four
|
| Article doesn't explain how "potential score" works.
|
| Considering it is 1 of 2 metrics that factor into total score, it
| sounds important.
| tasubotadas wrote:
| Yet again chasing clicks and page views got in a way of
| journalism.
|
| Why don't we write a sensational article about that instead?
| [deleted]
| ryanisnan wrote:
| A lot if not all of these performance review metrics are totally
| fine. Being customer centric, not developing overly complex or
| overly simple systems, having good judgement, etc.
|
| Why is this controversial?
| throwde wrote:
| Amazon has a goal to fire 6% every year.
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/internal-amazon...
|
| That's the controversial part, which for some reason this
| article doesn't really go into.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Your employer isn't your friend, or your mom. Of course they want
| you to provide value to the company in exchange for money.
|
| > Factors that can boost an employee's score include being
| reactive to customer needs, acting as a mentor, providing new
| ideas in discussions, and exhibiting a strong and adaptable work
| ethic.
|
| Never mind, this is outrageous. Somebody should put a stop to
| these monsters.
| vaidhy wrote:
| This is really the amazon leadership principles - customer
| obsession, hire and develop the best, invent and simplify and
| deliver results :)
| psi75 wrote:
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Tech companies posture as families all of the time. But Amazon
| probably doesn't, to be fair.
|
| The reason why this concerns people is because Amazon's
| approach to worker metrics is notorious for all sorts of bad
| effects, from warehouse staff pissing into bottles to PIP
| culture among its engineering staff.
|
| Is there any sign that these KPIs will be used in a less
| stringent way?
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| Ex-Amazon here.
|
| Leaked documents aren't necessary to know that Amazon -- among
| other FAANG companies -- stack rank. But I will say that when
| Forte (the system used for performance reviews) first rolled out
| about 4-5 years ago, it was initially intended as a way to
| solicit feedback from your peers: and it was used that way.
|
| At first.
|
| But of course, within a few years, the system evolved and was
| eventually tied to your compensation.
| throw1230 wrote:
| It's not tied to your compensation or ranking.
|
| Your forte, when you discuss it with your manager, should give
| you some growth areas that you should improve. If in your next
| talent review, you haven't made much progress, that will
| contribute to your ranking naturally but that's about it
| ArrayBoundCheck wrote:
| The very few people who I known worked there seemed to like it.
| Is there any particular reason why you left? I know one of them
| said he only left because they were overworking him
| yftsui wrote:
| Forte was never a system for performance review, it was for
| peer compliments to make you feel good. The actual performance
| rating never use Forte - the performance review always happen
| before Forte due date.
| alangibson wrote:
| The only way to deal with such systems is to accept that you're
| in an adversarial relationship and act accordingly. If you're an
| employee, organize to get some power on your side of the table.
|
| IMHO the best way to work in tech is as a partially committed,
| outside contractor. Your counterparty has little leverage over
| you because you don't have all your eggs in one basket
| snotrockets wrote:
| But as a contractor you'll get about half the TC of what a full
| time employee would get for the same amount of work. And there
| isn't as much leverage as you imply, because there's the non
| trivial cost of getting new clients.
| civilized wrote:
| In my experience, contractors spend the majority of their
| time fixing their own foreseeable mistakes.
| znpy wrote:
| <<A leaked trove of documents>> ... where would one find such
| documents ?
|
| The author comments about these documents, but how would one
| proceed to form their own opinion?
|
| I'm not sure if anybody should just "believe" on such articles.
| tinktank wrote:
| Amazon seems like it's in the process of eating itself. Good
| riddance.
| pjbeam wrote:
| Edit: Had wrong % for LE.
|
| Former Amazon SDM here. The actual rating process didn't strike
| me as something all that controversial. I had to do extensive
| write ups for all of my reports--this was standard stuff: what
| went well ("superpowers"), what didn't ("growth areas"), and some
| actionable ideas for improvement.
|
| Then I had to pick numerical scores for "impact" and "potential"
| that were fed into a black box that resulted in an "overall
| value" score--this score is meant to be mysterious to the
| employees but it's the worst kept secret in Amazon at this point.
| OV ranged from LE (least effort/effective) at the low end,
| through HV 1,2,3 (high value) which is essentially "meets", and
| then TT ("top tier") at the high end.
|
| ~10-15% of a director org is supposed to be LE, up to 20% TT, and
| the rest of people distributed through the HV levels. I proposed
| these ratings to the bigger org that were then agreed to or
| adjusted by HR and higher management in a formal manager meeting.
|
| The infamous URA quota of ~6% unregretted attrition (PIP) is
| meant to be met through managing out LE employees. The process
| starts with a PIP-lite called "Focus" and goes to the real PIP at
| the next stage, called "Pivot".
|
| Many people got out of Focus, very few get out of Pivot. The part
| of the process I had trouble with, which contributed to me
| leaving, is the curve fitting of ratings for people. I had to do
| things like trade a HV3 down to an HV2 in order to keep an
| unpopular but otherwise fine performing engineer from getting an
| LE.
|
| The stories people tell about hire to fire and unfair Pivot are
| overblown in my experience but not false. From what I've seen,
| the company will find pliant people and lean on them hard for
| more and more and more and then manage them out when then start
| to falter.
|
| Lot of nuance to this--I have no love for Amazon and I'm happy to
| have moved on. It is definitely a meat grinder. That said
| articles like this are pretty low effort on my view.
| throwde wrote:
| Another former amazon manager here, I can confirm this. The
| rule of thumb was %6 URA target and a somewhat larger number
| into Focus.
|
| I never saw any written documentation about the URA goal, HR
| probably wants to avoid creating a leakable paper trail. It
| always came down verbally from my L8. I heard rumors that
| Amazon's HR boss Galetti is the big advocate of the URA goal,
| but I was nowhere high enough to be part of those
| conversations.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| How were managers rated?
| stainforth wrote:
| No, this is a good question - do managers share in this
| same kind of analysis
| ignoramous wrote:
| AAAA++++++ by each other... Like mafioso
| jorblumesea wrote:
| If you're in the industry and used to this, it "doesn't seem
| crazy" but it feels completely insane to most other
| professions. I only realized how completely lord of the flies
| it was after reading this and thinking about it if I was a
| teacher, doctor, lawyer, firefighter, journalist...
|
| I can absolutely understand how this feels news worthy to those
| outside of tech.
|
| It should be more controversial and the fact that people are
| saying "hey this is just how it works" is part of the problem.
| oblio wrote:
| Do you really think teachers or doctors or lawyers (!!!) or
| journalists don't backstab each other? :-)))
| xerxesaa wrote:
| Good summary. This is probably the most accurate and succinct
| writeup I've seen (in what is otherwise a sea of misinformation
| about the company). I'm also an ex Amazonian (Sr SDM).
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Did they apply this same formula to management or was it just
| ICs?
| pjbeam wrote:
| I believe so, at least through L7 (senior manager). I was L6
| and only did a few manager calibrations before I left.
| Another commenter said they were an L7 SDM, they would know
| better than I. The sense I had was that things work
| differently for L8 (director/senior principal) and above but
| I have no first hand experience or knowledge of that.
| throw1230 wrote:
| Everything here is true. And the article is really low effort.
|
| LE and URA targets do change by organization and current HC
| goals. People need to go to Focus but in my experience it was
| the right thing to do. HR will absolutely help you to improve
| the performance and retain the individual if you think it's
| fixable.
|
| From my experience, and I'm not saying this is case for all,
| people in Focus had undeniable performance problems that needed
| addressing. Stack ranking and quotas suck, and you feel like
| shit having to abide by them, but I've also seen managers being
| overprotective about underperforming employees. At some point,
| you have to do something about them because they'll bring the
| whole team down.
| civilized wrote:
| > Stack ranking and quotas suck, and you feel like shit
| having to abide by them, but I've also seen managers being
| overprotective about underperforming employees.
|
| Then those managers are bad at their jobs and should be PIP-
| ed even more ruthlessly.
|
| It's always interesting to me how managers get a complete and
| utterly unexamined pass in these conversations. The bar is
| so, so low for them. Managerial incompetence can be breezily
| cited as the reason for a horrible policy, like managing out
| a fixed percentage of every team, and everyone considers it a
| fait accompli. After all, what would be the alternative?
| Managers actually being held accountable for doing the most
| important part of their jobs?
|
| ICs must be held nose to the grindstone every minute of every
| day... but ya can't do anything about bad management!
| H8crilA wrote:
| Being a (low level) manager sucks, though. At least if
| you're a competent programmer and could get by with a very
| similar pay with little involvement in politics.
| civilized wrote:
| If I said "being a programmer sucks", people would tell
| me I can do another job and let someone who likes the job
| do mine instead.
|
| Not so for the poor manager, somehow. The poor manager
| who, in most cases, bent over backwards to get that
| promotion.
| tezza wrote:
| Managers have their own Managers , and those are appraising
| them too.
|
| Big Orgs have big re-orgs all the time and the entire
| management structure can change swiftly. Leaf node workers
| left untouched.
| civilized wrote:
| I've seen one _incredibly horrible_ manager managed out
| this way. But anyone above _incredibly horrible_ tends to
| survive all the reorgs.
|
| If the reorgs actually got rid of bad management, it
| wouldn't be necessary to shrug and cite bad management as
| the excuse for mandatory stack ranking and attrition
| quotas.
| buran77 wrote:
| The problem with zero sum game performance reviews is that
| they're not about improving performance but about fitting
| everyone in the same boxes. And this usually results in
| ridiculous outcomes, some of which are particularly bad
| depending on how that "box fitting" is implemented.
|
| > trade a HV3 down to an HV2 in order to keep an unpopular
| but otherwise fine performing engineer from getting an LE.
|
| Like this where the company's goal is never to improve
| "unpopular but otherwise fine performing engineer" but rather
| to keep the boundary of the boxes. And this despite mounting
| evidence against such systems, and the known abuse with
| methods like hire to fire. To me this is always a sign of
| rotten leadership.
| wronglebowski wrote:
| I think the main issue is to the more common person that
| paragraph read like as bunch of complete business nonsense. I
| have no idea what the vast majority of those abbreviations
| mean.
| pjbeam wrote:
| I missed SDM = software development manager and PIP =
| performance improvement plan. The rest I think are explicated
| above.
| iamsomewalrus wrote:
| This is my experience as a line manager but also a manager of
| managers.
| vaidhy wrote:
| Only one nitpick - I remember LE as being around 10% of the org
| and was strongly suggested to put around 15% on focus so that
| 6% can be managed out, assuming 50% of people on focus would
| get out of it.
|
| Source: former L7 manager, now happily out.
| pjbeam wrote:
| You're right--it's been a while. Not all LEs were meant to
| leave.
| [deleted]
| Hammershaft wrote:
| I understanding stack ranking has its benefits in upping the
| organizational incentives to cull nonperformers...
|
| But holy fuck I have no desire to work in such an adversarial
| low trust environment.
| christkv wrote:
| How can I get hired to be the patsy. I'll change my name so I
| can get rehired each year just to be fired. I'll make it super
| easy to be the LE.
|
| Cannon fodder for hire :)
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| What levels of SDE usually have hire for fire at Amazon? SDE I?
| II?
| iamsomewalrus wrote:
| Hire for fire feels like an urban myth. We do a lot of work
| to find you, interview you, hire you, and train you. Managing
| someone out is also a lot of work.
|
| That being said a company as big as Amazon will always have
| edge cases.
| int0x2e wrote:
| The myth I heard was: Manager has 10 employees who are
| absolute rock-star engineers. They love their team, work
| great together, and deliver amazing results.
|
| This manager obviously doesn't want to hurt this awesome
| team or lose any members, but Amazon wants them to churn
| out the bad engineers (which this team may not have).
|
| So instead of finding faults where they don't exist, our
| manager hires 2 engineers with little to no chance of
| working out in the team long term, give them some busy
| work, puts them on a PIP, then eventually fires them, only
| to soon replace them with two new victims.
|
| It sucks to be a victim, and it sucks to knowingly do that
| as the manager, but it does work out great for the team and
| the manager - so I think it could happen (maybe not super
| common, but it isn't unrealistic in my mind).
| majormajor wrote:
| That's the problem with applying a curve as a rule. In a
| large org it's probably true across the board. But there
| will be outlier teams. How does an org handle those?
|
| You can critique Amazon for basically saying "don't worry
| about it" so managers may invent plans like hire-to-fire
| to game the system and overall _someone 's_ gonna get
| screwed on that team, but it's a tough problem to solve -
| otherwise, what's to stop managers from all simply
| claiming "no, my team's a special case"? Introduce
| special cases and it'll just be gamed through that
| mechanism.
|
| I'm a firm believer that if you want to avoid things like
| that you have to avoid large organizations. A large
| organization is highly incentivized to be bureaucratic so
| to minimize the effects of unexpected losses and to keep
| the money machine running.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| You got the myth part right: having a single team with 10
| rock-star engineers.
|
| 1. Amazon isn't so special that even they can control the
| distribution curve to only have rockstars,
|
| 2. This is too big for a single team in the first place,
| let alone 10 rockstars,
|
| 3. You don't want any rockstars, let alone only rockstars
| on your teams,
|
| 4. Managing low performers is a magnitude more work than
| solid performers; no manager would do this to themselves
| on purpose. It would be easier to cut their 2 least
| rockin' stars.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Hire for fire feels like an urban myth. We do a lot of
| work to find you, interview you, hire you, and train you
|
| Your unspoken assumption here is that recruiters, HR and
| managers have perfectly aligned incentives. It is trivial
| to find instances when this is not the case - e.g. a high-
| performance team being forced to fire their "least
| effective" member[s]- this relies on the theory that talent
| is uniformly distributed across Amazon.
| pjbeam wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's a "usual" thing at all, but more common
| the lower your level. L4 or SDE 1 has highest risk for
| negative personnel actions in general for 2 reasons: there
| are a ton of people in this level and many of them are early
| career and don't know how to protect themselves from
| corporate politics.
| Ternari wrote:
| Early-career person here. How do you protect yourself from
| corporate politics?
| mprovost wrote:
| The biggest issue I've seen with new engineers is a
| mismatch between what behaviours they think the company
| should reward them for, vs the actual things the company
| judges performance on. Pay attention to some senior
| people who are doing well and see what it is that they're
| doing to be successful. Hint: it's usually not writing
| the best/most code.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Often what is considered success at L6 is different than
| at L4 so this should be done very carefully. Generally at
| lower levels writing good code is much more important.
|
| I've seen new engineers that tried to rush senior eng
| behaviours and they didn't do well in performance reviews
| until they corrected their behavior. You need to prove
| you can be a baseline contributor before you start
| dreaming big.
| vkou wrote:
| Work on things that the firm values[1], for bosses who
| will reciprocate your work at making them look good, by
| making you look good.
|
| Your manager has a huge amount of impact on your career.
| If you're working for an asshole/moron who won't
| reciprocate in this way, find a different one.
|
| [1] Not the same thing as work that's valuable for the
| firm.
| pjbeam wrote:
| This is a super important distinction! Great way to
| phrase it too--thank you.
| edem wrote:
| Either you don't work for corporates or only work as a
| contractor.
| housedrafta wrote:
| Watch the first four seasons of Game of Thrones.
| dannyw wrote:
| Understand the motivations of your managers, and your
| managers manager.
|
| Figure out who the internal competitors are.
|
| Learn what gets rewarded in an organisation. This often
| has little correlation to actual value.
|
| Optimise for political capital, not whats right.
|
| Don't make a scene. Don't cause drama. Don't be stupid
| enough to lead anti-company movements, e.g. discussing
| pay inequality, or unionisation.
|
| Be cordial and respectful to everyone, even if they don't
| deserve it.
| holografix wrote:
| This is really good advice (sadly) but I will
| disagree/add one point:
|
| > Optimise for political capital not what's right.
|
| Yes and no. Often what's politically valuable is short
| term and misaligned with what the company's values are.
|
| Pushing back diplomatically might be the smarter thing in
| the mid to long term. be mindful of where the request
| comes from and from whom.
| makk wrote:
| Ouch. Where do you work?
| holografix wrote:
| Any company with more than 100 people will display these
| behaviours.
|
| Companies with > 1000 employees will operate completely
| like this. Where there will always be 3 "priorities" for
| every manager: what they were told by the C-level, what
| they know to be important to their manager and what
| _they_ want to get out of their position.
|
| The amount of times I have been caught totally off guard
| because I couldn't fathom why a certain team or
| individual would be actively doing something to the
| detriment of the business... only to later understand it
| was to the benefit of their unit/selves.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| I'm not the grandparent poster you replied to, but this
| is pretty standard operating procedure for political
| success in almost any large organization.
| robocat wrote:
| Some people strongly disagree with playing the game this
| way: however parent is fantastic advice because you need
| to know how others are playing to win, and you need to
| recognise those players and fit your game style
| appropriately to adjust for that.
| pjbeam wrote:
| That's an enormous topic that is hard for me to treat
| here. Knowing that it's a thing you should do is a great
| first step though. Find more experienced people in your
| context willing to mentor you and critically listen to
| what they say.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I work at small startups (up to 25 people), where there
| isn't time or space for much of that.
| phphphphp wrote:
| Don't go to companies with corporate politics. If you're
| going to such a company (where politics are important,
| like Amazon) you must participate: you cannot protect
| yourself from them.
| oblio wrote:
| Any company develops corporate politics. Corporate
| politics stems from the corporation ultimately being a
| non-human entity that doesn't really have desires and
| needs, while its individual humans do have them.
|
| At some point what's "good for the company" will not
| align with what certain (powerful) individuals want or
| need.
| idrios wrote:
| You don't have a lot of control over that if you're not a
| manager. Early career politics is basically your
| relationship with your coworkers and your manager.
|
| Ideally you'll have coworkers that want to succeed and
| want you to succeed so that you are all open to learning
| from each other.
|
| Sometimes you have a coworker who has gaps in their
| knowledge and is insecure (or sometimes that person is
| you). To avoid politics there, just help that person feel
| secure -- find things to learn from them or find ways
| they can help you.
|
| Maybe a coworker is burnt out and doesn't have the energy
| to work as hard as you can. Learn what you can from them
| too, help them feel important.
|
| Maybe your manager is overloaded with work. Figure out
| what their responsibilities are so you can prioritize
| what you work on in a way that makes their life easier.
|
| Basically: politics is inevitable but you should just be
| new, make friends, have empathy, and let things fall into
| place.
| zwkrt wrote:
| This advice to avoid politics by becoming a people
| pleaser is not a bad strategy to attain the goal, but it
| might come at the cost of your sanity. The only way to be
| not involved in politics is to totally accept the current
| situation and to align your goals and interests with
| those in power.
|
| This is the type of behavior that causes mid-life crises.
| idrios wrote:
| This is extremely true. I should have also added that
| sometimes situations and people are just toxic, and when
| that happens all you can do is try to get out of those
| situations.
| majormajor wrote:
| > The only way to be not involved in politics is to
| totally accept the current situation and to align your
| goals and interests with those in power.
|
| At a small, young, growing company, that's what the
| company needs - if your goals aren't aligned with the
| company's, you are going to be spending scarce resources
| on the wrong things.
|
| If there's a way, in a larger company, to prevent
| "necessary alignment" from turning into "political
| gamesmanship," I've never seen it. If the people in
| control of _your_ fate have goals that aren 't perfectly
| aligned with "overall health of company" then now it's
| games and bullshit and it gets real hard on the
| individuals. And that can happen very easily: Director X
| wants to be promoted to VP, needs to show results in
| their domain, maybe doesn't care if this has knock-on
| effects on other orgs; the company is 99% likely to be
| fine anyway, and it'll help them move up... do you get on
| board, or do you push back because it's a bad overall
| strategy? Good luck... :|
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| "I had to do things like trade a HV3 down to an HV2 in order to
| keep an unpopular but otherwise fine performing engineer from
| getting an LE."
|
| And you did this because why, exactly? It doesn't matter if
| someone is performing fine if they're an insufferable ass to
| everyone around them and breeding resentment, etc.
| pjbeam wrote:
| Because I didn't want someone to lose their livelihood for
| the crime of being introverted.
|
| Further I would not rate anyone being an insufferable ass as
| "fine performing".
| juunpp wrote:
| Where are the documents?
|
| These "news" sites never link their sources.
| Madmallard wrote:
| Seems the same as it was roughly when I worked there 8 years ago?
| I don't see what's secretive about this.
| BeetleB wrote:
| This is only a tad bit more formalized than what most companies
| use for performance evaluation. This doesn't seem news worthy at
| all. In fact, it's at least heartening to know that there is
| _some_ process for evaluation, as opposed to companies I 've
| worked at where it's mostly how your manager and his manager
| "feel" about you.
| sgift wrote:
| > as opposed to companies I've worked at where it's mostly how
| your manager and his manager "feel" about you.
|
| From reading the article that's exactly what Amazon is doing.
| How does your manager feel about you, how do your coworkers
| feel about you, what do you think about yourself. Just with
| more ceremony, so it doesn't look like a bunch of dice rolls.
| closeparen wrote:
| It would be remarkable if the assessments of other skilled
| practitioners familiar with your work were no better than
| "dice rolls."
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| I wonder if the leaked documents is real and exist in this case.
| faangiq wrote:
| Miserable sweat shop with low IQ management. Everyone knows this.
| JCM9 wrote:
| Company identifies its best performers and then pays them more
| than others. Why is this controversial?
|
| Is this the "everyone gets a trophy" generation shocked by how
| the world really works?
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Which generation is that? The ones who had a much easier time
| affording college, houses, making a living (even just with a
| high school degree), etc, and just think everyone can pick
| themselves up by their bootstraps? Or is this just another low
| hanging cheap snub at millennials and gen z?
|
| Tbh, I'm a millennial, but always thought "everyone gets a
| trophy" was a crock, as did many of my peers.
|
| What's also a crock though is the world we've been left with,
| but that's also become just a cheap low hanging generational
| quib that is counterproductive. Then again, it does actually
| provide some sense of foresight
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| I imagine because, as i've heard not experienced, Amazon
| purposefully tries to churn employees. Sounds awful to work
| for.
| JCM9 wrote:
| Why is it bad that Amazon seeks to cycle out the lowest
| performers? Is that not what any high performing organization
| does?
|
| I'm not aware of any very high performing organization that
| doesn't have some form of cycling out low performers. And
| places that don't do this, or promote based on silly metrics
| like years of service, consistently are places plagued with
| poor standards and performance overall.
|
| High performing individuals also loathe the underperformers
| and want them gone. They drag down standards, create more
| work for others, impact morale. I've seen too many orgs that
| don't chase out poorly performing people. What happens? The
| good performers flee.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| This assumes an organization can effectively identify who
| are the underperformers of a company. I've yet to see this
| proven out.
| voxl wrote:
| Performance cannot be evaluated in a vacuum, and likely has
| as much to do with your environment as it does your
| experience and talent. A _high_ performance company, if
| such a tech company even exists, would do everything in
| their power not to lose institutional knowledge. Throwing
| out a low performer is the wrong tact if you have more
| products and teams then you know what to do with it, it is
| much better to shuffle that employee into a new environment
| a couple of times to see if anything sticks.
| throwde wrote:
| Because it encourages pathological behaviour.
|
| Amazon's attrition goal is an open secret everybody knows.
| Once everybody knows that someone else's success is your
| failure, people start backstabbing eachother. They stop
| helping eachother.
|
| The problem is that the attrition target is a quota that
| all of us had to fill.
| rxbudian wrote:
| Stack Rank is bad is because mid to low performing
| developers will put a lot of effort to not get fired. That
| means they're not fully putting all their focus and effort
| on the company's goals. Their views will focus on short
| term gain/success because they expect to eventually get
| fired. They'll try to get an accomplishment notch on their
| resume and preferring speed over quality and design.
| Hopefully their managers will see their accomplishments
| over the other brown nosing under performers and won't be
| around for the fallout of their low quality work. That's
| only for the ones who have hope. The hopeless ones who
| knows they can't make it won't care about the quality of
| their work and would focus more on finding another job.
| et-al wrote:
| More concretely, imagine you're on a team of 4 and
| management says the lowest performer by some metric will be
| cut at the end of the quarter and replaced with some other
| random person.
|
| Does this sound like a healthy environment? It creates
| perverse incentives where folks become more concerned about
| outperforming the next person than actually working toward
| the primary goal of shipping a product.
|
| If your goal is to whittle a group of people down to one,
| then stacked ranking is the right tool. However most, if
| not all, organizations are created to achieve larger tasks.
| And this requires the cohesion of a team. If you think of
| only individuals, then you'll miss the forest for the
| trees.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| How high performing was the stack ranking regime of
| Ballmer-era Microsoft? Thought it was industry consensus
| that stack ranking led to a toxic, highly political
| organization propped up by perverse incentives. This is
| history repeating.
| didibus wrote:
| The issue is that they evaluate people relatively to each
| other, but only within their own team, though they try a little
| bit to do it at the director level.
|
| If you're the worst of the best, you might be paid the same as
| the best of the worst in a different team, even if you're way
| better then them.
|
| I think a lot of people would prefer an absolute measure, like
| did you deliver what people expected you to do deliver for the
| role and position you were hired for, aka, are you doing the
| job they need.
|
| If it was an absolute scale, then ideally someone that's the
| worst of the best would still be paid more than someone that's
| the best of the worst.
|
| But, like with interviews, I think it's just a hard problem.
| Evaluating performance is not something anyone has found a good
| way to do it. Wanting to do it seems reasonable, but being
| accurate at it isn't easily achievable, there'll always be
| injustice due to the innacuracies of the process.
| sgift wrote:
| The interesting part is not that they identify their best
| performers, but how they try to do it. This tells us something
| about the company, what they value and so on.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Self review? Manager and peer's review? What's "interesting"
| in pejorative terms here?
| DragonStrength wrote:
| The issue is high-performing teams can never last more than 18
| months at Amazon because someone is getting sacrificed on the
| altar of URA, which then demoralizes the other employees.
| Amazon has a bad reputation as a place to work because it is
| highly political since everyone is always trying to avoid
| getting axed. You end up with the people with the fewest
| options left behind after any project ships.
| noasaservice wrote:
| > Is this the "everyone gets a trophy" generation shocked by
| how the world really works?
|
| In my experience, it was the boomers who did this sort of shit
| to us millenials. I remember the 2nd grade softball games that
| we just wanted to have fun, and the younger boomers (our
| parents) then got all of us participation trophies for..
| reasons. I know at least 3 in my team that intentionally left
| the worthless trophies underneath the benches. They were
| nothing to us.
|
| We 2nd graders just wanted to play ball. Sure, do points (we
| weren't "allowed to"), and play quick, mix up teams. But no, it
| must be structured. My generation was also the start of that
| crap too.
|
| And speaking of participation trophies, schools tried to do
| that crap too with "gold stickers" on perfect homework. I mean,
| who cares? I just wanted it done. Fellow students did similar
| with rolling eyes, like whatever.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Side note: what generation do you think started handing out
| trophies to everyone because parents couldn't stand their kids
| not getting anything?
|
| No one I know raised on "everyone gets an award" has done
| anything but mock it.
| dls2016 wrote:
| I tend to agree with people mocking this pov, but working as
| a university instructor... holy hell! There really are some
| very entitled and shameless people out there. I doubt it's
| generational, though.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| I was a university instructor during grad school back in
| the 90s, there were plenty of entitled and shameless people
| back then too.
| AgentOrange1234 wrote:
| Amusingly the Forte system itself is very much an
| implementation of "everyone gets an award."
|
| Every peer review calls out someone's "superpower" and the
| Leadership Principle they excel at. (It also has some
| suggestions for improvement.)
|
| There's really very little to complain about in Amazon's
| process except for the curve fitting.
| no_wizard wrote:
| It's near consensus if not full consensus that Amazons
| number one problem is the URA and work environment that
| fosters. Even Microsoft reversed course on this after
| Nadella took over. It's what I think has lead to their high
| attrition issues
| danielrpa wrote:
| Nothing to see here, folks. All big tech companies have similar
| nonsense, "objective" performance review processes.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The reason for that is straightforward. It's to protect the
| company from lawsuits about unfair pay practices.
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