Amazon PIP
Is it true that at Amazon the manager has to mandatorily PIP someone every review cycle even if the employee managed to do well? I will soon be starting at AWS soon. I work at a relatively safe job. I was pretty happy about my offer when I first got it to enter the FAANGs, but I keep hearing these PIP stories and I am wondering if it is worth resigning my current job? Current TC 150k Amazon TC 210k
No, it is not. It is actually pretty rare, regardless of all the blind posts that people are put on PIP unless there are serious performance concerns. The distribution each year is 5% LE (least effective), 70% HV (highly valued), and 20% TT (top tier) Of the 5% LE, only around around half of those are put onto development plans, as their manager likely did not document their lack of performance, give them feedback in their 1:1s, etc. This is how the process should be followed.
The number didn't add up. Where's the rest of 5% people?
@AznGigolo They quit before the review. So no data on their review
So...you are mandated to give the bottom X% dev plans? Even if everyone is performing well?
At MSFT this is probably not true for Senior and above. Only SDE 1 & 2's get fired based on performance.
For the past several years, I’ve worked at small startups that do NOT do this. Every single person became an essential member of the team. I understand the numbers game for companies with thousands of employees, but it’s sad that they feel a need to assign X% to drop. It’s theoretically improbable, but possible that every single employee could perform equally exceptional.
It's also not 5% of every team. It's 5% of either a director or VP org. If you have an org of 100 people in pretty sure you can find 5 who aren't doing the best.....
What about new employees? They certainly won't be as productive as the ones who have been there for years. How are these new joiners measured?
How offtens is review?
Really depends on your manager. If your manager is weak and just try to cover his/her ass not care about team members then yes.
Yes 5% under director needs to be piped. Since no m1 wants to accept all in their team so essentially one from each team gets piped. Now if the team is part of old people they will target the new member since they don't want themselves to be targeted. It's just self implied. Stay away from Amazon.
Heard that dev list is mandatory.