Because Amazon is a managers' paradise. It's full of incompetent managers. Throwing their reports under the bus because their incompetence says backstabbing their reports is the easiest work to make their paycheck
The logic is stupid. The bar can't always be raised. These are people we are talking about. Most of the so called bar raising should happen internally through better treatment of employees. We aren't building rocket ships. Most people here are good enough to produce given the right support. A 3 hour interview tells you fuck all about a candidate.
True. At Amazon, chances of you working hard while your manager created fake reasons to throw you under the bus is high when you thought you're on path to promotion based on good verbal 1:1 feedback. At Amazon working is not a problem, it's the incompetent backstabbing managers from who you have to protect yourself while delivering results. Manager is not there to support their reports.
Stocks vest 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% in 4 years. Kick out the supposed bottom ones if possible before 3 years so majority of that stock is never handed out, stock which has appreciated using which the company can hire the PIPed out engineer's replacement and still have stocks left.
People living under the fear of PIP would work their ass off so unpaid overtime.
The quota sounds like amazon just shooting themselves in the foot? If the choice about who gets URA'd is completely up to the managers discretion then you're going to get plenty of regrettid attrition due to it as well, particularly of experienced/seasoned staff who don't want the stress anymore, leading to an overall drop in quality, the opposite of what the URA target has set out to achieve?
"I've seen lots of posts that seem to suggest the requirement for evidence is a lot lower than you're suggesting, i.e. you can be PIP'd/URA'd just for not getting on with your manager." It's really hard to do that. "If that's the case even if you're a good performer you may get unlucky eventually and end up with a bad manager" That can and does happen, but if you're performing it's not easy for your manager to put you on PIP.
DEVPLAN: The mental harassment of writing emails with fake performance monologue starts at Devplan. This results in people getting mental health issues because their incompetent backstabbing mgr thinks throwing their reports under the bus is the easiest workaround to make their paycheck instead of supporting their reports in the team. Amazon managers are 100% responsible for destroying the mental health of their reports.
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1. Hard to work with an engineer.
2. Real performance issues, engineer not giving enough to the work. Or lack skills.
People living under the fear of PIP would work their ass off so unpaid overtime.
That's all I could guess.
It's really hard to do that.
"If that's the case even if you're a good performer you may get unlucky eventually and end up with a bad manager"
That can and does happen, but if you're performing it's not easy for your manager to put you on PIP.