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Long term Amazon leader who is no longer there so willing to be honest about our famous pip… #askmeanything #ama
How bad is product management culture there? Considering something at HQ2 but have heard all the nightmare stories here.
Amazon in general is not a great place to be a Product manager. Some product teams in AWS or other orgs are good but they have horrible WLB.
That’s what I’ve heard too. Seems like you’d learn a lot but sounds like they grind PMs to a nub
Why is there sooo much chaos within product and engineers seem to hate product managers? Do pms get pipped at all?
Yes PMs get pipped as well. It happens less than eng but that’s also because their numbers are less than eng. Amazon is not a PM driven culture like google or meta or some other companies. So most eng teams view them as not bringing any value. I don’t agree with this. PMs do bring a lot of value but that’s not the general opinion in eng teams at Amazon
Why do you think the PM culture is worse at Amazon? Most of the teams ive been on made products for other engineers. And many of the PMs had a far worse understanding and intuition about the product just because its fairly technical.
It is said that Scientists at Amazon are privileged and are rarely get PIPed out, if they are doing satisfactorily. Is this True?
It depends on what scientists role you are taking about. Amazon has weird roles when it comes to this domain. The highest is the economist role. These are definitely privileged and rare. Then we have applied and research scientists - these do get pipped but less often. At the bottom we have data scientist roles. They are pipped like any other roles. In fact, a lot of DS got laid off in the last round - most of them in Alexa
Thanks for the detailed response, I was wondering about all, but applied in particular because I was one till the Jan layoff.
If someone is highly paid for his/her level, does that person have higher chance of getting PIPed?
No, high TC is not a consideration for pip. There has to be documented poor performance.
Better. Is connection score used to document poor people managers performance?
If you're in focus is your manager obligated to tell you? Or you learn only if you're switching teams? Also does Focus mean you're automatically LE? Do you have to be in Focus first before you get pipped?
A manager is not obligated to inform you if you are in focus, in fact it’s discouraged. This is the worst part of the whole pip process at Amazon. You will either learn when you try to switch teams or if the manager chooses to tell you. Most don’t Focus does not automatically mean you are LE since rating is done once a year at amazon. There is a mid year trending rating. But usually if you are LE or trending LE it means you are going to be in focus. But the other way is not always true. Yes, you have to fail focus step first, only then can you be put into pivot step and be pipped out
Thank you so much! This is very helpful.
Let's say you are performing well but the project you are working isn't pf high visibility and isn't due for promotion. How do you handle such scenarios so that you are given right opportunities
Flag such things early with your manager and make sure you are asking for some high visibility projects on your teams roadmap.
The last few years I read a couple articles which described Amazon's stack ranking and URA. These articles were rebutted by Amazon saying that they don't systemically let bottom x percent go anymore. Was this True, did Amazon ever relaxed systemic URA for some years. If so, what was the thinking?
Yes, for a few years 2019-2021, many teams did not enforce the 6% rule. They were hiring at such a pace that firing didn’t make sense. However, this was different from org to org. AWS was usually strict and kept close to the 6% rule while some orgs didn’t
What has been the fastest hire to fire till date?
I have heard about 3-4 months cases online but I don’t believe most of those. Those usually happen for some serious policy violations or other legal/ethics reasons. The fastest I know personally has been 9-10 months
Fastest i know is 3 months. This was a rehire, and was gone by end of 3mo.
If I'm in Focus and find a role within same VP org can I change team without VP approval?
No, VP approval is must
How common/rare is VP approval? Would they even give it consideration?
Who gets selected to be on pip
Usually the bottom 6% is supposed to be the pip target. However, sometimes one can get unlucky in many scenarios as well e.g if you are in a team of high performers or you get a really bad manager and they are doing some political shit. That’s not how it’s supposed to happen but there are bad apples everywhere
What is pip rate in meta?