Amazon/AWS PIP
I am a new grad hire, joined AWS as a SDE-1 9 months ago, My manager started talking to me harshly in the 1:1s since the end of 3 months of on-boarding/embark plan itself, mostly on why my feature tasks were taking a bit longer, why the LPs are not followed properly and some other shitty reasons. He used to do a lot of micro-management that I used to get pissed off several times. He used to put msgs on chime even on weekends, and night 1 or 2 am regarding task status. I got frustrated and tried looking for switching the teams internally for a few weeks, but it was hard for me since it was only 3 months since I joined the company and ppl were asking to stay a bit longer and see if the current team was not a fit for me. After 6 months, the manager got changed and this guy is even more worse. He treats developers like labors, knowingly gives tons of work beyond the team's capacity. There were no team lunches, no outings too. By the time this guy came-in, almost 5-6 developers have already left the team to other internal teams/external. This new manager started troubling me with the feedback from previous manager and had put me immediately into dev-list (which I didn't even knew that). He started giving me some literally un-doable/ambiguous tasks for a less experienced guy, and none in the team was having knowledge to even review the CRs. The team also has no senior SDEs. With no help/support from the team members, and discouraging manager (every week), I lost much of my confidence and interest and again started looking for opportunities internally. After next 2-3 months, I started getting really good offers from other team in retail/Alexa, but during the same time was put into PIP by my manager. Hence, I cannot even apply/accept those offers. I was so disheartened and didn't knew what to do, I just accepted PIP so that I can kill some time to find a job externally in this tough job market scenario. This is the worst thing that can happen to me ever. Wondering if I am targeted under URA? Does this happen in Amazon/AWS so common? Any thoughts/suggestions for me to become strong and boost my confidence? #PIP #AWS #amazon #pip SDE-1 TC $140k #layoff #severance #pip #aws #amazon
Damn...Amazon is so toxic. Run for your life and never look back.
Your mistake was looking for an internal transfer.
Hi OP. I’ve been there so I understand. My first manager was micro-managing, doesn’t know how to manage ppl, ppl are leaving from that team, and he gave me 0 reward after 6 months, which basically means I’m on my way out. And my second manager saw the reward and warned me to prepare for plan B. He also asked me to think about if I’m actually qualified for a developer, maybe I should try something else, and he doesn’t like the fact that I didn’t have a cs degree. I got my shit together in a couple of days, and started to prepare for interviews & worked hard to gain more time. I spent ~4 months working until 8 pm + Leetcode after I cam home, and later I got recognized by my team and my manager. That period of time, I felt nothing but lonely, stressed, sad, not believe in myself etc, but I survived. You can look at the topic I posted before. I got a decent manager even though he doesn’t believe in me in the first place, but your manager doesn’t look decent enough to stick around, so I recommend you to finish the minimal work and interview as much as possible. You will get through this.
Great strategy to deal with a shitty manager, and possibly the only working strategy! When you are not ready, don’t play hard ball with someone who is in charge. Earn yourself time and get better. Normally a shitty manager won’t be able to survive a tech survey, unless he/she is a smart shit.
alex5 is right, this is the optimal solution for most people.
Which org?
At Amazon, I was put on devlist by my then manager right after getting an offer from another team. Amazon can be comically toxic. The management-structure and powers assigned to managers are woefully out of date.
So even if you get an offer from another team, once you tell your current manager he will just put you on dev list to block transfer? How do people ever switch teams then?
There is a handshake period (max of 30 days) that you need to serve with the current team. Your current manager can pretty much do anything during that afaik.
That's a typical scenario at Amazon. Sorry to hear that.
So sorry to hear about your story bro, Amazon’s managers are literally untrained with zero people and leadership skills. Keep digging in, I am pretty sure you will land up with much better deal
What about those LP's they talk so much about and insist you build re*arded STAR format around during the interview process?
First of all welcome to amazon. Second of all leave asap because this experience is not justified by your TC
Are you on h1b?
No. I am on OPT.
Not sure about your h1 application status. But, try to postpone it as much as possible and meanwhile get stem extension and find another job.