Don't fight PIP/dev plan: My success story: AMA
Don't waste your time, energy and mentality to fight back. Even if you win, it's not worth it at any aspect. Grief for a short while (maybe a week?) to take it off your chest and then start LC. I've been there and I understand how unfair it can be at Amazon with that many terrible managers. External offers come with higher TC, higher level probably, better starting point (fresh and positive perception of the team/manager), more stable state of mind (no old $hit dangling, no walking on eggshells), ... Believe me getting external offers is absolutely worth the pain of not fighting back the PIP/dev-plan. (Aside from the TC bump and uplevel) Yoe:4 Amazon TC (right before PIP): 180k (L5) External offers: Msft: 180k/260k/50k (L64) Apple: 180k/400k/75k (ICT4) Fb: 175k/400k/60k (E5) OCI: 150k/500k/5k (don't remember the level) Uber: 155k/600k/30k Didn't pass G's onsite and Lyft's phone screen. Canceled Snap, Airbnb before the phone screen, because I was too tired of interviewing. I might not have got the best offers, but feel free to AMA.
Huge huge congratulations!
Where are you joining op?
Congrats! Just another example of how Amazon is a shithole and keeps losing excellent engineers due to their incompetent SDMs
Totally agree. I met really good engineers at Amazon, but the amount of horrible SDMs was insane.
I’m about to leave Amazon for LinkedIn. Mind If I DM you ?
Company politics sucks. Many good engineers do suffer similar fate. Especially if you are the type who believe in actually doing the work rather than talking about what you are going to do. In any case I am glad it worked out so well for you. I have never understood the culture where a person is promoted to be a manager to manage engineers without being technically solid himself/herself. Sigh!
Maybe they don't value it as much because these guys are not expected to code on a day to day basis anyway. So a shallow understanding of the architecture and technical limitations is preferred with more soft skills (which seems to be absent anyways in this particular case). I'm just happy to see OP chose to fight the right battle instead of whining over office politics.
Sorry I disagree may be project managers are okay to not have technical depth, and they are paid accordingly. I am talking of engineering managers, you don't just become a good engineering manager unless you are a strong engineer yourself. There is no other way.
Is there any SDE equivalent of SDM role ?
What do you mean? SDE is the engineer, SDM is the engineer's manager
SDM is non tech role. In some companies you have tech stream and management stream with seniority mapped one to one.Like in some places manager and senior architect report to same person.
Congrats! Happy for you!
Did you deserve to be on PIP?
Not at all. The manager was an as$hole, didn't understand any technicalities (was promoted to a manager from a QA) and the org was one of the worst at Amazon (catalog org). Backstabbing, talking behind each other, throwing each other under the bus, blaming, etc. was the norm in the team/org. No long-term vision from the leadership. I was/am a good engineer. You could see I've received senior level offers already.
Are you an SDE? Or QA? Any tips for hacking interviews?