One of my employees is on PIP and my team is a rockstar team. I fought with management and ranted but I can’t help but feel sad that losing a potential employee for STUPID mandatory URA. Knowing their life is impacted with this, I am unable to sleep. Man, I won’t even say how it is almost making me cry. 😢 Will Amazon ever change their stupid culture. PIP is fine, but mandatory URA? Really? I understand we need to let go under performers but we are having to let go good performers because of mandatory URA. AWS really sucks in terms of this. People complain about Managers but we don’t even have a say in this anymore. It’s like you either let your employee go or you go. Update: Got my employee out of PIP. Gave them a project which is achievable and coached them on how they can hit a home run. Told them that I’d support but if they want to change teams, I’d understand and support anything to help them.
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why didn't you hire people just to pip them like other managers?
Not so unethical to play with other’s lives. If someone is not performing then I can coach and let them go after everything. But if they are doing their job well, being forced to let employees go. That’s plain unethical.
Is that really what people do? Hire PIP'able folks? How do you avoid? Is the HM smirking when interviewing you?
This is fucking insane. And let me tell you, Amazon managers are going in other companies as senior leaders and forcing this culture. I joined this cool company in Seattle as a manager, everything was good until we hired a Senior executive from Amazon..I am having to let go only SDE in my team who was trying to improve. So bad that we have to deal with this Amazon PIP and bottom 10% bullshit everywhere now
Maybe. But pease do note that all of us Amazon managers are not bad. I literally came to a point where I had to fight with my L8. Mandatory PIP is just unethical. The practice is unethical. Have PIP but why make it mandatory even if people are performing well.
Amazon culture might be more dangerous than Amazon itself.
If you have a rockstar team, that means your talent rotation sucks. Let that rockstar be a REAL rockstar on another team and get cannon fodder or someone even better instead.
Can people change teams on PIP?
Sure. But do I need to fire my lowest performer on team (relative to others) even if that person delivered all projects because of mandatory URA? Note that lowest performer is only considered low at a relative level to other employees but in general is performing well. No, they can’t change teams on PIP but can change after coming out of PIP.
Leave and go to a less evil company
Planning to after this.
🤞, OP
Sucks to read this. How often do managers have to PIP employees, out of curiosity?
Mostly in Jan - March time. The other times you see this happening is mostly during to performance issues. But Jan - March could be performance or mandatory URA.
To be clear you are not supposed to outright Fire employees for URA. Post OLR you can still work with the engineer to build a reasonable dev plan that candidates successfully clear. That helps them get better at their work and be more careful next time. Maangement doesn't force you if you showcase positive improvements in those bottom performers. Dev plan to ura transition is expected to be 50%
Yes but that transition is 5%. Currently I gave my employee the most reasonable project and expectations and the person has been delivering. I really hope they come out of PIP. It’s my L8’s decision after this. If my employee has to leave after delivering work on PIP then I told them I’d get referrals at any other companies using all my network.
To be clear is person on PIP or Focus?
I am no fan of Amazon but this post seems a bit fake and just to malign.
Sure. Whatever you want to think. I’m just here to rant. Not validate.
I don’t think it’s fake. If the director has common sense they’ll get the OP’s take and agree move the engineer out of Focus. However not 100% of directors are competent enough and OP is just unlucky to work for one.
Although it's a garbage idea, it's better to hire some useful cannon fodder just so you get your URA quota than let go of someone who is smart and has proved their value to the team over time. Or go to a different company. The firing squad will march on with or without you. The only thing to do is make sure the really good people are not on the line even if some poor innocent schmuck has to pay for it.
AWS or Retail? Is the employee aware of PIP and still doing fine?
URA=?
Unregretted attrition
Didn’t MSFT do this too back in the day? It sounds so toxic.