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As discussed in our 1on1 today, in the past, your behavior/attitude is not meeting the L6 SDE 3 bar on “earns trust” and “hire and develop the best” as part of the ****** team. You often express a negative attitude towards decisions that are made, bring issues forward without any input to a resolution and often viewed as unapproachable from junior team members and this impacts the overall team’s morale negatively. Here are examples when you have not earned the trust of peers and leaders in ******: - For example, during Sprint Planning/Retrospective meetings, you spent significant time in the meeting on May 25th, 2020 criticizing that we are assigning too much work and not focussing on OE. This was not the appropriate forum to discuss and you did not provide alternate solutions or a path forward. This distracted the team from Sprint planning and had a negative impact on the morale of the team. - In daily stand-ups and 1on1s, you have consistently complained about having to attend too many meetings or work on reviewing and approving MCMs. As an SDE3, you should earn trust by proposing solutions to problems rather than focusing on highlighting them. This further impacts the team negatively and is a missed opportunity to delegate and support the development of other team members. - Feedback has been received from members of the team that you are not approachable or visible as an SDEIII/technical leader for ******. One of the interns and a couple of SDE 1s from ****** have mentioned to their respective managers during 1on1 conversations that they are afraid to approach you and avoid discussions with you. ------------------------------------------------------- This is what Management has come up with, and wrote in the most exaggerated manner possible, as my biggest SDE3 failure examples. First off, I want to say that as the Senior SDE on the team, I really do care about my teammates and I stand up for them. If appropriate, I respectfully "Disagree and Commit" with Management to make sure my teammates are happy and their opinions are heard. We trust each other completely, and they have repeatedly said I am *positive* for team morale. So the only "negative team morale" that Management refers to in this dev plan, is a spin on Management's own displeasure. 1. For this particular project, almost a year ago, Management had committed externally to unreasonable deadlines - without consulting the engineers on what actually needs to be built and how long it would take. I have enough experience to be able to navigate the right balance on delivering projects with quality, and became concerned about the team's workload and potential quality issues.To take advantage of the particular rollout timeline for this project I proposed that some features be staggered and more of the Operational Excellence (OE) tasks be mixed in. This would not have negatively impacted the Customer. This is the example cited in the dev plan. Mngmt insisted to proceed as before without OE, and so we Committed. At great personal cost to the team, we delivered this critical project successfully with significant positive impact to the future of Amazon and visibility all the way to the top. However, for one of the new features, an issue slipped through the cracks, causing a high Sev, and we had to write a Correction of Error (COE) doc. We then had to do the Action Items from the COE => the OE tasks that were in the backlog. Our L8 Director saw the COE and complained about the engineers - that we didn't do the OE before launch. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. 2. I have been at Amazon long enough to know not to complain in my 1on1s about *anything*. I'm surprised Mngmt would lie/exaggerate so blatantly. 3. This may or may not have happened. I don't want to make excuses but they would be from adjacent teams in our org. There are others that would have positive feedback. I know that remote onboarding is extremely painful for new hires during the pandemic and I try to help as much as I can but it's difficult to gauge the right feedback loop so as to give Interns enough room to accommodate and not seem overbearing. ------------------------------------------------------- So, this is what happens when the Amazon yearly URA quota arrives, and Management doesn't like you anymore - they just make stuff up. Furthermore, Management could not come up with a single negative example on: "Customer Obsession", "Ownership", "Invent and Simplify", "Deliver Results", "Are Right a Lot", "Insist on the Highest Standards", "Think Big", "Bias for Action" or "Dive Deep". I raise the bar on all of them. When I started at Amazon and joined this team, the previous Management and SDEs had all bailed - there were few Customers, core functionality didn't scale and the oncall was atrocious. Now I lead a team that is critical to running Amazon and nothing gets designed (years lead time) and built in our particular domain without our involvement. We have designed/built and scaled services/Customers/use cases/features multiple magnitudes since I started, and reduced oncall load, with flat headcount. We collaborate and deliver cross-org projects. You will read in the mainstream media about projects that my team is working on right now. I still go oncall, and lead high Sev conference calls, with people around the world. I dive deep, mitigate the impact quickly and destroy the root cause, even when it's not our services that are affected. I got constant praise from Mngmt. I have invested soooo much of my life, time and effort into Amazon. L6 SDE YOE: 12+ Amazon: almost 4 years (almost 3 years @ L6) TC: trending to 0 Me and my family are absolutely devastated mentally.
Haven't read the entire post but seems like they want you to do lot of work but you are pushing back righly so. But some employers don't like that. They need yes man who keeps on taking work. Its not your fault. Find another job and move on.
Op you did your best. As you said it’s all about meeting the URA target. Please don’t let the negative feedback get to you, time to jump ship. You are awesome 👏 don’t doubt your abilities 😀
OP, it's not your father's company. Leadership principles are just for mumbo-jumbo and kool-aid. Disobedience is always punished more than Incompetence. With 13 yoe you should know better. Operational excellence can go fuck itself. It is higher guy's problem. Be as nice to juniors as possible but yeah you need to push the crap down. Get your yoe and move out. At this point, idk why people even apply for Amazon.
"At this point, idk why people even apply for Amazon." Engineers who want FAANG status but can't make it to FANG. I was once an Amazonian, although I did very well there, but never again.
Sorry to hear. One thing for sure, I wont ever join Amazon after reading such horror stories.
Yes Amazon only to get interview practice and get an offer to use that as leverage for other offers.
Lol. Amazon has great work too.
OP, you’ve been at Amazon long enough to see how the sausage is made. URA quota has arrived and you’re on the bottom of your manager’s list. When putting the list together, managers think “who is the 1 out of 10/20 ppl from this group who would impact the team least negatively / most positively if they left?” Seems like in your case, the feedback is on your negativity (that you also admit to). Your manager probably assumes the team would do better without this attitude, despite you being right and protecting the team. It tells a lot about them (manager chain) that this is the case. With 3 years at L6, you should have enough options externally. And you might be surprised on how much good a change of scenery from Amazon can do. You sound like a solid engineer who would thrive in sane environments without pointless PIPs like this. Good luck and you did the right thing.
OP sounds like an excellent senior engineer, who challenges status quo, focuses on improving Operational excellence, and doesn’t have any negative feedback on the areas that are important for the job. Respect for you to share the feedback as it is here, most people would have presented a one-sided story. I think you will do great anywhere outside Amazon. This is clearly a case of leadership saving their ass by throwing you under the bus. All the best, let me know if you need referral in Google, thanks.
+1. You will never be treated like this at google. Even hard core teams in cloud treats better. You deserve better. Leave that shithole. Don’t fight devplan / pip. Use that time to prepare for better companies. Take severance and get multi fold increase in TC with six figure sign on bonus. It’s win win for you. Severance + sign on + increase in total comp = lot of money
If you go through the comments on this post, you'll find a bunch of OPs fellow engineers giving their opinion of him. He'll do well.
Man good luck buddy, hope ya land on your feet. Fmla and resume brush up.
Document everything Lawyer up Show the finger
Don’t waste time, money and effort...House always wins!!
I read so many Amazon PIP posts and it's scary. PIP seems to be the norm instead of being the exception. I have 2 questions/observations 1. Why is OP mentally devastated? As engineers, that too senior ones, I think we should take pride in our skills and believe that 10 other recruiters will line up to interview us if we are on the market for a job 2. The attitude should be what is Amzn doing to retain you, not what you are doing to survive. Always think that you are valuable and ball is in your employer's court to convince you to stay. If they fail, have a conversation with your manager about how he/she failed, how can they improve, and finally put them on notice about your last working day.
All your points are very much true. But as a person in a similar situation I’ll tell you that the stress of losing a job is extremely painful mentally and emotionally. I’ve been struggling with anxiety and depression for months now as a result of work stress and it’s not easy
I thought PIP incidents would be rare at L6. What about L7 ? Are PIPs common at L7 as well ?
I’m on a similar boat as you Got piped last week My team has 4 engineers including me, and has been struggling to hire new folks. I tried to move to a different team and my manager told me that I’m on a Dev plan, and since then he’s been skipping 1:1s until last week
They clearly did it to retain you in the team until you are no longer needed.
I have heard for some reason a decent chunk of SDM at amazon are actually internal transfers from TPM roles and some dont even have much SDE experience which sounds crazy to me. Is this true or exaggerated bs?