Found out from a seasoned manager that PIPing out employees counts towards "hire and develop the best " and "insist on high standards" leadership principles, in addition as a mechanism to meet 5-10% URA targets. Lot of incompetent managers misuse/abuse this as a badge of honor . Is this why its common in FB too? PS: PIP is not unusual for PMs but one doesn't hear as much because PMs are generally seasoned and far few in numbers (vs Developers). Life outtake: I just learnt I'm on focus after I informed my manager before applying for an internal transfer.
I'm not surprised. Lots of LP are misused. Another example is Earn Trust. Earn trust has a very prescriptive definition to listen carefully, respectfully and speak up about own mistakes, "even if it is embarrassing". Having worked for Amazon for 7+ years, if you piss someone off 2 weeks prior to Forte/Performance reviews, YOU BET that they will ding you on Earn Trust, even if there is nothing to do with the definition.
This is like Reddit downvotes
PM here and can confirm. I got pulled into a side project by my director about a month prior to Forte. Consequently I was a little slow in responding to queries from my team (no burning issues, regular ongoing tasks that I responded to albeit a bit slow). Got dinged by SDM on earn trust stating that I'm not around to answer team's questions. I have been working on this team for more than a year now and was shocked to see this feedback on forte. It was pretty clear from the phrasing that it came from the SDM. Totally blindsided as I always had a good relationship with them (or so I thought). Note that this lasted only for a few weeks until I found a way to repriortize and adjust my schedule. Years of working closely with engineering team (all SDEs gave me very positive feedback) down the drain!
Hi, FB here - Short answer: kind of Every 6 months, 15% of the workforce minions are forced in MM/MS bucket or a "low rating". 2x MM/MS results in PIP. Assuming completely random and theoretical drawing, 2.25% are getting PIP'd at ANY given time. Note that MS can get you immediate PIP and those with MM are much more likely to be assigned MM again, so actual PIP % (and % fired) are much higher (from the theoretical 2.25% up to a max 15% in a 6-month time frame). Specifically for FB, the 2 primary reasons are because - (1) To leverage fear and keep employees from getting too friendly with each other so executives don't have to deal with situations like Google where the employees would form a union AND (2) To squeeze as much productivity as possible out of high energy youngsters that are naive enough to trust the company. It definitely did NOT happen by chance that most of the hires skew towards the younger side Hope this helps!
Thanks for the insight. How commonly does this happen for PM, TPM and other non developer roles ?
This is the company culture, so it happens unilaterally across all positions - no exceptions. The rating assignments are compared to by role and level. So you'll be competing against someone of same (or very similar) role at the same level to keep your job
Fuck all of this, I never want to work for FAANG ever, if it's like this.
OR, you're just not good at your job..
Nope. Give it time, you’ll see - one way or another. There’s a reason equity is back loaded folks!
Keep drinking the banana flavored kool-aid. There's so many benefits from the company's PoV to keep employees fearful and antagonistic towards each other. It raises productivity at the cost of our mental health. Encourages cut throat behavior that creates a fucked up two faced culture where no one is really interested in helping you unless it also serves their interest. If the bottom % gets cut regardless, do you think anyone will really try and help you get better? Raising you up hurts them in the long run. It's fucking toxic
Wow... makes sense now
I see Amazon is hiring lot of incompetent managers who are not technically qualified as well , they just want dummies . I am sure those nitwits will be good In PIPing out folks to save their asses !!!
I have seen majority of employees frm FAANG talking about PIP. Its not spoken abt largely at other companies.
Seems PIPs are all over the place, not only faang. They are crap, need other tools to measure improvement.
Adobe got over this forced low performance bracketing stupidity a long time ago
What do they have in place for identifying low performing people?
A quarterly checkin system with managers that go through employee growth training. PIP still exists as a tool if you need it as a manager but it’s not mandated to segment your entire team into high, mid, and low performance and automatically PIP the bottom 10% https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidburkus/2016/06/01/how-adobe-scrapped-its-performance-review-system-and-why-it-worked/
Yes managers get positively ranked on the number of people they let go and positively ranked on the number of people that they promote
Lol no on the let go part. Don’t make up BS to appease to the salty SDE-indexed crowd here. Seasoned L7 Sr SDM here with experience across multiple orgs, and not once has this been part of the discussion in my directs’ talent review. I manage both L7 and L6 SDMs. You’re right about the promote part. It takes a lot of effort to provide the right opportunities/projects to groom your top SDEs for a good promo doc. And it’s the right thing to do too, encouraging frontline SDMs to invest in too 20% talent.
Lol ... seasoned.