Is Amazon/AWS that bad these days?

Mar 28 33 Comments

Is Amazon/AWS that bad these days? Why so much negative reviews of PIP and bad WLB?

What is the measurement of being good there?

How bad you do to get PIPed?

TC: 160K #tech #amazon #amazonaws

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TOP 33 Comments
  • A VP at my previous company is a L7 SDM at AWS. He is being forced to pip someone to meet quotas this month. He tried his best not to pip anyone as all members of his team performed well but his L8 got involved and basically twisted his hand into PIP'ing someone. The end criteria to PiP was based on number of lines of code.

    He is looking to leave AWS once his 1st year is up as he has zero wlb and hates the mandatory URA quota there.
    Mar 28 11
    • New / R&D
      WqDK65

      New R&D

      WqDK65
      PIP makes some sense but I think URA is just messed up. That's turning team members against each other and how would you expect to collaborate.
      Mar 28
    • Amazon
      hNyg33

      Go to company page Amazon

      hNyg33
      PIP makes less sense than URA imo. Pip is awful on everyone and causes a forgone conclusion of letting someone go to get dragged out by months and gives false hope. Get rid of pip and let managers simply fire people how and when as needed while giving them a big severance and suddenly you don’t have to worry so much about the URA goal.
      Mar 28
  • Amazon / Eng
    lPyh26

    Go to company page Amazon Eng

    PRE
    Microsoft
    lPyh26
    I like working at Amazon. Don’t be the least productive engineer in your org and you’ll be fine. You can look up number of commits and loc in CRUX (the code review tool). If there aren’t 2-3 people with less code committed than you, fix that. Your manager doesn’t have to PIP anyone, but your skip-level does. Everyone knows that check ins are a terrible measure of effectiveness, but it gives your manager something “objective” to defend you with. Learn as much as you can.

    Bottom 5% get PIP, roughly half come out of it and do fine. The other half get a few months pay to go get a job somewhere else. You can’t end up in the PIP process your first year.
    Mar 28 4
    • Adobe
      blindMafia

      Go to company page Adobe

      blindMafia
      “ If there aren’t 2-3 people with less code committed than you, fix that.”

      Wow, That says a lot about the culture.
      Mar 29
    • New / R&D
      WqDK65

      New R&D

      WqDK65
      "number of commits and loc", that doesn't make sense at all. I once fixed a bug that existed for years and half a dozen people tried and failed to fix, took me two weeks, in the end just a few lines of code and one commit. I would get piped for sure.
      Mar 29
  • Join and find out
    Mar 28 2
  • Amazon
    zgsv

    Go to company page Amazon

    zgsv
    Bottom 6% or so for pip
    Mar 28 0
  • Amazon
    FjeD24

    Go to company page Amazon

    FjeD24
    I’ve been with Amazon for over 10 years, but transferred to aws about 8months ago. I was only working in aws for 9 weeks before going on leave for 5 months. When I got back from leave I went through forte and got ‘needs development’ and put on a pip.

    I’m beyond shocked. I’m absolutely looking to leave Amazon after this experience.
    Apr 2 2
    • Amazon
      hNyg33

      Go to company page Amazon

      hNyg33
      One thing shitty about leave at AWS is that it kind of gets counted against your performance since you get compared to those around you who didn’t go on leave. I think they should really reconsider how they look at this.
      Apr 2
    • Google / Eng
      ABC-CEO

      Go to company page Google Eng

      ABC-CEO
      You're supposed to sacrifice your life so Bezos can sleep easy on the Dominican island. Any less than that is a PIP.
      Apr 2