As a manager, I found this extremely concerning, and the dude expects people to pay for his newsletter??? WTF! Is this how managers at Amazon treat people?
His name is cut off, but I think it's Jack Welch.
He is right, I am speaking from experience.
I doubt your time coaching a top performer and a underperformed results in a 10% improvement on either one. Your influence on a top performer is probably negligible, your influence on a underperformer could be literally life changing. Also, letting underperformers underperform will drag down the morale of the entire team, issues shouldn't be neglected. Your solution is PIP? You'll spend more time hiring and ramping up a new employee, and that's if you are lucky enough to get a backfill in this environment. This is just a lazy excuse to avoid having difficult conversations, a manager's time is best spent ensuring the whole team operates well and is successful. If you don't have the time, make the time for it, that's the job.
I think the assumption here is that the manager is somehow an average performer here. If a top performer manager puts in time to improve a top performing report, then it can lead to a 10% improvement. Otherwise, you are assuming that the top performer report is already able to perform maximally negating the need for a manager anyways.
These are not leaders. These are your average selfish joes who reap the success of their top performers and credit their failures to weaker members of the team. Leadership is about leading the way, empowering others and getting results where there are none and this dipshit is talking about not caring about the weak candidates!
Yet to come across a Amazon ‘leader’
He easily falls under the category of a sociopathic leader.
This only works if you can continuously attract better and better talent. That is not the case for Amazon for at least 2 years. Even so, it destroys team wellbeing. In Japan there is a culture where if someone cannot do the job properly it is considered the manager's fault they did not train them. I find that more reasonable rather than companies today who want to have employees come in fully equipped with an extremely broad skillset, ready to estimate and produce with extreme accuracy
This is an interesting perspective and I agree with everything you said. Most companies have very good hiring process, it should be pretty safe to assume that anyone who's underperforming is able to recover with enough coaching, at least this should be the case for Amazon specifically.
Then they hire only best people.
i i have to say if it is real he is really good manager but in fact in amazon, a lot of managers did not understand engineering, they most preferred “engineers” from same village or same colleges from some indian unknown cities
It's not much different at Microsoft either my friend 🐒
Getting 10% improvement out of low-performers is much easier than getting an extra 10% out of your already over stretched high-performers
Not true. Help your top performer to scale has the best ROI.
Somehow all the universities does this. Like Stanford and other big colleges hire exceptional candidates and they don’t hire mediocre and train them, even though primary objective of university is to teach people with tuition they paid.
Okay? I guess following your analogy, once someone made it into one of these prestigious universities, they are in, they are not considered mediocre anymore, they are considered exceptional, and therefore are given the training/education they need. Isn't it the same for companies? They hire the best talent, going through lengthy and difficult interview process, once they are in, they are not considered mediocre anymore, they are exceptional, and they deserve to be given the support they need to be successful. We are not talking here about picking up any random people from the street and trying to train them in complex fields they are unfamiliar with, these are capable people who've proven their ability and might need some help getting back on track, most times these people can be successfully ramped back up to desired levels of productivity. Very rarely there's lost causes that are not worth the time, sure in those instances is better to move on, but that's seldom the case.
Exactly as Meta said…people who are PIPed at Meta are generally not the right fit culturally..its not that they are not good…
Managers don’t “help”. They get paid to do the job. This guy wants to ride on some self driven successful peoples efforts by “helping them succeed”
It might sound harsh but the essence of it is that you have to prioritize your time in creating an environment where your key people are content and where they can thrive. This obviously does not mean putting up with high performers who are jerks to others (read “the no asshole rule”). It also does not mean you don’t invest your time and energy in helping those who you believe have the potential but have just not found their groove yet (hence ROI). It means you recognize when something drains your time/energy/wellbeing and that of your team’s with no ROI in sight. It goes without saying that you should still show empathy, be professional and help those out, but not get too caught up in investing all your time that does not leave anything for those who are delivering the results. It would be a disservice to them.
I agree with this train of though, but that's not exactly what is being described in this post, also more often than not, the ROI is well worth it, some people are just lazy to even want to put in the effort and come up with excuses like this to not do it.
He's full of shit. If you have top performers, you let them do their things and don't cockblock them.
Right?
Playing devil's advocate: "let them do their thing"? Why not spend some energy on their growth? As he said 10% growth for top performer > 10% growth for poor performer.