PIP Jury of Amazon
This is a one more story of how Amazon as a Corporate works. After the NY Times article, Amazon realized that the Managers are giving "false PIPs" and they want some accountability to be built in. To stop this, Amazon created a "PIP Jury" where anyone person who received the PIP can challenge the Manager with the help of a Jury - a 5 member panel. I was an active Jury member, and also helped couple of engineers how to fight with Managers and what kind of documentation / feedback they would need to win a case with the Jury. But most engineers don't need that, a large number of Managers were non-SWE (TPM turned SDM) and they were losing the cases as they cannot evaluate SWEs properly. With the help of Jury, the number of PIP cases started decreasing. But it further decreased drastically as Managers started realizing they have weak cases for PIP and rather than losing a case in front of Jury, they stopped giving PIPs. 2019 was the first major year of Amazon stock stagnation and negative growth. The Management blamed "not enough PIP" as the reason that Amazon is not growing. They removed the Jury. Now a person can be put on PIP. It can only challenge the work done within the PIP (after a termination decision is made), but not challenge for putting on PIP. And Amazon managers are smart, they started creating projects which can never be completed even by the best engineers. My manager also came to me and ask about creating projects of such nature to handle his PIPs. Moral of the story - Amazon as a Corporate is designed to screw employees and any empathetic move will be temporary. They will blame everything on employees whenever the company goes through a bad phase - like with RTO, RTH, and PIP.
So how to fight PIP?
Prepare for interview and up level outside. That's the only serious and possible way to fight PIP.
Everything reminds me of her
Python Devs must be going through it
this is what elliot smith was singing about, so ahead of his time
It’s a shithole where dreams go to die. I can never understand why people want to work for Amazon.
Because my tc is 62k and it’s the only FAANG I have a chance of getting in to. tc 62k
I'm following this guy cuz he posts TC
The LPs are designed to blame employees for everything. Counting days to run away from this company.
In a few decades, People will look back at Amazon practices the same way we look at working conditions of feudal laborers or coal miners
no, they wont.
They will for the frontline staff in the fulfillment centers.
I feel like I'm about to be PIPed, or at least coworkers say so and I can attest to the pre-pip setting up.... manager ignores praise of me by coworkers, focuses on issues with performance, doubts everything I'm saying, even when coworkers agree with me, and gives me tasks suitable for a level above me....
More than likely, you are in focus now, it seems. Ask your manager, he has to tell you if you are in focus
100% being set up for pip… exactly what happened to me
I was once a manager at Amazon. The only appeal panel that I know of where the employee won the appeal they were fired less than a year later. They probably got rid of it because nothing was being accomplished.
Or they just don't care about it and wanted to make it look like they did
Whether they care or not it was a useless process. The panel almost always sided with the company and it took up tons of time.
The OP is a bit skewed. The PIP panel primarily evaluate a few things: 1. Were expectations clearly set 2. Was feedback given on any gaps 3. Were the expectations reasonable 4. Were the expectations met The problem with evaluating the entire time period before the PIP is that since it's less structured there's a lot more he said / she said about what feedback was given, what the expectations were, how they were impacted by changing business priorities. In normal work people don't micro manage you to the point that they have a paper trail on every thing that happened. This is true of both the manager and the employee. The PIP is much more structured. The expectations are formally agreed. Everyone knows it's on and both manager and employee will collect detailed information. Feedback is given regularly and documented. Thus it's a lot easier for the panel to look at the evidence and determine whether or not expectations were reasonable, communicated properly, appropriate feedback given and whether what was delivered met those expectations.
Managers were expected to document behaviors that led to PIP. They need to have feedback and to also prove that they already provided feedback to employee but unable to change the behavior. This is the norm in every other tech company. Why managers at Amazon were afraid, because they didn’t do the basic management job. If a manager pip someone which he/she didn’t see coming, this is a Manager failure.
Of course, and that is checked by HR before allowing a focus entry to be made, and again before focus progresses to PIP. Nevertheless if it leads to a dispute outside the structure of a written PIP you can have a manager saying they delivered feedback and the employee denying it. You can have a manager saying that expectation were set, and the employee denying it. You can have an employee saying they delivered what was asked, and a manager saying they asked for something different. Who is right? It can be hard for a panel to figure out if there was miscommunication, who is at fault, etc Under normal circumstances managers don't put everything they ask for in writing and make the employee sign it, they communicate in 1:1 and then make notes. Those notes are good, but if an employee outright denies getting the message it's still he said, she said, which can be difficult for a panel to get to the bottom of The PIP creates absolutely no doubt by ensuring that everyone is literally on the same page - what's written in the PIP. HR actually sits in the Pivot entry meeting to ensure that the employees gets the feedback and understands it and has had an opportunity to ask questions. It's much clearer.
Sounds like a great place. When can I start?
You already started
Don’t forget to bring a lawyer with you.