I have spent a lot of time on Blind where this is discussed often and I think I have an idea what is going on.
At a high level, Amazon orgs have Unregretted Attrition (URA) targets/quotas for orgs. Not every manager needs to hit the exact target but under a certain level of middle management they do. Because of this built-in churn they need to have a pipeline of low performers - because once the current set of URA targets get managed out or leave you will need to still hit that quota next quarter/half/year/whatever. So maybe your quota is 5% but you have another 5-10% extra in earlier stages of your pipeline so you can sacrifice them later.
In the later stages when you’re actively getting managed out they put you on a formal PIP. In theory it’s possible to “get out” of it but because of the quotas it’s pretty much a lost cause. So on Blind the most common suggestion for people on PIP is to do the absolute bare minimum and start interviewing elsewhere, expecting to fail the PIP.
I imagine the reason Amazon doesn’t want people to know about Focus/Dev plans is that once you know you’re in the earlier stages of the pipeline, you may come to a similar conclusion. Basically if a target is painted on your back and you know there’s a high probability you’re going to get managed in the next 6 months, it’s better to do the bare minimum at work and focus as much as possible on getting a new job. But from Amazon’s perspective that’s a lot of lost work/time/money, and they’re not even sure yet that they want to get rid of those people. And further, if employees don’t know about the performance plan there is less chance they will deliberately sandbag and may actually improve their ranking enough to move off the early stage pipeline.
In my opinion the root of all this disfunction is the quota system. If managers were not forced to manage out so many people and being on a “low performance plan” at any stage were seen as an actual opportunity to identify issues and improve performance, there would be much less incentive to sandbag by doing the bare minimum, and also much less need for secrecy about the process.
But this is Amazon, I am sure they have thought deeply about this. My guess is that they have done the math on many alternatives and this is the least-worst. For example by managing out so many people they can be less selective in hiring which may be better overall (eg an overall acceptance rate of 20% with 10% of those being false positives fills more roles than an overall acceptance rate of 10% with a 0% false positive rate). Of course managing people out also has a cost in creating an unpleasant/toxic work environment that itself increases churn, which they may or may not account for. Keep in mind due to their vesting models, a good performer burning out and quitting after 2 years is actually good for their bottom line. As long as they continue to fill roles I doubt they will be incentivized to change this model.
That does make a lot of sense. One question I have is how this practice will affect their reputation. My theory is that the reputational damage will most adversely affect their ability to hire more experienced workers. But maybe their plan is to hire more people fresh out of college and bring them up internally (the ones that don’t get URA’d anyway), in which case the reputational damage may not matter as much?
It still seems like a pretty big long term gamble to me. I have to think a lot of experienced workers will be reluctant to even consider working at a place with this level of shenanigans. I know I would be.
I do believe that Amazon has irrevocably hurt its image. You only need to spend like a week using the Blind app and you'll run into a few horror stories about amazon.
There were posts on the blind app regarding how amazon has been having trouble hiring experienced folks. I am also seeing increased linkedin posts from Amazon SDMs in my network, all advertising positions they have open on their team.
> maybe their plan is to hire more people fresh out of college and bring them up internally
In addition to new grads, amazon also depends on L1 visa imports from India and other countries. And maybe H1 hires here. Its not easy to switch jobs on visa besides you need to stay at a company for 2-3 years to get green card, so it works out in Amazon's favor. My guess is they are feeling the pinch now because Covid is bad in India, and India to US travel is stopped, So visa pipeline has dried out significantly.
I can see how some small aspects of this policy could make sense objectively. Having a URA target + needing a pipeline to feed that at scale certainly makes sense - notwithstanding the proven misguided approach of having a URA target to begin with.
But taken as a whole I cannot help but conclude that the program is meant to instil a culture of fear (and by extension toxicity). Considering the following:
* A manager may or may not have made vague statements to indicate you are on this list. Since the manager is explicitly instructed not to talk about the list itself, it is up to the employee to triangulate from a manager's statements their standing relative to performance. This means that employees can never really be sure about their status with respect to this list and so must constantly be on their toes (especially regarding statements from their managers).
* If a person is borderline under-performing, what is the logic in preventing them from switching teams internally? Perhaps a culture change or a product change would tip the scales for them to increase performance. Maybe there is a culture clash with the org or with the direct manager. I don't see any downside in maintaining the FOCUS status but allowing the employee to explore options to improve their productivity internally.
* If a person is borderline under-performing, what is the rationale behind blacklisting them from ever becoming rehired at the company? This the most egregious offence to me regarding the entire program - that Amazon is hanging a sword of damocles over all their employees heads, implicitly threatening them with blacklisting them as one of the largest tech employers in the industry. This list, again, being entirely secretive and Amazon explicitly instructing managers not to talk about with employees.
From my understanding, you can work at Amazon several years, be on a FOCUS/devlist for a huge amount of that time - and never even know. When you leave, you are automatically marked as URA and ineligible to rejoin the company.
This all adds up to me as a program specifically designed to be vaguely threatening and fear inducing.
If we assume an ideal world where managers are all great communicators and can handle performance management with skill and would never misuse the program for any reason - I can maybe squint and suspend my disbelief enough to see how this program can effectively work.
But you would have to be breathlessly naive to assume that's how the program would practically work in the real world with actual managers (and the state of middle/upper management in tech companies at large).
Any management/leadership team who is OK with rolling such a program out at scale given the above is not a team I would want to work with in any capacity, and IMO it just speaks to the dehumanizing nature of the culture they are aiming to create. It is inconceivable that upper management at Amazon doesn't realize these effects of the program.
Like you say, they have probably thought about it deeply, and just don't care. The metrics are working for them, so it continues. I personally am not going to lose sleep over it, I will simply refuse to work there. I hope employees who do work there know that there are other technology companies who actually consider these negative effects on their own employees and actually have empathy towards creating a place where people genuinely want to work - because for other companies, the equation regarding optimizing business metrics lands a bit differently when it comes to their own employees. If you can pass the bar at Amazon you can pass the bar at other places. Don't sell yourself short thinking this is normal or OK.
Couldn’t this backfire by making a lot more employees feel they should always be evaluating other offers because it’s unknown to them if they’re going to be dismissed at the end of the eval period.
At a high level, Amazon orgs have Unregretted Attrition (URA) targets/quotas for orgs. Not every manager needs to hit the exact target but under a certain level of middle management they do. Because of this built-in churn they need to have a pipeline of low performers - because once the current set of URA targets get managed out or leave you will need to still hit that quota next quarter/half/year/whatever. So maybe your quota is 5% but you have another 5-10% extra in earlier stages of your pipeline so you can sacrifice them later.
In the later stages when you’re actively getting managed out they put you on a formal PIP. In theory it’s possible to “get out” of it but because of the quotas it’s pretty much a lost cause. So on Blind the most common suggestion for people on PIP is to do the absolute bare minimum and start interviewing elsewhere, expecting to fail the PIP.
I imagine the reason Amazon doesn’t want people to know about Focus/Dev plans is that once you know you’re in the earlier stages of the pipeline, you may come to a similar conclusion. Basically if a target is painted on your back and you know there’s a high probability you’re going to get managed in the next 6 months, it’s better to do the bare minimum at work and focus as much as possible on getting a new job. But from Amazon’s perspective that’s a lot of lost work/time/money, and they’re not even sure yet that they want to get rid of those people. And further, if employees don’t know about the performance plan there is less chance they will deliberately sandbag and may actually improve their ranking enough to move off the early stage pipeline.
In my opinion the root of all this disfunction is the quota system. If managers were not forced to manage out so many people and being on a “low performance plan” at any stage were seen as an actual opportunity to identify issues and improve performance, there would be much less incentive to sandbag by doing the bare minimum, and also much less need for secrecy about the process.
But this is Amazon, I am sure they have thought deeply about this. My guess is that they have done the math on many alternatives and this is the least-worst. For example by managing out so many people they can be less selective in hiring which may be better overall (eg an overall acceptance rate of 20% with 10% of those being false positives fills more roles than an overall acceptance rate of 10% with a 0% false positive rate). Of course managing people out also has a cost in creating an unpleasant/toxic work environment that itself increases churn, which they may or may not account for. Keep in mind due to their vesting models, a good performer burning out and quitting after 2 years is actually good for their bottom line. As long as they continue to fill roles I doubt they will be incentivized to change this model.