Amazon's Controversial 'Hire to Fire' Practice Reveals a Truth About Management(inc.com)
inc.com
Amazon's Controversial 'Hire to Fire' Practice Reveals a Truth About Management
https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/amazons-controversial-hire-to-fire-practice-reveals-a-brutal-truth-about-management.html
205 comments
> The article somehow embraces tracking and targeting attrition yet acts surprised that the natural result is planned attrition.
That doesn't strike me as odd at all. Companies should track attrition. It's a metric that should be watched, and if it goes up over time, that should be alarming. The problem is that managers are apparently graded on this metric:
> Managers are even evaluated using this metric, known as "unregretted attrition rate" (URA).
... which is just completely bizarre. Basing part of a manager's performance review based on whether or not they fired enough people to match a company-wide expected attrition rate is completely bonkers. Managers should possibly be penalized if they fire (or lose) too many people (it shows that either they are really bad at hiring, or that their people hate them and leave), but being below that number shouldn't generally be cause for alarm. Certainly it could mean that a manager is keeping dead weight around, but that shouldn't be the default assumption.
That doesn't strike me as odd at all. Companies should track attrition. It's a metric that should be watched, and if it goes up over time, that should be alarming. The problem is that managers are apparently graded on this metric:
> Managers are even evaluated using this metric, known as "unregretted attrition rate" (URA).
... which is just completely bizarre. Basing part of a manager's performance review based on whether or not they fired enough people to match a company-wide expected attrition rate is completely bonkers. Managers should possibly be penalized if they fire (or lose) too many people (it shows that either they are really bad at hiring, or that their people hate them and leave), but being below that number shouldn't generally be cause for alarm. Certainly it could mean that a manager is keeping dead weight around, but that shouldn't be the default assumption.
Presumably they've identified that under performance is spread uniformly amongst managers with a large enough number of indirect reports. Presumably the target URA is arrived at via other independent measurements. Presumably they control for negative feedback loops like hiring people just to preserve your team by stratifying the URA target, or subjecting new hires to other measures too. Etc.
Its cut-throat no doubt, but if its also well rewarded, why shouldn't there be a place for this kind of practice?
Its cut-throat no doubt, but if its also well rewarded, why shouldn't there be a place for this kind of practice?
> why shouldn't there be a place for this kind of practice
Here's an article that explains why - https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/amazons-controversial-hire-to...
Here's an article that explains why - https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/amazons-controversial-hire-to...
Where does it explain it? There's a lot of words in this op-ed with almost zero actual substance. It's a pure play on emotions, without even the effort to talk to past or present employees potentially affected. Just more lazy "journalism".
Taking the article at face value (a risky move when journalists get warmed up against business) - Amazon is effectively lying - they are claiming that they have work for someone to do and that they think the person can do it.
In reality - the hiring manager doesn't have work for the person and doesn't care about their qualifications. So Amazon is misrepresenting the situation to their hires. People make big life decisions based on their employment - doing that is very unethical and disruptive.
If you want the conversation to be about legality then that is one thing. It seems like a practice that should be legal to me. But it is objectionable.
In reality - the hiring manager doesn't have work for the person and doesn't care about their qualifications. So Amazon is misrepresenting the situation to their hires. People make big life decisions based on their employment - doing that is very unethical and disruptive.
If you want the conversation to be about legality then that is one thing. It seems like a practice that should be legal to me. But it is objectionable.
The OP article, the referenced Insider article, and most of the comments here are all pure speculation... based on a single memo. The Insider quotes are laughable, themselves speculative "it could happen" comments rather than "it did happen" examples. "Some say that leads to stack ranking" isn't actual valid criticism or journalism, it's a comment on a possibility.
It fuels the anti-Amazon rhetoric and so everyone just runs with it, assuming every worst case scenario is true and extrapolating every rumor to the extreme to validate their disdain for the company. It's exhausting.
It fuels the anti-Amazon rhetoric and so everyone just runs with it, assuming every worst case scenario is true and extrapolating every rumor to the extreme to validate their disdain for the company. It's exhausting.
Strangely the vaunted leadership principles of Amazon dont include one for ethics
That’s a lot of presumptions. It may be as simple as noticing that teams with a higher attrition rate are more productive on average and faithfully treating that observation as a causal link.
It may be successful in the short run, but that doesn’t make it a good long term strategy. It may be a good long term strategy but that doesn’t make it ethical.
To the thought police: notice how I engaged the parent in a thoughtful argument instead of moronically hitting the downvote button.
It may be successful in the short run, but that doesn’t make it a good long term strategy. It may be a good long term strategy but that doesn’t make it ethical.
To the thought police: notice how I engaged the parent in a thoughtful argument instead of moronically hitting the downvote button.
I tried to make my assumptions clear. I suppose I'm saying that Amazon's massive success should give us reason to think about its HR processes in a constructive light. I feel that many posts in this thread take the view that Amazon management is stupid and/or short-sighted. That stack ranking is somehow flawed at conception and will doubtless fail. It builds a strawman out of one of the worlds biggest employers which is a bit silly.
I guess this is a political issue for many. If you view this discussion through the prism of fundamental rights, fairness and so on then its bound to cause a down-voting orgy. If ever HN was a place one could discuss alternatives with political implications, it no longer seems to be.
I guess this is a political issue for many. If you view this discussion through the prism of fundamental rights, fairness and so on then its bound to cause a down-voting orgy. If ever HN was a place one could discuss alternatives with political implications, it no longer seems to be.
>> I suppose I'm saying that Amazon's massive success should give us reason to think about its HR processes in a constructive light.
Business success does not justify employee exploitation.
Business success does not justify employee exploitation.
Amazon can afford to make mistakes because it’s cash cow has already been bred, so I wouldn’t presume that their macro success is evidence that their micro strategies are also successful. It’s more likely that the micro failures can become invisible.
But playing the devil’s advocate, one could make the case that having a quick fire culture keeps employees on their toes and maybe keeps wages suppressed. Maybe that’s worth the cost of hiring poor performers?
But playing the devil’s advocate, one could make the case that having a quick fire culture keeps employees on their toes and maybe keeps wages suppressed. Maybe that’s worth the cost of hiring poor performers?
Given that lousy managers would cause more people to quit, which we can reasonably suppose, wouldn't a system like this favor the lousiest managers? After a while, you'd expect the organization to end up with the worst possible managers, and a steady employee churn rate?
As a selection process it sounds pretty much the worst one imaginary. However, these organizations seems to not only survive but prosper. There must be more to it than this.
As a selection process it sounds pretty much the worst one imaginary. However, these organizations seems to not only survive but prosper. There must be more to it than this.
My theory is that they’re super successful in one area, so it probably doesn’t matter at all what the rest of the company is doing. Just one major successful project can float thousands of failed teams, due to the vast sums of money involved. I’m also positive the “golden goose” teams aren’t subject to the same kind of scrutiny and have more autonomy so they’re not subject to these kinds of policies
See my other comment in this thread. Regretted attrition rates will indeed penalize managers, and weed out the lousiest managers. The article is only describing unregretted attrition rates.
That’s compatible with the “everyone cries at their desk here” reports from a few years ago
More generally, it is very hard to turn a useful, indirect metric into a useful target, because of perverse, unforeseen incentives.
It is the correlation/causation problem, often times the metric is not causal to your success.
It is the correlation/causation problem, often times the metric is not causal to your success.
> Managers should possibly be penalized if they fire (or lose) too many people (it shows that either ... or that their people hate them and leave)
There is a nuance here, which is that Amazon is only targeting unregretted attrition rates. Which indicates the number of people leaving Amazon, who have been previously marked as poor performers. The system also doesn't allow simple gaming, such as marking someone as a poor performer after they tell you they are leaving. Having a high regretted attrition rate is indeed something managers will be penalized for.
Not defending the system in any way. Just wanted to clarify the above
There is a nuance here, which is that Amazon is only targeting unregretted attrition rates. Which indicates the number of people leaving Amazon, who have been previously marked as poor performers. The system also doesn't allow simple gaming, such as marking someone as a poor performer after they tell you they are leaving. Having a high regretted attrition rate is indeed something managers will be penalized for.
Not defending the system in any way. Just wanted to clarify the above
> system doesn't allow marking someone as a poor performer after they tell you they are leaving
Haven't seen this being done firsthand. But I've heard from trusted sources, that it's a common practice to mark people leaving on their own as URA.
Haven't seen this being done firsthand. But I've heard from trusted sources, that it's a common practice to mark people leaving on their own as URA.
> manager's performance review based on whether or not they fired enough people to match a company-wide expected attrition rate is completely bonkers
Amazon is a company which gained a lot from their policy of exploiting the employee. Amazon loves how they can hire mostly subpar candidates and still make profit by driving them with fear. The same is reflected in their mandatory URA policies. Its not a big deal that some great people get fired too. They don't expect such people to stick around for long in the first place. Policies to manage developers and warehouse workers have come from the same person, so you can't expect much difference in philosophy of how to treat employees.
On Blind's Amazon private lounge, there's a popular saying, don't make noise until Amazon starts shooting it's own employees. Anything less is either old or unsurprising.
Amazon is a company which gained a lot from their policy of exploiting the employee. Amazon loves how they can hire mostly subpar candidates and still make profit by driving them with fear. The same is reflected in their mandatory URA policies. Its not a big deal that some great people get fired too. They don't expect such people to stick around for long in the first place. Policies to manage developers and warehouse workers have come from the same person, so you can't expect much difference in philosophy of how to treat employees.
On Blind's Amazon private lounge, there's a popular saying, don't make noise until Amazon starts shooting it's own employees. Anything less is either old or unsurprising.
I have an open secret for you - they never dropped stack ranking. It is just called differently and less transparent now but they still grade on the curve. The only real change is that you, as a manager, don’t have to have 5% on “possible fire list”. But larger teams will, on average, have about 5% of people whom they don’t care about and/or prefer to lose.
I was at Microsoft when the switch happened, and can confirm this. The only thing that changed after they dropped stack ranking was that employees were no longer told which performance bucket they fell under, and any comp changes/stock grants were now fully opaque with zero justification given.
And wasn't that just a wonderful change?
I don't know what assumptions/mindset you'd have to start with to think it's a great change. You simply get less information.
GP was being sarcastic, from what I can tell.
Yes. I was there at the time. Only time in my life I was consumed by near crippling anxiety was dealing with ranking/review process at MS. It all seemed so pointless to me. And toxic.
5%? I've seen many engineering teams having an attrition rate well above 25%, where only few people would stay for longer than 3 years.
Separate from dumb attrition goals, you'd think they'd also be tracking hiring vs reviews metrics. Hiring takes a lot of time and resources, and so does training new employees, so if you're firing a lot of the people you hire within a year (or whenever), you need to do better hiring.
maybe that's as good as it gets with hiring, you never know how people truly perform until they work in the intended invironment.
From personal experience, I think this is accurate. I think that at best interviews correlate with candidate performance but most of the information is gained at the earliest stages of the interview, and as you progress further, the process becomes less and less informative. I'd suspect a success rate of 50-60% - meaning you don't regret the hire and the hire didn't leave - is probably quite good.
> Hiring takes a lot of time and resources, and so does training new employees
Not if you dont care about finding the best candidate or them succeeding
Not if you dont care about finding the best candidate or them succeeding
In fact they care about finding the worst candidates, so they will fail. Getting someone great means they need to fire someone already on the team who is "only" very good.
The cynic within me wants to know how diversity initiatives interact with hire-to-fire practices that protect valuable team members from churn. The former eschews meritocracy in favor of alternative hiring criteria; the later protects meritocracy by sham hires that will be shed like ablative armor to protect the core team members.
It just means the non-protected class of employees has to have a higher than nominal churn rate.
> Asking everyone to churn their teams means a healthy team of power players is just not allowed.
It does creates what we called a "Mafia". Amazon orgs do have untouchables and stack ranking affords them that status.
It does creates what we called a "Mafia". Amazon orgs do have untouchables and stack ranking affords them that status.
Okay, apparently once every year or two I try to do real talk with HN about attrition, and tonight's that night.
Firing people is unpleasant and emotionally draining. Everyone likes to talk about the failure mode where someone is overly quick to fire, but the truth for large orgs is that it's far more common to be overly slow to fire people. Absent other incentives, for every one person that you fired overly aggressively, you'll have 10 people sitting around drawing salaries despite being low-productivity or zero-productivity or negative-productivity and their managers are just avoiding conflict.
There are no perfect hiring practices, and no perfect ways to turn around failing employees -- as soon as your org gets to be a certain size (much, much smaller than Amazon or Microsoft), you'll have bad hires and/or employees who used to be productive who no longer are who you need to fire. And if you don't fire them, you get more of them -- they drain the morale of people around them. People say, "Why should I work hard if Bob is transparently doing nothing and still getting his paycheck?"
When you're a smallish org, maybe 100 people or fewer, you don't need processes for this, you just need the ultimate leaders of the company to demand accountability. If I'm the CEO of a 100 person company, I can tell my managers that it's really important that we have a high-performing team, that that means firing sometimes, and then do some spot checks to make sure that they're taking me seriously, and that's fine. And not having a process is preferable to having a process at this size.
But at some point in the triple-digit employee numbers, that falls apart. Once you have people 4 or more levels from the CEO, it starts getting really hard to make sure that everyone is just holistically doing what they're supposed to, and you start to need a process.
And once you've got, you know, high 4 digit numbers of employees or more, you also have to start being realistic about what value having a really high-performing team of 10 or 20 people somewhere deep down in your org chart really gets you: not that much.
Ignore gaming the system for a minute, let's just talk about first order effects. Just say, "Okay, in some kind of system that forces attrition, stack ranking or something similar, you remove the possibility of recognizing the reality of a team that has 10 members who are all high-performing."
If Amazon sacrifices the ability to have some random engineering team having 10 high performers, in return for getting a hundred teams to get off their ass and remove their low performers, that's a great deal for Amazon. Teams of 10 high performers are rare. They happen, sure. But they are rare. And at Amazon's size, they don't move the overall fortunes of the company much. In contrast, teams that accumulate deadweight are common, and because they are common, in aggregate they do move the fortunes of the company. Any smallish team of high performers that is actually in a position of high-leverage that it can affect Amazon's overall fortunes is going to be some weird exec-created team that's insulated from these kinds of performance metrics anyway.
But of course we can't ignore gaming the system, not entirely, and that's where the rubber hits the road. What's worse than 100 teams where deadweight is accumulating is 100 teams where deadweight is accumulating but also the managers are hiring to fire. But I guess the question is: is that actually a failure mode that happens relatively frequently? Are there enough cynical managers who have low enough empathy to hire someone just to fire them, but high enough empathy that they want to do that in order to protect the tenured deadweight on their team? I don't know the answer, but it seems like a bit of a snowflake situation. I'm sure someone is out there is basically a psychopath who'll hire someone just to fire them, in order to protect their buddy. But it doesn't sound like a common pathology.
There's no perfect system here, clearly. One of the real competitive advantages that smaller companies have -- a big reason why we all don't just literally have only five companies in tech -- is that people hierarchies get inherently less efficient as the org scales. But HN commenters, especially anyone here who aspires to one day run an org, whether as a founder or just a manager, should get past this whole business of, "the only failure mode we'll think about is being overly fast to fire."
Firing people is unpleasant and emotionally draining. Everyone likes to talk about the failure mode where someone is overly quick to fire, but the truth for large orgs is that it's far more common to be overly slow to fire people. Absent other incentives, for every one person that you fired overly aggressively, you'll have 10 people sitting around drawing salaries despite being low-productivity or zero-productivity or negative-productivity and their managers are just avoiding conflict.
There are no perfect hiring practices, and no perfect ways to turn around failing employees -- as soon as your org gets to be a certain size (much, much smaller than Amazon or Microsoft), you'll have bad hires and/or employees who used to be productive who no longer are who you need to fire. And if you don't fire them, you get more of them -- they drain the morale of people around them. People say, "Why should I work hard if Bob is transparently doing nothing and still getting his paycheck?"
When you're a smallish org, maybe 100 people or fewer, you don't need processes for this, you just need the ultimate leaders of the company to demand accountability. If I'm the CEO of a 100 person company, I can tell my managers that it's really important that we have a high-performing team, that that means firing sometimes, and then do some spot checks to make sure that they're taking me seriously, and that's fine. And not having a process is preferable to having a process at this size.
But at some point in the triple-digit employee numbers, that falls apart. Once you have people 4 or more levels from the CEO, it starts getting really hard to make sure that everyone is just holistically doing what they're supposed to, and you start to need a process.
And once you've got, you know, high 4 digit numbers of employees or more, you also have to start being realistic about what value having a really high-performing team of 10 or 20 people somewhere deep down in your org chart really gets you: not that much.
Ignore gaming the system for a minute, let's just talk about first order effects. Just say, "Okay, in some kind of system that forces attrition, stack ranking or something similar, you remove the possibility of recognizing the reality of a team that has 10 members who are all high-performing."
If Amazon sacrifices the ability to have some random engineering team having 10 high performers, in return for getting a hundred teams to get off their ass and remove their low performers, that's a great deal for Amazon. Teams of 10 high performers are rare. They happen, sure. But they are rare. And at Amazon's size, they don't move the overall fortunes of the company much. In contrast, teams that accumulate deadweight are common, and because they are common, in aggregate they do move the fortunes of the company. Any smallish team of high performers that is actually in a position of high-leverage that it can affect Amazon's overall fortunes is going to be some weird exec-created team that's insulated from these kinds of performance metrics anyway.
But of course we can't ignore gaming the system, not entirely, and that's where the rubber hits the road. What's worse than 100 teams where deadweight is accumulating is 100 teams where deadweight is accumulating but also the managers are hiring to fire. But I guess the question is: is that actually a failure mode that happens relatively frequently? Are there enough cynical managers who have low enough empathy to hire someone just to fire them, but high enough empathy that they want to do that in order to protect the tenured deadweight on their team? I don't know the answer, but it seems like a bit of a snowflake situation. I'm sure someone is out there is basically a psychopath who'll hire someone just to fire them, in order to protect their buddy. But it doesn't sound like a common pathology.
There's no perfect system here, clearly. One of the real competitive advantages that smaller companies have -- a big reason why we all don't just literally have only five companies in tech -- is that people hierarchies get inherently less efficient as the org scales. But HN commenters, especially anyone here who aspires to one day run an org, whether as a founder or just a manager, should get past this whole business of, "the only failure mode we'll think about is being overly fast to fire."
My company gets around that by making it nearly impossible to fire anyone. I know a handful have been fired, but they have all been big HR offenses (I'm not told any details but reading between the lines I'm guessing some form of sexual harassment) not performance. The result is we are careful about interviewing because we know we are stuck. The other half is we put a lot of effort into training because we know we need to make people work out because the next opportunity to get rid of them will be the early retirement (which only applies to someone old enough to at least think seriously about retiring - and applies to everyone including those you don't want to get rid of)
It turns out in practice you can make good employees out of anyone if you are forced to. Sometimes it means taking a poor engineer and turning them into a great marketing person though.
It turns out in practice you can make good employees out of anyone if you are forced to. Sometimes it means taking a poor engineer and turning them into a great marketing person though.
>>you also have to start being realistic about what value having a really high-performing team of 10 or 20 people somewhere deep down in your org chart really gets you: not that much.
Seriously questionable conclusion. It is exactly those types of teams that will create the next generation of outside-the-box product/service that will lead the next generation of profit for the company. E.g., it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon's data management team was such, and now AWS basically is the golden goose while their core biz is marginally profitable and has many problems (counterfeiting, stuffing, fraud-rife review system...).
That said, the value of such teams is often squandered by higher management that too often sees the new product line as cannibalizing their existing cash cow products. Fixing that problem is more key than fixing the problem of deadweight, or at least as important.
I'm no Apple-head but my impression was that Jobs' leadership focused not at all on deadweight, but on being the first to cannibalize their own products with new innovations.
Seriously questionable conclusion. It is exactly those types of teams that will create the next generation of outside-the-box product/service that will lead the next generation of profit for the company. E.g., it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon's data management team was such, and now AWS basically is the golden goose while their core biz is marginally profitable and has many problems (counterfeiting, stuffing, fraud-rife review system...).
That said, the value of such teams is often squandered by higher management that too often sees the new product line as cannibalizing their existing cash cow products. Fixing that problem is more key than fixing the problem of deadweight, or at least as important.
I'm no Apple-head but my impression was that Jobs' leadership focused not at all on deadweight, but on being the first to cannibalize their own products with new innovations.
> I don't know the answer, but it seems like a bit of a snowflake situation. I'm sure someone is out there is basically a psychopath who'll hire someone just to fire them, in order to protect their buddy. But it doesn't sound like a common pathology.
I generally agree with your comment, and the above is a great way of phrasing your point. However, I do think the above behavior is extremely common. There are tons of people out there who show great loyalty to friends, but not strangers. I personally know many people who have said that they will help cover up their friends' crimes, regardless of the severity of the crime. Taken one step further, there is no shortage of people who are extremely patriotic and loyal to their fellow countrymen, but completely callous to foreigners and immigrants.
If you want to pursue the psychopath angle, there is ample avenue there as well. Everyone has a handful of work-friends who they know will have their back. They will give them glowing feedback to upper management, references, and job referrals. Cultivating this inner circle of peers, is a fantastic way to grow your career. "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine."
I do agree with the overall point of your post. But I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss managerial pathologies or hire-to-fire practices.
I generally agree with your comment, and the above is a great way of phrasing your point. However, I do think the above behavior is extremely common. There are tons of people out there who show great loyalty to friends, but not strangers. I personally know many people who have said that they will help cover up their friends' crimes, regardless of the severity of the crime. Taken one step further, there is no shortage of people who are extremely patriotic and loyal to their fellow countrymen, but completely callous to foreigners and immigrants.
If you want to pursue the psychopath angle, there is ample avenue there as well. Everyone has a handful of work-friends who they know will have their back. They will give them glowing feedback to upper management, references, and job referrals. Cultivating this inner circle of peers, is a fantastic way to grow your career. "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine."
I do agree with the overall point of your post. But I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss managerial pathologies or hire-to-fire practices.
Not only does the manager have to have low empathy and questionable morals, they also have to get throwaway head count, collude with bar raisers to hire low performing employees, and they need to fool their directors. Like the OP stated, it's bad overall for the company / organization, and doubtful executives at the organizational level will let you get away with it if found out.
It stretches imagination that all of the above align and this is a common practice at Amazon.
It stretches imagination that all of the above align and this is a common practice at Amazon.
> get throwaway head count
It's not like they are choosing whether or not to fire someone. They know they have to let someone go. They are just strategically choosing who it should be. Their headcount doesn't change as a result of this
> collude with bar raisers to hire low performing employees, and they need to fool their directors
They don't have to go this far. As a manager, you could simply allow the hiring process to play itself out as it normally does. And then hire someone with the knowledge that they will be your sacrificial lamb when needed
> doubtful executives at the organizational level will let you get away with it if found out
How exactly is anyone going to find out. As long as you don't do it repeatedly and in a blatantly obvious manner, there's no way anyone will find out
> it's bad overall for the company / organization
Racism, sexism and homophobia would have never existed in the corporate world if everyone did what's best for the company. Surprisingly, the 20th century wasn't a great time to be a gay minority woman.
It's not like they are choosing whether or not to fire someone. They know they have to let someone go. They are just strategically choosing who it should be. Their headcount doesn't change as a result of this
> collude with bar raisers to hire low performing employees, and they need to fool their directors
They don't have to go this far. As a manager, you could simply allow the hiring process to play itself out as it normally does. And then hire someone with the knowledge that they will be your sacrificial lamb when needed
> doubtful executives at the organizational level will let you get away with it if found out
How exactly is anyone going to find out. As long as you don't do it repeatedly and in a blatantly obvious manner, there's no way anyone will find out
> it's bad overall for the company / organization
Racism, sexism and homophobia would have never existed in the corporate world if everyone did what's best for the company. Surprisingly, the 20th century wasn't a great time to be a gay minority woman.
Life is a feedback loop. What this means is if they hire to fire then the dead weight is not going anywhere, just the people who were hired to be fired and the problem is worse.
I'll give Bezos credit, I've had good insight into 50+ companies from 5 person to 300k and I've never seen this level of accountability at anything over 10 people. The natural tendency for the average employee is to devolve into a "how do I not get fired" mindset, rather than "how do I and my coworkers keep our productivity very high".
Tesla also has had some success with productive teams, but Musk can only scale so far. If he isn't showing up regularly and drilling down into teams and firing the people who are not productive, there becomes more incentive to make friends and play politics than to be productive at the expense of pissing someone off.
Tesla also has had some success with productive teams, but Musk can only scale so far. If he isn't showing up regularly and drilling down into teams and firing the people who are not productive, there becomes more incentive to make friends and play politics than to be productive at the expense of pissing someone off.
Interesting points here. But, in round 2 of these dynamics, and if the article is true, it means ~every team contains a sacrificial lamb. So, rolling with the hypothetical 'team of 10' approx 10% of your payroll could be spent on ablative armor. Furthermore there's no guarantee the unofficial core teams aren't subject to the same dynamics as before, they're just operating, nominally, above the threshold set relative to the lambs.
> any fresh hire could never truly know if they passed interviews
Always get large a signing bonus.
Always get large a signing bonus.
A lot of places claw back signing bonuses. They're also not that large.
Could you sue if you get fired within a year and have to give back the signing bonus?
Highly doubtful. Typically one agrees to the clawback. People tend to not know they can ask for this to be waived, but some smaller companies won't waive it.
Practically it may cost them more to get the money back than just letting it go if you refuse to pay. Also, typically, if you get fired early and the bonus was for relocation, the money doesn't unspend itself so I'm not sure what they expect.
Practically it may cost them more to get the money back than just letting it go if you refuse to pay. Also, typically, if you get fired early and the bonus was for relocation, the money doesn't unspend itself so I'm not sure what they expect.
Amazon solves this problem by only having 5% of your 4-year stock grant vest in your first year.
Every engineer that quits or gets fired in the first year thus saves their employer tens of thousands of dollars.
Every engineer that quits or gets fired in the first year thus saves their employer tens of thousands of dollars.
Policy formulators really need to understand Goodhart's law - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
- If your "productivity" is measured and rewarded based on lines of code, you know what'll happen.
- If a QA engineer is incentivised based on number of detected bugs, you know what'll happen - a lot of trivial bugs gets reported.
- If a dev is incentivised based on number of bugs per line of code, fewer bugs will get reported.
... and that's just w.r.t. software metrics. At the country level, we have the GDP to thank for if a govt targets its policies towards influencing the GDP number upwards to the detriment of what the people and economy really need in their context.
- If your "productivity" is measured and rewarded based on lines of code, you know what'll happen.
- If a QA engineer is incentivised based on number of detected bugs, you know what'll happen - a lot of trivial bugs gets reported.
- If a dev is incentivised based on number of bugs per line of code, fewer bugs will get reported.
... and that's just w.r.t. software metrics. At the country level, we have the GDP to thank for if a govt targets its policies towards influencing the GDP number upwards to the detriment of what the people and economy really need in their context.
The whole capitalist society is based on how much money (some) people have!
After all this metric stuff, I’m much more in line with the idea of embracing the difficulty of assessment. What are the exact metrics I need to get promoted? There are none. I have heuristics for when it’s beneficial to reward an employee and increase their influence. Even I don’t fully understand them. Here’s some vague hints. Meet those, and you’ll be promoted.
At least it’s honest.
At least it’s honest.
It is also correct. Eventually you will have someone great who fails to meet one metric, but you need to promote them before they decide they aren't going to be rewarded and leave.
Which is really what this is all about: ensuring people who you want to keep stick around. The pay you give someone is in part a reflection on how willing you are to leave. If my boss reduced my wage to minimum wage I wouldn't quit today, but you can be sure my top priority would be finding a new job. I know it is possible for me to feed my family on minimum wage, but I wouldn't like the lifestyle that means and I wouldn't like the snub.
Which is really what this is all about: ensuring people who you want to keep stick around. The pay you give someone is in part a reflection on how willing you are to leave. If my boss reduced my wage to minimum wage I wouldn't quit today, but you can be sure my top priority would be finding a new job. I know it is possible for me to feed my family on minimum wage, but I wouldn't like the lifestyle that means and I wouldn't like the snub.
The best model for a company is based off it's performance as a product. If your products are doing well then the team gets more funding. If not doing well less funding and cuts would have to be provisioned from that.
Performance is messaured in five points. Sales, adoption, support, dependency and need.
Sales, how much money am I making.
Adoption, how many users are joining.
Support, how many people current actively use the product.
Dependency, how dependent are it's users on the product.
Need, how much we really want this product to be successful. Some products purely exist on a need basis.
Performance is messaured in five points. Sales, adoption, support, dependency and need.
Sales, how much money am I making.
Adoption, how many users are joining.
Support, how many people current actively use the product.
Dependency, how dependent are it's users on the product.
Need, how much we really want this product to be successful. Some products purely exist on a need basis.
But sometimes, the reason you are failing is because you are missing a key person or lacking funding, so it isn't quite as easy as that (and this is even said as someone who thinks most software companies have 10-100x too many employees ;P).
Honestly, I think the real problem is blindly following "metrics" of any form: metrics are input to a decision making process, but can almost never be directly optimized without causing some kind of serious mistake (which is sad, as humans are often biased; the real solution is thereby to not build large companies, lol).
Honestly, I think the real problem is blindly following "metrics" of any form: metrics are input to a decision making process, but can almost never be directly optimized without causing some kind of serious mistake (which is sad, as humans are often biased; the real solution is thereby to not build large companies, lol).
Aligning incentives would be so easy.
And yet profit sharing is so rare.
And yet profit sharing is so rare.
I've seen the Goodhart'ing of this product orientation lead to bizarre product segmentation detrimental to positioning the company within the actual market. People keep trying to come up with a way to "systematize management" into synthesizing leadership, and I keep maintaining there is no substitute for actual leadership, which is as much an art form as non-trivial debugging and coding (especially at scale and speed).
I think this is not correct because many of our biggest and most successful companies stack rank. If there is a substantial productivity advantage to not doing it then the next company with a million person workforce has some low hanging fruit to pick.
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Like an evolutionary process, companies are only ever graded on the sum of their policies. There is almost never a company that offers almost everything the same but no stack ranking; it would not surprise me to see that the market for labor is “inefficient” here.
I wonder if there are management studies on introducing stack ranking to a unit inside of a company?
I wonder if there are management studies on introducing stack ranking to a unit inside of a company?
If there are, they are not framed in societal terms but in Darwinist terms.
In regular society, it's more profitable to be a criminal/mugger/what have you, viewed entirely in a practical sense. It only becomes unprofitable when (a) there's law to prevent you and (b) there's a general idea that preventing you from doing that is correct in some way.
If anybody's experimented with this, and I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon had as it seems like they'd try anything to see if it worked, I would guess that at scale stack ranking produces slightly more efficiency and productivity than it costs in harm to the well-being of workers. Since Amazon doesn't care at all about the well-being of workers OR employers… they're like a sort of pyre to the cause of scale and profitability… then stack ranking would stay.
If it didn't return some arbitrarily small (or large, as far as we know) benefit to the company at the cost of the well-being of the workers, it would be gone. Somebody's got to have measured this by now, and all these tech unicorns are smart enough to ditch it if it was actually impinging on their productivity. It's not, it's impinging on worker conditions, so win/win as far as the tech giants are concerned.
In regular society, it's more profitable to be a criminal/mugger/what have you, viewed entirely in a practical sense. It only becomes unprofitable when (a) there's law to prevent you and (b) there's a general idea that preventing you from doing that is correct in some way.
If anybody's experimented with this, and I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon had as it seems like they'd try anything to see if it worked, I would guess that at scale stack ranking produces slightly more efficiency and productivity than it costs in harm to the well-being of workers. Since Amazon doesn't care at all about the well-being of workers OR employers… they're like a sort of pyre to the cause of scale and profitability… then stack ranking would stay.
If it didn't return some arbitrarily small (or large, as far as we know) benefit to the company at the cost of the well-being of the workers, it would be gone. Somebody's got to have measured this by now, and all these tech unicorns are smart enough to ditch it if it was actually impinging on their productivity. It's not, it's impinging on worker conditions, so win/win as far as the tech giants are concerned.
It's hard finding counter-examples since no two companies are in the same business and situation, but consider Microsoft: stack-ranking coincided with their lost decade where they stagnated, ceded control of mobile & web to Apple & Google, etc.
A new CEO changed many things so it's hard to say whether stack-ranking was more a cause or symptom of Ballmer's bad management but from the outside it certainly seems like a healthier company now that it's gone.
That's also important to think about from the other perspective: stack-ranking seems like a frictional cost — Microsoft would have been profitable no matter what since anything short of discontinuing Windows/Office would have left a massive cash flow, but it's harder to see where pushing people out cost you until after the fact. Amazon has enjoyed a massive first mover advantage from the cloud and they're certainly executing well now but I would not be surprised if, say, strong competition lead to a point in a few years where they might wish that they hadn't lost staff due to their checkered reputation for being an enjoyable place to work.
A new CEO changed many things so it's hard to say whether stack-ranking was more a cause or symptom of Ballmer's bad management but from the outside it certainly seems like a healthier company now that it's gone.
That's also important to think about from the other perspective: stack-ranking seems like a frictional cost — Microsoft would have been profitable no matter what since anything short of discontinuing Windows/Office would have left a massive cash flow, but it's harder to see where pushing people out cost you until after the fact. Amazon has enjoyed a massive first mover advantage from the cloud and they're certainly executing well now but I would not be surprised if, say, strong competition lead to a point in a few years where they might wish that they hadn't lost staff due to their checkered reputation for being an enjoyable place to work.
Yup. The thing that's disturbing about this is that someone senior must understand Goodhart's law in the company. Which makes it more likely the side-effects are, in fact, intended.
Plenty of managers know about Goodhart's Law - they just also know about the power of incentives / KPIs / OKRs when properly managed. And they imagine they'll properly manage them.
After all, you can't believe in perverse incentives without first believing in incentives!
People in business largely believe in sales people getting bonuses for closing big sales, CEOs getting bonuses for raising the stock price, and workers getting bonuses for delivering projects on time and under budget.
After all, you can't believe in perverse incentives without first believing in incentives!
People in business largely believe in sales people getting bonuses for closing big sales, CEOs getting bonuses for raising the stock price, and workers getting bonuses for delivering projects on time and under budget.
At the end of the day “someone senior” is just protecting their own neck. These people got there for being “a team player”, ie. They play the game, in the office, in emails, in meetings, at parties and many in their own heads since school age.
At the end of the day they couldn’t give a shit about Goodhart’s law and all the book they were made to read in order to keep playing the game.
At the end of the day they couldn’t give a shit about Goodhart’s law and all the book they were made to read in order to keep playing the game.
The thing is, unless it comes all the way from the top, it’s not generally a good idea to disagree too vehemently with your boss.
Especially if he thinks stack ranking is the shit.
Especially if he thinks stack ranking is the shit.
Perhaps a more general observation is that a measure that faces pressure by intelligent agents needs to be monitored and adjusted by equally intelligent agents to patch the exploits.
So you can either use a simple measure that doesn't work, or a complex measure that does work, but at potentially great cost (evaluating all the terms, bureaucratic inertia by the controllers, etc.)
Some metrics seem to provide more of a free lunch - be more robust - than others. It's not obvious which are robust, however.
So you can either use a simple measure that doesn't work, or a complex measure that does work, but at potentially great cost (evaluating all the terms, bureaucratic inertia by the controllers, etc.)
Some metrics seem to provide more of a free lunch - be more robust - than others. It's not obvious which are robust, however.
This is everything in society, and many problems arise because those manipulating the measure have more to gain by challenging it, while the checks and balances only face loss.
Sounds like this would just lead to an arms race between smart managers and smart employees.
“All my life, I’ve been in the top 5% of people who understand incentives, and all my life, I’ve underestimated it.” — Charlie Munger
Quoting from memory. It’s true that almost every time I see a really strange group behavior, it’s the natural result of poorly conceived incentives.
This is a problem that is likely to be with us forever.
Quoting from memory. It’s true that almost every time I see a really strange group behavior, it’s the natural result of poorly conceived incentives.
This is a problem that is likely to be with us forever.
This reminded me of a dynamic I saw in city government when it was working with non profits, although not quite exactly the same. The example I'm thinking of is that the city placed requirements on non-profits that were helping unhoused people find housing, so shelters and so forth. Sounds good, right? And on the surface, it is. You don't want these non profits to be taking funding from the city and elsewhere and not helping people get housing.
However, the restrictions were so unrealistic, that in practice, the non profits had to end up cherry picking people that they'd let into their case management profiles and offer housing. At the time it was realistic that someone may find permanent housing after around a year (and even that was on the shorter side) but the city for some reason was giving the non profits something like 90 days. It was really just a data/numbers game and when the city set the numbers to play the game the non profits had to set their clients. This led to people who faced the most barriers and arguably needed help the most to not get help. For example a white mother with a child may look better on paper when the case managers were calling around and trying to find a fit than a non white male. As an aside, that's what really bothered me about Amazon's "contribution" to homelesness in Seattle - they chose to help the least objectionable class of homeless people, moms with kids, who already have loads of non profits fighting over them and doors open to them that pretty much anyone else in that situation doesn't have. We need more low-barrier resources.
Anyway, just another example that goes to show you, kind of a game theory thing, if you start out with some kind of fixed rules of the game, even with the best intentions, people are going to game the system to match it and often come to a totally different outcome than you were intending.
However, the restrictions were so unrealistic, that in practice, the non profits had to end up cherry picking people that they'd let into their case management profiles and offer housing. At the time it was realistic that someone may find permanent housing after around a year (and even that was on the shorter side) but the city for some reason was giving the non profits something like 90 days. It was really just a data/numbers game and when the city set the numbers to play the game the non profits had to set their clients. This led to people who faced the most barriers and arguably needed help the most to not get help. For example a white mother with a child may look better on paper when the case managers were calling around and trying to find a fit than a non white male. As an aside, that's what really bothered me about Amazon's "contribution" to homelesness in Seattle - they chose to help the least objectionable class of homeless people, moms with kids, who already have loads of non profits fighting over them and doors open to them that pretty much anyone else in that situation doesn't have. We need more low-barrier resources.
Anyway, just another example that goes to show you, kind of a game theory thing, if you start out with some kind of fixed rules of the game, even with the best intentions, people are going to game the system to match it and often come to a totally different outcome than you were intending.
from the article
> The problem is, that's not what's happening. Instead, Amazon managers are hiring people they otherwise wouldn't, or shouldn't, just so they can later fire them to hit their goal.
reminds me a bit of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive The term cobra effect was coined by economist Horst Siebert based on an anecdote of an occurrence in India during British rule.[2][3][4] The British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was a successful strategy; large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however, enterprising people began to breed cobras for the income. When the government became aware of this, the reward program was scrapped. When cobra breeders set their now-worthless snakes free, the wild cobra population further increased.[5]
reminds me a bit of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive The term cobra effect was coined by economist Horst Siebert based on an anecdote of an occurrence in India during British rule.[2][3][4] The British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was a successful strategy; large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however, enterprising people began to breed cobras for the income. When the government became aware of this, the reward program was scrapped. When cobra breeders set their now-worthless snakes free, the wild cobra population further increased.[5]
The government should have announced a specific date as the last day to get the bounty. Then all the breeders would kill all their cobras and turn them in on that day.
Still not ideal in that breeders are getting rewarded, but at least there isn't a bunch of cobras being released.
Still not ideal in that breeders are getting rewarded, but at least there isn't a bunch of cobras being released.
Not bad, except the British Government were in the business of extracting wealth more so than endowing... no doubt someone did the sums on this strategy and said “cor blimey let’s get out of here”
If they're loath to paying money, why did they even create the bounty in the first place?
To increase agricultural output would be my guess.
There is a parallel to this closer to home. There used to be a bounty on fox tongues because foxes were constantly worrying farm animals. Not sure about the outcome for the poor foxes but this no doubt sprang from similar thinking.
There is a parallel to this closer to home. There used to be a bounty on fox tongues because foxes were constantly worrying farm animals. Not sure about the outcome for the poor foxes but this no doubt sprang from similar thinking.
Exact same thing happened with rats in Hanoi under French rule.
...when the bad managers set their now worthless incompetent devs free... The wild unemployed dev population increased.
There's a phrase coined for this: Goodhart's law.
C.f. http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/240-goodharts-law-and-w...
C.f. http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/240-goodharts-law-and-w...
Why not compare it to sports teams where you keep some people on a bench through the season?
I definately dont think a whole bunch of dangerous cobras are being creared.
I definately dont think a whole bunch of dangerous cobras are being creared.
One reason to use that analogy would be to suggest that a lot of harm is consequently created by incentivizing the culling. Also a lot of people just don't think about team sports that much.
I don't really see why this is a problem. It seems like all this policy does is lead to the hiring of people who seem like more "iffy" hires during the interviewing process who are given the opportunity to work/learn/shine at Amazon.
I can see the point that maybe that employee would have taken another role instead of the Amazon one, but I highly doubt anyone who was "hired to be fired" who then showed they were a great fit/good employee was then fired to fulfil the policy.
If instead of being called "Hire to Fire" the policy was called "Rock or drop" (as in show you rock or you'll get dropped), would this even be worthy of an article? Why is the very idea that someone be given a chance that also comes with the reality that you might not make it so hard for some to accept?
I can see the point that maybe that employee would have taken another role instead of the Amazon one, but I highly doubt anyone who was "hired to be fired" who then showed they were a great fit/good employee was then fired to fulfil the policy.
If instead of being called "Hire to Fire" the policy was called "Rock or drop" (as in show you rock or you'll get dropped), would this even be worthy of an article? Why is the very idea that someone be given a chance that also comes with the reality that you might not make it so hard for some to accept?
What you're missing is that people are intentionally hired and set up for failure from the start. This seems to be standard practice at Amazon. You can't just fire people randomly, there is a whole process including documenting how the employee is falling behind and giving the employee a warning and a chance to dispute, etc. Setting up a new employee for failure by abusing the internal processes, setting up roadblocks and giving them unreasonable tasks or incorrect requirements is pretty common from what I've seen.
its definitely common. Really short stints on a resume damage careers
What counts as really short?
Over three years is more than enough. Less than 18mths is concerning. Of course, some people make a virtue of 6 to 12 mth engagements each of which have defined outcomes - and you hire these people to come and do the same for you.
Doesn't that count as a hostile work environment?
Probationary periods are a thing, and in fact are the default form of hiring in many countries. If the intention of the policy was what you said then Amazon would have told these candidates "we are hiring you for a one year period, and will then evaluate your performance and decide whether to keep you or not". Their comp plan and stock vesting structure would have reflected this as well, and they could then make their decision with all this info.
The fact that "hire to fire" wasn't even an official policy but rather an off the books stunt pulled by managers should tell you everything about it.
The fact that "hire to fire" wasn't even an official policy but rather an off the books stunt pulled by managers should tell you everything about it.
A significant problem with the policy is that once people know about it they're more reluctant to apply for jobs at Amazon. That leads to missing out on some good hires.
If you can believe stories on Blind, this is already happening. People reporting Amazon having a hugely difficult time sourcing senior engineers because their bad reputation has finally caught up to them.
There was a comment in yesterday's post about this, which applies here as well – there is zero evidence in the article that "hire to fire" is actually a thing at Amazon. Managers simply cannot hire people just to fire them because they do not have the final say in who gets hired and who doesn't. They can offer an opinion, the same as all the other 4-5 interviewers in the round, and then the bar raiser makes the final decision. The manager might not even be part of the interview round at all, and if they are they certainly cannot overrule anyone else's opinion.
This "fact" can be sourced back to an article from Business Insider which is pretty much blog spam at this point.
This "fact" can be sourced back to an article from Business Insider which is pretty much blog spam at this point.
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Managers generally overrule other's opinions by giving promise of personally "coaching" the new hire to make them meet the bar. In most cases such people are put on a plan, ironically called "Coaching Plan" itself, and thereafter fired. URA quota is an open secret at Amazon, and some employee appreciate the practice of hire to fire, as it saves their own employment. That in turn ensures that objection to bad hire, who is going to be "coached" is non existent.
I've done +200 interviews at Amazon and I have never seen this happen. I only remember one single case where a HM was pushing to hire a clearly unqualified candidate. The Bar Raiser pushed back and didn't let it get through.
Bar Raiser?
I've started observing this recently. I too didn't see such push earlier. Maybe because of recent supply crunch, hiring managers have become more desperate to save the head of the existing people in their team.
The important part is if managers have discretion over who to fire.
> there is zero evidence in the article that "hire to fire" is actually a thing at Amazon. In fact it cannot be a thing since managers do not have the final say in who gets hired and who doesn't.
Hiring and staffing is always horse-trading even when it’s not being actively manipulated in the way this article suggests.
“Send me your req so I can land these two top tier candidates and I’ll be sure to work your projects first”. “Everybody rate your employees for bonuses, then submit the ratings to the CIO so we can decide who gets the two ‘above and beyond’ bonuses we got this year.”
I’m not saying it is happening at Amazon as I have no direct knowledge. But it is pretty easy to see how stack ranking can introduce bad incentives: ICs doing the interview recommend candidates worse than them to pad their positions, managers do the same so their chaff gets approved.
Hiring and staffing is always horse-trading even when it’s not being actively manipulated in the way this article suggests.
“Send me your req so I can land these two top tier candidates and I’ll be sure to work your projects first”. “Everybody rate your employees for bonuses, then submit the ratings to the CIO so we can decide who gets the two ‘above and beyond’ bonuses we got this year.”
I’m not saying it is happening at Amazon as I have no direct knowledge. But it is pretty easy to see how stack ranking can introduce bad incentives: ICs doing the interview recommend candidates worse than them to pad their positions, managers do the same so their chaff gets approved.
As also pointed out in the thread yesterday, that comment about Bar Raisers was nonsense. The fact is that HMs do have the final say in most cases. It is very easy to “game the system” and get candidates past the hiring loop, BR or not.
Plus, the entire argument that “there’s a bar raiser involved” is irrelevant to the point. Hire-and-fire doesn’t mean that HMs are trying to sneak unqualified candidates through the process. What it means is that HMs will take even qualified candidates, which pass the BR with no problem, and set them up for failure and firing.
Plus, the entire argument that “there’s a bar raiser involved” is irrelevant to the point. Hire-and-fire doesn’t mean that HMs are trying to sneak unqualified candidates through the process. What it means is that HMs will take even qualified candidates, which pass the BR with no problem, and set them up for failure and firing.
> It is very easy to “game the system” and get candidates past the hiring loop, BR or not.
False.
Source: Am bar raiser. 9 year Amazonian, >500 interviews. Am a manager. I do performance reviews. Yes, there are unregretted attrition rates. But "hire to fire" is absolutely not a thing.
> HMs will take even qualified candidates, which pass the BR with no problem, and set them up for failure and firing.
That is so ridiculous people are laughing at this concept internally.
Hiring good people is HARD. Interviewing takes a lot of time.
Amazon sets very ambitious goals internally, and managers are behind on them from the day they got their head count, even it takes months to fill out.
If you have a viable quality candidate available, you TAKE THEM. Holy shit do you take them.
Hiring managers are DESPERATE For people. And they will beg barter and steal for hires, and try to convince bar raisers to lower the bar to get people in.
The idea that some teams have such low-pressure goals and their managers are so loyal to their team members that they would hire a candidate just to fire them is absolutely insanely false.
If managers don't meet their goals THEY eventually become "Unregretted attrition". So if a manager has head count to fill it's for a goal, and they are way more loyal to meeting those goals as a team than to protect a good team from unregretted attrition targts.
Which by the way is also not mandatory for every team. It needs to average out across Amazon, and directors/VPs will aggegate numbers and roll them up, but ultimately if you have a team full of rockstars, none of them will be marked for URA.
I don't care what is written on Blind. Those people are fucking liars. I don't believe a single one about hire to fire.
This article and the one yesterday is just pure libel.
False.
Source: Am bar raiser. 9 year Amazonian, >500 interviews. Am a manager. I do performance reviews. Yes, there are unregretted attrition rates. But "hire to fire" is absolutely not a thing.
> HMs will take even qualified candidates, which pass the BR with no problem, and set them up for failure and firing.
That is so ridiculous people are laughing at this concept internally.
Hiring good people is HARD. Interviewing takes a lot of time.
Amazon sets very ambitious goals internally, and managers are behind on them from the day they got their head count, even it takes months to fill out.
If you have a viable quality candidate available, you TAKE THEM. Holy shit do you take them.
Hiring managers are DESPERATE For people. And they will beg barter and steal for hires, and try to convince bar raisers to lower the bar to get people in.
The idea that some teams have such low-pressure goals and their managers are so loyal to their team members that they would hire a candidate just to fire them is absolutely insanely false.
If managers don't meet their goals THEY eventually become "Unregretted attrition". So if a manager has head count to fill it's for a goal, and they are way more loyal to meeting those goals as a team than to protect a good team from unregretted attrition targts.
Which by the way is also not mandatory for every team. It needs to average out across Amazon, and directors/VPs will aggegate numbers and roll them up, but ultimately if you have a team full of rockstars, none of them will be marked for URA.
I don't care what is written on Blind. Those people are fucking liars. I don't believe a single one about hire to fire.
This article and the one yesterday is just pure libel.
No one has said that Amazon itself has made Hire to fire a system. It doesn't make sense for a business to implement such a loss making strategy.
> Hiring managers are DESPERATE For people
You already admit to this. Now add to this the pressure on hiring managers to fire a certain number from his team. The only course of action he can take is to convince the bar raiser to accept the new hire even if the candidate is subpar.
It's strange that even after 500 interviews you have not this. I've been involved in less than a fifth of that interview number, and already seen this.
Even if you have not seen such cases you don't have any basis to claim that it doesn't happen. Logic and majority of evidence indicates that this takes place.
> Hiring managers are DESPERATE For people
You already admit to this. Now add to this the pressure on hiring managers to fire a certain number from his team. The only course of action he can take is to convince the bar raiser to accept the new hire even if the candidate is subpar.
It's strange that even after 500 interviews you have not this. I've been involved in less than a fifth of that interview number, and already seen this.
Even if you have not seen such cases you don't have any basis to claim that it doesn't happen. Logic and majority of evidence indicates that this takes place.
>The only course of action he can take is to convince the bar raiser to accept the new hire even if the candidate is subpar.
I suppose it is much easier to convince the bar raiser if the manager promises/explains that that hire isn't going to be here for long as for the bar raiser there is no point to object in such situation.
I suppose it is much easier to convince the bar raiser if the manager promises/explains that that hire isn't going to be here for long as for the bar raiser there is no point to object in such situation.
Jesus Christ the amount of unprofessional projection in this thread is insane.
No. That could not happen. Bar raisers are hiring to raise the bar for Amazon. Period.
No. That could not happen. Bar raisers are hiring to raise the bar for Amazon. Period.
> Hiring managers are DESPERATE For people. And they will beg barter and steal for hires, and try to convince bar raisers to lower the bar to get people in.
You just described something that comes very close to "hire to fire".
I've been in Amazon for long enough to see the hiring bar float up and down a lot, with big differences based on the team and the country.
Once you put together URA and the staggering attrition rate that exists in many high-pressure teams the managers are left with only two options:
A) Hire very skilled and productive engineers and then find ways to push them out of the company later on B) Let the bar slip sometimes and keep the good engineers for a bit longer
By all means, "A" happens far more frequently than "B" and, in many ways, it's even worse.
You just described something that comes very close to "hire to fire".
I've been in Amazon for long enough to see the hiring bar float up and down a lot, with big differences based on the team and the country.
Once you put together URA and the staggering attrition rate that exists in many high-pressure teams the managers are left with only two options:
A) Hire very skilled and productive engineers and then find ways to push them out of the company later on B) Let the bar slip sometimes and keep the good engineers for a bit longer
By all means, "A" happens far more frequently than "B" and, in many ways, it's even worse.
> You just described something that comes very close to "hire to fire".
Not at all. "Hire to fire" means that the person gets zero coaching because they are a sacrificial lamb. They have no chance to succeed even if they turn out to be skilled. "Holy shit I need to hire people" means that the bar is less consistent but every hire is intended to stick around. The latter puts people in a challenging position. The former is planned sabotage. Completely different things.
Not at all. "Hire to fire" means that the person gets zero coaching because they are a sacrificial lamb. They have no chance to succeed even if they turn out to be skilled. "Holy shit I need to hire people" means that the bar is less consistent but every hire is intended to stick around. The latter puts people in a challenging position. The former is planned sabotage. Completely different things.
> "Holy shit I need to hire people" means that the bar is less consistent
Not even. It's not the manager's job to determine the bar. It's the bar raiser's. And they are not under the same pressures.
We can and do veto hires below the bar.
Not even. It's not the manager's job to determine the bar. It's the bar raiser's. And they are not under the same pressures.
We can and do veto hires below the bar.
Get your head out of the sand. Amazon is a big place, and just because you are ignorant to it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
> Hiring good people is HARD.
Yes. You know what else is hard? Onboarding someone and training them to the same level as your tenured employees. When given two hard options:
1) hire someone qualified, invest lots of time to train them to the level of your current tenured team members, and then fire one of your tenured team members
2) hire someone mediocre that’s just good enough to pass the loop, don’t spend any time onboarding them, fire them, and keep your tenured team members
Which one do you think is easier? The answer should be clear. That’s what we’re talking about here.
Have you personally followed up with every single candidate you looped to see if they were fired soon after? Have you personally seen the data on every other BR in the company?
Most BRs aren’t you. Most BRs are wet noodles and will just go along with whatever the HM wants to do. And if you find one that isn’t a wet noodle, it’s trivially easy to find a different, more amiable BR to do your successive loops.
I applaud you, because you’re apparently good enough of a manager that you haven’t even considered hire-to-fire as an option you’re interested in doing. But just because you aren’t in this situation, that does not mean other managers in the company’s real so noble. Hire to fire absolutely does happen. I’ve seen it happen across multiple teams during my tenure. The fact that you’re plugging your ears and pretending it isn’t happening is just another example of the toxic culture that is dragging Amazon down. You need to accept that Amazon isn’t perfect, and that you aren’t fully in the know about how the company operates. Once you do that, maybe we can finally make some progress actually improving things at the company rather than just pretending that our own farts don’t stink.
> Hiring good people is HARD.
Yes. You know what else is hard? Onboarding someone and training them to the same level as your tenured employees. When given two hard options:
1) hire someone qualified, invest lots of time to train them to the level of your current tenured team members, and then fire one of your tenured team members
2) hire someone mediocre that’s just good enough to pass the loop, don’t spend any time onboarding them, fire them, and keep your tenured team members
Which one do you think is easier? The answer should be clear. That’s what we’re talking about here.
Have you personally followed up with every single candidate you looped to see if they were fired soon after? Have you personally seen the data on every other BR in the company?
Most BRs aren’t you. Most BRs are wet noodles and will just go along with whatever the HM wants to do. And if you find one that isn’t a wet noodle, it’s trivially easy to find a different, more amiable BR to do your successive loops.
I applaud you, because you’re apparently good enough of a manager that you haven’t even considered hire-to-fire as an option you’re interested in doing. But just because you aren’t in this situation, that does not mean other managers in the company’s real so noble. Hire to fire absolutely does happen. I’ve seen it happen across multiple teams during my tenure. The fact that you’re plugging your ears and pretending it isn’t happening is just another example of the toxic culture that is dragging Amazon down. You need to accept that Amazon isn’t perfect, and that you aren’t fully in the know about how the company operates. Once you do that, maybe we can finally make some progress actually improving things at the company rather than just pretending that our own farts don’t stink.
> Most BRs aren’t you. Most BRs are wet noodles and will just go along with whatever the HM wants to do.
Citation needed.
> 2) hire someone mediocre that’s just good enough to pass the loop, don’t spend any time onboarding them, fire them, and keep your tenured team members
You are clearly not a manager at Amazon and have no clue.
We throw people in the deep end. That, if anything, is our flaw.
Once again, if you are hiring its because you have head count. If you have head count it's for a goal. If you don't meet your goals, it's you who winds up as URA.
The best thing you can do for your team is ship your shit and get your top people promoted.
The way to do that is not waste a viable engineer on your team with a revolving door of mercy kills while you waste literally hours every week recruiting and interviewing folks you don't intend to keep.
The whole premise is so ridiculous, I can only shake my head.
Amazon has plenty of problems.
This isn't one of them.
Citation needed.
> 2) hire someone mediocre that’s just good enough to pass the loop, don’t spend any time onboarding them, fire them, and keep your tenured team members
You are clearly not a manager at Amazon and have no clue.
We throw people in the deep end. That, if anything, is our flaw.
Once again, if you are hiring its because you have head count. If you have head count it's for a goal. If you don't meet your goals, it's you who winds up as URA.
The best thing you can do for your team is ship your shit and get your top people promoted.
The way to do that is not waste a viable engineer on your team with a revolving door of mercy kills while you waste literally hours every week recruiting and interviewing folks you don't intend to keep.
The whole premise is so ridiculous, I can only shake my head.
Amazon has plenty of problems.
This isn't one of them.
Are you sure that all bar raisers are as stringent as you are? Are they all as steeped in the Amazon culture as you are? Is a favour from these managers not worth anything? Sympathy for a guy given "unreasonable" goals he can't complete without more team members, questionable as they may be?
As your answer depends on the people in this adversarial hiring system standing their ground rather than finding common ground. Even in companies far less bruising than Amazon, there is reason to cheat.
And add that to the desperation for bodies and you have a massive reason to find some way to hack the system.
As your answer depends on the people in this adversarial hiring system standing their ground rather than finding common ground. Even in companies far less bruising than Amazon, there is reason to cheat.
And add that to the desperation for bodies and you have a massive reason to find some way to hack the system.
Then explain to me how I was rated LE six months into the job when half the time I was without a manager and without ever causing a Sev2 let alone a Sev1?
There is definitive evidence. Many many threads of Amazon manager's specifying on Blind they're doing this exact hire-to-fire to save their team.
> Managers simply cannot hire people just to fire them because they do not have the final say in who gets hired and who doesn't. They can offer an opinion, the same as all the other 4-5 interviewers in the round, and then the bar raiser makes the final decision.
Having been part of debriefs, this is not correct. Bar Raiser is there to help the panel make a decision, not be the sole decision maker.
Having been part of debriefs, this is not correct. Bar Raiser is there to help the panel make a decision, not be the sole decision maker.
Bar Raiser may not make the final decision, but he/she can block a clearly bad hire.
Yes, perhaps I should have clarified. BR can only use the veto to make a HIRE to NO_HIRE decision. He doesn't have the veto to make a NO_HIRE to HIRE decision.
Not quite.
Source: Am bar raiser.
While bar raisers can't make hiring managers take a candidate they don't want, they can absolutely "veto to hire" for Amazon.
It just means that Recruiting needs to find another team, which the candidate is not guaranteed to be interested in. And that team's manager will also want to interview the candidate, so an offer is not guaranteed again.
Source: Am bar raiser.
While bar raisers can't make hiring managers take a candidate they don't want, they can absolutely "veto to hire" for Amazon.
It just means that Recruiting needs to find another team, which the candidate is not guaranteed to be interested in. And that team's manager will also want to interview the candidate, so an offer is not guaranteed again.
In other words, you can recommend recruiter to see if any other team wants to hire the candidate. Which makes sense from perspective of all. But you can't "veto" to hire which makes no sense.
Yes, agreed. I meant BR can't veto to hire for that team without HM being inclined.
i.e. without a collusion in people across teams "Hire to Fire" will not work. and for the problem to be systemic, collusion should be happening between thousands of people.
What I think is more likely is that managers are ready to take 90% candidates with hope of grooming them because they have a fallback if it was a wrong decision. Which is a positive thing in my 2c opinion.
What I think is more likely is that managers are ready to take 90% candidates with hope of grooming them because they have a fallback if it was a wrong decision. Which is a positive thing in my 2c opinion.
This story is extremely common, whether it be on Hacker News, Blind (which verifies employee emails), Reddit, or just anecdotes from former Amazon employees.
There may not be evidence of fire yet, but the smoke is very thick. BI did not pull this out of a hat. This claim has been around for a while.
There may not be evidence of fire yet, but the smoke is very thick. BI did not pull this out of a hat. This claim has been around for a while.
I don’t understand how this follows? This just means you are hiring eminently qualified candidates that are then later fired, regardless of how well they are actually doing.
There are two parts of this story.
1. Amazon has attrition metrics.
2. Hiring managers at Amazon are deliberately hiring weak people that they intend to later fire so they can protect the rest of their team.
The argument is that because managers can't actually unilaterally hire weak people that this strategy isn't really feasible.
There are still bad parts of #1, but that isn't the most controversial part of the story.
1. Amazon has attrition metrics.
2. Hiring managers at Amazon are deliberately hiring weak people that they intend to later fire so they can protect the rest of their team.
The argument is that because managers can't actually unilaterally hire weak people that this strategy isn't really feasible.
There are still bad parts of #1, but that isn't the most controversial part of the story.
2. is not accurate. Managers don't have to hire weak people to satisfy the quota. People are rarely ever put into PIP due to performance. Most of the times it is political.
But that's the whole point of the "Hire to Fire" story. The claims being made here are not that managers are firing people to meet quotas, but that they are deliberately sabotaging some of their hires so they have a sacrificial lamb to fire.
Deliberately sabotaging people does not require that the sabotaged person be under-performing or low quality. That’s the point. If a BR prevents you from hiring an unqualified person to be a sacrificial lamb, then you just hire a qualified person that can get past the BR to be a sacrificial lamb. The existence of BRs is absolutely not a foolproof check on this.
You might ask “why would an HM fire someone who is qualified to do the job?” The answer is that Amazon requires that someone must be fired. If you were an HM, who would you rather fire: an existing qualified tenured team member who already knows the ins-and-outs of your team and system, or a new qualified person who would require extensive training and time to get up to the level of the tenured employee? You’re going to pick the new person, even if they are qualified.
You might ask “why would an HM fire someone who is qualified to do the job?” The answer is that Amazon requires that someone must be fired. If you were an HM, who would you rather fire: an existing qualified tenured team member who already knows the ins-and-outs of your team and system, or a new qualified person who would require extensive training and time to get up to the level of the tenured employee? You’re going to pick the new person, even if they are qualified.
Plus the existing tenured knows how to survive and navigate the politics. If they didn't, they would've never reached tenure. This is why the average tenure is so low.
I’m available for hire to fire. You won’t need to onboard me, so I’ll introduce no unnecessary drag on your team. I won’t even show up to work, so I won’t be a headache to you. Just deposit a paycheck in my bank and fire me whenever you wish. Thanks!
Oh, I think I've worked with you before! Perhaps multiple times...
"We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions." https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/147819-we-judge-ourselves-b... ;)
Maybe someone needs to start a Firee-as-a-Service agency.
Damn, driftwood.com is taken
I'll be your Tony Clifton.
There should be a company that recruits people who agree to be fired at other companies.
They could all be stage artists who flail when learning the news and proclaim that they should have followed the company mantra and listened to their managers more carefully.
That would be hilarious.
They could all be stage artists who flail when learning the news and proclaim that they should have followed the company mantra and listened to their managers more carefully.
That would be hilarious.
Only in Silicon Valley...
It’s a big company, maybe my experience was unique. But nothing about this resonates with what I experienced at AWS. It was a relatively safe bet to assume your team would 2x in size over the coming 12-18mo. That’s definitely easier to do by not churning large numbers of people. We never hired someone we weren’t high conviction in. And I recall management calling out our very low rate of unregrettable attrition as a very positive thing in the annual review.
The article is rather empty. It just highlights that incentives create unexpected consequences.
But the truth is, if you're monitoring "URA", or other peripheral metrics, it means you're unable to actually measure performance. If you could, then URA wouldn't matter, because who cares if performance of a team was achieved by an old, stable team of company veterans or by an always evolving pack that has high attrition?
The other problem is cargo cult. Amazon is obviously a highly successful company, and so, because of this, everything they do will be regarded as a genius move that should be emulated everywhere else. But it's hard to know what contributes to success and to whar extent. For your business, maybe you don't need to use a door for a desk, or ask employees to piss in a bottle.
But the truth is, if you're monitoring "URA", or other peripheral metrics, it means you're unable to actually measure performance. If you could, then URA wouldn't matter, because who cares if performance of a team was achieved by an old, stable team of company veterans or by an always evolving pack that has high attrition?
The other problem is cargo cult. Amazon is obviously a highly successful company, and so, because of this, everything they do will be regarded as a genius move that should be emulated everywhere else. But it's hard to know what contributes to success and to whar extent. For your business, maybe you don't need to use a door for a desk, or ask employees to piss in a bottle.
Those are in fact the key Amazon best practices which other companies are most likely to adopt.
I expect we'll see some business best sellers promoting them as well.
I expect we'll see some business best sellers promoting them as well.
Unpopular opinion: This policy lets managers take bigger hiring risks. They can take a chance on diamonds-in-the-rough without feeling embarrassed for it.
Without this, managers are incentivized to just "hire the best", instead of hiring and developing under-valued talent. Amazon know to hire undervalued engineers and helps them punch above their weight. Compared to Google, who boast about paying top dollar for incrementally better engineers, Amazon's feat seems more valuable to me.
This also avoids homogenous teams. I would prefer to work in a team with a spread of skills over a crack-team of A+ players. This way, I get to develop people who want to improve, instead of being in a band of elite jocks.
Without this, managers are incentivized to just "hire the best", instead of hiring and developing under-valued talent. Amazon know to hire undervalued engineers and helps them punch above their weight. Compared to Google, who boast about paying top dollar for incrementally better engineers, Amazon's feat seems more valuable to me.
This also avoids homogenous teams. I would prefer to work in a team with a spread of skills over a crack-team of A+ players. This way, I get to develop people who want to improve, instead of being in a band of elite jocks.
A "Trial Period" where someone has a one shot (say every 5 years) at contract work for about 6 months is one thing.
Permatemps are another.
Hiring to fire just sounds bottom-rung skum level.
Permatemps are another.
Hiring to fire just sounds bottom-rung skum level.
I would guess it’s probably that, some kind of secret trial period, or some scheme to get out of paying benefits. I can’t imagine Amazon of all companies has a pattern of “accidentally” firing people they just hired.
This isn't just a truth about management, it's about human nature. The minute we start tracking a specific metric, it gets gamed into a useless metric. Look at the Cobra effect, politics, school districts 'reopening' for 1 day to get reopening funds, or a thousand other examples.
I don't think this is necessarily about tracking; companies should definitely track their attrition rate. The problem is setting an attrition target and penalizing managers if their numbers are below that target. Being too far above that target might indicate a problem with a manager, but being below it likely does not.
Generally you can see how company bosses view these policies by how they apply to top management. There never seems to be an evaluation metric for the the attrition rate of the c-suite for example. Just as those managers typically have much larger severance compensation than regular employees (relative to salary I mean).
Just going off my purely anecdotal experience with being fired as an underperformer, most companies don't do well in the improvement/mentoring aspect with underperformers like myself. I think part of the problem is that many of these calls for improvement or churn come from HR and they're handled by folks who aren't trained in mentoring and skill training. I think if there was more emphasis on helping supervisors actually learn how to mentor and train to improve underperformers to get them up to the same level as the rest of their team then there would be fewer articles like this. But it seems like it's easier to throw people away than to help improve them.
Let's view this practice in the light of another HN truism: The traditional Big-tech hiring practice (e.g. in person whiteboarding) does a terrible job at predicting future job performance.
In light of this, let's assume for the sake of argument that in any technical hiring practice, 20% of the candidates that get through are going to underperform. Given this, it is a sensible approach to inflate headcounts by 25%, and couple this with a mandate to cull underperforming employees, allowing the org to converge on the result you'd get with a hiring process that perfectly predicts future job performance.
One group that benefits from this strategy is developers as a whole, particularly those who don't interview well. It gives more developers a spot at the company and opportunity to prove themselves.
Not to diminish the many comments about Goodhart's law. There's a lot of ways this scheme can cause more harm than good. Having per-team/per-manager quotas is also problematic, and shows an ignorance of basic statistics. Even if you know that 20% of your employees are underperforming, you shouldn't expect them to be evenly dispersed across many "two pizza" teams.
In light of this, let's assume for the sake of argument that in any technical hiring practice, 20% of the candidates that get through are going to underperform. Given this, it is a sensible approach to inflate headcounts by 25%, and couple this with a mandate to cull underperforming employees, allowing the org to converge on the result you'd get with a hiring process that perfectly predicts future job performance.
One group that benefits from this strategy is developers as a whole, particularly those who don't interview well. It gives more developers a spot at the company and opportunity to prove themselves.
Not to diminish the many comments about Goodhart's law. There's a lot of ways this scheme can cause more harm than good. Having per-team/per-manager quotas is also problematic, and shows an ignorance of basic statistics. Even if you know that 20% of your employees are underperforming, you shouldn't expect them to be evenly dispersed across many "two pizza" teams.
This is something I try to mention a lot, but mostly focused on the importance of onboarding.
Either, your company makes sure that almost everybody contributes above their salary, or you need to fire often without hurting your "culture".
Either, your company makes sure that almost everybody contributes above their salary, or you need to fire often without hurting your "culture".
Discussed yesterday:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27369910
Imagine the lawsuits from something like this. Company's hiring people to meet a quota while planning to fire them. That is like borderline violating someone's human rights in terms of psychological manipulation.
Yes, there will be psychological issues from a short stint at a large company. But changing job is not just emotional, and affects other people too.
1. Would having a big company name (FAANG) on a CV be a good thing for finding future jobs?
2. Would the income from FAANG encourage fast-forwarding other life goals, such as starting a family?
3. What about foreigners who need the job in order to keep a visa? If losing the job means leaving the country, that new family might be separated.
Refusing to hire migrants at all isn't an acceptable solution either. There are many talented people who are doing everything possible just to have a chance to live in the country, who are systematically excluded by recruiters and HR. The labour market is not a capitalist free market.
1. Would having a big company name (FAANG) on a CV be a good thing for finding future jobs?
2. Would the income from FAANG encourage fast-forwarding other life goals, such as starting a family?
3. What about foreigners who need the job in order to keep a visa? If losing the job means leaving the country, that new family might be separated.
Refusing to hire migrants at all isn't an acceptable solution either. There are many talented people who are doing everything possible just to have a chance to live in the country, who are systematically excluded by recruiters and HR. The labour market is not a capitalist free market.
Amazon knows very well how to protect itself. Most of the times you are so fed up that you will leave yourself when you are in Focus/Dev plan.
I’m curious about if Amazon HR/recruiting cares about their poor reputation on here and places like Blind. Do they worry about it?
FYI to others, Glassdoor ratings don't mean anything. Amazon is dead last in company reputation on Blind for employees, by far. If senior management isn't aware of Amazon's truly awful reputation in engineering circles, they are incompetent.
Any current/ former Amazon employees have advice for future (Amazon) employees a little jarred by this and uncertain about their standing coming in?
I’d imagine for the less senior folks it also might be hard to initially get a read of the room when everything’s new and potentially remote.
On a side note, I recently spoke with several non-dev friends (sales, finance, etc.) about the idea of URAs and they made it sound the norm in their worlds. Honest question: Could it be just especially shocking for those of us potentially accustomed to “cushy” tech jobs.
I’d imagine for the less senior folks it also might be hard to initially get a read of the room when everything’s new and potentially remote.
On a side note, I recently spoke with several non-dev friends (sales, finance, etc.) about the idea of URAs and they made it sound the norm in their worlds. Honest question: Could it be just especially shocking for those of us potentially accustomed to “cushy” tech jobs.
I do wonder how common this is in non-US based Amazon offices as well. Firing people in EU countries is often not as easy.
I couldn't see this practice working in Japan either. Companies here tend to avoid firing people because they'll be obliged to support that person for a set number of months while also exposing themselves to litigation. Really curious to hear more from someone working in their Tokyo office.
If you have another offer from FAANG-like company, then you weigh your risk of survival and evaluate accordingly.
I believe the term "Perverse incentive" applies here. I think many people have heard of the story of the British government trying to get rid of Cobras in Delhi, so they offered a reward for each Cobra tail.
Enterprising people started to breed Cobras for a little extra income. Thus a program designed to get rid of "bad actors" actually bred bad actors.
Various versions of this story have been told. Another famous one is about rat tails having a reward, thus breeding rats became popular.
Write up of the above and some more examples are on Wikipedia.
Enterprising people started to breed Cobras for a little extra income. Thus a program designed to get rid of "bad actors" actually bred bad actors.
Various versions of this story have been told. Another famous one is about rat tails having a reward, thus breeding rats became popular.
Write up of the above and some more examples are on Wikipedia.
Many metrics are also created just for the need for metrics.
I am reading a draft of "development metrics" for my company and "frequency of code commits" is right at the top for quantifying developer productivity.
The only reason this document exists is that generating quarterly goals is also a metric, which is why I am not afraid of lazy productivity metrics being implemented.
I am reading a draft of "development metrics" for my company and "frequency of code commits" is right at the top for quantifying developer productivity.
The only reason this document exists is that generating quarterly goals is also a metric, which is why I am not afraid of lazy productivity metrics being implemented.
294 comment thread from earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27369910
"You say jump, I say 'how high'?"
Yes, it's just a line from a trite song you saw through even when you were in high school. But the awful truth is that it captures the reality of the corporate mindset very, very succinctly. Give people enough money and security... and whatever bullshit you ask them to sign onto, no matter how abusive and destructive it is to other people... they will happily come on board. And push the sleep button ever so firmly whatever parts of their brains might have (in a younger self) screamed out in protest.
"Hire people just to fire them, Mr Bezos? It's not exactly what you're asking us to do of course, but if one reads between the lines in these mandatory attrition guidelines... okay, sure, we get it. And sure, it will inevitably lead to ruined careers, mental breakdowns, more than a few divorces, maybe a suicide or two... but hey, as long as the music's playing, we gotta dance, right?"
It's just the way things work, and have always worked in hierarchical social structures.
Yes, it's just a line from a trite song you saw through even when you were in high school. But the awful truth is that it captures the reality of the corporate mindset very, very succinctly. Give people enough money and security... and whatever bullshit you ask them to sign onto, no matter how abusive and destructive it is to other people... they will happily come on board. And push the sleep button ever so firmly whatever parts of their brains might have (in a younger self) screamed out in protest.
"Hire people just to fire them, Mr Bezos? It's not exactly what you're asking us to do of course, but if one reads between the lines in these mandatory attrition guidelines... okay, sure, we get it. And sure, it will inevitably lead to ruined careers, mental breakdowns, more than a few divorces, maybe a suicide or two... but hey, as long as the music's playing, we gotta dance, right?"
It's just the way things work, and have always worked in hierarchical social structures.
A few years ago, when I raised Amazon's practice of stack-ranking as a bad-culture reason I wouldn't want to go there, an employee there said Amazon had discontinued that practice, and I was relieved.
I wonder whether the employee knew of this alleged URA metric target:
> One of the key pieces of Amazon's review process is a metric called "unregretted attrition rate (URA)," which represents the percentage of employees managers aren't sad to see leave the company — whether they part ways voluntarily or otherwise. [...] Even the most senior executives at Amazon, including incoming CEO Andy Jassy, closely track URA, according to internal documents obtained by Insider. Jassy, for example, has a "6% goal" for URA, which means he's expected to replace 6% of his team through "unregretted" departures on what appears to be an annual basis. [...] Several sources said some leaders may have a URA goal that was even higher than the 6% followed by Jassy.
(quoting article linked from TFA: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-tracks-unregretted-at... )
I wonder whether the employee knew of this alleged URA metric target:
> One of the key pieces of Amazon's review process is a metric called "unregretted attrition rate (URA)," which represents the percentage of employees managers aren't sad to see leave the company — whether they part ways voluntarily or otherwise. [...] Even the most senior executives at Amazon, including incoming CEO Andy Jassy, closely track URA, according to internal documents obtained by Insider. Jassy, for example, has a "6% goal" for URA, which means he's expected to replace 6% of his team through "unregretted" departures on what appears to be an annual basis. [...] Several sources said some leaders may have a URA goal that was even higher than the 6% followed by Jassy.
(quoting article linked from TFA: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-tracks-unregretted-at... )
We talk about management as if they were appointed by corporate divine right. These too are just people, and their job is also just a job. These ‘clever’ policies of top-down social manipulation often fail because there is no such thing as top-down execution of policy. All action in any system or organization is bottom-up. This is tautological. But information only propagates top-down. This is because of destructive mixing on the way up. So any policy that is designed to expect execution according to dictate is bound to fail, as individual actors will seek only their own best benefit and security. This has broad implications across business and politics. Most strategy games (e.g. Civilization) also help imprint this fallacy, and history books can’t avoid simplifying explanations that require omnipotence of a single agent. Its probably more reasonable to say that, while information asymmetry tends to create single points of accumulation for tremendous wealth and influence, the same principle in reverse also says that these are somewhat random choices, and they actually have no real power to do anything but filter, accumulate, and distribute the benefit of actions that that flow through them.
Your point about history being oversimplified is pertinent, but pretending a company is actually run bottom-up is just silly.
Incentives still matter, and are very much driven top down. If you are incentivized to let go of 10% of your team, then that's what you will do.
Incentives still matter, and are very much driven top down. If you are incentivized to let go of 10% of your team, then that's what you will do.
Maybe the point is that central power is always indirect through manipulation of information and financial incentive, the definition of finance being a centralized accumulation of future benefit. Direct power would be to hold a gun to someone’s head and tell them to do something. But the same power doesn’t go along with an email. The power of that email is complicated because it depends on what specific threats or benefits are promised, and how it is measured, and by whom. So it’s very easy for a system of incentives to directly contradict the command given by a policy. For instance, if I tell everybody to nominate the worst performer on their team, who will be fired by popular vote every week, it won’t be long before they all wise up and start voting in their own best interests, which will either be the top performer, or the least loyal to themselves, which would be the new hire, which is exactly what this article is about. The lowest performer, however, is the most loyal, and the strongest political player. Now imagine that they vote for the best performer to become their boss. The most loyal person is getting elected for that role.
This seems odd to me because the result would be obvious, unless Amazon is turning a blind eye to it.
If a team has thirty members, hires three, and fires those same three by the end of the year, that's suspicious, but obviously they could just have had a bad run. If it happens three years in a row, or happens on five out of eleven teams in a group of 300, then that's a real problem. But Amazon would have to be blind not to notice.
If a team has thirty members, hires three, and fires those same three by the end of the year, that's suspicious, but obviously they could just have had a bad run. If it happens three years in a row, or happens on five out of eleven teams in a group of 300, then that's a real problem. But Amazon would have to be blind not to notice.
Amazon wasn't the first company to practice this and it's not the only to do so today. The tighter the bonds within a team, the more likely it will hire-to-fire. They hire-to-fire so as to keep up with HR policy while protecting the legacy team members. New team members are socially rejected from the club as there is no point in making friends with the temporary help.
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a useful measure.
Anyone who has ever worked at Amazon and participated in the interview process will know how absurd this claim is. As if somehow a hiring manager could collude with the BR and the rest of the loop and hire someone who really didn’t meet the bar just so they can turn around and fire them. Why do people immediately believe everything they read on branded journalism sites like Inc? Is Inc really a bastion of integrity that is trying to expose a deep dark secret at a major tech company or are they selling clicks?
Unregretted Attrition Rate assumes managers can tell the difference between a bad employee and a good employee. My experience is that 90% of managers don't have that skill.
Is the guy at Amazon who prepares the document for the URA policy, make sure they're applied, etc is also under the URA rule ?
Where is the evidence this "Hire to Fire" practice exists? I can't see any in this article?
Either you can accept it as a logical conclusion, or ask around.
Suppose you are the manager and are happy with your team. But you have to meet the URA quota. What's the best solution you can think of?
And how much effort are you going to put in for the solution?
Suppose you are the manager and are happy with your team. But you have to meet the URA quota. What's the best solution you can think of?
And how much effort are you going to put in for the solution?
Many many threads of Amazon manager's specifying on Blind they're doing this exact hire-to-fire to save their team.
Does Blind actually verify that they are managers?
I would start from the assumption that Amazon senior execs (being a lot less stupid and naive than y'all seem to think) know perfectly well what tactics URA targets incentivize, and go from there
This article is shockingly light on sources, so I would call it more of a hypothetical opinion piece... which seems to just reinforce a truism about management metrics.
These are all signs of a vast over supply of talent. I can’t imagine anyone would willingly work at such a company unless they had no other choice.
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Seems like it would be easy to detect if last in first out was a pervasive pattern instead of firing based on performance.
I don't get it. Why a minimum attrition? What could be the possible purpose? Wouldn't you want a maximum?
I always do super crummy on interviews but usually end up being a star performer at places I work.
maybe this is my ticket in...
maybe this is my ticket in...
An an Amazon employee I can say this absolutely happens, and not only that, some managers really think they are upholding the Amazon bar by pipping people out early. "He didn't meet the bar" is something ive heard multiple times after someone was only a month on the job. Not only that, teammates often dont help eachother, old systems are extremely complex. There is very little sympathy, and massive data collection about employees and their productivity.
I've noticed the same, and spent years in Apple's engineering, which was healthy as a culture and very very positively run, so the contrast is immediately visible and the blatant lying about leadership principles and hiring and developing the best are at once laughably obvious and super dysfunctional.
There was an earlier discussion today on this same story where a comment said that Amazon interviews include a “bar raiser” who isn’t the hiring manager who ultimately makes the hiring decision. It seems like the “hire to fire” story is just sensationalist clickbait.
The comment you are referring to was nonsense. Bar raisers are not some magical fairy dust that prevents hire-to-fire, and in practice they are not usually the one who ultimately makes the decision, the HM is.
I've seen cases where out of 2 out of 4 people are not inclined (including BR), but still hiring manager convinces everyone that the candidate should be hired with the assurance of focusing more on the candidate to make them meet the bar.
In my humble opinion it is not Amazon who is at fault here, but our flawed human nature. Management set goals in good faith and with honorable intentions but then people started to optimize for the numbers more than for the spirit of the goal. I’ve read someone referencing the cobra effect here and it’s a very good example of loopholes causing more harm than if no policy had been implemented. Whenever a company plays with compensation and bonuses, it’s always a tricky game.
PS my SO works at AWS and has never heard of this "practice". I wonder how common it really is. Maybe this is all click-bait. From what I’ve seen AWS hiring processes are stellar.
PS my SO works at AWS and has never heard of this "practice". I wonder how common it really is. Maybe this is all click-bait. From what I’ve seen AWS hiring processes are stellar.
AWS tends to have different policies from the rest of amazon (such as different promo requirements). Not sure if that's true in this case.
I recently got turned down from a team lead role at AWS and the only feedback i got was that I seemed technically strong and understood performance management in theory but had not performance managed enough members of my team. The problem i have with this is that IMHO if I'm performance managing someone it's more than likely mine or the organisations failing; we've hired or promoted someone into the wrong role, or we've created an environment for failure or something had drastically changed in the individuals life. Fortunately for me these have not really happened to any great extent but that was unfortunate for my AWS interview.
I've a suspicion that I rubbed the group lead the wrong as I asked him a couple of times, non confrontationally and from a place of genuine interest, what he did to set the direction of the group and he didn't really have any answer, still not sure what he actually does.
I've a suspicion that I rubbed the group lead the wrong as I asked him a couple of times, non confrontationally and from a place of genuine interest, what he did to set the direction of the group and he didn't really have any answer, still not sure what he actually does.
The promo requirements are not different? The levels are calibrated to be the same across the whole company
Former AWS dev here -- the bar is the same but the workloads can be so insane that you meet the requirements faster than anywhere else in the company (there was one engineer that made principal like 5-6 years out of undergrad, which means they would've had to have been promoted every 1-2 years assuming they were hired as an L4). I think parent comment might be referring to more lenient stack ranking policies, I never experienced any of it during my time there but then again I saw teams with 20-30% annual turnover rates so no need to force people out when they're already showing themselves the door I guess :)
>made principal like 5-6 years out of undergrad
looking at our (we're naturally not FAANG, not even close) dept recent big promotions around - a principal 6 year out of undergrad. No need for insane workloads, just great soft skills around high management people, and the lack of experience and knowledge just helps to always be in enthusiastic agreement with instead of questioning that high management's not smart, to say the least, decisions .
looking at our (we're naturally not FAANG, not even close) dept recent big promotions around - a principal 6 year out of undergrad. No need for insane workloads, just great soft skills around high management people, and the lack of experience and knowledge just helps to always be in enthusiastic agreement with instead of questioning that high management's not smart, to say the least, decisions .
At Amazon, principal means you can direct organization wide technical strategy, implement the foundations and mentor others. It’s an insane bar internally.
in our case that specific person now owns all the aspects of a huge platform (~400 people), right next after the VP of our org (and being an engineer on a pet project of that VP is what resulted in such a career jump). The platform of course is just nowhere to be of any success - it is an unmanageable pile of modern sounding technologies (based on k8s of course; and you name any buzzword - we have it) done in our very "enterprisey" way - yet "we're making progress".
I actually was a principal at one mid-size a decade ago. I went there as an IC and was very clear about that, and they gave me the high level just to bring me in. Nevertheless the principal related crap - powerpointing/etc. - was creeping in, and after the first yearly vest i left, despite all the raises in the counter to keep me, for a normal senior engineer position at another place. 2 years later they tried to bring me back as a chief architect to build a new platform, and i almost went there as the project sounded great, just in the last moment right before accepting the offer i really remembered why i left - the technical work will be overwhelmed by the "organizational" work.
I actually was a principal at one mid-size a decade ago. I went there as an IC and was very clear about that, and they gave me the high level just to bring me in. Nevertheless the principal related crap - powerpointing/etc. - was creeping in, and after the first yearly vest i left, despite all the raises in the counter to keep me, for a normal senior engineer position at another place. 2 years later they tried to bring me back as a chief architect to build a new platform, and i almost went there as the project sounded great, just in the last moment right before accepting the offer i really remembered why i left - the technical work will be overwhelmed by the "organizational" work.
I have multiple friends at AWS and they work 35 hour weeks, around the same as me. With that said I’ve noticed very fast promo cycles in nearly all Tier 1 service supporting teams, both AWS and CDO.
Man I should've done my research before joining, my team was regularly pulling 70+ hour weeks including weekends for the first four/five months I was there (granted we were understaffed and behind schedule for launch at re:Invent at the time). Grateful for the experience because everything else feels like a breeze afterwards, but also definitely never putting up with that again lol
> Management set goals in good faith and with honorable intentions
If so, then they are incompetent at setting goals. The goal should be for teams to be at or below a specified attrition rate, not exactly at it.
If so, then they are incompetent at setting goals. The goal should be for teams to be at or below a specified attrition rate, not exactly at it.
> In my humble opinion it is not Amazon who is at fault here, but our flawed human nature.
Good management should be taking human nature into account.
Good management should be taking human nature into account.
From what I understand, AWS does this at the org level, i.e., an org is expected to have a certain URA rate. This is not an unusual policy in the tech world.
Personally, I hate systems like this. I can’t think of a quicker way to kill any loyalty or good will I might have to an employer.
Apart from this I think it encourages bad hiring, since hey - we can always just fire em. But on the other hand, a ‘firing people is impossible’ culture has its own problems.
Personally, I hate systems like this. I can’t think of a quicker way to kill any loyalty or good will I might have to an employer.
Apart from this I think it encourages bad hiring, since hey - we can always just fire em. But on the other hand, a ‘firing people is impossible’ culture has its own problems.
It's management's responsibility to have enough of a clue to look at their employees and determine that they're gaming the system. If they can't do that, then they shouldn't be management.
This "stuffing the deck" used to happen at Microsoft too before they dropped stack ranking. It meant any fresh hire could never truly know if they passed interviews or if they were setup to fail. It is one of the many absurdities caused by stack ranking.
A good manager will collect and maintain a good team. Asking everyone to churn their teams means a healthy team of power players is just not allowed.
Beyond hiring to fire, having under performers is also a powerful tactic in stack ranking. It allows managers to reward their power members with more raises.
Frankly any aspect of stack ranking is a curse. It sounds great from the top level but currupts companies from the bottom up.