[ballenf]

But it sounds like he won? He got his $200k and found a new job before any PIP was implemented? Why would his manager have been upset if they were actually trying to force him out?

Surely HR knows how long it takes to exit someone and if they wanted to keep the $200k they would have started the process earlier?

[anyoneamous]

The manager wasn't the one doing the forcing - the overall stack-ranking system was, and the manager was just employing the required level of doublethink to convince themselves the employee was both suitable for firing and also worth trying to retain.

[cornholio]

I disagree, this is not some junior manager drinking the company cool aid. They are a middle manager with hundreds of indirect reports - in HR, no less - fully aware of what they're doing and with a metric to hit.

So they lined up potential candidates, made them the same deal and tested their level of docility and loyalty to himself. Some of the candidates demurred and they got the boot, the author played the loyalty game and then "backstabbed" his superior and screwed the stats.

[hobs]

So, good? The employee recognizes that the employer is just screwing around with everyone, seems like a FAFO situation; I hope Amazon has this happen endlessly.

[okaramian]

To the point here: I think people think these managers are in a position of real power. They are not. They are cogs in the wheel as are their subordinates. It's entirely possible this manager wasn't even the one doing the direct ranking, sometimes this roles up to levels beyond where the manager can give real input. Someone has to get pipped as the system demands it, it happened to land on the person in the article. The manager is then trying to get them out of it because they believe they don't actually require the pip.

So this is both a failure of the manager (it is their job to navigate the system and boost their reports during stack ranking), and also a failure of the system as a whole (this person probably shouldn't have been pipped).

I don't think it's so much doublethink as it is this manager is trying to balance competing interests in their very immediate sphere.

[Obscurity4340]

How can they be maintaining these completely antithetitical interests, like wjy do they want to arbitrarily fire the person at all if they have already evaluated that person to be worthy of retention? Why is this even on the table in the absence of any failure to meet whatever metrics?

Is it just a big power play that keeps rolling in the expectation of bottomless/infinite talenent and pepetual inflow/attrition?

[nerdbert]

I assume there are different competing priorities at play that converge in particularly dumb ways sometimes.

Some stakeholders latched onto the idea of churning some % of staff each year in an effort to, I guess, eventually filter the entire human population for the best possible employees.

Some people want to make it look like their HR team is doing a lot of useful stuff.

Some people want to boost their own department's metrics.

Some people want to work with a team to achieve actual business goals.

[anyoneamous]

> Is it just a big power play that keeps rolling in the expectation of bottomless/infinite talenent and pepetual inflow/attrition?

This has always been my interpretation. The "everybody is replaceable" mindset comes from Amazon retail warehouses, and bled into the rest of the company.

[Obscurity4340]

Even Bezos?

[anyoneamous]

"Everybody" meaning "the normie plebs who work for a living".

[Obscurity4340]

I think I did read about there having been extensive succession plans and efforts established already

[1000100_1000101]

> Why would his manager have been upset if they were actually trying to force him out?

The manager made up reasons to place this person in the lowest rating, threatening w/ a PIP. Why? Perhaps to have a warning on file. Perhaps to try to persuade an even higher level of performance than what they'd previously considered excellent... who knows.

The manager being upset shows the PIP threat wasn't justified, as you noted. You don't get upset when a non-performer chooses to leave. Why would anyone continue to work under a manager that unjustly threatens them, or tries to motivate performance w/ fear? No, leaving was the right choice, even if they "won".

To me, it sounds like the manager is the one who really needs to go. Perhaps this really isn't Amazon policy at all, and this manager is being overly tyrannical and training his staff to be the same. We'll never know. On the other hand, Amazon never said what the "number of inaccuracies" were. It could very well be this tale is actually very close to policy too. Heck, it could be the actual policy exactly... zero IS a number after all.

[dtmooreiv]

His manager was likely upset because the guy left before he was put on the PIP and so wouldn't count towards the HR VP's (and by extension his manager's) 6% goal.

[DanAtC]

The manager was upset because leaving before PIP is regretted attrition which is a metric the manager themselves could get PIPed for.

[JohnFen]

That doesn't sound like he won to me. It sounds like he managed to get a good consolation prize, though.

[ghaff]

Most people are probably going to eventually leave their company anyway. If they can do so more or less on their own terms, that counts as more of a win than a loss.