[thinkling]

Thanks for the inside insight.

I'm surprised how few comments are written with the prior that Amazon managers aren't stupid or uninformed about how incentives work.

My guess would be that someone created the leaderboard without a lot of consultation with managers, and that some employees feel a competitive urge to try to "win" the leaderboard by burning tokens.

[johnbarron]

Your comment is the equivalent of stating, that Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy, do not really know their employees are carrying around urine bottles.

[thinkling]

Mmm, no, I don’t think it’s equivalent. I think they know that if you make the work hard, some employees will have trouble keeping up and will do things like peeing in bottles. And they’re OK with that, because they think there are enough people who can keep up that they can push the weaker people out. I think they believe that the peeing in bottle is relatively rare. I’m unsure whether that’s right or not. It’s been reported that it happens, but I have no sense whether it’s common.

[yfw]

Wilful ignorance much?

[geodel]

Management is told its a homebrew. Very commonly used by developers all over the industry.