[nefarioustim]

Seconded.

Having been a Senior Engineering Manager in an Amazon business, I can confirm that the stack ranking process is the single worse treatment of employees I have ever experienced. Furthermore, it is not based on an honest and truthful assessment of individuals, but rather who is best at standing up in a room full of managers across one division and arguing that their developers are better than someone else's, even if they've never met or seen the output of the developers they are arguing against. In fact, I've even seen people judged on the _amount_ of commits they've made (not the quality) and the _amount_ of wiki edits they have published.

It was the single worst employment period of my life, resulting in depression and stress that was off any scale you'd care to mention. I cannot recommend enough that you avoid at all costs.