tyuqfromhere's comments

Is that how you would feel if "we were talking about your favorite high school teacher who just had their career destroyed because some dude needed to get a few extra [upvotes on HN]"?

Saying "my statement may or may not be right, I'll let the general public decide" is lazy and shirking responsibility. If you have reason to believe that your statements are wrong, you should retract those statements or at least put a disclaimer on them. I think that's the bar you would hold Inc to, and you should hold yourself to it as well.

Metrics are quotas at Amazon. There is a literally a training during your onboarding about Amazon's "metrics culture", and how the only reason you track a metric is if you have a corresponding target for that metric, as well as someone responsible for ensuring that the metric reaches that target. Amazon doesn't just track random metrics for the hell of it. Those metrics and targets are used either for or against you during annual performance reviews, and URA/RA targets are one of the most important metrics for manager-track employees. If that isn't a 'quota', then I don't know what would be.

It's fine to analyze Inc's reporting with a skeptical eye, but did it strike you at all that you're essentially doing the same thing you're accusing Inc of doing (taking information at face value without digging too deep), but with the parent's comment?

Parent's comment is not fully correct, yet you are taking it at face value and not looking "too deep underneath the carpet", and in some ways are "pick[ing] up someone else's lie and expand[ing] on it without bothering the verify the fundamental thesis".

The fact of the matter is that the Amazon HMs who decide on firing often are the same people who decide on hiring. Amazon may desire for that not to be true, but in practice, it is. And GP's comment doesn't actually provide any evidence against that.

I've added more context here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27371455, but the gist is that Bar Raisers are supposed to be an independent hiring evaluator, but IME they often just serve as meeting facilitators that will just back up whatever decision the HM makes, which makes the HM the ultimate decider.

In this context, it refers to the tenure of the Amazonian. Full time employees that are <5 years tenure have a badge with a blue border, those with 5-10 years tenure have an orangeish border, 10-15 have a red border, etc...

Orange/red badges are typically a big deal because it is very rare for people to last at Amazon past even 2-3 years, nevermind 5 years.

You're speaking from a position of how the process is supposed to work, but not from how it actually does work. I think you seriously underestimate how much power an HM can have in the process if they have a little bit of experience.

In practice, the HM absolutely does make the decision. If the candidate is seriously "below the bar", then the BR might strongly assert that they will not be hired. But in reality, most BRs do not actually uphold a very high bar. The BR's main function is to act as a facilitator during the debriefs, but if the HR feels strongly one way or another, the BR will almost always back up the HM.

If an HM wants to hire someone just so they can fire them, all they have to do is find a mediocre candidate that a BR will not feel strongly about, and then during the debrief they just say that they know the needs of their team better than the BR does, and the BR will say "ok, I'll go along with your decision". It's as easy as that.

This is especially so on teams that use the same BR over and over - hiring teams can actually influence which BR they use for loops, so if they find one that consistently disagrees with the HM, they can simply just find a new BR that is more agreeable.