That was exactly his point though. He hoped that he would get promoted by doing an awesome job, by going beyond what was merely expected as "done".
I know where he's coming from. I've had one job in my career that was exactly like that (and I miss it dearly). I never really worked on promotions while on that job. I was very passionate about the stuff we were doing and made sure we were always building the right product for our customers, made sure our code was excellent, made sure we fixed bugs quickly, etc. And I didn't do those things by going around politicking. I just came in every day, sat at my desk, wrote code, had technical discussions with other folks, did code reviews, etc.
I got two promotions while on that job. They always came as a surprise and came with a brief talk with management about how much they appreciated my contributions and my technical skills.
These days I just dread all the career stuff. Thankfully I'm in a position at my current company where I can just "park" for the rest of my time there if I want to. The last thing I want to do when going to work is politicking and forking alliances and whatnot. I want my technical work to speak for itself. If that's not enough, I don't care. I make more than enough to make a good living.
I was frustrated by the expectation to focus on documenting to get a promotion. I don't think it is a good practice and was surprised to see that:
> focusing on that process (promotion) is not a distraction from doing your job: it is doing your job!
Seems like you understanding of "doing job" is different. To make it clear - I used to be promoted by helping a business grow - complete activities on time on an excellent manner, optimize, reduce costs, propose new features / work on POC.
Not by writing self-promotional documents.
> Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted.
Unfortunately, it is not by "exceeding", but documenting that you have exceeded, and knowing how to document it right, sometimes not really exceeding at all.
> It seems like the author's idea of "doing your job" was different than his employer's, so of course he had a bad time.
Do you think I came from Tel Aviv to Vancouver AND brought my family to just "do the job" and not to exceed? And, moreover, write and share an article about that? No.
>Not by writing self-promotional documents.
>> Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted.
>Unfortunately, it is not by "exceeding", but documenting that you have exceeded, and knowing how to document it right, sometimes not really exceeding at all.
You're stating the problem to be documenting. Yes, Amazon, I, and many others think that having concrete examples and data outlined explicitly is a good way to make these important decisions. Otherwise you have nepotism and gut-feeling type promotions for employees. If you thought about this more, would you really want promotions handed out randomly? How else do you show you're "completing activities, optimize, reduce costs, work on POC". Do you want to leave this all up to one person, your manager? What if they have a slight against you? Do you want your manager to do the work of documenting your progression? You still run into the single point of failure problem, on top of your manager's workload increasing for each developer, on top of them usually being already busier. Amazon et. al. constantly seek data on doing these types of things better, but you haven't proposed much of an alternative.
(Disclaimer: Amazon employee, opinions are my own, not my employer's)
Probably it's better than other processes, but still, it has few problems, and I tried to point them out: 1. It doesn't solve "nepotism" problem - especially at the higher levels 2. It puts employee's focus on promotion and the document, but not the actual job
There are much better places to work for in Vancouver (my opinion :). Hopefully you'll land in one (should have landed that before leaving Amazon :) ). There are definitely places with better management and where good work is noticed. That said you need to be aware of the cultural differences and that things work differently than the way you're used to. I was really lucky in terms of landing in a place with good culture and a team that I really got along with, but still there were culture clashes initially (and probably to some degree still are).
Anyways, good luck at work and surviving the grey winter ;) Let me know how to get in touch if you're interested in some more local advice.
Amazon is a giant machine with hundreds of thousands of employees. How many SDE 1s do they hire Evey year globally? Hundreds? More? How do you possibly treat them all fairly when no single person has met them all?
The result is that companies like that become heavily systematized. Even if your boss wanted to promote you, they would have to defend the promotion to their boss which requieres evidence. And that boss has to justify all their promotions to their director or VP by demonstrating how they are making an impact across multiple teams - thus more evidence.
All that takes documentation. There are just too many people involved for promotions to be based on personal relationships.
What if one boss is super promotion-happy and another never promotes? How do you fix it? Because this happens all the time. Thus you need documentation to justify why each person gets promoted so there's at least so level of fairness - even if that documentation is totally detached from how you feel you do on a day to day basis.
Yes, big tech companies are soulless machines and you are right to leave if you don't want to live that life. The only way to succeed there is to learn how to play the game to some extent. It is just how it is. No one else has found a less terrible system that seems to work much better when that many people are involved and are competing with each other for money and promotions.
This was apparently a relatively recent change. Until about a year ago, apparently managers wrote this document. Previous feedback that the promotion process seemed random, obscure, and allowed favoritism resulted in this change being made, where employees are involved in writing their promotion document.
However, the intention isn't to focus more on documenting your promotion than doing the right things.
At least in our office, senior management is aware of the problems that have been introduced, and trying to find solutions.
> Not by writing self-promotional documents.
If you think the most important thing for promotion is writing your promotion document, you have either been misled by your manager, or you have fallen into a trap.
> Unfortunately, it is not by "exceeding", but documenting that you have exceeded, and knowing how to document it right, sometimes not really exceeding at all.
In my experience, this is not true.
I have sat in promotion reviews where the manager was told to write the employee's promotion doc for them, because it wasn't worth it to frustrate an good employee who doesn't find time to write his own promotion document.
I am sorry that you had a bad experience at Amazon, but your experience doesn't match mine or any of the colleagues at our office that I know well enough to gauge their job satisfaction etc. However, a lot of your sentiments have been reported to arise in junior employees (who seem to focus too much on reaching promotion instead of on developing themselves).
Your case may have been different because you seem to have had a bad hiring experience, where you should have been hired as an SDEII, not an SDEI. But, your manager should have sorted this out for you (by doing the work to fast-track your promotion without letting you do all the document-writing). Either you had a bad manager, or you didn't discuss this with your manager adequately.
I think it is unfair for you to judge the whole company based on what seems to be one bad manager.
I still struggle with it every time I need to invest the work, but c'est La vie.
And if focusing on your promotion is your job according to Amazon, well than there famed leadership principles, Customer Obsession being the first that comes to mind, are just words on some document you have to use for political purposes. What that means for Amazon as a company is everyones guess.
I was (un)fortunate that my first few managers were proactive in rewarding my good performance, until I had a manager who wasn't. Under the new manager, my peers had all been promoted in due time, and my feedback from them and said manager had been positive, as he'd expressed during our frequent 1:1, so I wasn't worried about my progression. That was until I casually brought the subject up at a 1:1. He of course affirmed that it would be forthcoming, but from his demeanor my gut told me that he hadn't given it a thought until that moment. I believe this was not out of malice or office politics, and in retrospect my coworkers had dropped hints to me that I should have broached the subject sooner rather than later -- this was how this organization operated -- but the idea was so foreign to me that I didn't quite process their message. Had it been malicious I would have been screwed. Ever since I've erred on the side of impudence. I hate it, but...[0]
No analogy is perfect, but suppose if you do your job, you expect to be compensated; if you do a good job, you expect to be promoted, get a raise / bonus, etc. Would it be acceptable for a company to not pay its employees unless they bring it up each pay period, because it's "100% [...] part of [their] job"? Indeed there are industries -- often low end retail -- where this happens a lot, and this assuredly contributes to employee dissatisfaction. Similarly, some people would prefer if their work speak for itself, and managers / companies wouldn't neglect to promote them just because they don't bring it up. When the OP found out that's not now it worked at Amazon (and many other large enterprises), he was understandably miffed, as I was from my own experience.
> You won’t be promoted for doing your job, you will be promoted by focusing on your promotion.
Well, yeah. That's how it is in a lot of companies, especially big ones. Doing what is expected of you in your current position is proof that you are well suited for your current position. Exceeding expectations for your current position is how you get promoted.
If the company has a documented promotion process, (and it seems like Amazon does based on the article), then focusing on that process is not a distraction from doing your job: it is doing your job! They went to the trouble of spelling it out for you because that's what they want you to do!
It seems like the author's idea of "doing your job" was different than his employer's, so of course he had a bad time.