Do large U.S. companies use "personal improvement plans" as elaborate devices to fire perfectly competent staff or encourage them to quit? To some, this seems unlikely, as the disruption and bureacracy involved would surely be more wasteful than the consequences of not doing that sort of thing. To others, that's exactly how western corporate management thinks, acts, and wastes. Who is right? Business Insider today published the testament of a disgrunted Amazon HR officer who did this to people for years—until Amazon did it to them. Welcome to "Pivot," Amazon's kafka-esque PiP program designed to grind down unwanted staff and grind them out—especially if they're getting close to vesting.
I would say 80% of my time ended up being focused one way or another on Pivot. Either the Pivot appeal or the Pivot work that workers' managers had to do. And look, I'm not going to say you're going to ever find this somewhere, locked down in words. But the idea is, if you're putting somebody in Pivot, you make that so damn hard that they don't get out.
Grim reading indeed. The appeal of working for FAANG-tier companies is simple: they pay big money. Everything else about it outside of the VP playpen sounds like hell, and the author here claims to suffer from PTSD as a result.
