This is a copy-paste from Blind

No strings attached, in the text itself. I'll write a post based on this, but want this copy-paste to remain intact.

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Hi Everyone,

Got pipped from Amazon after being here for 2 years and 9 months as an L4 straight from graduation. Wanted to give out my PIP story for those who it might help in the future if you are in my situation.

Early on, I was under Manager "X", for the first 6 months of my career, I was performing well and got back only positive feedback from my peers and Manager. Afterwards, we had a reorg in our 30 person onsite specific team where I was placed under another manager to help balance the number of members on each team.

Manager "Y" was also very nice, but he convinced to me to work on these projects that were not in the domain of our product, which resulted in good feedback but later would come to bite me. Manager Y started talking about promotion at the two year mark (at this time was 1 year and 5 months) and held a carrot in front of me saying how great these would look for my promotion. They didn't and they were just projects that were things that others on the team were too smart not to pick up or work they didn't want to do.

When I finished those projects, this became apparent as when I had just wasted my time. As my manager Y left the team and I was transferred back to Manager X. After this I spoke to Manager X about my promotion and how Manager X promised me it at the 2 year mark. Manager X basically said nothing I had done for the past 1 year and 5 months mattered. He listed out my growth goals and said i needed to accomplish these for my Promotion.

For an entire year, I had a carrot dangled in front of me again, completed projects that satisfied those growth goals however, every time I completed them something would be said about how they don't satisfy them or I needed help to satisfy them.

Lastly, I was assigned a large project 3 months ago, within this project the tasks were ambiguous 1 liners, an L6 wrote the design for the project but was later promoted so he became busy with other things so a different L6 took over. The L6 was very hesitant to help, he would often times respond late, show up 15 mins late to meetings etc... I had a discussion with my Manager about this and said if you want to be an L5, you need to be able do most of this task on your own, and shouldn't require as much help. 1 week later after I brought this up to my manager, he says he got negative feedback from the L6 on my performance and is taking me off the project as I'm not progressing enough (1 month into the project)

This leads to being placed on focus, I tried talking to my manager about how I received nothing but good feedback and the project was not defined well which led me to taking longer to get it done as it required me to schedule meetings with SME's (Since it touched a bit of everything) to no avail.

During focus, got placed on another ambiguous project that even though I'd complete the tasks, manager found holes and reasons why it wasn't enough. Worked day and night on focus.

Focus -> Pip and now I no longer at Amazon starting this week

Looking back, I don't think my managers had my best interest, even though at times I was told they did and they were setting me up for success. I never had a single negative feedback about my performance prior to that last project I mentioned. For other L4's my advice would be to always look our for yourself before anyone else. Whenever u get a project make sure its impactful and well defined and ask questions and always make sure to cover ur back and get advice from seniors. Your manager will only have his best interest in mind, whatever makes them look good. Often times there's work on a team that people don't want to do because its low impact and doesn't do anything for their promos, don't do this work. When u get placed on focus, if you feel like it was unfairly done, its most likely that the manager is trying to get of you so don't do it. Just apply for other jobs.

I have 2 job interviews in 2 weeks, wish me luck on those.

TC: $0