Amazon Wants To Know What Every Corporate Employee Accomplished Last Year (businessinsider.com) 65
Amazon is now requiring its corporate employees to submit a list of three to five accomplishments that represent their best work as part of an overhauled performance review process, according to Business Insider, which cites internal documents.
The company's internal Forte review system previously asked employees softer questions like "When you're at your best, how do you contribute?" but the new standards place greater emphasis on individual productivity and specific deliverables. Amazon's roughly 350,000 corporate employees must also outline actions they plan to take to continue growing at the company.
The company's internal Forte review system previously asked employees softer questions like "When you're at your best, how do you contribute?" but the new standards place greater emphasis on individual productivity and specific deliverables. Amazon's roughly 350,000 corporate employees must also outline actions they plan to take to continue growing at the company.
seems normal (Score:3, Insightful)
am i supposed to be outraged at this? seems like a pretty normal question to ask in a performance review. although im sure a ton of people will tell me im stupid or being abused by my company because they expect me to work and produce things..
Re: seems normal (Score:3)
Top 5 is done every week at my company. And if you have a good reason that it's less than 5, that's ok too. The semiannual performance review is similar, but with self and peer evaluations. And going over 5 is okay too.
Re: seems normal (Score:5, Insightful)
it works well for sales and customer service that have discrete repeatable tasks and keep metrics. or other people with well defined jobs.
less so for most developers and generally more senior people.
and often I don't want to say "well, I spent three days convincing VP A not to rage fire director B".
anyway I personally hate the "justify your existence in public to people who don't know the context" type stuff with a passion.
Re: seems normal (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
less so for most developers and generally more senior people.
This surprises me. I'm on a team of device driver developers with two thirds of them in their 40s and 50s and at least one had been there since they graduated.
If I have projects, features, releases, and bugs. I can make a plan for each of them, and then execute. In the look back, I go over what I accomplished versus what I planned. And also I can cover any unexpected problems that prevented me from completing my goals.
Re: (Score:3)
Sounds more like a question for managers. If you're not monitoring my work then it's a you problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds more like a question for managers. If you're not monitoring my work then it's a you problem.
In other words, if a manager isn't looking over your shoulder at all times, the very thing you say they shouldn't do because you're an adult, you won't get your work done.
Re:seems normal (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they don't need to micromanage, just manage. If your manager doesn't know what you do, what are they managing? They should be in contact with the people they manage and communicating with them about their tasks. There are more options than "stand at desk and watch employee all the time" and "let the employees do whatever they want".
Re: (Score:2)
No, they don't need to micromanage, just manage. If your manager doesn't know what you do, what are they managing? They should be in contact with the people they manage and communicating with them about their tasks. There are more options than "stand at desk and watch employee all the time" and "let the employees do whatever they want".
Depends a lot on the type of place and the security level.
Especially with more "professional" types the value you provide "up" is that they DIDN'T know about your specific tasks because you're taking care of some delegated area of responsibility, be it a team, a project, a vertical etc should the boss have an idea of what people are doing? yes. can identify 5 things for each of their reports on a daily level seems near impossible . even at the weekly level idk how desirable it is.
Re:seems normal (Score:4, Insightful)
For IT staff, any reasonably organised place will have JIRA or some other project tracking software in place, which will show you exactly who did what and when. Amazon will certainly have something like this. For general office staff there may not be something like this but still a manager who has any degree of competence should be able to say who was assigned what and whether that got done or not (and how well).
This looks like it's copying what DOGE was doing with federal employees last year. I suspect it's preparing justifications for mass layoffs. Unless Amazon genuinely got so bloated and management structure got so convoluted that there are a lot of people who nobody knows what they're supposed to be there for.
Re: (Score:3)
Unless Amazon genuinely got so bloated and management structure got so convoluted that there are a lot of people who nobody knows what they're supposed to be there for.
This is very plausible because Amazon has never had to contract their business.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, that means smart employees will send emails like "So, looks like I can single-handedly save the company $1M/day with this awesome idea I came up with."
Re: seems normal (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Depends, is “keeping the company running” an acceptable achievement? Is that one achievement enough or must one make up two more just because management asked for three?
Re: (Score:2)
Depends, is “keeping the company running” an acceptable achievement? Is that one achievement enough or must one make up two more just because management asked for three?
Not always "the company", but the product, or service, or project, or department, whatever. (and occasionally while propping up the 1 or 3 adjacent products/ services / groups whatevers).
Definitely often had that feeling... (and i don't mean in a "can't be replaced"/"superhero" sort of way... but a historic... this is what happened sort of way)
and i totally agree that this kind of thinking COULD be self-delusional or just delusional and that it's possible to vastly over-estimate one's value, or to make
Spike... (Score:5, Insightful)
ChatGPT gets a sudden spike in prompts like: "Make up three to five accomplishments that corporate overlords won't bother reading."
Re: Martial Arts Bladder Training (Score:1)
Today I learnt to hold my pee for 5 extra seconds while stacking boxes
Using a new form of martial arts
(cut to a training montage of someone kicking him the nuts from different angles)
Fair turned out not to be fair after all. (Score:4, Interesting)
my passion? (Score:5, Funny)
Gutting fish at my desk like in Office Space
"The Bobs" Have Evolved (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I talk with developers, so the end users don't have to.
Re: (Score:2)
And I'm good with people, dammit!
Re: (Score:2)
I've made a career out of being this guy. (and the inverse of talking to the users so the developers don't have to) It's absolutely useful and despite a lot of other bullshit I'm glad my company sees it this way (until they replace me with a chatbot)
Easy (Score:5, Funny)
Accomplishments are specific projects, goals, initiatives, or process improvements that show the impact of your work
Was able to reduce my food budget by 45% by consuming the food and snacks in the break room fridge over the last 12 months. Huge success.
employees must also outline actions they plan to take to continue growing at the company.
Continuing as before, but increasing my consumption and reducing my exertion, I expect to grow in the coming year.
Wish me luck.
Pronouns include: Slim, Chunky, Tiny, fatso, FatFucker, and teddy bear.
Re: (Score:3)
Pronouns: FatFucker.
Every HR lady everywhere: "How do I fuck this guy today".
Though different HR ladies will mean totally different things by it.
Only three clicks away ... (Score:2)
Like every other company? (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't this common across corporate jobs? It's been a part of my review processes at different companies for 30ish years.
Find them (Score:1)
Find out who's in charge of ordering laundry detergent for Whole Foods because the stores are constantly out. You can't even order it on Amazon itself because it's constantly out.
Once you find them, they can be fired because clearly they aren't doing their job.
For those wondering, their particular detergent has a specific ingredient which does a great job getting clothes clean.
Re: (Score:1)
Why buy laundry detergent at whole foods? That's a simple commodity that they overprice.
Buy everyday commodities at Walmart. Fruits, vegetables, meats and bakery goods you buy at WF.
Re: (Score:2)
In this particular case the cost is less than name brand detergents and, as I said, has a particular ingredient which helps with cleaning clothers. Almost no other detergent or booster has it.
Easy? (Score:2)
Surely this is easy? Equally, surely your boss knows? Maybe they want to compare those two lists?
It's just going to be read by a chatbot. (Score:4, Insightful)
Just make some sh*t up.
Could be worse ... (Score:3)
Could be weekly and not responding could be taken as a resignation.
From White House to ax Musk’s ‘5 things’ emails [politico.com]
The Trump administration on Tuesday officially ended a [DOGE] program which required federal employees to summarize five weekly achievements in emails...
The mandate was originally introduced in February by tech mogul and one-time President Donald Trump ally Elon Musk, the then-head of the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE], as part of an effort to cut the federal workforce.
“Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” he wrote in his announcement of the policy [x.com] in February [2025]:
Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump ’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.
Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.
Re: (Score:2)
is this a new requirement? (Score:1)
So..... a standard performance review? (Score:5, Informative)
I mean I have been asked to list a few key accomplishments every year of my adult life in every job I've had (except for the brief period where I was contracting and self-employed).
Why is this news? Or is the news here that Amazon was not doing performance reviews beforehand?
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly this. I'm like, so Amazon is going to do exactly what every other company does? Okay, I guess, but why is this on slashdot?
Re: (Score:2)
I get a form every year I can use to brag about myself. I've gotten it twice and filled it out once. My manager still put some accomplishments on my review the time I didn't turn it in.
If Amazon's managers were a) competent and b) doing their jobs then they would know what their employees accomplished.
Re: (Score:3)
When working at my first ReallyBigCorp I noticed that the presidents of vice would periodically present us with their pearls of wisdom. This one year the fad was "180 Reviews", where we grunts gave perf reviews on our managers. That happened exactly once.
Then one year it was "self-reviews", and it was expected to be more than the typical "what i did" list. I looked at my manager with "are you serious" on my face, and he gave a little shrug. I decided that I wasn't going to provide them any ammunition by lis
Report your failures (Score:2)
"Consider situations where you took risks or innovated, even if it didn't lead to the results you hoped for."
So if I did something other than I was told because it seemed like a bright idea to me, and it failed which resulted in a big mess, I should put that in my report as a plus?
Re: (Score:2)
Standard interview rules apply, which is that your "failures" should be, at worst, things that turned out really well but not 100% as well as you hoped.
Re: (Score:2)
>> things that turned out really well but not 100% as well as you hoped
So successes, but not as successful as you might conceivably have wished.
Well... (Score:2)
2) Moderated on Slashdot
3) Got flamed on Slashdot
clawhammer (Score:2)
'#1/5 : I delivered a claw-hammer guitar to Molly Tuttle and here's a picture of her
The interruption came fast. "Scranton you are so FIRED. Guitars are not played by claws, let alone hammers, and your graphics AI program that created the picture forgot to draw in her hair." You may ent
I always wondered (Score:2)
who thinks it's a good idea of wasting energy on something that is completely irrelevant. If the action is relevant then it should have been addressed when it happened to ensure what ever positive benefit the action had it would be repeated next time.
This is "busy work". Work that is created so you look like you are busy doing something.
Another piece of bs (Score:2)
Let's see, is that submit to your managers, or to corporate? If the latter, what, they'll use AI to decide to keep you?
And in either case, lessee, the last five or more years before I retired, we had "make a plan for improving/development." I was a sr. sysadmin, end of career, and "development"? I was doing pretty much the same job for 10 years.
The only response is *gag* pull out the Wellies and the manure fork, and shovel bizspeak bs.
Honest reply to the boss (Score:1)
how about (Score:2)
Prelude to the layoff (Score:2)
I've seen this numerous times - they're fishing for "unaligned" workers. It's not about what you accomplished or didn't accomplish, it's about finding the areas they are cutting. This is also why performance reviews are terrible and worthless - if you're not getting timely feedback, either from a manager if you're not senior, or from your customers (internal or external) then you're in a bad organization. Yearly performance reviews come from the 1960's when work was much more regimented and manageable by
Oooh ooh I have an accomplishment! (Score:2)
Well uhm I really listen to our customers. I looked at how to make our products better. Then I considered how to reward our loyal paying customer base.
After those activities that sometimes took weeks I took a summary of my analysis to my manager and he listen for a little bit but then when I told him customers have little ability to push back against enshitification we laughed together.
So I'm really proud to say we accomplished rolling out ads on Prime.
Oh, and another thing, for those paying customers
Another day in the office (Score:2)
1. Arrived very early, checked tests in progress, did rounds of cubicles to locate and dispose of trapped / poisoned mice that would otherwise cause screaming and trauma among female employees.
2. Repaired espresso grinder, essential for group productivity.
3. Constructed gigahertz current sense instrumentation to determine order of operations in a bus collision.
4. Identified Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Flushing in restroom, fixed by hitting valve with mallet.
5. Monitored brittle diabetic coworker in recu
Apparently they have no idea (Score:2)
What their employees are doing each year.
In other words (Score:2)
Should you be able to list what you've done? (Score:2)
1. Tightened up the documentation standards, and documented them.
2. Improved the documentation control system.
3. Improved the CI/CD system, which is a tool I develop in GO.
4. Improved the Infrastructure management system, another tool in GO, to convert Azure to OpenTofu Files.
5. Created an improved failover process.
6. Improved deployment times, I can now do ~140 clients in less than 25 minutes.
e
So what would you say... (Score:1)
...you do here?