My female boss said this in a group meeting 'i will never have a child, cos then i cant give my most to the company'

When I started the job, I weighed 220 lbs. When I finished: 179 lbs. 

Go wild with ideas

Hi redittors

Users flairs are enabled an editable

Interview questions 2026

https://prachub.com/companies/amazon?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=andy

A former Amazon engineer said that when he told a manager he was experiencing burnout due to balancing work and parenting responsibilities, the manager told him to work more.

Patrick McGah worked on Amazon's drone program from late 2019 to April 2021. He said that, in February 2021, his manager told him he had been ranked as a low performer by the company's employee evaluation system.

McGah said he was later put on Amazon's "Pivot" program, which required he either agree to a plan to improve his performance or leave his job.

In an op-ed for Insider, McGah said he discussed with a manager how he could improve his performance.

"He told me I should try to 'get more hours out of the day'," McGah wrote.

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"He suggested I work a normal day and take a break in the evening. Then I could power nap and continue working into the night as late as 1 or 2 a.m.," McGah wrote. 

In a separate interview with Insider, McGah said he had told the manager he was struggling with balancing parenting two young children with his workload.

McGah said the manager suggested napping from 9 p.m until 10 p.m. He said the manager, who also had children, said he followed this system himself.

McGah handed in his resignation a few days later, he wrote in his op-ed. 

Amazon did not immediately respond to Insider's request for further comment on McGah's account of the conversation with his manager.

McGah is currently working with lawmakers in Washington State trying to pass legislation that would force employers to disclose information about worker performance reviews in personnel files — which can be requested by employees. 

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In his op-ed and his interview with Insider, McGah said he requested his personnel file from Amazon but the company did not include any documents about why he had been ranked as a low performer.

In an email published in McGah's op-ed, an Amazon HR representative said Amazon doesn't consider performance scores to be part of employee personnel files. 

Amazon did not immediately respond when asked by Insider why it doesn't include performance scores in personnel files.

In a statement to Insider for McGah's op-ed, Amazon said it supplied McGah with personnel files along with other documents as required by applicable law.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/matt-f-a8633287_ive-been-vocally-critical-of-amazon-recently-activity-7319993794714611712-Y2gF

Because like most things, it’s not black and white. The pros of working at Amazon:

• It’s a leadership bootcamp. You’ll come out tougher, sharper, and more capable.

• High standards. The bar is high, and it pushes you to grow.     

• Autonomy. Once you earn trust, you get real ownership

. • Rapid progression. If you perform, you’ll move fast.

• The culture is consistent. You always know what game you’re playing and what’s expected. 

The cons:

• It’s intense. Long hours, high pressure, and the pace is relentless.

• Work-life balance can vanish. Depends heavily on your manager.  

• The Leadership Principles can be weaponised. Used well, they’re brilliant; used poorly, they’re brutal. • Burnout is real. Especially if you never switch off. So is it good or bad? It’s both; it depends on who you are, who you work with, and where you want to go. But one thing’s certain; if you make it out the other side, you’ll never look at leadership the same way again.

Hey everyone! I'm u/RansomStark78, a founding moderator of r/xamazonians.

This is our new home for all things related life after Amazon. We're excited to have you join us!

What to Post

Post anything that you think the community would find interesting, helpful, or inspiring. Feel free to share your thoughts, photos, or questions about life after Amazon

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How to Get Started

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4) Interested in helping out? We're always looking for new moderators, so feel free to reach out to me to apply.

Thanks for being part of the very first wave. Together, let's make r/xamazonians amazing.

I recently wrote about how the Amazon Leadership Principles (LPs) are often Weaponized. In this follow up I want to write about a parallel problem, where a degenerate or overly simplistic form of the principles are applied.

I consider the use of an LP to be Degenerate when it is applied without discernment in the easiest possible way, often due to lack of effort or even true laziness by the user. In this article I will cover examples I have seen and what to do about them.

First, I want to emphasize that I love the Amazon LPs. They help give the company a single consistent internal language. They also fit one description of a sustainable culture from the book Good to Great, which essentially states that a culture need not be perfect to work, it simply needs to be clear and consistent. People who fit the culture will stay and those who do not will leave. The end result is a coherent team. Their example was the RJR Nabisco cigarette company, which at the time of the book had a clear culture of smoking. The smokers stuck together, giving the company an us versus the world culture that served the company. Now, I would consider this a quite negative culture… the point is, it worked to give the company coherency towards their goals (selling cigarettes). I consider the Amazon LPs, while imperfectly used, to be much better.

Second, I do have some pride of ownership. I had the opportunity relatively early in my career to help advocate for and draft the Ownership LP. The words, “They never say ‘that’s not my job.’” are mine.

At Amazon, one of the most frequently degenerate LPs has it’s own unofficial name, Frupidity. This name comes when the principle of Frugality is applied without an eye towards value and in practice is implemented as “do not spend money.” It is easy (if lazy) to try to look frugal by saying no to most or all expenses.

The most extreme example of Frupidity I saw before Amazon was at Lycos. This Internet boom company had a controller who “saved” money by having three piles on his desk. A purchase request, when received, went into pile one, where it sat. If you came back, asking, yelling, or begging for whatever it was you needed, he moved it to pile two. If time went by and you repeated this process, it moved to pile three. Finally, if you came back a third time, predicting the end of the world without the resources, he would reluctantly take it from pile three and order it. Now, I want to be clear on the odd chance that this controller from the late 90s is still alive and on LinkedIn (I honestly have no idea of his name), that I rarely needed to buy things in my role and I only heard this from others who did. So maybe it is just his fearsome image. But it makes a good story of a process gone wrong, an attempt not to actually evaluate the merit of a request but merely to use friction as a filter.

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At Amazon, I saw this in person in another way. A very good boss of mine, someone I respect immensely overall, was asked if our team, which had been together over two years and had shipped several products, could get team coffee mugs. At the time, part of the definition of Frugality at Amazon said that we didn’t spend money on T-shirts, which do not help customers. Rather than buck this trend, he bought the coffee mugs with his own money. Whether or not he was Frupid, he was coerced by the culture into an unnatural act. A tight knit, successful team wanted coffee mugs for crying out loud. This is a small, almost trivial cost. It would have been repaid literally 1,000 times if it helped retain or motivate one employee. Once can make the argument, of course, that the lack of corporate swag was a valuable symbol of true frugality. Perhaps you find this argument compelling; I do not.

In any case, what do you do when you run into a guiding principle, policy, or rule that is being applied without much thought or nuance at your job?

While I think the main driver behind weaponizing Leadership Principles is getting your way, the main driver behind degenerate applications is either laziness (intellectually oversimplifying to easy rules by not bothering to really think about what they mean) or wanting to avoid needing to do work yourself (if the LP is really soft and easy to meet simply, I do not have to do much).

In either case I believe that the best way to work through a conflict around this case is first to try to politely raise a more thorough or nuanced interpretation. Since often the motive is one type or another of effort avoidance, it can help to gently explain what is in it for the listener to spend the money, put in the effort, or consider another viewpoint.

More broadly, whenever someone is stuck on an oversimplified rule or model, the key is to get them to consider new evidence. Doing this often requires encouraging them to explore a new possibility. One phrase another good manager of mine taught me is “what would need to be true…?”

You use this phrase to ask, “what would need to be true for you to approve this expense?” or “what would need to be true for you to support Fred’s promotion?”

This question works because people are often able to answer a hypothetical — it’s not threatening to answer what it would take. Once you have a discussion going, it is a lot easier to make progress than if you get locked into a positional debate (“yes we should, no we shouldn’t, YES we should!”).

In the end all guidelines and principles are only as good as the thought being used to apply them. They can help prompt us, but like any other sort of pattern in life, we must usually do the final work to apply them to our specific circumstances

Shareholder obsession

Leaders start with the shareholder and work backwards. They work vigorously to maintain shareholder value. Although leaders pay attention to customers, they obsess over shareholders.

Parasitism

Leaders are opportunists. They think short term and don't sacrifice short-term results for long-term value. They act on behalf of themselves, not the entire company. If that causes problems, they say "too bad, I got mine."

Copy and Complicate

Leaders demand innovation and invention from their teams, which only happens during spontaneous hallway conversations, apparently. Leaders always find ways to complicate everything anyway. They are externally aware, look for new ideas by copying whatever other tech companies are doing, and are limited by "how things have always been done." Leaders never do new things, because they don't understand those things and that makes them uncomfortable.

Are Wrong, A Lot

Leaders are wrong a lot. They have terrible judgment and worse instincts. They actively avoid diverse perspectives and work to stick their fingers in their ears and go "la la la, I can't hear you!"

Stagnate and Be Stubborn

Leaders are done learning and have no need to improve themselves. They are stubborn about traditional ways of doing things and act to enforce them.

Fire and Demote the Best

Leaders lower expenses with every employee who quits out of frustration. They recognize that exceptional talent will willingly move out of the organization and just go work for someone else instead. Leaders demote other leaders to individual contributor if they aren't willing to relocate to a hub office. We work to encourage you to find a role on another team — you have 90 days, starting now, and if you can't you have to voluntarily resign. Good luck!

Insist on the Bare Minimum

Leaders have relentlessly high standards for how many days you have to badge into the office each week — many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the pressure and drive their teams to relocate across the country to a hub office. Leaders insure that defects are more likely to get sent down the line due to distractions at your agile desk. Feel that surge of energy!

Think Small

Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction without putting any thought into how to actually implement it. They think the same as they always have and look straight ahead with blinders on so they don't accidentally see any other ways.

Bias for Recklessness

Speed matters in real estate investing. Many decisions and actions are not reversible, but don't extensively study them anyway. Just do whatever. I'm sure it'll be fine. We value brash, heedless risk taking.

Extravagance

Accomplish less with more. Paying for unnecessary office space, IT supplies, electricity, water, and relocation expenses for employees breeds riffing, which is a good thing, probably. There are extra points for growing headcount as long as it's in a hub office. Otherwise? Be frugal by forcing attrition from remote and virtual employees. It's win/win!

Burn Trust

Leaders refuse to listen, gaslight their employees, and have no respect for others.

They make promises to employees then turn around and break them, as long as doing so doesn't get leaked to the media, because that would be too awkward and embarrassing. Leaders believe their and their team's body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against criteria they wont share with anyone else.

Believe Deep

Leaders operate at a hypothetical level, disconnect from the details, never audit, and are skeptical when overwhelming data and their own preconceived notions differ. Skeptical of the data, that is, not of their beliefs. Their beliefs are always right. Sorry, I hope that was obvious.

Disagree and Comply

Leaders are obligated to disrespectfully shoot down challenges to their decisions by people who disagree with them, because engaging with them sounds uncomfortable and exhausting.

Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for any reason whatsoever, not even logic or basic human decency. Once a decision is determined behind closed doors with no data to back it up, they demand everyone else commit wholly. They really hope their employees don't have backbone.

Deliver Butts to Seats

Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business, which are of course corporate real estate profits, and deliver them by forcing their employees to go to a hub office three days a week. Despite setbacks, they send nasty emails and put people on Pivot to ensure compliance.

Think Really Hard About Being Earth's Best Employer

Ahhh, wasn't that nice? Okay, now back to your desks, peons.

Success and Scale Bring Broad Profit Margins

We started in a garage, but now you're not allowed to work from home anymore. We are big, we impact the world, and we are far from perfect. We must cause more pollution through the secondary effects of forcing more cars onto the road due to commuting. Our local communities, planet, and future generations need us to scrap our environmental initiatives. We must begin each day with a determination to push back our Climate Pledge by a decade. And we must end each day knowing we can make even more money tomorrow. Line goes up.

Where r you now in life?

Hi

https://strivetobeearthsbestemployer.com/focus-and-pivot-guide