This is such a poor implementation of what has proven to be a very robust mechanism.<p>Since the employee is being fired (deprived of something), they are "the accused" and "the burden of proof lies with the accuser". All the charges that are presented must be presented in such a way as to be challenged. Allowing the manager the last word -- and not allowing the employee to even be aware of what was said -- indicates that accusations are being made without being challenged.<p>The selection of jurors -- three non-managers or one manager -- seems strange in part because it recognizes a hierarchy of people and in part because it involves such a small number of people. The validity of a jury hinges in part on a certain notion of the equality of people -- we don't have juries of 12 ordinary people or 2 senators in the United States because we don't expect that senators are "more just" than ordinary people. It's hard to see why expecting managers to be "more just" is any more reasonable.
I think the immediate problem with setting this up as a legal preceding is that it gives everyone involved a fundamentally wrong idea.<p>It suggests that the employee is on trial, but you can't be on trial if your performance is poor because poor performance is not a crime. Yes, I'm sure everyone involved understands academically that it's not, but reading the article, the comments here, I think the internalized intuition at work is casting this as a matter of justice.<p>Hiring, retention and firing are not mechanisms to enforce some sort of justice, they're about ensuring that employment is mutually beneficial.<p>It's extremely hard for someone looking at being fired to have this kind of detached view of it, especially if you're already inclined to view the world in terms of justice, but you shouldn't because it will mess with your head. The first thing you want to do if you leave a job for any reason is move on, not feel like you've been exiled or ostracized. And if you come into an interview with a chip on your shoulder, that makes it significantly harder to get a new job and move on.<p>And this is not just a problem employees have, many managers are prone to criminalize employees who don't do well or hold grudges against people. That leads to capricious behavior and corrosive office politics, and you do not want them in leadership roles.
> She wasn’t invited to watch her boss’s presentation, and he got the last word.<p>Hearing the argument of your accuser and being given time to rebut with evidence contradicting it is a critical part of a justice system.
My thought is, why would you try to appeal?<p>If you've been marked for firing, obviously management has a poor perception of you. Sure, your coworkers can vouch for you and stop the firing, but to management you're still a marked man or woman. You might still have your job, but you're probably looking at poor performance reviews and no raises for a few years. I know very few people who've ever dug themselves out of a situation like that.<p>You'd be far better off to just leave for another company and start fresh.
I like the idea of breaking off a boss/employee relationship that's not working and allowing the employee to find a different position in the company rather than just terminating the employee.<p>However, why not hire an independent mediation firm to judge? Why put current employees in a position of taking sides? It seems like the unfairness cited in the article would be nearly unavoidable as relationships and reputations between the judges, the bosses and the employee would all be put to the test.
Do the employees given the three options know this is coming? IE, has their manager communicated to them as part of their daily communication that there is a problem? If not, Amazon really needs to start there. If I have to fire an employee for performance problems, it should not be a surprise to them.
If only there was some sort of organization that workers could collectively be apart of and contribute to. An organization dedicated to worker's rights, an organization that would make sure whimsical decisions couldn't aversely affect people's lives because they're in the wrong class in an organization/society.<p>I understand the comment is snarky, but it's really quite absurd in my mind that this is an actual headline, instead of it being a bad joke (which I guess it kind of is). Because it's not even your "peers." It's mainly still just upper management trying to put on a facade of peer judgement.
In the most charitable light, this is organizational cargo-cult.<p>"What if we brought the court of employment law into Amazon? Wow, wouldn't it be great for Amazon? It'd cost less, move faster, and be more fair! Oh and the employee too, because whatever is good for Amazon is good for everyone!"<p>It's the similar to how some school district replace superintendents with CEO's and then blush when cost-cutting and sexual harassment kick in [1].<p>Unthinkipng, these prganizatibs replicate the trappings and rituals of the seemingly successful without understanding why they're successful; doing so in the faith that a new world is right around the corner if they just believe hard enough.<p>Right under the surface, of course, is our collective loss of faith in society, and thus the impetus to award public power to private entities. Handing over healthcare, our rights, our freedoms in the "hopes" that companies will govern us "better" than our elected government. From a single modern republic to multiple feudal realms: the reality of Libertarianism realized.<p>[1] <a href="http://graphics.chicagotribune.com/chicago-public-schools-sexual-abuse/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://graphics.chicagotribune.com/chicago-public-schools-se...</a>
There can be plenty of reason not to trust a jury of co-workers.<p>Somebody I worked with was fired. He wasn't doing much work and seemed to devote most of his days to manipulating his image. He was not just "managing up", in fact if he were better at that maybe he could have survived longer. What he did especially well was molding perception of peers.<p>Maybe tops ~3 people working closest with him knew he was full of shit. But in very far breadths of the organizational tree, he spread the word that he was the guy to talk to on the team, pulling all the weight. If you asked most of his colleagues to this day, they would probably tell you he was a productive to high-performing contributor, which he was not.<p>I think this is actually how he got the job in the first place. He schmoozed far and wide in company X, then more productive employee lands a gig at company Y, where I worked, and he greased the wheels through social connection to also go there. I suspect he collected stock options at some pretty good places over the years doing this.
I mean, I suppose this is better than no review process whatsoever. But the real solution is to just have a union, so that the fired worker has some representation.<p>(For management workers, I favor a similar process but that would require some changes to labor law to be fully protected. You could still have a union without that, but it's not going to be one that has the same recognition.)
Systems of justice are <i>incredibly</i> annoying, and invariably involve a lot of careful fine-tuning that goes completely out the window with every new addition.<p>It reminds me a little about how every time a new package manager comes out, the peanut gallery all chimes in with "well why don't we just use OS packaging?"<p>Package managers and justice systems hard-enforce legibility in a way that completely breaks the second the landscape does. You <i>have</i> to do the hard work of making a new one. Getting by with what you have only increases the workload on the already-busy humans. There are Debian packages for various extremely well-used Ruby gems. But somebody got motivated enough to do that work.<p>Similarly, if you introduce the wrong system of justice into a human social regime, it creates all kinds of perverse incentives. The task of preventing bad outcomes from perverse incentives then gets compounded onto the few extremely busy people that have to juggle being cops along with their existing jobs.
It seems extraordinarily generous to offer a choice of severance or a hearing in front of an impartial "jury", as alternatives to a PIP. Anyone who's been working for a while knows that when you get to a PIP, you basically have one foot out the door. Relatively few people go from PIP back to a valued, productive employee.
Maybe they are trying because they are widely known as being a horrible place to work. But man that sounds like Survivor and getting voted off the island... or Lord of the flies...<p>Just sounds weird and broken.
PIPs and firing are the path of least resistance for lazy managers.<p>From a Covey or Drucker style of leadership...<p>If the Manager interviewed and hired the Employee, then the default assumption is that the Manager failed to "lead" and train the Employee.<p>If the Manager inherited the Employee (via re-org) and is cleaning house, then that's a different circumstance. But still not an excuse for lazy leadership.
The "jury of their co-workers" is a scary farce that begins with the continuous 360 feedback that is built into their current employee performance model. I have read that this is integrated into the WorkDay HR software platform, which is used for timesheets and everything else.<p>You might have a disagreement with a co-worker, and next thing you know, you are getting live feedback, behind your back. And then after that... you are begging to not get fired. Someday, the jury and appeal process might get automated through WorkDay as well. Sounds fun!<p>Bezos is an investor in WorkDay and Amazon uses this 360 feature. Other companies use it too. See also: <a href="https://blog.impraise.com/360-feedback/the-amazon-controversy-what-is-missing-in-its-performance-management-360-feedback" rel="nofollow">https://blog.impraise.com/360-feedback/the-amazon-controvers...</a>
I remember reading about this system in some business class. They're generally well-received by staff, prevent arbitrary termination, and give feedback to manager who may not know what the realities of the job are. Is Amazon's version of it any good? I don't know, but I do know there's literature on it. I can appreciate the cynicism of Amazon trying to manipulate things in their favor, but you're forgetting that this is a check on the authority of managers to empower workers. Without such a system the person would have just been fired and they would have had no recourse. It's like giving a homeless man a dollar and he goes "what, you can't spare 5?"
This is a really cool and refreshing idea on paper, but in reality it fails miserably. If one chooses the three nonmanager workers to be on the jury, they can lean towards the "support the working man" idealogy and strongly favor retaining worker jobs. On the other hand, managers might tend to favor corporate interests, and be more likely to reject appeals. The article mentioned that these employees who appeal can look at lists of potential jury people for them so they can select who would best sympathize with them. Employees literally get to select which bias' they want in their jury lineup.<p>Not to mention the vast resource cost of these programs. Amazon has hundreds of thousands of employees, what if every single employee that was set to be fired made an appeal? How many thousands of man hours would that chew up?<p>Lastly, and probably the most important is that lasting tension with boss figures. If an employee challenges a boss and they win, that boss is going to forever have a grudge against them. I'd think that could be fixed by if you win an appeal, you are automatically transferred under a new boss that isn't allowed to view your previous work history at the company.<p>Again this is good in theory, but changes would need to be made for this to be an effective system. Bravo on Amazon for installing this type of plan though. As much hate as Amazon gets for running what are basically sweat shops in their warehouses(I know, I've been in them, it's soul crushing), at least they are in some small part giving employees a voice. Then again, this could be a rigged system for all we know and it's just to save face.
This is a good way to keep people aware of the status quo and be controlled by seeing and participating in these things. To paraphase Agents of Shield "How do you keep such control over all of your slaves?" "He has them kill each other, that's what I'd do."
Seriously fuck this stupid shit. When I was there this fucker in India bribed my manager for a ticket to the US on L1 Visa as our new manager. Once there his only goal was to sell as many US-based jobs to Indians in India as possible. He kept telling me I had to set up meetings with India, set up one on ones with his buddy in India. Fuck that guy. Now there is no way in hell I would subject myself to a "jury" that had assholes like that on it. Sometimes you just have to realize your manager, your team, or your company are just unfixable shit and leave.
Seems like the process just adds politics where they aren't needed. It makes it harder to fire bad employees, and incentives bad employees to play politics on the way out.<p>If I worked for Amazon, I'd want no part in the process. Bad situations end best when everyone cuts their losses quickly.<p>In my experience, the best way to get rid of someone is to offer a generous severance period. In theory, the person can take a long vacation or get two paychecks for a few months.
I worked at Amazon developing various portions of the core software that drives their website. Code I wrote runs billions of times per day...<p>While there, I was told to do many things that I think are not a valuable use of my time. I pushed back on many, and attempted to keep productive. It was very frustrating and stressful.<p>Eventually the stress came to a head and I vehemently told my boss that I thought the task I was being told to do was idiotic. I requested to go home for the day sick for mental health reasons, as I was unable to cope with the stress that moment.<p>My boss refused to let me leave for the day and continued arguing with me. The discussion then obviously went too far and I said "I would like to kill [someone who is my friend at Amazon]." I meant it only as an expression of the intensity of how much I was upset. The friend I mention knows this also and would confirm this if asked. I was just freaked out and stressed beyond my capacity to deal.<p>My boss forced me to go back to work after this exchange. After 4 hours he then came and got me and took me to a meeting with HR and security. They accused me of threatening to kill my coworker ( which is a horrible misunderstanding ) I explained clearly that I meant no such thing, and pointed out that I asked to and needed to leave for mental health, and they didn't care.<p>They said I have to go home at that point and would be forbidden from returning to work for 2 weeks. This upset me further. I assumed I would never be returning and was being fired. I pleaded with them to just give me the day off as requested and they refused. They forced me to stay home for a week.<p>I went home and told my wife what happened. She had just passed the first trimester of her pregnancy. She saw the doctor about the pregnancy 2 days previous and the baby was perfectly healthy and there were no problems.<p>After learning what happened to me at work, she was so stressed over it that she started bleeding later that day. If I was fired at that moment I would lose my house and be homeless in Seattle; I didn't have the funds to endure that.<p>She had a miscarriage 2 days later as a result of the stress and worrying. She nearly bled to death. My child died because of Amazon's reckless disregard for mental health.<p>Amazon did allow me to return to work after a week. I went back to my job and had to continue working for the same manager responsible for my child dying for another 4 months.<p>During that time I told anyone who would listen at Amazon what happened.<p>Eventually HR approached me and told me I could not keep telling people and they would fire me if I do.<p>They gave me the following four choices:
1. Quit of my own accord and tell whomever I want ( no severance )
2. Continue talking about it at work and get fired
3. Stop talking about it and retain my job ( my performance was high and I had recent great reviews; they had no other issue with me )
4. Accept a severance of $30,000 and leave the company peaceably ( layoff )<p>I chose option 4 and started my own startup ( carbonstate.com ) I only had enough funds to run my startup for a year, and have not made any money on my product. I have since had to rejoin the industry to pay bills.
Silo'd specialized software engineers often don't have the benefit of these relationships with other employees<p>Whether it is for nomination for employee of the month<p>or being acquitted in a workplace tribunal<p>the most introverted people have to go out of their way to let people know how productive and beneficial they've been, and that is a losing proposition
I was just reading about how horrible and exploitative Amazon is. How they deliberately hire the weak, the afraid, the vulnerable. I can understand the mindset that designs an employment and recruitment system with the purpose of being able to thoroughly abuse and exploit employees. Doesn't make it any less horrible. I no longer buy anything from Amazon. They're scum. I see well-paid employees expressing their conscience and saying they won't work on surveillance, or won't work on military projects. Where are the well-paid Amazon employees taking a stand against their own company's mistreatment of other employees? I wouldn't be surprised if we had some reading this very thread. Maybe they can tell us. I expect they just don't think about it. Take the money, try not to think about it.<p>From elsewhere:<p><i>Bezos defended Amazon in a fireside chat with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner on Tuesday evening, saying he was “very proud of our working conditions and I am very proud of our wages that we pay.”</i><p>He's proud of it. He's proud of the return to the workhouse. He's proud of rolling back workplace protections. He's proud of paying a pittance. He's proud of it all. Or is he oblivious?