![]() ![]() Software developer Oleg Churyumov was labeled a low performer and placed in Pivot shortly after complaining to HR that he believed his manager was discriminating against him based on his Russian heritage. Those concerns are heightened as multiple sources warn of possible staffing cuts in Seattle following a long stretch of hiring that has swelled the corporate headcount there to more than 45,000.Ī spokesperson said Amazon has no requirement for individual managers to let a certain number of employees go and the company has more than 10,000 job openings in Seattle. “The severance buys them a complete release, which is another problem because it buys them a release of FMLA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and other liabilities the person can sue them for,” Emery added. The unique program has enabled Amazon to reduce legal liability and in turn head off litigation costs, all with the veneer of fairness, he said. While PIPs and severance packages are relatively common at big tech companies and corporate America in general, the scale of their use and the teleconference appeal process of Pivot is “100 percent unique to Amazon,” said Timothy Emery, an employment lawyer at Seattle-based Emery Reddy PLLC who has counseled clients facing Pivot. Initially, the program offered three options: appeal their placement in the program before a teleconference jury of three coworkers, part ways with a severance package, or spend several weeks trying to pass the PIP with coaching from “Career Ambassadors.” With Pivot, Amazon appeared to throw a lifeline to employees at risk of losing their jobs after receiving a low ranking. Speaking with The Daily Beast, an Amazon spokesperson denied that the company has used stack ranking, adding that an annual review is based on “a combination of feedback from peers and performance metrics and does not require managers to rank employees." At Amazon, that process encouraged managers to continually grade their subordinates and relegate those at the bottom of the stack to Sisyphean performance improvement plans, known as PIPs. In stack ranking systems, managers sort workers from best to worst, a practice that inevitably puts some employees at the bottom of the heap. Unveiled in early 2017, a year-and-a-half after a New York Times exposé spotlighted Amazon’s aggressive white collar work culture, Pivot was an attempt to humanize the company’s “stack ranking” review process. In a workforce of over 650,000 people, there will be some individuals with ongoing performance challenges, and we work with these employees to help them meet the performance bar before determining if Amazon is the right place for them,” the spokesperson said. The vast majority of employees meet or exceed that high bar. “Amazon has always had a high bar for performance-it’s one of the things that makes Amazon an attractive place to work. And recent changes to Pivot’s appeal process may have further eroded workers’ chances of a fair hearing.Īn Amazon spokesperson said the Pivot program was created to provide a “fair and transparent process for employees who need support in their job,” while providing them choices about next steps in their career. It’s a critical piece of the toolkit the company’s management uses to wield power over its workers.Īmazon managers have routinely used Pivot as a weapon to edge out employees for a slew of reasons unrelated to low performance-some of them potentially illegal-according to current and former employees and employment lawyers familiar with the program. That program, known as Pivot, gives employees accused of underperforming a choice between leaving voluntarily or signing onto a rigorous work improvement plan to test their mettle. (Amazon disputed this estimate and told The Daily Beast those workers number in the hundreds.) Like thousands of tech workers at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, Judy was managed out through an experimental management program at Amazon. Exhausted and disillusioned, she took the severance package and signed an agreement promising she wouldn’t sue Amazon. ![]()
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