Amazon-to-Google-to-Amazon #a2g2a thought of the day: Reasons Not to Promote. When you endorse somebody for a promotion at Amazon, you MUST provide Reasons Not to Promote. This is in recognition that we all have gaps and places where we could use a little growth. Nobody is perfect. In fact, if an endorsement lacked Reasons Not to Promote, it was removed from the promotion package. Or if it had too many weasel words and platitudes, it too was often challenged (“X is a very nice person and a good developer” – did you spot the weasel words?). Occasionally this was weaponized. It also led to some awkward situations, like when I was up for promotion to Senior Engineer and I got a frantic text from my manager saying “Director X is citing ABC as reasons not to promote you, do you have any data to show improvement? I need it in the next 3 minutes if you wanna get promoted!!!” But most of the times I think it worked as intended. The desire was to trigger the right objective, data-driven, and honest discussions during the promotion decision meeting. A couple of months after I joined Google in 2020, I was asked to endorse an engineer I worked with. I wrote my endorsement in Amazon-style, ending with Reasons Not to Promote. About a day later I got a worried text from the manager, “Hummm… do you NOT want X to be promoted???” I was confused, “I’m a huge fan of X!” I clarified. The manager explained in no uncertain terms that I was to remove the Reasons Not to Promote. “Also, why did you say ‘Endorse’ and not ‘Strong Endorse’?”, the manager probed. At Amazon, a Strong Endorse means I’m willing to debate anybody regardless of seniority, tooth-and-nail, that this person deserves the promotion (and I did that multiple times). An Endorse means I fully endorse the promotion, simple as that. I quickly learned Google “Strong Endorse” mapped to Amazon “Endorse,” which also meant a Google “Endorse” mapped to an Amazon “Weak Endorse” or really to a “I-kind-of-don’t-really-endorse-this-person-but-I-dont-want-to-be-rude.” Ultimately, the way that both Amazon and Google operate in this regard maps to the DNA of the company. Amazonians have a healthy disregard for social cohesion, and a very direct and factual communication style which I admit can sometimes borderline being a jerk, whereas googlers fear being jerks, to the detriment of making hard and correct business decisions sometimes. Ultimately, the challenge is to be both direct and polite. I think both companies could learn from each other, but as for me, I’m a lot more comfortable in a culture of directness and open discussion.
Scott Brown
5mo
Interesting. I find the obligatory negative feedback at Amazon a bit annoying. Sometimes I really have nothing negative to say about a coworker. Also in every yearly review I’ll have to defend the negative feedback I get from peers which I usually defend with, ‘Well, they have to give negative feedback and those are the few LPs people pick when they have no real feedback.’ Not to say I’m perfect but when negative feedback is mandatory it’s a bit annoying to defend.
Benjamin Spain
5mo
> need it in the next 3 minutes if you wanna get promoted!!! To me, this is a reminder, as leaders, to deeply invest in our people. I would hope that a good career growth plan has the data on hand ready to back up claims of success. I am not looking to cast judgement on the situation you cited, perhaps your detractor was bringing up something "way out of left field" that no one could have been prepared for. Kudos if you hand data on hand for the moment, but I try to temper people's opinions with "we are going to need data to confirm or refute that" and gathering data takes time.
Rohan Singh
5mo
"Healthy disregard for social cohesion" is intriguing. But strong teams need both directness and positivity. Maybe it's a balance, similar to Google's "healthy disregard for the impossible." Open communication with a supportive environment could be key.
Lauren Albert
5mo
I’m a brand new Amazonian, onboarding in about a week - I really enjoy these insights into culture. Especially before starting. Having them called out so explicitly is ramping me up to head right in to day 1 rooted with some power ⚡️ Keep it up!
Arvind Telharkar
5mo
Carlos Arguelles “Hummm… do you NOT want X to be promoted???”- That cracked me up 🤣
Gareth Neville
5mo
IDK about Google but to your last point on the challenge of being both direct and polite. This sits with emotional intelligence. And if we over promote IQ over EQ, we’ll have leaders who have difficulty with empathy and humility. Two fundamental skills for effective leadership of senior teams. But this isn’t just an Amazon problem. Businesses have long promoted high performing IC’s to people management without first identifying natural leadership ability or offering any form of people based leadership training.
Ishita T.
5mo
Finding someone to strongly endorse a person at any company is insightful for understanding their soft skills. However, let’s address the core issue. Why do managers decide who provides feedback for promotions? This old school practice is inherently biased, creating a veneer of neutrality in the promotion process. 🚫 Looking ahead, we need to remove these biases and develop a more transparent and equitable system. 🚀 While the current method has its strengths, there is substantial room for improvement. 💡 A manager's job is inherently biased as they follow orders for a promotion process, so we need to think outside the box as engineers. 🧠 We need to empower the team and not rely blindly on managers for promotion decisions. 🙌 (referring here to quote - I need in 3 mins from the manager in above post, this tells about the pressure of manager) Every company, whether considering IQ versus EQ, kindness versus directness, or empathy, must innovate and enhance how we evaluate and promote talent. We should strive for a process that is as efficient and forward-thinking as the strategies we employ in our business operations. 📈🌟
You have a way of zeroing in on the things that Google was not good at. If anybody asks me what wasn’t great about Google, the promotion process is the first thing I cite (though I hear it’s changed since I left and that it’s better than it used to be). You’re spot on about one of the primary problems here. Not only is it awkward for people writing the feedback, it makes every promotion packet into an arcane tea-leaf-reading activity for the promotion committee. Because nobody can ever say “this person shouldn’t be promoted” in feedback, the committee (I was on 10 of them during my time at Google) ends up obsessing over tiny details that _might_ mean there’s something wrong. Plus, the manager is free to choose only people who they think will provide positive feedback, which makes this even harder.
John Glotzer
5mo
I have pretty mixed feelings on Reasons not to Promote. At the very least I think I would change it to something like Growth Areas which probably maps to roughly the same thing but to me feels less weaponized. We all know that these discussions (once you get to L6 and beyond) can become very adverserial so this feels to me a bit like giving matches to arsonists. Personally I'd go even further and remove it altogether. I support X because they have delivered A, B and C and embody qualities D, E and F and let the inevitable debates organically bring out the fact that X can sometimes be less than diplomatic in certain situations because we all know that that will always come out.
MS | Software Engineer
5moIt seems to me that Google started with great foundation of genuine kindness and openness, which made possible to to build things beyond imagination in the early years... But a lot of that degenerated towards hypocrisy, once the company lost its way to greed, especially in the last few years. It's been profoundly sad for me to see it happen :/ I haven't worked for Amazon, but it seems to be more consistent and robust especially lately, and perhaps a better place to work than what Google has become?