A manager from Amazon about layoffs in the US and programmer performance evaluation
I continue to interview Russian-speaking IT specialists from Silicon Valley. This time I was lucky to talk with Denis Davydenko , Software Developer Manager from Amazon .
- I studied applied mathematics at the Belarusian State University and graduated from it without red diplomas and outstanding achievements. In a word, an ordinary programmer, a manager from Silicon Valley described his education.
- What happened after university?
')
- My first job was not entirely programmer. After university, I got a job at Belarusbank, worked in ATMs, serviced branches, and drove computers back and forth — a regular job for fresh university graduates. Then a friend started calling me to Epam ( American outstaffing company with Belarusian roots - author's note). I was always interested in programming, it just didn't work out right away, so I decided to try it and left the bank. Epam started my real programming career. I worked there for about a year, and then another friend dragged us to Moscow, where I started working on the site for payments, the user portal and subscriber services in a large cellular company. The work was rather boring and I decided to look further. Quite by chance I found a startup and joined the development team (the main office was in Los Angeles, and all the developers were in Moscow). The startup was rapidly growing and the service station, which was located in the USA and had to devote more and more time to business development, decided to transport several developers from Moscow to help. I became one of them.
- What did the startup do?
- The startup was quite interesting in its time: we tried to make a social platform for social platforms. At that time, it was very popular to do not that clones (Facebook was not yet as popular as it is now), but such unique crafts on the theme of the same Facebook was doing. Our startup did about the same. It was a platform where each user will be able to make a small site for himself and organize a community around his content. Let's call it a social network for content creators.
- When did your transition from programming to management happen?
- Upon arrival in the US, I, as expected, began to deal with the technical side of a startup, but since all the development was still in Moscow, someone needed to fill the void between the product management and the technical part - the developers. Actually, I did this, so I had to move into more managerial activities.
- It turns out it was a forced decision?
- I would like to think so, but in fact I am more a managerial job. I pondered and understood: I just do not have enough brains to be a good engineer to grow into an architect. And with people, I work well. The first two years were hard enough, because switching from a programmer to a manager is quite a difficult process. I had to stuff the bumps myself.
- What difficulties did you encounter during the “transformation” from a programmer to a manager?
- The biggest difficulties were to learn how to work with difficult programmers. These are rock-stars that simply perform 120% constantly, but at the same time terrible introverts. They do not want to communicate, and are very weakly managed. As a rule, these developers set their own course of action, which can interfere with the project and disrupt all deadlines. So the difficulty of working with them was to learn how to “move” them towards the interests of the project, most often it means sacrificing the quality of the code for the sake of speed.
- Let's go back to your story: you worked first in Los Angeles in a startup, but then moved to New York. What happened?
- Our startup company bought Viacom. For a while, we still worked from the office in Los Angeles, but then the whole team was transported to New York, where Viacom’s main office was located. There, I grew from the position of Technical Project Manager to Software Engineering Sr Director, but after 5 years the company started having difficulties on the stock market - cuts started, and I also fell into one of the waves.
- There are many frightening stories about how to cut in America: without any warnings they put a box on your table where you have to pack your things and leave on the same day. How was it in your case?
- This is so and not so. Usually in the contract it is really written that the employer can eliminate the employee without warning in advance and without giving reasons, but the employee can leave the same way at any time. In fact, at least in IT companies, the employer usually warns the employee in advance (not 2 months, of course, but about a week) and pays him a severance pay, which can be from a month to an extrapayment year. American law is so arranged that you can judge everyone and for everything, so it is easier for companies to pay compensation to a downsized employee than to go to court and pay a fair amount of money for lawyers. In my case, I was paid very good money, which I calmly took, said thanks and went to Silicon Valley, where I still live.
- Tell me about your way to Amazon?
- A completely ordinary story: when I was cut from Viacom in New York, I started looking for a job, as a result of which I received an offer from Amazon. I liked the project to which I was invited, and, of course, I was arranged in numbers in the offer, so I, without hesitation, moved to work in Silicon Valley. At first, I began working on Alexa voice assistant, and after a year and a half I joined a team that is working on improving advertising in Amazon search. In general, if you wish, you can change the commands inside Amazon at least every year.
“There are a lot of different reviews about Amazon on the Internet, some of which are about squeezing all the juice out of programmers and managers. How high is stress really?
- Everything is very dependent on the specific product and on the specific team. My first team at Amazon was superstress. I had to work for 10-12 hours. Usually this happens in very fast-growing products. Despite the high intensity of work in such teams, there is a very important plus: the result of your work is immediately visible, and this gives additional motivation. Work in other teams, where they are engaged, for example, in supporting something, goes quite calmly, without undue stress.
- To what extent should a manager at Amazon be immersed in the tasks of programmers?
- In Amazon, there are no specific requirements on this subject, it is only the performance of the team that is important, and how each manager decides how to achieve it and how much to dive. I have 6 programmers in my team. I try to be aware of all cases as much as possible. Sometimes, of course, I miss something, because you often need to switch from one task to another, but we have a good team and programmers help out in such situations.
- Have you ever dismissed people?
- Yes, in my memory there were 3 such situations. The main problem was to make a decision about dismissing a person. When the decision is made, then everything is done according to the instructions for one-two-three. However, decision making has always been rather difficult.
In general, I try to anticipate such situations in advance and use the rule of 90 days: first let the person know that his performance is not what it should be; then we discuss options for how to correct the situation, draw up a plan of action. All this happens in the mode of ordinary conversation, we do not sign any official papers. And then every 1-2 weeks for three months, I monitor whether there is any improvement. If after 90 days there is no improvement, then either the person leaves himself (for example, he finds another job), or I give his case to the personnel department, where a compensation package is formed for him, and is reduced. Fortunately, the last three years I have not had to dismiss anyone, but if I had to, it would have been easier. I realized for myself that by not dismissing the person who needs to be fired, I make him, myself and the company worse.
- How does the interview process for managers in American companies?
- The interview process is fairly standard for managers and for programmers. It differs only in the ratio of technical interviews to interviews for managerial skills. Of course, managers focus on management skills, and engineers on technical skills. When I interviewed Amazon, I had to go through 6 interviews on the same day, 4 of which were on managerial aspects and 2 on technical ones. Engineers have the opposite.
For several years now I have been seeing interviews at Amazon, on the other hand, from the interviewer. I usually ask candidates for a managerial position quite standard questions and look at 3 aspects: how a person can solve problem situations, how a person manages risks, and how he communicates. As for the technical interviews for managers, they are higher-level: during an interview at Amazon you will not be asked to decide any algorithm, rather the task will, for example, design a system for the library.
- You called 3 managerial aspects that you check with candidates during interviews. What questions are you asking?
- An example of a question that I can ask: “Tell us about the situation in your personal experience, when you had deadlines and your project depended on some other team. What did you do? ”In managerial practice, this is quite a common situation, so it’s very important how a potential employee behaves in it, what exactly he tells, what reasons he gives, whether he is trying to tell what the team was doing or can isolate his contribution to common cause. Of course, preference is given to those who can tell about what he did. How he himself influenced the situation.
- Everyone around is talking about a shortage of employees in the IT industry. How does Amazon keep employees in the company?
- With specific salaries, a fairly easy process of changing teams (it became boring to work on one project, you can always find something more interesting) and attention to career development. For example, one of the important duties of a manager is the career planning of their employees. We have weekly one-on-one rallies with each programmer, and we also use them to discuss possible career growth. Talking about whether the programmer sees himself in the future as a manager or wants to develop in programming, depending on the desire, we plan the path to transition to managers or to the next programmer level. This is always a very individual process: one needs to grow in terms of communication, another lacks design skills, the third one is just very introverted and cannot show the whole world what a cool programmer he is and how much he did. Unfortunately, in large companies it is not enough just to work well. It is also necessary to show everyone that you are working well.
- Tell me about the methodologies that are used in Amazon?
- I met at least two methodologies that are used in Amazon. The first is Scrum, the second is Kanban. Of course, basically, I see that SCRUM is being used, because it allows us to give managers the appearance of what projects will be made and when they will be made. Accordingly, business development can be planned, deadlines can be announced and expectations set. But I had to work with Kanban. When the project is a complete break, everyone shouts, runs, tears out the hair on itself, we switch to Kanban for 3 months in order to clear problems and swim to the surface. Waterfall I have not seen, at least in Amazon, and I try not to resort to this methodology. And others I do not know.
- How does Amazon rate programmers' performance?
- In general, performance-evaluation occurs not only for programmers, but in general for each employee, even for VP, there is performance evaluation, and it has the same format.
At the end of each year, each person in the team anonymously writes a small review of the work of the other team members from the point of view of three criteria: value delivery (how much benefit a person brings to work), communication (how easy it is for a person to communicate in work) and visibility (visibility of what a person does).
On the basis of all reviews, an aggregate calculation of how well each of the team members worked out is made, and a certain rating is given, which is given to each programmer. That's all.
- What advice can you give to managers who can try their professional skills in the USA?
- Tip number one - make sure that you are able to communicate well in English. This means that you can quickly connect to any working conversation with any English-speaking person and communicate freely. Of course, sometimes you can ask again, but do not open the dictionary for each word. The second advice is to find out as much as possible about the mentality and culture of the country you are traveling to. This is much more important than it seems, because cultural differences can destroy any professional plans. And finally - try to understand what you expect from the move before you find yourself in a new country, and reserve the right to make a mistake. If you are traveling with the intention to stay, then set a clear framework for yourself, what it means for you to "stay" and in which case you are ready to return.
- I studied applied mathematics at the Belarusian State University and graduated from it without red diplomas and outstanding achievements. In a word, an ordinary programmer, a manager from Silicon Valley described his education.
- What happened after university?
')
- My first job was not entirely programmer. After university, I got a job at Belarusbank, worked in ATMs, serviced branches, and drove computers back and forth — a regular job for fresh university graduates. Then a friend started calling me to Epam ( American outstaffing company with Belarusian roots - author's note). I was always interested in programming, it just didn't work out right away, so I decided to try it and left the bank. Epam started my real programming career. I worked there for about a year, and then another friend dragged us to Moscow, where I started working on the site for payments, the user portal and subscriber services in a large cellular company. The work was rather boring and I decided to look further. Quite by chance I found a startup and joined the development team (the main office was in Los Angeles, and all the developers were in Moscow). The startup was rapidly growing and the service station, which was located in the USA and had to devote more and more time to business development, decided to transport several developers from Moscow to help. I became one of them.
- What did the startup do?
- The startup was quite interesting in its time: we tried to make a social platform for social platforms. At that time, it was very popular to do not that clones (Facebook was not yet as popular as it is now), but such unique crafts on the theme of the same Facebook was doing. Our startup did about the same. It was a platform where each user will be able to make a small site for himself and organize a community around his content. Let's call it a social network for content creators.
- When did your transition from programming to management happen?
- Upon arrival in the US, I, as expected, began to deal with the technical side of a startup, but since all the development was still in Moscow, someone needed to fill the void between the product management and the technical part - the developers. Actually, I did this, so I had to move into more managerial activities.
- It turns out it was a forced decision?
- I would like to think so, but in fact I am more a managerial job. I pondered and understood: I just do not have enough brains to be a good engineer to grow into an architect. And with people, I work well. The first two years were hard enough, because switching from a programmer to a manager is quite a difficult process. I had to stuff the bumps myself.
- What difficulties did you encounter during the “transformation” from a programmer to a manager?
- The biggest difficulties were to learn how to work with difficult programmers. These are rock-stars that simply perform 120% constantly, but at the same time terrible introverts. They do not want to communicate, and are very weakly managed. As a rule, these developers set their own course of action, which can interfere with the project and disrupt all deadlines. So the difficulty of working with them was to learn how to “move” them towards the interests of the project, most often it means sacrificing the quality of the code for the sake of speed.
- Let's go back to your story: you worked first in Los Angeles in a startup, but then moved to New York. What happened?
- Our startup company bought Viacom. For a while, we still worked from the office in Los Angeles, but then the whole team was transported to New York, where Viacom’s main office was located. There, I grew from the position of Technical Project Manager to Software Engineering Sr Director, but after 5 years the company started having difficulties on the stock market - cuts started, and I also fell into one of the waves.
- There are many frightening stories about how to cut in America: without any warnings they put a box on your table where you have to pack your things and leave on the same day. How was it in your case?
- This is so and not so. Usually in the contract it is really written that the employer can eliminate the employee without warning in advance and without giving reasons, but the employee can leave the same way at any time. In fact, at least in IT companies, the employer usually warns the employee in advance (not 2 months, of course, but about a week) and pays him a severance pay, which can be from a month to an extrapayment year. American law is so arranged that you can judge everyone and for everything, so it is easier for companies to pay compensation to a downsized employee than to go to court and pay a fair amount of money for lawyers. In my case, I was paid very good money, which I calmly took, said thanks and went to Silicon Valley, where I still live.
- Tell me about your way to Amazon?
- A completely ordinary story: when I was cut from Viacom in New York, I started looking for a job, as a result of which I received an offer from Amazon. I liked the project to which I was invited, and, of course, I was arranged in numbers in the offer, so I, without hesitation, moved to work in Silicon Valley. At first, I began working on Alexa voice assistant, and after a year and a half I joined a team that is working on improving advertising in Amazon search. In general, if you wish, you can change the commands inside Amazon at least every year.
“There are a lot of different reviews about Amazon on the Internet, some of which are about squeezing all the juice out of programmers and managers. How high is stress really?
- Everything is very dependent on the specific product and on the specific team. My first team at Amazon was superstress. I had to work for 10-12 hours. Usually this happens in very fast-growing products. Despite the high intensity of work in such teams, there is a very important plus: the result of your work is immediately visible, and this gives additional motivation. Work in other teams, where they are engaged, for example, in supporting something, goes quite calmly, without undue stress.
- To what extent should a manager at Amazon be immersed in the tasks of programmers?
- In Amazon, there are no specific requirements on this subject, it is only the performance of the team that is important, and how each manager decides how to achieve it and how much to dive. I have 6 programmers in my team. I try to be aware of all cases as much as possible. Sometimes, of course, I miss something, because you often need to switch from one task to another, but we have a good team and programmers help out in such situations.
- Have you ever dismissed people?
- Yes, in my memory there were 3 such situations. The main problem was to make a decision about dismissing a person. When the decision is made, then everything is done according to the instructions for one-two-three. However, decision making has always been rather difficult.
In general, I try to anticipate such situations in advance and use the rule of 90 days: first let the person know that his performance is not what it should be; then we discuss options for how to correct the situation, draw up a plan of action. All this happens in the mode of ordinary conversation, we do not sign any official papers. And then every 1-2 weeks for three months, I monitor whether there is any improvement. If after 90 days there is no improvement, then either the person leaves himself (for example, he finds another job), or I give his case to the personnel department, where a compensation package is formed for him, and is reduced. Fortunately, the last three years I have not had to dismiss anyone, but if I had to, it would have been easier. I realized for myself that by not dismissing the person who needs to be fired, I make him, myself and the company worse.
- How does the interview process for managers in American companies?
- The interview process is fairly standard for managers and for programmers. It differs only in the ratio of technical interviews to interviews for managerial skills. Of course, managers focus on management skills, and engineers on technical skills. When I interviewed Amazon, I had to go through 6 interviews on the same day, 4 of which were on managerial aspects and 2 on technical ones. Engineers have the opposite.
For several years now I have been seeing interviews at Amazon, on the other hand, from the interviewer. I usually ask candidates for a managerial position quite standard questions and look at 3 aspects: how a person can solve problem situations, how a person manages risks, and how he communicates. As for the technical interviews for managers, they are higher-level: during an interview at Amazon you will not be asked to decide any algorithm, rather the task will, for example, design a system for the library.
- You called 3 managerial aspects that you check with candidates during interviews. What questions are you asking?
- An example of a question that I can ask: “Tell us about the situation in your personal experience, when you had deadlines and your project depended on some other team. What did you do? ”In managerial practice, this is quite a common situation, so it’s very important how a potential employee behaves in it, what exactly he tells, what reasons he gives, whether he is trying to tell what the team was doing or can isolate his contribution to common cause. Of course, preference is given to those who can tell about what he did. How he himself influenced the situation.
- Everyone around is talking about a shortage of employees in the IT industry. How does Amazon keep employees in the company?
- With specific salaries, a fairly easy process of changing teams (it became boring to work on one project, you can always find something more interesting) and attention to career development. For example, one of the important duties of a manager is the career planning of their employees. We have weekly one-on-one rallies with each programmer, and we also use them to discuss possible career growth. Talking about whether the programmer sees himself in the future as a manager or wants to develop in programming, depending on the desire, we plan the path to transition to managers or to the next programmer level. This is always a very individual process: one needs to grow in terms of communication, another lacks design skills, the third one is just very introverted and cannot show the whole world what a cool programmer he is and how much he did. Unfortunately, in large companies it is not enough just to work well. It is also necessary to show everyone that you are working well.
- Tell me about the methodologies that are used in Amazon?
- I met at least two methodologies that are used in Amazon. The first is Scrum, the second is Kanban. Of course, basically, I see that SCRUM is being used, because it allows us to give managers the appearance of what projects will be made and when they will be made. Accordingly, business development can be planned, deadlines can be announced and expectations set. But I had to work with Kanban. When the project is a complete break, everyone shouts, runs, tears out the hair on itself, we switch to Kanban for 3 months in order to clear problems and swim to the surface. Waterfall I have not seen, at least in Amazon, and I try not to resort to this methodology. And others I do not know.
- How does Amazon rate programmers' performance?
- In general, performance-evaluation occurs not only for programmers, but in general for each employee, even for VP, there is performance evaluation, and it has the same format.
At the end of each year, each person in the team anonymously writes a small review of the work of the other team members from the point of view of three criteria: value delivery (how much benefit a person brings to work), communication (how easy it is for a person to communicate in work) and visibility (visibility of what a person does).
On the basis of all reviews, an aggregate calculation of how well each of the team members worked out is made, and a certain rating is given, which is given to each programmer. That's all.
- What advice can you give to managers who can try their professional skills in the USA?
- Tip number one - make sure that you are able to communicate well in English. This means that you can quickly connect to any working conversation with any English-speaking person and communicate freely. Of course, sometimes you can ask again, but do not open the dictionary for each word. The second advice is to find out as much as possible about the mentality and culture of the country you are traveling to. This is much more important than it seems, because cultural differences can destroy any professional plans. And finally - try to understand what you expect from the move before you find yourself in a new country, and reserve the right to make a mistake. If you are traveling with the intention to stay, then set a clear framework for yourself, what it means for you to "stay" and in which case you are ready to return.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/352002/
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