Seems like a major waste of time, cause no one is going to actually read these emails
Sounds like a DOGE initiative. No further comment.
An example of why I never want to work for a conglomerate.
Only local small business engineering firms for this guy.
This reminds me of a job I had, where the person they hired to be my boss knew a lot about paperwork, and zero about what I actually did. I had to document EVERYTHING that I worked on.
She got pissed when I did it accurately one week, with 5 hours dedicated to documenting what I did the rest of the time (I quit not long afterward).
Those employees who object to this initiative have had time to leave by now. This is the latest step in formalizing what has been going on for months.
IMO the previous Amazon corporate culture was toxic as well as unproductive. Peer feedback had a huge weight and the back stabbers were part of the culture.
Not sure how this is productive. Has nothing to do with peer feedback. It is literally an email, to your manager, with 5 reasons why you shouldn’t be shown the door.
GOOD MANAGERS should already know what you have done for the year. Amazon managers now can see down to the second computer usage/activity and badge in/out times.
Telling an employee “Stop everything your doing, and I need you to think about the last 365 days and give me your top 5 (money makers) for the corporation” is literally elementary school work.
Everything involving a corporate HR department is “literally elementary school work” and usually unproductive. This might actually help a manager to evaluate his employees.
A manager that needs this to evaluate his staff is a manager that isn’t managing properly.
Ha, Ha, Ha-FOFL. Do these people in power never learn?
A manager who does not seek his employee’s perceptions of the situation is a manager that isn’t managing properly. What the employee thinks are his five greatest accomplishments in a given period may differ from the manager’s perception. And that difference should be dealt with in a performance review if the employee is to thrive in the organization.
I was doing this 15 years ago….
Thankfully, no more, I think…..
I agree w/ you-but should be a bi-yearly review by an immediate supervisor that the employee interacts w/ every work-day. Not an impersonal e-mail by the CEO who is worth a zillion bucks and the employee never sees in person. Ridiculous!
I worked for the Feds! This is the type of BS their managers shoot out at the beginning of the year because their bureaucracy has become too large to handle/supervise!! A conversation at a person’s desk or even coffee in the break room would do this better. Jassy won’t read the million e-mails. It’s make-work- worthless.
All this type of malarky does is make the employee feel precarious in their position!
THIS in spades. I was part of a serious Compliance Department for a middle sized (at the time) investment firm. The section I was in was part of the larger department and we worked exclusively in supervising and examining insurance agents that were with the parent company – entirely separate and HUGE.
Our section/division got bought out by the parent company and we we literally FORCED to go to work for the parent company or become unemployed.
At the time, their “Best Practices” section was a half-assed compliance operation and those of us that had been in the business for decades knew that.
With a sales force of over 5000 agents they terminated 2 or 3 agents a year for violating various rules/laws which was/is a preposterously low number.
Our first year there the number increased to over 15 or 20 which we all felt was an actual accomplishment – keeping the buyers of mutual finds and variable life and annuities safe from fraud.
Manglement felt otherwise. We were instructed that effective IMMEDIATELY we could no longer examine ANY insurance files, even if they were for variable product that we were brought in to supervise.
They knew, but didn’t realize, what doing that would trigger when they had forced someone that doesn’t play nice with incompetent power structures to literally cross the street to work for them.
Expensive lessons to be had…
A Lt. Col does not wait 2 years for a captain’s next OPR to come around to determine if “difference should be dealt with”. That failure of leadership is 100% the responsibility of the O5 or E7 or whoever is at the top of the org chart where it branches down. If a leader is not intimately knowledgeable about an employees heath and wellbeing and performance metrics on a constant basis, they are either inept, or the org chart/organization is broken and an email of accomplishments does nothing just like an OPR/EPR in the military.
Way too much of this corporate cowardice BS where feral employees roam free range because leaders are afraid of being labeled one form of phobic or another, and on the other end we have quiet quitting managers who blame the same employees they failed to lead in the first place because they are slaves to culture below and corporate/shareholder profits above. Hard to lead a team of marathon runners who hate running, while wearing kneepads the whole time.
The military has far greater respect for authority than Amazon has.
Discipline is part of the military culture, The Amazon corporate culture has little discipline and that is a big piece of what Andy is remedying.
Andy is a biotch to the shareholders and can never be a true leader. They will yank his leash if his culture change impacts growth. Tech bros at AWS are not going to want to work at the equivalent of a Foxconn factory, just because Andy wants people to come into the office 5 days a week or send a fluffy weekly email. The culture has changed, and those smart enough to be masters of their craft are not as tolerant of corporate greed like in yesteryears where people had pride in the company they work for. Like a skilled plumber, they know they can be easily employed elsewhere with less corporate BS or simply work as a contractor.
While true, it is not exclusive. Amazon employees are not dying when their algorithm accidentally launches an F-35 off the carrier at 3AM or when a mortar round lands 4’ from the tube. I would assert you can find discipline in many corporate environments, airlines, hospitals, companies who deal with hazardous materials.
Darwin helps motivate discipline when shareholders won’t. There is no Darwin for everyday workers at foxconn… oops I mean Amazon.
Sample list of 2025 achievements:
“Cleared thousands of cases off my queue in record time”
If honesty were required (ha!) – could even one Seller Support agent claim to have helped someone? Once?
There was this seller support agent, who upon listening to the seller explain that his cue sticks inventory was missing, placed the seller back in que so he could find them … does that count?