But that said, I think Amazon had a very long interview process. Too long. (But I hear it's gotten better.) And so to grow fast, they need an easy way to exit people... that's not a bad thing.
Interviews are never a great way to hire people. Working with them tells you a lot more about personality and work ethic and commitment.
From what I've seen, I don't disagree with any of the employees that had been on Focus. Like generally speaking, we showed the people the door who needed to be shown the door.
For the good of the team, some people just don't fit, or they distract... a lot of it was personality, but a lot of it was really they were lacking the Ownership quality we needed.
If you have someone waiting for 12-levels of approval, they just slow down the others. I don't know quite how to say it, but it was a common thing you'd get someone from a big company... and they had various processes in mind when doing anything. We need that "Bias for Action" instead of anyone just looking to do things the way they did them at past jobs.
Or we had a guy who thought, "We're Amazon, we print money... let's just solve all our problems by throwing money at them." Oof. Amazon is, silly as it sounds, a startup at scale. And their Leadership Principles really speak to this.
Some people just don't get it.
https://www.aboutamazon.com/about-us/leadership-principles
Anyway, my 2 cents, as a former Amazon employee... It's good for any company -- especially one that wants to grow fast -- to exit about 5-10% of their workforce every year. Find the ones that aren't doing what's needed... and encourage them to go work somewhere else where they can add value. I never saw anyone bullied, I never saw anyone put on "Focus" who shouldn't have been there.
Playing devil's advocate... given so few people get off "Focus" plans, what's the point of letting people know they are on it? Kind of just seems like a waste of everyone's time. Some conversations just burn hours, no?
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