Allow me to speculate that the guy’s manager is perhaps new at being a manager. Imagine going into being a manager from being an engineer not knowing you’re up against sociopaths in your own org who want to gut your team (other commenters have called it a bloodsport).

I’d love to see the data correlating PIPs of reports to manager tenure. I bet there is an inverse correlation. So to prospective hires, ask your hiring manager how long THEY have been a manager AT AMAZON before you waste time going through the whole interview process.

I had a manager who was one of those org-psychopaths you speak of and it was entertaining to watch him tear apart managers of other teams. Absolutely shred their OP1 docs and argue that their team was working on utter bullshit.

Don’t get me wrong there was a lot of good stuff about Amazon, their operations culture is second to none, but a lot of the ways I saw people being treated and bad behavior from managers being tolerated rubbed me the wrong way. I absolutely saw PIP being used reactively to block a transfer to my team, for instance.