Tag Archives: people management

Talent is a Power Curve, or Why Employee Top Grading is Driven by Bias

In which I discuss how talent distribution follows a power curve rather than a Gaussian “bell” curve, making it difficult to differentiate low performers. It critiques Amazon’s stack ranking policies, which ultimately lead to bias becoming the determining factor for who gets performance management. Continue reading

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Amazon’s RTO SNAFU

Where I discuss Amazon’s RTO (return-to-office) mandate, and their inability to communicate any data-driven or evidence-based decision making. Continue reading

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Leaving Amazon

The first post I made on LinkedIn was my goodbye post, announcing that I was leaving Amazon, with a few comments as to why. I was surprised when it got nearly 250,000 impressions, over 1,500 reactions, and 150 comments. It’s … Continue reading

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Increasing the Scope

As mentioned in the about page, I’m not only an amateur / hobbyist astronomer with a high-tech telescope, I’m also a software professional. I graduated with a computer science degree back in the mid-90’s, and pretty quickly got into management. … Continue reading

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