Aggressively Unethical

Performance reviews at Amazon are the worst. They hide from all regular employees how the performance management system really works, but you have to make it your business to find out or else you’re definitely leaving soon. 

The managers give you a rank. Knowing what that rank means and what the other possibilities are is essential. You have to figure out the politics needed to get a promotion. Amazon is very much up or out. They take in a huge number of college hires and they try them out. If they can't get promoted in two or three years, they are out the door. 

If you are in this situation and you want to keep your job, you need to be laser focused on get promoted. Chances are high that your manager (who has likely also been there for a super short period of time as well) is not necessarily looking out for your interests. Even if you get lucky with a good manager, the chances that you will have a new manager in the next one to two years is almost 100%. 

Your manager entirely controls where you rank. If you have a manager who doesn't like you or simply won’t assign you the right work to move ahead, this means your Amazon career is plainly dead. Even having a manager who can't effectively defend you means you'll get screwed when the managers go up against each other in the OLR to fight for their own survival along with the survival of their friends. 

Amazon hires loads of managers, but the ones who “win” in this system are the most aggressively unethical. It just seems to be getting worse all the time.