I started as a new grad in July, this is what I've gathered. Every year Amazon stack ranks their employees of the same level against each other, TT = top tier, HV = High Value, and LE = Least Effective. This is done in a large meeting with all the managers at the org level (org is short for organization and an org is a set of teams that work in a similar domain, around 300 employees). There is a set percentage of employees that must go in each bucket, most importantly 10% every year MUST be labeled as LE. This bottom 10% is then put on "dev plan." This a precursor to PIP. With this plan, your manager will try to help you improve so you are no longer labeled as LE. From my understanding this plan is relatively realistic and completable. If you fail, you are put on PIP. PIP = "performance improvement plan." PIP is essentially just Amazon's way of firing you. Your manager will give you goals to reach during this PIP (which from my understanding are very difficult) and once you don't reach them, you get fired. Now the kicker is each org in Amazon has a URA (unregretted attrition) rate. This rate is a percentage of employees that get fired every year, this is done through the stack ranking process I mentioned earlier. Amazon's philosophy is that the "bar is always raising" meaning they trim the fat by removing who they think is the bottom tier employees to make room for new employees who "raise the bar." I've heard the URA rate being 5-6%. This means that 10% are put in LE every year and about half of those employees are fired. The cherry on top is that Amazon offers (at least for new grad) have their stock vesting schedule very backloaded. For example, my offer is $80k RSU's over 4 years, however the schedule is 5/15/40/40. Meaning I get 5% after completing my first year, 15% after completing my second, 40% after completing third, and the remaining 40% after completing the 4th year. The average tenure of Amazon SDE's is between 1-2 years, which is why they tend to backload the stock. Edit: See u/DarkFusionPresent 's reply below for more info from a more experience Amazon dev

Copy-pasted from many other Blind posts: managers are instructed to send you an e-mail documenting their feedback on performance right after finishing a meeting to talk about concerns with performance. managers are told not to mention Focus, but that they "should answer honestly" if employees ask a direct question like "am I in focus?". managers can in practice lie and violate policy and have you in focus without giving you that e-mail or answering a direct question honestly. if you know you're in Focus you're entitled to concrete actionable feedback and may request specific goals to consider your performance as improving. and it's called focus, it hasn't been called devplan in years. to give you some context, copying one of my comments here: since q1 this year amazon rates employee performance 1 through 7 and potential 1 through 4, so there are 7 performance ratings. then the combination of those is mapped to an Overall Value rating by a formula, which can be (from worst to best) Least Effective (targets 5% of employees in orgs of 50+) Highly Valued . 1 (35%) . 2 (25%) . 3 (15%) Top Tier (20%) if your performance is 1 to 3 you're told your performance Needs Improvement, 4 or 5 Achieves Expectations, and 6 or 7 Exceeds Expectations. because of the way the mapping works, NI can only be LE or HV1. TT implies EE but EE could be HV1 or 2 or 3. AE implies you're one if the HV. Focus is NOT a rating. it's a process for formalized performance management where data is collected into a system about progress on improving performance. in theory focus exists to help managers improve performance of their underperforming reports but in reality it's to mitigate the risk of lawsuits to amazon from people they fire, by forcing managers to spend time documenting underperformance so that it can be argued later that the company gave opportunities to improve and firing wasn't a surprise. anyone rated LE every quarter has to be added to Focus except with L10 exception (in some orgs only in Q1). you can get added to Focus anytime if your manager thinks your performance is below the bar or if you violate a standard work policy or fail basic attendance. you can't transfer teams while on Focus unless the receiving team's s-team direct approves (usually vp). the manager has to give written feedback on performance and goals for improvement, and write weekly updates into the system about progress on focus goals. people are usually active in focus between 3 to 6 weeks, and 3 months is usually too long and will force a decision. in some countries it lasts a minimum of 3 months though. you get out of focus into good standing with L8 manager and hr approval, and you can't be added again to focus for 6 weeks. if not, you go into Pivot. Pivot is also NOT a rating. it's a process and a system to give people a choice between Leave Amazon or an Improve Plan (a.k.a. Performance Improvement Plan / PIP). you have 5 working days to choose. the Leave option is with a big severance payment in exchange for a signed agreement to waive rights to litigate against amazon for managing you out, and not to talk shit about amazon. if you choose the improve plan, you have usually 5 weeks to achieve aggressive delivery goals. if you succeed, you're back in good standing for at least 6 weeks. if you fail, you can leave with medium severance and the same agreement, or appeal. if you appeal, you collect feedback and data to make your case before a "neutral" panel vs your manager. if you win on appeal, you're back in good standing and can transfer to another team. if you fail, you can leave with small severance and the same agreement. you can be added to pivot anytime for serious violations of standard work policies or amazon's code of ethics. if it's serious enough you can also just be fired directly for cause, like if you do something outright illegal. you can also be added to focus or pivot for bullshit reasons if your manager breaks policy and skips steps, but then you can try to get your manager in trouble, and it's less likely since it requires collusion between your manager and hrbp, and possibly your skip. if you leave (or are made to leave) while active in focus or pivot or an improve plan or on the severance options, you count as unregretted attrition (URA) and there's a yearly goal for that in every org (typically about 6%) and then you're not eligible for rehire ever. if you weren't active in Focus you can still be added to it post facto with HR L8 approval if you violated the code of ethics.