Amazon Abandons Punitive Annual Review Process

Amazon.com has said it will abandon its annual review process, which critics called draconian, in favor of employee evaluations that focus more on staffers’ achievements. “We’re launching a new annual review process next year that is radically simplified and focuses on our employees’ strengths, not the absence of weaknesses,” said Amazon spokesman Teal Pennebaker. This makes Amazon the latest tech company to abandon the stack-ranking system, an evaluation method that forces managers to grade their teams on a curve, providing outsized rewards to best performers. Some see it as a signal that the company is looking to better compete in a job market that includes Microsoft, Google, and a host of start-ups. Microsoft got rid of stack-ranking in 2013. The stack-ranking system was recently skewered in a New York Times piece, which described it as a “bruising” work culture. Amazon also recently announced an expanded maternal leave policy and offered paternal leave for the first time.