Oh, 1000%. I could write a book on how monumentally stupid the whole process is (and most Amazonians agree), but the fundamental points are:
The people that stay are of a certain mindset, where you don’t pick up “hard” tasks, and you are quick to establish blame/ownership elsewhere.
Data is king, but you can lie a lot with data.
Employees are customers also, and when you piss off employees you piss off customers and their families.
You spend a huge sum of money on hiring and training talent, only to send them to your competitors.
You spend money to give severance to active employees. That is still, to be, the dumbest thing ever. SO many people don’t resign, they just down tools or do a bad job to get the extra pay. PIP is called Paid Interview Prep for a reason.
Amazon’s Focus/Pivot has such a bad reputation that being fired used to mean that other big companies would happily tell you “if you have any trouble at Amazon, let me know and we’ll start an interview loop”.
Most fundamentally of all…very few companies do this. It died with Jack Welch/GM and Gates/Microsoft, after they saw the same downfalls. Amazon is yet to learn their lesson, and it shows in how poorly the “Amazon Management School” under Bezos are performing. The other big tech companies also now do this, although less severe, and surprise surprise, they’re all going downhill - making awful decisions, delivering nothing of value, and ignoring customers over leadership.