Stack Ranking and Unregretted Attrition

In this lesson we examine how Amazon pushes managers to remove low performers each year. We also look at why a system that sounds harsh exists in the first place.

• Each year there is a target for “unregretted attrition,” typically a few percent, which in practice means firing the bottom performers.
• When Amazon dropped the target as an experiment, managers stopped having hard conversations, so it came back the next year.
• The system forces action but can also put people on the list just to meet a quota.

Original podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40-ENZmqcz0