I suspect there is a correlation between companies that have a culture of letting engineers change roles/departments (and a clear process for doing so) and retention/average tenure.
As much as everyone hates on Amazon, no manager can block a internal transfer, maximum they can do is keep you for 4 weeks (with a very, very good reason).
The average tenure on many, many teams is 6 months.
As long as you don't talk to your manager ahead of time. I watched a colleague tell our manager that the job wasn't in line with what was explained (colleague was right, he wasn't a fit). Instead of the manager moving him into a new roll, my colleague was PIP'd. When my colleague did try to transfer, the PIP blocked it.
If you have a good manager, maybe its fine. But if your manager needs some headcount to cut.... don't trust them.
That's untrue, a manager can put their employee into a performance improvement program (without even needing to inform them) which would block them from any internal transfers.
How does a pip effect improved performance when the employee isn't even aware they're in one? Is trying to switch teams the only way to discover that, or are there other indirect ways?
But HR sees it as a way to prevent a subpar employee from escaping the natural HR process. The fact that you have not been informed yet is just a failure of current management to follow process, but does not obsolve you of your subpar performance. HR is there for the company, not for you.
But really, if the only goal is to not be able to shirk a PIP by repeated team-hopping, the PIP should just follow you as you move teams rather than blocking your progress, right?
"Here's Joe Candidate, he applied for your open position, and he has a 3 month old PIP on track to be resolved in 3 months. Accept or decline the transfer to your team?"
In theory that would be good. The issue is that a lot of managers don't like dealing with problems. If somebody is doing badly and maybe should be fired (which is what a PIP is supposed to indicate) you don't want a manager just passing the buck to some unsuspecting team.
Ultimately, I think you're right. It's impossible to build a bureaucratic pachinko machine that will make the correct personnel decisions. You really need line managers dedicated to coaching staff, and higher-level managers coaching line managers. One-size-fits-all rules are not the optimal solution. But bad management is endemic in so many organizations that I'm sure these abuses go on all the time.
Half?!? In most companies, a manager with half their people on PIPs would indicate the manager is really fucking things up somehow. Bad at hiring or bad at managing. That's not the case at Amazon?
This is true in many cases but internal transfers can still make sense.
Searching costs are a lot lower internally (no leetcoding needed in most cases, hopefully) and you are more likely to be able to land something outside of your current skillset, increasing your long term compensation and job security.
