GIC reviews

The below Linkedin post from an Amazon employee perfectly summed up GIC's make-shit-up for promotions culture: "Rewrote a perfectly good microservice just for my SDE3 promotion at Amazon. The legacy Java service was running fine for 5 years. Zero latency issues, minimal maintenance. But I needed “Scope” and “Complexity” to justify my move from L5 to L6. So, I wrote a 20-page design doc arguing that we needed to “modernize the stack” by rewriting the whole thing in Go with a complex microservices architecture. Wasted 4 quarters of engineering time and 3 other engineers’ lives. The new system is actually slower and costs 2x more in compute, but the launch email looked “strategic” enough to get my packet approved. I officially got the promo last week. Today, I accepted an internal transfer to a chill Core Infra team. The memory leak in the new service usually hits around 2 AM, and I won’t be on call. Good luck to the new grad taking over. TC $550k."

One of the growing concerns in the team is the tendency to attract so-called top talent who are unwilling to put in real effort. A clear example lies within certain operations teams, where members frequently excuse themselves for coffee breaks, citing the demanding and complex nature of analyzing investment data. But this justification doesn’t hold — if you’re truly talented, the work should come naturally. You shouldn’t need frequent breaks if the tasks are supposedly aligned with your expertise. There’s also a problematic mindset when it comes to innovation. Our top talent often doesn't want to hear about costs — they want revolutionary solutions. But without first understanding the actual problems, bold ideas are just noise. Good ideas are rarely obvious, but they should be simple, cheap, and implementable. Unfortunately, leaders often confuse complexity with innovation. A sophisticated solution to a simple problem isn't innovation — it’s poor judgment. What’s most disappointing is the recognition structure. I supported my team lead well and contributed meaningfully, yet when it came time for promotion, she was elevated to SVP — despite doing little actual work. It’s demotivating to see effort overlooked and titles handed out without merit. There’s a serious disconnect between effort, impact, and reward. If we want to build a culture of true excellence, these issues need to be addressed.