According to Business Insider, Amazon is now requiring its corporate employees to submit three to five specific “accomplishments” as part of this year’s Forte performance review process. This is the first time the company has explicitly formalized the review around individual deliverables, moving away from broader past questions about employees’ “super powers” and how they contribute. The internal guidelines, obtained by BI, instruct staff to provide specific examples of projects, goals, or process improvements that show impact, even if the risks taken didn’t pan out. The move is a key part of CEO Andy Jassy’s push for a more disciplined corporate culture, following last year’s return-to-office mandate and pay model overhaul. The Forte review directly drives employee compensation through an “Overall Value” rating.
Jassy’s Culture Shift
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just a new HR form. It’s a fundamental cultural signal. Under Jassy, Amazon is systematically dismantling the more introspective, sometimes fuzzy, aspects of corporate life in favor of hard-nosed, output-oriented discipline. Think about it: last year it was “get back to your desk.” This year it’s “prove what you did at that desk.” The throughline is unmistakable. He’s streamlining management layers, tweaking pay to reward top performers more clearly, and now making the performance review itself a blunt instrument focused on delivery. It’s a full-spectrum effort to create what he sees as a more unified and, frankly, more accountable workforce. The era of pondering your “super powers” is over. The era of listing your deliverables is here.
The Broader Tech Reckoning
And Amazon is far from alone in this pivot. Look at the industry. Elon Musk set the tone at Twitter (now X) in 2022 by demanding weekly accomplishment lists. Mark Zuckerberg declared his “year of efficiency” and intensity at Meta. Even Google, long the poster child for cushy perks, has gotten tougher with stack ranking and cuts. After a decade-plus of talent wars and mollycoddling, the tech giants are collectively entering a period of austerity and scrutiny. The question shifts from “How can we keep you happy?” to “What value are you providing?” For a sector built on rapid growth and seemingly endless resources, it’s a sobering, necessary correction. But it’s also a brutal one for employees who got used to the old way of doing things.
Why This Matters For Managers
So what’s the real impact on the ground? For managers, this formalizes a difficult conversation. It’s easier to talk about “growth areas” and “principles” than it is to look at a sparse list of accomplishments from a report and have to justify their rating. The guideline’s note about including risks that failed is interesting—it tries to preserve some innovation spirit. But let’s be real: in a stack-ranking system that determines pay, how much weight will a “noble failure” really carry against a colleague’s five shipped features? The pilot in Amazon’s advertising unit, where chief Paul Kotas said it led to more “productive” talks, hints at the goal: less philosophy, more facts. It turns managerial judgment into something closer to a quarterly business review. That’s great for clarity, but does it stifle the long-term, speculative work that big companies need? That’s the big gamble.
