The Hunger Games Rank and Yank - Anonymous employee American Express Employee Review

American Express doesn't rate you on how well you perform your position responsibilities. They FORCE RANK you against your peers. This is commonly referred to as "Rank and Yank" or "The Hunger Games." Amazon recently caught bad press for this and changed their practices. American Express uses the Rank and Yank process to quickly and without thought or leadership, artificially bolster their stock price. "Amex earnings are down, oh wait they're cutting costs!" The joke is that the total number of workers never really goes down. They seem to focus on their oldest workers (most expensive) and then simply rehire after they burn the remaining people out over a period of a few months. There is ZERO loyalty to long term staff here. If they can outsource your job to India or hire a contractor.....they will. Many of the long timers at Amex have been laid off multiple times. It's sad. Unless you're a phone sales person who constantly has high numbers, you're expendable. The layoffs are every single year and destroy morale. I've never been at an organization where there was so much fear every single day. Everything you do is based on covering your rear so when it comes to review time, your list of things you've done is longer than the others on your team. Working with your cheaper outsourced labor from India is not bad, but the incessant late night calls are. Do you like phone calls at midnight? If you don't I'd highly suggest not working here. They are also exceedingly difficult to understand over the phone. The pay at the executive levels are INSANE. While they lay people off, they give themselves multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses. I remember listening to a town hall where one of the executives was talking about her dog walker. Yes, while they lay off in mass, this lady is worried about her dog's twitter/instagram account and her private dog walker! This really is The Hunger Games! I wrote an earlier review stating I was trying to get out....and it didn't take me long to find a much better. I left a young high performing up-and-comer. In my short time at my new job, I have saved my organization literally millions of dollars using new financial models and knowledge application. It's amazing what you can do when you're not guided by fear.