Amazon Promotion Document: Writing for the OLR Process

At Amazon, your promotion document must prove you are already operating at the next level - not that you are ready to start. That single sentence is the most important thing to understand about Amazon's promotion process. The OLR committee does not promote potential. It promotes demonstrated, sustained, next-level performance.

The standard threshold is roughly 80% of the next level's expectations. Not 80% of your current level - 80% of the level above. If you are an L5 going for L6, the committee needs to see that you have been consistently delivering L6-scope work for multiple quarters before they will approve the promotion.

This requirement is strict, and it is where most promotion attempts at Amazon fail. The work might be excellent. The feedback might be positive. But if the promo document does not clearly demonstrate next-level operation against Amazon's Leadership Principles, the OLR panel will say "not yet."

This guide breaks down exactly how the OLR works, what the promo document needs to contain, how Leadership Principles factor into every decision, and what each level transition requires.

How Amazon's OLR (Organization and Leadership Review) Works

The OLR is Amazon's closed-door calibration process where promotion decisions, compensation adjustments, and performance ratings are finalized. It runs twice a year, typically in Q1 and Q3, though exact timing can vary by organization.

The OLR Meeting Format

An OLR meeting follows Amazon's signature narrative format. The meeting begins the way most Amazon meetings do: all attendees silently read a document. For promotions, this is the promo doc - a narrative document that outlines the candidate's case.

After the document is read, the candidate's manager presents the case. Then the manager's peers - typically other VPs or senior leaders - debate the merits and weaknesses. This is not a rubber stamp. The discussion is rigorous, and the panel actively looks for reasons the candidate might not be ready.

Bar Raisers may also be involved. These are highly tenured Amazon employees whose role is to ensure promotions only go to people who genuinely raise the performance bar at the next level. They are not advocates. They are skeptics. Your document needs to withstand their scrutiny.

The Role of Forte in the Promotion Process

Forte is Amazon's performance review system. It feeds into the OLR but is a separate process. As of 2025, Forte requires employees to submit 3-5 specific accomplishments rather than a broader self-assessment narrative. Each accomplishment should map to Amazon's Leadership Principles.

The Forte timeline typically runs from November to January: you request and receive feedback from colleagues, stakeholders, and managers. All feedback is anonymous once submitted - it goes directly to your manager, who decides which feedback to include in the final Forte summary.

Your Forte rating becomes one of the inputs into the OLR calibration, but the promo doc is the primary vehicle for promotion decisions.

OLR Rating Tiers

During OLR, employees are placed into one of these tiers:

• Top Tier (TT) - roughly the top 20%. Gets a raise and usually a promotion.
• High Value 3 (HV3) - strong performer. Gets a raise and recognition. Promotion is possible.
• High Value 2 (HV2) - meets expectations. Modest compensation adjustment.
• High Value 1 (HV1) - below expectations for your level. Often assigned to new-in-level employees or those losing momentum.
• Least Effective (LE) - bottom 5%. Managed out through Focus, Pivot, or PIP.

To get promoted, you generally need a TT or HV3 rating. Consecutive TT ratings make promotion almost certain. After promotion, you are typically placed at HV1 in your new level - the reasoning being you are too new to be accurately assessed at the higher level.

Amazon's 16 Leadership Principles: The Promotion Framework

Unlike Google's four axes or Meta's four pillars, Amazon evaluates promotions against 16 Leadership Principles. As of 2025, adherence to these principles is now formally embedded as a scored metric in performance reviews - the first time they have been this explicitly quantified.

You do not need to demonstrate all 16 in your promo doc. But you should explicitly reference the 4-6 principles most relevant to your work. Here are the principles that matter most for each level transition:

For L4 to L5 (SDE I to SDE II): Execution and Depth

• Deliver Results - Are you consistently shipping on time with quality?
• Dive Deep - Do you understand your systems at the detail level, not just the surface?
• Insist on the Highest Standards - Is your code quality raising the team's bar?
• Bias for Action - Do you move fast and unblock yourself?

For L5 to L6 (SDE II to SDE III): Scope and Influence

• Ownership - Do you treat your team's systems as if you own the business?
• Think Big - Are you proposing solutions at a larger scale than your immediate tasks?
• Earn Trust - Do cross-team partners seek your input and trust your judgment?
• Invent and Simplify - Are you finding better approaches, not just executing the existing ones?
• Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit - Do you push back when you see a better path, then commit fully once a decision is made?

For L6 to L7 (SDE III to Principal): Strategic Impact

• Think Big - Are you defining the technical strategy for your organization?
• Hire and Develop the Best - Are you growing senior engineers and future leaders?
• Customer Obsession - Are your decisions driven by customer impact at scale?
• Learn and Be Curious - Are you staying ahead of the technology curve and bringing new capabilities to your org?

Amazon Levels: What Each Transition Requires

L4 to L5: From Guided to Independent

L4 is the entry level for SDEs at Amazon. The L4 to L5 promotion is typically held back by insufficient technical complexity - the committee wants to see that you are solving hard problems, not just completing tasks quickly.

What the OLR panel looks for:

• You independently own and deliver features without your manager defining every step
• You have resolved production issues that required deep technical investigation
• Your work has measurable impact on team-level metrics
• You are starting to help onboard new team members and review code effectively

Typical timeline: 1-2 years at L4. This is the fastest promotion at Amazon.

L5 to L6: From Individual to Organizational Impact

The L5 to L6 promotion is where most Amazonians plateau. The committee rejects L5 to L6 candidates primarily for lack of scope, influence, and impact. Being the best individual coder on your team is not enough - you need evidence of cross-team influence and organizational-level problem solving.

What the OLR panel looks for:

• Cross-team projects where you defined the technical approach
• Design documents reviewed and adopted by engineers outside your team
• Measurable business impact (revenue, cost, customer metrics) not just technical metrics
• Evidence that you own the problem space, not just the solution - you identified what needed to be built, not just how to build it
• Mentoring that produced measurable growth in more junior engineers

Typical timeline: 3-5 years at L5. Many strong L5s need 2-3 OLR cycles before approval because they are deep but narrow.

L6 to L7: From Organizational to Business-Wide Impact

L7 (Principal) promotions are rare and heavily scrutinized. At this level, the OLR panel expects you to have meaningfully changed how Amazon operates in your domain.

What the OLR panel looks for:

• Multi-org or business-wide technical strategy that you defined and drove
• Systems, frameworks, or platforms that multiple organizations depend on
• Direct influence on VP-level and senior leadership decisions
• A track record of developing L5 and L6 engineers into stronger technical leaders
• Customer impact at massive scale (millions of customers, hundreds of millions in revenue)

Typical timeline: 4-7+ years at L6. Multiple OLR cycles before approval is the norm, not the exception.

The Promo Doc: Format and Structure

Amazon's promo doc follows the company's narrative document culture. It is not a slide deck or a bullet-point list. It is a written narrative that is read silently at the beginning of the OLR meeting, then discussed.

Here is the structure that works:

1. Introduction (1 paragraph). Current level, target level, tenure, team, and a one-sentence thesis: why this person is operating at the next level.
2. Role and Context (1-2 paragraphs). What is the scope of the candidate's current role? What does their team own? What business problems do they work on? This gives the OLR panel context for evaluating the impact that follows.
3. Accomplishments (3-5 detailed sections). Each accomplishment should be a self-contained narrative: the problem (with business context and scale), the approach (with technical depth and trade-off analysis), the outcome (with metrics), and the Leadership Principles demonstrated. Lead with the metric. End with the principle mapping.
4. Leadership Principle Evidence. An explicit section mapping the candidate's work to 4-6 relevant Leadership Principles. Reference specific accomplishments by name so the panel can cross-check.
5. Growth Trajectory. How has the candidate's scope, complexity, and influence expanded over the review period? The panel wants to see an upward trend, not just a snapshot.
6. Peer and Stakeholder Endorsements. Direct quotes or summaries from cross-team partners, skip-level managers, or senior engineers who can speak to the candidate's next-level performance.

Before and After: What Good Promo Doc Writing Looks Like

Weak (describes activity):

John worked on improving the reliability of the order processing system. He fixed several bugs and improved monitoring. The team was happy with the improvements.

Strong (demonstrates next-level performance):

John identified that the order processing system was experiencing an average of 3.2 severity-2 incidents per month, with a mean time to resolution (MTTR) of 4.1 hours - contributing to an estimated $2.8M in annual lost revenue from failed orders. He independently scoped and executed a reliability improvement program: implemented distributed tracing across 7 microservices (enabling root-cause identification in minutes rather than hours), designed and deployed a circuit-breaker pattern that prevented cascading failures between the order and payment services, and built an anomaly detection dashboard that provided 15-minute early warning for capacity issues. Over the following quarter, severity-2 incidents dropped to 0.4 per month (88% reduction), and MTTR improved from 4.1 hours to 38 minutes. This work demonstrated Dive Deep (root-causing systemic issues beyond surface symptoms), Insist on the Highest Standards (setting a new reliability bar for the team), and Ownership (treating the reliability gap as his problem despite it not being in his initial project scope).

6 Amazon-Specific Mistakes That Sink Promo Docs

Mistake 1: Not Referencing Leadership Principles by Name

The OLR panel evaluates you against the Leadership Principles. If your promo doc does not explicitly reference them, you are forcing the panel to make the mapping themselves. They will not invest the effort. State which principles each accomplishment demonstrates.

Mistake 2: Writing About Current-Level Excellence Instead of Next-Level Performance

"John is the best L5 on the team" does not get you promoted to L6. The panel needs to see: "John has been consistently operating at L6 scope for the past 3 quarters." Frame every accomplishment in terms of the next level's expectations, not your current level's.

Mistake 3: Submitting Without Cross-Team Evidence

For L5 to L6 and above, the panel specifically looks for impact beyond your immediate team. If every accomplishment involves only your team, the panel will conclude you are not operating at the next level's scope, regardless of how excellent the work is.

Mistake 4: Ignoring the "Already Operating" Requirement

Amazon does not promote based on potential. The panel wants to see that the candidate has already been performing at the next level for a sustained period. If you describe future plans or theoretical capabilities, the panel will redirect to: "Show me where they have already done this."

Mistake 5: Burying Metrics in Narrative

Amazon is a metrics-driven company. If your key numbers are buried in the middle of a paragraph, the panel may miss them during a fast read. Lead accomplishment sections with the metric, then provide the context. $2.8M saved, 88% incident reduction, 40% latency improvement - put these numbers where the eye lands first.

Mistake 6: Not Getting Your Manager Aligned Early

Your manager writes and presents the promo doc. If they do not deeply understand your strongest accomplishments, the document will be weaker, and they will struggle to defend it during the OLR discussion. Share your evidence early. Discuss framing. Ask them what the panel is most likely to push back on.

The 2025 Changes: Leadership Principles as a Scored Metric

Amazon's 2025 performance review update formally embedded Leadership Principles as a scored metric for the first time. Under the new system, managers evaluate three factors:

1. Performance - Did you deliver results?
2. Potential - Can you grow into more responsibility?
3. LP Behavior - How effectively did you demonstrate the Leadership Principles?

These three factors combine into an Overall Value (OV) score that influences raises, promotions, and PIP decisions. Only 5% of employees are eligible for the top "role model" grade for LP behavior. This makes explicit LP evidence in your promo doc more important than ever.

OLR Timeline: When to Prepare

• November-January (Forte cycle): Request and collect feedback. Submit your 3-5 accomplishments for Forte, tied to Leadership Principles.
• 3-4 months before OLR: Have the explicit promotion conversation with your manager. "Am I on track for promotion this OLR? What evidence is the panel most likely to question?"
• 8 weeks before OLR: Draft your accomplishment narratives. Share with your manager for feedback on framing and gaps.
• 4 weeks before: Finalize the promo doc with your manager. Ensure cross-team evidence is strong. Align on which Leadership Principles to emphasize.
• 2 weeks before: Your manager should have the final document ready to present. Follow up to confirm they are prepared.

Putting It Together

Amazon's promotion process is deliberate, metrics-driven, and rooted in the Leadership Principles. The OLR panel reads narrative documents, debates the evidence, and holds candidates to the "already operating at the next level" standard. Bar Raisers ensure the bar does not drop.

The engineers who get promoted at Amazon are the ones who understand that the promo doc is not a summary of their work - it is a structured argument proving they have already been performing at the next level. Every accomplishment needs a metric, a Leadership Principle mapping, and evidence of scope appropriate for the target level.

For the general promotion packet framework, read our complete guide to writing a promotion packet. For strong self-evaluation examples you can adapt for Forte, see our self-evaluation examples guide. For level comparisons across Amazon, Google, Meta, and others, check the tech promotion levels guide. And if you are at Amazon and ready to build your case, visit the Amazon promotion packet page for a guided walkthrough.