Proper management

I believe that one of Amazon’s biggest obstacles is that they don’t value and establish proper people management. In my 4 years of experience with the company, I had exactly one good manager (who is of course no longer with the company). All other managers were pretty bad – we’re talking about lies, backstabbing and other cases of employee abuse. This problem is based on the leeway that HR gives to these managers without having to fear any consequences. It's like the Amazon version of "The Untouchables".

Main problem: Amazon dislikes the very basic idea of people management. Employees are considered to be the ‘necessary evil’. Whenever an internal employee is promoted to a people manager position, it seems that Amazon mostly disregards any lack in qualifications but rather goes for the person who knows to play their political game and rose the hand fast enough. As a result, a buddy manager promotes one of his obedient underlings over other more qualified candidates. Most of these candidates lack the natural skills for becoming a good people manager, though. In addition, this means that B-quality-level managers will promote C-quality-level managers and so on. These C-quality-level managers will then do everything in their power to exploit their subordinates for their own benefit and you will not receive any means of personal development support from them. Why? Because you (the silent yet strong worker expert type) are a threat to them and you may expose their weakness, inexperience and lack of knowledge in the long run. But thankfully, these have PIPs for getting rid of their underlings that don't fall into line, right?

I’ve seen this happening when one of my colleagues in a different team got promoted to people manager. Yes, he knew how to play the game and how to do play the political poker. Yes, he sucked up to the right people. Yes, he drank the Kool Aid. And yet, he had no f***ing clue about what was important in his new role - not to mention his initial one. The only thing that he cared about was using his former colleagues as a rung in the ladder towards his next promotion. Yet, that guy lacked the very basic and essential & natural people management skills. So how is it that employees without any natural people leadership skills are given power over employees? Needless to say that guy then promoted his buddies who had the same leadership ‘qualities’.