The turnover problem

I have been working at Amazon for more than 5 years. The very high turnover makes it so hard to just do our jobs, let alone do it well. The lack of knowledge (depth or breadth) because most people are new means you nearly always get a lot of wrong answers. You end up spending a lot of time just chasing down basic information needed to do your job. In other words, there is little to no tribal knowledge or institutional memory. We don't want people sitting around doing nothing and collecting a paycheck until they retire (like at many other companies), so we end up with the opposite problem and this makes it really hard to get work done.

There result is so much incompetence at Amazon with constant excuses for why. The top two being too busy or too new. Both are always true and always going to be true until they fix the turnover problem (if they'll even admit it is a problem).

Amazon may be the best thing since sliced bread for our customers, but it is truly unbelievable the mess you will find when you look behind the scenes. It is equally unbelievable how little Amazon appreciates the workers who make it so amazing for customers and treats them all as disposable pawns in the political games the managers play.