In my experience, Amazon is very good about focusing managers on facilitating talent and trusting engineers with implementation. Not in all orgs, granted, but t

In my experience, Amazon is very good about focusing managers on facilitating talent and trusting engineers with implementation. Not in all orgs, granted, but the innovative / experimental ones are very engineering driven... even the managers generally have some first-hand engineering experience. They're also good about keeping projects under single org trees - senior engineers act as executors of the VP's will, bypassing slow human management chains. If a team slips on their roadmap, the senior engineer can immediately intervene to provide unblocking advice (possibly looping in other experts) and coordinating scheduling changes with dependent teams... that shadow technical hierarchy is very powerful. It's let some VPs / directors reorg every couple months to shift out bad people managers, knowing tactical implementation isn't being interrupted. Knowledge management... I've heard Google is much better. Amazon's infrastructure is well documented, but bleeding-edge projects can be hit-or-miss. Their forte is strong separation of responsibilities... which usually means tribal knowledge. edit: I say "engineering" because I am one... but it's not just engineering. Amazon management focuses on hiring smart people they can trust to operate autonomously. That means less bureaucratic red tape, flat(ish) management chains, and effective direct communication. Talking "through" management, escalation, is a seen as a last-resort.