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I’m a Principal SDE at Amazon. Amazons weakest link are its managers, especially at the L6 and L7 levels. Competent L6 SDMs are far and few. I’m now working wit

I’m a Principal SDE at Amazon. Amazons weakest link are its managers, especially at the L6 and L7 levels. Competent L6 SDMs are far and few. I’m now working with the nth L6 SDM as a direct ask from an L7 peer. Like the other SDMs I was asked to work with, this guy can’t write, lacks technical depth, but he’s able to wow other managers in interviews. And the person who hired him is too proud to admit his failure and won’t do anything about it. It’s the same damn thing on repeat every damn year. The problem with L7 managers is many of them are just sales people. Many of them are brilliant individuals, but they can’t hold themselves from trying to shadow architect what their teams are developing. Okay you wanted to be a manager. Now trust your damn people to do their job and get the hell out of the way. For an L6 SDM, eventually this person will get encouraged to move to another org to go be incompetent somewhere else and become someone else’s problem. It’s unlikely he gets let go, unless it’s an engineer. An engineer is put on a performance improvement plan and removed. Does it really bother me? I’m helping him write a coherent road map document. His senior engineers are getting flak for the managers poor management abilities. The engineers manage themselves and TPM themselves. Why are he and so many like him here? It makes no god damn sense. And good, hard working, very capable engineers are thrown under the bus because of incompetent managers. They screw up peoples careers. I’m just bitching at this point. I know. But nothing will change until it hits our bottom line.

posguy 5y ago
This reminds me of Almost Live's Boeing Union Negotiations skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGHBQLxynrI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGHBQLxynrI
tamzn 5y ago
I'm a L6 SDM and do agree that there is a lot of scope for screwing up people's careers at this level, whether through incompetence or malice. If your org consistently has subpar SDMs, are there datapoints that support this statement (eg: attrition/failed promo docs/prfaqs/goals tracking)? If so, then as a L7, can you escalate this as a systemic issue? If not, what datapoints can you find to make you confident this is a systemic issue? Scary to escalate for sure but if your L8 isn't going to listen to you with an open mind maybe you need another L8.
ngc248 5y ago
This is an industry wide issue, any bozo/hustler (pardon my french) can get into the management track, get promoted as long as he keeps the one guy above him happy. In some cases like the one you mentioned the guy above does not want to admit his mistake so the bozo keeps on thriving. Whereas over in the technical track, the difficulty of getting promoted becomes exponentially harder, you need to have patents, publish papers, come up with new product lines etc etc But over in the management track, its a regular old boys club, you can decimate whole teams, bury good products into the ground and still come out unscathed. So is the solution that we need more technical folks to go into management ... I dont know ... any thoughts?
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  This isn‘t a great solution because the venn diagram of „good at people managing“ and „good at engineering“ is not anywhere close to a circle. In fact for any job this is largely true, to the point of being a media trope. Michael Scott in The Office is a fantastic salesman and a pretty terrible manager.
vanusa 5y ago
I’m just bitching at this point. I know. But nothing will change until it hits our bottom line. Thanks, seriously, for sharing. Just hope you don't get, uh, "found out" by the wrong L6 or L7.

posguy 5y ago

This reminds me of Almost Live's Boeing Union Negotiations skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGHBQLxynrI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGHBQLxynrI

tamzn 5y ago

I'm a L6 SDM and do agree that there is a lot of scope for screwing up people's careers at this level, whether through incompetence or malice. If your org consistently has subpar SDMs, are there datapoints that support this statement (eg: attrition/failed promo docs/prfaqs/goals tracking)? If so, then as a L7, can you escalate this as a systemic issue? If not, what datapoints can you find to make you confident this is a systemic issue? Scary to escalate for sure but if your L8 isn't going to listen to you with an open mind maybe you need another L8.

ngc248 5y ago

This is an industry wide issue, any bozo/hustler (pardon my french) can get into the management track, get promoted as long as he keeps the one guy above him happy. In some cases like the one you mentioned the guy above does not want to admit his mistake so the bozo keeps on thriving. Whereas over in the technical track, the difficulty of getting promoted becomes exponentially harder, you need to have patents, publish papers, come up with new product lines etc etc But over in the management track, its a regular old boys club, you can decimate whole teams, bury good products into the ground and still come out unscathed. So is the solution that we need more technical folks to go into management ... I dont know ... any thoughts?

bobthepanda 5y ago
This isn‘t a great solution because the venn diagram of „good at people managing“ and „good at engineering“ is not anywhere close to a circle. In fact for any job this is largely true, to the point of being a media trope. Michael Scott in The Office is a fantastic salesman and a pretty terrible manager.

vanusa 5y ago

I’m just bitching at this point. I know. But nothing will change until it hits our bottom line. Thanks, seriously, for sharing. Just hope you don't get, uh, "found out" by the wrong L6 or L7.