Ich habe Amazon gekündigt, nachdem mir 21 direkt unterstellte Mitarbeiter zugewiesen worden waren und ich ausgebrannt war. Ich mache mir Sorgen über die Entscheidung, die Hierarchie abzuflachen.
https://www.businessinsider.com/quit-amazon-manager-burned-out-from-employees-2024-10
27 Comments
Non paywall:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careers/i-quit-amazon-after-being-assigned-21-direct-reports-and-burning-out-i-worry-about-the-decision-to-flatten-its-hierarchy/ar-AA1se8YS
It’s has been well researched by both the military and academic population than an ideal group size is around 12 people.
Any effort to increase that by corporate management is not backed up by science, but by costs and spreadsheets
Five to nine direct reports, 12 max is a good rule. Amazon knows what its doing and no, i wont work for you.
Dunbar’s number. It is a thing!
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191001-dunbars-number-why-we-can-only-maintain-150-relationships
The bigger you get the harder it is to show investors big percentage growth numbers. Harder still when you’ve saturated the market by owning most of it. So you aggressively cut costs to boost margin numbers hoping that will keep them happy. Usually doesn’t end well… and takes a long painful time to end. The coming recession will not be due to any economic or government policies but rather the slow self strangulation of tech and med giants. Fun times ahead
she made my manager looks like shit. he has 4 direct reports but the fucker barely talk to us. the only thing the fucker cares is when we get our piles and piles of work done. he is one motherfucker
Personally I don’t want to manage people unless I am comfortable that what they’re doing is done right, and I don’t see that being possible with 20+ people.
Stay for the RSUs.
We stop around 10 at my company because it’s basically impossible past that to maintain any real leadership past that. I’ve had teams past 20 briefly during hiring/turnover and it’s doable short term but that’s it.
Why do people still work at Amazon after reports of toxic work culture, abortions, heart attacks and mental depressions
Only 21?! I have 27 and can relate. I’ve been doing for a few years and burnout is real.
I had a lead at a tech company, once he got double digit reports you could tell he was in over his head.
The sweet spot is 6-8.
TLDR precis of the article
Yvonne Lee-Hawkins, a former Amazon HR manager, left the company after burning out from managing 21 direct reports across multiple time zones. Despite her experience and love for the company, the workload affected her health and job satisfaction. Initially managing 11 people, she had to cut individual meetings in half when her team expanded, which led to a lack of personal connection and hindered employee development. Although she improved her communication and leadership skills, the growing workload overwhelmed her. She worries about Amazon’s plans to flatten its hierarchy but still believes in the company’s potential.
I jumped up into a supervisor role about a year ago. I have 9 direct reports to me and maybe 2-3 others who are assigned to my projects.
It honestly has created a very large strain on my work load to support everyone and sometimes to be an unintentional therapist to them. Being person people go to vent, complain, come to for help and guidance is a lot. It does burn me out, but my biggest gripe is it reduces my work efficiency.
Don’t post the article with paywall.
Amazon is on the bubble and heading downward.
Yet another supposed paradigm improvement turns out to be simply beating more out of your workers using brainwashed middle management and Taylorism, while undercutting competition because you have more patient stockholders and can bleed the longest.
If your drivers are passing in bottles, you havent’t found a higher gear than your competitors.
This is what happens when people think they need to be unicorns to make $500k salaries. They do this, instead of hiring and developing people who’d be able to compete with them and also *help with the workload*. They pick their own poison. The rest of us can only shrug our shoulders and say “I applied, but I guess you had all the help you needed.”
The rat wheel can’t spin fast enough. Have at it. This is what you wanted, isn’t it?
I had 45 direct reports last year because I refused to pick “team leads” who got the “privilege” of acting like middle managers without the pay. I folded my org into 5 “squads” and skinnied down 1:1’s to 1x a month or as needed (open door). It actually worked pretty well, and I was able to hold out long enough to get real manager positions approved. I restricted application eligibility to those within my group, and that worked out okay, too. Now I have 5 managers who get paid a decent amount, plus 40 team members who feel like they’re on a first name basis with me. Got an 88% approval rating on the annual survey, which I’m happy with.
Only 21 direct reports? I had 32 at Apple.
Yea, it was ass. I quit, too.
Ha, my boss (startup CEO) had 20 people reporting to him, so just didn’t meet with any of us at all.
I think 5-9 is a good amount. It’s enough that you can have discussions in a team and figure it all out. But more than 10, and it’s hard for everyone to get their word in, especially if someone had a good point and only can send a slack DM later that could potentially make everyone go, “shit, we should’ve let them talk instead”.
Same reason why most parties in multiplayer games max out at 6-10, depending on the game. Any more than that, and it’s hard to communicate. Put that on a corporate scale, and it can easily get out of control.
> I truly love and still believe in Amazon, but I struggled to effectively manage nearly two dozen people and quit in April when my physical health was suffering and I was burning out.
Stockholm Syndrome is rough, man.
Someone above them is reading 21 weekly status reports and tracking individual measurable?
This seems primed for phoning it in by telling your supe(s) that you’ll flag the top performers/metrics and let them know if anyone falls into a danger zone. Then they’ll bin the others that aren’t interesting and as long as you hit targets and forward them enough “wins” to look good… you can coast
Think a lot of managers and team leaders don’t realize that the door swings both ways if you let it
Having that many directs seems like a huge mistake. Managing at scale is hard. This is making it even harder.
21 was my max. Way too many!
My mgr has like 50 under her. They have really consolidated teams (aka fired managers) at my work.
Lol, government be like: “here’s 90 direct reports, plus you need to train them, do performance evaluations, their wcb claims, HR, oh, and you have a full time job to do on top of that”