People leaders without the requisite leadership skills
Pros
Getting to work on innovative projects and programs without budget restrictions. Seeing these turn into tangible products and services. Strong advanced focus on metrics that force you to speak with data relevance. While many people do not like writing documents, I think it's a great way to force someone to know the details of what they are presenting / proposing. Great culture of insisting on the highest standards and driving ownership across teams. I've met some amazing people in my time here.
Cons
The majority of leadership at the L8 level have no business being leaders. These people are intelligent people, who have accomplished a lot as individual contributors yet lack the requisite people skills to interact with employees. I wish I could say that what you read online isn't true, but it is. Leaders in Amazon do not play by the 14 principles, instead what I've seen is a great deal of ego and my way or the highway. Secondly, the people they favor tend to be people who are yes men. Therefore the concept of "have backbone, disagree and commit is overshadowed by the unwritten 15th principle "whatever your boss suggests, just say yes". This is not a scalable / sustainable model as the people that really are top tier contributors, leave because of the pathetic leadership and the toxic culture they create. The people in my department that are L7's only stay because they do not have other options, or are at the end of their career's and do not care.
