> That directly contradicts point 2. Apparently there's a potential for preventing 6+ billion dollars of lost revenue.

But not in a single budget anywhere in the company.

And, it's all about MY local budget. You're asking ME to put a couple of devs on something that might pay off half a million dollars. Maybe. And, if it doesn't those devs could have been deployed elsewhere.

Uh, yeah, no. Not on my watch. I'm going to put those devs on something that might get me a bonus or promoted, thanks.

Thinking like this at Amazon gets you stalled at the L6 (manager 2) level. I can think of about 5 managers I've dealt with who acted like this in the past 4 years. As a senior tech person I was asked for feedback on them and gave something to the equivalent of the motivations you listed above. They were all managed out quickly.

By the time management is asking me for my opinion there is usually a worry about a person and I'm just providing data.

Also saving the company $6bn with "one wierd trick" ticks all the amamazon promo boxes and usually skyrockets you.

> They were all managed out quickly.

What? Why? Putting devs on something that will provide benefit rather than might is hardly a firing offense. I simply don't believe you.

> Also saving the company $6bn with "one wierd trick" ticks all the amamazon promo boxes and usually skyrockets you.

IF you can get it implemented. Something which crosses political boundaries is ferociously hard to get implemented unless there is credit that can be claimed by all involved.

> What? Why? Putting devs on something that will provide benefit rather than might is hardly a firing offense. I simply don't believe you.

I don’t work at Amazon but failing to see past your own team’s mission and missing your role in the larger company is a (common) failure of management.

managed out doesn't necessarily mean fired, probably demoted or moved into less important positions.

I'm sorry if that's really your view. There are both divisions in corps and people who think beyond a single bonus. I wish we started calling this out as "culture at Amazon enables thieves" rather than - here's a list of excuses why they can't do it.

At the very least, the higher ups with the view of the overall budget have the power to start projects like that which assign the budget as necessary.

> At the very least, the higher ups with the view of the overall budget have the power to start projects like that which assign the budget as necessary.

Except they won't because if it fails, their name is associated with it and they will get punished.

Most politics in big companies is about avoiding sins of commission as they are easy to spot--sins of omission are a lot tougher to identify and punish.

The "they will get punished" is a bit extreme. Big corps have both teams trying new things and maintaining existing ones. The proportions vary widely, but things get tired and fail all the time. If people get fired over trying something, that would make a very dysfunctional company. The budget for validating if they can stop some stolen deliveries would not be worth mentioning in most meetings.

Although I haven't been in Amazon specifically, in my experience in corp, the worst that happens to bad mid-level managers is that they're moved to a different project. And that's actually overall bad managers, not someone trying out an idea.

7 doesn't contradict 2. If you are the loss prevention VP in charge of stopping theft, and you reduced the number of reshipped items, you are decreasing a cost account. The revenue account for sold goods was already increased when the item was sold. The revenue account belongs to the retail group. They look good as long as sales are made. The cost account belongs to the LP group. They start out looking very BAD with huge losses and have to fight to get their costs back to zero.

For this reason large companies might group all their cost groups such as shipping, LP, fraud, etc into one big organization with special protections so they won't be cannibalized by revenue generating groups that have more political power.

> That's enough to put a dev on this problem for a year with required infra and still save some extra money - just from that single pawn shop.

If LP saves 400k, retail doesn't cut them a check for the 400k. They are on fixed budget, usually small because it is considered good money after bad. And at Amazon it is easier for devs and managers just to transfer to a shiny new AWS project than try to reduce costs.