Nope no approval required

Interesting, I was told the opposite by my managers...

Unless you’re in Focus or Pivot, you’re a free agent. When Amazon is performance managing you in any sense it isn’t up to your existing manager if you can move, it would be an L10 (VP) exception on the receiving side to allow you to move, even if the hiring manager thinks you’re great.

that can't be right (but i have no idea). In the new group, nobody has any desire to at least do a reference check with the previous group? That would be the first thing as a hiring manager i would try to check for, say "this person is a d-bag that the entire group hated, and we were about to pip him/her anyway"? That would be kind of an equivalent of an approval, even if there is no formal approval.

Yes they do this. I don't know if the other guy just hasn't seen it himself or what

I mean, yes, having your manager say "I will destroy your career if you think about leaving" would be a kind of approval needed, but short of that level of viciousness it sounds like no?

Not familiar with Amazon culture so I don't know if that'd be considered acceptable behavior. I hope not!

have you considered that the manager may rightly have bad things to say? or that is just never warranted.

> have you considered that the manager may rightly have bad things to say? or that is just never warranted.

The manager should put those bad things _in writing_ during performance reviews instead of trying to prevent their employees from leaving by dunking on them after they are informed about the fact.