‘I quit Amazon’: Ex-manager shares how flattening hierarchy led to burnout and made her walk out

Yvonne Lee-Hawkins, a former HR professional at Amazon, recounted her unexpected journey into management. After years of climbing the corporate ladder, she found herself thrust into a high-pressure role overseeing a global team. The complexities of managing employees across diverse cultures and time zones proved to be a formidable challenge, as she shares in essay, according to Business Insider.

The former employee, who worked for the company for a long time described how the workload left her feeling stretched thin and disconnected from her team members, as she could no longer provide the individual attention she believed was crucial to effective management.

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Why I left Amazon?

After nearly a decade in various HR roles, Hawkins found herself overwhelmed when her responsibilities expanded to managing 21 direct reports across multiple time zones. Despite her passion for Amazon, Lee-Hawkins ultimately made the difficult decision to resign when the demands of her position took a toll on her physical health and well-being.

She first joined Amazon in 2014 as a senior launch manager in the grocery delivery space. However, after just two years of constant traveling, she became completely burned out. She decided to change her career track and stepped into the HR department, where she continued for the next eight years. In 2019, she became a business partner but ultimately decided to leave, believing there was little room for growth and seeking a promotion. She then joined another Jeff Bezos company, but it didn’t work out, leading her to return to Amazon a year later.

Unexpectedly landed into a managerial role

This time, she joined as a program manager for business continuity, organisational changes, and mass layoffs. Soon after, she was unexpectedly promoted to manage two teams, leading to a staggering increase in her direct reports to 21.

Lee-Hawkins found herself with a lot more work when she was suddenly put in charge of two teams, each with 11 employees spread out across China, India, and some parts of Europe. Handling a team from all over the world and dealing with different time zones was a big headache for her.

Before this, she was only in charge of a few people who reported to her indirectly, and she was really good at making sure each person got some one-on-one time online to talk about their career goals and get support. But as her job got bigger, her meetings started going on for 11 hours a week, which was tiring but she managed to keep up with it.

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The burnout point

Things got worse when a coworker took maternity leave, adding another team to her responsibilities and bumping up her total number of direct reports to 21. This left Lee-Hawkins with no other option but to reduce the number of one-on-one meetings she had. The growing stress made her change how she communicated, focusing more on being efficient and using methods that worked regardless of where her team members were located.

However, as her workload kept piling up, she started feeling more and more stressed, realizing she couldn't give the personal attention her team members needed. In April, after months of struggle, she made the difficult decision to resign. “I stopped enjoying work. My work felt bureaucratic, and I was so focused on staying on top of each little task that I wasn't contributing to things that were moving the needle,” she said.

“I worry about this fallout continuing as Amazon prepares to flatten its organisation in January, but I still believe Amazon can be a magical place full of innovation, autonomy, and creativity,” she added.

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