My Worst Management Experiences at Microsoft, Google, Amazon

It’s the manager that makes work well or hell

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

After starting my career at Amazon, moving to Microsoft, and now joining Google, I’ve had my fair share of managers. Different people have different management styles and I’ve had experiences good and bad. In this article, we’ll talk about the bad ones.

Pinging Offline

Of course I’m going to take advantage of my health insurance working at these companies. Whenever I needed a few days off to recover from surgery or covid, I fairly spent my sick days. My first day back at work I’m not listed as out of office and get a message from my manager:

“Wanted to check in if you’re back at work”

I tell them yes and was left on read. I was half-expecting more concerns on my health. It left me unsettled thinking I was being checked up on for taking days off without using sick days. Because I’d rather have a manager check in if I’m “ok to work”.

Asking Why

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

There was a team meeting I missed to review a design I wasn’t knowledgable in. I declined the meeting on my calendar and let the meeting become an afterthought. That afterthought became fear when my manager asked me why I wasn’t there. If it’s not because a life-threatening emergency, then it’s just a rhetorical question.

It might not seem like a big deal but questions like these make me feel like I’m being watched. I feel like I can’t be trusted like an adult to make my own decisions. I feel like I’m being micromanaged. And nobody wants to feel like they’re being micromanaged.

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Being Blamed