At any reasonably sized company individual managers are going to have a lot of control over their subordinates, and their underlings aren't going to have any say pretty much at all. What are they going to do, complain to HR? HR at any large company isn't in the business of keeping people employed, it's in the business of keeping the company safe. If you rock the boat, you are now the problem. It's no wonder that all of the negative comments about Amazon boil down to either "this job was absolute shit" - bad manager from the start - or "this job was amazing and then turned to shit" - either the good manager quit/was fired by their superior for not being shit/was promoted and their replacement was garbage, or they were a sociopath that slowly turned up the heat so the proverbial frogs wouldn't notice the boil until they were cooked.
Remember, your boss is ultimately not your friend, certainly not in a professional setting. An individual contributor/manager relationship fundamentally must be adversarial, because one side holds all the power, and even if the manager breaks trust the worst thing that will happen is the IC's replacement will be less productive for a few months.
When managers have this much power over their reports and there's no way for someone to fight back against their manager, it's no wonder that shitty managers are so common. It's a situation ripe for abuse.
Remember, your boss is ultimately not your friend, certainly not in a professional setting. An individual contributor/manager relationship fundamentally must be adversarial, because one side holds all the power, and even if the manager breaks trust the worst thing that will happen is the IC's replacement will be less productive for a few months.
When managers have this much power over their reports and there's no way for someone to fight back against their manager, it's no wonder that shitty managers are so common. It's a situation ripe for abuse.