The Amazon internal transfer process was pretty terrible when I joined Amazon.

• It locked you into your team for 12 months after hire (or if you changed teams).

• It allowed your manager to block your transfer for just about any reason.

• Managers were allowed to ask for 9 weeks of transition time, which (of course) they always did.

After a particularly egregious situation with a terrible manager and an abused team, I set out to get that process changed. With the help of Nick Ciubotariu, we wrote a proposal which went to Jeff, and quotes from said proposal were directly quoted by Jeff when he changed Amazon's transfer policy.

In particular, the lock-in was gone, managers lost most of their blocking power, and the transition time was decreased.

It was a roaring success in my opinion. And most people agreed it was a fantastic change. Although, as I mention in my article, a few VPs were not as happy.

A few results:

• Managers were forced to actually care about their team members, or else they'd leave.

• Employees weren't stuck on the team they were "assigned" to at hire, or with managers they disliked.

• Overall, Amazon retention increased because quitting was no longer the only option to leave a toxic situation.

For more on the story of getting this process changed, read on in my latest article.