Amazon

The retail space is very complex, with many organizations. Each organization consists of tens of teams. For most teams, they work with tens of teams that are either downstream or their clients. This forces you to deal with complexity that's hard to replicate in other companies.

Even though there are some standard tools that are used, the architecture, specific tech, and processes are all up to each individual team to decide. This causes inconsistencies across the system, leading to complexity.

Sometimes there's politics at play. Not all systems are designed with sound tech design due to this politics. It's getting worse as the company grows and main values are not adhered to. Since each team has a lot of control over its destiny, this also means that you might need to play other people's games to get better. Sometimes you are so busy that you don't know what games people are playing.

Being more frank with employees around politics or career paths. Sometimes being too aggressive doesn't help the situation. It can be hard to have tough conversations, but it's business, and those conversations need to be had.