You can hardly be blamed. This quote just on page 3:
My manager did not communicate to her management chain the positive impact I was having on the product - in fact, she once told me “You’re here to make me look good - you’re doing an awesome job”.
My manager did not communicate to her management chain the positive impact I was having on the product - in fact, she once told me “You’re here to make me look good - you’re doing an awesome job”.
Don't get me wrong, dysfunction at large companies is disproportionately large most of the time. But man, even smaller bits of nonsense can be extremely frustrating when you see them up close.
"Make me look good" doesn't mean "do stuff and I'll take all the credit" -- at least not with a good manager. It's about meeting/exceeding your goals, which helps your boss meet/exceed his goals, etc. and makes the organization stronger.
That said, this is not something you would plainly state to your direct report...
I find this sentiment horrifying. When I hire people, I don't want them to spend one second thinking about how to make me look good. I want their brainpower entirely devoted to things like serving the customer, improving the company, and helping their colleagues.
Admittedly, give that so many companies are dysfunctional feudal empires, it is often good career advice. But I still find it horrifying.
Don't you think all those things make you look good if you are the hiring manager? Conversely, if the employee you hired fails to perform those duties, you look bad.
Again, "making your boss look good" is NOT supposed to mean "do specific things for your boss that will impress his boss", it's supposed to mean that the employee meets or exceeds the expectations of the job which _in turn_ makes the hiring manager look good because his group is meeting or exceeding their goals, and so on up the line.
But of course, they're not. This whole mess at Amazon is an issue only because Kivin Varghese chose to do the right thing by his customer instead of making his manager look good. And look where it got him: screwed over and sued.
Regarding your claim that "make your boss look good" really means "do the assigned job well": I don't believe you. If that's what it meant, we could say, "do the assigned job well". What it actually means is exactly what it says. The reason that people say and mean that is that in organizations driven by power and appearance, making your boss look good is indeed a road to success.