I work for Amazon, and I personally am a huge fan of the "LPs" . I consistently find myself mentally consulting them when I'm not sure what to do in a particular situation. I also think it really helps to work in an environment where everyone shares the same core values.
Is anything in this thread for real? This post talks about a bunch of stuff that sounds like gibberish to someone not working at Amazon. The hell is an LP? More importantly, how does this possibly become the top comment?
Also this user has only made 2 comments in a year? That's worse than my throwaways
If you were "customer obsessed" I would be able to buy a fucking Chromecast on Amazon, but instead you're too busy trying to force Google to shoehorn your absolutely shitty Amazon video service on there.
How does Amazon's purported customer obsession square with its vast offering of counterfeit goods? Just off the top of my head, I can recall reading articles about counterfeit perfume, pet accessories, books, CDs, DVDs, and clothing. This is not to mention my personal experience with counterfeit electronics (blue smoke!) At this point I'm not sure there's any product category I'd trust, with the possible exception of things Amazon puts its own name on. Is this by design? Do they aspire to sell only Amazon-branded goods?
Amazon is the first place I've seen where the core values are useful, clear, and integrated into the culture. For the values to be effective, everyone up to the top has to follow them, and you can see that at Amazon in the annual shareholder letters.
Other companies I've seen ask their HR staff to put some words (e.g., "Entrepreneurship" or "Be bold") on some posters and call it done.
Ex-Amazonian here. I still use some of the principles in my day-to-day life. There are some things I don't like about Amazon, but I reckon they did pretty well at the Principles - and I liked the way that they refined and clarified them over time, eliminating any that didn't work, and providing good examples to prevent people from over-optimizing individual principles (particularly frugality) to the point of uselessness.
I interned there last year. They really want to get this point across. Like, I had to sit through an entire day of orientation repeatedly telling me this in different ways. We even had "fun" games to re-inforce the principles lol. I was going to be there for a maximum of 2 months, but nope.
But hey, the tech was really cool. My team was amazing, we went on multiple team outings during my short stay. Office hours were very relaxed - I came in whenever I wanted and left the office when I liked. My manager gave me full ownership of my task. I had all the resources in the company if I quickly wanted to test something.
> We even had "fun" games to re-inforce the principles
As an ex-consultant forced to go through corporate training at more clients than I can count, I hope there's a special place in hell for anyone in HR who creates/buys a game-based training product.
Why no, I do not want to "drive a racecar down HIPAA Highway" to remind me what an unauthorized disclosure is.
So how much do they pay for this kind of job? And how much latitude are you given as a "leader"? Is it all talk or are they serious about this? I don't really care if I can buy a private jet but I will put in a lot of hours if that means I get to live a life never caring about money (> 200k a year).
I've seen this said before in other companies ("we want leaders") but when it's time to put some resources into X or Y project, things slow down really fast...
Amazon tries to push Leadership Principles into every part of at least their corporate world. It's supposed to drive decision making for basically everyone, brand new engineers on up (I don't know if they push them lower down the stack). What I'm getting at is it's not solely for "leaders" as in high level folks.
> live a life never caring about money (> 200k a year)
I'm in my 3rd year as an engineer here (and of my career). Their target for me is 175k as a new SDE II, but I'm already well above that considering AMZN growth. If we're talking calendar year, as long as AMZN doesn't take a dive, next year I'm easily hitting 200k (yes, I realize how crappy the reliance on RSUs is). I'll probably hit 200k as an actual target next year. So, your number isn't difficult to reach, which is both great and ridiculous.
Amazon employee here. Just to clarify these leadership principles are intended to apply to everyone at Amazon, not just those that are in "lead" positions, but if you are applying them a lot you are much more likely to end up in a senior or manager position. These principles are also a significant part of both the initial hiring process and the post hire advancement within Amazon.
Pay obviously varies but I've found it to be competitive with what I've been offered by other large tech companies, and better than almost all startups I've talked to, especially when you factor in that compensation in Amazon stock is actually worth a lot of money, while startup stock is a gamble with pretty bad odds.
Some of these are contradictory - in addition, some of these aren't really even leadership principles of much merit outside the company they're created for.
Here is an example of a proven set of leadership principles that is a worthwhile read: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usmc/leadership.htm . Someone who can embody all of these principles that the Marine Corps espouses is someone I can respect immensely regardless of profession.
This isn't a jibe at Amazon, but I wouldn't call it Principles. Principles is something you adhere to when there's no financial gain involved. When defense contractors use the terms Values, Excellence, Honesty etc - it just undermines the effort.
There should be a better word to describe this, perhaps Weights and Constraints when making decisions at Amazon. It's difficult to come up with something as good as Azimov's laws but for humans.
I know a lot of companies have ancronyms, bullet points, or a list of company culture principals. What's everyone's reaction to all of this? Do you take it seriously? Pretend to? Roll your eyes? Find value in them?
I agree it feels out of place in that list. Most of the rest of the principles are prescriptive: "Do this" or "Take that action" or "Keep this in mind", whereas this one is an after-the-fact measurement. The rest of them are things you can wake up one day and decide to incorporate into your life. "Being right" is not such a thing. They should probably re-write it with something like "Use good judgment" or "Seek diverse perspectives."
I'm not really sure why Amazon's leadership principles are on the first page, but since we're talking about Amazon,
Here's a video with RBC Capital's managing director Mark Mahaney talking about why amazon could be the first trillion dollar business.
I would say it is such a misleading principles. Don't believe it. The actual 'core' meaning of the principles is: work for Amazon without any complaint. It turns developers in Amazon out to be ruled by the higher leaders. Very capitalism.
I find a lot of arrogance in this Principles, at some point of view it is even evil. Have anybody knows of another company that throws their leadership principles to your face?
I take Reed Hasting and Netflix a lot more seriously and their principles. They pay for performance. Amazon just grinds through as many people with low self esteem as possible and pays a poor salary.
Do these leadership or company principles ever truly have any effect on employees or products? I've seen them thrown around at my company on a few occasions, but they never feel like they drive much beyond trying to be one of those gaudy motivational posters.
At Amazon they are like a religion. I don't know if every group is like that, but someone very close to me works there and they tell me those leadership principles are a part of daily work and are explicitly mentioned in day-to-day activities. Amazon's leadership principles are also used during performance reviews, and to evaluate candidates in interviews.
It depends on how they're implemented. At my previous company, there was a small list of principles posted on the wall, such as, "make each other better," "show integrity." I was astonished one day when I realized that I had seen several people at different levels of the company actually try to make each other better. It inspired me, personally, and made me glad to work at that company.
Famously, IBM used to have their priorities:
1) Customers first
2) Employees second
3) Stock holders third
That's something that the CEO needs to take the lead on. When IBM has followed that, they have done really well (and you can see evidence of it in the dedication of Mythical Man Month)
All that said, this particular list of principles looks like so much pablum. It's too long and unfocused to be really useful, and I can't see it having much affect. My guess is that Amazon is having trouble finding people to hire lately, and that's why they keep coming up with experiments like this (another example is their foray into 4-day work weeks)
They get discussed in almost every circumstance, every meeting. Especially the customer focus one. It really does seem to work, from my perspective.
I now work for a relatively new division at another company, one staffed with a lot of ex-AWS staff. One of the earliest things they did there is work with employees from a few different previous companies to figure out our own values, and we've proceeded to apply them to the business in similar fashion. First and foremost among them being one focusing on the customer.
Happy customers come back, and are also likely to talk about it to their friends. You might take a hit to your bottom line now, but you'll make it back in the long run with repeat business from the customer.
The only one I ever had an issue with there was frugality. I get why it's there, and the intention, but it leads to something we'd internally refer to as "Frupidity". Frupidity is where in the interests of frugality, the company would do something really stupid, or that would ultimately end up costing them more money.
It also became the last recourse of the bad manager. "we're not going to do this, because frugality" and you then won't be able to get them to budge an inch regardless of what data you bring. It especially will end up being a local to their team only frugality.
They are contradictory enough that you can get dinged on one for following another at review time.
Frugality means putting up with lousy hardware and cramming people into working environments to the point where people start bringing up OHSA w.r.t. number of toilets.
Customer obsession means getting an email about a feature used by a couple percent of users and having to spend a week scrambling because the strategic decision you made (to drop the feature in a major release because you need to get it out) has now been declared wrong. Sev-S was a popular term (S-team being Jeff and his directs).
Bias for action means break extremely important OS features that support multiple products because of pure incompetence. Note that this should really conflict with customer obsession and are right a lot, but oh well.
One thing I found odd was that are right a lot/disagree and commit don't seem to matter if the opposing argument is your manager wanting to do other stuff.
My less snarky response would be that they do spread this stuff around. It has some positive impacts around things like customer obsession, which Amazon is great at. Bias for action can be a good motivator for the right type of person, see something wrong and you go fix it. That said it's not problem free. Frugality is made fun of a lot, because it often goes from sensibly frugal to just cheap.
am amzn shopper. for a data driven company these 10 commandments are a priori? are the results of decades clinical research? is there an extensive bibliogrpahy? peer review? or is this newspeak? can't amzn do better? a ted talk has more data. thats my backbone. i disagree and i am committed to emoticons. :)
Leaders are willing to take a 100x salary compared to their line employees because they know they can hustle hard enough to live up to the expectations.
I'm very excited to see the helmet cam video of Jeff Bezos serving a customary 8-10-12-14 hour shift at the Dallas Amazon Fulfillment Center and walk out with a smile. Can you do what you ask of others? That's leadership.
No, really. Principles not tested in the fire mean nothing (i.e. "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg"). I know how much grinding I put in and I'd be happy to strap a Fitbit to Bezos and run a day shift side by side.
> I'm very excited to see the helmet cam video of Jeff Bezos serving a customary 8-10-12-14 hour shift at the Dallas Amazon Fulfillment Center and walk out with a smile. Can you do what you ask of others? That's leadership.
I feel like there is a big difference between getting through some shifts, and looking at it for the next few years.
> Leaders are willing to take a 100x salary compared to their line employees because they know they can hustle hard enough to live up to the expectations.
There are several reasons for the salary differential. But, fundamentally, one issue is that some things don't scale linearly.
To use a simpler example: Richard and Maurice McDonald created a hamburger stand in 1948. They created the original recipes, came up with the original ideas, and opened the original stores. Apparently, they even started offering franchises. But their ability to grow McDonald's was limited. Ray Kroc managed to make McDonald's scale. Without the McDonald brothers, there was no restaurant to scale. Without Kroc, there was no chance that McDonalds would eventually have signs saying "billions served." What is the fairest way to allocate their rewards based on their contributions?
What about Billy Durant and Alfred Sloan ( https://steveblank.com/2009/10/01/durant-versus-sloan-part-1... )? Durant figured cars were going to be profitable. He managed to get loans to buy several car companies and called the combination General Motors. He actually created a good sized business. At some point, though, the banks lost their nerve and convinced Durant to turn over control of GM to Alfred Sloan. Sloan's book, My Years With General Motors describes his approach to R&D, accounting, marketing, and trying to organize the world's largest company in some sane way. Without Durant (and the bankers) there would be no GM. But without Sloan, GM would have never grown as large as it did. When a company gets that large and accumulates that much capital, how do you fairly divvy up the revenue? Without the people on the assembly line, there are no cars. But without the people in the board room, there's no assembly line.
I don't think Bezos is a god, or a saint, or even necessarily a good guy. But it is clear that without him, there would be no warehouses and no inventory. We live in a world where small teams of people can create hugely profitable companies. When it comes time to divvy up the revenue, how do you reflect the fact that companies don't necessarily scale linearly based on the effort and contributions of their founders and executives?
Basically, just because someone doesn't practice what they preach does not make the thing they preach any less valid.
To give an extreme example, if someone argues against domestic violence, then you find out they beat their wife, you don't suddenly go "gosh, clearly domestic violence is not bad, otherwise you wouldn't partake in it!"
Now I really don't think this is completely fair or that you have to pay this much to attract top talent [0]...
but I think I can see a different reason why top executives are paid like this.
It is the same as with pro sports, e.g. soccer where the top players in the big leagues earn more money than they know what to do with, decently good ones seems to earn a living and everyone else is sponsoring by paying for their kids to play on a team etc etc.
Actually a bit of the same thing as lotteries:
Big payouts to a few more (lottery) or less (CEO) randomly selected individuals to make sure everyone else keeps putting in money or effort.
[0]: IIRC Norways pension fund have done fairly well even if their experts are paid fairly normal salaries.
> I'm very excited to see the helmet cam video of Jeff Bezos serving a customary 8-10-12-14 hour shift at the Dallas Amazon Fulfillment Center
It's not quite the same, but I do recall that in an interview on a late night show (probably Leno), Bezos referred to shipping things out of his garage when the company started. The story he told was about finally having enough profit to buy a table and save his and his co-founders' knees.
> Leaders are willing to take a 100x salary compared to their line employees because they know they can hustle hard enough to live up to the expectations.
> I'm very excited to see the helmet cam video of Jeff Bezos serving a customary 8-10-12-14 hour shift at the Dallas Amazon Fulfillment Center and walk out with a smile. Can you do what you ask of others? That's leadership.
Sometimes I just have to sit and marvel at how many layers of ideology some of you folks are on.
[+] [-] kkelleey|9 years ago|reply
I work for Amazon, and I personally am a huge fan of the "LPs" . I consistently find myself mentally consulting them when I'm not sure what to do in a particular situation. I also think it really helps to work in an environment where everyone shares the same core values.
[+] [-] kpil|9 years ago|reply
I stopped buying from Amazon after reading about how they treat their warehouse employees.
To me, Amazon just represents monopolistic corporate greed, with no aspiration of caring even just a little bit about anything else.
[+] [-] throwasehasdwi|9 years ago|reply
Also this user has only made 2 comments in a year? That's worse than my throwaways
[+] [-] omgwhat|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sevensor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eel|9 years ago|reply
Other companies I've seen ask their HR staff to put some words (e.g., "Entrepreneurship" or "Be bold") on some posters and call it done.
[+] [-] camtarn|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adtac|9 years ago|reply
But hey, the tech was really cool. My team was amazing, we went on multiple team outings during my short stay. Office hours were very relaxed - I came in whenever I wanted and left the office when I liked. My manager gave me full ownership of my task. I had all the resources in the company if I quickly wanted to test something.
Just tone down on the principle force-feeding.
[+] [-] ethbro|9 years ago|reply
As an ex-consultant forced to go through corporate training at more clients than I can count, I hope there's a special place in hell for anyone in HR who creates/buys a game-based training product.
Why no, I do not want to "drive a racecar down HIPAA Highway" to remind me what an unauthorized disclosure is.
[+] [-] brut|9 years ago|reply
I've seen this said before in other companies ("we want leaders") but when it's time to put some resources into X or Y project, things slow down really fast...
[+] [-] greyskull|9 years ago|reply
> live a life never caring about money (> 200k a year)
I'm in my 3rd year as an engineer here (and of my career). Their target for me is 175k as a new SDE II, but I'm already well above that considering AMZN growth. If we're talking calendar year, as long as AMZN doesn't take a dive, next year I'm easily hitting 200k (yes, I realize how crappy the reliance on RSUs is). I'll probably hit 200k as an actual target next year. So, your number isn't difficult to reach, which is both great and ridiculous.
[+] [-] NathanKP|9 years ago|reply
Pay obviously varies but I've found it to be competitive with what I've been offered by other large tech companies, and better than almost all startups I've talked to, especially when you factor in that compensation in Amazon stock is actually worth a lot of money, while startup stock is a gamble with pretty bad odds.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Bahamut|9 years ago|reply
Here is an example of a proven set of leadership principles that is a worthwhile read: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usmc/leadership.htm . Someone who can embody all of these principles that the Marine Corps espouses is someone I can respect immensely regardless of profession.
[+] [-] Nikhil_teja|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rodionos|9 years ago|reply
There should be a better word to describe this, perhaps Weights and Constraints when making decisions at Amazon. It's difficult to come up with something as good as Azimov's laws but for humans.
[+] [-] golergka|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bertlequant|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kurtz79|9 years ago|reply
How is this even a principle ?
Just "be right", a lot ?
[+] [-] ryandrake|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Denki86|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alphadevx|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardthered|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mataug|9 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8id_1gxOXc
[+] [-] Lammy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antowa|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yoandy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yogrish|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blazespin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheGRS|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] somethingsimple|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ktRolster|9 years ago|reply
Famously, IBM used to have their priorities:
That's something that the CEO needs to take the lead on. When IBM has followed that, they have done really well (and you can see evidence of it in the dedication of Mythical Man Month)All that said, this particular list of principles looks like so much pablum. It's too long and unfocused to be really useful, and I can't see it having much affect. My guess is that Amazon is having trouble finding people to hire lately, and that's why they keep coming up with experiments like this (another example is their foray into 4-day work weeks)
[+] [-] Twirrim|9 years ago|reply
I now work for a relatively new division at another company, one staffed with a lot of ex-AWS staff. One of the earliest things they did there is work with employees from a few different previous companies to figure out our own values, and we've proceeded to apply them to the business in similar fashion. First and foremost among them being one focusing on the customer.
Happy customers come back, and are also likely to talk about it to their friends. You might take a hit to your bottom line now, but you'll make it back in the long run with repeat business from the customer.
The only one I ever had an issue with there was frugality. I get why it's there, and the intention, but it leads to something we'd internally refer to as "Frupidity". Frupidity is where in the interests of frugality, the company would do something really stupid, or that would ultimately end up costing them more money.
It also became the last recourse of the bad manager. "we're not going to do this, because frugality" and you then won't be able to get them to budge an inch regardless of what data you bring. It especially will end up being a local to their team only frugality.
[+] [-] aanm1988|9 years ago|reply
They are contradictory enough that you can get dinged on one for following another at review time.
Frugality means putting up with lousy hardware and cramming people into working environments to the point where people start bringing up OHSA w.r.t. number of toilets.
Customer obsession means getting an email about a feature used by a couple percent of users and having to spend a week scrambling because the strategic decision you made (to drop the feature in a major release because you need to get it out) has now been declared wrong. Sev-S was a popular term (S-team being Jeff and his directs).
Bias for action means break extremely important OS features that support multiple products because of pure incompetence. Note that this should really conflict with customer obsession and are right a lot, but oh well.
One thing I found odd was that are right a lot/disagree and commit don't seem to matter if the opposing argument is your manager wanting to do other stuff.
My less snarky response would be that they do spread this stuff around. It has some positive impacts around things like customer obsession, which Amazon is great at. Bias for action can be a good motivator for the right type of person, see something wrong and you go fix it. That said it's not problem free. Frugality is made fun of a lot, because it often goes from sensibly frugal to just cheap.
[+] [-] neocodesoftware|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NumberCruncher|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6stringmerc|9 years ago|reply
I'm very excited to see the helmet cam video of Jeff Bezos serving a customary 8-10-12-14 hour shift at the Dallas Amazon Fulfillment Center and walk out with a smile. Can you do what you ask of others? That's leadership.
No, really. Principles not tested in the fire mean nothing (i.e. "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg"). I know how much grinding I put in and I'd be happy to strap a Fitbit to Bezos and run a day shift side by side.
Dogfooding is a principle I'll never abandon.
[+] [-] pryelluw|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rileymat2|9 years ago|reply
I feel like there is a big difference between getting through some shifts, and looking at it for the next few years.
[+] [-] maxlybbert|9 years ago|reply
There are several reasons for the salary differential. But, fundamentally, one issue is that some things don't scale linearly.
To use a simpler example: Richard and Maurice McDonald created a hamburger stand in 1948. They created the original recipes, came up with the original ideas, and opened the original stores. Apparently, they even started offering franchises. But their ability to grow McDonald's was limited. Ray Kroc managed to make McDonald's scale. Without the McDonald brothers, there was no restaurant to scale. Without Kroc, there was no chance that McDonalds would eventually have signs saying "billions served." What is the fairest way to allocate their rewards based on their contributions?
What about Billy Durant and Alfred Sloan ( https://steveblank.com/2009/10/01/durant-versus-sloan-part-1... )? Durant figured cars were going to be profitable. He managed to get loans to buy several car companies and called the combination General Motors. He actually created a good sized business. At some point, though, the banks lost their nerve and convinced Durant to turn over control of GM to Alfred Sloan. Sloan's book, My Years With General Motors describes his approach to R&D, accounting, marketing, and trying to organize the world's largest company in some sane way. Without Durant (and the bankers) there would be no GM. But without Sloan, GM would have never grown as large as it did. When a company gets that large and accumulates that much capital, how do you fairly divvy up the revenue? Without the people on the assembly line, there are no cars. But without the people in the board room, there's no assembly line.
I don't think Bezos is a god, or a saint, or even necessarily a good guy. But it is clear that without him, there would be no warehouses and no inventory. We live in a world where small teams of people can create hugely profitable companies. When it comes time to divvy up the revenue, how do you reflect the fact that companies don't necessarily scale linearly based on the effort and contributions of their founders and executives?
[+] [-] enraged_camel|9 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
Basically, just because someone doesn't practice what they preach does not make the thing they preach any less valid.
To give an extreme example, if someone argues against domestic violence, then you find out they beat their wife, you don't suddenly go "gosh, clearly domestic violence is not bad, otherwise you wouldn't partake in it!"
[+] [-] bambax|9 years ago|reply
"Leaders" take a huge salary because they can.
[+] [-] reitanqild|9 years ago|reply
but I think I can see a different reason why top executives are paid like this.
It is the same as with pro sports, e.g. soccer where the top players in the big leagues earn more money than they know what to do with, decently good ones seems to earn a living and everyone else is sponsoring by paying for their kids to play on a team etc etc.
Actually a bit of the same thing as lotteries:
Big payouts to a few more (lottery) or less (CEO) randomly selected individuals to make sure everyone else keeps putting in money or effort.
[0]: IIRC Norways pension fund have done fairly well even if their experts are paid fairly normal salaries.
[+] [-] maxlybbert|9 years ago|reply
It's not quite the same, but I do recall that in an interview on a late night show (probably Leno), Bezos referred to shipping things out of his garage when the company started. The story he told was about finally having enough profit to buy a table and save his and his co-founders' knees.
[+] [-] newsat13|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knucklesandwich|9 years ago|reply
> I'm very excited to see the helmet cam video of Jeff Bezos serving a customary 8-10-12-14 hour shift at the Dallas Amazon Fulfillment Center and walk out with a smile. Can you do what you ask of others? That's leadership.
Sometimes I just have to sit and marvel at how many layers of ideology some of you folks are on.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] nandemo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artana|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] suryakrishna|9 years ago|reply
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