[diskzero]

I worked at Amazon before the two newest principles were added, so I can't comment on Strive to be Earth's Best Employer and Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility. I was asked about the principles during my interview(s) and they were discussed extensively during my onboarding process. I found there were groups of peeple who were very sincere about them and groups that were quite cynical. Some co-workers had no opinion and just wanted to survive their current pager duty. I frequently used some combination of principles as support for an argument for or against some technical or business decision. It was nice to have them written down and the entire company accepting them as the basis of how the business should operate. This was quite different from my time at Apple, where the principles were somewhat fuzzy other than Do the Right Thing, Do What Steve Wants or Put the User First.

The Amazon of the 2020s is different from my Amazon of the 2010s or others earlier Amazons. I can't remember any instance of someone saying a certain principle needs to be violated because it would lead to decrease in profits or market share. There certainly could be cases I don't know about. I found many of the principles helped create a good environment to make technical decisions and maintain some technical autonomy across groups. Yes, working at Amazon is a grind and there many ways working there can suck the joy out of your life. I never found the principles used as a weapon against me, my team or customers. I know Amazon has a lot of faults, but I am not sure they are are directly correlated to the principles. A thought experiment would be to wonder what Amazon would be like if it didn't have any principles at all?

[TheOtherHobbes]

All organisations have principles. Beyond a certain size - and sometimes long before then - they're never the stated ones.

And while you may have used the stated principles to create a good environment, there's nothing in Amazon's principles that prevents someone else using them to create a bad environment.

For example - conspicuously absent from them is any concept of worker welfare.

[patrick451]

The problem with the LPs is they are all contradictory. You can make an argument for anything you want using LPs. Want to refactor something? Insist on the highest standards. Don't want to refactor something? Deliver results. It's all BS.

[brians]

It’s a language for communicating about decisions. It doesn’t make the decisions for you