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Amazon's Leadership Principles

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Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#51

Post by khazhou »

knucklesandwich wrote: post #32
6stringmerc wrote: post #12

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…

> 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 a…

Please explain.

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#52

Post by [deleted] »

knucklesandwich wrote: post #32
6stringmerc wrote: post #12

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…

> 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 a…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#53

Post by [deleted] »

knucklesandwich wrote: post #32
6stringmerc wrote: post #12

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…

> 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 a…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#54

Post by reitanqild »

6stringmerc wrote: post #12

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…

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.

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#55

Post by eel »

kkelleey wrote: post #26

The emphasis on "customer obsession" is clearly working, since it has topped the polls for best corporate reputation two years in a row. http://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-tops-harris-poll-corpora... 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 env…

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.

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#56

Post by ljk »

kpil wrote: post #39
kkelleey wrote: post #26

The emphasis on "customer obsession" is clearly working, since it has topped the polls for best corporate reputation two years in a row. http://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-tops-harris-poll-corpora... 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 env…

How could that be? 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.

> So many ambulances responded to medical assistance calls at the warehouse during a heat wave in May, the paper said, that the retailer paid Cetronia Ambulance Corps to have paramedics and ambulances stationed outside the warehouse during several days of excess heat over the summer.

https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/inside-amazons-ver...

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#57

Post by enraged_camel »

6stringmerc wrote: post #12

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…

That seems like the Tu Quoque fallacy to me.

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!"

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#58

Post by maxlybbert »

6stringmerc wrote: post #12

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…

> 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.

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#59

Post by thesumofall »

Bahamut wrote: post #36

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 regar…

I work for one of the big three strategy consulting firms and our values / principles are intentionally similarly contradictory. There are simply things that cannot be black and white and where it is about constantly trying to make the best out of the grey zone in between. Some of the best and deepest discussions I had with colleagues was exactely about that particular grey zone and how to find the right balance

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#60

Post by pm »

ljk wrote: post #56
kpil wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could that be? 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.

> So many ambulances responded to medical assistance calls at the warehouse during a heat wave in May, the paper said, that the retailer paid Cetronia Ambulance Corps to have paramedics and ambulances stationed outside the warehouse during several days of excess heat over the summer. https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/inside-amazons-ver...

Because it's cheaper and more efficient to have them onsite.
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