Live data from Hacker News

Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

daemonology.net

21–30 of 147 posts

Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#21
post #7

I have principles-fatigue after going through a number of companies that promise to abide by certain good sounding principles only to backtrack at the slightest pushback. I would actually trust a company more if it had no defined principles. Perhaps just honesty and transparency.

Possibly a better alternative than, say, Bridgewater when Ray Dalio was in charge. Adherence to principles was part of a high percentage of decision making conversations, but since is book is so big, they might be best compared to theological arguments in the middle ages, with different specialists arguing with different quotes from different parts of the book.

All in all, once an organization gets big enough, power does what power wants, and power wants what is good for them in the short term, regardless of what is good for the organization. That's how most large companies end up spending very large amounts of money on things that wouldn't actually pass muster to anyone aiming for the organization's best interest and with actual knowledge of what is being accomplished.

You see new, wide eyed PMs approaching budgeting processes as if the goal really was profitability, or customer satisfaction, or something reasonable. But if they are going to stay as PMs for long, they better realize quick that the vast majority of project proposals have only a passing interest in what will be accomplished, and are mainly about making sure every sub-organization gets fed sufficient money to not lose people, or possibly even grow if the manager is well liked. All the efforts in documentation and justification are just theater.

Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#22

As someone who has been working at Amazon for not far from a decade, the author misunderstands some portions because of his focus on a very specific part of the description. In particular for "Ownership", the part about "They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team." does not at all mean what the author implies, and is well connected to the rest of the description instead, about weighing your…

In particular for "Ownership", the part about "They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team." does not at all mean what the author implies, and is well connected to the rest of the description instead, about weighing your decisions against the impact it has beyond your team. Sure, but how can you weigh the impact your decisions have across the entire company if you don't know what's happening…

Amazon's staff is about the size of 1800s London. There's no way anyone could understand all of what's going on, so people have to use judgement to assess what they know, proxy what they don't know, and move forward.

Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#24

As someone who has been working at Amazon for not far from a decade, the author misunderstands some portions because of his focus on a very specific part of the description. In particular for "Ownership", the part about "They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team." does not at all mean what the author implies, and is well connected to the rest of the description instead, about weighing your…

leadership principles are relevant to high level amazon employees, L6 and below they are used as a control mechanism/justification to call out low performance

Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#26
post #7

I have principles-fatigue after going through a number of companies that promise to abide by certain good sounding principles only to backtrack at the slightest pushback. I would actually trust a company more if it had no defined principles. Perhaps just honesty and transparency.

Amazon DOES follow them very closely, it's quite unlike any other company in that aspect.

Using principles (as stick and a carrot) is not the same as following it. That said, I do get what you're trying to say: Leadership Principles are inescapable at Amazon, whether or not you want to progress in your career, whether you know how to game it or not, those commandments are set in stone.

Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#28
My favorite one is leaders "Are Right, a Lot". The others are all generally "meta" about deciding what to do and how to do it, but that one actually calls out the concrete results of actions. It feels pretty meaty, and actually is a way to grade leaders. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, as a team lead, who recently very much was not right about something. But fortunately it's "a lot" and not "always".

Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#29

Amazon is a far cry from the glory days of the past. 80% of corporate workers are visa workers that spend all of their time managing and maintaining the massive complexity inside the company. There is no leadership principles, its just low level grinding. There was a time when employees, even line managers and senior engineers, had massive scope and built state of the art systems

That’s bullshit … just another scaremongering post against employees with some kind of visa. Leadership depends upon individuals not upon their immigration status. From direct experience I can say there are leaders and non leaders on bothe sides. BTW ec2 was first conceived and made in South Africa.

Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#30
post #5

The secret sauce to Amazon's success is an obsessive compulsive focus on money.

This was not my experience, reflecting on about 10 years of service in AWS network engineering (both as an engineer and manager). I’m at Oracle now, which, by contrast, is orders of magnitude more focused on revenue/spend.

I left Amazon in 2012, so things may have changed since then. But in my days I was quite impressed that the goals executives were bonused on did not have the word revenue or profit. The goals were about adoption and customer satisfaction.
Post reply on HN