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Amazon's Leadership Principles

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Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#181

Post by adtac »

icefox wrote: post #142
adtac wrote: post #66

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…

> My manager gave me full ownership of my task. So the million dollar question, given what they tried to teach you did you change anything about your task or did you just did what you would have done anyway?

It wasn't really on my mind. I did occassionally think about it (and maybe even acted accordingly), but I don't think it really affected my work flow.

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#182

Post by osullivj »

aanm1988 wrote: post #174
osullivj wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those USMC principles are fine principles; they exhort leaders to care for and develop the juniors under them. In my experience, in a political corporate environment, behaving that way will hold you back. Instead of "know your marines and look out for their welfare" you should "know your manager and look out for his/her welfare" ie "manage upwards". Instead of "keep your marines informed" you should "keep your manage…

If you are a leader and you aren't looking out for the people under you then you are a shit leader. Applies to the Marines, applies to Amazon. My manager there largely did what you are talking about and it did nothing good for anyone involved. It's pretty much the reason why one of the guys who worked for him as an engineer is now moving up to senior manager well my former manager is still stuck at the same place. Ac…

I've seen the tactics I described work very well in investment banking, purely in terms of personal advancement. I naively adopted a USMC style approach as a newly minted manager and got beaten up and stabbed in the back massively by the more experienced and Machiavellian managers. So I left. It's important to realize the difference between a mature org and a growing business. In a mature org the senior staff are all fighting to get a bigger slice of a pie that doesn't grow. That's not the case in a growing business. Note that I'm using the term manager, not leader.

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#183

Post by CamperBob2 »

draw_down wrote: post #48
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.

I don't get it either. Probably the last 4 or so things I've purchased on Amazon have not actually been shipped to me. I hate using it and try hard to avoid it these days.

That's extremely hard to believe, just because it's such an unusual complaint. You generally get something in the mail, even if it's a Chinese counterfeit. There must be a logical explanation -- what do you think is contributing to the problem?

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#184

Post by ethbro »

adtac wrote: post #66

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…

> 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.

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#185

Post by dap »

andrewguenther wrote: post #138
Kurtz79 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is very sensible, but then the principle would be "[Our leaders] Do not assume they are always right".

The wording of this principle is probably the one that gets talked about the most internally. People always bring up changing it, but when they rolled out a new revision of the principles two years ago or so, this one stayed the same. It's a shame, because once properly explained it's probably one of my favorite principles.

It's not the only one, though. The last four are either commands ("Dive Deep") or a completion of a sentence starting with "Leaders" (e.g., "Leaders dive deep"). But "Frugality" and "Bias for Action" are just properties of good leaders. The tenses (or parts-of-sentence) are all different.

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#186

Post by ethbro »

Leires wrote: post #148
Nikhil_teja wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto! Same experience :D Realized you used "Ownership" in that comment? ;p

Not sure if you know, but "ownership" isn't a word or concept that Amazon invented. I'd like to add that Amazon isn't the first company to have leadership principles. From my experience, the only people that actually believe this crap are people that haven't been exposed to this sort of corporate propaganda in the past. Taking responsibility for a project, seeing it to completion, and following a standard is the righ…

From an ex-gf who worked in corporate culture, I did learn to see the other side of this. The benefits (when it's being done for honestly good purposes) are in standardization.

Both of language and in approach.

There's innumerable ways to get from A to B. If everyone knows that if someone says "Widgetification" then they mean X & that the standard way of accomplishing the task is Corporate Approach Y, then everyone can get back to work having saved time in communication.

So I think there's definitely an efficiency case to be made.

PS: I'm aware it's used for evil (anti-organized labor, preventing valid workplace lawsuits, covering management's ass, etc) at a lot of shops too.

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#187

Post by krapp »

awj wrote: post #176
petra wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should dehydration be an acceptable problem ? i can understand heat and not using air-conditioning, but even soldiers in hot countries manage to stay hydrated.

Where in all of this did you get that someone saw it as an "acceptable problem"? Hell, where did you get that dehydration isn't a problem for soldiers? I grew up in Texas. Literally everyone I knew, and absolutely everyone who did manual labor, was familiar with the dangers of the dehydration+heat combo. It still happened all the time , despite being common knowledge. Show me a warehouse actively preventing workers f…

Amazon doesn't actively prevent workers from getting water - in fact, they're quite clear about dehydration being a problem.

However, the job is designed to push people to the limit, so dehydration being a problem is clearly acceptable to Amazon in the abstract. In the facility where I work, depending on where you are, it can be a long enough walk to the nearest water fountain that you risk getting written up for being off task if you water too often, because Amazon is "frugal" with things like that.

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#188

Post by krapp »

nojvek wrote: post #153
krapp wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason Amazon is so successful and highly regarded is the degree to which they exploit their warehouse employees. This exploitation results in customer orders being stocked and shipped quickly and in costs being reduced. Amazon is obsessed with the customer , remember, not the employee.

I see Amazon as a company that wants to give a great service to humans but their humans in Warehouses aren't up to the task. I predict in a decade a large part of their warehouse will be automated for the labor heavy skills. There is an inherent desire to enslave to leverage work off automation. Robots would be perfect slaves for corporations. Whoever makes electric muscles and sells it at scale is going to be the ne…

I work in an automated Amazon facility - robots carry the bins around to human associates who do the Moravec's Paradox - ridden work requiring fine motor skills and quick visual acuity (those bins can be very messy) or the simple labor that wouldn't be cost effective for a machine that probably costs more than my car (such as pushing juice carts around the facility.)

The problem is, humans are up to the task - if you push them hard enough. A robot isn't going to be more cost effective than that for a long time to come. Given Amazon's culture, I'm not certain they would replace their human workforce en masse even if they could, as long as meat remains fundamentally cheaper.

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#189

Post by krapp »

ethbro wrote: post #184
adtac wrote: post #66

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…

> 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.

Somewhere in the bowels of Amazon's intranet I came across some HR training games and tried to find out who made them, and with what. It seems like an odd genre. I wound up on a mailing list but still haven't found anything out.

Re: Amazon's Leadership Principles

#190

Post by galkk »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #183
draw_down wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it either. Probably the last 4 or so things I've purchased on Amazon have not actually been shipped to me. I hate using it and try hard to avoid it these days.

That's extremely hard to believe, just because it's such an unusual complaint. You generally get something in the mail, even if it's a Chinese counterfeit. There must be a logical explanation -- what do you think is contributing to the problem?

Not an original author, but had it several times as well. Example one - tracking number was plain fake. Amazon refunded after I've contacted them through A-Z guarantee. Example two - tracking number was ok, but order was delivered to Florida, instead of California, with no comment from seller. Amazon refunded through A-Z guarantee.
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