
Former Amazon employees bake Bezos principles into their startups - wallflower
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/two-pizza-teams-and-more-former-amazon-employees-bake-jeff-bezos-principles-into-their-startups/
======
0zymandias
What I hear from Amazonians in Seattle is that the culture is markedly
different today than it was 5-10 years ago.

That shouldn’t be surprising. Things are slower now and layered. VPs report to
VPs who report to VPs. More politics. More focus on competitors. Less belief
in the upside.

Using Jeff’s words: We are well into Day 2. As a result, great people are
leaving in droves.

Satya managed an incredible cultural and business turnaround of Microsoft
after it stagnated. Who will do this at Amazon?

~~~
manigandham
Amazon doesn't need a turnaround. Entire industries are afraid of its
relentless march to perfect execution at the lowest possible price. It's only
accelerating in new developments and innovation and is far from its peak.

~~~
ng12
> to perfect execution

Their retail business is pretty far from perfect. Just a few days ago I got my
first obviously fake product that was "sold by Amazon".

~~~
manigandham
I'm talking about operating as a business. Nobody executes better than Amazon
right now.

As for as the store experience, their selection, price, speed and convenience
has led to their wild success. The fakes from 3rd-party sellers are not as big
of a problem as HN makes it seem, and they could drop them overnight if they
really wanted to in case any liability arises.

~~~
ng12
> Even with occasional 3rd-party product issues

The problem with Amazon is anything can be "3rd-party" and you'll never know
until you have a problem with it. Maybe the fraudulent product was the result
of a sketchy 3rd-party dealer but also I don't really care -- I bought it from
"Amazon" and they sent me tainted inventory.

Target and Walmart are catching up with their online operations and at least
with them I don't have to worry about being shipped fake products.

~~~
manigandham
> " _Target and Walmart are catching up_ "

Exactly. Amazon is still well in the lead. They have likely analyzed this
entire problem with news and features scheduled over the next 2 years to
resolve it as soon as their competitors gain any real ground.

~~~
ng12
That's still not anything close to "perfect execution".

~~~
manigandham
You seem to be looking at this as a consumer who got a fake item (from a 3rd-
party seller). Store experience is not the same as business execution.

The company is operating optimally, making the most revenue with the most
growth while controlling costs and taking market share from all of its rivals.
Nothing's perfect, but this is as close as you can get with a trillion dollar
company that remains in the lead and is pulling even further ahead.

------
dchichkov
I'm guessing that business processes in a company as big and successful as
Amazon are well beyond the point of turning into a religious cult. And now we
see adepts of such cults, sometimes familiar with only a _single_ cult,
without much understanding why this cult was there, reproducing that cult to
build new companies.

And funny thing, it sometimes is a success.

~~~
naravara
> I'm guessing that business processes in a company as big and successful as
> Amazon are well beyond the point of turning into a religious cult. And now
> we see adepts of such cults, sometimes familiar with only a single cult,
> without much understanding why this cult was there, reproducing that cult to
> build new companies.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a better summary of the habits of alumni from
management consulting firms.

------
logicallee
I was just reading here on HN how Amazon recently quietly replicated and
replaced UPS and FedEx with their own fleet. These companies are $82.92
billion and $65.45 billion companies respectively so I was pretty impressed.

~~~
m-ee
I think you'd be a lot less impressed if you'd received any packages through
their fulfillment services. Literally every single driver I've had has lied
about attempting a delivery, usually multiple times, then flat out lied and
said the package was delivered. The package will then show up 2-3 days later,
defeating the purpose of paying for prime or faster shipping.

Customer support for these issues is kafkaesque.

"Hi I have not received my package which says it was delivered at a time when
I was home"

"Let me check the tracking, sir it shows that you have received the package"

"I have not, no delivery was attempted"

"Yes you are right you will receive your package shortly"

~~~
SamReidHughes
I now get photos of my package when it was delivered.

~~~
sl1ck731
A local Amazon delivery driver was just found to have been taking the photos
then swiping the package. The only reason he was caught was someones Ring
doorbell. If anything the package photos are to help Amazon refute claims.

I don't know the pay structure for Amazon drivers, but I would not be
surprised that we are giving up "trustworthy" drivers for the cheapest option
Amazon can provide at scale. I've heard working at UPS as a driver is a great
job long-term for some people perhaps leading to more integrity, but I'm just
speculating. Maybe I'm wrong but I trust UPS or FedEx with my packages more
than Amazon or their flex drivers.

~~~
mhdhn
Right. UPS drivers are union (Teamsters), Fedex are not.

------
echelon
How do you beat Amazon.com?

How do you beat AWS?

How do you survive if Jeff Bezos has his eyes on your market?

Could an antitrust case break them up?

~~~
unlinked_dll
> How do you beat Amazon.com?

Trustworthy product reviews, higher quality products, fewer/zero counterfeits,
reliable shipping (based on arrival), and/or secure and convenient pickup at
more accessible locations.

Subscription services (StitchFix, BarkBox, etc) and manufacturer direct
(Drop.com, there are others) seem to be doing fine without 2day shipping on
every product in existence. Probably because their customers are getting good
products delivered reliably.

------
ignoramous
> _Amazon’s hard-driving company culture has come in for its share of
> criticism..._

Byran Cantrill famously put Amazon on a pedestal for its _Leadership
Principles_ [0] but when I read his own startup's _Values_ , they strike me an
awful lot like Amazon's [1]?

> _Other Bezos directives — among the most famous, teams should be small
> enough to be fed with two pizzas — have shaped Amazon’s corporate structure.
> Former employees say it functions as a collection of startups, each with the
> resources and support of a mega corporation... They inform business plans,
> product ideas, hiring decisions, promotions and compensation... key
> attributes of Amazon’s culture, such as its emphasis on data-driven
> decision-making... At the corporate level, Amazon is composed of many small
> teams, each limited by the two-pizza rule, part of Bezos’ strategy to stay
> nimble and grow quickly._

AWS re:Invent this year had numerous presentations [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] on
exactly this.

> _Some implementations can actually be quite toxic if you focus so deeply on
> one without some of the counterbalance._

This remains a problem for a section of employees. Outpouring of that emotion
on _Blind_ come year-end review is significant and sometimes there're folks
complaining about it on news.yc, too [10].

\--

[0] [https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/9QMGAtxUlAc](https://www.youtube-
nocookie.com/embed/9QMGAtxUlAc)

[1] [https://oxide.computer/principles/](https://oxide.computer/principles/)

[2] Marc Brooker, Amazon's approach to building resilient services,
[https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/KLxwhsJuZ44](https://www.youtube-
nocookie.com/embed/KLxwhsJuZ44)

[3] Peter Ramensky, Amazon's approach to high-availability deployment,
[https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/bCgD2bX1LI4](https://www.youtube-
nocookie.com/embed/bCgD2bX1LI4)

[4] Andy Troutman, Amazon's approach to running service-oriented teams,
[https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/n1d20Yok000](https://www.youtube-
nocookie.com/embed/n1d20Yok000)

[5] Colm MacCarthaigh, Amazon's approach to security during development,
[https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/NeR7FhHqDGQ](https://www.youtube-
nocookie.com/embed/NeR7FhHqDGQ)

[6] Becky Weiss, Amazon's approach to failing successfully,
[https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/yQiRli2ZPxU](https://www.youtube-
nocookie.com/embed/yQiRli2ZPxU)

[7] Thomas Blood, Amazon's culture of innovation, [https://www.youtube-
nocookie.com/embed/2ZQKPUD7vKE](https://www.youtube-
nocookie.com/embed/2ZQKPUD7vKE)

[8] Andy Warfield and Seth Markle, Lessons from Amazon S3's culture of
durability, [https://www.youtube-
nocookie.com/embed/DzRyrvUF-C0](https://www.youtube-
nocookie.com/embed/DzRyrvUF-C0)

[9] Colm MacCarthaigh, Lessons from Amazon's highest available data-planes,
[https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/2L1S0zfnIzo](https://www.youtube-
nocookie.com/embed/2L1S0zfnIzo)

[10]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15910526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15910526)

~~~
bcantrill
My criticism of Amazon's values are (1) they are (generally) not values and
(2) they can be used to justify essentially any action. We tried to be mindful
of that with Oxide's values which are very much values (and not management
bromides or all-hands claptrap) and we are explicit about the fact that (as
values) they can come into tension: we explicitly ask applicants to describe a
time when two of our values have come into tension for them and how they've
resolved it.[1] (The answers have honestly been incredible: many are deeply
thoughtful, insightful and inspiring!)

So you may believe that we missed the mark, but Oxide's values are in contrast
to Amazon's -- aligned only in the belief that a company's values should be
articulated clearly and referred to frequently.

[1] [https://docs.google.com/document/u/5/d/1Xtofg-
fMQfZoq8Y3oSAK...](https://docs.google.com/document/u/5/d/1Xtofg-
fMQfZoq8Y3oSAKjEgDQCRHx-GMSmPcxdEea4A)

~~~
hitekker
Out of curiosity, what kind of research went into articulating Oxide’s
culture?

~~~
bcantrill
Honestly, we just sat down and figured out the values that _really_ bonded us:
values that we deeply shared, not merely aspired to. There are some values in
there that are subtler than they look -- but that the three of us hold very
deeply...

~~~
hitekker
Thank you. Another follow-up if you don't mind: have you and the others
considering ranking Oxide's values separately, and then coming together to
determine their hierarchy? It would help a candidate to know which values are
more deeply shared, equally shared, or less shared by their own leaders.

Gitlab describes this concept here:
[https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#hierarchy](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#hierarchy)

~~~
bcantrill
That's a great question, but honestly, we deeply share all of them -- so much
so that it's very hard to rank them. And not because each is unequivocally
good! Indeed, each of these values can be taken to excess and must be held on
tension by the others. So it's hard to imagine any of them taken away -- or
valued to the exclusion of the others. (With my apologies for the profoundly
unhelpful answer!)

------
kbos87
I can appreciate the sentiment behind not saying that something “isn’t my
job.” But that’s also a quick road to people shaming and guilting one another
into doing work they think needs to be done, regardless of what the hierarchy
thinks should be done. Simple answers usually aren’t the right ones.

------
taurath
Yup, and it’s filling out every other company in Seattle with people
conditioned to be assholes - this isn’t a leadership principle but it is how
you act over time after being ranked according to the leadership principles.

~~~
throwawaya2z
Throwaway account because I don’t want my primary account to be associated
with my career in any way.

I’m a strong advocate of the leadership principles. My organization knows when
to cut the noise and get down the business but we have a fairly diverse
workplace where opinions are valued but being rude, insulting coworkers,
arrogance, etc are not tolerated. Creating an environment where people don’t
feel safe means that place won’t be around very long.

Given the number of people Amazon employs, I’m sure some people aren’t the
most flattering, but to say we’re conditioning anyone to be assholes isn’t
based on reality at all.

Usually people who scream the loudest about others being assholes are the ones
who can’t get along.

~~~
pm90
> Usually people who scream the loudest about others being assholes are the
> ones who can’t get along.

I was nodding along until this line. The fact that you would phrase it this
way makes it hard for me to trust whatever you said earlier.

~~~
hitekker
A throwaway proclaims, without evidence, that their employer is a paragon of
virtue and its victims are liars, miscreants, criminals etc.

A predictable pattern.

~~~
Apocryphon
This would be a cynical baseless insult, if not for the fact that Amazon has
engaged in exactly such underhanded whitewashing behavior:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20711695](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20711695)

------
jerkstate
Asshole managers who copy Jeff Bezos are just this tech generation's version
of asshole managers who copied Steve Jobs that we had to deal with 20 years
ago.

~~~
asveikau
Was it cool to copy Jobs 20 years ago, after NeXT but before OS X, iPod, and
iPhone? I don't think so.

Was it cool to copy his asshole traits before he was kicked out the first
time? I would have been too young to know. I am not sure how widely they were
publicized.

Anyway, I am not the biggest Amazon fan, but if what they are imitating are
things like "customer focus" as claimed in the article and it's not a
euphemism or lip service then that sounds good. Seems like they could do that
without being jerks too.

~~~
jerkstate
I would say if there was any lull in Jobs' popularity it would have been
between when he was fired in '85 to the early '90s, by '96 Pixar had released
Toy Story and Jobs had been Acqui-hired back by Apple. OS X, iPod, and iPhone
are far from his first successes.

Through this time he worked with thousands of people and was an asshole the
whole time, so when people saw his trajectory in the 90s after his fall in the
80s they were even more convinced that Scully was wrong and Jobs had been
right all along.

One of the things they mention in the article is the "bar raiser" concept and
I've seen that concept used politically at Amazon offshoots. They don't
mention in the article the morale-crushing public blame games in the name of
"accountability" that Bezos acolytes can't resist doing, that's well
documented in many other Amazon introspectives. Same shit, different decade.

~~~
asveikau
I think some of this view of Jobs needs to be anchored to the subsequent
successes. Imagine if he had rejoined in '96 [when Apple seemed doomed] but
then didn't churn out a bunch of successful projects ... In 1999 the outcome
wasn't clear yet.

I totally believe you on terms like "bar raiser" and "accountability". (Never
worked at Amazon but did have a stint in Seattle). These are tingling my
"corporate bullshit" senses strongly. But I'll still say a term like "customer
focus", if it's correctly applied, is very important.

------
batt4good
As someone who left Amazon, I'd never want to deal with that garbage culture
ever again in any form or permutation.

It gives me a headache that founders who previously worked at Amazon would
want to promote the "culture" dissonance of Amazon at their own companies.

~~~
dang
Rather than just denouncing something without explaining it, it would be
better if you described what your experience was and how you arrived at these
conclusions. That would gratify curiosity more.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

