Weaponized Culture at AWS

Posted on November 30, 2023  •  6 minutes  • 1177 words

Company culture is usually organic. But at Amazon it’s manufactured from the top down.

When I first started in 2020 I heard at least 1 leadership principle per meeting. I was surprised it wasn’t just the “company motto” or hiring fluff. They were regularly used in conversations and document feedback that took a while to get used to.

Over time they stopped being used in every day conversations, and turned into methods to keep power and influence in the right places. Looking back they were probably always used that way but it was less obvious because they appears to be used universally for everyone instead of directed towards individuals.

You may notice at your company—especially big companies—that the dos and don’ts are dictated from management. Usually communication happens through passive, undocumented behavior, but Amazon is very explicit about desired behavior through Leadership Principles (LP).

In my three and a half years working at AWS on the EKS product team here are various ways I’ve seen leadership principles used to negatively impact employee behavior.

Customer Obsession

Customer obsession is the most important LP and it drives many of the decisions made for what products to develop and what features to prioritize. But it causes a huge problem when it comes to maintenance and taking care of employees doing the work.

The word “customer” has a lot of meaning you don’t think about until you have to make desicions based on it. Customers have a business relationship with you and almost always pay you money.

If your north star is customers, you will prioritize making money over anything else. This is a big reason why Amazon has large customer support teams, and also why they focus on the biggest customers and are not good open source contributors.

At Disney we called it “guest experience” and it made us approach every decision in a very different way. When making money is the goal, you don’t care if you burn out employees or if they’re happy with their job. Employees are deprioritized for getting more customers and having them pay more money.

Disney still prioritizes money, but when the language used isn’t based on a financial transaction there’s more ephesis on people being happy. Or at least the employees who interact with guests directly.

Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit

The most dangerous leadership principle is “Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit” because it is almost always misused by someone in a position of power to tell someone else to do something they don’t want to. Recently Mike Hopkins—senior vice president of Prime Video—told employees to “disagree and commit” when it comes to return to office (RTO) plans.

He used a leadership principle to avoid providing any data for the commitment. Data can just as easily be used to tell any narrative you want , but when someone is in a position of power they use this LP to avoid doing the work.

Jeff has said this LP should only be used for 2-way door decisions. RTO is not an easily reversible decision and this LP does not apply.

Ownership

Ownership is used to give you more work. It usually happens during a re-org or when someone leaves and you’re told to “pick up the slack.”

Part of the text literally says “They never say ’that’s not my job.’” If you try to say “no”, I have too much work they’ll throw this on your yearly review or promotion documents as reasons you are not “Amazonian.”

Invent and Simplify

This LP is used in two ways to keep people in line. The first is because “innovation and invention” are subjective. If you create a new and novel way to do your job it’s only innovative if your manager or senior engineers agree. Otherwise, you’re just doing things that waste time and you should get back to work.

When you invent or simplify things at Amazon it’s limited to technology. Simplifying a process is not allowed. People invent more process and approvals as a method to exert power and control.

From my experience this has ended up with more single points of process failure than any other LP.

Bias for Action, Dive Deep, Learn and Be Curious

These all are used against employees in similar ways. They’re all ways to make you explore new opportunities in your personal time. Very few roles have the opportunity to act on any of these things during working hours.

If they do get to do these things they’re in senior positions (L6) or higher. It keeps the low ranks low because they can never act, dive deep, or be curious enough.

Frugality

Internally this often is called “frupid” [froo-pid]. It’s defined as “frugal but stupid” and “Sacrificing productivity or efficiency for cash savings blindly and out of proper propotion.”

In reality it’s a way to tell people “no.” We can’t do that, or buy this, or spend time on something because it wouldn’t save us money right now.

Earn Trust, Deliver Results, and Are Right, A Lot

These are used the same way. Primarily it’s used on performance reviews to say you didn’t do them.

The problem with them is it’s not something you can use data to back up. They’re feelings that have to be agreed on by your manager and senior leaders. If the thing you deliver is a failure, it doesn’t matter how much work you did.

Even when you are right, usually someone disagreed and you had to commit. So, were you right? The answer is “no.” Unless you convinced someone to do it your way you were always wrong.

This builds cliques of people that trust each other and are the “right” people. It keeps outsiders out and people without influence doing implementation work without impact.

The Rest

All of the other LPs are either not talked about at all or are ways of measuring work you didn’t do.

• Think Big
• Hire and Develop the Best
• Insist on the Highest Standards
• Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer
• Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility

The only one of these LPs I’ve heard in a conversation is “insist on the highest standards” in it’s alternate form “raise the bar.” But this was never about “highest standards” it was always about improving something that was done poorly. Giving feedback to have someone redo something because it was bad is not the same thing as making something the best.

Your Company Culture

You may notice some of these patters at your own company. They are probably not explicitly called out like the Amazon Leadership Principles, but the behavior is probably unspoken and learned by example.

I’m sorry if any of these have been used against you. Personally, I think it’s better to have explicit values than implicit ones because at least we can use the same words when we talk about what went right or wrong.

But if I were to change the leadership principles at any company it would be:

1. Employee driven The people who do the work get to make the decisions.
2. Equal impact The