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Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

's Leadership Principles are famous, not just within Amazon but also in the tech world at large. While they're frequently mocked — including by Amazonians — they're also generally sensible rules by which to run a company.

But in general Amazon doesn't even live up to its stated (narrow) promise of having leaders acting on behalf of the entire company — it's simply too siloed. Amazon is famously secretive, and this applies internally as well as externally: When AWS launches two similar services, it's often because two teams didn't know what each other was working on. My team became familiar with the phrase "convince me that this is correct", and I'd like to see more of that at senior levels of Amazon: Principal and Distinguished Engineers need to step in with a bias for inaction, and use the respect they have earned to stop projects which do not meet the highest standards before they undermine trust.

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