Amazon Culture: The Good and Bad

I worked at Amazon and AWS for 8 years. For the most part, I was very happy with my time there. The people I worked with were, smart, talented, and friendly. Just like at any company, the culture you experience is the product of executive leadership, your direct leadership, and the individuals you work with day to day. There are good teams and bad teams. There are also good and bad managers, which in many cases, can make or break the team. So it’s perfectly understandable for one group at Amazon to have a healthy, cooperative, positive culture, while another group has a toxic, competitive, politicking culture. In reality, any group probably has a mix of both.

I’ve read a lot online about toxic Amazon culture¹. So I thought I could write a little bit about what I experienced at Amazon and what I felt was good and bad about it.

The Leadership Principles

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For all the hate they get online¹, Amazon has some of the most well thought-out company values (their “Leadership Principles”) I’ve ever seen. Personally, I really like them². The Leadership Principles are integrated into everything at Amazon. Trying to get promoted? You’re measured on your commitment to Ownership and ability to Deliver Results. Writing a project proposal? You’re expected to Dive Deep to get data to support your ideas.

Even though I left Amazon years ago, I can still rattle off most of the Leadership Principles. (By comparison, Circle has 4 values and I can only name 2 of them 😬). I still use some of them to guide my decision-making. I think about my leadership style in terms of Earning Trust. I want to behave in such a way that I earn the trust of my team and my org leaders. That means building the people around me up and helping them to achieve more and grow. It means honoring my commitments, and collaborating effectively. When I’m reviewing a pull request or working on a design, Invent and Simplify is at the top of my mind.

Before you tell me I drank too much of the company Kool-Aid, I’m aware that the Leadership Principles can be “weaponized”. Because they’re so ingrained into the company culture, they can sometimes be taken as Gospel and maybe have an aura around them that prevents them from being questioned. In my mind, their primary utility is to provide a shared language that people can use when comparing trade-offs. Is this a situation where we need to Dive Deep and come up with more data, or can we Bias for Action and roll back if needed? Was this incident out of someone’s hands, or should they have shown more Ownership? Whether to apply one or another can be very subjective. There is a tension between them, pulling in different directions. I think it’s up to individuals to use them in a constructive way and not abuse them.

Big Company Effects

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Being part of a big company also comes with its own set of pros and cons. On one hand, there is the usual stuff you expect from any big company: Meaningless all-hands meetings with low-ball questions and very little substance. Useless middle management that thrive despite their incompetence. Documentation that varies wildly in quality. Deadline-driven products that cut quality instead of scope. Lack of clarity in communication from senior leadership. Promotion-driven development.

On the other hand, you get the benefits of being part of a big company. There’s lots of money, which means a long runway for projects, good hardware and software provided, and budget for training and events (although Amazon is famously Frugal). You also have the ability to move around between teams and work on a lot of different problems.

Sink or Swim Culture

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At Amazon, I had lots of interesting projects to work on. These were projects that had an impact on thousands or even millions of customers. People were really using what I built, and that was exciting. It also meant that when I made a mistake (and I made plenty), it impacted those same customers. So I learned the importance of digging into data to verify my assumptions and using it to drive decision-making.

I also had a lot of autonomy. I was expected to move fast, to overcome obstacles and Deliver Results. At the same time, I felt supported by my team if I was ever stuck or needed help. Everyone I worked with was very smart and talented. I never felt even close to being the smartest person in the room. It was great, because it meant I was always learning.

I’ve read¹ that people who come from Amazon are assholes. That the sink or swim culture incentivizes forcing your way into things, taking over, and getting your own way for the sake of “impact”. Since leaving Amazon, I’ve tried hard not to be that person. I put a lot of emphasis on collaboration and teamwork. Even still, I found that I brought some of those tendencies with me, and I had to learn to dial it back.

Conclusion

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Would I work there again? It’s hard for me to say. I would be happy to work with the groups that I worked with before. I would consider other teams as well, but I would carefully interview any team before joining³.

In the last few years, Amazon’s leadership has really eroded the trust of its employees with Return to Office (enforced with badge tracking, which really gives me Big Brother vibes), layoffs, and tonedeaf policies that demonstrate a lack of empathy for employees. If I were to join again, the leadership would have to show significant improvement to Earn Trust. It would also take some persuasion to get me to want to work with Amazon’s internal tooling again. Maybe if they closed the pay gap between Canadian and US employees, I would consider it. But for now, I’m happier working elsewhere.