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I completely agree. I've been at jobs where I would be asked to explain a product or initiative and would go with documentation, only to be told that I "write t

I completely agree. I've been at jobs where I would be asked to explain a product or initiative and would go with documentation, only to be told that I "write too much" and to condense into slides. This was almost always due to managerial laziness in vetting decisions on the basis of "saving time", instead of doing the hard work of understanding a problem or opportunity as thoroughly as possible. Then, when problems arise that were highlighted or predicted in the documentation, you can't just tell people "I told you so". But getting people to understand the flimsiness of slide presentations compared to documentation can be a slog.

seattle_spring 8y ago
There has to be a balance though. The last place I worked some guy would write literally 30-40 pages explaining a service he was going to write. No one was going to read that, nor should they. It could have been explained in 1-2 pages, easy.
- loganfrederick 8y ago
  Agreed, the level of "paperwork" varies depending on what you're actually trying to get done. Proposing a new product? 2-3 pages like the Amazon Press Release technique should probably be the max. Product and engineering manager scoping the implementation? Could total 10 pages, but split into 20 different tickets that go across 5 devs and a designer. Context definitely matters.
- btilly 8y ago
  Hence the importance of the other half of Amazon's policy. Not just "written form", but "written and of easily digestible length X". You want there to be nowhere for bad reasoning to hide. Neither in the disconnection that comes naturally with slide shows, or in a forest of spurious verbiage that long writing encourages. As Dijkstra famously commented about writing, "You cannot sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. Nor will 10 blunt axes suffice."
- sib 8y ago
  Yes, definitely. I wrote (or contributed significantly to) dozens of docs for Jeff Bezos and his senior team. It was important to understand whether you were writing a 2-pager or a 6-pager (depended on a number of factors, mostly relating to complexity of the issues involved, the size of risks, and the variances in expected outcomes.) Two examples: (1) An acquisition memo justifying a functional/technical area (and specific target company) that we wanted to be able to move into due diligence with. (2) A recommendation related to whether "Alexa" (the service) and "Echo" (the device) should have the same or different names. In case you're wondering, the former was a 2-page and the latter, a 6-pager. In each case, the recommendation that we presented was accepted, the second after much more vigorous debate than the first. Jeff was initially strongly opposed to having two different names. No one would read a 40-page document, but there were a few times when we ended up with 6-pagers that contained 20+ pages of detailed appendices. I also believe that the culture of the document is a key success factor for Amazon (but that it can't just be cargo-culted into other organizations without a lot of buy-in).
  - sandGorgon 8y ago
    Could you talk a bit more about the "rules of thumb" for these documents. is it used in all meetings ? what should you NOT DO in these memo ? are they paragraph prose or bullet points ? etc I've been trying to find info about this practice (to use in my startup), but didnt find any.
    - sib 8y ago
      Sure - something I've been wanting to do for a while. I just wrote a Medium post, as I think it's a longer topic than HN comments are optimized for. Please take a read and let me know whether it's helpful. https://medium.com/@sib1013/writing-docs-at-amazon-e025808616bd https://medium.com/@sib1013/writing-docs-at-amazon-e02580861...
      - sandGorgon 8y ago
        This is super helpful ! Is there a format that you can create/share ? Like - is it like a spec (with "goal", "stakeholders", stuff like that). I'm betting it's not ...and that's makes this a little hard to get started on. You guys had the benefit of looking at your peers' work - what would be a good two pager that we can learn from ?
- bbgm 8y ago
  6 pages is not mandatory. It’s up to 6. A lot of decision meetings are a a page or two when it’s a very clear decision which doesn’t require too much framing.
wenc 8y ago
There are companies with heavy non-native English speaking populations, for whom it be a greater cognitive load to constrain themselves to prose, whereas they might be good at explaining things pictorially interpersed with terse text. Sometimes distillation and condensation can lead to more precise thinking too. Western civilization has a bias toward the written, which has helped us produce analytical thinkers ("Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man." - Francis Bacon). We tend to value precision in verbal expression and argumentation (disputation) as means of arriving at knowledge. But I think we need to recognize that other cultures have other preferences that may be just as effective. From what I've observed, Japanese culture has a preference for the pictorial (Kanban is one such example) and it's amazing how much much they've achieved along those lines. I've worked with Japanese folks and their docs and slides tend to be diagram heavy (often beautifully so). Japanese product manuals also reflect their visual culture.
- loganfrederick 8y ago
  This is a really good, interesting point. You're probably right that it's deeply rooted in culture. In America, pictures and diagrams are just as often, if not more so, used to obfuscate than provide clarity. But I don't disagree with other cultures being able to teach from a young age how "a picture can be worth 1,000 words" and how to execute that meaningfully.
- SatvikBeri 8y ago
  That's a really interesting point. You could argue that the problem is the low standard of PowerPoints in most companies, not the presentation medium itself. I've certainly seen the occasional great presentation. To put it another way, my view is that good visuals >> good writing > average writing >> average visuals So I could certainly imagine a culture where the average visual presentation was good enough to make that the best choice.
- jaehoony 8y ago
  Amazon certainly doesn't shy away from diagrams for right time and place. A good example being Bezos' famous napkin diagram. https://i.imgur.com/asNNqOn.jpg https://i.imgur.com/asNNqOn.jpg

seattle_spring 8y ago

There has to be a balance though. The last place I worked some guy would write literally 30-40 pages explaining a service he was going to write. No one was going to read that, nor should they. It could have been explained in 1-2 pages, easy.

loganfrederick 8y ago
Agreed, the level of "paperwork" varies depending on what you're actually trying to get done. Proposing a new product? 2-3 pages like the Amazon Press Release technique should probably be the max. Product and engineering manager scoping the implementation? Could total 10 pages, but split into 20 different tickets that go across 5 devs and a designer. Context definitely matters.
btilly 8y ago
Hence the importance of the other half of Amazon's policy. Not just "written form", but "written and of easily digestible length X". You want there to be nowhere for bad reasoning to hide. Neither in the disconnection that comes naturally with slide shows, or in a forest of spurious verbiage that long writing encourages. As Dijkstra famously commented about writing, "You cannot sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. Nor will 10 blunt axes suffice."
sib 8y ago
Yes, definitely. I wrote (or contributed significantly to) dozens of docs for Jeff Bezos and his senior team. It was important to understand whether you were writing a 2-pager or a 6-pager (depended on a number of factors, mostly relating to complexity of the issues involved, the size of risks, and the variances in expected outcomes.) Two examples: (1) An acquisition memo justifying a functional/technical area (and specific target company) that we wanted to be able to move into due diligence with. (2) A recommendation related to whether "Alexa" (the service) and "Echo" (the device) should have the same or different names. In case you're wondering, the former was a 2-page and the latter, a 6-pager. In each case, the recommendation that we presented was accepted, the second after much more vigorous debate than the first. Jeff was initially strongly opposed to having two different names. No one would read a 40-page document, but there were a few times when we ended up with 6-pagers that contained 20+ pages of detailed appendices. I also believe that the culture of the document is a key success factor for Amazon (but that it can't just be cargo-culted into other organizations without a lot of buy-in).
- sandGorgon 8y ago
  Could you talk a bit more about the "rules of thumb" for these documents. is it used in all meetings ? what should you NOT DO in these memo ? are they paragraph prose or bullet points ? etc I've been trying to find info about this practice (to use in my startup), but didnt find any.
  - sib 8y ago
    Sure - something I've been wanting to do for a while. I just wrote a Medium post, as I think it's a longer topic than HN comments are optimized for. Please take a read and let me know whether it's helpful. https://medium.com/@sib1013/writing-docs-at-amazon-e025808616bd https://medium.com/@sib1013/writing-docs-at-amazon-e02580861...
    - sandGorgon 8y ago
      This is super helpful ! Is there a format that you can create/share ? Like - is it like a spec (with "goal", "stakeholders", stuff like that). I'm betting it's not ...and that's makes this a little hard to get started on. You guys had the benefit of looking at your peers' work - what would be a good two pager that we can learn from ?
bbgm 8y ago
6 pages is not mandatory. It’s up to 6. A lot of decision meetings are a a page or two when it’s a very clear decision which doesn’t require too much framing.

wenc 8y ago

There are companies with heavy non-native English speaking populations, for whom it be a greater cognitive load to constrain themselves to prose, whereas they might be good at explaining things pictorially interpersed with terse text. Sometimes distillation and condensation can lead to more precise thinking too. Western civilization has a bias toward the written, which has helped us produce analytical thinkers ("Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man." - Francis Bacon). We tend to value precision in verbal expression and argumentation (disputation) as means of arriving at knowledge. But I think we need to recognize that other cultures have other preferences that may be just as effective. From what I've observed, Japanese culture has a preference for the pictorial (Kanban is one such example) and it's amazing how much much they've achieved along those lines. I've worked with Japanese folks and their docs and slides tend to be diagram heavy (often beautifully so). Japanese product manuals also reflect their visual culture.

loganfrederick 8y ago
This is a really good, interesting point. You're probably right that it's deeply rooted in culture. In America, pictures and diagrams are just as often, if not more so, used to obfuscate than provide clarity. But I don't disagree with other cultures being able to teach from a young age how "a picture can be worth 1,000 words" and how to execute that meaningfully.
SatvikBeri 8y ago
That's a really interesting point. You could argue that the problem is the low standard of PowerPoints in most companies, not the presentation medium itself. I've certainly seen the occasional great presentation. To put it another way, my view is that good visuals >> good writing > average writing >> average visuals So I could certainly imagine a culture where the average visual presentation was good enough to make that the best choice.
jaehoony 8y ago
Amazon certainly doesn't shy away from diagrams for right time and place. A good example being Bezos' famous napkin diagram. https://i.imgur.com/asNNqOn.jpg https://i.imgur.com/asNNqOn.jpg