The circumstances that Yegge described happened somewhat before my time, but I suppose you could call it an "internal goal" or "internal mandate". Amazon's not

The circumstances that Yegge described happened somewhat before my time, but I suppose you could call it an "internal goal" or "internal mandate". Amazon's not really big on "mandates" in general, but the term seems to fit Yegge's characterization of what happened. "Internal goal" would be another way to phrase it. E.g., "The single most important technical goal in the history of Amazon".