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Yup, and it’s filling out every other company in Seattle with people conditioned to be assholes - this isn’t a leadership principle but it is how you act over t

Yup, and it’s filling out every other company in Seattle with people conditioned to be assholes - this isn’t a leadership principle but it is how you act over time after being ranked according to the leadership principles.

throwawaya2z 7y ago
Throwaway account because I don’t want my primary account to be associated with my career in any way. I’m a strong advocate of the leadership principles. My organization knows when to cut the noise and get down the business but we have a fairly diverse workplace where opinions are valued but being rude, insulting coworkers, arrogance, etc are not tolerated. Creating an environment where people don’t feel safe means that place won’t be around very long. Given the number of people Amazon employs, I’m sure some people aren’t the most flattering, but to say we’re conditioning anyone to be assholes isn’t based on reality at all. Usually people who scream the loudest about others being assholes are the ones who can’t get along.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- pm90 7y ago
  > Usually people who scream the loudest about others being assholes are the ones who can’t get along. I was nodding along until this line. The fact that you would phrase it this way makes it hard for me to trust whatever you said earlier.
  - hitekker 7y ago
    A throwaway proclaims, without evidence, that their employer is a paragon of virtue and its victims are liars, miscreants, criminals etc. A predictable pattern.
    - Apocryphon 7y ago
      This would be a cynical baseless insult, if not for the fact that Amazon has engaged in exactly such underhanded whitewashing behavior: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20711695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20711695
- taurath 7y ago
  The leadership principles give you cover to be an asshole, and justify it, and turn off questioning of whether what you did was the right thing afterwards. It turns off your empathy. Want to justify screwing over a customer? Just say that someone else is actually the customer. The common response is that one just doesn’t get it well enough if they have criticisms. That’s what you call a cult. You are the machine that is plowing through businesses and people. Sometimes the field really looks better afterwards, but your paycheck depends on never really looking at the side effects.
_vertigo 7y ago
Can you expand on this?
- taurath 7y ago
  Amazon is a big company so there’ll always be exceptions, so take anything with a grain of salt if it doesn’t match your experience. My opinion is people who do well at Amazon develop a hard edge over time, by design, and that edge frequently makes them into the productive jerk archetype.

throwawaya2z 7y ago

Throwaway account because I don’t want my primary account to be associated with my career in any way. I’m a strong advocate of the leadership principles. My organization knows when to cut the noise and get down the business but we have a fairly diverse workplace where opinions are valued but being rude, insulting coworkers, arrogance, etc are not tolerated. Creating an environment where people don’t feel safe means that place won’t be around very long. Given the number of people Amazon employs, I’m sure some people aren’t the most flattering, but to say we’re conditioning anyone to be assholes isn’t based on reality at all. Usually people who scream the loudest about others being assholes are the ones who can’t get along.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pm90 7y ago
> Usually people who scream the loudest about others being assholes are the ones who can’t get along. I was nodding along until this line. The fact that you would phrase it this way makes it hard for me to trust whatever you said earlier.
- hitekker 7y ago
  A throwaway proclaims, without evidence, that their employer is a paragon of virtue and its victims are liars, miscreants, criminals etc. A predictable pattern.
  - Apocryphon 7y ago
    This would be a cynical baseless insult, if not for the fact that Amazon has engaged in exactly such underhanded whitewashing behavior: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20711695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20711695
taurath 7y ago
The leadership principles give you cover to be an asshole, and justify it, and turn off questioning of whether what you did was the right thing afterwards. It turns off your empathy. Want to justify screwing over a customer? Just say that someone else is actually the customer. The common response is that one just doesn’t get it well enough if they have criticisms. That’s what you call a cult. You are the machine that is plowing through businesses and people. Sometimes the field really looks better afterwards, but your paycheck depends on never really looking at the side effects.

_vertigo 7y ago

Can you expand on this?

taurath 7y ago
Amazon is a big company so there’ll always be exceptions, so take anything with a grain of salt if it doesn’t match your experience. My opinion is people who do well at Amazon develop a hard edge over time, by design, and that edge frequently makes them into the productive jerk archetype.