4 ms·

> The most famous I can think of is the Amazon culture where each meeting starts with 10 minutes of quiet reading, to ensure everyone is on the same page. As a

by larrik 6y ago

> The most famous I can think of is the Amazon culture where each meeting starts with 10 minutes of quiet reading, to ensure everyone is on the same page. As an American, I've never heard of this, and can't even imagine it.

strgcmc 6y ago
It's not like, 100% adopted at literally every single meeting, but it's pretty common across Amazon. Some orgs will do it more religiously than others, but no org will look at you funny if you request for a 5-10 min doc read before you start the rest of the meeting.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  (Never worked for Amazon) Is it literally a quiet-read time where everyone just sits there silently reading a shared doc? Or is it what Ive seen happen in a lot of companies where someone projects the doc, and walks through it, reading/summarizing it aloud to attendees. I like to call that activity "executive storytime", since it's often underlings reading status reports to execs.
  - kevan 6y ago
    Silent reading time in my experience. 5-10m of a 30m meeting, and up to 30m for longer design reviews or program docs. I personally love the format but I know some people get tired of writing so much.
  - strgcmc 6y ago
    As the other poster said, it's meant to be silent reading time. Some reasons why (loosely paraphrasing internal guidance on how to run meetings and why writing culture matters): - PowerPoints are lazy/evil, and not good formats for conveying complex ideas; by nature, PPT's encourage shallow thinking, and is thus antithetical to the goal of having rigorous analysis/deep-thinking in making complex tech/business decisions - Docs should stand on their own, without needing to be presented or walked-through by a person; forcing you to explain your ideas and support them in such a way that any sufficiently motivated reader can follow along and work out what they mean on their own, is again a way to encourage you to be rigorous and thorough (but limiting you to 6-pager format, for brevity) - Writing long-form paragraphs and full sentences forces you to take time to refine your ideas - Forcing people to take time to digest the doc first, gives everyone a chance to take notes and formulate ideas/responses to the info/arguments presented; this saves a lot of time as compared to, walking through a doc/slides for the first time, and having a roomful of people encounter those ideas for the first time and to ask questions in real time as they encounter them... reading the doc should hopefully already address the most common questions/critiques, and so you can spend more time on 2nd/3rd-order more advanced decisions or arguments
  - sib 6y ago
    Yes, it is literally a quiet read time. Up to and including Bezos meetings. For longer (6-pages + appendices) docs, it can be 20-25 minutes. If you try talking during this time, you will get lots of dirty looks (and then probably be fired if you keep it up).
simonw 6y ago
Search for 'Six-Page Narratives' on this shareholder letter from Bezos for a bit more detail: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312518121161/d456916dex991.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312518...
- larrik 6y ago
  Nice, thanks
tracer4201 6y ago
Once you become accustomed to this culture, it's difficult to go back. At one of my previous companies, there was a PowerPoint heavy culture. Every meeting had a presenter who brought PowerPoint slides. There's something to be said about PowerPoint being boring, but the bigger issue with PowerPoint culture is that the focus stays on the presenter and whatever information they provide... questions were typically saved towards the end. Some presenters who are open to disruption during their presentation will answer question, but it never fosters a rigorous, thorough deep dive. Instead, using a written document absolutely forces the presenter/writer to have clarity in thought and it absolutely requires that they "cut the bullshit" and get to the point – what matters and what doesn't matter. These kinds of meetings will derail if the writer hasn't fully fleshed out their ideas or even if the document is missing important structure ... the purpose of the document, what the author is trying to get out of the meeting ("what is the success criteria for the document or meeting?"), what's in scope, if it's a technical document then clarity in functional requirements, non-functional requirements/constraints, options/alternatives, trade offs, and so on. In my honest opinion, the document driven meetings provide Amazon a competitive advantage.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sib 6y ago
Previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19126556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19126556

by larrik 6y ago

strgcmc 6y ago

It's not like, 100% adopted at literally every single meeting, but it's pretty common across Amazon. Some orgs will do it more religiously than others, but no org will look at you funny if you request for a 5-10 min doc read before you start the rest of the meeting.

ryandrake 6y ago
(Never worked for Amazon) Is it literally a quiet-read time where everyone just sits there silently reading a shared doc? Or is it what Ive seen happen in a lot of companies where someone projects the doc, and walks through it, reading/summarizing it aloud to attendees. I like to call that activity "executive storytime", since it's often underlings reading status reports to execs.
- kevan 6y ago
  Silent reading time in my experience. 5-10m of a 30m meeting, and up to 30m for longer design reviews or program docs. I personally love the format but I know some people get tired of writing so much.
- strgcmc 6y ago
  As the other poster said, it's meant to be silent reading time. Some reasons why (loosely paraphrasing internal guidance on how to run meetings and why writing culture matters): - PowerPoints are lazy/evil, and not good formats for conveying complex ideas; by nature, PPT's encourage shallow thinking, and is thus antithetical to the goal of having rigorous analysis/deep-thinking in making complex tech/business decisions - Docs should stand on their own, without needing to be presented or walked-through by a person; forcing you to explain your ideas and support them in such a way that any sufficiently motivated reader can follow along and work out what they mean on their own, is again a way to encourage you to be rigorous and thorough (but limiting you to 6-pager format, for brevity) - Writing long-form paragraphs and full sentences forces you to take time to refine your ideas - Forcing people to take time to digest the doc first, gives everyone a chance to take notes and formulate ideas/responses to the info/arguments presented; this saves a lot of time as compared to, walking through a doc/slides for the first time, and having a roomful of people encounter those ideas for the first time and to ask questions in real time as they encounter them... reading the doc should hopefully already address the most common questions/critiques, and so you can spend more time on 2nd/3rd-order more advanced decisions or arguments
- sib 6y ago
  Yes, it is literally a quiet read time. Up to and including Bezos meetings. For longer (6-pages + appendices) docs, it can be 20-25 minutes. If you try talking during this time, you will get lots of dirty looks (and then probably be fired if you keep it up).

simonw 6y ago

Search for 'Six-Page Narratives' on this shareholder letter from Bezos for a bit more detail: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312518121161/d456916dex991.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312518...

larrik 6y ago
Nice, thanks

tracer4201 6y ago

Once you become accustomed to this culture, it's difficult to go back. At one of my previous companies, there was a PowerPoint heavy culture. Every meeting had a presenter who brought PowerPoint slides. There's something to be said about PowerPoint being boring, but the bigger issue with PowerPoint culture is that the focus stays on the presenter and whatever information they provide... questions were typically saved towards the end. Some presenters who are open to disruption during their presentation will answer question, but it never fosters a rigorous, thorough deep dive. Instead, using a written document absolutely forces the presenter/writer to have clarity in thought and it absolutely requires that they "cut the bullshit" and get to the point – what matters and what doesn't matter. These kinds of meetings will derail if the writer hasn't fully fleshed out their ideas or even if the document is missing important structure ... the purpose of the document, what the author is trying to get out of the meeting ("what is the success criteria for the document or meeting?"), what's in scope, if it's a technical document then clarity in functional requirements, non-functional requirements/constraints, options/alternatives, trade offs, and so on. In my honest opinion, the document driven meetings provide Amazon a competitive advantage.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

sib 6y ago

Previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19126556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19126556