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It's actually a rare opportunity that someone smart can "rip me apart" for the right reason. Candid truth does not hurt. It stimulates growth. In contrast, the

It's actually a rare opportunity that someone smart can "rip me apart" for the right reason. Candid truth does not hurt. It stimulates growth. In contrast, the worst place is where everyone is nice, but does not tell you what you have done wrong.

paxys 6y ago
Candid truths can be shared in blameless postmortems and a hundred other ways. An executive shouting at someone in a large meeting is an ego trip, nothing more.
- xyzelement 6y ago
  Blameless is often pointless because sometimes something about the person is the problem. If the project failed because Bob ran it and Bob is too risk averse, then you can't fix it without talking about Bob. Bob either needs to figure out how to be less risk averse (hard and time consuming journey) or Bob shouldn't run projects that require risk taking. Doesn't mean Bob is bad or gets fired, but he is part of the picture. The whole blameless thing is so weak - if there's something about you that caused the failure, don't you want to know?
  - ehaughee 6y ago
    The key mental shift (for me anyway) is that if a system can be brought to its knees by a single person, then the system is very likely flawed. You need to design a better system when the flaw in the system is the people. What that often looks like is changing/instituting processes such that quantitative measure (metrics, checklists, etc) governs decisions (thereby removing much, but importantly not all, of the human element), or you design processes in such a way that one person is not in charge of making the decision (the "two person rule", CRs, leadership approval). There are of course other tools but these two are pretty common in my experience.
    - adwn 6y ago
      > if a system can be brought to its knees by a single person, then the system is very likely flawed. That just means that the person who designed the system deserves the blame. I'm only half-joking here. You can't just rely on the "system" – someone needs to be responsible, either for the decision or for creating the system that makes the decision.
      - ehaughee 6y ago
        Having a system/process is not about removing accountability, it's about reducing discretion/cognitive load where it's been identified as risky. In fact, having a system/process in place to point to and say "this individual did not follow the steps/process/rules" makes an unbiased conversation about their performance much more possible.
        xyzelement 6y ago
        Yes and this works when you're doing something for the 10th time. It totally doesn't work when you're doing something innovative and risky, which I assume is the kinds of conversations we're talking about here (this subthread is contextual to a senior amazon exec, he's probably not PMing someone forgetting to change the backup tapes)
  - hamburglar 6y ago
    If your root cause analysis leads to a preventative fix that amounts to “humans should not make mistake X” you haven’t done anything to prevent recurrence.
    - xyzelement 6y ago
      I am not constraining my statement to the narrow set of problems where your statement applies.
- ehaughee 6y ago
  As someone who has been on these calls multiple times, I think "rip someone apart" was an attempt to portray the bluntness with which feedback was provided but (as other commenters have mentioned) not to import any ad hominem attack characteristics to the feedback. Although admittedly the language used was contrary to that. While Amazon certainly has its flaws and has plenty of room to grow in the hospitable work environment category, cbell's feedback on weekly calls is not one of those areas imo.
- mabbo 6y ago
  I listen to the calls weekly. No one shouts. No one degraded others. Cbell's power is that he doesn't have an ego in these calls. The blameless postmortems are reviewed in these meetings, and the findings challenged, to ensure they really got to the root cause and lessons are learned. I once almost got to present my post mortem, but it wasn't high enough priority that week. I wish it had been. It would have been ripped apart, but I would have gotten the feedback from the smartest people in the company on how to make my system better.

paxys 6y ago

Candid truths can be shared in blameless postmortems and a hundred other ways. An executive shouting at someone in a large meeting is an ego trip, nothing more.

xyzelement 6y ago
Blameless is often pointless because sometimes something about the person is the problem. If the project failed because Bob ran it and Bob is too risk averse, then you can't fix it without talking about Bob. Bob either needs to figure out how to be less risk averse (hard and time consuming journey) or Bob shouldn't run projects that require risk taking. Doesn't mean Bob is bad or gets fired, but he is part of the picture. The whole blameless thing is so weak - if there's something about you that caused the failure, don't you want to know?
- ehaughee 6y ago
  The key mental shift (for me anyway) is that if a system can be brought to its knees by a single person, then the system is very likely flawed. You need to design a better system when the flaw in the system is the people. What that often looks like is changing/instituting processes such that quantitative measure (metrics, checklists, etc) governs decisions (thereby removing much, but importantly not all, of the human element), or you design processes in such a way that one person is not in charge of making the decision (the "two person rule", CRs, leadership approval). There are of course other tools but these two are pretty common in my experience.
  - adwn 6y ago
    > if a system can be brought to its knees by a single person, then the system is very likely flawed. That just means that the person who designed the system deserves the blame. I'm only half-joking here. You can't just rely on the "system" – someone needs to be responsible, either for the decision or for creating the system that makes the decision.
    - ehaughee 6y ago
      Having a system/process is not about removing accountability, it's about reducing discretion/cognitive load where it's been identified as risky. In fact, having a system/process in place to point to and say "this individual did not follow the steps/process/rules" makes an unbiased conversation about their performance much more possible.
      - xyzelement 6y ago
        Yes and this works when you're doing something for the 10th time. It totally doesn't work when you're doing something innovative and risky, which I assume is the kinds of conversations we're talking about here (this subthread is contextual to a senior amazon exec, he's probably not PMing someone forgetting to change the backup tapes)
- hamburglar 6y ago
  If your root cause analysis leads to a preventative fix that amounts to “humans should not make mistake X” you haven’t done anything to prevent recurrence.
  - xyzelement 6y ago
    I am not constraining my statement to the narrow set of problems where your statement applies.
ehaughee 6y ago
As someone who has been on these calls multiple times, I think "rip someone apart" was an attempt to portray the bluntness with which feedback was provided but (as other commenters have mentioned) not to import any ad hominem attack characteristics to the feedback. Although admittedly the language used was contrary to that. While Amazon certainly has its flaws and has plenty of room to grow in the hospitable work environment category, cbell's feedback on weekly calls is not one of those areas imo.
mabbo 6y ago
I listen to the calls weekly. No one shouts. No one degraded others. Cbell's power is that he doesn't have an ego in these calls. The blameless postmortems are reviewed in these meetings, and the findings challenged, to ensure they really got to the root cause and lessons are learned. I once almost got to present my post mortem, but it wasn't high enough priority that week. I wish it had been. It would have been ripped apart, but I would have gotten the feedback from the smartest people in the company on how to make my system better.