4 ms·

well, then founder mode is a meaningless thing because the essay seemed to suggest doing the opposite of "think he just forwarded the email to one of the S-team

well, then founder mode is a meaningless thing because the essay seemed to suggest doing the opposite of "think he just forwarded the email to one of the S-team and it would get passed down the org chart until it reached the relevant manager"

philwelch 2y ago
My understanding is that Jeff Bezos would remain involved in the followup
- swiftcoder 2y ago
  Yeah, the key bit here is that you would remain under the microscope till you could demonstrate to the entire management chain that the problem was actually solved - and with the Bezos question mark came an implicit guarantee that the resources/authority to actually solve issue would be made available.
  - vasilipupkin 2y ago
    all this implies trust in the management team, right? to tell Bezos that it's really solved. The opposite of what the essay is arguing, that these managers tend to be fakers and can't be trusted.
    - swiftcoder 2y ago
      Indeed. And I think the essay comes with the implicit assumption that founders are bad at spotting snake-oil execs (which may be warranted in general, but isn't in Amazon's case)
    - philwelch 2y ago
      Except it doesn't sound like his style was to "trust the management team to tell him that it's really solved". It sounds like his style was to "dive deep" and make sure the problem was solved. If you put in the work and understand the business deeply enough, nobody's going to successfully bullshit you.
      - vasilipupkin 2y ago
        Come on. There is no way CEO of a huge company like Amazon can really know every detail. At some point he’s gonna just have to trust someone at the company.
        philwelch 2y ago
        You’d be surprised—the founder of a huge company like Amazon is likely to be an outlier in terms of how many details he actually can know. The more you learn about the biographies of exceptional leaders the more you realize that many of them actually had a hard, concrete understanding of what their organizations did that often exceeded that of the people who actually did the work on a day to day basis. But part of being a founder is that by the time the company outgrows what you can personally keep track of, you’ve cultivated a core of people around you whom you’ve thoroughly vetted as trustworthy. Besides, the goal here is not that Bezos knows every detail; it’s that he knows enough of the details that a subordinate isn’t going to be able to bullshit him. And once he has trusted subordinates with a long history of not bullshitting him, he can offload some of the “understanding details” to them, so however difficult it was to try and bullshit Bezos, it’s going to be even harder to bullshit a team of Bezos and a trusted lieutenant. And ultimately you can develop a skill or a technique for not being bullshitted even without knowing any of the relevant details ahead of time. Just as there are techniques to bullshitting a person, like handwaving and glossing over inconsistent or inconvenient details, there are also counter-techniques for not letting people bullshit you, like demanding all of the inconvenient details that people seem to be glossing over or trying to hide.
        vasilipupkin 2y ago
        I disagree. Some things are just complex and inherently outside of the CEOs competency. They have to be able to build a management team of properly incentivized highly skilled professionals. Time in the day is limited, if you are delving into details on X and Y, that means at that same time you are not spending time on Z.
        2y ago

philwelch 2y ago

My understanding is that Jeff Bezos would remain involved in the followup

swiftcoder 2y ago
Yeah, the key bit here is that you would remain under the microscope till you could demonstrate to the entire management chain that the problem was actually solved - and with the Bezos question mark came an implicit guarantee that the resources/authority to actually solve issue would be made available.
- vasilipupkin 2y ago
  all this implies trust in the management team, right? to tell Bezos that it's really solved. The opposite of what the essay is arguing, that these managers tend to be fakers and can't be trusted.
  - swiftcoder 2y ago
    Indeed. And I think the essay comes with the implicit assumption that founders are bad at spotting snake-oil execs (which may be warranted in general, but isn't in Amazon's case)
  - philwelch 2y ago
    Except it doesn't sound like his style was to "trust the management team to tell him that it's really solved". It sounds like his style was to "dive deep" and make sure the problem was solved. If you put in the work and understand the business deeply enough, nobody's going to successfully bullshit you.
    - vasilipupkin 2y ago
      Come on. There is no way CEO of a huge company like Amazon can really know every detail. At some point he’s gonna just have to trust someone at the company.
      - philwelch 2y ago
        You’d be surprised—the founder of a huge company like Amazon is likely to be an outlier in terms of how many details he actually can know. The more you learn about the biographies of exceptional leaders the more you realize that many of them actually had a hard, concrete understanding of what their organizations did that often exceeded that of the people who actually did the work on a day to day basis. But part of being a founder is that by the time the company outgrows what you can personally keep track of, you’ve cultivated a core of people around you whom you’ve thoroughly vetted as trustworthy. Besides, the goal here is not that Bezos knows every detail; it’s that he knows enough of the details that a subordinate isn’t going to be able to bullshit him. And once he has trusted subordinates with a long history of not bullshitting him, he can offload some of the “understanding details” to them, so however difficult it was to try and bullshit Bezos, it’s going to be even harder to bullshit a team of Bezos and a trusted lieutenant. And ultimately you can develop a skill or a technique for not being bullshitted even without knowing any of the relevant details ahead of time. Just as there are techniques to bullshitting a person, like handwaving and glossing over inconsistent or inconvenient details, there are also counter-techniques for not letting people bullshit you, like demanding all of the inconvenient details that people seem to be glossing over or trying to hide.
        vasilipupkin 2y ago
        I disagree. Some things are just complex and inherently outside of the CEOs competency. They have to be able to build a management team of properly incentivized highly skilled professionals. Time in the day is limited, if you are delving into details on X and Y, that means at that same time you are not spending time on Z.
        2y ago