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If any Amazon employee involved in this is here, I'd love to hear their take on if/how this conflicts with their leadership principles: https://www.amazon.jobs/

If any Amazon employee involved in this is here, I'd love to hear their take on if/how this conflicts with their leadership principles: https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-principles https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-... Whenever i interviewed there, i felt they actually abide by these and somehow this move seems to contradict their top one: Customer Obsession.

barbazoo 2y ago
> Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers. I don’t see a contradiction at all. Their customers want to consume cheap products and get those products instantly if possible. If removing regulation lets them sell those products cheaper, ship them faster, that’s pretty aligned with the leadership principle it seems. Customer will continue to “trust” Amazon because that trust isn’t that the product will be good. It’ll just be that Amazon will take it back and dispose it for them and send them something different.
spiderfarmer 2y ago
[flagged]
- b112 2y ago
  This isn't reddit or slashdot, and turning everything into a post about the politics or the other team isn't helpful. Amazon has been on a constantly downward path for a decade. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
  - leosanchez 2y ago
    > This isn't reddit or slashdot Or Twitter
robotnikman 2y ago
Unfortunately, the unspoken rule in all publicly owned companies is that the shareholders matter more than anything else. No longer are we in the days of the customer is always right. The line must always go up.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > Unfortunately, the unspoken rule in all publicly owned companies is that the shareholders matter more than anything else. In most companies with shareholders, public or private, that's a written rule, right in the corporate founding documents.
  - mlhpdx 2y ago
    Can you cite actual example of such “founding documents”?
gradientsrneat 2y ago
Amazon has treated their warehouse employees poorly for years. Poor pay. Limited breaks. Frequent injuries. And meanwhile it's gotten harder to find good products on Amazon, while goods there have become more expensive, and Amazon uses its might to force sellers into exclusivity deals where they can't charge lower prices elsewhere. Amazon lobbying the government to abolish a consumer rights law, or a few, seems consistent with past behavior.
anon84873628 2y ago
At the size of Amazon that principle is meaningless. Not because people don't care, but because there are too many conflicting constituents anyway. Which one do you prioritize to obsess over? Some might care about safety and recall notices, others just want things as cheap and fast as possible (as a sibling comment explains). There are probably product categories that Amazon would rather not bother with (because of high return rates or low margin or what have you) but they keep it around in order to attract and retain customers who are overall more profitable.
evanelias 2y ago
To be fair, "obsession" often has a negative or even sinister connotation. I mean, Merriam-Webster's definition [1] includes the words "disturbing" and "unreasonable"... [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obsession https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obsession

barbazoo 2y ago

> Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers. I don’t see a contradiction at all. Their customers want to consume cheap products and get those products instantly if possible. If removing regulation lets them sell those products cheaper, ship them faster, that’s pretty aligned with the leadership principle it seems. Customer will continue to “trust” Amazon because that trust isn’t that the product will be good. It’ll just be that Amazon will take it back and dispose it for them and send them something different.

spiderfarmer 2y ago

[flagged]

b112 2y ago
This isn't reddit or slashdot, and turning everything into a post about the politics or the other team isn't helpful. Amazon has been on a constantly downward path for a decade. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
- leosanchez 2y ago
  > This isn't reddit or slashdot Or Twitter

robotnikman 2y ago

Unfortunately, the unspoken rule in all publicly owned companies is that the shareholders matter more than anything else. No longer are we in the days of the customer is always right. The line must always go up.

dragonwriter 2y ago
> Unfortunately, the unspoken rule in all publicly owned companies is that the shareholders matter more than anything else. In most companies with shareholders, public or private, that's a written rule, right in the corporate founding documents.
- mlhpdx 2y ago
  Can you cite actual example of such “founding documents”?

gradientsrneat 2y ago

Amazon has treated their warehouse employees poorly for years. Poor pay. Limited breaks. Frequent injuries. And meanwhile it's gotten harder to find good products on Amazon, while goods there have become more expensive, and Amazon uses its might to force sellers into exclusivity deals where they can't charge lower prices elsewhere. Amazon lobbying the government to abolish a consumer rights law, or a few, seems consistent with past behavior.

anon84873628 2y ago

At the size of Amazon that principle is meaningless. Not because people don't care, but because there are too many conflicting constituents anyway. Which one do you prioritize to obsess over? Some might care about safety and recall notices, others just want things as cheap and fast as possible (as a sibling comment explains). There are probably product categories that Amazon would rather not bother with (because of high return rates or low margin or what have you) but they keep it around in order to attract and retain customers who are overall more profitable.

evanelias 2y ago

To be fair, "obsession" often has a negative or even sinister connotation. I mean, Merriam-Webster's definition [1] includes the words "disturbing" and "unreasonable"... [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obsession https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obsession