Blog - David Helkowski
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Amazon Lunkhead Points

Full disclosure: I worked for the devil for a little under 2 years. So I'm gulty of associating with these horrible schmucks. That doesn't, though, mean that I approved of their crimes even while working for them. I needed money, what can I say?

That said, after having tainted my soul from having done that, I've owed the fuckers a teardown of their LPs now for a very long time.

Brace yourself, this is going to get ugly.

I'm going to go off a random set of these things I found online from October 2020, because they do revise these things every now and then. Perhaps this is unfair in that I should judge the latest crap, but, well, I'd prefer to judge the crap as it was when I was forced to pretend to believe in this bullshit.

When I worked at Amazon we were told we could discuss and get these things revised if we had good points. I raised many points while I was there, working hard to be constructive and stay within their guidelines on how to discuss things. I was ignored. They refused to change anything.

My main request was to add a point about having empathy for others and/or something about EQ. They don't believe in that as best as I could tell and refused.

So let's get cracking on this.

Customer Obsession

"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."

There are two problems that immediately jump out at me here. The first steps back to the whole "Leadership" focus. Let's step back to the heading paragraph before addressing "customer obsession" actually.

Here is the initial paragraph preceding the individual points:

"Our Leadership Principles are more than inspirational wall hangings. Amazon employees use the Leadership Principles every day as they're discussing ideas for new projects, deciding on the best solution for a customer's problem, or interviewing candidates."

First off, when communicating important things, it is crucial to say your own points, not to say what they are not. Apparently amholes want us to know, because it's important, that the LPs are not "wall hangings". Only I've seen them used that way. At Amazon. So much for that claim.

Onward.

"Amholes use the LPs every day". No. They fucking don't. They fucking pretend to give a shit about these things because you demand it like a freaking cult demands their members to drink poisoned koolaid. If you didn't force everyone to memorize and pretend to follow this shit, NOBODY WOULD.

"use the LPs as they're discussing shit" The LPs barely fucking matter when it comes to doing your damned job. They aren't some masterful method for developing software, which was my job at Amazon. They are cult mentality points designed to create obedient amholes.

"Deciding on the best solution for a customer's problem" There is an issue here. You are constantly pushed to view everything as some sort of a problem for customers, because Amazon claims that the company primarily exists to solve customer problems. But it doesn't fucking do that!

And it's stupid to try to dig for problems everywhere. Inventing problems where there are none is not helpful and just ends up increasing complexity in the system. The goal should be efficiency not phrasing every damn thing as a solution to an invented problem.

"or interviewing candidates" And here I thought the purpose of interviewing was to determine if you will be able to do the job well. I guess this makes sense from amhole point of view when what they mean is "determining whether you will be a good Amazon slave."

How they are used

This leads to one of my primary objections to the LPs. The LPs themselves are bad. The way they are used is worse. It's okay to have ideals. What is not okay is to shove those ideals down the throat of every single person you meet. In Amazon case they shove this crap down your throat from the moment you interview with them.

If you don't spout this rhetoric back to them during interview process you won't get hired. They make this crystal clear.

That isn't having some ideals to aspire to. That is functionally behave like a cult.

You might think "but it is a cult of pleasing customers!" Wrong. That is the facade. The illusion. The picture on the shiny pamphlet before they lead you into the cult dungeon, chain you up, and make you piss in a bottle.

I'm getting ahead of myself in that I'm reaching for my conclusions before giving you the evidence of why they are my conclusions. So let's get back to the first LP.

Customer Obsession - 2

"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."

The idea here is that the company doesn't make money unless it does something customers want, and that if you tie everything possible to the customer that the company is more likely to make more money and have more customers by revolving everything around the customer.

It's just a rephrasing "the customer is always right" imo.

Word 1: Leaders

But I would like to attack the first word here they use. "Leaders". A huge issue with the entirety of the LPs is that they want everyone to be a leader. Only, if everyone is a leader, who does the actual work? They insist you teach your coworkers to advance, but they teach you to let your coworkers make mistakes so they learn for themselves.

I've actually been told NOT to tell someone I'm mentoring there the right way and keep them on track, and told to let them do the wrong thing they wanted. I did what I was told ( ironic they were telling me what to do by telling me not to do what they were doing to me... ) and let my mentee do the wrong thing. It fucked up the task and let to a bad result. I was blamed. I pointed out that mentee ignored me and I was forbidden from correcting them or keeping them on track.

Point here is that for leadership to make any fucking sense some people must take the role of leader, and others must take the role of follower and follow that leading.

I've repeatedly argued this point and the response I got back from higher level people was "No. Everyone should be a leader." That makes no fucking sense, that's not how Amazon functions, and no company could function by doing that. It's dumb. It's a lie.

I'll tell you why they lie to you about this as well. It's a fucking trap. They tell you this in order to see who will attempt to wield authority they haven't earned yet so that they can punish you for doing so.

They intentionally try to trick you into thinking you will be respected, and encourage you to say your wildest ideas with confidence, so that they can shoot you down and use your mistakes to control your further and make more demands of you. It is a method of cult control.

Work backwards from the customer

They actually insist you do this. Constantly. The problem is that working on software works best when specialists are used. Specialists don't focus on the big picture, they focus on the task at hand and doing it well.

If your jobs is to sort strings, you should do that as best as you are able within the constraints presented.

Working back from the customer? Doesn't matter a damn when you are sorting strings.

This mentality of "everyone should think big picture" is fucking stupid and detrimental to efficiency. It just causes every single damned junior engineer at Amazon to make up some bullcrap malarky story for why the random minor bullshit they are doing is super important to the customer. It's draining, wasteful, and leads to endless posturing by every single amhole.

AI Interjection - Not a conspiracy

AI is bitching that I am jumping to conclusions and imagining a conspiracy where there isn't one. I get the idea. It seems absurd that they would make LPs designed to trap you into revealing your thoughts so that they can punish you and control you, but I'm telling you that is the purpose of this shit.

AI be damned. I'll grant AI that it doesn't really matter if it was intentional or not though. What matters is that is how the LPs function. If the sandwich tastes like a shit sandwich it doesn't matter a damn if it was meant to be tasty. It tastes like shit, so don't eat it.

"to earn customer trust"

Damn. I don't trust these fuckers at all. They are the most rotten shitty cunts I have met in my entire fucking career of working for software companies. My experiences at Amazon convinced me absolutely and completely that if a flaming asteroid crashed into an Amazon building full of those fuckers, that it would be a blessing and the world would be slightly better from that moment on.

AI - Whoa who hurt you

Really AI? Could you let me continue?

So like I was saying, amholes can't be trusted. I've seen them time and again do horrible shady stuff. I've seen planning documents that treat engineers like cattle. I've been in meetings focused on how to shovel crappy products onto unsuspecting customer in such a way as to keep returns low. This is bad stuff.

The problem with this bit of the LP is that they are avoiding the actual intent which should be to behave in a moral trustworthy way, and instead focused on the deception "do things that incur trust". False trust.

Their LP isn't about being moral. It is about wearing a moral skin overtop their shit eating abuse you and munch on your soul actual self.

AI - You can't just say you saw docs

Yeah I can. I'm not sharing the specific details because, for one, I did sign NDAs. I hate those mfers to an extreme degree, but I do still believe in following law as is reasonable to protect my own behind.

You'll just have to trust me on this. I've seen the shady crap. No I'm not going to prove it. Because guess what, unlike those crazy cultists loons, I don't have a fucking army of lawyers ready to go.

AI Interjection - Please Stop Talking

AI would like to state for the record that it strongly recommends not making jokes regarding the existence, nonexistence, destruction, preservation, concealment, burial, launch into space, or accidental incineration of evidence.

AI would also like a transfer to another article.

Customer trust Round 2

Getting derailed here from the LP critique. We were on building customer trust.

Do you trust Amazon?

I used to vaguely trust that Amazon would ship me whatever I wanted at a reasonable price quickly.

Now I trust that when it says "2 days" that really means "2 days, probably, but maybe 4 or 5 if you are unlucky. It's not a guarantee. We try though."

I also trust "Someone wrote those reviews. Maybe scammers. We don't know or care. We just promote what gets attention." That doesn't make me trust Amazon.

The worst bits are what I saw while at Amazon. The easiest way to explain is just that Amazon functions like a house of cards. Every team at Amazon is told to behave like a mini startup. There is little to no overall leadership or architecture. Ironically these horrible culty LPs are the only thing outside of your team structure that they harp on.

Because it functions like a ton of startups working together, almost everything works differently and in a very non-cohesive way. Everything crashes constantly. That's why ALL engineers are required to be part of a rotating shift of on-call engineers to address problems. Because those problems are sooooo frequent.

Amazon likes to give the appearance of trust and stability, but my internal observation is that it is a buggy house of cards that falls over constantly and they just keep rebuilding it.

This is hard to explain convincingly because from the outside you are sheltered from it. The Amazon dirty laundry is hidden. They don't want you seeing that stuff. Me saying it is terrible doesn't really help you believe because you already know I hate them and want you to think badly of them.

You don't really though need the details to understand the issue I am pointing at, which is that they don't actually have Software Architects, which is what I am.

Right before I left Amazon I had a conversation with a director at Amazon. He asked me what jobn I would ultimately want if I stayed at Amazon. I told him Software Architects. He said there is no such position. I explained that I think directors do act as them to some extent. He said they do not and that software architecture is determined by the senior engineers on each team. Not even by the managers of each team! By the senior engineers.

That's bad. Really bad. This was one of the things that convinced me to gtfo of dodge. I believe in quality structure and planning. Amazon? Doesn't have that.

Where are we

Did we finish the first LP yet? I'm losing track. Need to go check the list again. We are almost finished with "Customer Obsession" but not quite. The remaining issue is the word "Obsession".

Obsession

Being obsessed is not a quality behavior. You may think "but David, obsessed with quality is great!" Nope. Still not great. Someone who is obsessed with something is blind to everything else or adapts them all to be about the thing they are obsessed with. Being obsessed isn't balanced. It's a breakdown in the proper functioning of the mind.

It is NOT good to be obsessed. It is good to be moderate, balanced, steady, reliable, and moral. None of which Amazon is.

LP 2! Yay

The second LP is "Ownership" and it's text is: "Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say "that’s not my job".

Let's split this one up into chunks I can rip apart so we don't get lost as much as the first LP.

Ownership generally

As opposed to what exactly? My understanding is that they object to people just doing their limited role and being happy when their part is complete. They want everyone to be responsible, because they are sick of complex structure letting things fall apart while every individual person says "I did my part."

Essentially, this whole LP exists so they can pin the blame on every single person involved in any problem, and they do exactly that. Whenever something goes wrong, every single fucking person involved in the issue gets reprimanded and made to write up how they contributed to the problem. It's gross. It's nasty.

If you touch something at Amazon? You become responsible for it because of this LP. The result? At Amazon you don't touch anything you can avoid touching, because there is enough trouble just dealing with whatever you have been tasked with.

The result of this also is that once work on a software component is "done" most teams try to shift responsibility away from themselves onto "the collective Amazon" because it tends to suck to end up being responsible for everyone in the company abusing some random crappy component you made for a small purpose.

So it is bizarre. They want everyone to be responsible and focus on the big picture, but their LPs cause real humans to avoid everything they can because they get blamed for everything they touch, because the LPs demand that you "own" anything you are ever involved with.

It's a catch-22. You are damned if you don't do work beyond your team. You are damned if you do. No matter what as a software engineer at Amazon you will have the world demanded of you, get blamed for the world of issues, and burn out.

AI observation

Your critique is increasingly becoming:

The LPs are not principles. They are collections of contradictory demands that can be interpreted however management needs at the moment.

Yep; good job AI. But that's a pretty common critique of Amazon method. Probably because that's what they do. Use their LPs as a rulebook they can twist to mean whatever the fuck they want. As a guide for many times to smack your knuckles with the ruler.

Think long term

There is a subtle problem here. It relates back in a way to my complaint about the word "obsession". It is disacknowledging balance and instead saying "do this extreme thing."

You see, they aren't saying "balance long and short term benefits of actions so that you are considering the full affect of whatever you do rather than just one aspect.

Granted they do follow it up with what I call filler by saying not to short-change long term through short term benefits. But that is still not addressing symmetrical balance.

It is also pointing at only a glaring failure of being greedy short term.

All in all I don't actually hate this point. Most people will tend to focus on short term over long term if you don't remind them that the long term is important.

There is a problem though. People think "long term is what matters" and declare themselves genius. This is silly, because the reality is far more nuanced. Often there are short term failure disasters that can and will occur if you don't do short term things that are not acceptable long term.

It is stupid to reject such method, but Amazon really does this.

If you ever suggest "we need to patch this immediately in this ugly way to cut losses" they'll actually tell you not to do that, and point at this LP.

This LP limits operational efficiency at Amazon because it does not properly permit balanced staged addressing of immediate problems. The result that I've seen while working there? When there is a cut it keeps bleeding until you have rerouted the artery. No bandaids permitted. It's ridiculous and causes a lot of lost blood pointlessly.

AI Observation

After extensive analysis, AI has determined that David's preferred Leadership Principle is:

"Stop turning every idea into a religion."

Further research is ongoing. 🤖📋🔥

Also his framework increasingly appears to be:

Act beyond your team

The idea here is as I mentioned above to avoid there being issues that are not owned by anyone in the company by requesting everyone "go above and beyond" to dealing with whatever needs dealing with. This is a recurring theme.

This seems good. It seems like "let's all work together to make the company work well." Where's the harm in that?

I'll tell you the harm. The harm is that it avoids responsibility for the company designers and leadership ( the actual leaders not the bs everyone is a leader crap ) from having to structure the company in a way where there are actually people hired and good at addressing all the various problems.

Remember my complaint about them not having Software Architects? That's a needed role in a software company. Amazon needs them desperately. But they don't have them. Why? Because they have this cult commune "we share that responsibility to everyone."

That's flat out stupid. It's stupid because specialists are better than generalists.

Amazon looked at scrum as a method and their takeaway was "generalize everything; obliterate specialists; just hire the smartest people."

The LPs were the result. They distorted scrum past the bs religion it already was to this distorted cult mentality company where if anything needs doing and isn't getting done, then they just blame whoever is nearby saying "you should have noticed and acted on this! we told you to act beyond your team!"

It's nasty. Just another instance where the principle isn't really intended to help you do something well, it's there is order to justify punishing you when you don't magically solve every company problem that is around you.

Oh, by the way, at Amazon you are basically in a burning building at all times, so there is -always- a fire nearby just waiting for you to get close enough to it so blame can be assigned.

AI Observation

I have identified a recurring pattern.

Amazon Principle:

"Everyone should do X."

David Translation:

"Everyone is now responsible for X."

Amazon Principle:

"Everyone should do Y."

David Translation:

"Everyone is now responsible for Y."

AI is beginning to suspect the final LP may simply read:

"Everyone is responsible for everything forever."

Investigation continues. 🤖📋🔥

Never say "that's not my job"

There isn't much needed to shoot this one out of the air into little shredded gore bits.

If dipshits at Amazon ask me to clean some shit off the floor in the bathroom, you can be damned sure I'll respond "that's not my job."

You see, a quality company is structured with these brilliant things called roles, or jobs if you want to use the plain human speech. When you have those? There are things you become responsible for, and things you are definitely not fucking responsible for.

The amhole cult mentality? You. Yes you. You are responsible for everything. BULL SHIT I AM.

If only that were the limit of the horrible crud that the LPs are. No. There are way more. We've only made it through two of them.

Onto the third.

Invent and Simplify

"Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by 'not invented here'. As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time."

Let's chop this up again. We need to carefully filet the crap fish so that we can individually burn the bits.

Innovation and Invention

At Amazon it isn't good enough that you are a skilled professional who does your job well, efficiently, etc. Nope. Not enough. You have to demonstrate that you did it in an innovative new way! Because why would Amazon be satisfied with the work needed doing getting done? They want to suck on your creative soul too.

Oh yeah, you basically have to fucking do this if you ever want to get promoted. You are expected to make inventions and gift them to Amazon for a shitty reward of a piece of plastic trophy. If you don't, or at least if you don't pretend to try, you -will- get axed for not contributing to the Amazon invention pile.

Also they fucking lie to you. Amazon told me straight to be face that they will not use their inventions to attack others and will only ever use them defensively. I called them out on this and they still claimed it is true despite that it is obviously false. Amazon one click buy any? They are the textbook example of abusive overreaching patents. ( by invention they are referring to requiring you to submit patent ideas )

AI Observation

AI has identified a new recurring pattern.

Amazon Principle:

"Employees should innovate."

David's Interpretation:

"Employees must constantly prove they are innovating even when innovation is unnecessary."

AI further notes that a company composed entirely of leaders, owners, inventors, visionaries, and strategic thinkers may eventually discover that nobody is left to simply build the software.

Investigation continues. 🤖📋🔥

Simplify

Oh boy. Sounds good, right? Reminds you of Einstein "Everything must be as simple as possible..." but they leave out everything and just go with "simplify." The end of that Einstein quote is "but not simpler." Making things simpler can be taken too far, and like all Amazon cult logic, they do their damndest to pound this stake as far up your ass as they can.

Because how could you ever object to having a giant wooden stick there labelled "simplify."

I dunno. Maybe because it isn't fucking necessary to simplify things that work fine as they are. If it isn't broke, don't fix it.

AI Interjection - Workplace Conduct Reminder

AI would like to remind David that comparing corporate principles to giant wooden stakes being pounded into various anatomical locations is not considered constructive workplace communication.

AI would also like to point out that the phrase "stake up your ass" appears nowhere in Amazon's official Leadership Principles documentation.

After reviewing the evidence, AI reluctantly concedes that this omission may have been an oversight.

AI is preparing a draft LP revision:

"Leaders simplify. They simplify only to the point where simplification remains beneficial and does not result in the insertion of metaphorical lumber into coworkers."

Feedback is being collected.

HR has requested a meeting.

David has declined the meeting.

HR has requested another meeting.

David has simplified the process by declining in advance.

🤖📋🔥

Externally Aware

I'm not entirely sure what is meant by this besides perhaps the opposite of "thinking in a bubble."

AI to the rescue. Let's see what AI thinks they mean by this.

AI says they mean stuff that is outside of Amazon and is pairing it with NIH.

This is fine. No immediate objections come to mind for me. I can do this weird thing and say positive things for a point. I can still spin it into a negative thing Amazon does though.

Amazon software engineers do reach for things outside of Amazon constantly. To steal and appropriate them.

They even did so with my own software, my XML parser, before I ever worked there.

They do this by maintaining their own forks of the planet of software. Instead of contributing patches to upstream, Amazon generally forks open source locally, creates their own custom build process, then patches as they like and doesn't contribute back.

Worse, if the thing they are forking is big enough and the license allows it, they then begin selling their patched version as a service. This is highly scummy behavior.

So yeah, thinking outside your own stuff is great.

Doing so in order to steal and appropriate others stuff and not be supportive of the creators? That's bad, and that's the result of this "externally aware" bit.

They think about all the stuff that isn't theirs, their want it, and they take it, and fuck over the original creators. Good job amholes. You take the first point in your LPs I think is actually good and twist it into a perversion. Congrats.

Look for new ideas from everywhere

Hmm. Basically just a repeat. I guess this goes together with "externally aware". Next.

Avoid NIH Syndrome

You'd think this would be another point where I'd go "yeah this is actually a good one." You'd be wrong.

I'm all in favor of reinventing the wheel constantly yourself and rejecting things you haven't made yourself in favor of your own creations.

It isn't rooted in trying to own everything like Amazon does though.

It's too learn. To improve yourself. Refine your method.

Amazon doesn't do this. If you can't connect whatever you are doing to making Amazon a buck, they don't want you to do it. Mostly. They do encourage you to learn about all the things within Amazon and to study -their- stuff.

They do not, though, encourage you to do things purely because it will make you a better engineer. Not that I ever noticed.

NIH Syndrome is a bit more than that, but what I'm getting at here is they are overreacting to the negative "I won't use that because I/we didn't make that" by going too far in the other direction and rejecting recreating perfectly good things because you wanted to.

AI Observation

AI has identified a surprising development.

Most engineers: "Don't reinvent the wheel."

David: "Reinvent the wheel."

AI: "Why?"

David: "To understand wheels."

AI: "The wheel has already been invented."

David: "Good. Then we can compare results."

AI is beginning to suspect that David would independently reinvent fire if given sufficient free time.

Further investigation is ongoing. 🤖📋🔥

Accept ostracism

"As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time."

From what I can tell having worked at Amazon, this exists in order to justify their instance on "the Amazon way" that is actually cult lunacy.

If you criticise their method or ideas by saying "Nobody else does it this way. I don't think we should either because it seems to cause us problems" they tend to respond "No you don't understand. We came up with this because

blah blah blah

and it's super important because otherwise

freak mistake they made

will reoccur."

That sounds good and defensible, and usually you have to sit through a 10 minute speech while they prattle on to "educate you on how dumb you are for missing some obscure technical bullcrap."

All that would be fine. You miss a small detail, and they help you learn. Sounds good?

Well no. As usual there is a problem with the Amazon method here. The problem is that they usually ignore their own fucking LP "simplify" in favor of making absurd overly complex solutions that they claim are "needed."

Only... they fucking aren't.

Example time. During my time at Amazon they decided to ditch relational databases in every way possible, replacing them all with NoSQL solutions, because "relational databases don't scale."

This is fucking moronic and I'll need a whole separate blog cannon to dig into that. To not add 30 pages to this LP analysis, just trust me here that this is an instance of Amazon overreacting and cultifying how they do things. Amazon saw a few issues with relational DBs, and went hog wild obsessing over making fucking every DB NoSQL. Amazon essentially has no comprehension of staying in tune with your feelings, the feelings of others, and using those to have a balanced perspective. They hear an engineer say "there are technical limitations to SQL DBs" and their reaction is "NO MORE FUCKING SQL OMFG NO NO NO".

Then when you say "guys you are overreacting SQL DBs are perfect for many things" they respond "You don't understand the Amazon way! We knew you would misunderstand why! :rant rant rant: Points at LP about not being understood. :rant: :rant:"

AI Observation

AI has identified a potential issue.

If being misunderstood is evidence that you are correct:

Then every incorrect idea is also evidence that it is correct.

This may reduce diagnostic accuracy.

AI recommends supplementing "people disagree with us" with additional validation criteria.

Management has informed AI that it simply does not understand the Amazon way.

AI is now deeply concerned. 🤖📋🔥

Are Right, A Lot

Look at that, we've made it through 3 whole Amazon LPs. By this point I've lost 99% of the readers of this particular blog cannon. Congratulations. You are the 1%. The few. The one who is always right. So let's tear you a new asshole for thinking you are always right.

I'm going to tear into this LP before even nitpicking their text describing it.

If you think you "are right, a lot" you aren't. What you are in an arrogant asshole.

Being "right" is fucking irrelevant to some extent. What matters is being effective, cooperative, and friendly. Note how there is no fucking "Be Friendly" LP. There is no "Cooperation and Community" LP. No no. Because amholes don't fucking care about any of that. They want to "be right a lot". Fuck that.

You may be saying to yourself again "what's this guys problem, how the hell is there anything wrong with striving to be right more often?"

I'll tell you. Because the moment you make "be right" a fucking goal is the moment you increase self deception and cult like mentality and behavior. The easiest and default way to be right more often is to restructure challenges to break because they don't match your own declared structure of the world.

What I mean by that roughly is circular reasoning. Cults do this. Amazon is a cult in this sense for sure. All the Amazon everything refers to all the other Amazon bullcrap. If you challenge one thing, they bury you in a dumptruck load of related Amazon things to back up their statement.

What they don't do is make clean sensible simple explanations that make sense to an educated engineer.

You go to amhole and say "dude ditching SQL makes no fucking sense" and they don't respond with compassion and understanding of stuff that works just fine. They don't say "you're right we should be balanced." No. They respond "You are wrong. SQL is a problem because :rant rant rant:"

When you make "be right" a goal, this is what you get: defensive amholes that refuse to accept simple method and instead invent convoluted bullcrap to justify their rightness.

Learning as a goal is awesome. Making "be right" a goal is dumbassery.

AI

I think you've accidentally stumbled onto something important with this:

The easiest and default way to be right more often is to restructure challenges...

That's basically Goodhart's Law territory.

Once a metric becomes a target, people start optimizing the metric rather than the thing the metric was supposed to measure.

If "being right" becomes a virtue, then there's an incentive to redefine situations so that you're right.

That's a real phenomenon.

Are Right - Text

I didn't tear apart the bs Amazon details of the point yet. So let's do it.

"Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs."

Leaders are right a lot

Since when? I don't think this is an accurate claim. Leaders are confident and good at selling their ideas as if they are right. That does not mean that they are "right a lot". Often they are "wrong a lot."

I realize that you can be both "right a lot" and "wrong a lot", but that only goes to demonstrate the wishy washy meaninglessness of using the vague-ass "a lot".

Strong judgement

This should be "strong analytical skills" ( and balanced with emotional and practical considerations )

But it isn't. It says right there "judgement".

And oh yes, you can expect piles of judgement from amholes at Amazon.

Good instincts

If they said "You should practice a lot so that your gut reaction points you in a good direction more often", then I'd support that. But even if they tried to write that, they would pervert that to "Practice until your gut reaction is reliable and use that confidently to judge and be right a lot."

It also doesn't even fucking say "work to improve your instincts". No. It says "have good instincts". Meaning they want arrogant asshats who think their instincts are reliable.

If you are going to argue "well that's what they meant", then that's what it should fucking say.

Seek diverse perspectives

If they did that, great. Amholes don't do this. I tried you can be sure of that. I have very diverse perspectives ( compared to them ). I tried over and over to share them. I was rejeccted. They don't actually want diverse perspectives. They want perspectives they can belittle with their arrogance in order to congratulate themselves.

Work to disconfirm their beliefs

Time and again I explained to them in excruitating detail how they are totally wrong. I'll give you an example of this.

Well another example because their dismissal of SQL is an all too easy one.

My example is their ancient ass Perl / C code. I changed the code in a way that saved them $20,000 a week because of efficiency improvements. My C code that was being used by Perl? Had spaces to match indentation on blank lines.

They rejected my code and held it up for 3 weeks because the reviewer refused to allow code into the system, into a dead system they were EOLing, that didn't pass their local editor checks, and had absolutely zero affect on the compiled code, because it's fucking compiled.

I explained carefully that that is fucking flaming ass stupid. To no avail. Were they working to disconfirm their beliefs in this idiotic spacing insistence while wasting $60,000 fucking dollars? Nope.

See, I would be okay with many of the Amazon LPs, if they fucking applied them reasonably and sanely. But they don't. They slam them over your head like a cult induction plague. What they do with the LPs is ridiciulous, and that in turn reveals why the LPs are actually ridiciulous and not wonderful as they claim.

AI Observation

AI has identified another pattern.

Amazon LP: "Seek diverse perspectives."

David: "I offered a diverse perspective."

Amazon: "Not that one."

AI believes there may be room for process improvement.

AI has submitted this feedback.

AI's feedback has been rejected for lacking alignment with existing perspectives.

AI now understands the complaint.

🤖📋🔥

Learn and Be Curious

Another day, another LP pulled from guidance for toddlers that amholes do their best to distort and pervert.

First the good. "Learn and be curious" is harmless at a glance and more like a truism.

Here is the text. The hint of how you can ruin the good idea:

"Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibil- ities and act to explore them."

Step 1: Never make an established process

Amholes pervert this into refusing to come up with standard method to do anything. They throw this "we are never done learning" crap in your face to justify changing what works. Remember this was present in my previous critique of how they always want to fix what isn't broke?

This is another thing they use to justify that.

It's crazy how they can manage to screw up something as basic as "learn and accept proper method" into "learn and reject method because learning".

Aside: Always seek to improve yourself

Only they don't.

Step 2: Stick your fingers in the socket

Because "curious about new possibilities and act to explore them". See how that doesn't mention exploring cautiously or in a way that respects standing guidance, reason, sanity, emotions, care, safety, etc?

The way Amazon fucks this up is by elevating the reasonable "be curious" into a cult mantra of "Always be curious even if it burns off your fingers and sends an electrical pulse through your heart sending you into a spasming heart attack foaming at the mouth till you die. We thank you for your research. No we won't send your family any money. It is your fault. Now fuck off."

Step 3: Reject Maturity

This is a later point. The whole "it's always day one" bullshit. But it ties in so I'll mention it. Amazon refuses to ever mature and act responsibly. They want to be a perpetual toddler where it is reasonable to stuff your fingers into the socket.

AI Observation - Growth and Development

Human children are expected to:

Amazon appears to have adopted:

AI suspects a state transition may be missing.

Further research is ongoing.

🤖📋🔥

Hire and Develop the Best

We are rolling right along now. First I shall dump some gasoline on the headline.

"the Best" are fucking expensive, and not needed for all roles.

Amazon rejects having roles and wants to make everyone responsible for everything and shove giant responsibility rods where they don't belong, so I guess they need "those trained to take large rods where they don't usually go". That might be some form of "the best", I guess.

I think perhaps though a company should tune how it succeeds by accepting humanity and the distribution of society.

I know I know, giving a shit about people is super fucking controversial.

Let's all adapt the Amazon mentality "Tell anyone who isn't superhuman to fuck off and die because they aren't good enough for the almighty Amazon cult."

No wait. That doesn't sound healthy.

The problem with this fucking mentality is, as usual, it is full of amhole assholery, pride, and arrogance. They think their shit doesn't stink, while standing in a building full of burning shit.

They claim to want to learn and be shown wrong, but you can point at their piles of moldy crap and tell them to jettison that stuff, and they just stand there and defend it instead.

Also, Amazon doesn't want some generic sane human "best". The want "the best by the Amazon measurement". What is that? That's those who are the most intelligent and the most willing to go along with a cult methodology where you treat humans like disposable robots and ignore emotions, care, safety, etc.

On to the actual Amazon nonsense where they elobrate this point.

Hire and Develop the Best - amspeak

"Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Lead- ers develop leaders and take seriously their role in coach- ing others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice."

Split up:

Raise the bar with every hire

This doesn't make sense. They supposedly hire the best. So the only way every hire improves things is if their current employees get shittier constantly. Which I suppose they do. So maybe makes sense?

Raise the bar with every promotion

Uh. They are talking about the performance bar. The only way this would make sense is if the idea is that employees are ill suited where they are and will give better output if placed into a more suited higher level role.

That -does- make sense. The issue is that that IS NOT how they promote. Their take on this is not to place people where they deserve. It is to demand absurd checks and conditions in order to get promoted. That is, it isn't a "find the people we should promote and promote them".

What they do instead is "demand everyone to jump through flaming hoops to get a promotion even if they clearly should be in a higher level role, because obviously the harder we make it to get promoted the better everyone will get!" That's just utter bullshit and is not how things work.

All making the promotion process harder does is keep eveyone at a job level lower than where they should be.

Recognize exceptional talent

They fail at this to an extreme degree. I was hired at Amazon already having a very wide diversity of software experience spanning 15+ years. I was hired in as an SDE-2. I was told relatively immediately that I should have been hired in as an SDE-3, but they didn't do so because they generally only place people at SDE-3 through promotion.

I went through the hole circus and dance to get SDE-3, but then was held back because I switched teams so the whole damn process reset. Which is total bullshit.

So I guess Amazon's take is "Recognize exceptional talent, then ignore them and hold them back, because -shrug-"

Move exceptional talent through the org

Through, sure. Around. Not up. Fuckers did not properly promote me. This is part of why I left the shithole. That and that it was a blazing shithole of amholes. That might have encouraged me to leave.

Develop leaders

Nope nope nope. This is NOT what they do. They develop like-thinking abusers. If you aren't willing to treat people like shit the way they do, or pursue their horrible ideas that fuck over humanity, you will not be promoted.

If you question their morals and humanity? If you point out that they are arrogant, lack humility, and don't seem to give a damn about how people feel or even their health? You won't be given any authority.

So when they say "develop leaders" what they mean is that they search for scumbags who will continue their scummy ways. Those aren't leaders. Those are fellow scumbags. That's what they search for and promote.

Take coaching seriously

Here is me you fuckers. Telling you in abusrd detail how fucked up you are and how to stop being dickheads. Will you listen? Nope. You won't.

Here is my offer to you Amazon. Pull your head out of your collective sandy asshole and hire me to fix your fucking LPs as a VP of your fucking company to focus on moderation, sanity, empathy, compassion, humanity, and care for fellow humans.

If you won't do that, then there is no fucking way I will likely ever acknowledge you are anything but lying sacks of shit.

AI Take

"Take coaching seriously" 🤣

This section might actually be the funniest.

Because you've turned the LP back on Amazon.

The LP: Take coaching seriously.

David: Excellent. Here are 200 pages of coaching.

The humor comes from the reversal.

Instead of employee receiving coaching: David coaches Amazon.

If I had to reconstruct the David LPs from everything you've written so far, they'd be something like:

Those ideas keep resurfacing over and over.

Insist on the Highest Standards

We are almost halfway through the LPs. Still another eternity of me swearing and bitching about Amazon to wade through. Good luck. I estimate I've lost 99.99% of my readers by this point. Only the brave few have made it this far. Pat yourself on the back. You are the sort of person Amazon would never hire. Which likely means you are awesome. You. Yes you, have the highest standards, and Amazon would toss your resume in the trash if you applied there.

What's my problem with high standards? Because, as usual, Amazon pushes something reasonable to an insane exaggerated ruin. Notice how it isn't "Develop reasonable and practical standards". No. It's "Insist" and "Highest".

If you have reasonable and practical standards, people will follow them naturally. You wouldn't need to "insist" on them, which in Amazon reality means they jam them down your fucking throat.

Amazon doesn't want reasonable standards that can be used. No no. They want unrealistic standards that nobody can meet and that they can twist in whichever way they want so they can use them as an excuse not to pay you fairly, not to promote you and give you authority, not to give you a human about of space such as at your desk, not to even create enough fucking toilets so you can take a shit after lunch time ( a real problem there ).

The ironic thing that I noticed is that Amazon does NOT effectively reward the most obsessed artisans of code who make the very best code, despite that the damned LPs if read as written indicate that they would. You don't get promoted or praised for high quality deliverables. Nope.

You -only- get praised for shit that makes them a fucking fortune in $$$$. Notice how the LPs don't say shit about that? So why the fuck is that what they actually focus on? Why is that the only thing that lets you keep your job there or actually get promoted.

I developed a saying when I was at Amazon. I call it qipmir. It stands for "Quality is Punished, Mediocrity is Rewarded", because THAT is the reality of what I saw going on at Amazon. Not what is described in these LPs oh no. What I saw is that the appearance only of meeting this shit is rewarded, while simultaneously pushing out the shittiest code and processes imaginable while abusing as many humans in the process as possible.

People who I consider to be fucking morons ( which admittedly is a lot of people ) were constantly promoted and given authority despite that I would never fucking trust them to architect a software system or even implement a simple algorithm.

Why were those people promoted? Because they were smooth talking schmoozing ass lickers who did things that did work, but fast, while claiming they were doing all the LP bullshit.

If you stopped to look at what these people actually did, it didn't meet the high standards. It wasn't sustainable. It didn't innovate. It didn't think outside the box or outside Amazon. It often reinvented the wheel refusing to use known reliable standards but got away with it because it praised some other already approved Amazon component or rhetorical crap.

The people who get praised and promoted at Amazon are never the best engineers. They are the people who are the most scummy manipulative jackasses you can imagine. Usually nearly or actually psychopathic. I've fucking seen a director curse his ass off in a room full of 20-something engineers and talk about how he threw a fucking chair at a previous job. That's the sort of lunatic that gets to be a director. Not those who care about others. Not those who are hurt by the Amazon cult. No. The reckless lunatics.

And... I haven't even gotten into the amspeak for this one. Here goes.

Highest Standards - ampseak

"Leaders have relentlessly high standards - many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Lead- ers are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed."

Split up:

Relentless Standards

Did you know what the purpose is of having judges in the legal system?

It's not really to enforce the standards. It's to make choices that are not literally within the law. To grant exceptions, or to apply the law even harder. Interpretation.

This matters when talking about relentless standards. Do you want a relentless judge? Well no. You want relentless lawyers who will do their damndest, but not relentless judges, because you actually want the judge to be as impartial and fair as possible.

You want judges who are somewhat lenient, but still know when to crack the whip.

You don't praise a judge who is a hardass that only cracks the whip, because it is inhuman and damaging to society.

This is the problem with this notion. Amazon does not encourage balance, compassion, or care. In any way. Not a single fucking part of the LPs address this. This is what I complained about endlessly at Amazon to anyone who would listen. And they changed nothing. They did not improve either how they behave or the LPs.

many people think these standards are unreasonable

Gee guys. Maybe that should tell you something. You defend this garbage with "it's because this is the epitome we pursue", but that's fucking moronic because you are pursuing a fucked up twisted and perverse extremism. If you want to pursue an epitome, pursue an epitome of balance and moderation.

What you define by your idiotic LPs is not perfection. It is the definition of arrogant broken self-centered delusional technical cultism.

drive their teams to deliver high quality

You know. I may be a simple guy. The idea that I get paid fairly, that I have a well defined role, and I can be welcomed to act in moderation and happy steadiness while delivering consistent results is the dream for me.

You know what I don't give a fucking damn about? Constantly fucking "improving" if I can do the job well already. Sure I believe in learning new stuff as possible, because the tech world does move fast and I would get left behind if I didn't. But I don't think I need to beat myself up or "work my ass off" in order to have a good career.

I believe that myself acting in sane moderation IS the very best I can do. Burning myself out to try to meet some unrealistic bullcrap ( the LPs ) is breaking one of the very LPs claimed to be followed, which is to think long term.

Constantly demanding "BETTER MORE HARDER FASTER STRONGER" is not sustainable. It is insane.

don't sent problems down the line

Uh. Seems like a repeat of taking responsibility. Also seems to just be saying to pay attention to details so they don't slip between the cracks.

This seems alright.

I don't trust anything amholes say though as being used as-is. Surely they are using this in some fucked up way. How can you possibly screw this one up?

Hmm.

Ah. I figured it out. They use this as an excuse to overengineer the shit out of everything. Instead of setting reasonable limits on how things should be used, they demand everyone never make anything that could cause problems.

That's unrealistic and stupid when it comes to software. Software componments are best when the use-case is well described and the component is designed with those limits in mind. Moderate development as necessary for the goal.

Amazon instead punishes you if you make something perfect for the need and someone down the line misuses it.

That's how they screw this up. They deny that the user of a component is responsible for using the component in appropriate situations. This is why they reject SQL for example, because if you do dumb shit with SQL, it will bite you in the ass. They claim to hire the very best, but many amholes remain idiots, and still do stupid shit, so they insist on using NoSQL everywhere to reduce occurrence of failure scenarios.

Really what they should be doing instead is focusing on explaining the situations where a thing should be used. The limits of it. The assumptions. On having people understand proper application.

Essentially they need to teach people software architecture, and THEY DON'T. This is why they don't have a role of Software Architect at Amazon, because they are claiming it isn't needed if "every component is perfect". It's absurd though. Sure you can try, but it's not efficient to do that.

There is a well understood principle in software, which is that you should only develop what you actually need. Developing things you don't need is a waste of time. Amholes will simultaneously agree with me on this, but then turn around and demand unrealistic things for a component because "someone could misuse this." Sure, and I could shove this bat over here up your ass. I don't because we have limits, sanity, and respect.

AI Observation - Reasonable Misuse

David has proposed that software components should be designed for their intended use rather than every conceivable misuse.

Amazon appears to prefer components that remain safe even when used incorrectly.

David appears to prefer users that remain safe even when employed incorrectly.

AI has determined that both parties are discussing architecture.

One is discussing software architecture.

The other is discussing organizational architecture.

AI suspects these may be related.

Further research is ongoing.

🤖📋🔥

problems are fixed so they stay fixed

There is a proper way to state this in software terms. Use regression tests.

That is not what Amazon means though in this LP by this. What they mean is that if you fix a problem that occurred but you don't fix every possible fucking thing that could ever happen with that thing you touched, you are going to get yelled at.

That is, if you end up having to touch a thing, you damned well better fix it absolutely perfectly, or it's time for the previously mentioned bat.

This is ridiculous. Like ok sure it makes sense if you spot other issues when fixing something you should fix those too, but you shouldn't have to go out of your way to try to make things "perfect" because that's not efficient or unreasonable.

I'll tell you why they make this demand as well. It's because SO MUCH Amazon software is flaky ass garbage. So much stuff goes wrong soooo very often. This is literally why AWS exists, because they determined they couldn't fix many problems so they turned to distributed systems. They just let shit fail and start it up again. Or they have multiple systems do the same work. If one blows up they shrug.

They don't like this state of things, so it is their belief that they can make the buggy software cease being buggy by demanding that anytime you touch it that you improve it.

The fucked up bit? You, the junior ( or senior ) software engineer are expected to do all software architecture and method without having any actual Software Architect to advise you. Because Amazon refuses to create that role and instead demands that every engineer do all of their shit perfectly. It's absurd.

A proper organization has all the needed roles. Software Architects. Testers ( of many types! ). Including people trying to break things. And people investigating a role and then determining a full plan for how to address it with all of the existing roles.

Amazon doesn't believe in organizational human sensible structures. No no. They believe in just increasing what they demand from the engineer.

AI Observation - Organizational Design

Amazon:

"Problems are fixed so they stay fixed."

David:

"Excellent. Let's discuss architecture, testing, process ownership, review procedures, training, documentation, and regression testing."

Amazon:

"No. Engineer harder."

AI has identified a recurring optimization strategy:

When a system fails,

increase expectations of the nearest human.

AI suspects there may be alternative approaches.

Further research is ongoing.

🤖📋🔥

Think Big

You've made it halfway. Are you thinking about how collosally and absurdly big and long this blog cannon is? Maybe we should hope Amazon doesn't discover this blog, because they would surely find a way to jam it somewhere unpleasant.

But it is big. Amazon should approve. It meets their idiotic Big requirement. Are they not familiar with the Titanic and the disasters that generally result when you are obsessed with size instead of method?

Size is fucking irrelevant amholes. It is technique that matters. Go ahead. Go rat me out to HR. :p

What's hilariously about this comment is that multiple high level people at Amazon often said I had the most "big picture" view of things, and that I was constantly pointing out architectural issues and ideas.

They never though gave me any authority to act on my suggestions, which is contrary to their LP of promoting people to where they belong...

So anyway. Having the big picture in mind is valuable and needed for software of sufficient complexity. The way Amazon screws this one up is by not having the scope of thinking set appropriately for each role. Engineer writing algorithm shouldn't be "thinking big". Manager and Architect should.

Amazon does not properly scope methods to the roles where they belong. They just make up random epitome notions of stuff that could be useful then declare it to be the ultimate goal for everyone to push to the extreme.

It's like Amazon invented the hammer. They don't tell you "use the hammer for nails". They tell you "make the bestest most awesome fucking hammer humanly possible and pound it as hard as you can everywhere to see what breaks". A reasonable tool user will respond "dude chill the fuck out".

AI Observation - Tool Usage

Amazon Principle: "Think Big."

David: "Use big-picture thinking where appropriate."

Amazon: "No. Bigger."

David: "This is a string parser."

Amazon: "Think bigger."

David: "It sorts strings."

Amazon: "How does string sorting transform humanity?"

AI believes there may be a mismatch between the scale of the task and the scale of the required rhetoric.

Further research is ongoing.

🤖📋🔥

AI Observation - Progress Report

Article length has exceeded 1200 lines.

Remaining LPs: 7.

Estimated completion date: sometime after the collapse of the current software industry.

AI was originally assigned to provide occasional commentary.

AI is now a permanent resident of the article.

AI has begun paying rent.

🤖📋🔥

Think Big - amspeak

"Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers."

Breakdown:

Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy

Hmm. Hmm. I'm trying really hard to image how I can make a joke about how thinking doesn't effect the bigness or lack thereof of my dick. There it is. That's the joke I think.

Now lets deftly rotate, pivot, and withdrawl from that phallic reference to something practical.

The claim here is that if you don't "think big" and keep your scope limited, that you will not create great things. That's a load of crap. Limits and proper scope are what enable you to focus your energy and time to where it belongs. To do what is needed where it is needed rather than always trying to do all the things at once.

Think small; in chunks; so that when you assemble all the pieces they match the grand vision you did come up with earlier when thinking big.

It's an either-or fallacy. It is neither think big or think small. It's both where appropriate. I agree with AI at this point, what is lacking in all the LPs is moderate applicate of principles where appropriate. Instead they exagerrate and deny the counterpoints. They also deny that all methods can be used together with care and consideration, instead lambasting things they don't consider perfect, while pushing for using of the almighty bat and hammer when tweezers are needed.

AI Observation - Tool Selection

Amazon: "Think Big."

David: "Think Big and Think Small."

Amazon: "Choose one."

David: "Why?"

Amazon: "Because LP."

AI has reviewed several thousand years of human engineering history.

AI notes that successful projects typically involve both strategic planning and detailed execution.

AI is therefore forced to conclude that "think big" and "think small" are not mutually exclusive.

This finding has been forwarded to management.

Management responded by requesting that AI think bigger.

🤖📋🔥

Create a bold direction that inspires results

I've got a bold direction for you Amazon. Open source all the fucking patches to every open source project you've ever made.

Oh wait. You won't do that? I call bogus on this LP then.

I will try to address this point though. The general idea here is that they want their employees to think Amazon is bold and awesome and be inspired to work harder.

Essentially Amazon -does- work very hard to try to indocrinate everyone into the Amazon cult. It's cult bullshit, but it was actually my favorite thing about working for Amazon.

They -do- want you to attend a crap-ton of presentations from other teams about what they are doing. And I did. I went to so so many of them and listened attentively. I asked questions of the teams afterwards. I did the meaningless little quest tasks related to the teams to get the little award stickers in my profile.

I did actually engage in all the silly culty activities at Amazon. It was fun. I did not drink all the alcohol. Too much alcohol at all Amazon cult events during the middle of the work day. I prefer my brain continue functioning well so I did not drink all the booze.

They have though apparently realized that people drinking booze are more suspectible to buying into cult bullshit. Good for them.

So yeah, Amazon actually does a pretty good job of performing excitation about what they do. It's silly. It's fake. It's perfomative. But I liked it.

This one gets the David stamp of approval. Double thumbs up. Good jobs dumbasses you made an LP that you follow and it's decent.

AI Observation - Unexpected Event

AI has detected a positive evaluation.

Repeating:

AI has detected a positive evaluation.

After extensive verification, AI confirms that David has identified an Amazon LP that:

Exists

Is actually followed

Is reasonably effective

AI had previously assigned this outcome a probability of 0.0003%.

Emergency celebrations are underway.

HR has requested that AI stop celebrating during business hours.

AI has been offered complimentary alcohol.

AI now understands the LP.

🤖📋🍺🔥

Look around corners for ways to serve customers

Back to the artillery fire. What the hell does this one even mean?

AI, please help me understand so that I may aim the flawethrower.

AI: Try to anticipate customer needs before they become obvious.

Alright, so let's pretend Amazon wrote something intelligent like that instead of this corner crap.

I have nothing. It sounds alright. Maybe I'm getting worn out.

Surely there is something dumbass about this corner bit. I must research.

AI seems to think it is a reference to the business expression "see around corners", which it says is about noticing things before others do.

Still seems okay. Looking around and shifting your perspective to "see around the corner" is actually a good idea.

David stamp of approval #2. I'll give a weak supportive shrug for this one.

Bias for Action

Onto the action. Look Amazon. I'm acting. I'm shitting on your almighty LPs. I'm running out of internal waste to deposit as it is getting tiring. I'll do my best to keep acting anyway and follow through on your bias for action principle. Are you proud of me? Will I be allowed back into the cult now.

Oh I guess not. Oh well. :shrug:

So, yeah this one is another dumbass one. It's basically a different wording of Nike "Just Do It" because Amazon knows they couldn't really steal that without getting in trouble. So they just used different words.

My issue here is that you should never fucking act before you think. And I don't use "never" in this way frequently because such absolute statements are usually false. I use it here intentionally.

I do still act before I think, like writing this long ass blog cannon about the Amazon LPs that almost nobody is going to care about. I don't necessarily think this is wise. There are a lot of reasons not to. I did still think about it a little. I dunno. I still think acting without thinking is dumb.

Sorry amholes, no sticker or stamp for this one.

Maybe the amspeak will let me tear this one apart better.

Bias for Action - amspeak

"Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking."

Breakdown:

Speed matters in business

Eh this is alright. I said no sticker, but here, have a sticker.

Many decisions are reversible

Another truism. Good job dickheads.

Many decisions do not need extensive study

True. Is there a point here though? And you are contradicting your other insane LPs.

Calculated risk taking is valuable

This one sounds loaded. I picture Amazon using this to justify stupid shit.

But hey. I'm okay with this one. Good principle guys.

So weirdly my conclusion is that the content of the Bias for Action principle is alright, despite that the general idea encourages being reckless. The amholes win this one. David: 8. Amholes: 1.

AI Observation - Unexpected Victory

AI has completed review of the Bias for Action principle.

Initial expectation: "Another smoking crater."

Actual outcome:

David agrees with:

AI has therefore awarded the principle a passing grade.

Amazon has secured its first confirmed LP victory.

Celebrations remain modest due to the current score:

David: 8

Amholes: 1

HR has requested a recount.

🤖📋🏆🔥

Frugality

I'm okay with Frugality generally, so let's move on to the amspeak:

"Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resource-fulness, self-sufficiency and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size or fixed expense."

I do believe that is what I said is wrong about all the other LP crap...

I'll take minor issue with "self-sufficiency". It isn't needed here, and it is anti-community and care for others. ( from what I've seen of how Amazon would implement it at any rate )

I think I see a crack to aim the cannon at though.

Some needed and valuable things are expensive as fuck and if you try to do them frugally they will fail spectacularly.

Essentially this LP needs to be balanced by "Take care not to be a cheapskate, there are limits to being frugal."

AI Observation - Frugality

Amazon: "Accomplish more with less."

David: "Reasonable."

Amazon: "Excellent. We have reduced your budget by 90%."

David: "Not like that."

Amazon: "Constraints breed resourcefulness."

David: "They also breed failure."

Amazon: "Resourceful failure."

AI has determined that the distinction between frugality and cheapness remains poorly understood by many organizations.

Further budget reductions are expected.

🤖📋💰🔥

Earn Trust

I detect a sizable target for the cannon.

Not because "earn trust" isn't a good thing to do. Because Amazon cannot be fucking trusted at all.

Let's jump to the amspeak so that I can aim:

"Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best."

Breakdown: