Working Backwards
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'Essential for any leader in any industry' – Kim Scott, bestselling author of Radical Candor Working Backwards gives an insider's account of Amazon's approach to culture, leadership, and best practices from two long-time, top-level Amazon executives. In 2018 Amazon became the world’s second trillion dollar company after Apple: a remarkable success story for a company launched out of a garage in 1994. How did they achieve this? And how can others learn from this extraordinary success and replicate it? Colin Bryar started at Amazon in 1998; Bill Carr joined in 1999. Their time at Amazon covered a period of unmatched innovation that brought products and services including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Echo and Alexa, and Amazon Web Services to life. Through the story of these innovations they reveal and codify the principles and practices that have driven the success of one of the most extraordinary companies the world has ever known, from the famous 14-leadership principles, the bar raiser hiring process, and Amazon’s founding characteristics: customer obsession, long-term thinking, eagerness to invent, and operational excellence. Through their wealth of experience they offer unprecedented access to the Amazon way as it was refined, articulated, and proven to be repeatable, scalable, and adaptable. Working Backwards shows how success is not achieved by the genius of any single leader, but rather through commitment to and execution of a set of well-defined, rigorously-executed principles and practices that you can apply at your own company, no matter the size.
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An interesting look behind the curtain of the business principles that took Amazon to the top. Enjoyable to live in a space where work is genuinely productive and smart, especially if that isn't typically true for your company.
Admittedly, the pacing and enjoyability of the chapters is a bit up-and-down, and the authors are quick to blow past the effects of Jeff's 'genius business impulses' - it genuinely seemed miserable to be an employee there half the time.
There's actionable lessons for any company, and an enjoyable read here for tech workers. Amazon should probably revisit the purity of their earlier years given the tank in quality their site has experienced over the past few years.
Take homes:
- Constrained input metrics
- PR/FAQ, start from the end
- Tenets to help guide decision making
I'm using these concepts in production right now.
Fantastic read! The processes developed within Amazon and described in the book give great insight into how to - slowly but surely - drive innovation within a larger corporation. Besides that, the case studies later in the book, like the one on AWS, are page-turners. Pretty cool, how they were willing to bet big (and completely out of their comfort zone) to keep developing value for their customers.
