[amazonthrowaway]

Yes, it's true that as part of the interview process they ask behavioral questions to try to use the leadership principles to evaluate a candidate. An example might be, "can you tell me about a time when you had to build something but you had very vague requirements". So I think the leadership principles are taken seriously, but I don't think they're treated as gospel. Bezos usually says something in the all-hands meeting like "these are our leadership principles unless you know better ones". People usually roll their eyes at the "frugality" leadership principle - the term "frupid" is used pretty frequently.

The high on-call load is a pretty frequently complaint.

I haven't worked at Google or Netflix, so I don't really have a basis for comparison.

In general, I think Amazon is a pretty demanding environment, but I think if the environment was as Streitfeld describes it, I wouldn't do well. I don't think I have that great a work ethic and I don't think I handle stress or workplace conflict particularly well, yet I've managed to be successful at Amazon.

[srean]

> but I don't think they are treated as gospel

Sorry, untrue. Literally several examples of offers turned down because of this even when apart from this 'raise the bar' person everyone were strongly in favor of hiring. This happens all the time and employed engineers are none to happy about this. BTW from the number of your posts here, would that be an unofficial job requirement ?