The larger issue is that Jeff's subordinates will then treat their subordinates in the same way. If this becomes common, it will extend to other behavior or communication. This will result in horrible company culture, where bosses treat their underlings like shit. Do not normalize this type of behavior! That is not good for employee retention, nor employee productivity/morale. It all comes from up top.
I'm no fan of Amazon, but it's the third most valuable company on the planet. Whatever they're doing is obviously working for them, even if I personally wouldn't want to work there.
I used to think along the same lines, but morality and economic success are different things. Sometimes a few 'things' they do, moral or not, are the deciding factor to reach such high valuations, and then we fixate over things like the '?' email and try to explain it as 'the secret' management technique or whatever that made them successful, when in reality they were successful in spite of it not because of it.
I remember having an ongoing debate with someone who reported to me about the etiquette of emails.
He held that every subsequent email in a long thread should start with, "Hello [name]," before the first paragraph. I thought that was reasonable for the first email, but when things got to the 3rd or 4th response, it was normal to just write your response, first paragraph starting on the first line.
Most of the company did that. He and I had issues. We never resolved this (I gave in on this, as I was trying to resolve our lack of alignment on many fronts), but I find it completely normal in most of the companies I've worked in since.
Especially since those of us who are emailing each other all day long are doing it over and over again, day after day, and getting the friendly formalities when we see other in real space, or on calls.
There's a passive aggressiveness to holding out for higher formalities when the cultural context is otherwise totally fine with shorthands that come with working and communicating with some people a lot.
I'd actually prefer to recieve '?' because it allows me to respond with what I consider relevant. As someone unfamiliar with the details of the topic, he's unlikely to know what's relevant, so specific questions are likely to be more of a distraction than anything.
The larger issue is that Jeff's subordinates will then treat their subordinates in the same way. If this becomes common, it will extend to other behavior or communication. This will result in horrible company culture, where bosses treat their underlings like shit. Do not normalize this type of behavior! That is not good for employee retention, nor employee productivity/morale. It all comes from up top.