[schott12521]

Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer

Leaders work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher performing, more diverse, and more just work environment. They lead with empathy, have fun at work, and make it easy for others to have fun. Leaders ask themselves: Are my fellow employees growing? Are they empowered? Are they ready for what’s next? Leaders have a vision for and commitment to their employees’ personal success, whether that be at Amazon or elsewhere.

I kept asking leadership how they were embodying this LP while I was still at Amazon and I never got an answer. To me, Andy Amazon should remove LPs 15 + 16 in an attempt to build some credibility but I get why that will never happen. If it wasn't clear before, it's clear now: Amazon leadership will lie at every opportunity if it means making a smidge more money (it's their fiduciary duty, after all).

[gemstones]

I’m curious, since most people seem to take company-wide statements like this as having no implicit limitations -

Why? Why would this supercede fiduciary duty? Maybe this is a real ask for managers which isn’t considered anymore after a certain point. Why is every rule expected to apply equally across every level of the company?

[anon84873628]

To answer the general philosophical question, I think it is simply because we don't like hypocrisy. Or to put it more elaborately, the statements are pointless if they don't actually require making tradeoffs or taking the harder path when necessary.

Why am I required to return to office but everyone in my management chain gets to work remote? Are the benefits of in-person collaboration not relevant to them too?

If a policy requires carve outs and exemptions, those should be documented ahead of time with the rational explanation.

Edit: note my example about remote work was totally hypothetical; I don't work at Amazon.

[UncleMeat]

I'll ask the opposite question: why not?

The idea that businesses exist for shareholders and then only incidentally exist for the benefit of their employees or their customers is not handed to us on stone tablets from God. This principle is no more valid than a principle which insists that an employer must act in the pursuit of the interests of its employees.

[jwestbury]

Well, for one thing, fiduciary duty to maximise profit isn't real[0][1].

0. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

1. http://in-houseblog.practicallaw.com/fallacy-of-the-duty-to-...

[schott12521]

I don’t have a great answer for you, but I will say that leadership’s lack of data / concrete reasoning was the most jarring aspect.

Throughout the company, data was used to make decisions. Without data, documents would be rejected and projects put on hold. So why is this mandate lacking data? It managed to ruin a lot of trust that employees had placed on leadership.

[ashbee]

> why is this mandate lacking data

Easy: it's a decision made by the S team who can get away with not justifying themselves to ICs. They usually would show their working even though they don't have to, but in this case that would reveal their true reasoning (stealth layoffs, pressure from local governments who gave tax incentives to build now empty offices). So, they make up some stuff about RTO increasing innovation.

[salawat]

>(stealth layoffs, pressure from local governments who gave tax incentives to build now empty offices)

Ding ding ding. You got it in one!

Can't tell you how often hiring issues/complete fuckery arises from municipalities slapping golden handcuffs on companies.

[danaris]

"Fiduciary duty" meaning "the leadership must take any and all actions that increase shareholder value" is a myth.

In fact, it just means that the leadership isn't allowed to do things like buy themselves private jets with corporate funds (unless they get the board's approval, of course).

[flashgordon]

Wow you actually were pretty gutsy for asking something like this especially for rubriks that are just that - rubriks. How'd you manage to come out of it unscathed?

[thegrim33]

If people/teams are as or more productive working remote than in the office, wouldn't Amazon make more money by keeping them remote? Why would they choose to bring them back into the office where they'd be less productive?

[bediger4000]

Because they are trading off in this instance: lower productivity (that to be fair, they have trouble measuring) vs tax breaks and/or high values of commercial real estate the corporation owns.

I'm guessing about the other side of the trade off, but I'm sure there's something with an easy dollar value vs employee productivity, which is much harder to give a dollar value of.