Business

Amazon Company Culture: What are the working conditions?

Many employees at Amazon report difficulty keeping up with the demanding work atmosphere. The company culture, according to the ex-CEO Jeff Bezos, has contributed to the e-commerce giant’s phenomenal growth throughout the years. Amazon has the commercial infrastructure to absorb the needs of the e-commerce marketplace because of its work culture.

The extra drive at this corporation has been largely explained by the description of Amazon’s corporate culture as “purposeful Darwinism”. Amazon’s success has been attributed to its corporate culture by both active and retired employees. Numerous Amazon FBA and general businesses try to mimic the high standards set by this corporation. We’ll be demonstrating why the workplace culture at Amazon is so distinctive in this essay.

What is Amazon?

A multinational tech enterprise headquartered in the United States, Amazon.com, Inc. is heavily invested in digital streaming, cloud computing, digital advertising, and AI. Amazon began as an online bookstore but has now evolved into a web-based company primarily specializing in vast digital services. 

The company, which employs an Amazon-to-buyer sales strategy, offers a staggering selection of products, making it possible for customers to purchase almost anything, including clothing, accessories, gourmet cuisine, jewelry, books, films, gadgets, home goods, furnishings, toys, garden supplies, and housewares.

One of the largest firms in the world, the US-based multinational tech giant employs approximately 1.4 million people across 235 locations and generated 469.8 billion USD in revenue in 2021. Six Comparably awards, including Best Places to Work in Atlanta, Best Places to Work in Austin, Best Places to Work in LA, Best Places to Work in Seattle, Best Global Culture, and Best Company Outlook, were given to Amazon in 2021 in recognition of its exemplary workplace culture.

Amazon’s Work Philosophy

Early executives and workers claim that Mr. Bezos was motivated to fight against the factors he believed drained organizations across the time — bureaucracy, inefficient expenditure, and a lack of precision — almost as soon as he launched Amazon in 1994. As the business expanded, he wanted to formalize his workplace principles, some of which were brazenly paradoxical, into guidelines that were easy for new hires to understand, universal enough to be used in the virtually infinite number of industries he intended to explore, and rigorous enough to prevent the incompetence he despised.

The outcome was the set of guiding principles for governance, which served as the ‘Amazonian’ code of conduct. Amazon has principles that are part of its everyday vocabulary and rituals, utilized in recruitment, cited at meetings, and recited in long queues at lunchtime, in contrast to businesses where assertions about their philosophies amount to nebulous clichés. According to some employees, they even teach those etiquettes to their kids!

Bezos relied on some of his impulses to build a tech and commercial behemoth: a desire to inform others how to act, a propensity for brashness that borders on encounter, and an overriding faith in the power of benchmarks that was reinforced by his time in the start of nineties at D. E. Shaw, a financial institution that defied Wall Street convention by employing algorithms to amplify the return on every dealing.

Eccentric features of Amazon Company Culture

Amazon’s success is unquestionable. Following are some distinctive features infused in Amazon Company Culture that make it what it is today.

‘Working backward’ Culture

Every successful company has a solid culture at its core. And that’s exactly what’s happened with Amazon. The company’s culture of working backward has significantly accelerated development and expansion while adhering to the original leadership precepts established by Jeff Bezos.

Amazon’s organizational culture will continue to be influenced by Bezos, despite his recent retirement as CEO. The 25-year-old enterprise has been preserved in good form by his customer-oriented passion and “Begin with the consumer and proceed backward” mentality, and this will continue in the forthcoming years.

‘Two-Pizza-Rule’ for Agility

The two-pizza rule is arguably the most notable human resources innovation introduced by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. This distinctive philosophy dictates that each internal team focusing on business expansion must be minimal enough to be fueled by just two pizzas, which has an impact on Amazon’s overall company culture.

Amazon encourages agility in its company culture with the two-pizza rule. This idea came into play when the organization’s specialized teams were formed because they wanted to keep lines of communication open to avoid data redundancy.

This promotes direct communication, cuts down on meetings, and gives Amazon employees complete power over their tasks. Along with increasing production, small teams have improved workplace morale.

As young as a ‘Start-up’

Despite having 1.4 million employees worldwide, Amazon makes an effort to preserve a startup culture in terms of taking risks, trying out new things, being adaptable, and having a constant thirst for success. The company’s current Chief Andy Jassy is riding on the coattails of the company’s founder and first CEO Jeff Bezos, who never got weary of repeating the mantra “Day 1”. Being constantly inquisitive, nimble, and adventurous is the theme of “Day 1”. It entails having the guts to fail. Amazon’s corporate culture is firmly ingrained with the “Day 1” strategy.

Strategy for Decision-making

Amazon employs principles to support team members’ autonomy in decision-making. When each team member is presented with a situation, these pillars serve as principles that direct the decision-making process. Each team receives a list of five tenets and their charter details how each tenet should influence their concepts and methods for completing a specific task.

These doctrines assist team members in determining what matters most when making business. These principles therefore aid people in deciding which value to pursue when they reach a point where there is a conflict between them. These guidelines are meant to avoid the drawn-out process of asking managers for approval from staff members.

Customer-centric Managerial Environment

Amazon prides itself on being among the most customer-focused markets worldwide. “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online”, reads the vision statement of Amazon. One of the pillars of Amazon’s corporate culture is a good degree of customer-centric approach, which has direct consequences on a variety of managerial practices and procedures.

Unique etiquette of Meetings

In contrast to other organizations, Amazon arranges meetings in a unique way. PowerPoint is despised in this culture because it interferes with meetings’ lucidity and rhythm. Additionally, Amazon prefers that workers use more time to support their arguments rather than bringing up pointless ideas and styles during meetings.

In contrast to other businesses, opinions and ideas considered when carrying out business operations are recorded. These documents often have six pages or fewer. These resources significantly improve clarity when sharing useful knowledge. 

The meeting attendees study these documents for at least an hour before the discussion. Points are taken from each page during this debate and appropriately assessed prior to advancing next. Employees will not have to hold up until the talk is over or risk forgetting what they meant to say in order to participate or ask a question.

What makes Amazon stand out?

The organizational culture at Amazon is particularly peculiar. This cultural trait specifically alludes to the notion of questioning traditions. As an illustration, Amazon encourages its employees to see their work and personas as distinctive from traditional corporate practices. Conventions, in the company’s opinion, place restrictions on the possibilities for business expansion. In order to maximize the potential of the e-commerce business, Amazon encourages employees through this aspect of the workplace culture to think creatively.

According to an article in New York Times, from 2008 through 2014, Dina Vaccari collaborated on initiatives ranging from the selling of technical equipment to corporate gift cards, and according to her, “I was so addicted to wanting to be successful there. For those of us who went to work there, it was like a drug that we could get self-worth from.”

The bottom Line

After learning about all the unique features of Amazon’s company culture, the evolution of Amazon from an online book store in 1994 when the company was founded to the greatest e-commerce and cloud services company in the world today is easy to comprehend. The organizational culture is one of the factors that have led to the company’s phenomenal success. It can be said that the working culture of Amazon is rigorous yet effective. 

Adrian

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