Two Years at Amazon
5 things I have learned that make Amazon tick
Every company you join comes with its own culture and language. The longer a company has been around and the bigger it gets, the more embedded the culture becomes to the company and its employees. You begin to adopt the customs and language as your own.
I had never heard the phrase “dogs not barking” prior to joining AWS. It means to keep a watch for things that could be potential problems later. Maybe you are familiar with the phrase, but having lived in the startup world for the past decade, the phrase was completely new to me.
Before I joined AWS two years ago, I had different plans. My goal was to join a startup or launch my own. Based on a friendly recommendation though, I took a chance, got offered the role, and started my Day 1 on May 18th of 2020 as a Startup Advocate.
Amazon gets a fair amount of attention for having a “peculiar” culture. I do not think of Amazon’s culture as any more or less peculiar as other companies. What is remarkable though is just how ingrained, pervasive, and vital the culture is to everything that Amazon does, from operations to product development to people management.
We have a whole dictionary of Amazonian phrases. Some are generic like “dogs not barking” or doing “Start, Stop, Continue”…
