Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

I have principles-fatigue after going through a number of companies that promise to abide by certain good sounding principles only to backtrack at the slightest pushback. I would actually trust a company more if it had no defined principles. Perhaps just honesty and transparency.

Possibly a better alternative than, say, Bridgewater when Ray Dalio was in charge. Adherence to principles was part of a high percentage of decision making conversations, but since is book is so big, they might be best compared to theological arguments in the middle ages, with different specialists arguing with different quotes from different parts of the book.

All in all, once an organization gets big enough, power does what power wants, and power wants what is good for them in the short term, regardless of what is good for the organization. That's how most large companies end up spending very large amounts of money on things that wouldn't actually pass muster to anyone aiming for the organization's best interest and with actual knowledge of what is being accomplished.

You see new, wide eyed PMs approaching budgeting processes as if the goal really was profitability, or customer satisfaction, or something reasonable. But if they are going to stay as PMs for long, they better realize quick that the vast majority of project proposals have only a passing interest in what will be accomplished, and are mainly about making sure every sub-organization gets fed sufficient money to not lose people, or possibly even grow if the manager is well liked. All the efforts in documentation and justification are just theater.