Engineer Says Amazon’s 6-Web page Memos A part of Its ‘Secret Sauce’

When Steve Huynh was a principal engineer at Amazon, conferences started with a “examine corridor.”

Amazon had a “studying tradition” even amongst engineers, Huynh just lately instructed the Pragmatic Engineer podcast, talking of his time on the tech big. Workers steadily drafted six-page memos, he stated, which they shared with the corporate to replace progress and exhibit new initiatives.

“I spent on the order of like 1-4 hours day-after-day studying whereas I used to be a principal engineer,” Huynh stated. “What an incredible tradition that I believe that just about each different firm ought to replicate if they may.”

Huynh, who stated the corporate’s embrace of writing and studying the 6-page memos was a part of its “secret sauce,” stated Amazon staff’ writing was typically constrained to the format throughout his tenure on the firm, whether or not it was a enterprise technique, system design, or press launch.

Huynh began at Amazon in 2006, just a few years after the corporate turned its first revenue and whereas Jeff Bezos was on the helm. Bezos famously instilled this tradition of memo-writing from the highest down.

Bezos insisted on dense, direct memos in 10-point font. In his 2017 letter to shareholders, Bezos wrote that “we do not do PowerPoint,” as a substitute choosing these six-pagers. “Not surprisingly, the standard of those memos varies extensively,” he wrote.

Earlier than conferences, Amazon staff learn these memos collectively. On the Lex Fridman Podcast in 2023, Bezos defined why he did not ask staff to learn the memos upfront.

“The issue is individuals haven’t got time to do this, they usually find yourself coming to the assembly having solely skimmed the memo, or perhaps not learn it in any respect,” Bezos stated. “They’re additionally bluffing like they’re in school, having pretended to do the studying.”

Andy Jassy, Bezos’ successor and Amazon’s present CEO, has labored on the firm since 1997. When first pitching what would turn out to be Amazon Net Providers, Jassy described writing his personal memo.

“I bear in mind this six-page narrative, we known as it a imaginative and prescient doc. We requested for 57 individuals, which felt so ballsy on the time. I used to be so nervous, I wrote 30 drafts of this paper, and Jeff did not blink,” Jassy stated in a 2017 speak to the College of Washington.

Jassy has continued the tradition of memo-writing below his personal management. In his 2024 letter to shareholders, Jassy wrote {that a} mere six-page allotment made the memos “a lot simpler for the viewers to interact with and ask the correct ‘why’ questions.”

“I bought actually actually good at simply studying these paperwork to rise up to hurry,” Huynh stated on the podcast, explaining that studying sufficient six-page memos taught him to specific himself in the identical format.

Huynh now not works at Amazon. He left to pursue YouTube content material creation full-time, as he instructed BI in 2024. However Huynh nonetheless reveres the corporate’s studying tradition — even when he acknowledges it is probably not simply reproducible.

“The problem can be, you truly must be disciplined and principled,” Huynh stated. His interviewer, Gergely Orosz, argued it might solely be accomplished from the highest down. Huynh agreed.