Working Backwards

Insightful book about what works at Amazon

This book contains highly detailed stories and explanations about some of the leadership principles at Amazon. Given how the book is structured, only a few leadership principles are covered in depth but they are all brought together in various stories.

As such, the book is structured well and it doesn't read like a treatise on each of the principles. The first part of the book covers some of the principles in detail and how they came about to be. The second park contains stories of various organizations and products at Amazon and how those leadership principles came together to make them a success. But if you're only interested in the leadership principles or the stories, you might like to read a blog post or maybe Amazon's website. The book goes into rich background and detail. I enjoyed reading most of it but I sometimes felt it was too detailed.

If the culture at Amazon intrigues you, go ahead and read this book but prepare to skim or skip or get bored if the background doesn't interest you.