On Hiring

“You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can't choose two out of three”

Looking at how Amazon hires Jeff Bezos emphasis is on a long-term view. With his letters, he shares fundamental management and decision-making approach with shareholders on hiring. Amazon seeks leaders who can invent, think big, have a bias for action, and deliver results on behalf of customers. Amazon has a set of leadership principles that they follow every day, whether discussing ideas for new projects or deciding on the best approach to solving a problem. It is just one of the things that makes Amazon peculiar.

The single most important thing

Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been, and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon.com's success.

How does amazon accomplish this?

we ask people to consider three questions before making a decision:

- Will you admire this person? If you think about the people you've admired in your life, they are probably people you've been able to learn from or take an example from. For myself, I've always tried hard to work only with people I admire, and I encourage folks here to be just as demanding. Life is definitely too short to do otherwise.

- Will this person raise the average level of effectiveness of the group they're entering? We want to fight entropy. The bar has to continuously go up. I ask people to visualize the company 5 years from now. At that point, each of us should look around and say, "The standards are so high now -- boy, I'm glad I got in when I did!"

- *Along what dimension might this person be a superstar? *Many people have unique skills, interests, and perspectives that enrich the work environment for all of us. It's often something that's not even related to their jobs. One person here is a National Spelling Bee champion (1978, I believe). I suspect it doesn't help her in her everyday work, but it does make working here more fun if you can occasionally snag her in the hall with a quick challenge: "onomatopoeia!"

Compensation

We will continue to focus on hiring and retaining versatile and talented employees, and continue to weight their compensation to stock options rather than cash. We know our success will be largely affected by our ability to attract and retain a motivated employee base, each of whom must think like, and therefore must actually be, an owner.

One of the leadership principles of amazon is ownership - Leaders are owners. They think long term and don't sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say "that's not my job."

Working hard vs Working smart

It's not easy to work here (when I interview people I tell them, "You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can't choose two out of three"), but we are working to build something important, something that matters to our customers, something that we can all tell our grandchildren about. Such things aren't meant to be easy. We are incredibly fortunate to have this group of dedicated employees whose sacrifices and passion build Amazon.com.