Amazon’s Company Culture
Many companies and startups follow the founders’ values, habits, and personality in forming the culture of the company. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon. Initially, it was selling books online after Bezos realized there were no books sold on the internet. Later, Amazon turned into online retail shopping, and now it offers cloud services. In its lifetime, it has had to change its way of doing business, experimenting with new ideas fast, and coming up with new solutions to existing problems. Amazon’s culture is influenced directly by how Bezos worked and thought when he founded the company, pushing everyone to work hard and have a startup mentality.
Amazon is a high intensive working environment that requires a high risk and thick-skin for its employees. Such an intense working environment means the company values problem solving more than it values employees’ attitudes, making the company attract few people who cannot handle such a lack of a caring attitude (Corporateculture, 2018). Such traits are derived from hard work that Bezos put in for the company to thrive during its initial stages of life. Also, just as Bezos was and is ambitious, the company values people who are ambitious and have a low caring attitude towards some culture of the company (Corporateculture, 2018). This makes it very competitive to the extent that a junior engineer can correct a senior engineer.
To maintain an organization’s culture, a company relies on its mission and vision. Such traits help in attracting only employees who would fit into such a culture that would help achieve the mission and vision. This also filters out people who would not fit in the organization early on. Also, for new employees, they have to go through induction into the company’s culture to know what is expected of them.
In conclusion, Amazon shows how a founder’s mentality shapes a company. Being the senior-most person in a company, the founder often looks for employees who share the same vision and goals. As the company grows, a culture derived from the founders’ way of working, problem-solving, and attitudes develops.