Business writing suffers from an epidemic of post-fact rationalization. Looking back, it is trivially easy to parse out whether something someone said was “insightful wisdom” or “useless”. I am continually amazed by the scope and depth of this hindsight bias disease.<p>While this author tries to make a point that bezos is a good writer, I am afraid that this is just riding a wave of bezos worship (like Elon worship, Jobs worship, Buffett workship, [‘name successful business person, preferably, billionaire’] worship) — <i>after</i> bezos’ company is seeing good results.<p>I wish more business writing was devoted to 1) suggesting ways so that people have their own original thoughts 2) Discussing merits of strategies <i>before</i> they become successful 3) Discussing problem solving frameworks 4) early days of companies when they weren’t successful etc. I believe learning about the first 100-300 days of companies would be very instructive. Someone should write a book about that :-)
Bezos' role is to get everyone working toward the same vision. Stories go a long way toward articulating that vision. If you can write well (in your native language), it is typically a sign you can reason well.<p>Leaders who can't write well are also interesting. There is almost a cliche about dyslexic type-A personalities, where the adapted skill of misdirecting people from your reading and writing ability as a kid manifests as a glad handing sales and dealmaker personality later on.<p>Just as someone who doesn't write well probably doesn't reason too abstractly either, someone who writes exceptionally well can often be considered too intellectual and theoretical to lead, or lacking in the required adaptability and spontaneity.<p>It's great that this super-CEO can write, but it's also a signal that the company is still run by a technocrat, and that it is not mature and autonomous enough as a business to be operated by a mere chief dealmaker.
A CEO who got his start from selling books, probably has more than average attention to literature and writing. Such people should typically be able to write. I'm not surprised at all by this.<p>Further, such people also have more attention to philosophy. And have more grandiose visions of the world.<p>But I find it surprising he was able to succeed so well, compared to your typical bookseller.
A very smart gui indeed: This is from his year 1999 shareholder letter. Mobile was growing back then, too. But writing this at the end of 1999, shows that he indeed had a very good grasp of technology and his market.<p><i>In closing, consider this most important point: the current online shopping experience is the worst it will ever be. It’s good enough today to attract 17 million customers, but it will get so much better. Increased bandwidth will result in faster page views and richer content. Further improvements will lead to “always-on access” (which I expect will be a strong boost to online shopping at home, as opposed to the office) and<p>we’ll see significant growth in non-PC devices and wireless access.<p>Moreover, it’s great to be participating in what is a multi-trillion dollar global market, in which we are so very, very tiny. We are doubly-blessed. We have a market-size unconstrained opportunity in an area where the underlying oundational technology we employ improves every day. That is not normal.</i>
The author assumes that Bezos doesn't have an editor helping him craft the letter going out to thousands of investors. While Bezos seems entirely capable of writing letters on his own, he's running Amazon. As someone who is known to optimize company time, he would probably write a draft and then have correspondence with an English-phd type for help.
Steven Sinofsky (formerly of Microsoft, now at Andreessen Horowitz) recently wrote something similar about Bezos and the power of writing:<p><a href="https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/writing-is-thinking-an-annotated-twitter-thread-2a75fe07fade" rel="nofollow">https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/writing-is-thinking-an...</a>
I am just confused.<p>Why can he write? It is not clear.<p>How does the author know that this letter is not edited/approved by PR and legal?<p>The culture of worshipping CEO sets very low bar on human ambition.
Good to hear from good ol' Gasse! whenever he is mentioned I can't help but remember this quote of his:<p>"We must always give our users pure sex. It's like a rendezvous in the back seat of an automobile with a beautiful girl. One's experience with the personal computer should be better than the greatest orgasm you could have."
<i>Our Leadership Principles aren't inspirational wall hanging...</i><p>Admittedly I sympathize with the 501 programmer sentiment, nevertheless these corporate manifestos, principles, credos etc. make me gag a little. But probably that's their purpose anyway, so great writing there.
The examples don't really show an exceptional writing ability. Is this one of those things where we're happy he's written at all?<p>It's also important to be aware we give more slack to those we admire.
>In 2010, he penned a tribute to Amazon’s engineers ... The tone was just right, neither disingenuously geeky nor overtly tongue-in-cheek.<p>I'd love to see a similarly graceful and well-penned tribute from Bezos to the workers who routinely collapse from exhaustion in his fulfilment warehouses (1), before they are swiftly replaced by another Oompa Loompa who will scrape just above minimum wage if they make their hourly dispatch target.<p>(1) <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/amazon-warehouse-like-prison-where-workers-used-pee-bottle-2018-4?r=UK&IR=T" rel="nofollow">https://www.businessinsider.com.au/amazon-warehouse-like-pri...</a>