Working Backwards: A Book Review
Working backwards is a book that is written by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr. Colin worked for Amazon for twelve years, and Bill worked for fifteen. The book determines that Amazon’s success is due to how the employees act. They call it “being Amazonian”. There are six processes that are applied to being Amazonian. They are solid leadership principles, raising the bar, having single-threaded leaders, communicating using narratives, starting with customer experience, and managing business inputs. I really enjoyed this book because despite being organized in very specific ways, the authors still decided to incorporate failures that occurred. I always used to wonder how Amazon became one of the most influential and important companies ever, and this book answered my questions.
I would not consider myself a business driven person, but I found it fascinating to read about the tricks that Amazon used to grow exponentially. I learned a lot from this book. One really interesting thing is that Amazon has a person whose sole responsibility is to raise the bar progressively through hiring. The idea is that each hire is smarter and more capable than the last. This is how Amazon has been able to keep increasing their work capability. They are progressively getting a higher quality workforce. I could see that they really cared about looking after their customers instead of competing with other companies to take advantage of the customers. My favorite lesson from the book was that you should always have a problem before making a solution. Do not have a solution waiting to find a problem. This really struck me because a couple years ago, I would find myself doing homework that hasn’t even been assigned yet. This would cause me to sometimes forget homework that may have been due the next day. These last couple weeks, I have been using the lessons I learned from this book. I think this book can benefit everyone! I would definitely recommend this book. It is the perfect balance between light and informative. I learned a lot from this book, and if I had to rate it I would give it a solid nine out of ten.
-Rishabh Prasanth
This book provides a sketch of Amazon and what makes the company tick...tock. The way you describe the workflow is that each new employee gets a better environment to work in, making a better Amazon, which leads to better employees. The process seems just like a function. I enjoy these books. They provide an informative view about this world we live in so it is practical and implacable. Thanks for the review and suggestion.
ReplyDeleteNice review, Rishabh! I found it fascinating how you used the principles of the book and incorporated them into your everyday life. The example of homework made the point you were trying to make clearer. I never imagined myself reading a book about Amazon, but now I can consider reading this one in the future!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a really interesting book to read, thanks for writing this review! This review really makes me wonder about how the internals of the largest company on the planet works, and it sounds like this book gives insightful details about these happenings from the stories of people from the inside. It also sounds like this book gives some important lessons you could apply to my own life, and that is always fun to read about in any book. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI liked this review. You kept things concise while still including important details. It's very fascinating to see how a company as large as amazon works, and this book shows exactly how it does. I also liked how you compared it to your own experiences, using your homework as an example. Great job!
ReplyDeleteGreat review, Rishabh! Your review did a great job of summarizing the main ideas of this book. I have also found myself wondering how major businesses rose to power, and this book seems to hold the answers. It is obvious that Amazon relies on their employees, but I never knew how complex the selection process was. This book appears to have some great insight on how one company has produced so many millionaires and billionaires.
ReplyDeleteGreat review Rishabh, I liked how you explained what lessons you took away from the book, and how each of the lessons you learned have actually been applied. I feel like a lot of the time when we learn lessons we don't do a great job of actively trying to apply what we learned so it's nice to see you do that. I think you did a good job summarizing the main parts of the book
ReplyDeleteI definitely would keep walking if I saw this book. However your review put what this book is about in an interesting way. I like how you connected it to the things we can relate to. Great review Rishabh!
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