When Doug Herrington first arrived at Amazon more than two decades ago, he found not just a fast-moving e-commerce startup, but a culture wrapped in what felt like a corporate creed.
“I felt like I had joined a cult,” Herrington said on a recent episode of Learn and Be Curious With Doug Herrington, Amazon’s new podcast. He had joined Amazon in 2005 as vice president of consumables, according to his LinkedIn, working up the ranks to CEO of worldwide Amazon stores by 2022.
“I told my wife, ‘I don’t understand what’s going on,” he recalled. Herrington isn’t the only Amazon employee to describe the company that way, especially in its early days. A 2001 Wired feature titled “Inside the Cult of Amazon” quoted a former employee who described workers as being “brainwashed” into adoring Bezos and embracing 20-hour workdays.
But Herrington ultimately saw his initial skepticism as a rite of passage—one that made him a better leader. And he saw it as a way for Bezos to “get this whole company to row in one direction.”
Still, the company’s now-famous 16 leadership principles aimed at defining “how we want our leaders to make decisions, and behave, and work with each other, and solve problems when they’re at their best” at first felt like too much, Herrington admitted.
