Evans: Bezos preferred paying for redundant teams over forcing early collaboration
Ethan Evans · Ex-Amazon VP: Lessons from Working with Jeff Bezos that Changed My Life | Ethan Evans · Jun 3, 2026 · at 57:56
Former Amazon VP Ethan Evans recounts Jeff Bezos's response to an executive who wanted to centralize redundant engineering efforts into platform teams.
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“I'd rather pay to get two of something because I find when I force people to collaborate too soon, they gridlock and argue about priorities, and what I actually get is nothing. And so I'd rather pay for two Then get zero, and if we're so lucky as to get two working things, that's a first-class problem we'll deal with later, as opposed to trying to force central planning on this huge organization and getting nothing.”
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