Former Amazon executive and Hulu CEO Jason Kilar discusses executive longevity at Amazon to defend its corporate culture against media criticism.
Insight
Kilar: 90% of people are not comfortable with Amazon-style culture
“It's something that I bet 90% of humans out on the sidewalk would absolutely not be comfortable doing, and therefore they should never apply and go work at a place like Amazon.”
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Jason Kilar: Company culture is determined by how leaders act when unobserved
“You know, as the founding CEO of Hulu you know, it was very, you know, clear to me that the culture of Hulu really was going to be how I acted a lot when no one was looking because people model that over time and then it perpetuates.”
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Kilar: Relying on good intentions at scale guarantees organizational failure
“When you're, as Sam and Reed were saying, when you're a team of 30, good intentions are good enough. But when you're a team of a thousand or 10,000 or 300 plus thousand, as the case is with Amazon right now, Good intentions are a recipe for disaster, and certa…”
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Kilar: Celebrating the destruction of bureaucracy is essential when scaling
“When you're scaling a company, Bureaucracy, which is bad process, creeps in each and every day, and to be able to have mechanisms that celebrate the destruction of bureaucracy that's just as important as things that celebrate frugality”
Insight
Company cultures must repel bad fits as much as they attract talent
“It's very, very important when you think about your cultures to make sure that they're a repellent as much as they are a magnet because then, you know, you've, you actually stand for something and you're actually probably going to be effective so long as you m…”
Insight
Kilar: Constantly disagreeing with an employee means they are in the wrong role
“I don't think it should happen a lot, and if it's happening a lot, I would ask if you've got the right person in the role, if there's a certain person that you're constantly disagreeing with that's my experience at least.”