> Amazon's most memorable value was "ruthlessly escalate." This removed any question about how decisions would be made. It encouraged a culture where people would debate strongly held ideas, knowing the solution to disagreements was to bump it up to the next level of management.
"Ruthless" anywhere in your value system is terrible, unless you are the military, or your mission statement is to "fight" something like cancer or child hunger. Second, management never knows how to solve a problem better, they just pick one and go with it. Third, a culture where everyone is always asking their boss to solve their problems? Yikes.
> Second, management never knows how to solve a problem better, they just pick one and go with it
But if your (presumably intelligent, qualified) engineers are at a stalemate between two things, what's to say both options aren't fine and they need just exactly that: someone more senior to pick one, given the pros and cons of each.
"Ruthless" anywhere in your value system is terrible, unless you are the military, or your mission statement is to "fight" something like cancer or child hunger. Second, management never knows how to solve a problem better, they just pick one and go with it. Third, a culture where everyone is always asking their boss to solve their problems? Yikes.