Colin Percival reflects on Amazon’s Leadership Principles, sharing insights from his 25+ years as an Amazon customer and nearly 20 years as an AWS user, and as an AWS Hero. He critiques three key principles: 1. Customer Obsession: While Amazon’s focus on customers is positive, Colin warns against taking this literally as "giving customers what they ask for." Early AWS innovations like EC2 were driven by engineering vision rather than explicit customer requests, which he believes was beneficial. Over time, he observes a shift towards building exactly what customers ask for, and later what analysts want, which he views as detrimental. He emphasizes the need for Amazon to provide essential building blocks customers truly need, such as internal services supporting application resilience, rather than just responding to vocal customer demands. 2. Ownership: Colin finds this principle too narrowly defined and poorly implemented. Leaders should think beyond their team and company, considering the broader technological ecosystem. He praises some Amazonians who contribute to open standards beyond Amazon’s immediate needs. However, he criticizes internal silos and secrecy in Amazon, which result in duplicated efforts and hinder leaders from acting across the company effectively. Breaking down internal barriers is necessary to foster true ownership. 3. Bias for Action: While speed matters, and many decisions can be reversed, Colin stresses the importance of balancing action with high standards and maintaining customer trust. Shipping half-baked services damages long-term trust, even if issues get fixed later. Drawing on his experience as FreeBSD Security Officer, he values the bias for inaction when needed to uphold quality. He suggests Amazon implement "service bar raisers" with veto power over product launches to ensure only high-quality releases that preserve trust go forward. Colin closes hoping Amazon will heed critical feedback because it comes from care and a desire to help them return to roots focused on needed innovation and high standards, not just customer or analyst demands. The post reflects a nuanced, experienced viewpoint on leadership and product development at Amazon and AWS.