To give intent the broadest benefit of the doubt, maybe that's why they wanted to encode the goal in a principle.
Changing Amazon's corporate culture at this point has to be like relocating the Alps.
Changing Amazon's corporate culture at this point has to be like relocating the Alps.
In light of "The Great Resignation", and increasing awareness and activism around work/life balance, socially conscious employers, etc. this kind of move is required. At worst, it's a survival mechanism. A more charitable take is that leadership actually wants to change things.
In either case, if they actually implement this, it's good for employees even if leadership was forced to do this by the current climate.
Some of this is inherent due to what Amazon's business is, but a big chunk of it is that Microsoft outsources essentially every job that's not at the absolute core of their business. Anything outside of that is outsourced to vendors. Microsoft's management of these vendors is basically "make us happy as cheaply as possible or you're fired" and the results for the employees of those companies is about what you'd expect.
We're already seeing things like people getting hired and then PIPed within months so that their managers can avoid firing the reports they like...