For employees at Amazon.com Inc, the departure of CEO Jeff Bezos might spell the finish of one of the company’s uncommon and, for some managers, frightening practices: the “question-mark” e-mail.
Bezos, whose e-mail address is public, receives consumer complaints that he then forwards to a relevant executive whose group is accountable for fixing the challenge. Sometimes landing overnight, these emails from the world’s second-richest individual had no salutation, no commentary or thank you – just a single query mark.
Or worse, stated one former manager.
“‘This can’t be true’ was a bad one. ‘Fix this’ was another,” the manager stated on situation of anonymity. “By the morning, I better have a damn good resolution to whatever this is.”
Amazon stated Bezos sent query-mark emails sometimes to handle the volume of consumer messages he received.
It was an productive tool: effective for Bezos – who juggled oversight of retail, technologies, media and space companies – and motivating for staff who feared for their jobs, the former manager stated.
Bezos will step back from the firm he founded 27 years ago and develop into executive chairman this summer season, Amazon stated Tuesday.
Some recall the practice with nostalgia. Sean Scott, a vice president of autonomous delivery who lately left Amazon immediately after almost 15 years, stated working with Bezos was rewarding but stressful.
“Meetings with Jeff were always an unbelievable amount of work in prep during the lead up (as were the ? emails) but the dialog and the Q&A during the meeting would remain with the team forever,” he stated in a LinkedIn post Tuesday.
No one can predict how incoming CEO Andy Jassy will govern in his boss’ footwear. The cloud computing head cares just as substantially about fixing customers’ issues.
But 3 executives who worked with him stated the single query mark is not his style.
()