Weird reason Jeff Bezos always kept an empty chair in every meeting at Amazon
Over the years various employees of Jeff Bezos have come forward to reveal some of the methods behind the madness of working for a multinational company such as Amazon.
Founded by the now 60-year-old in 1994, Amazon has gone from a simple online book store to an e-commerce haven and multifaceted service provider.
Considered on of the Big Five American tech companies - alongside Apple, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft - Bezos’ company employed around 1.5 million people globally as of June 2024, with the majority working in its fulfilment network, according to Geek Wire.
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Before stepping down as CEO in 2021, Bezos was known for his somewhat unconventional business methods, including banning certain tech from the office and making sure an empty chair was always available in meetings.
Below, we’ve listed some of his famous practices:
Two pizza-team rule
According to Amazon, the company believes in the popular proverb ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’.
Bezos decided in the early days of his company that he would implement the ‘Two-pizza rule’ when it came to building his teams.
Basically, every team working on a project should consist of less than 10 people - the ideal number to comfortably share two pizzas - to ‘minimize lines of communication and decrease overhead of bureaucracy and decision-making’.
It’s understood the smaller, two-pizza team can spend more time focusing on their customers and less time worrying about each other.
Empty chair theory
According to Amazon insiders, in the early days of running his company Bezos would always be sure to add an extra chair to rooms when conducting meetings.
It’s claimed that the empty place was to represent the customer, the most important person when it comes to making business decisions.
In 2018, an alleged insider opened up on the empty chair theory, telling Inc: "One problem is that the customer isn't really there at every meeting.
"So what we like to do at every meeting is we reserve a seat for the customer.”
Hiring an employee after just two questions
Back in 2002, University of Washington graduate Ann Hiatt was hired by Bezos.
After completing a number of ‘dizzying’ rounds of interviews to become Bezos’ junior assistant, she eventually met with the man himself.
Speaking to CNBC about what the Amazon founder asked her, Hiatt said: “Bezos started the interview by promising that he was only going to ask two questions and that the first one would be a 'fun' brainteaser.”
The conundrum ended up being how many panes of glass did she think there was in the entire city of Seattle.
The second request Bezos made was for Hiatt to simply outline her goals.
"I explained that I had no idea how to be an assistant, but that I knew the importance of being consistently outside of my comfort zone. I wanted to jump into an astronomical learning and growth curve,” she explained.
Hiatt revealed that the boss was clearly impressed by her answers and hired her ‘on the spot’.
PowerPoint presentations are banned
In 2004, Bezos sent an email to senior employees announcing that they would no longer be making PowerPoint presentations, as per Business Insider.
He allegedly reasoned: “Powerpoint-style presentations somehow give permission to gloss over ideas, flatten out any sense of relative importance, and ignore the innerconnectedness of ideas.”
Instead, Amazon workers were asked to structure an idea pitch in the form of a four-to-six-page memo which would be read over in the first 20 minutes of team meetings.