Writing Documents at Amazon

One of the hardest types of docs to write was basically a “de-commit” document (Amazon is big on “disagree and commit,” so if you are coming back and wanting to de-commit to something previously agreed, you really had to have your data and logic clear as to what had changed since the plan was committed.) If your document is identifying a problem (“Hey, Jeff, we’ve now done enough in-depth analysis to see that there’s this big technical issue that will limit system performance and will hurt the customer experience”) and proposing a solution (“We’d like to double our hiring plans in this particular area, which would allow us to accelerate progress this much…”), think through the rest of the logic. You may even discover that Jeff was right (that “smart” thing again), or you’ll come back, present the new data / new logic, and he’ll (very) happily say, “you guys were right, thanks for pushing on this.”

Source: medium.com