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Why Did Jeff Bezos Call a Team the B Team?
Ethan Evans says Jeff Bezos once stopped a meeting and asked whether the A team for the project was available, because the people in the room were clearly the B team.
That was attack mode. Bezos would get frustrated with the team that had screwed up and with himself for letting it get that way, and he was relentless. One case was an app that let a customer photograph a price in a store and send it to Amazon, so Amazon could match it. In the press it became Amazon using its customers to spy on small-town America. A woman from PR sat across from him while he said, how could we be so stupid, how could anyone screw this up. She thought he meant her. Evans says Bezos was saying it to himself. When he was unhappy, that unhappiness came out in the room. He is also famous for his laugh. The emotion went both ways.
Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos ·