How does Amazon use Leadership Principles in interviews?
Amazon interviewers are each assigned one or two Leadership Principles to probe per interview. They ask behavioral questions specifically designed to generate evidence for or against each principle, using STAR-format follow-up questions until they have enough data to make a hiring recommendation. Every story you tell is explicitly evaluated against a named principle.
Amazon's behavioral interview process is the most structured and principle-driven of any major technology company. Where most organizations conduct behavioral interviews with general competency probing, Amazon codifies its desired employee behaviors into 16 named Leadership Principles and trains every interviewer to evaluate candidates against specific principles systematically. Preparing for Amazon interviews without understanding this structure is like preparing for a coding interview without knowing what languages are allowed.
The 16 Amazon Leadership Principles
Amazon's Leadership Principles, as of 2024, are:
- Customer Obsession
- Ownership
- Invent and Simplify
- Are Right, A Lot
- Learn and Be Curious
- Hire and Develop the Best
- Insist on the Highest Standards
- Think Big
- Bias for Action
- Frugality
- Earn Trust
- Dive Deep
- Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
- Deliver Results
- Strive to Be Earth's Best Employer (added 2021)
- Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility (added 2021)
"At Amazon, we believe leadership is not a title. It is a set of behaviors that we expect from everyone at every level. Our Leadership Principles are not marketing material — they are the actual criteria we use to make hiring, promotion, and performance decisions." — Amazon Jobs, Leadership Principles documentation
How the Interview Process Works
In a typical Amazon loop, you will meet with four to seven interviewers. Each interviewer is assigned a Bar Raiser designation or a regular panel role, and each is explicitly assigned specific Leadership Principles to probe. You will not be told which principles each interviewer is evaluating.
A standard Amazon behavioral question sounds like: "Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision with very little data." After your answer, the interviewer will use follow-up questions to probe deeper: "What data did you have? What alternatives did you consider? What would you have done differently?"
This process is called behavior-based interviewing with follow-up probing, and it is designed to distinguish candidates who have genuinely lived the principles from those who have prepared polished surface-level stories.
Mapping Your Stories to Principles
The most effective preparation strategy is to build a story bank that covers each of the 16 principles with specific, detailed, quantified examples.
High-Priority Principles for Engineering Roles
| Principle | What It Tests | Key Story Elements |
|---|---|---|
| Customer Obsession | Do you start with user needs or internal convenience? | Stories where you advocated for users against technical shortcuts |
| Ownership | Do you act like an owner of the whole business? | Stories where you went beyond your job description, especially during crises |
| Invent and Simplify | Do you find creative solutions that reduce complexity? | Stories where you eliminated a complicated process or built something novel |
| Bias for Action | Do you move fast under uncertainty? | Stories where you made a calculated decision quickly with incomplete data |
| Dive Deep | Do you understand your systems thoroughly? | Stories where your deep technical understanding uncovered a non-obvious problem |
| Deliver Results | Do you achieve the outcomes that matter despite obstacles? | Stories with hard deadlines, resource constraints, and measurable delivery |
| Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit | Do you hold your positions under pressure and then commit? | Stories where you pushed back on a senior stakeholder and where you committed to a decision you disagreed with |
High-Priority Principles for Management Roles
| Principle | What It Tests | Key Story Elements |
|---|---|---|
| Hire and Develop the Best | Do you raise the bar with new hires and develop existing team members? | Stories about recruiting, mentoring, and growing talent |
| Earn Trust | Do you build genuine trust through transparency and delivery? | Stories where you delivered on commitments and communicated honestly about problems |
| Insist on the Highest Standards | Do you maintain quality even when it is costly? | Stories where you rejected work that did not meet standards |
| Think Big | Do you set ambitious goals? | Stories where you challenged conventional thinking about scope or impact |
| Strive to Be Earth's Best Employer | Do you actively create conditions for people to do their best work? | Stories about inclusion, psychological safety, career development |
Building Your Amazon Story Bank
Plan to write 20 to 25 specific stories in advance. Amazon interviewers use follow-up questions aggressively, so your stories need enough detail to withstand three to five minutes of probing.
Story Quality Standards for Amazon
Specificity — Every story must include specific dates, project names, team sizes, and numbers. "Improved performance significantly" will not survive follow-up. "Reduced median API latency from 340ms to 95ms over a six-week project involving three engineers" will.
Your individual contribution — Amazon interviewers are trained to identify "we" stories where the candidate's specific contribution is unclear. Use "I" to describe your actions even when describing team efforts.
Measurable outcome — Amazon is an exceptionally results-oriented culture. Every story needs a quantified outcome. If you do not have a number, have a clear qualitative before-and-after comparison with a timeline.
Scope and scale — Stories should, where possible, demonstrate scope appropriate to the level you are applying for. Amazon levels their roles on a defined scale, and your stories should reflect the expected scope for that level.
The "Disagree and Commit" Principle Explained
This is one of the most commonly misunderstood principles. It describes two separate behaviors that must coexist.
Disagree (Have Backbone) — When you believe a decision is wrong, you are expected to say so directly, based on the merits, even if the other person is more senior. Silence or passive agreement when you have concerns is specifically not valued at Amazon.
Commit — Once a decision is made by the appropriate decision-maker, you are expected to execute it fully even if it was not your preferred option. Undermining decisions after they are made, or delivering halfheartedly, violates this principle.
A complete answer to a "Disagree and Commit" question tells both halves of the story: the moment you pushed back and exactly how you did it, followed by the decision and how you committed to executing it fully.
"The Have Backbone half is what most candidates think to include. The Commit half is what Amazon is actually most interested in. The person who disagrees respectfully and then executes fully regardless of their preference is exactly who we want making decisions at every level." — Amazon Senior Manager, interview debrief discussion
Practice With Metrics: The Bar Raiser Standard
The Bar Raiser is a specially trained Amazon interviewer whose role is to maintain the hiring bar across the organization. Bar Raisers have veto power over hiring decisions and evaluate candidates relative to the existing employee population, not just against the job requirements.
To meet the Bar Raiser standard, your stories should:
- Describe impact at or above the expected scope for the role level
- Demonstrate ownership, not just participation
- Show that you would have acted differently than a less experienced or less engaged employee would have
- Include evidence of learning and adaptation, not just execution
Sample Amazon Behavioral Questions by Principle
| Leadership Principle | Sample Question |
|---|---|
| Customer Obsession | Tell me about a time you advocated for a customer's needs against internal pressure to take a different approach. |
| Ownership | Describe a situation where you took ownership of a problem that was technically outside your scope. |
| Invent and Simplify | Tell me about a time you found a significantly simpler solution to a complex problem. |
| Are Right, A Lot | Give me an example of when you were confident in a decision others questioned, and it turned out you were right. |
| Learn and Be Curious | Tell me about the most significant thing you have learned in the past 12 months and how it changed how you work. |
| Bias for Action | Describe a time you made an important decision without waiting for perfect information. |
| Dive Deep | Tell me about a time when your deep understanding of a system uncovered a problem that others had missed. |
| Deliver Results | Describe the most difficult situation where you had to deliver a major outcome under adverse conditions. |
| Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit | Tell me about a time you pushed back on a direction from a senior leader and what happened. |
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Leadership Principle stories should I prepare for an Amazon interview? Plan for at least two stories per principle, because interviewers will ask follow-up questions and may ask for a second example if they probe the first one thoroughly. Given that 16 principles exist, preparing 25 to 30 stories provides adequate coverage. Focus depth on the eight to ten principles most relevant to your role.
What happens if I run out of examples during a follow-up question? It is acceptable to say you have covered your best example for this principle and ask whether they would like to continue probing that story from a different angle or hear a different story. Running out of examples is less problematic than fabricating details under follow-up pressure.
Does Amazon weight all 16 principles equally? No. In practice, Ownership, Customer Obsession, Deliver Results, and Dive Deep are weighted most heavily for engineering roles. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit is often probed specifically because it is culturally distinctive to Amazon. The two 2021 additions receive less emphasis in current interview loops for technical roles.
References
- Bezos, J. (1997-2020). Annual Letters to Shareholders. Amazon.com Inc. https://ir.aboutamazon.com/annual-reports
- Amazon.com Inc. (2024). Amazon Leadership Principles. https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles
- Rossman, J. (2014). The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World's Most Disruptive Company. Clyde Hill Publishing.
- Jassy, A. (2021). Annual Letter to Shareholders. Amazon.com Inc.
- Kwan, L., & Sobral, F. (2019). Leadership and hiring decisions: An organizational culture perspective. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 26(3), 322-339.