Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon
Colin Bryar and Bill Carr spent a combined twenty seven years at Amazon, including Bryar's run as Jeff Bezos's technical advisor and shadow. Working Backwards explains the mechanisms behind the company, from the ban on PowerPoint and the six page narrative memo to the press release first product process and the bar raiser hiring system. The second half applies those tools to real product histories, including Kindle, Prime, Prime Video, and the Amazon Web Services build out. The authors are honest about what worked, what failed, and where the principles bent under pressure. The result is the closest thing to an operating manual for the company that anyone outside the door has written.
What you might want to know about Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Two longtime Amazon executives walk through the leadership principles, six page memos, and product processes that defined the company from the inside.
Yes. Bezos provided a cover blurb for the book, and the authors worked closely with him for years, with Bryar serving as his technical advisor and shadow during a formative period at Amazon.
Yes. The six page memo, press release first product brief, and bar raiser hiring loop are described in enough detail that teams at startups and other large companies have adopted them directly.
Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon was written by Colin Bryar, published in 2021 by St. Martin's Press.
Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon is 304 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
