Command and control
Not even remotely. Almost all major technical and business decisions are made at the L7 level or below and simply reviewed and approved by l8+. What development process is followed, and how agile it is, is a decision mostly made at the l5/l6 level and varies by team. AMZN is very, very decentralized.
If your level is < 7, it is command and control.
Process: “whatever. Just meet these dates, no matter what you’ve learned in the intervening 6 months. Also, here are some S-team goals to sprinkle in you’re not funded for” What you commit to yearly is—largely—decentralized. But the seagull, S-team and legal compliance bullshit comes out of fucking nowhere.
How can it be both? If you Agile and just doing Scrum for the sake of it or something like that, how is it possible?
Explicitly not command and control, with Jeff saying so himself. Anyone who thinks it is hasn’t been in a C&C culture. Personal ownership is big, though degree varies by group
There is no overarching process culture at amazon. Team/org dependent
This is the answer to most questions about Amazon.
Dead on.