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Amazon built a competitive advantage around forcing clear thinking through mandatory memo writing — six-page documents that executives had to read silently before discussing. Now that AI can generate those memos instantly, people skip the thinking step entirely, and the author argues this is eroding decision quality and trust across the company.
- Amazon's writing ritual (30-minute silent reading sessions, red-pen feedback) forced rigorous thinking before wasting colleagues' time; AI-generated documents bypass this filter, leading to half-baked decisions that compound over time.
- Performance reviews have devolved into managers copy-pasting AI summaries of AI summaries, turning what used to drive career growth conversations into "a conversation between two prompts" with humans as intermediaries.
- The author proposes a practical rule: use AI freely for reversible "two-way door" decisions (status updates, code reviews, routine tasks), but require humans to write and read for irreversible "one-way door" decisions (strategy, hiring, major architecture changes).
Too much context buries what matters; too little forces follow-up questions. The trick is matching your detail level to what your manager actually needs to decide and act.
- Remind your manager where you left off and be explicit about what you need from them—don't make them guess whether this is an FYI or a request for approval.
- Cut details that don't serve your main point (like exact dates when relative time matters), but add more context when decisions are irreversible, expensive, or customer-facing.
- Lead with your recommendation and reasoning, then put supporting details below so your manager can read as much or as little as needed.