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Comment by hkrgl | Hacker News Reader

I am curious if Amazon follows this process for engineering design documents. I worked there a very long time ago and don't recall this. At another company I worked for, folks from Amazon introduced this for eng reviews. I found it very difficult to get or do a thorough review after reading a document for the first time at the meeting. Some things are nuanced and need time to process - I thought this style just didn't work for these cases.

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Writing is followed for design reviews as well.

The recommendations to solve the challenge you mention are to (a) writing better, (b) splitting into a sequence of meetings, (c) reading the document ahead of the time.

There's no real reason why writing process should not apply to design documents as well.

I wasn't questioning the writing process - written design documents are very necessary. My experience with the Amazon-style design review meeting is that there wasn't sufficient time to read the document, process it and come to a decision. If you're reading the document ahead of time, then that isn't really following Amazon style :)

We try to go slower with such documents. E.g., the meeting may start by asking to read the first five sections and discussing them first. The meeting then may naturally be longer than an hour, usually two hours, and still may need a follow up slot.

Nothing in the Amazon style precludes reading ahead of the time, and it is recommended to send the document to the audience ahead of the time. That people often don't is another thing.

I start reading ahead of the time as I read slower (but also read more carefully and thoughtfully).

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