Always Day One: How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay on Top Forever

by Alex Kantrowitz

An acclaimed tech reporter reveals the inner workings of the most powerful companies in the world, taking you behind the scenes with Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Google's Sundar Pichai, and Microsoft's Satya Nadella.

At Amazon, "Day One" is code for working inventively and urgently, as if it were the first day of your startup. Day Two is, in Bezos's own words, is "stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by excruciating, painful decline, followed by death."

Amazon and its fellow tech giants are under fire for their size and power, but there's more to their story than anti-competitive practices and tax avoidance. These companies have kept ahead of the competition by embracing a new leadership model, one built for an age where companies can spin up new products and services at record speed.

On the inside, these tech giants operate nothing like the corporate giants of the past -- like Exxon and GM -- which built core advantages and did everything they could to defend them. For these new goliaths, it's always day one. They are in a constant state of reinvention despite their massive size, understanding that once you become obsessed with the past, you will miss the future.

Always Day One takes you deep inside these companies, revealing the uncommon cultures and leadership practices that have kept them from being picked apart by smaller, nimbler competitors. It details how their CEOs will do away with any obstacle blocking the free flow of ideas within their companies, how they're creating systems to bring the best of these ideas to life, and how they're using advanced workplace technology to make it all possible.

Kantrowitz reveals a new model propelling their dominance at a stage when most big companies begin to decline. And he shows the way forward for anyone who wants to compete with -- and beat -- the existing tech giants.

Genres: Business, Technology, Nonfiction, Leadership, Startup, Audiobook, Buisness

Audible Audio

Published April 7, 2020

Reviews

[Wendy Liu]

An accessible and insightful look at the management practices & culture of Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft.

[Ezra Katz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It's a well-written and captivating book about the cultures of Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple. It takes you inside these companies and describes how their culture allows it to grow or stumble. For those interested in tech or management, this is a must read.

[Sambasivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily one of the best books on the culture of the current behemoths. Extremely well researched and hits the bull’s eye on what drives these companies.
Lessons for the entire corporate world are strewn throughout.
Must read.

[Himanshu Upreti · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Day One at Amazon is code for inventing like a startup, with little regard for legacy. It’s an acknowledgment that competitors today can create new products at record speeds—thanks to advances in artificial intelligence and cloud computing especially—so you might as well build for the future, even at the present’s expense." Day Two in Bezos' own words is "stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by excruciating, painful decline, followed by death.”

Always Day One is a gripping narrative of the Famous Five often referred to as FAAMG or the Big Five; FAAMG is an acronym used for the tech giants represented by Alphabet (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Facebook (FB), and Apple (AAPL), and Microsoft (MSFT). The author has adroitly brought out the culture and leadership practices at these firms which show no signs of aging.

Amazon's inventive culture, Facebook's internal feedback, Apple's design focus, Google's collaborative strength and Microsoft's growth mindset portrays the immense value the "Engineering Mindset" is given at these workplaces. With over 130 interview insights and several tech initiatives covered including the Amazon Go launch, Google's open debate and internal employee disagreement and the Microsoft's dramatic turnaround, the book deep dives into the battle these tech behemoths are fighting everyday especially with the emerging startup ecosystem and advancements in AI/ML in the backdrop of shift from industrial economy to knowledge economy. There is a slight backlash to Apple owing to HomePod and Apple Car failure and sole dependency on iPhone in terms of its revenue share but the current trillion dollar market cap is still a testament that Apple is a force to reckon with.

Towards the end of the book, there is a series of Black Mirror-esque scenarios imagined out with the dark side of AI which makes up for an interesting discourse. The book ends on a positive note though with discussions around thoughtful invention and bias removal from AI systems and reimagines a future world of endless possibilities with major shifts in work and education.

[Jessica Dai · Rating 4 out of 5]

really well-written and well-researched! I think this is quite a fair, nuanced approach to evaluating what makes big tech cos tick, pinpointing the particular elements of org culture that have driven success while also highlighting that it's these same elements that have made them so often exploitative, dangerous, etc.

I read most of this after reading ben tarnoff's piece on the tech worker movement, which was an interesting lens on the content to say the least.

[Tomáš Ulej · Rating 3 out of 5]

Autora som počul rozprávať na WebSummite v Lisabone, kniha podľa mňa sľubuje oveľa viac než nakoniec dá, ale v princípe celkom verne hľadá odpoveď na otázku, čo robia firmy ako Amazon, Google alebo Facebook inak, že sa im relatívne dlho darí držať na špici.

Cez desiatky interviews so súčasnými a bývalými zamestnancami sa snaží poskladať obraz nejakej “formuly” (Engineer´s mindset) ako inovovať, aj keď už ste veľká firma, ktorej väčšinu času zaberá dojenie kravy (súčasného biznisu).

Sú to v podstate tri piliere:
- democratic invention (že nápady musia prúdiť zdola hore bez ohľadu na to kto s nimi prišiel - Amazon)
- contraint-free hierarchy (v podstate pokus o tyrkysovú organizáciu - trochu Facebook, aj keď s veľa vecami by som nesúhlasil)
- collaboration (že vo firme každý s každým môže na nápade robiť a nik tomu nebráni)

Čiže žiadna mágia, ale zas super veľa konkrétnych príkladov ako to v tých firmách robia. Amazon cez pištoľ pri hlave - musíš inovovať, inak ťa automatizujeme, Facebook cez šialený systém feedbackovania každého každým a všetkého všetkými. Google cez prepracovaný systém ako ľudia vedia kolaborovať na projektoch.

Super boli antipríklady - ako Apple zabilo viacero projektov lebo nik nesmie vedieť na čom pracujú ľudia z iných oddelení. Alebo Microsoft ktorý zabíjal Explorer aby Google nekradol užívateľov Officu pre svoje Docs.

Celkovo fajn čitanie pre každého kto sa venuje corporate inováciám, zázraky nečakajte, len také feel-good čítanie plné anekdot a cez to kúsoček umelá snaha ich pospájať do nejakého frameworku.


—-

Názov knihy je inak prebraný od Bezosa z Amazonu, ktorý hovorí, že startupy sú day one (akože čosi sme vymysleli a teraz riešime čo s tým) a veľké firmy sú day two (akože doja kravu). On tvrdí, že vždy musíš zostať v day one.

“What does Day Two look like?” Bezos asked. “Day Two is stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by excruciating, painful decline, followed by death.”

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reasonable short mainstream summary of management culture at Facebook/Google/Apple/Amazon/Microsoft. Nothing really new or insightful if you understand how these companies work, but a good summary for outsiders. The "black mirror" dark potential chapters about tech were sort of grafted on at the end (I think to flesh out an already short book), but were also done adequately well.

[Shyue Ping Ong · Rating 2 out of 5]

Basically a summary of many articles and books written over the years by others. Worse, the author lack any objective analysis. Gushing over Bezos, Pichai and Nadyella like a fan boy and doing the fashionable dumping on Cook. To say that Apple “only” has the iPhone while Google is innovative is rather ridiculous to any objective observer. What was the last innovative profitable thing Google did? Apple in the meantime is whipping Intel with the M1 chip and basically outinnovating all other phone manufacturers. Who is challenging them in wearables or tablets? Yes the HomePod is a piece of trash, but hardly reflective of the whole company.

[Mike · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you like the free magazine you get in domestic business class then you'll love this book.

[Teddy Schleifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very perceptive, close reading of the culture and leadership styles of Big Tech CEOs. Good buy!

[Vivek Srivastava · Rating 4 out of 5]

How can corporates develop competitive advantages and stay relevant with changing business environment of today and tomorrow? One way to find answer is to get into the inner workings of today's successful technological giants; and that's where "Always Day One" comes handy. This book is an abridged version of cultures developed in Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft. These cultures help these companies to build advantage for success. But as the common proverb goes "Excess of everything is bad", these companies sometimes find themselves in difficult situation due to excess of a particular behaviour losing track of the right thing or to misuse of tools of advantage or to even loss of adaptability.

The key take aways:
Amazon:
Culture: "Always Day One" or entrepreneur mindset
Processes: "Six pager" avoiding presentation driven biases, Idea initiator made lead for implementation, AI and Automation used for execution to free up resources for idea generation or innovation
Advantage: Agile and Inventive
Challenges: Personal life imbalance due to pressure of everyday entrepreneur mindset and inexcusably high customer focus
Future: Amazon strives to make people technically skilled and creative at the same time. With this approach, the company has been able to bring great ideas to life and further trying to generate more such ideas. Amazon Go is next such thing where consumers can just walk in, pick the stuffs they want to purchase and walk out without getting into billing queues (The amount is automatically deducted through your mobile app)

Facebook:
Culture: Feedback and learning environment, bottoms up approach for idea generation
Processes: Friday's Q&A, Internal groups, Inner Circle and Product Reviews (Mark surrounds himself with disagreeable givers to get alternate point of views)
Advantage: Innovative and better decisions based on alternate point of views
Challenges: Moral risks of new technology. To address this, Facebook has started analysing risks based on threats, vulnerability and motives of users before feature deployment
Future: The ultimate vision of next computing platform (VR and AR) based on organizational principle, making it around people rather than just tasks

Google:
Culture: Reinventing itself for changing consumer preferences; Engineer's mindset
Processes: Collaboration tools - Monthly Q&A, Dory(a Q&A tool) and internal social media
Advantage: Quick idea flow and better collaboration; Adaptability (Organisation Adaptability - Split into Alphabet and its subsidiaries to address right focus for various ideas; Product Adaptability - Chrome to address browser slowness issues, Google search bar in mobile to operate independent of browser)
Challenges: Misuse of collaboration tools, Unclear AI policies (Google tried to address this by coming up with AI guidelines which states its development only for overall good of humans)
Future: Autonomous cars and Assistant which will combine all google tools and utilise Computer vision, voice recognition and natural language understanding for the next age search engine

Apple:
Culture: Refinement culture; Secrecy, Top down approach; Design driven
Processes: Hierarchical, Idea generation by top few and execution focus down
Advantage: Avoids ambiguity in execution, Refined design (exceptional touch and feel of products), Marketing skill bolstered by secrecy
Challenges: Lack of pace and sufficient idea generation in fast changing world. This mainly due to secrecy which impedes collaboration. iPhone has already reached a form beyond which there is seemingly no marginal benefit of improvement for customers
Future: Although Apple had been opportunistic to utilise iphone security episode to bolster its position as a brand not compromising data security, it still has a lot to do to become inventive

Microsoft:
Culture: Democratic invention, Engineer's mindset, Growth mindset, Being the customer philosophy, Empathic approach, Focus on problem understanding rather than pressured to find solution
Processes: Bottoms up idea generation, Venture style pitch committee for its AI ideas, Quarterly Connects for feedback, Reduced hierarchy and approachable seniors, "One Week" an yearly employee gathering for hackathon, Re-organisation to reduce unwanted conflicts and facilitate collaboration, Performance rating more based on collaborative efforts than individual to prevent toxic competition between individuals hindering work
Advantage: Ease of idea build up through higher collaboration
Challenges: The company faced its challenge in earlier decade when "the Asset" mindset prevailed. This approach hindered innovation by prioritizing reaping of benefits from current products over the future. With Satya Nadella at its helm, Microsoft has been able to bring about cultural changes to suit today's world which are evident from a trillion dollar evaluation of the firm
Future: Microsoft has been able to transform itself under Satya Nadella's leadership and looking poised towards goal of new cloud based operating system with its products such as Azure

"A look into the Black Mirror" chapter covers the perils of AI. One of the prime impending threat of AI is further erosion of humanity's weakening sense of meaning. Top three things which give meaning to life are: Friends & Family, Religion and Work & Money. Modern technology is weakening all three. Author wonders whether humans could ever live in a world where their sense of self-worth is divorced from work. But then there is an alternate view: "Kids don't contribute anything economically, but many of them still seem to have pretty worthwhile, happy lives"

Finally, the book culminates with the vision on future leadership. Leaders of future are expected to proactively spark ingenuity through less defined work to employees thus creating room for ideas. They are also expected to continuously monitor their technology for bias. To support the future world, even education needs to change. It needs to inculcate independent thought, creativity and novelty rather than current system built around obedience and repetition.

Though the book is written more in the form of journalism than a literary work and is sometimes marred by cliched phrases, it still brings out knowledge of culture from successful firms in concise manner. It is a worthwhile read, specially for those who have only nascent knowledge of workings of these companies.

[Ricali Ebejer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting think pieces on the innovative or lack their of practices at Amazon, Facebook, Google Apple and Microsoft.

Each chapter talks of their operational structures, their success and some critiques of the companies. The end of the book speaks to AI and the future of work.

It was entertaining but the structure the book was written in became a bit predictable and monotonous making the final chapters a little bit of a laboured read. However it’s full of entertaining stories, gems of managerial knowledge, and some good-human principles.

[Leonardo Longo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a history of tech companies surmised in one place and without a technical language, but at the same time with a robust background acomplished through 130 interviews with insiders from Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft. The author reveals the culture, technology and processes the tech giants have developed to sustain success. Kantrowitz also tries to underline the common philosophy, something that he calls the engineer’s mindset of innovating and breaking new barriers.
I strongly recommend for the ones planning to work in a BigTech, but are not aware of its cultural differences and nuances.

[Umair · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh for me, likely because I understand the companies discussed much better than the average lay-person.

[Alexandre Santos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adds a lot of relevant information. I liked most the part about Jeff Bezos, Microsoft culture change and the last chapter on changes for the future.
I think the first part of it is more engaging and interesting than the last. An interesting read, definitely worth it to anyone that likes to understand how companies evolve and what they have to do to stay relevant on an ever changing sector

[Manas Saloi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the first two chapters around Amazon and Facebook. Learned quite a few things about their style of work. Microsoft, Google, and Apple chapters did not have many new things

The biggest takeaway was the bit around how Amazon treats future projects like science fiction. Dreaming the future, writing memos about them, then working backwards to make them a reality. The author gives a lot of examples around automation in their factories as well as how Amazon Go launched

Rating: 3.5/5

[Neeraj · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an approachable and compelling book about how Amazon, Meta (née Facebook), Google, Apple, and Microsoft operate at a cultural level. I found the author's analysis of the way these companies are organized — and how their organization principles translate into how they innovate — fascinating. In particular, his critique of Apple's information and idea dissemination process (top-down, with information siloes galore), while tough, seems fair, especially considering the case study of the HomePod — which, amusingly, was re-released just last week as basically the same product as before, but $50 cheaper.

I also enjoyed Kantrowitz's measured analysis of the pluses and pitfalls of Google/Alphabet's highly collaborative culture. While it's resulted in some impressive products, like the Google Assistant, that Apple couldn't hope to replicate because of how it's organized, this culture has also helped spark cultural movements within the company (e.g. a protest against Andy Rubin's receiving of a golden parachute in spite of his sexual misconduct allegations) that management has struggled to rein in.

Though any book about technology gets outdated pretty quickly, I think this book will have a shelf life of at least a few more years, and I highly recommend it. I breezed through it, and that's a testament to how well it's written.

[Steve Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title of this book certainly caught my attention. It is always Day 1 is a phrase that I most associate with Amazon. It is principle #14 in my book The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon and I was very curious how the author would apply this principle to other tech LC companies. While the chapter on Amazon reinforced my own research, I was especially interested in how Kantrowitz applied it to the re-birth of Microsoft. I thought his treatment of the “engineering mindset” was interesting as a way to explain how each company (Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft) embraces the idea. It was also informative to read how Apple may have lost it’s way, as a result of not having an engineer mindset that leads to Day 1 thinking. Day 1 thinking can help any company continue to succeed.

[Amit Verma · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very Interesting.
It gets in close contact with giant tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple.
Then it details recent happenings in them.
Their mistakes, changes, achievement, culture. Change, strenghths and weaknesses.
Book tries to answer how they manage to stay at top for so long.
Writing is smooth, simple and engaging.
It is very Interesting to learn recent events in these behemoths.
All companies are covered one by one and an unbiased account of their recent ups and downs is given.
Power of book is its detached approach in analysis of tech giants.
A good book for technology and nonfiction book lovers.
Thanks netgalley and publisher for review copy.

[Darwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story telling from the other side shows how even the giants of tech company is struggling to change and keep things working. This is a good angle to show that no matter how big you are, there will always be issues that needed to be solved. The survival of the fittest comes with great power to change and adapt in this era

[Juarez Poletto Jr. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing new, but a good overview of today's major tech companies. A good option if you don't have time to read a full book for each one of them: Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. I wish I knew that before as I've already read them :D

[Valery Zelixon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great insight into the most influential companies of today with focus on culture, innovation, creativity and the impact a leader has on the companies they create. Every tech leader and future entrepreneur should read it.

[Sean Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Really instructive examples and stories from large modern tech companies and what it means for the future of work, the economy, and even the advice I give my own kids in college as they angle toward their career paths!

[Tomasz Piotrowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alex Kantrowitz has written a very interesting analysis of the great four tech companies' organizational culture and rather objectively. Definitely worth reading!

[Gabriel Strauss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating look inside the culture and structure of the worlds most influential companies!

[Kajoli Tankha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book. Read it in one go.

[Samuel Yow · Rating 5 out of 5]

fascinating and informative

[Srinivasan Nanduri · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-worthy read on (inside) view of the functioning of top tech giants.

[Jacob Wallenberg · Rating 1 out of 5]

Avoid like the plague

[Khoa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reinvent

A lot of good content. The important of continuous reinventing to survive.
Recommend to everyone: reinvent in studying, reinvent in working