Docs culture at Amazon, Google and Anthropic
What role does documentation culture play in shaping how companies operate and succeed?
Last week, I gave a talk at the Product Festival about the role of Prod Ops, and shared the Mapping program setup as an example of how Prod Ops could fit in (see the image below). While preparing, it reminded me how it all started: I just joined the company, received a one-pager (literally one page) with a short description of the pilot idea, and assembled a team of five engineers. In six months, we launched a Map Data Collection program in San Francisco with a few drivers who mounted Insta360 cameras on the rooftops of their cars. In eighteen months, the end-to-end loop e represented in the diagram below was fully operational in 20 US cities. We processed terabytes of live-streaming data from Android devices daily, built ML-solutions to automate and optimize map updates, and had four cross-functional teams closely working together to deliver best in class mapping experience for drivers and riders. It all started with a one-page document.
To compare, to launch a similar scale/complexity program at Stripe, I’d need to have at least a 20-page strategy document, build a business case, and run multiple (likely two-digit number) reviews to fund it. This reminded me that documentation plays a crucial role in shaping how companies operate and succeed. Companies like Amazon, Google, and Meta have each developed distinct documentation cultures that reflect their values and business goals. Is it a universal truth that startups don’t have a good docs culture in place, or rather a stereotype? Instead of guessing, I asked my peers and now sharing a select number of examples I got.
Amazon
“Everything at Amazon begins with a doc”.
Amazon is well known for its rigorous documentation culture, epitomized by the six-page narrative. The core idea behind this is that well-crafted documents encourage deep thinking and thorough analysis. Many folks in my network confirmed the same. Here are key points:
Amazon has several types of standard docs:
One-pagers - plus zero page with metrics, plus several appendix pages with FAQs, etc.
Six-pagers - used for larger strategy and review docs. Again, with page zero as a metrics table and lots of appendices and FAQs
In fact, you generally can not show up to a meeting without a doc that everyone first spends 10-15 minutes reading and commenting on. Then the discussion follows, first on high level comments, then a page by page discussion.
Google
Based on the feedback I received, Google’s approach to documentation is a blend of flexibility and structure, and it really depends on the initiative you’re working on. Google emphasises the importance of documentation through its extensive use of internal wikis, where employees can contribute and access a wide range of information.
Key Aspects of Google's Documentation Culture:
Collaborative wikis: Google encourages collaboration through its extensive use of internal wikis.
Living documents: Google views documentation as dynamic, encouraging continuous updates and improvements as projects evolve.
No forced templates and structure: You’re free to choose your own preferred format and tool for documentation storage.
Anthropic
Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. Fast pace of AI developments and growing competition defines its docs culture. Here is what I’ve learned:
It's relatively easy to start a new initiative given a short doc with a strong argument
Given a lot of the work is research, to actually ship ideas people expect empirical results that are documented clearly. At some point, to continue an initiative, it's necessary to back up claims with evidence - this is less a matter of writing a lot and more a matter of running the correct initial experiments.
In general, there isn't a feeling of too much bureaucracy, but maybe it's early days given the company is growing rapidly.
Recap
Documentation is more than just a record-keeping tool; it is an integral part of the company culture. It reflects collaboration culture, decision-making process, and also a stage of the company. I personally prefer the “fail fast” approach, so I’m always trying to find a balance between running an experiment vs. writing a book-like doc describing the need of this experiment. Sometimes this red tape kills innovation, but sometimes it’s necessary. One thing that helped us be more productive at Stripe is that we introduced templates for the majority of types of docs we create: PRD, implementation review, launch review etc. It’s arguable that such an approach kills a writer's personal style, but over time it helps with both faster writing (you have building blocks) and faster reading as you know what to anticipate in the doc.
Dina’s 2 cents:
It’s been interesting to read about Amazon docs culture - this is probably one of the most famous approaches. I had a chance to work with a few ex-Amazon product leaders that brought in documentation expectations with them to a company where we worked. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it was not helping our product culture, but the opposite - it felt out of place given we were not close to Amazon by scale, type of the product, team size or decision making approach on the leadership level. It felt quite alienating too - Amazon people could understand each other’s ideas through the familiar documentation principles, while the rest of us were not given proper training (or mandate) to follow specific patterns.
I think documentation culture should be adapted to the scale and stage of the company and evolve accordingly. In addition to that, I also think it’s important to consider learning styles as a part of documentation culture. I found that I understand visuals (diagrams, examples, rough wireframes, etc.) much better than text.