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With Bezos out as Amazon CEO, is this the end of his ominous question-mark emails?

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Jeffrey Dastin, Reuters

<p>For staff at Amazon.com Inc, the departure of CEO Jeff Bezos may spell the end of one of the company&#x27;s unusual and, for some managers, frightening practices: the &quot;question-mark&quot; email.</p><ul class="op-related-articles">	<li><a href="https://news.abs-cbn.com/business/02/03/21/jeff-bezos-to-step-down-as-ceo-of-amazon-this-year">Jeff Bezos to step down as CEO of Amazon this year</a></li></ul><p>Bezos, whose email address is public, receives customer complaints that he then forwards to a relevant executive whose team is responsible for fixing the problem. Sometimes landing overnight, these emails from the world&#x27;s second-richest person had no salutation, no commentary or thank you - just a single question mark.</p><p>Or worse, said one former manager.</p><p>&quot;&#x27;This can&#x27;t be true&#x27; was a bad one. &#x27;Fix this&#x27; was another,&quot; the manager said on condition of anonymity. &quot;By the morning, I better have a damn good resolution to whatever this is.&quot;</p><p>Amazon said Bezos sent question-mark emails occasionally to manage the volume of customer messages he received.</p><p>It was an effective tool: efficient for Bezos - who juggled oversight of retail, technology, media and space businesses - and motivating for employees who feared for their jobs, the former manager said.</p><p>Bezos will step back from the company he founded 27 years ago and become executive chairman this summer, Amazon said Tuesday.</p><p>Some recall the practice with nostalgia. Sean Scott, a vice president of autonomous delivery who recently left Amazon after nearly 15 years, said working with Bezos was rewarding but stressful.</p><p>&quot;Meetings with Jeff were always an unbelievable amount of work in prep during the lead up (as were the ? emails) but the dialog and the Q&amp;A during the meeting would remain with the team forever,&quot; he said in a LinkedIn post Tuesday.</p><p>No one can predict how incoming CEO Andy Jassy will govern in his boss&#x27; shoes. The cloud computing head cares just as much about fixing customers&#x27; problems.</p><ul class="op-related-articles">	<li><a href="https://news.abs-cbn.com/business/08/27/20/jeff-bezos-becomes-first-man-worth-over-200-billion-forbes">Jeff Bezos becomes first man worth over $200 billion: Forbes</a></li></ul><p>But three executives who worked with him said the single question mark is not his style.</p><div><em>(Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Lisa Shumaker)</em></div><figure class="op-interactive"><iframe height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/39TUSzy_-DU?enablejsapi=1" width="560"></iframe></figure><div class="iwantbar">Watch more in <a href="//www.iwantv.com.ph/">iWantv</a> or <a href="//tfc.tv/">TFC.tv</a></div>

<p>For staff at Amazon.com Inc, the departure of CEO Jeff Bezos may spell the end of one of the company's unusual and, for some managers, frightening practices: the "question-mark" email.</p>

For staff at Amazon.com Inc, the departure of CEO Jeff Bezos may spell the end of one of the company's unusual and, for some managers, frightening practices: the "question-mark" email.

With Bezos out as Amazon CEO, is this the end of his ominous question-mark emails?

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With Bezos out as Amazon CEO, is this the end of his ominous question-mark emails?

Jeffrey Dastin,

Reuters

Published Feb 04, 2021 06:01 AM PHT

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