What are Amazon's S-Team goals and how does Steve Huynh use them to explain visibility?

Steve Huynh describes S-Team goals as prioritized goals set each year by Amazon senior VPs who report to the CEO, usually six to 12 per org, covering areas like customer adoption, revenue, efficiency and operations. Because everyone has already agreed they matter, work that moves them gets attention naturally. Huynh advises engineers who cannot touch S-Team goals to tie their work to team or skip-level manager goals, and to ask their manager which priorities matter most this quarter.

• Huynh's example reframes an on-prem to cloud migration as a cost saving that frees staff for other business problems.
• Huynh says helping a goal go from missing a deadline to on time is a clear, visible contribution.
• Huynh warns this is double-edged, but says proactive communicators are seen as messengers rather than the cause of a slip.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on A Life Engineered (2026-10-12). Read the whole episode summary →

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