What's weird is making interview candidates memorize these and come up with a canned performative story for each one.
I realized pretty quickly with their followup questions that there was no point in answering truthfully with your real reasoning and thought process. I think you're much better off making up a story that perfectly covers the principle they're asking about, so they can take it and just put it down directly on their form. It felt like they had leetcodified non-coding interview questions.
But simply your willingness to memorize and recite them.
And lie (ie: come up with fake stories to highlight how you followed the principles in the past). A great trait to look for in a future teammate.
It was quite memorable in a bad way, it felt very unwelcoming and mechanical. I even wondered during the interview if I was actually talking to a human being or to a very elaborate AI + deep fake.
Nonetheless, their leadership principles are bookmarked for later reuse. They're very good general purpose guidance.
I've also had similar experiences talking to people at Amazon. I can associate most of the big tech companies with various negative traits (and some positive ones too), but Amazon is the only one where a significant number of the people seemed to be inhabitants of the uncanny valley. One ex-amazonian I know gradually seemed to 'de-program' over about 3 years after he left.
Not being terribly familiar with the internal culture, I'm not sure what causes it, but perhaps it's what naturally happens if you're the kind of person to succeed at a company that wishes that humans were as predictable as automated processes.