Ethan Evans
Founder, Level Up. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
executivefounderhostauthoroperator@EthanEvansVP ↗LinkedIn ↗ethanevans.com ↗
During a 15-year career at Amazon, Evans rose to Vice President and led teams that developed Prime Video and the Amazon Appstore. Today, he operates the Level Up community and courses, coaching technology managers and senior leaders on career advancement and executive leadership.
2shows
2appearances
43statements
2resolved
1supported
0contradicted
50%fully supported
2said about them ↓ Everything Ethan Evans said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Evans: Managers fail to develop employees because they prioritize own careers
“Lots of managers have great intentions to help their employees, but they get busy with their own lives, their own work, all the things they're focused on, and also their own career. The manager is often busy thinking about Their own needs. And so they just, th…”
Evans: Managing up evolves from asking for tasks to solving problems independently
“Over time you go from asking your manager, how can I help? To suggesting to your manager, these are some things I see that seem like they need to be done. Would you like me to do them? To just seeing what needs to be done and sort of keeping your leader in the…”
Evans: Autonomous decision-making requires established trust and alignment with leadership
“A huge part of career success is how much trust you have, mutual respect with your leadership. When they get to, they're confident that you're going to make the right decisions, they're confident to let you go. But yeah, you know, when you're brand new or you'…”
Evans: Managers assume direct reports either stay put or want management
“Managers often fall into the trap. They chose to become managers. So they assume one of two things about you. They either assume that you want to keep doing exactly what you're doing forever. Just maybe make a little more money. So you're an artist. You want t…”
Evans: Advancing beyond Senior Manager requires shifting from execution to influence
“The difference between a senior manager and a director is kind of how you lead and the work you're doing. And you can get as far as senior manager by being really strong in your function and being really good at getting things done. As a director, it becomes m…”
Evans: Managers have a selfish incentive to promote capable direct reports
“I have selfish motivation to promote you. A lot of people think like, oh, the boss is there holding me down. Well, maybe some bosses are, but why wouldn't I want stronger, more capable direct reports? Why wouldn't I want people under me who can do more of my j…”
Evans: The most straightforward way to invent is combining existing things
“And the most Straightforward way to invent is not to somehow come up with something completely new, but instead to put together two things that exist.”
Evans predicts Amazon will ultimately adopt his truck-based drone delivery patent
“You know, I'm waiting for the, my idea to become part of Amazon's drone delivery system, but I think ultimately it will.”
Evans: Senior job candidates fail by describing activities instead of business impact
“Beyond those cosmetics, the biggest thing I see particularly higher levels Is people talk about what they have done, but not why it mattered. They don't talk about the impact.”
Evans: In-person presence diffuses executive anger compared to email
“Angry emails are easy. Stitting three feet from someone and being angry with them face to face is hard.”
Evans: You can earn executive promotions even after massive public blunders
“What I want people to understand is if I can get away with publicly failing One of the richest and most famous inventors on earth, and then get promoted and finish my career at Amazon very successfully, you can dig out of any hole. You just have to manage it r…”
Evans authored Amazon's rule: an owner never says that's not my job
“And I propose these six words, which are an owner never says that's not my job. Maybe that's seven words. So. I propose this specific language as a part of it. And we sent off this draft and months go by, we hear nothing. And then one day the leadership princi…”
Evans: Speed is essential because lucky early-moving competitors will beat you
“In a competitive environment, being right is good, but being quick is necessary because if there are 10 startups working on an idea, some of them will gamble and they'll make bad gambles and they'll go out of business. But some of them will gamble and make an …”
Evans: Survey of thousands of managers shows unsolicited help is extremely rare
“I've surveyed thousands of managers by having them raise their hands and ask them, how often does someone on your team offer you help? ... They all say the same things. Number one, it's so rare to be asked. Number two, it makes an immediate impression on me. A…”
Evans: Amazon's Initial Prime Video Team Was Only Seven People
“Like my first team that built this version of prime video that failed at the demo was only seven people.”
Evans: Bezos operated with strategic patience and tactical impatience
“He often said we need to be strategically patient, but tactically impatient. And what he meant by that was really valuable things take time to build.”
Evans: Bezos intentionally spoke last to avoid anchoring meeting decisions
“The, another thing I learned from Jeff, he always spoke last because he realized very quickly that even though he wanted strong leaders who would disagree with him, once the great Jeff Bezos says, I like this idea, Everyone else is more or less going to line u…”
Evans: Amazon's on-demand t-shirt printing business started as a six-page memo
“One of the businesses I helped start was our t-shirt printing business. So I had to justify like, hey, we've never printed t-shirts before. Why is this a good idea? And why should we do it? And what's going to be the consequences? And three of us worked togeth…”
Evans: Amazon engineer rose from SDE II to Director in eight years
“One of my best people I ever worked with joined my team at Amazon as what we would call an SDE two, which in Amazon is a level five employee. He grew with me kind of following this process to a senior engineer. Then he switched to management and ran a small te…”
The other half of the tape: Ethan Evans's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 2 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Lenny Rachitsky 2
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2025 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Ethan's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 BIGDEALLEDGER | Founder, Level Up | 1 | 22 | 50% 1/2 | full record on BigDeal → |
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Founder, Level Up | 1 | 21 | — | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |