The Exchanges

Q there. I mean, having read your, your, a few chapters about, uh, moments where proposals that you made didn't exactly go well. There was, I think this, uh, manager, Mitch, was that his name? Sort of dresses you down in the middle of, uh, uh, a review of a project proposal. Can you, I mean, it's a pretty hard scene. So can you, can you share like what happened there?

A Yeah. I had a proposal to make over, um, Um, the merchandiser role at Amazon, so kind of one of the main retail roles, and I had sold it to this other group of VPs and SVPs, including Jeff Wilkie, and, you know, they had questions and quibbles, of course, but we're on board, like, great work, do this. I got thanked even, and I had to sell it to this other senior VP, and he read their proposal, kind of pushed back his chair, and we said, oh, so what do you think? And he said, well, it's stupid. And I said, oh, you know, like I've got my game face on. Can you tell me more? Can you give me more feedback? It's stupid. And, you know, we said, well, we'd love to know more because, you know, like Jeff Wilkie and the other VPs were really into it. They didn't read it. I mean, it was just this kind of like almost childish refusal to acknowledge either that there was any benefit to the proposal or that I was a person. Um, he just said, well, they lied. They didn't read it. If they said they liked it, that was a lie. And eventually he ended up calling me stupid, um, which to me was really crossing a line. Like it's bad enough to call a document stupid, but, um, to call a person stupid is like, just avoid that, you know, like that's my business advice. And it was a shocking experience to me because in my mind, the job of a senior leader at a company like that is largely to teach. To teach,…

AI assessment note: “I had a proposal to make over, um, Um, the merchandiser role at Amazon”

Q of these stories and I read some of these stories in the book and like, I'm just thinking, man, if I'm like in a, in a big meeting with an executive and the person turns to me and calls me stupid, I'm like giving my two weeks notice right there and then. So, so what made you stay? What good did you see inside Amazon's culture that, that you appreciated?

A Yeah. I think the biggest reason I stayed, well, first of all, the money cannot be overstated. Like, I came from a small town in the, you know, Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I was making, you know, like, 60,000 dollars a year and living quite well on it. And if in Seattle, the stock price is going nuts. I was, I was overpaid for the market for a lot of my time at Amazon. Um, but you know, it's not, it's not only money. I was never bored a day in my life at Amazon. And I think that's really what it comes down to. I had gotten, I had a very nice, cozy, safe job in Michigan. That I was desperately bored at. I couldn't find new things for myself to do. I kept trying to get a, find a new role and the company wasn't big enough to accommodate it. Amazon would push me as far as I wanted to be pushed. Um, I got to write my own job descriptions at Amazon a couple of times. And when I would hit the wall in one area, you know, just burn out or get called stupid by my SVP and decide to go. There'd be something new. You know, I got to go work in publishing at a high level. I got to work on Amazon Go. You don't just find this everywhere you look. And I found that exhilarating. I mean, publishing, which is an industry I know something about, um, generally you have to start when you're 21. You know, you start as an editorial assistant. You have six roommates. Um, I was 41 when I got a job, a Runni…

AI assessment note: “I think the biggest reason I stayed, well, first of all, the money”

Q And it's like how we should approach this. Like, this is what the product will look like. Or if we hit a fork in the road, we will opt for X way or what, what exactly are these things?

A Yeah, it could be like, this is what the product will look like. Or it could be like, if we, if we ever have to decide between speed and flexibility, we will opt for speed. Yeah. You decide in advance. They Amazon also does these internal Uh, what they call a working backwards document, which is an internal press release and FAQ. Um, that's basically you write the press release. You want to be able to share with the world someday and you write it and write it and write it until you all agree that this thing you want to build is actually solving the right customer problem. Um, I have spent months having internal press releases reviewed before we all agree that This is what we want to build. And again, it's a huge investment up front. It can drive you crazy. Uh, junior people are just in shock when they go through this for the first time or new people because it's so unusual, but it really forces thinking, um, up front, which saves you thinking downstream. And then the last thing I would say is having people read written documents in a meeting rather than having a PowerPoint culture. Um, is great. It's a ton of work. I do think it gets abused some, but the first half of every meeting is everyone sitting there and reading the same words and same paper. And so you're all on the same page. Nobody's getting ahead of themselves. No one's calling out something about that, you know, is …

AI assessment note: “Or it could be like, if we ever have to decide between speed and flexibility”

Q in your tenure had become just like super jacked arms and head bigger than it was when you'd first met him. And now he has, you know, this big yacht with His partner carved into the front of it. Um, so tell me a little bit from like your perspective, like how, how do you see the evolution of Bezos? And, uh, does he come back ever? Does he boomerang?

A Yeah. It's fascinating. Like when I met Jeff, you know, he was just this guy and he would come and he ate pirates booty a lot, you know, that like freeze dried low carb cheese thing. And he was wearing his khakis and, and everything. And, um, I remember, so Jeff has these people called shadows who are basically his technical advisors. It's, you follow him around and basically act as his second brain. And there was a guy who always was with Jeff in early meetings I had with him and he never talked. He just sat there. And I remember thinking, I bet that's his bodyguard, you know, cause the guy was kind of muscular and I was like, that's gotta be his bodyguard. And like, no, he didn't have bodyguards in meetings at that time. Um, It was this guy named Jim Atkins, who was, I think probably a senior VP in retail now, and he was Jeff Shadow. Um, by the time I left Amazon, Jeff definitely had, there weren't bodyguards in the room with him, but there were men sort of hovering around, you know, in the hallways outside. Um, lots more security. I mean, he has four children. I have to assume they faced Incredible risks, you know, um, in terms of kidnapping and things like that. He was super checked. Um, he acted the same. It, it's very disarming because he kind of is a goofy guy. He's really smart. He's to me, it was always quite pleasant. Um, but he's terrifying. I mean, it's, it's terrif…

AI assessment note: “when I met Jeff, you know, he was just this guy”

Q it's obvious it's like make shipping quicker or, you know, uh, you worked on for instance, making the packaging less frustrating. So, um, what, when, when I'm trying to get in the mind of Amazon leadership, what do you think they're thinking of when they think of, okay, this should be our next step. Like, how do they even think about that one? It is like you say, an organism.

A Yeah, I think that, so what I found in my time at Amazon was that Amazon, you know, senior leadership was always like three steps ahead of me, you know, so the drones, for instance, like I found out about the drones on 60 minutes along with everyone else. Um, that clearly didn't happen. I think Amazon is moving to a place where I do think they would like to take over. I mean, maybe not intent in so many words, but To be the main delivery source for America, you know, to be the mail system. Um, I, I see it moving more and more in that kind of ops focused way. There seems to be less and less attention to the retail side of things in terms of customers sort of figuring out what they want. Um, and more and more on just, well, we've got one of everything and we'll get something to you very, very quickly. I mean, when I think about like the, the, The airplanes and the whole last mile idea. Um, it's all about Amazon closing that gap between what you want and any, you know, the time it takes you to get it. So if I had to speculate, I mean, that's kind of it, but I've been wrong a lot about Amazon too.

AI assessment note: “To be the main delivery source for America, you know, to be the mail system.”

Q also overbuilt and sort of left it itself in like a precarious logistics and operational place. And to get out of that, a leader like Wilkie seems like, you know, he would be, who ran retail seems like he would be the right CEO for Amazon, yet they went with Jassy and I'm kind of curious, you know, now looking back, do you think that that was the right choice?

A Yeah, it's, it's hard to say. I think I told you at the time I was like, I don't know. Um, the circumstances have been so bizarre that in some ways I kind of want to see Jassy lead lead for another year before I have a sense of it. I will say I was really surprised that Jeff Wilkie was not the successor. Um, in my mind, he was, he would have been perfect. He had all that hardcore logistics and retail knowledge, and he also kind of got the soft stuff in a way that very few Amazon leaders did in my experience. Um, He sort of understood why editorial mattered. He understood why you didn't want to sound stupid when talking to customers. He kind of got all that. So I was pretty shocked. Um, and I think it's possible. I think it's possible that Jeff picked a CEO for a world that doesn't really exist anymore. Um, I was also surprised to learn just the other day that Dave Clark had been in the running. I had somehow, yeah, I had not really thought about that. And so was it Flexport that he just left?

AI assessment note: “in my mind, he was, he would have been perfect.”