Opinion
Coulter: Andy Jassy lacks Bezos's manic inventive spark
“I think he's super smart. I actually think he has more emotional intelligence than, well, than Jeff did, or at least that he's willing to show, you know, more empathy. But I don't see that spark of almost manic Inventiveness in him. You know, he always struck …”
Opinion
Coulter: Amazon's confusing UX was caused by under-resourcing, not malice
“Amazon, in my experience, is also vastly under-resourced when it came to designers and UX writers, and I found confusing navigation and confusing language all over the website during my tenure. That mostly happened because they had, you know, like coders or pr…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Coulter: Multimillionaire Amazon executives work through the night out of fear
“I can tell you that Amazon, these people who are worth tens or scores of millions of dollars are working insanely hard. You know, they're emailing at four in the morning and they're working all night. These people are crazily driven. And the ones I got close e…”
Opinion
Coulter: Flexport's executive purge was about eradicating the 'Amazon vibe'
“It felt like, oh, it's not just Dave that they're getting rid of because Ryan Peterson wants to come back.
They're trying to get rid of a whole vibe.
My thought was like, they just want this Amazon vibe out of there.”
Opinion
Coulter: Amazon's shopping experience is degrading under Andy Jassy
“What I'm concerned about is that I see a lot of attention to brass tacks, you know, Andy Jassy sweet spot kind of stuff, but like the shopping experience is, in my experience, it's degrading, you know, the product pages are hard to navigate. There's more and m…”
Opinion
Coulter: Jeff Wilke would have been the ideal Amazon CEO successor
“I was really surprised that Jeff Wilkie was not the successor. 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 exper…”
Opinion
Coulter: Bezos picked a CEO for a bygone world
“I think it's possible that Jeff picked a CEO for a world that doesn't really exist anymore.”
Opinion
Coulter: Amazon's corporate culture makes overachievement impossible
“It attracts people who are used to just kicking ass at whatever they do and overachieving and then makes it impossible to overachieve. Like you're never really good enough for Amazon.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Coulter: Ex-Amazonians often flame out at other companies and boomerang back
“I've seen a lot of Amazon people leave Amazon, go elsewhere, and then either flame out or just not love it and leave of their own accord.
a lot of, you know, jumping around, a lot of boomeranging back to Amazon.”
Opinion
Coulter: Amazon lost its scrappiness to bureaucratic bloat
“Got to the point where, you know, to get the VP review, you needed to move forward. You'd have to reschedule a meeting six times and it could get pushed out weeks and everything slowed down and there were many more layers and, you know, it's not the kind of sc…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Coulter: It is possible that Jeff Bezos returns to run Amazon
“I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibility. I, he's still on the board, of course, I could see him coming back. I don't think it's going to be like a Ryan Peterson scenario where he comes back and it's like, get out of here, Andy Jassy and take your tea…”
Assertion Supported
Coulter: Average employee tenure at Amazon is now under two years
“The tenure, the average tenure is less than two years now.”
Insight
Coulter: Companies want Amazon's DNA but not its aggressive culture
“I think that people, when they bring in Amazonians, they often do it because they do want some of that Amazon DNA in their company, but it doesn't mean they want to be, like, waterboarded with it, you know.
You just arrive and change everything.
It's more like…”
Assertion Supported
Coulter: Amazon flags and manually reviews accounts for excessive returns
“There's definitely like, you get flagged and there's like, I think there's special people who review things and I don't know what the limit is, but yeah, absolutely.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Coulter: Anticipated consumer backlash over Amazon Go surveillance never materialized
“And so when we built Amazon Go, my mind was full of every vicious fear people could have. You know, like, what if they poison our food? Amazon doesn't want us to cook at home anymore. And we prepared for all these eventualities. I mean, I wrote FAQs for the wo…”
Assertion Supported
Coulter: Amazon Prime no longer guarantees two-day delivery
“Prime used to just mean two-day shipping, and now it means all kinds of things, but not necessarily two-day shipping.”
Kristi Coulter