If I told you: 'Hey, the sky is blue,' you
would normally say: 'Yeah, the sky is blue. 
the sky has always been blue.' At Amazon,
however, if you say that the sky is blue,
others will ask you: 'Why is the sky blue?’. Then
you should respond with: 'The sky is blue,
because the molecules in the air, scatter
the blue spectrum of the sunlight more than
they scatter the red spectrum.’ Then you
will hear another question: 'Why is that?'.
And you would have to respond with: 'Because the
blue spectrum of the light travels in shorter
wavelengths.’ Then, you guessed it, a third
follow-up question's going to be: 'Why does
it travel in shorter wavelengths?’ on and
on, until you reach down to the atomic level
of why things are the way they are.
I’m Nick Dimitrov, welcome. You are listening
to Episode 4 of the Amazon Bound podcast.
In this episode, we will continue to prepare
you to interview well with Amazon. In our
last podcast we talked about Amazon’s Business.
In this current episode, we will take on Amazon’s
Culture.
I am excited to get going, but before I say
another word, I should first announce the
quiz winners from our last episode. We received
23 (believe it or not) correct responses to
the Amazon Business quiz. These responses
came from a total of 6 countries, including
awesome places like Poland and India, among
others. Thank you so much to everyone who
took the time to respond – we really appreciate
it.
Since we only had 5 free lifetime access passes
to “The Essential Course to Prepare for
the Amazon Interview,” to give out, we chose
the first five from the 23 total correct responses
we received. And here are the lucky winners.
In no particular order:
Winner #1 is James from Palo Alto, CA; Winner
#2 is Josh from Needham, MA; Winner #3 is
Clara, also from Needham, MA – I guess we
are big in Needham :); Winner #4 is Nagarajan
(I hope I didn’t mispronounce the name,)
from Calgary, Canada; and Winner #5 is Adam,
from Seattle WA. To these five winners: James,
Clara, Josh, Nagarajan, and Adam – you guys
should have received an email with the access
credentials to the course. Congratulations.
So – that is the story with our first quiz.
Moving on - our second brand new quiz will
open at the end of this episode. The award
for the second quiz will be the ebook: “Nine
Proven Do-s and Don’ts for the Amazon interview”
That’s an ebook guide which covers 9 tactical
recommendations of what to do and what not
to do when you interview with Amazon.
Ok – with these housekeeping items out of
the way, now, let’s jump into the heart
of things. In the previous Episode, we discussed
Amazon's business and in this current episode,
we'll talk about Amazon's culture. The purpose
of this episode, similarly to the previous
one, is to continue to give you contextual
know-how about Amazon, which, later on, you
will use to build your personal portfolio
of professional behavioral accomplishments.
OK, now we are finally ready to start. In
this episode, we will cover seven different
topics dedicated to Amazon’s culture: 1)
Amazon’s Day 1 Concept; 2) Amazon’s 14
Leadership Principles; 3) General overview
of Amazon’s culture; 4) Amazon’s org structure;
5) Amazon’s unique communication style;
6) Amazon’s reliance on data; and 7) Our
second quiz. Let’s get going.
Starting with Topic One: Amazon’s Day 1
Concept
It is Always Day 1, at Amazon. Before we start
talking about Amazon’s culture, it is useful
to explain what Amazon means when it says
"Day 1." Day 1 is such an integral part of
their culture that it bears spending time
with. 
Day 1 means that even though Amazon has achieved
so much in their life as a company so far,
it's still Day 1 on the Internet. The potential
of what is to come online still far exceeds
the accomplishments that Amazon or any other
company has recognized. In one of the recent
Amazon all-hands meetings with employees,
someone asked Bezos: “Jeff, what happens
when Day 1 ends? What does Day 2 look like?"
And the way Bezos answered this employee and
later posted in the Amazon’s shareholder
letter from that year was very foundational. Here
is Bezos’s verbatim response: "Day 2 is
stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed
by excruciating, painful decline. Followed
by death. And that is why it's always Day
1.”
That's how Amazon thinks. It's always Day
1. It's not OK to sit on your laurels. It's
not OK to be complacent. It's not OK to think
that we could relax, since the beginning is
now behind us and we're in this steady-state
mode of execution. Relaxing, and losing that
hunger and drive means that Day 2 has come
about and that also means the end of Amazon’s
culture as we know it. 
Even more importantly, in addition to defining
what Day 1 looks like versus Day 2, Bezos
also defined what are the four methods Amazon
uses to ensure it always stays in a Day 1
mode. 
The first method is to stay focused on customers. As
I mentioned earlier in one of our previous
podcast episodes, other companies are motivated
by focusing on competitors. Or focusing on
technology. Amazon always stays focused on
customers. That is the very foundation and
essence of who Amazon is. 
The second method is to focus on results,
not process. Obviously, you need process. You
cannot generate 200+ billion dollars in annual
revenue, based on good intentions only. Process
is needed but it should never happen at the
expense of results. It's never going to be
the case of: We do things this way because
we've always done them that way. Process
is here to service the achievement of results, not
the other way around. 
Look outside the company, is the third mechanism
Amazon uses to ensure it’s always Day 1.
It's very important to be aware of the external
reality that the company lives in. An example
here is Amazon's invention of Amazon Echo
and the Alexa voice technology. In 2014, when
Amazon launched the Fire Phone, Alexa and
Echo did not exist. Fire Phone was a failure
by any stretch. However, Fire Phone included
as a feature, the very first iteration of
the Alexa tech, and later it also gave rise
to the Amazon Echo line of products. Because,
again, Amazon course corrected, based on what
their customers told them they wanted to do.
Customers didn’t care about a 3D rendering
phone, with four corner cameras. Customers,
however, wanted an easier user-interface of
communicating with the devices around them. And
that's how looking outside the company enabled
Amazon to turn a failure which was Fire Phone
into a success like Alexa, which has now become
one of Amazon core flywheel businesses. 
And last but not least, the fourth, and maybe
the most important mechanism to ensure that
it's always Day 1 is to make quality decisions
quickly. There's a number of great companies
out there that make very quality decisions
but it takes them too long. Amazon is always
going to make decisions in the fastest way
possible. Amazon calls these decisions both
high-quality and high velocity decisions.
High-quality alone is not going to cut it,
you need the high-velocity factor as well
to pair with the high quality.
OK – this concludes Topic 1: Amazon’s
Day 1 Concept.
Let’s move on to Topic 2: Amazon’s Fourteen
Leadership Principles.
The Leadership Principles are the heart and
soul of Amazon. A lot has been written about
these principles, and I am not going to spend
too long on them here. If you are however
to learn one thing and one thing only about
Amazon – it’s these 14 Leadership Principles.
They are publicly listed on Amazon's website
and define everything that happens at the
company. They define how Amazon hires talent.
They define how Amazon promotes people. They
define what projects Amazon invests in, and
everything in between. Literally, I strongly
encourage you to learn the 14 leadership principles,
if you are applying for a job, at Amazon. The
first principle at the top of the list of
14 is "Customer Obsession". "Deliver Results"
is at the bottom of this list, and together
with Customer Obsession the two serve as bookmarks
of all the other principles, which are just
as important but Customer Obsession and Deliver
Results, really are at the very heart of Amazon’s
existence. 
Very quickly, I'm going to run through the
14 principles to just let you hear them, and
again I, encourage you to spend time studying
them.  Customer Obsession is the first one,
then it’s Ownership, Invent and Simplify, Right
A Lot, Learn And Be Curious, Hire And Develop
The Best, Insist On High Standards, Think
Big, Bias For Action, Frugality, Earn Trust, Dive
Deep, Have Backbone, and finally Deliver Results.
When Amazon hires you, and you start your
first day there, it almost feels like a prank
when you walk down the hallways and you hear
people talk. They use exactly these leadership
principles in discussing product decisions
and everything else really. And unlike a lot
of other companies, where mission statements
and slogans are plastered on the walls, or
put on a website and nobody knows them, let
alone follows them, at Amazon it is exactly
the opposite. 
The Leadership Principles are the foundation
of the Amazon culture. The micro cultures
at the company tend to vary from one team
to another, but what doesn't vary is the utmost
reliance on Amazon's Leadership Principles
in anything that Amazon does. And you will
have to prepare for your behavioral Amazon
interviews very heavily with these Principles
in mind. And really distill the Leadership
Principles into your own professional accomplishments,
to-date. 
OK – this precludes Topic 2: Amazon’s
Leadership Principles.
Let’s move on to Topic 3: An overview of
Amazon’s Culture.
It's hard to try to synthesize Amazon’s
culture in a few minutes, but I’ll attempt
to outline some key concepts for you. Amazon
is focused on output not input. At Amazon,
nobody cares how hard you work. Nobody cares
how late you stay. Everybody cares about
your results.
It's all about the results, not about optics. It's
not about if you wait to leave your desk only
after your boss has left for the day. It's
not about if you send emails late at night. None
of that is important. What matters is the
volume and significance of your output. If
your output is more significant than say my
output, then you are going to get higher rewards
and more stock than I would. It’s that simple.
The best Amazonians deliver both short-term
and long-term output. Short-term output means
quick wins, something you accomplish in a
very short amount of time. Get that quick
win, make the quick iteration, move forward.
Long-term output, on the other hand, is output, which
helps innovate on behalf of customers over
the long run. Over years, over multiple quarters. The
most successful Amazonians are good at both.
Both short-term output and long-term output
are equally important. 
The final nuance of output, at Amazon, is
that you deliver output in a very self-service
and very scrappy way. In the example I gave
you in one of our earlier episodes, when I
was presenting a proposed games strategy to
Jeff Bezos, I did not have the luxury of
using consultants for that presentation. I
did not have the luxury of using a Wall Street
Journal subscription or any of those other
second-hand research proxies that large companies
like to use. Instead, it was up to me to become
a subject-matter expert in what I did, I could
use any of my prior knowledge 
as long as it wasn’t confidential and as
long as I backed it with data. I could also
use any number of other services I could find
or think of. It was up to me and my ingenuity
and entrepreneurship spirit, to become credible
and learn my craft. And not just to become
a regular subject matter expert, but understand
and own the work so deeply, that I could go
to Amazon’s CEO himself and convince him
that my way was the right approach. 
At Amazon, you are not limited to just presenting
a number of recommendations to your senior
leadership. In Amazon's culture, you own the
decision. You are empowered not just to present
the options but to push hard for the recommendation
you believe is the best. You have to, of course,
illustrate your work and you must use data.
You're going to have to be specific. You're
going to have to be unbiased. You're going
to have to demonstrate why this is an important
problem to solve. You are going to have to
present all options you’ve considered and
then push for the best one, in your view.
Why is that option the best? What are the
resources you need to accomplish the option? And
then, after all of that, you look at that
leader in the eye and ask them: "Let's go. Do
you have any questions? Is anything unclear? Do
you have any edits that you'd like to make?
If you don’t - let's go.” It's very different. It's
a very different culture from a lot of other
places where you would just present options
and then defer the decision-making process
to someone else.
OK. One last thing about Amazon’s culture
I should talk about is that Amazon has a very
dog-friendly culture.  If you want to work
for Amazon and you don't like dogs, you're
out of luck. There are a lot of dogs there.
If you have a dog, everyone would encourage
you to bring your dog to work. If you don't
have a dog, tough luck – you’ll start
liking dogs.
OK – this finished Topic 3: An overview
of Amazon’s culture.
Moving on to Topic 4: Amazon’s org structure.
The organizational structure at Amazon is
quite flat.  At the bottom of the hierarchy,
you have Level 3 and Level 4 employees. The
abbreviation is L3 and L4. Those are entry-level
folks. Those are workers in fulfillment centers,
admins, so on and so forth. Above them are
the L5 employees. Those are individual contributors
or managers of entry-level people. The L6
employees come next. Those are senior-level
individual contributors or managers of more
senior people. It's important to mention that
L5 and L6 are the two levels in the organization,
which represent Amazon’s executional muscle. The
L5s and L6s are the employees who make things
happen and move the company forward. 
Above them are the L7 employees. They are
Principals or senior managers of even more
senior people. I was a Principal during my
Amazon career. The L8 employees are next
– they are Directors. Again, even more senior
folks, who are managing entire businesses.
L8s at Amazon are equivalent to GM or VP
title at almost any other company. There's
also an interesting nuance to mention here. Amazon
is good at two things and bad at two other
things. The two things Amazon is good at
are: one, Amazon is great at giving you awesome
work that is challenging and fun and that's
going to grow you. And two Amazon is great
at rewarding its employees with stock grants,
if you deliver good output.
The two things that Amazon is bad at, are:
one - titles. As you can see the titles at
the company are not very flashy. And two,
Amazon is generally not good at promotions.
Promotions are hard to come by, because there
are not very many levels to promote people
across. Speaking of hard promotions to come
by, the next level after the Level 8 Director
level is Level 10. That's the VP level. That's
where the truly senior Amazon leaders are:
people who run large internal organizations
and business units. And the interesting
point, which you might have noticed already,
is that a promotion from a Level 8 to a Level
10 requires a double jump. There is no Level
9, at Amazon. Jumping from a Level 8 to a
Level 10 requires a double promotion, because
the difference in responsibilities is that
significant. 
and – finally, at the top of the Amazon
organization are the Level 11s - Amazon’s
senior VPs and CEOs. There are roughly 20
L11 individuals in total, across the entire
company. And really really finally, Jeff
Bezos is Level 12, all by himself, at the
very top.
So, to summarize Amazon’s org structure,
it’s important to understand how little
distance there is between the L5 and L6 employees,
who are the executional Amazon muscle, and
the L8 / L10 employees, who are really the
strategic leaders defining the strategy and
move the company forward. 
Of course, the L11s and L12s are at the very
top, but that’s a very small group of people
(about 20ish individuals) who determine the very
long-term strategy and direction for the company.
OK – this finished Topic 4: Amazon’s organizational
structure.
Moving on to Topic 5: Amazon’s unique communication
style.
At Amazon, when you want to convince anyone
of anything, you write a narrative (an up-to-six-pages-long
essay.) In meetings, people spend the first
few minutes in complete silence to read these
narratives. PowerPoint slides are not allowed,
because Amazonians believe that when making
an argument, bullet-points are hand-wavy and
insufficient. PowerPoint is usually OK when
communicating with customers or with the rest
of the world. But not OK for internal business.
Words, at Amazon, are so powerful because
they are the medium that, in Amazon’s view,
can adequately force the healthy conflict
required to make high-quality/high-velocity
decisions. Amazon encourages healthy conflict
and, as such, it draws a clear distinction
between what they call Consensus Building
and Truth Seeking. For example, Consensus
Building means that if I looked at the ceiling
now, in the room that I’m in, and then asked
you: 'Hey. Look at this ceiling, I think it’s
12 feet high. How high do you think it is?'
And then you responded with “No, it looks
more like 11-feet high to me.” To which
I would then say: ok, let's split the difference.
Let's call it 11.5 feet high and be done.’ 
That is Consensus Building. And that is precisely
what Amazon dislikes. Amazon does not reach
decisions in that fashion. Instead, Amazon
encourages Truth Seeking. Truth Seeking means,
that if I said: 'Hey. I think this ceiling
is 12 feet high,’ for one of you to say:
'Well, I'm not really sure, Nick' to grab
a measuring stick, jump on a table, actually
measure the height of the ceiling, then come
down and tell me: 'You know what Nick, the
ceiling is 11.67 feet high. And that's the
truth.’ And you would do so not to make
me look bad, or to one-up me. You would do
so because you're focused on the truth, and
the truth should always trump Consensus Building. That's
a very typical Amazon trait.
Let me end the topic of Amazon’s unique
communication style with an example from one
of the New Hire Orientation sessions I facilitated.
During the Orientation, I was telling the
new Amazonians how words mattered and how
Amazon’s mission statement of being Earth’s
most customer centric company illustrated
that. And I was encouraging them to challenge
how things were done, at Amazon. Then, later
in the day, I had moved to a different topic,
discussing Amazon’s financials. I was talking
about Amazon’s worldwide revenue and was
saying how Amazon’s worldwide revenues were
such and such billions….when one of the
new hires interrupted me with: “If the word
‘world’ is not a clear-enough qualifier
in Amazon’s mission statement, why do you
use the word ‘worldwide’ when you talk
about Amazon’s revenues, instead of the
word ‘Earth-wide’?”
I stopped and turned to this new Amazon employee.
Then, I asked her to tell everyone what her
name was and to stand, so everyone could see
her. Then, I gave her a standing ovation.
She was 100% right. And Amazon had made a
really good hire.
OK – this covers Topic 5: Amazon’s unique
communication style.
Moving on to Topic 6: Amazon’s reliance
on data.
At Amazon, Data wins all wars. Amazon runs
the company entirely based on data. it is
the backbone of every decision Amazon makes.
Diving deep to collect the data and then analyze
the data is a skill that all employees are encouraged
to have. 
It's not just the Level 5s and Level 6s who
are diving deep to do work. It's the VPs
who dive and collect data as well. Because,
again, diving deep and data gives you the
ammo to make any argument. Nobody's going
to believe what you say just because you're
a VP. They're going to look at your data.
They're going to evaluate the facts you use
to demonstrate your point. That's why data
is revered at Amazon. 
What happens though, you might ask, if the
product Amazon is working on is so brand new
that there's not enough data? 
In this case, Amazon would resort to what
they call "anecdotes.” They would go out
and interview customers. Amazon would literally
find out what customers think and observe
their behavior. And even if there is not
enough data around that, to turn it into a
fact, Amazon would use the available anecdotes,
build an action plan based on these anecdotes,
run a bunch of AB tests, iterate, and move
fast. And they would collect those facts in
the process. 
Sometimes, this excessive reliance on data
could become tiring, because once and again
it's kind of convenient to have a common-sense
foundation that most people would agree with. For
instance, if I told you: 'Hey, the sky is
blue,' you would normally respond with: 'Yeah,
the sky is blue. That makes sense, the sky
has always been blue.' At Amazon, however,
if you assert that the sky is blue, others
will ask you: 'Why is the sky blue?’. And
your reply should be: 'The sky is blue, because
the molecules in the air, scatter the blue
spectrum of the sunlight more than they scatter
the red spectrum in the sunlight.’ Then
the Amazonians would ask you again: 'Why is
that?'. And you would have to respond: 'Well,
because the blue spectrum of the light travels
in shorter wavelengths.’ Then, you guessed
it, a new follow-up question's going to be:
'Why does it travel in shorter wavelengths?’ 
On and on, Amazon drills down until they reach
the very atomic components of why things are
the way they are. And then if you connect
the dots further, they drill down until they
understand super deeply, what would please
the customer and what would delight customer.
OK – this covers Topic 6: Amazon’s reliance
on data.
Let’s move on to our final Topic, Topic
7: The Amazon Culture Quiz
We have published the full quiz on our website
https://amazonbound.today/podcast, go check
it out and please email us your responses
to: hello@amazonbound.today. As usual, I am
not going to read the full quiz, on the podcast,
but I will give you the first question here“What
is one of the four methods which Amazon uses
to keep its culture in a Day 1 mode?”
The quiz has a total of five questions. If
you’d like, go to the website to find out
what they are, email us with your responses,
and then, at the beginning of our next episode,
we will award the first five of you who emailed
us with correct answers, with a free copy
of the ebook “Nine Proven Dos and Don’t
for the Amazon Interview,” which is a $50
value for you guys. Completely for free. We
look forward to receiving your responses.
Alright, this covers Topic Seven: “The Amazon
Culture Quiz.”
And, this also wraps up this episode of our
podcast. As always, I hope this has been fun
for you.
I am Nick Dimitrov, your host.
Thanks for listening. I’d like to wish everyone
of you very Happy Holidays and very Happy
New Year. We’ll release our next episode
in early January 2019. In the interim, Please,
subscribe to our podcast and give us a review,
wherever you get your podcasts. See you soon.
