Kristi Coulter, a former Amazon veteran and author of "Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career," shares her gripping insights on Amazon's intense culture and leadership dynamics. She discusses the paranoia that grips employees and the difficulties of career transitions within the company. Kristi reveals her personal struggles and the emotional toll of Amazon’s high-pressure environment, while candidly reflecting on what she wished she could have articulated during her departure.
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insights INSIGHT
Amazon's Identity
Amazon is now more of an amorphous organism than a structured organization.
It aims to create an ecosystem where customers can live entirely within.
insights INSIGHT
Amazon's Forward Thinking
Amazon's leadership thinks several steps ahead.
They focus on long-term goals that are not always immediately apparent to employees.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Drones on 60 Minutes
Coulter learned about Amazon's drone delivery program on 60 Minutes like the general public.
This highlights the secrecy and forward-thinking nature of Amazon's leadership.
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Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career
Christy Coulter
Always Day One
Alex Kantrowitz
In 'Always Day One,' Alex Kantrowitz explores the concept of 'Day One' as coined by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, which means continuously inventing and acting like a startup, even for large companies. The book is based on 130 interviews with insiders, from top executives like Mark Zuckerberg to hourly workers, and delves into the cultures, technologies, and processes that enable these tech giants to maintain their dominance. Kantrowitz emphasizes the importance of a 'Day One' mindset, where companies prioritize reinvention over tradition and collaboration over ownership, and how this approach helps them stay ahead of competitors and avoid the pitfalls of 'Day Two,' which Bezos describes as 'stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by excruciating, painful decline, followed by death.'
Kristi Coulter worked at Amazon for twelve years and is the author of the new book, Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career. She joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the state of Amazon today: What is it? Who should be leading it? Where's the culture going? Then, she discusses her experience at the company, which she details in depth in the book. We talk about the paranoia within the company, the difficulty Amazon employees have switching jobs, why she stayed, and everything she wishes could've said at the exit interview that never happened.
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