A Day as an Amazon Ops Manager

This is my personal account and is in no way the opinion of Amazon or its subsidiaries.

As Covid-19 hit and I watched my friends and neighbors struggling with isolation and fear, reliant on companies like Amazon to deliver everything from toilet paper and hand sanitizer to... well... clothing, shoes, protective masks, family movies, frozen pizza, children's cough syrup, notebooks, bike seats,... I had the realization that my Amazon Prime membership was providing me and millions of other American families the things we needed most right now. I'd always loved Amazon both as a prime member and as a long-time shareholder, but I realized that in this time our country was reliant on them for more... and that I wanted to be a part of that. I had been growing a increasingly successful consulting business prior to Covid, but like so many that work went on hold when Covid hit. I was already helping my less able neighbors get the essentials they needed, but this role with Amazon provided an opportunity to help tens of thousands of my neighbors. I wanted to help. This was the job that could let me help. This was the day I went on their website and applied.

Yesterday marked the last day of my fifth week with the company. I have a lot to learn but have already learned a lot from this experience. Amazon's culture is unique. Their vernacular is different. Their expectations are high. Their scale is immense. Someone there told me early on: You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon you can't choose only two of the three.

I woke before my alarm at 4:45 AM, throwing on shorts, a t-shirt, and gym shoes before heading out the door with my laptop and two more cans of Diet Mountain Dew for my car as the sun rose at 5:30 AM. It was another beautiful Vegas sunrise as I drove the 15 minutes to work, planning in my head for the day to come.

At six, I was walking into my fulfillment center, a half-million square foot, four story building filled with a few hundred million dollars worth of robotics, state-of-the-art conveyor lines, picking, sorting, packing, and shipping lines, and millions of the products that my friends and neighbors need every day. I wore a mask like everyone else, walked through the thermal scanners like everyone else, went through security screening like everyone else, and kept my six+ foot distance like the few thousand others who entered this building every day. I scanned my emails, looked over the night team's recap and results, adjusted my plan to confirm 700 of my team working this shift, 3 packing stations down for upgrades, a few challenges with one of the many conveyor lines, and 38 first day Amazonians coming to my departments from Learning at 10 AM. I chatted online with my planning guy in Phoenix to reconfirm our shift plan, adjusting a few teams and adding more stations on a line I knew would run slower with new hires. I was ready to go.

6:45 Ten of my Area Managers (AMs) arrived and joined me in the meeting room, one to a table, ten feet apart. Each is from a different background, all with impressive capabilities as operations leaders, most either recently promoted to their new Amazon leadership roles or veterans jumping over from long-term roles as logistics leaders at Wal-Mart, in the military, etc. We had a quarter million orders to pick, sort, pack, and ship in the next 11 hours. I shared my start-of-shift plan with them, discussed safety, standard work, productivity targets, staffing patterns, volumes, and anticipated attrition. There is a process at Amazon for everything, a metric, a plan, a set of expectations, not the least of which is keeping your team safe while hitting the numbers. Our discussion is brief, concise, (hopefully) motivational, and focuses their minds on the day's work.

7:15 The first of my outbound teams start their day. The pick teams have already been hard at work this morning, filling totes of products needed for the day's orders, so as soon as I turn on the facilities routing lines a few hundred full totes will start their electronic journey to their sorting and packing stations. I stand at my desk, a stark rectangular wood door like most every desk at Amazon, surrounded by a few dozen conveyor lines at the heart of the operation. On my desk, my laptop and monitor, my radio, and a few pages of hand-scratched notes of details I'll need to remember today. Beyond that, a 15' wall of high-def monitors showing all the flow lines, stations, ship docks, camera views of critical parts of the operations, and 30 of the more critical KPIs essential to a successful shift. At my side, my assistant with his laptop and more auxiliary monitors showing more critical KPIs we'll need to watch non-stop to keep the operation running quick and clean.

7:30 A half dozen mouse clicks and the operation hums to life around us. Conveyor lines carrying hundreds of complete orders rush down the lines in front and behind us toward the automated sorters and ship docks. We watch the top two monitors and confirm all the lines still show green... not red, purple, blue, yellow, or any of the other colors which tell us instantly of any problems across this massive facility. Green. Good to go. Second pack team comes online as my third floor AMs direct a few hundred more people to their stations. More of those amazing Amazon boxes start pouring down the conveyor lines toward anxiously waiting customers as I submit my start-of-shift report on KPIs and readiness.

The first few hours are for me the most rushed, as I'm still learning which systems to use to generate which reports and what data points tell me what predictively to run an optimal operation. There are a lot of systems, all designed to provide specific sorts and levels of data. It's far more operational data than I've ever had before, but there's a lot of 2 and 3 letter acronyms that means things I'm still struggling to fully comprehend after just 35 days with the company. I still have to refer to a six-page cheat sheet that tells me what some of these things mean, while others have found their way into my everyday vernacular like words I learned when I was 5. We're critically understaffed for a key function and don't have cross-trained people in the building to labor share - I call in Learning and suddenly we're cross-training a dozen new inductors for the day. Crisis averted. I spend most of my time on the radio with my AMs, making sure every process and sub-process is staffed with qualified people and coordinating the sea of communications of staff overages and shortages, balancing customer- and cross-ship demands, trailers needed by the dock team, maintenance issues which might impede productivity, and that unending sea of internal emails.

10:00 Sync. I meet virtually with a half dozen of my AMs, providing them our plan for the second quarter of the shift. How many lines in each department running, how many people, when do the new hires come online from Learning, how so we pivot to make up volume lost in Q1 due to jams on a routing sorter, whose volumes are too low, who is kicking butt on production, what we need to watch in the next 180 minutes. We talk safety. We talk productivity. We talk strategy, but get into the weeds real fast to get to the granular level of what needs to get done and how we're going to do it. Keep 'em safe. Hit the numbers. Be Amazing. 4 minutes and we're done until our 1:15 sync.

I'm walking the floors, seeing my AMs and motivating their busy associates. I've walked three miles by lunch, coached a stressed-out AM, talked to a half dozen associates about everything from performance issues to old sports injuries, looked at my KPIs 300 times, responded to 50 texts, conversed with my assistant 200 times on everything from tray count to WIP levels to productivity rates to headcount on the dock to his career aspirations.

13:15 Sync2 Same routine as before with my leaders. We're running slightly ahead of plan, but facing higher than expected attrition and it looks like even more are leaving between 3 and 4 this afternoon. We're going to lose 100 people more than we expected before end of shift... Saturdays can be that way I'm learning. Replan. Recalculate. Update leadership on KPIs, current productivity, and risks. Answer their questions. Back to work.

13:40 I forgot to eat lunch! I realize this as I'm passing the 3rd floor break room. I haven't sat down since 7:10 this morning. I grab a table in the massive break room. 1 per table. I don't see another soul within 30 feet. I sit down, enjoy my sandwich and some strawberries while I review the last of my training quizzes. 12 minutes later I'm up and running again. 5 miles in for the day. My Apple Watch tells me I've hit my exercise goals - cool. Keep going.

14:40 My dock AM radios to say we're down to one person on the vendor returns desk- it should have half a dozen based on today's volume. OK. An associate dropped a box on her foot - that takes priority, head that way first. She's fine. Back toward the dock. Radio chimes - big jam on a key conveyor line. Turn around. On the radio - call for jam clear. Conveyor broke. Back on the radio. Get RME enroute. Get a trouble ticket started. Back to the desk. What's WIP on the vendor returns line? Good. Cool. Singles WIP is high - five associates unexpectedly late from break. Central flow - adjust pick ask for that line. Radio for Jam Clear to downstack. Gridlock averted. Keep running. Rates low downstairs. Coaching. Root cause - high attrition took down 2 walls versus plan. Can we find labor from upstairs - Yes - Send 'em! Running 6k orders behind plan. Can we overstaff SmartPac? No - open machines waiting on parts. Copy. Recalculate plan. Alert senior leadership to risk. Tactical as hell but the day's flying by. Touch base on a major project in upfitting for the busy season's volumes. Touch base with upstream counterpart to confirm we're aligned. All good. Keep running.

16:00 Team caught up to plan, borrowing cross-trained staff from other departments to run 2 extra walls until attrition took us back to Q3 plan a few minutes ago. Apologize to central flow for running more teams than plan for the past hour without getting their permission first. Oops. Keep moving forward. Thank God my Central Flow guy is awesome. Take some coaching from a seasoned ops leader on how to find data and calculate rates more effectively based on perspectives of one senior leader versus another. I'm learning something new about every 5 minutes at this point and appreciate all the perspectives, templates, links, and ideas the other Ops Managers across Amazon are throwing my way - I really feel like they're on my side and want to see me succeed. It's a great feeling.

16:15 Sync3 OK team - it's crunch time... Optimize staffing to drive volume. Had to drop back on my latest replan - we've lost over 100 staff this afternoon to attrition. They'll all be back for their next shift, but only need provide an hour notice if they want to leave early and it's a great Saturday afternoon in Vegas. Not a whole lot I can do about it. Keep running. Plan will be tight but should make our target. Coach an AM. Hear a grievance from an upset associate. Oh, wait, build and submit the Q3 recap. Make sure my leaders are closing out their coaching opportunities. Run downstairs to the docks to check back with an AM who started with me 5 weeks ago to make sure he's set up for success. Check on a broken belt on the flats sorter. Vendor returns just lost their last associate - Damn, forgot that one. Call HR to double check if we have anyone qualified for that desk in the building. Found one - radio in that transfer so he's down there by 17:00. Coach a week one AM to stay focused on the big picture. Directed we run a jam clear class so we have backups for coming weeks. Direct AMs to arrange a cross-training class for tomorrow so we have enough sort staff. Lost 30 more associates. Just heard the governor is closing the bars due to COVID at midnight - explains why they're all leaving early on a Saturday afternoon... pivot. Replan to ensure we're getting the critical customer shipments out in case we run short. Look at performance versus plan - new hires are running REALLY slow today, dragging down our numbers. They're DPMO is high too - radio appropriate AMs to focus on coaching and ensure quality meets standard. I start planning tomorrow's shift, looking at active staff, historical attendance, demand projections, attrition projections, maintenance schedules, etc., submitting to Central Flow my preliminary plan for their analytics and projections models. 7 pack walls way above standard for PPW, also lost key staff and have to drop 4 more pack walls... AMs are catching on quick. I look but don't say a word - they already knew what they had to do. My PA updates me on HC. AFE1 dropping fast. Pull water spiders and put them in direct roles.

17:30 10,000 units to plan. We're going to make it. I'm running, coaching, motivating, even clearing jams myself at this point. It's going to be down to the wire, but my calculations show us exceeding plan by 17:55! The main ship sorter goes down. What? Radio the dock. No response. Throw back on my safety vest as I run toward the stairs down to the dock. Halfway down the stairs, I can see the sorters restart as a torrent of envelopes and small packages pour out of the flats sorter like Niagara falls - hundreds pouring over that feed every minute. I turn around to get back up to the desk.

17:45 The first teams log out and begin leaving. Our staggered shifts are in place to allow for the safest possible experience for our associates. New leaders leading a big, complex team of mostly new associates... but they're really good leaders and they again did a good job on their shift. I see their shift recap come in via Chime and thank them again for their leadership.

17:50 Silence. All the sorters turn off. Wait? What? Dock: We just lost our last dock-trained associate. Without the minimum number of staff to safely run the dock, the sort lines shut down. I can probably find another couple people who are dock-trained in this quarter-mile long building, but I can't get them down there and logged back into that path in 9 minutes. We're done. It'll be another 15 or 20 minutes before the reporting systems actually tabulate our final number, but if my calculations are right I'm a few thousand short of plan.

18:00 The next teams end their shifts. Our shift is officially done, but I've got over 100 people still hard at work in several departments. I start compiling my data for end-of-shift reports from a dozen different systems.

18:25 The numbers are in. I led a team of 700 associates today and we got out a quarter million orders, but those 10 minutes left me a thousand orders short of my target. Nobody will probably say anything overly critical, but I'm disappointed in myself. I let my team down. They did so many things right and overcame so many obstacles today, and we missed our target. I could literally see that many sealed boxes on the conveyors around me, but they didn't make it to the dock so we don't get credit.

Deep breath. Tomorrow, we're going to kill it! I learned a dozen things today that'll make me better tomorrow. We cross-trained people in 5 key paths, which will give us more flexibility tomorrow. We onboarded over a hundred new associates today that'll only be better next shift. My leaders learned a lot today - they're watching the numbers better every shift. We are going to kill it next time!

18:40 Sitting down in the break room with my laptop - only the second time I've sat in the past dozen hours. Deep breath. My watch announces I tripled my move goal again today and walked 18,000 steps. What did we do right and wrong. Begin processing my shift recap. Auto-populate a thousand data points in the workbook. Add my AMs comments on the various paths. Add snips from half a dozen key reporting systems to show trends and results. Summarize my own key findings of opportunities and successes.

18:50 The Ops Manager who runs nights came up and shared several really insightful suggestions with me. Really thankful. He has some great templates that he uses - I can't wait to look them over and see how I can use them to run a better shift.

19:15 Walking out of the building. I'm still learning. I still have a lot to learn. I have great leaders and a great team. I'm frustrated with my performance - I know I could have done better. I want to redo the day. I want to do better. I bet if I'd overstaffed another 2 walls of packers on the third floor in Q2 and started the day with an extra cross-training class in Pack Singles, I could have pushed out 12,500 more units by lunch. If I'd communicated better with my Dock AM, I'd have known to pull 6 packers to run down to work the dock at 17:00. Everyone stayed safe. A quarter million of my friends and neighbors got what they needed today. I helped make those in my charge better leaders and did the right things for the right reasons. I text my girlfriend to tell her I'm on my way home. Today was a good day.

Yes, I am on my feet non-stop for a dozen hours, often more. I walk 5-10 miles a shift. It's not the strategic level of business I've been leading for the past several decades... quite tactical comparatively. It's noisy, reminding me that I have some hearing loss. I have to wear a protective mask due to Covid all day. Their systems are good, but they don't seem to talk to one another very well, and I'm always struggling to remember which refresh real time versus which only update at about 15 or 25 after the hour. Sometimes I feel like I'm totally unprepared for situations I walk into or requests that are thrown at me. I find myself hundreds of emails behind at the end of a busy shift. I lead almost a thousand people, but that in a company of about a million people. I went from a CEO title to a Manager title. Those are the downsides.

On the other hand, I'm paid pretty well to do a very rewarding job for a great company. I work with a great team of very talented, very motivated leaders. I'm doing what I came here to do - help my friends and neighbors in this challenging time, both by getting their essential needs delivered and by helping improve the lives and careers of those I manage and lead. I'm refining my ability to lead and enhancing my tactical execution abilities while I'm here four days a week.

I also continue leading and guiding the work of CX Artisans, the holding company which provides consulting services to a growing portfolio of market leaders and holds equity stakes in several well-positioned startups. What I learn here helps me to stay focused there. (On Sunday's I rest.) I'm not sure how long I can balance everything, but right now it is the perfect balance of intellectual/strategic with tactical/operational leadership.

Since Covid hit in March, I've taken on this role with Amazon, completed major consulting contracts for clients of CX Artisans, published three articles in national print magazines, joined a round table of inspirational business owners and met regularly, been a guest speaker at two national conferences, biked several hundred miles, landscaped our back yard, hiked four national parks with my girlfriend, and spent great time with my amazing girlfriend and (virtually) with my kids in Texas and Florida. PLUS, I've helped ensure that a few million orders get to my neighbors and friends, helping keep them safe and cared for in their homes. It's a pandemic, but LIFE IS GOOD.