A Day in the Life - Program Manager

This content is not from Amazon - Just my personal experience and insights.

I've led businesses for some great companies but surprisingly I get 10x the number of people asking me "What's it like..." since I joined Amazon. Here's my answer...

I roll out of bed early, 45 minutes before my 6 AM alarm, thinking about the task at hand... I owe a first draft of a document to my team tomorrow and today is going to be a doc writing day! I grab my iPhone and look at today's calendar - Eight meetings, half an hour for cardio, four hours blocked for putting this document together. I scroll through new emails - My team in Bangalore sent the data I needed. Most of the project managers I'd reached out to have sent me the project updates I'll need. My BU POC sent a note saying he needed to push our update back an hour due to conflicts. Three people sent notes asking help or clarification on various projects. Two project managers sent chimes saying they'd have updates to me in the next couple of hours once they confirmed budgeting and resource approvals were in place. No fire drill messages that'll pull me off my plan for the day. It's going to be a GOOD DAY!

I fire up my laptop well before 6 AM and start really thinking about the day. My role is about driving action in a very different way from the Operations Manager role I previously held with Amazon - In this role it's about driving actions through carefully crafted narratives, documents, meetings to align teams and calendars, tough conversations with executives and other business leaders. It's about changing the way we work as a company to PROTECT those who entrust their safety to Amazon every day they walk in to work. I'm aligned specifically with certain Kingpin goals for the company and with the tenets for our group.

I look at my narrative paragraph - the 100 words that'll define the message of the document I'm aiming to finish writing today. After carefully reviewing the data and analytics provided by our amazing team in Bangalore earlier today, I refine my narrative to match the updated numbers and add a few highlights to address rising concerns in a few unexpected areas. I send a dozen emails seeking further clarifications on specific issues and data points to my teammates in India, Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. from Seattle to Tampa. I chime my closest colleagues to say good morning and touch base on a few issues we're working together to solve and to see how their weekends went. I read last month's copy of this document to reflect on what I previously said and the action items we had coming out of that meeting. Our 7 AM team huddle was cancelled so I have an extra hour to map out the refinements to my outline and add some important callouts I need to convey in each section. The time flies by and suddenly it's 7:55AM. 5 minute reminder.

I'm going to be on videoconferences quite a few times today with executives, project managers, peers and my team, but jeans and a T-shirt are still status quo. (Amazon has no dress code but to use common sense and not be offensive.) I grab a small bucket of espresso and sit back down in my kitchen at my laptop, logging in to my first chime meeting of the morning as I pull up some online files I'll need in the upcoming discussions.

I'm a participant but not running this 30 minute meeting. Amazon is peculiar in our meeting cadence in that we're a document culture. This forces us to really think through the issue and focus on the details. A dozen of us join the meeting but nobody turns on our video. My peer who is running this meeting welcomes us on audio and drops a word document into the meeting's Chime window. We download the document and agree we will resume the meeting in 15 minutes. Everyone mutes their microphone and starts rigorously reading the one-pager (A document wherein the main body is contained in a single page, though frequently with a few to a few dozen pages of appendices for those who want further detail.) 17 minutes after the meeting's start, we all reconvene. The person leading the meeting comes on screen and we discuss the document - We dive deep into the details and make clear decisions on the topic, in some cases disagreeing but ultimately committing to a set of decisions. By 28 minutes into the meeting, we're confirming decisions and next steps. At exactly 30 minutes into the meeting, we wrap up and everyone jumps to their next meeting.

The next several hours are a flurry of meetings discussing various process improvement initiatives, project and program updates, status of migration to a new reporting system, planning for upcoming business unit meetings and responses to senior executive requests. I seamlessly switch gears between meetings, drafting my monthly business review (MBR), and communicating with 30 different stakeholders and peers on 50 different topics via Chime, Slack, and e-mail.

I work with some of the best, brightest, and most motivated leaders I've ever met. They care more deeply than you can imagine - about the company, our associates, our teams, me. They insist on the highest standards and think big. They work hard. They communicate and collaborate well. They're also genuinely good people and a lot of fun!

At 11:30 AM, I move into the 4-hour time block I'd set aside for drafting and work diligently to create a cohesive, measured narrative for the progress made in terms of recent progress made toward our primary 3 year goal for this business unit. As I write, responses continue trickling in from my prior messages, providing critical data points and clarifications needed for the document. I take a break to prepare some chicken and pasta for lunch, then eat it while I continue drafting. An hour later, my daughter calls and I pause a few minutes to congratulate her for getting accepted to graduate school. Then back to writing until am comfortable everything I can put to the document is now in the draft. 3:18 PM. I'm 12 minutes ahead of schedule! Recheck to confirm that no new meeting notices or urgent messages have come in... Clear! Mentally I need a break to clear my head. I go throw on sweats and run around the corner to my gym.

30 minutes on the elliptical machine and I'm headed home, refreshed and ready to continue. Back to my computer and focused sixty seconds later on the document once more. With a clear head, I edit the three sections of the document I realized I could improve while I was at the gym, catching a few more grammatical errors as I proof the whole document. I'm still waiting on a few more inputs but they're from parts of the world that probably aren't on their laptops right now. I chime polite reminders to prompt those I'm waiting for and recognize the document is about on track.

One more meeting, a bi-weekly check-in with one of my engineering POCs. I log in to Chime and we talk through how projects are progressing and how his trip planning for Hawaii next month is coming together. We had 30 minutes scheduled but wrap our conversation after 25.

Another Chime pops up from one of my colleagues seeking input on a common challenge. We jump on a quick videoconference together (on Chime) and hash out the details of how we're going to align. I throw in data, as does she. We are aligned. Decision made. We catch up on our kids and holiday plans for another couple minutes then say goodbye and log off for the evening.

At 5:40 PM, I take one last look at my email and run through tomorrow's calendar. In good shape. Everything is on track. I chime my team good night and close my laptop. It was a GOOD DAY! I'll probably check chime on my phone a dozen times in the next few hours, but typically don't need to log back in or do much work before the morning gets here.

I don't have set hours. I typically work Monday through Friday, though I'll work weekends if I'm needed. A typical week is about 50 hours, but I'll work more when needed and a few weeks might be slightly less. I have all the tools I need to do my job well. My boss is great and really wants me to succeed. Once Covid is behind us, I'll be traveling more - maybe one week a month, but for now my travel is only about once a month. The company cares about my work, but also about my safety and my success. There are thousands of program managers at various levels across Amazon - Right now, I'm having a great time, driving up the bar, and happy to be one of them!