Lessons Learned Working at Amazon for 14 Years

Working at Amazon can be a rewarding and challenging experience. I have spent 14 years of my career at the company, in various roles and teams, from Financial Analyst to Product Manager. Over the years I've led teams to expand into emerging markets, made strategic decisions to broaden selection for customers, delivered enterprise-grade products to accelerate revenue growth, and drove initiatives and integrations across multi-tenant platforms that encouraged and incentivized millions of customer interactions.

As I started to write my obligatory 'I can't believe it's been 14 years' anniversary post, I found myself wanting to share some lessons learned. Instead of an absurdly long post, I thought I'd write this article. These lessons and many more have shaped me as a professional and as a person. They are not only applicable to the tech industry, but to any profession that requires critical thinking, collaboration, and innovation.

#1 - Ask 'Why?'

We all receive requests that appear to be urgent or high impact. Regardless of the urgency or perceived impact, there is always a benefit to ensuring you understand the 'why.' Simply asking 'why' can often save a lot of time or potential fire drills. Asking 'why' includes understanding what will happen if it it doesn't get done and what problem is driving the request. Identifying the problem gives you the opportunity to identify if the request will truly solve for it. Either you will learn more about the importance of the request and you can use that information to help prioritize the work, or you may identify that the request was based on inaccurate assumptions or doesn't have data to back it up. Doing your due diligence can save you and potentially your team from low impact, high urgency work.

#2 - Prioritize your work and set expectations

It can be easy to accept all of the work that comes your way along with the timeline you're given, but eventually you'll find yourself falling behind or delivering low quality work. You may feel exceptionally compelled to always say 'yes' when you first start a new role and you're hoping to set a good first impression. That said, it's important to remember three things:

1. Setting realistic timeline expectations for your deliverable makes a good impression: Most clients would prefer a well-reasoned timeline and discussion on expectations over a late or low-quality delivery. One of the best ways to avoid over-commitment and burnout is identifying the most important work on your plate, prioritizing it accordingly, and setting reasonable expectations for delivery.
2. Not all work requested actually needs done: After you ask 'why,' you may find that what you've been asked to do on a tight deadline doesn't actually need done. There may be an alternative available or you may find that the request won't actually solve for the problem at hand.
3. Not all deadlines are created equal: It's important to understand what downstream impact your deliverable has. For example, is there a team waiting for this in order to become unblocked, or was the deadline issued based on expectations of how long it'd take to complete the work? Is there any immediate impact if delayed?

#3 - Don’t be afraid to make decisions without all of the data

Making decisions without all of the data can be inevitable in some situations, especially when what you're trying to achieve has never been done before at your company or in the industry. Sometimes, the best you can do is make decisions based educated assumptions. The key to these types of decisions is to communicate them well. State the assumptions made that led you to the decision. Invite open collaboration on the approach. Further, when determining if it's worthwhile to move forward with incomplete data, you need to understand if the decision can be undone or changed easily in the future. If the decision can be undone easily and has relatively low impact if wrong, then it may not be worth the time an effort that would go into collecting more data. If the decision cannot be easily undone and it has a potential for high negative impact, then it may be worth investing more time in obtaining data. Some options for getting more data is to create a proof of concept, run a beta, or send a survey and analyze if the results better inform a decision.

#4 - Accept feedback as collaboration, not criticism

When you create a document, whether it's a narrative, a report, or an analysis you conducted, you will get feedback. You may even get so many comments across the document or verbal feedback that it seems like your document was a failure. It's important to recognize in these situations that feedback is not criticism. If people didn't see value in your work, or were not interested in the outcome, they often wouldn't bother leaving feedback. If you change your perception of feedback to collaboration rather than criticism, it can become much more productive. You may even invite more feedback as a result so that you can refine your ideas and incorporate the insights offered from others. When I'm writing a document, I never try to fully polish it to perfection before sharing with others. I get the main ideas and objective on the page, ensure it tells the story I want to relay, and use it as an opportunity for collaboration and refinement. I find this results in faster turnaround, better collaboration, and less discouragement.

#5 - Demonstrate the value of your product

Product success isn't just about delivery. It's also about what happens next. Do clients know how to use your product to its highest potential? Do they know how to learn about the latest feature releases? Do they know where to go if they experience issues? To ensure continued adoption and success of your product, you'll need a mechanism where clients can learn about it. I find that the best way to do this is by creating a good product page or wiki. These are often overlooked by teams churning out more and more products on a regular basis, but I find them to be a major time saver and a great way to showcase your product. With a self-service product page or wiki, I get far fewer meeting requests with questions about how the product is used and have achieved relatively seamless adoption where new clients may not even reach out to me before getting started with my product.

#6 - Explore new skills to stay energized

Challenging yourself to learn new skills can help both increase your own sense of fulfillment as well as grow as a professional. I am happiest when I am regularly learning new skills. Over my time at Amazon, there has been no shortage of skills to acquire. I've continually broadened my skill set when challenges arise and there is not someone available to deliver what's needed. Whether it is market research, data mining, or user experience design, if I find the subject matter interesting and worthwhile to expand my knowledge base, I have risen to the challenge. I find that this openness to learn new skills helps me stay engaged and excited about my work. If I go a long time without learning something new, I begin to feel disenchanted with my work and it becomes easier to start to feel burnout.

#7 - Be your authentic self

You may see this advice pop up again and again, but what does it really mean and how can it make a difference? To me, it means not trying to be something you're not. Changing yourself to fit the mold others expect often drives resentment and burnout. It can cause a lot of pressure and unnecessary stress to try and perform in the same way as your peers. Recognizing your strengths, where your interests are, and what you genuinely want to improve can go a long way toward building a more satisfying career. Being true to yourself will also help you build meaningful relationships along the way by sharing honest opinions and engaging in meaningful conversations. With the right time and effort, you will be able to turn some of those relations into mentors and gain allies in your career objectives as well as someone to share your successes and failures.

I hope you found this article helpful and insightful. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to share them below. Thank you for reading!