July 11, 2022 • 31 mins
Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO speaks with Emily Chang about the company’s innovation priorities, as well as heated competition in areas like rapid delivery and streaming video. He’ll also talk about Amazon’s commitment to be Earth’s best employer and its approach to unions, as well as navigating challenges like inflation, global supply chain shortages and the current regulatory environment.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you Andy so much for coming down. It's really
wonderful to have you here in person. It's my pleasure
to be here. Thanks you. Has found out we actually
lived in the same dorm in college, just a few
years apart. So it's been almost a year since you
took over from Jeff as CEO of Amazon, and it's
been a year of first the first stock split since
the dot com boom, the first vote to unionize an
(00:21):
Amazon warehouse, your first Bloomberg Technology conference. Thank you. I
want to start with a quick report card. I'm Emii Chang,
and welcome to this edition of the Bloomberg Studio One
point oh podcast. In February one, Jeff Bezo shocked the
(00:43):
world by announcing plans to step down as Amazon CEO.
A few months later, he passed the reins to Andy Jase,
his longtime top lieutenant, the architect of one of the
company's biggest profit engines, Amazon Web Services, Bezos has stayed
on as executive chair, leaving Jazz to navigate a critical
inflection point in Amazon's history. How does the company manage
(01:05):
market turmoil, rising inflation and regulatory scrutiny, and a push
by some warehouse workers to unionize, all while keeping customers
coming back joining me on this edition of Bloomberg Studio.
At one point, oh, Amazon second CEO Andy Jassey, he
joined us from our flagship Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco.
(01:26):
I'd like you to grade your view of Amazon's performance,
and we've got time later to to really dig in.
But quickly, how would you grade Amazon's performance over the
last year with customers. Well, I think we've you know,
I'm not sure I'm the right person to grade myself
during the year or not, but I'll give you my take.
(01:46):
You know, I think with respect to customers, I think
we've done a lot of good, you know. And I
think if you look at during the pandemic, which really
has extended until the early part of this year, you know,
so much as a ppe and food and central items
and people equipping their home offices were bought from Amazon,
and you know, to scale the way we needed to. Remember,
(02:07):
in two thousand twenty, we grew thirty nine percent year
over year on a two billion dollar revenue run rate.
I mean, it's very it's unprecedented, it's never happened before.
But it was really hard to do that, and we
had to take the really big footprint of fulfillment center footprint.
We built the first twenty five years of Amazon and
doubled it in twenty four months. And we you know,
(02:29):
we built a transportation network, which we planned on doing
over several years, but because we weren't going to be
able to get enough capacity at the cost structure we
needed to serve all the big demand in twenty one,
we built out that transportation network in just a couple
of years. Uh, you know, we um we doubled, uh
nearly doubled the size of our workforce during that time,
(02:49):
and we still didn't have enough people to to receive
all the items and our fulfillment centers and to ship them,
and and so we had to make decisions. We looked at,
you know, we didn't have enough people to see them
in the right spots to get them to customers as
cost effectively as we normally did. And so we decide,
do we just allow ourselves to be out of stock
with much longer delivery times and we stock them wherever
(03:10):
we can, even if it meant we're gonna have to
pay for a lot more transportation costs to get it there.
And in all those cases, we sited on the side
of customers, and I think we I think customers really
appreciated it, and I think you saw it in other businesses.
You know, AWS is a really big part of helping
companies and governments have business continuity during the pandemic, and
(03:30):
so many companies and organizations in the last year made
the strategic decision that they were going to stop running
their own infrastructure technology and disproportionately chose AWS to help
them move to the cloud. And we spend a lot
of time helping them make that transformation. So I think
we've done a lot of good for customers, and we
have always sided on the side of customers. So what
about investors, I mean, the stock is down significantly from
(03:52):
a peak last year. Obviously there's broader market term weil. Yeah,
I think, you know, for investors and financially, I'd say
it's mixed. You know, I think we have some businesses
that are growing really strongly. If you look at AWS,
you know, in year every year, you know, it's not
a seventy four billion dollar revenue run right business, it's
(04:13):
pretty unusual growth, and we grew fifty percent year every
year in our advertising business. You know, it's the thirty
two billion dollar revenue run right business. So some business
has grown really strongly, and you know, we've continued to
grow in our retail business despite pretty crazy comparables during
I think the real challenge for us there is on
the cost side, and there have been several things that
(04:35):
have happened, um, some of which are more controllable than others.
You know. I think the part that's less controllable is
really around inflation. And I think we thought that inflation
would start to attenuate in two and with the war
in Ukraine, it just went the other way and it's
significantly accelerated. So the cost of trucking and line hall
and ocean and air and fuel has just substantially gone up,
(04:58):
and I think that will tenuate at some point. No
one knows how long that will take. I think the
more controllable areas for us are really around fulfillment center
capacity and productivity. And I think on the fulfilment center
capacity side, it was taking about twenty four months to
build new filming centers during the pandemic, and so we
had to make decisions, you know, in mid two thousand
(05:19):
twenty in early on how much demand we're going to
plan for and the team made a decision, which I
think in retrospect was a good decision that we were
going to build the high side of what we could
imagine consumer demand being, because we didn't want to constrain
consumers or sellers who were trying to place inventory, you know,
FU filming centers for fulfilment by Amazon, and so, you know,
(05:40):
we we end up with more capacity and we need
right now, and there's a number of things that we're
working on. We we've stopped building on properties where we
don't need it yet, and we've let a number of
leases laps and not a small number, you know, of
both those things. But you know, we are very confident
that we're gonna grow into that cost structure on the
on the fulfillment center side, and we decided that if
(06:01):
we were going to have to air one way, we'd
air on the side of customers, even if it meant
short term trouble for us or challenges for us, you know.
And I think on the productivity side, what I would
say is that when you build as quickly as we
did in the fulfillment center space and the transportation network,
you're always gonna have areas that you can optimize and
(06:22):
be more streamlined in And that's true for us, And
we've had a lot of occasions in our history where
we've worked on productivity and made improvements, and we have
a lot of clearly defined niches and I'm confident we'renna
get back to the right level of profitability. You are
going to sub lease thirty million square feet of space?
Is there a mistake? And the execution there because of
the overball, Again, because you have to make these decisions
(06:43):
two years in advance, and again, if you put yourself
back in twenty where we were growing thirty nine percent
year over a year on a two five billion dollar
revenue run rate, it's very hard to know what's the
right amount to build and you have to make a decision.
And we made the decision to air on the side
of our consumers and sellers, and we knew it might
mean that we might have more capacity for some short
(07:05):
period of time, but we were willing to do that
because we're always long term oriented and customer focus. Now,
how would you grade Amazon's performance with employees, your colleagues?
There has been some high profile Yeah, I think that
um And when I started in this gig, we had
just create a new leadership principle to strive to be
Earth's best employer. And I think we're you know, we
(07:26):
spent a lot of time trying to think through what
that really means is broad, and I think we've made
a fair bit of progress, but it's still early. In
my opinion, I think Amazon in general is a unusually
compelling place to work. You know, when you have a
mission which is to make customers lives better and easier
every day, and relentlessly invent to do so, it's inspiring
(07:48):
if you layer on top of that that we you know,
we not only make customers lives better, but people get
to work on a scale that's nearly unprecedented given the
nature of Amazon's business, with a culture that likes to
invent and is willing to move fast and its ideas,
and willing to be long term oriented, which means if
you want to leave a mark on the world that
outlasts you, you have a chance to do so. That
(08:10):
combination is really unusual, and I think it's why we
rank high and a lot of them polls in great
places to work. But I still think there are many
areas that we can keep improving, you know, and I think, UM,
you know, the first one I'd mentioned is safety. You know,
I think that UM you know, in our fulfillment centers,
that is the top priority. And you know, when you
(08:32):
get into the details of the numbers and outside of
all the spin of it all, you know what we're
about average there, but we're not trying to be average,
you know. We want to be the best in the
industry and the best in the world at it. And
that's a high priority in an area that I'm passionate
about and the team is passionate about. I think we've
made a lot of progress in UM over the last
several years, including last year, on diversity and inclusion, but
(08:55):
to really get to where we want to get to,
I think we have a lot of work to still do.
Their You know, we have a very strong set of
managers in Amazon, but we have grown so much in
the last ten years, and we have so many new managers,
many of whom we have promoted internally, and we have
management trading programs, but I think you've got to kind
(09:15):
of retool those things to to really make sure that
you have managers who are developing your teammates the way
you want managing is a privilege, and so you know,
we've we've spent a lot of time in the last
number of months um refining our management training programs that
you'll see us rolling out, you know. And then I
also think that our services and tools to our external
(09:38):
facing customers have outpaced those for our internal employees. And
I think we have a lot of work we can
do to make our employees everyday lives easier. And we
have we've identified kind of a top hundred list of
of areas that we can be better at that we're
just metronomically stepping through. And so we've made a lot
of progress, but we have a lot of work to
(09:58):
you still say, Clark just announced fairly abruptly that he's
leaving Amazon after twenty three years. He has been described
as an absolutely integral member of the S team, knew
the logistics and fulfillment center network better than anyone. Just
announced he's going to be co CEO flex Port. What
happened with Dave specifically and where you surprised, Well, you know,
(10:21):
I think, uh, different people want to do different jobs
with different responsibilities at different times, and it's incredibly personal,
and I think Dave wanted a different gig at this point,
and I don't begrudge him at all. I mean, Dave
has added so much to Amazon over the last twenty
three years, and particularly over the last two and a
half years, which have been among the most crazy in
(10:43):
the history of Amazon. And I think that if you
want to build a business that lasts a hundred plus years,
and that lasts all of us, you have to get
used to these sort of transitions and make sure that
you're you know, you're doing the right succession planning and
you've got the right talent to keep building the business.
And you know, we've done that historically and I expect
we'll do it again. Elon Musk just came out saying
(11:05):
he has a super bad feeling about the economy, Tesla
laying off ten percent of his staff. Jamie Diamond says
he's preparing for an economic hurricane. The World Bank just
slashed its forecast for global growth. How do you feel
about the economic climate? Well, it wasn't planning on giving
any guidance to please, but super bad or super super bad,
(11:33):
I think, Uh, there's some things that relates to Amazon
that are useful to remember, you know, I think the
first pieces, remember the of the of the worldwide retail market,
segment share is offline. And if you believe that that
equation is going to flip at some point, which we do,
(11:53):
I think it will will flip over a long period
of time. But if you believe that the companies that
have a customer experiences like we do, I think we're
gonna are gonna do all right. And you know, and
that and great customer experiences mean you have really broad selection,
low prices, and very fast delivery that's reliable to customers. Yeah.
I also think that if you look at different down turns, UM,
(12:17):
you know, should we have one at some point And
we've been through a few obviously in the twenty five
years that I've been at Amazon. Customers change their habits.
You know. They tend to be pickier about what they
buy and when they buy, and who they buy from,
and they often pick the partners and the companies that
they trust, you know, and that have great customer experiences
like the dimensions I mentioned earlier. UM, And so you know,
(12:39):
I also think there's you know, those two reasons, those
two factors give me some optimism that even if we
have a downturn, that we have the potential to still grow.
I would say that regardless though, we have so many
things that we believe we can do better for customers.
We have a roadmap that's you know, probably three to
five years long, and we're going to continue to invent.
(12:59):
We're gonna continue to be insurgent, and we have a
lot of work to do to get to where we
think we ultimately can get for customers. Now, when it
comes to the stock, as I mentioned, it has fallen significantly.
Do you think investors are missing something or has tech
just been overvalued? And this also of course matters to
employees who are significantly paid in stock. Well, you know, look,
(13:22):
I haven't been at Amazon for twenty five years. I
arrived at the company three weeks before we went public.
I have never tried to predict what the stock is
going to do, and any time I've tried to a
little bit, I've been wrong. So, you know, I think
it's I think it's pretty hard to um uh, pretty
hard to predict what it's going to be in any
short period of time. I do really believe that, Benjamin,
(13:44):
that Benjamin Graham maximum that um in the short term,
the stock market tends to be a voting machine in
the long term, it tends to be a weighing machine.
And I think if you you know, we've been through
a lot of points in twenty five years to be
an Amazon where the macro factors are off and um
stocks are down. Our stock is down, but you can't
(14:07):
really control that, you know. We have a concept. We
talked about a lot of Amazon inputs and outputs, you know,
in the ultimate output for a company of share price,
you know, and then other big outputs are free cash
flow or profit or revenue. You can't really manage the outputs.
You have to manage at the input level, and that's
where we spend all our time. And so in these
types of circumstances, you have to focus on what customers
(14:30):
care about and building for them in the long term
and inventing on their behalf. You got to get your
cost structure in the right spot. But if you do
the right things for the business long term, things tend
to work out. I think we've had very good returns
for investors, and I expect that to be true. Again.
I have, as you could probably tell a lot of
optimism for and I'm an optimistic person, but I also, um,
(14:53):
you know, there's this food fighter song called Congregation that
has that line you need blind faith, but no false hope,
you know. So I do have blind faith, but I
also think I don't have false hope. You know. I
have a lot of of data and uh, you know,
and and I think insights internally where all of our
(15:14):
businesses are on the right path. But if you measure
at any one point with lots of things happening around you,
you may not get to the same conclusion that you
get too. Long term, what are the moon shots at
Amazon that are capturing most of your time and attention?
What is going to define the next era of Amazon?
I mean is it? Is it astro the home robot,
or is it something else? Well, you know, we have
(15:36):
a unique way that we look at big new investments.
And I'm not sure it's right or wrong. It just
happens to be our way. And we ask ourselves when
we're considering something four questions. We ask, Uh, if it's successful,
can to be big and move the needle? At Amazon?
Is it being well served today? Do we have a
differentiated approach? And do we have competence there? And if not,
(15:59):
can we acquire clean If we like the answer to
those questions we'll go pursue it with a single thread
team that isn't distracted by the rest of the business.
And sometimes that leads to innovation investments that seemed pretty obvious,
Like you know, when I got to the company was
a books only retailer, and then we expanded to music
and video and electronics and choice, it seems obvious to people.
Other times that process does not lead to investments that
(16:22):
seem obvious to people. I mean, AWS was something that
people externally and internally thought was a little bit nutty
at the time. But just imagine what Amazon would be
today without AWS and and I think that you see
the same thing here. You know that there are so
many significant investments from making that I'm excited about. I'm
gonna have to constrain myself to a few, but you know,
(16:44):
I'm really excited about what we're doing in the prime
video space. I think we're clearly on the right track
there and building a significant business. That's interesting because Netflix
also just announced some layoffs, first subscriber loss in a decade,
Disney cutting back on costs. Do you see Amazon strategy
as fundamentally different from Netflix and Disney? And if so,
how well you know We're very bullish on it. And
(17:07):
remember we all the all the models are a little
bit different. But for Prime Video we have twun or
million plus Prime subscribers who are you know, get that
entertainment for free by being part of Prime and so
we have a little bit different pricing model than some
of the others. But I'm incredibly encouraged by what we
(17:27):
have coming if you if you look at me. We
launched this show Reacher earlier in the year, was a
huge hit. We you know, we have a new Masal season.
We we just launched the New Boys season, which is
I am a big Amazon, It's very good. Of course,
we have glad of the Rings coming up, you know
in September and Thursday and football, so I'm very bullish
(17:48):
about it. UM we also, you know, we're excited about
what we've done with mgm uh. You know, I think
some of the assets there will go very well with
the rest of what we're doing entertainment wise. We have
had supported um channel there or platform there and free
v which I think is appealing. And we have a
channel's business, which is also a little bit different, where
(18:09):
third party streaming companies will ingest all their content in channels,
so they get kind of the leading viewing experience that
we've built over a number of years, and then they
get to sell monthly subscriptions as a channel to our
two million plus prime subscribers. And so if you look
at Warner Brothers, Discovery and Paramount and Stars and Global,
(18:29):
they're building really significant subscription businesses. So I'm very bullish
about that business. I'm I'm optimistic that we have a
chance to build a significant grocery business, which is early
stages for us. I am excited about uh Kuiper, which
is our low earth orbit satellite that we're building. You
gotta remember there three hundred to four hundred million people
(18:51):
in the world who have limited to no Internet connectivity.
I mean, just think about how different the world is
when you don't have that type of connectivity. And so
I think that's a really significant opportunity that has some
aws characteristics to it. I continue to be very optimistic
about Alexa, you know, building the world's best personal assistant.
We have a you know, two hundred million endpoints already
(19:13):
that are using Alexa. We're clearly onto something there. And
and then you know, our autonomous driving ride hailing service
and zooks that were building, you know, here in the
Bay Area. I just think with the way auto consumption
is evolving, I think that also is a chance to
be a really significant business. Now. I don't know if
I don't know if all of them are going to
be successful, but if any one of them becomes the
(19:34):
fourth pillar for us on top of Marketplace and Prime
in AWS were completely different companies, just like we were
when AWS became successful. So I think they're very worthwhile
investments and bets, and I'm optimistic about We didn't mention
Astro obviously though, powered, but I mean our home robots
gonna be where I don't yet where is it? It's
not really widely available for sale. What's the status? Hope
(19:57):
you good one? Okay, um, thank you. Everyone's very curious
about Jeff's role these days. What kind of executive chair
he really is. He said when he left that he'd
focus his attention and energies on initiatives that he really
cares about as at Amazon. But from the outside, it
looks like he's really focusing on philanthropy, he's focusing on space.
(20:17):
What kind of an executive chairman is he? Well? He
you know, Jeff is always going to be UM involved
and UM he has. You know, I'm I feel very
lucky to have been in Amazon for twenty five years.
I feel very lucky to have worked directly for Jeff
for twenty of them. And we have a really close
relationship and have for a long time. And I think
(20:38):
we share a lot of the same values about customers
and um, how important is to optimize for customers and
how high standards they need to be um, you know,
given how easy it is for people to switch, and
the importance of invention and speed and so, you know,
I just feel very lucky to have had the chance
to work so closely with him. We still talk all
the time. It's it's very useful for me to be
(21:00):
able to seek his council. He did the job for
so long and and he's always made himself available. So
is your relation I mean, he was your only boss
for twenty five years, right, is your relationship fundamentally different
than it was when you were the head? Of course,
you know, every every single job you have, the relationships different.
You know. Remember the first couple of years I worked
(21:22):
for Jeff, I worked is what we call his shadow then,
which really like a chief of staff and that was
different than when I was starting AWS, which was different
from when we got AWS going, and it was, you know,
a business that was starting to do well, and and
it's different when I'm in the CEO role. But you know,
the constant has always been that we have a great relationship,
and we collaborate really well, and I think that we
(21:43):
listened to one another and um again, for me to
have the ability to bounce different things off of him
and seek his council is very valuable. And he's still
focused on Amazon. He still has focused on Amazon. Amazon
is poised to become the biggest private sector employer in
the world, second only right now Walmart is in that spot,
but Amazon will probably soon surpass it. First vote to
(22:07):
unionize at an Amazon warehouse, I know you've been spending
a lot of time at warehouses. When you look at
someone like Chris Small's who I think some people look
at as this modern day hero who got fired pulled
off this union vote, what's your message to someone like him,
Your message to the folks who think maybe we should
join a union. Well, I know, I think that the
(22:27):
first thing to be clear about is that employees get
to make that choice whether they want to have a
union or not. They always have had that choice and
it continues to be their choice. And you know, we
happen to think they're better off without a union for
a number of reasons, including the fact that you know,
it's it's much harder when you have a union to
have a direct relationship with your manager and to get
(22:49):
things done quickly. So if you see something on the
line that you think could be better for your your team,
or you or your or customers, you can't just go
to your manager and say, let's change this. You know,
there's a whole process in bureaucracy that you have to
go through to be able to do that. You know,
and and we get you know, when there's a union,
we're going to get the feedback filtered by what the
union decides is worth bringing up. And we'd much rather
(23:13):
hear from every employee whatever is on their mind. And so,
you know, I think if you want to continue to
have the structure that we've had for all this time,
you have to have really competitive benefits. And then I
think if you look at Amazon's they're very unusual in
this space. We champion the fifteen dollar minimum wage several
years ago. The starting salaries now over eighteen dollars an hour,
(23:36):
which you know is more than double the federal minimum wage.
You get full health insurance in four oh one K
and twenty weeks up to twenty weeks of parental leave.
And if you want to get a college education, you
haven't had one. We have a career choice program that
let's our fulfillment center associates to be able to do. So.
That is a very unusual and compelling set of benefits,
(23:57):
and those were all accomplished without a union. So you know,
I think that we realize that we you know, we
have to continue to work on the relationship with our
our employees, and we need to continue to provide the
right benefits, and you know, we need to continue to
work on safety, and that's our intention. The FTC has
revamped its antitrust inquiry into Amazon and by some accounts,
(24:19):
is accelerating it. Are you preparing for an antitrust lawsuit
from the FTC? You know, I think that if you
are a large company that's growing to a significant extent
like we have, you have to be prepared to be scrutinized.
And we have known this for some time, you know,
many years and We have tried to run the company
(24:41):
with that in mind and knowing that if if somebody
look that we would stand up to that scrutiny, and
I you know, I think that's what we've tried to
do and running the business. We can't control what, you know,
you know, whether organizations bring different suits against us. But
I think if you look at our business, if you
actually look at the fact, if you take out you know,
take out of the equation that there there may not
(25:03):
be the most objective you know, leadership when it comes
to Amazon in that organization. If you look at the facts,
you know, in our retail business, we're about one percent
of the worldwide retail market segment share, and remember is
still offline. And if you look in our AWS business,
we you know about depending how you measure of the
(25:26):
worldwide global I T span is on premises, you know,
and then we have a cloud business and then we
have a portion of that. You know, we're a leading
market segment share in the cloud part of this, but
we operate you know, who we compete with in AWS
is really on premises UM I T in addition to
the cloud. So you know, these are relatively small percentages
of the entire party and you can kind of step
(25:48):
through all the businesses. And I think simply because you've
been successful in a few different businesses doesn't somehow mean
that you have un natural market power. It just means
you've been successful in a couple to from customer experiences.
But we still have a relatively small amount of market
segment share in those areas. What about the sec you're
being sued by them over third party data and how
(26:09):
you've used it. Do you think in the past Amazon
main mistakes with letting employees internally see how those third
party selling sellers were doing, we have we have pretty
good control. I mean, you know, we of course disagree
with the premise of that, but I would say that
we have um very good controls with respect to the
(26:30):
data that the different employees sets are able to see.
And you know, I think if you if you look
at sellers, we have about two million small medium sized
sellers who sell in our marketplace. And by the way,
I think that we can be better for sellers. You know,
I think that um, you know, we can have better
(26:50):
tools from to get started, we can have better tools
from the manage what they're doing across their their different
Amazon units. I think we can communicate better. There's a
whole bunch of things we can do better. Um, and
we agonize over every single email or communication we get
from sellers that's you know, critical or where they're unhappy,
but we also you know, we get many thousands of
(27:13):
very positive emails from sellers, and we do very regularly
robust surveying, and a lot more sellers are happy with
Amazon than unhappy with Amazon. And I think if you
look at what what they're able to do is, you know,
as a business, by virtual selling on Amazon versus not,
it completely changes what's possible. Sellers don't really long for
(27:35):
e commerce software that exists in lots of places and
uh and it's not very expensive. What they love about
selling on Amazon is that they get access to our
hundreds of millions of customers and that completely changes what
their prospects can be in terms of the businesses they're building.
So we have a lot of work to do there
like we do in a lot of other places. But
(27:56):
I think we have a very strong partnership with sellers.
What's the view of the supplied chain right now and
how much pain there is going to continue to be
and for how long well, you know, I think that, um,
there's a lot of challenges in the supply chain still.
I mean, it's it's gotten better than it was, but um,
there are all sorts of challenges. You know, non perishable goods, electronics,
(28:18):
chips is still a really significant issue for all sorts
of businesses, and so, you know, I think most companies
are are working really hard to overcome those challenges. In
our case, we have tried to order significantly ahead of
when we normally do, which again might create risks financially,
but we're gonna do it to side on the side
of customers. We have worked really hard to open a
(28:41):
lot more points of presence and ports and increase our
capacity and getting products in. But I think it's going
to be something that companies battle with for some time.
What's sometimes six months a year, you know, I don't
really answer that, but I don't think it's imminently going away.
You know. I think if you look at some of
the challenges that we have around capacity, that the inflation worsens,
(29:04):
I don't think it's you know, around the corner. You
made a huge mark on Amazon with aws. Obviously, what
is the mark that you want to make? Still? On Amazon.
I mean, in this new role, what's going to define
the anti jazz era? Well, I don't I don't really
think of it that way, Emily. I mean, I, um,
(29:25):
I don't think it's really about any anti jazz era
or any one person you know. And uh and by
the way, AWS was not about any one person that
you know. If you spend any time on AWS, that
is an unbelievable team. Um, not just an incredible leadership team,
which it is, but just top to bottom and the
number of inventors and people care about customers and operate
(29:49):
you know, uh, something where it has to work almost
like a doubt and it's it's always teams. And so
what what I'm open for over the next number of
years is, um, you know, is really what we took
what really unites all the parts of our business, which
is we exist to make customers lives better every day
and easier every day, and we're gonna keep inventing to
(30:11):
do so. And so I look at every single one
of our businesses and you know, take our retail business
or a consumer business, which is the oldest of our
businesses of it still lives offline. Like I think we
have a lot of upside and a lot of growth.
And I think as much invention as we've seen the
last twenty five years, you know, the time I've been there,
(30:33):
I think that's it's gonna look small compared to the
next twenty five years. There is a lot for us
to invent on behalf for customers, and so you know,
I'm excited to be part of the team that makes
that happen. And uh, you know, I also think that
there's a lot we can do as we continue to
make Amazon a place that employees love working at and
it's the place that they can best build their career at.
(30:54):
And I also think that you you've seen some of
this last few years, but increasingly, you know, we are
continuing to you know, to increase the amount that we
give back to the communities in which we have big presence,
and that really matters to me. I think we have
a responsibility to do that. And um, so you know,
it's it's it's a long journey that we're working on,
but I'm excited to be part of it, and uh,
(31:16):
you know, I hope to hard for a long time. Well,
thank you for joining us and telling us about the
way the journey is going. So far. Bloom Brook Studio
One point I was produced and edited by Lauren Ellis
and Brian Carter Gainer. I'm Emily changing, your host and
executive producer. Thanks for listening.
Thank you Andy so much for coming down. It's really
wonderful to have you here in person. It's my pleasure
to be here. Thanks you. Has found out we actually
lived in the same dorm in college, just a few
years apart. So it's been almost a year since you
took over from Jeff as CEO of Amazon, and it's
been a year of first the first stock split since
the dot com boom, the first vote to unionize an
(00:21):
Amazon warehouse, your first Bloomberg Technology conference. Thank you. I
want to start with a quick report card. I'm Emii Chang,
and welcome to this edition of the Bloomberg Studio One
point oh podcast. In February one, Jeff Bezo shocked the
(00:43):
world by announcing plans to step down as Amazon CEO.
A few months later, he passed the reins to Andy Jase,
his longtime top lieutenant, the architect of one of the
company's biggest profit engines, Amazon Web Services, Bezos has stayed
on as executive chair, leaving Jazz to navigate a critical
inflection point in Amazon's history. How does the company manage
(01:05):
market turmoil, rising inflation and regulatory scrutiny, and a push
by some warehouse workers to unionize, all while keeping customers
coming back joining me on this edition of Bloomberg Studio.
At one point, oh, Amazon second CEO Andy Jassey, he
joined us from our flagship Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco.
(01:26):
I'd like you to grade your view of Amazon's performance,
and we've got time later to to really dig in.
But quickly, how would you grade Amazon's performance over the
last year with customers. Well, I think we've you know,
I'm not sure I'm the right person to grade myself
during the year or not, but I'll give you my take.
(01:46):
You know, I think with respect to customers, I think
we've done a lot of good, you know. And I
think if you look at during the pandemic, which really
has extended until the early part of this year, you know,
so much as a ppe and food and central items
and people equipping their home offices were bought from Amazon,
and you know, to scale the way we needed to. Remember,
(02:07):
in two thousand twenty, we grew thirty nine percent year
over year on a two billion dollar revenue run rate.
I mean, it's very it's unprecedented, it's never happened before.
But it was really hard to do that, and we
had to take the really big footprint of fulfillment center footprint.
We built the first twenty five years of Amazon and
doubled it in twenty four months. And we you know,
(02:29):
we built a transportation network, which we planned on doing
over several years, but because we weren't going to be
able to get enough capacity at the cost structure we
needed to serve all the big demand in twenty one,
we built out that transportation network in just a couple
of years. Uh, you know, we um we doubled, uh
nearly doubled the size of our workforce during that time,
(02:49):
and we still didn't have enough people to to receive
all the items and our fulfillment centers and to ship them,
and and so we had to make decisions. We looked at,
you know, we didn't have enough people to see them
in the right spots to get them to customers as
cost effectively as we normally did. And so we decide,
do we just allow ourselves to be out of stock
with much longer delivery times and we stock them wherever
(03:10):
we can, even if it meant we're gonna have to
pay for a lot more transportation costs to get it there.
And in all those cases, we sited on the side
of customers, and I think we I think customers really
appreciated it, and I think you saw it in other businesses.
You know, AWS is a really big part of helping
companies and governments have business continuity during the pandemic, and
(03:30):
so many companies and organizations in the last year made
the strategic decision that they were going to stop running
their own infrastructure technology and disproportionately chose AWS to help
them move to the cloud. And we spend a lot
of time helping them make that transformation. So I think
we've done a lot of good for customers, and we
have always sided on the side of customers. So what
about investors, I mean, the stock is down significantly from
(03:52):
a peak last year. Obviously there's broader market term weil. Yeah,
I think, you know, for investors and financially, I'd say
it's mixed. You know, I think we have some businesses
that are growing really strongly. If you look at AWS,
you know, in year every year, you know, it's not
a seventy four billion dollar revenue run right business, it's
(04:13):
pretty unusual growth, and we grew fifty percent year every
year in our advertising business. You know, it's the thirty
two billion dollar revenue run right business. So some business
has grown really strongly, and you know, we've continued to
grow in our retail business despite pretty crazy comparables during
I think the real challenge for us there is on
the cost side, and there have been several things that
(04:35):
have happened, um, some of which are more controllable than others.
You know. I think the part that's less controllable is
really around inflation. And I think we thought that inflation
would start to attenuate in two and with the war
in Ukraine, it just went the other way and it's
significantly accelerated. So the cost of trucking and line hall
and ocean and air and fuel has just substantially gone up,
(04:58):
and I think that will tenuate at some point. No
one knows how long that will take. I think the
more controllable areas for us are really around fulfillment center
capacity and productivity. And I think on the fulfilment center
capacity side, it was taking about twenty four months to
build new filming centers during the pandemic, and so we
had to make decisions, you know, in mid two thousand
(05:19):
twenty in early on how much demand we're going to
plan for and the team made a decision, which I
think in retrospect was a good decision that we were
going to build the high side of what we could
imagine consumer demand being, because we didn't want to constrain
consumers or sellers who were trying to place inventory, you know,
FU filming centers for fulfilment by Amazon, and so, you know,
(05:40):
we we end up with more capacity and we need
right now, and there's a number of things that we're
working on. We we've stopped building on properties where we
don't need it yet, and we've let a number of
leases laps and not a small number, you know, of
both those things. But you know, we are very confident
that we're gonna grow into that cost structure on the
on the fulfillment center side, and we decided that if
(06:01):
we were going to have to air one way, we'd
air on the side of customers, even if it meant
short term trouble for us or challenges for us, you know.
And I think on the productivity side, what I would
say is that when you build as quickly as we
did in the fulfillment center space and the transportation network,
you're always gonna have areas that you can optimize and
(06:22):
be more streamlined in And that's true for us, And
we've had a lot of occasions in our history where
we've worked on productivity and made improvements, and we have
a lot of clearly defined niches and I'm confident we'renna
get back to the right level of profitability. You are
going to sub lease thirty million square feet of space?
Is there a mistake? And the execution there because of
the overball, Again, because you have to make these decisions
(06:43):
two years in advance, and again, if you put yourself
back in twenty where we were growing thirty nine percent
year over a year on a two five billion dollar
revenue run rate, it's very hard to know what's the
right amount to build and you have to make a decision.
And we made the decision to air on the side
of our consumers and sellers, and we knew it might
mean that we might have more capacity for some short
(07:05):
period of time, but we were willing to do that
because we're always long term oriented and customer focus. Now,
how would you grade Amazon's performance with employees, your colleagues?
There has been some high profile Yeah, I think that
um And when I started in this gig, we had
just create a new leadership principle to strive to be
Earth's best employer. And I think we're you know, we
(07:26):
spent a lot of time trying to think through what
that really means is broad, and I think we've made
a fair bit of progress, but it's still early. In
my opinion, I think Amazon in general is a unusually
compelling place to work. You know, when you have a
mission which is to make customers lives better and easier
every day, and relentlessly invent to do so, it's inspiring
(07:48):
if you layer on top of that that we you know,
we not only make customers lives better, but people get
to work on a scale that's nearly unprecedented given the
nature of Amazon's business, with a culture that likes to
invent and is willing to move fast and its ideas,
and willing to be long term oriented, which means if
you want to leave a mark on the world that
outlasts you, you have a chance to do so. That
(08:10):
combination is really unusual, and I think it's why we
rank high and a lot of them polls in great
places to work. But I still think there are many
areas that we can keep improving, you know, and I think, UM,
you know, the first one I'd mentioned is safety. You know,
I think that UM you know, in our fulfillment centers,
that is the top priority. And you know, when you
(08:32):
get into the details of the numbers and outside of
all the spin of it all, you know what we're
about average there, but we're not trying to be average,
you know. We want to be the best in the
industry and the best in the world at it. And
that's a high priority in an area that I'm passionate
about and the team is passionate about. I think we've
made a lot of progress in UM over the last
several years, including last year, on diversity and inclusion, but
(08:55):
to really get to where we want to get to,
I think we have a lot of work to still do.
Their You know, we have a very strong set of
managers in Amazon, but we have grown so much in
the last ten years, and we have so many new managers,
many of whom we have promoted internally, and we have
management trading programs, but I think you've got to kind
(09:15):
of retool those things to to really make sure that
you have managers who are developing your teammates the way
you want managing is a privilege, and so you know,
we've we've spent a lot of time in the last
number of months um refining our management training programs that
you'll see us rolling out, you know. And then I
also think that our services and tools to our external
(09:38):
facing customers have outpaced those for our internal employees. And
I think we have a lot of work we can
do to make our employees everyday lives easier. And we
have we've identified kind of a top hundred list of
of areas that we can be better at that we're
just metronomically stepping through. And so we've made a lot
of progress, but we have a lot of work to
(09:58):
you still say, Clark just announced fairly abruptly that he's
leaving Amazon after twenty three years. He has been described
as an absolutely integral member of the S team, knew
the logistics and fulfillment center network better than anyone. Just
announced he's going to be co CEO flex Port. What
happened with Dave specifically and where you surprised, Well, you know,
(10:21):
I think, uh, different people want to do different jobs
with different responsibilities at different times, and it's incredibly personal,
and I think Dave wanted a different gig at this point,
and I don't begrudge him at all. I mean, Dave
has added so much to Amazon over the last twenty
three years, and particularly over the last two and a
half years, which have been among the most crazy in
(10:43):
the history of Amazon. And I think that if you
want to build a business that lasts a hundred plus years,
and that lasts all of us, you have to get
used to these sort of transitions and make sure that
you're you know, you're doing the right succession planning and
you've got the right talent to keep building the business.
And you know, we've done that historically and I expect
we'll do it again. Elon Musk just came out saying
(11:05):
he has a super bad feeling about the economy, Tesla
laying off ten percent of his staff. Jamie Diamond says
he's preparing for an economic hurricane. The World Bank just
slashed its forecast for global growth. How do you feel
about the economic climate? Well, it wasn't planning on giving
any guidance to please, but super bad or super super bad,
(11:33):
I think, Uh, there's some things that relates to Amazon
that are useful to remember, you know, I think the
first pieces, remember the of the of the worldwide retail market,
segment share is offline. And if you believe that that
equation is going to flip at some point, which we do,
(11:53):
I think it will will flip over a long period
of time. But if you believe that the companies that
have a customer experiences like we do, I think we're
gonna are gonna do all right. And you know, and
that and great customer experiences mean you have really broad selection,
low prices, and very fast delivery that's reliable to customers. Yeah.
I also think that if you look at different down turns, UM,
(12:17):
you know, should we have one at some point And
we've been through a few obviously in the twenty five
years that I've been at Amazon. Customers change their habits.
You know. They tend to be pickier about what they
buy and when they buy, and who they buy from,
and they often pick the partners and the companies that
they trust, you know, and that have great customer experiences
like the dimensions I mentioned earlier. UM, And so you know,
(12:39):
I also think there's you know, those two reasons, those
two factors give me some optimism that even if we
have a downturn, that we have the potential to still grow.
I would say that regardless though, we have so many
things that we believe we can do better for customers.
We have a roadmap that's you know, probably three to
five years long, and we're going to continue to invent.
(12:59):
We're gonna continue to be insurgent, and we have a
lot of work to do to get to where we
think we ultimately can get for customers. Now, when it
comes to the stock, as I mentioned, it has fallen significantly.
Do you think investors are missing something or has tech
just been overvalued? And this also of course matters to
employees who are significantly paid in stock. Well, you know, look,
(13:22):
I haven't been at Amazon for twenty five years. I
arrived at the company three weeks before we went public.
I have never tried to predict what the stock is
going to do, and any time I've tried to a
little bit, I've been wrong. So, you know, I think
it's I think it's pretty hard to um uh, pretty
hard to predict what it's going to be in any
short period of time. I do really believe that, Benjamin,
(13:44):
that Benjamin Graham maximum that um in the short term,
the stock market tends to be a voting machine in
the long term, it tends to be a weighing machine.
And I think if you you know, we've been through
a lot of points in twenty five years to be
an Amazon where the macro factors are off and um
stocks are down. Our stock is down, but you can't
(14:07):
really control that, you know. We have a concept. We
talked about a lot of Amazon inputs and outputs, you know,
in the ultimate output for a company of share price,
you know, and then other big outputs are free cash
flow or profit or revenue. You can't really manage the outputs.
You have to manage at the input level, and that's
where we spend all our time. And so in these
types of circumstances, you have to focus on what customers
(14:30):
care about and building for them in the long term
and inventing on their behalf. You got to get your
cost structure in the right spot. But if you do
the right things for the business long term, things tend
to work out. I think we've had very good returns
for investors, and I expect that to be true. Again.
I have, as you could probably tell a lot of
optimism for and I'm an optimistic person, but I also, um,
(14:53):
you know, there's this food fighter song called Congregation that
has that line you need blind faith, but no false hope,
you know. So I do have blind faith, but I
also think I don't have false hope. You know. I
have a lot of of data and uh, you know,
and and I think insights internally where all of our
(15:14):
businesses are on the right path. But if you measure
at any one point with lots of things happening around you,
you may not get to the same conclusion that you
get too. Long term, what are the moon shots at
Amazon that are capturing most of your time and attention?
What is going to define the next era of Amazon?
I mean is it? Is it astro the home robot,
or is it something else? Well, you know, we have
(15:36):
a unique way that we look at big new investments.
And I'm not sure it's right or wrong. It just
happens to be our way. And we ask ourselves when
we're considering something four questions. We ask, Uh, if it's successful,
can to be big and move the needle? At Amazon?
Is it being well served today? Do we have a
differentiated approach? And do we have competence there? And if not,
(15:59):
can we acquire clean If we like the answer to
those questions we'll go pursue it with a single thread
team that isn't distracted by the rest of the business.
And sometimes that leads to innovation investments that seemed pretty obvious,
Like you know, when I got to the company was
a books only retailer, and then we expanded to music
and video and electronics and choice, it seems obvious to people.
Other times that process does not lead to investments that
(16:22):
seem obvious to people. I mean, AWS was something that
people externally and internally thought was a little bit nutty
at the time. But just imagine what Amazon would be
today without AWS and and I think that you see
the same thing here. You know that there are so
many significant investments from making that I'm excited about. I'm
gonna have to constrain myself to a few, but you know,
(16:44):
I'm really excited about what we're doing in the prime
video space. I think we're clearly on the right track
there and building a significant business. That's interesting because Netflix
also just announced some layoffs, first subscriber loss in a decade,
Disney cutting back on costs. Do you see Amazon strategy
as fundamentally different from Netflix and Disney? And if so,
how well you know We're very bullish on it. And
(17:07):
remember we all the all the models are a little
bit different. But for Prime Video we have twun or
million plus Prime subscribers who are you know, get that
entertainment for free by being part of Prime and so
we have a little bit different pricing model than some
of the others. But I'm incredibly encouraged by what we
(17:27):
have coming if you if you look at me. We
launched this show Reacher earlier in the year, was a
huge hit. We you know, we have a new Masal season.
We we just launched the New Boys season, which is
I am a big Amazon, It's very good. Of course,
we have glad of the Rings coming up, you know
in September and Thursday and football, so I'm very bullish
(17:48):
about it. UM we also, you know, we're excited about
what we've done with mgm uh. You know, I think
some of the assets there will go very well with
the rest of what we're doing entertainment wise. We have
had supported um channel there or platform there and free
v which I think is appealing. And we have a
channel's business, which is also a little bit different, where
(18:09):
third party streaming companies will ingest all their content in channels,
so they get kind of the leading viewing experience that
we've built over a number of years, and then they
get to sell monthly subscriptions as a channel to our
two million plus prime subscribers. And so if you look
at Warner Brothers, Discovery and Paramount and Stars and Global,
(18:29):
they're building really significant subscription businesses. So I'm very bullish
about that business. I'm I'm optimistic that we have a
chance to build a significant grocery business, which is early
stages for us. I am excited about uh Kuiper, which
is our low earth orbit satellite that we're building. You
gotta remember there three hundred to four hundred million people
(18:51):
in the world who have limited to no Internet connectivity.
I mean, just think about how different the world is
when you don't have that type of connectivity. And so
I think that's a really significant opportunity that has some
aws characteristics to it. I continue to be very optimistic
about Alexa, you know, building the world's best personal assistant.
We have a you know, two hundred million endpoints already
(19:13):
that are using Alexa. We're clearly onto something there. And
and then you know, our autonomous driving ride hailing service
and zooks that were building, you know, here in the
Bay Area. I just think with the way auto consumption
is evolving, I think that also is a chance to
be a really significant business. Now. I don't know if
I don't know if all of them are going to
be successful, but if any one of them becomes the
(19:34):
fourth pillar for us on top of Marketplace and Prime
in AWS were completely different companies, just like we were
when AWS became successful. So I think they're very worthwhile
investments and bets, and I'm optimistic about We didn't mention
Astro obviously though, powered, but I mean our home robots
gonna be where I don't yet where is it? It's
not really widely available for sale. What's the status? Hope
(19:57):
you good one? Okay, um, thank you. Everyone's very curious
about Jeff's role these days. What kind of executive chair
he really is. He said when he left that he'd
focus his attention and energies on initiatives that he really
cares about as at Amazon. But from the outside, it
looks like he's really focusing on philanthropy, he's focusing on space.
(20:17):
What kind of an executive chairman is he? Well? He
you know, Jeff is always going to be UM involved
and UM he has. You know, I'm I feel very
lucky to have been in Amazon for twenty five years.
I feel very lucky to have worked directly for Jeff
for twenty of them. And we have a really close
relationship and have for a long time. And I think
(20:38):
we share a lot of the same values about customers
and um, how important is to optimize for customers and
how high standards they need to be um, you know,
given how easy it is for people to switch, and
the importance of invention and speed and so, you know,
I just feel very lucky to have had the chance
to work so closely with him. We still talk all
the time. It's it's very useful for me to be
(21:00):
able to seek his council. He did the job for
so long and and he's always made himself available. So
is your relation I mean, he was your only boss
for twenty five years, right, is your relationship fundamentally different
than it was when you were the head? Of course,
you know, every every single job you have, the relationships different.
You know. Remember the first couple of years I worked
(21:22):
for Jeff, I worked is what we call his shadow then,
which really like a chief of staff and that was
different than when I was starting AWS, which was different
from when we got AWS going, and it was, you know,
a business that was starting to do well, and and
it's different when I'm in the CEO role. But you know,
the constant has always been that we have a great relationship,
and we collaborate really well, and I think that we
(21:43):
listened to one another and um again, for me to
have the ability to bounce different things off of him
and seek his council is very valuable. And he's still
focused on Amazon. He still has focused on Amazon. Amazon
is poised to become the biggest private sector employer in
the world, second only right now Walmart is in that spot,
but Amazon will probably soon surpass it. First vote to
(22:07):
unionize at an Amazon warehouse, I know you've been spending
a lot of time at warehouses. When you look at
someone like Chris Small's who I think some people look
at as this modern day hero who got fired pulled
off this union vote, what's your message to someone like him,
Your message to the folks who think maybe we should
join a union. Well, I know, I think that the
(22:27):
first thing to be clear about is that employees get
to make that choice whether they want to have a
union or not. They always have had that choice and
it continues to be their choice. And you know, we
happen to think they're better off without a union for
a number of reasons, including the fact that you know,
it's it's much harder when you have a union to
have a direct relationship with your manager and to get
(22:49):
things done quickly. So if you see something on the
line that you think could be better for your your team,
or you or your or customers, you can't just go
to your manager and say, let's change this. You know,
there's a whole process in bureaucracy that you have to
go through to be able to do that. You know,
and and we get you know, when there's a union,
we're going to get the feedback filtered by what the
union decides is worth bringing up. And we'd much rather
(23:13):
hear from every employee whatever is on their mind. And so,
you know, I think if you want to continue to
have the structure that we've had for all this time,
you have to have really competitive benefits. And then I
think if you look at Amazon's they're very unusual in
this space. We champion the fifteen dollar minimum wage several
years ago. The starting salaries now over eighteen dollars an hour,
(23:36):
which you know is more than double the federal minimum wage.
You get full health insurance in four oh one K
and twenty weeks up to twenty weeks of parental leave.
And if you want to get a college education, you
haven't had one. We have a career choice program that
let's our fulfillment center associates to be able to do. So.
That is a very unusual and compelling set of benefits,
(23:57):
and those were all accomplished without a union. So you know,
I think that we realize that we you know, we
have to continue to work on the relationship with our
our employees, and we need to continue to provide the
right benefits, and you know, we need to continue to
work on safety, and that's our intention. The FTC has
revamped its antitrust inquiry into Amazon and by some accounts,
(24:19):
is accelerating it. Are you preparing for an antitrust lawsuit
from the FTC? You know, I think that if you
are a large company that's growing to a significant extent
like we have, you have to be prepared to be scrutinized.
And we have known this for some time, you know,
many years and We have tried to run the company
(24:41):
with that in mind and knowing that if if somebody
look that we would stand up to that scrutiny, and
I you know, I think that's what we've tried to
do and running the business. We can't control what, you know,
you know, whether organizations bring different suits against us. But
I think if you look at our business, if you
actually look at the fact, if you take out you know,
take out of the equation that there there may not
(25:03):
be the most objective you know, leadership when it comes
to Amazon in that organization. If you look at the facts,
you know, in our retail business, we're about one percent
of the worldwide retail market segment share, and remember is
still offline. And if you look in our AWS business,
we you know about depending how you measure of the
(25:26):
worldwide global I T span is on premises, you know,
and then we have a cloud business and then we
have a portion of that. You know, we're a leading
market segment share in the cloud part of this, but
we operate you know, who we compete with in AWS
is really on premises UM I T in addition to
the cloud. So you know, these are relatively small percentages
of the entire party and you can kind of step
(25:48):
through all the businesses. And I think simply because you've
been successful in a few different businesses doesn't somehow mean
that you have un natural market power. It just means
you've been successful in a couple to from customer experiences.
But we still have a relatively small amount of market
segment share in those areas. What about the sec you're
being sued by them over third party data and how
(26:09):
you've used it. Do you think in the past Amazon
main mistakes with letting employees internally see how those third
party selling sellers were doing, we have we have pretty
good control. I mean, you know, we of course disagree
with the premise of that, but I would say that
we have um very good controls with respect to the
(26:30):
data that the different employees sets are able to see.
And you know, I think if you if you look
at sellers, we have about two million small medium sized
sellers who sell in our marketplace. And by the way,
I think that we can be better for sellers. You know,
I think that um, you know, we can have better
(26:50):
tools from to get started, we can have better tools
from the manage what they're doing across their their different
Amazon units. I think we can communicate better. There's a
whole bunch of things we can do better. Um, and
we agonize over every single email or communication we get
from sellers that's you know, critical or where they're unhappy,
but we also you know, we get many thousands of
(27:13):
very positive emails from sellers, and we do very regularly
robust surveying, and a lot more sellers are happy with
Amazon than unhappy with Amazon. And I think if you
look at what what they're able to do is, you know,
as a business, by virtual selling on Amazon versus not,
it completely changes what's possible. Sellers don't really long for
(27:35):
e commerce software that exists in lots of places and
uh and it's not very expensive. What they love about
selling on Amazon is that they get access to our
hundreds of millions of customers and that completely changes what
their prospects can be in terms of the businesses they're building.
So we have a lot of work to do there
like we do in a lot of other places. But
(27:56):
I think we have a very strong partnership with sellers.
What's the view of the supplied chain right now and
how much pain there is going to continue to be
and for how long well, you know, I think that, um,
there's a lot of challenges in the supply chain still.
I mean, it's it's gotten better than it was, but um,
there are all sorts of challenges. You know, non perishable goods, electronics,
(28:18):
chips is still a really significant issue for all sorts
of businesses, and so, you know, I think most companies
are are working really hard to overcome those challenges. In
our case, we have tried to order significantly ahead of
when we normally do, which again might create risks financially,
but we're gonna do it to side on the side
of customers. We have worked really hard to open a
(28:41):
lot more points of presence and ports and increase our
capacity and getting products in. But I think it's going
to be something that companies battle with for some time.
What's sometimes six months a year, you know, I don't
really answer that, but I don't think it's imminently going away.
You know. I think if you look at some of
the challenges that we have around capacity, that the inflation worsens,
(29:04):
I don't think it's you know, around the corner. You
made a huge mark on Amazon with aws. Obviously, what
is the mark that you want to make? Still? On Amazon.
I mean, in this new role, what's going to define
the anti jazz era? Well, I don't I don't really
think of it that way, Emily. I mean, I, um,
(29:25):
I don't think it's really about any anti jazz era
or any one person you know. And uh and by
the way, AWS was not about any one person that
you know. If you spend any time on AWS, that
is an unbelievable team. Um, not just an incredible leadership team,
which it is, but just top to bottom and the
number of inventors and people care about customers and operate
(29:49):
you know, uh, something where it has to work almost
like a doubt and it's it's always teams. And so
what what I'm open for over the next number of
years is, um, you know, is really what we took
what really unites all the parts of our business, which
is we exist to make customers lives better every day
and easier every day, and we're gonna keep inventing to
(30:11):
do so. And so I look at every single one
of our businesses and you know, take our retail business
or a consumer business, which is the oldest of our
businesses of it still lives offline. Like I think we
have a lot of upside and a lot of growth.
And I think as much invention as we've seen the
last twenty five years, you know, the time I've been there,
(30:33):
I think that's it's gonna look small compared to the
next twenty five years. There is a lot for us
to invent on behalf for customers, and so you know,
I'm excited to be part of the team that makes
that happen. And uh, you know, I also think that
there's a lot we can do as we continue to
make Amazon a place that employees love working at and
it's the place that they can best build their career at.
(30:54):
And I also think that you you've seen some of
this last few years, but increasingly, you know, we are
continuing to you know, to increase the amount that we
give back to the communities in which we have big presence,
and that really matters to me. I think we have
a responsibility to do that. And um, so you know,
it's it's it's a long journey that we're working on,
but I'm excited to be part of it, and uh,
(31:16):
you know, I hope to hard for a long time. Well,
thank you for joining us and telling us about the
way the journey is going. So far. Bloom Brook Studio
One point I was produced and edited by Lauren Ellis
and Brian Carter Gainer. I'm Emily changing, your host and
executive producer. Thanks for listening.
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