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