Speaker 1: How do you conclude a legendary business story, the story
Speaker 1: of a company that started in a garage more than
Speaker 1: twenty seven years ago and every single day expands further
Speaker 1: into our neighborhoods, onto our screens, and throughout our lives.
Speaker 1: How do you wrap up the story of an iconic
Speaker 1: entrepreneur like Jeff Bezos who continues to dominate news headlines
Speaker 1: and stir controversy. As I was pondering this question, a
Speaker 1: funny thing happened. Jeff Bezos gave us an ending before
Speaker 1: most people expected, and some bombshell news this evening from Amazon.
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos says he's stepping down as CEO. And this
Speaker 1: is one of those announcements that when it came through today,
Speaker 1: everyone went, oh, my gosh, what's happening. He's leading, He's
Speaker 1: leaving the company. As far as day to day operation,
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos has announced that the quarter it was February second,
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty one, and an earnings press release, Amazon
Speaker 1: shocked the world it announced that its iconic founder was
Speaker 1: leaving the CEO role. That summer, he would become executive
Speaker 1: chairman and as protege. A guy named Andy Jassey who
Speaker 1: ran Amazon Web Services would step into the top spot.
Speaker 1: Beazo said he would remain actively involved in new projects
Speaker 1: at the company, but he also spoke of other priorities.
Speaker 1: He sent a memo to all Amazon employees. I asked
Speaker 1: my colleague to read a selection from it. Being a
Speaker 1: CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility, and it is consuming.
Speaker 1: When you have a responsibility like that, it is hard
Speaker 1: to put attention on anything else. As executive chair, I
Speaker 1: will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives, but also have
Speaker 1: the time and energy I need to focus on the
Speaker 1: Day One Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, the
Speaker 1: Washington Post, and my other passions. At the time, Basos
Speaker 1: seemingly at a high point. He was the richest person
Speaker 1: in the world. Amazon had surpassed to one trillion dollar
Speaker 1: market cap, he had moved past the infamous pr battles
Speaker 1: with the National Enquirer, and he even seemed to have
Speaker 1: gotten over any public embarrassment over his divorce. But now
Speaker 1: Bazos was talking about his interests in philanthropy and its
Speaker 1: pursuit of space exploration with this private company, Blue Origin.
Speaker 1: Things that Amazon were getting to be a lot less
Speaker 1: fun for Bazos, as we covered in previous episodes, Sellers
Speaker 1: in Amazon's marketplace were complaining bitterly about fraud and unfair
Speaker 1: competition from overseas companies. Delivery service providers which employed Amazon
Speaker 1: drivers were grumbling about how the company pressured them to
Speaker 1: work at unsafe speeds. Amazon had so many vocal critics
Speaker 1: in organized labor and on Capitol Hill, and they were
Speaker 1: weaponizing the exorbitant wealth of the tech giants against them.
Speaker 1: Here's Rhode Island Congressman David Cicillini concluding the Congressional hearings
Speaker 1: on big Tech and antitrust. When these laws were written
Speaker 1: in monopolists were men named Rockefeller and Carnegie. The names
Speaker 1: have changed, but the story is the same today that
Speaker 1: the men are named Zuckerberg, Cook, Chai, and Bezos. Their
Speaker 1: controls and marketplace allowed them to do whatever it took
Speaker 1: to crush independent businesses and expand their own power. This
Speaker 1: must end. Bezos had become an object of ire, even scorn,
Speaker 1: for his wealth, his power, and his life of extraordinary leisure.
Speaker 1: His successor, Andy Jassey, would at the very least present
Speaker 1: a humbler target for Amazon's critics. A handover made sense.
Speaker 1: So what was next for Amazon without its iconic leader,
Speaker 1: and what was next for Jeff Bezos now that he
Speaker 1: was free from the daily responsibility of running the company.
Speaker 1: He seemed to be in the midst of a profound
Speaker 1: midlife crisis. It involved space travel, a mega yacht, and
Speaker 1: going head to head with his ex wife in the
Speaker 1: realm of philanthropic giving. You're listening to Foundering, I'm your host,
Speaker 1: brad Stone. To begin the final act of our story.
Speaker 1: We started early with the COVID nineteen pandemic, with stores
Speaker 1: closing and people quarantining at home. Amazon sales sword. Many
Speaker 1: people depended on Amazon at this time when they were
Speaker 1: afraid to leave their homes, which put a terrible strain
Speaker 1: on its warehouses, endangered the lives of its workers, and
Speaker 1: kicked off a fresh and critical examination of Amazon's labor practices.
Speaker 1: We'll tell you that story after the break. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: we hardly need to relive the early days of COVID.
Speaker 1: It's still burned into most of our memories. Out of
Speaker 1: growing concerns about the deadly coronavirus, a Washington State resident
Speaker 1: fell ill after returning from Huhan, China, where the outbreak began.
Speaker 1: Officials now the first confirmed COVID case in the US
Speaker 1: was actually in Seattle, Amazon's backyard. In early March, the
Speaker 1: majority of the workforce headed home for what would be
Speaker 1: a brutal extended quarantine. The human told during this period
Speaker 1: was horrific, of course, but so was the financial one.
Speaker 1: The International Monetary Fund estimated that COVID will cost the
Speaker 1: global economy over twelve point five trillion dollars. That's a
Speaker 1: staggering number, comparable to the impact of the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: But at Amazon, exactly the opposite happened. While engineers and
Speaker 1: other white color employees went home, workers in the fulfillment
Speaker 1: centers had to stay at their posts. Here's Derrick Palmer,
Speaker 1: a packer at a warehouse in Staten Island. You go home,
Speaker 1: all you see is coronavirus dis coronavirus that stay safe.
Speaker 1: When I get to Amazon, there was no talk about
Speaker 1: coronavirus at all. It was almost as like Amazon didn't
Speaker 1: know what to do, so they didn't address it at all,
Speaker 1: you know, which was very alarming, because when I'm working
Speaker 1: a lot of people will come to me and say,
Speaker 1: what are we gonna do about this virus? Like they
Speaker 1: already coming to me looking for a solution because they
Speaker 1: didn't have any trust in Amazon, and I myself was lost.
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't know soon COVID wasn't only something
Speaker 1: that Derek saw on the news. His colleagues at Staten
Speaker 1: Island called out sick, and others showed up to work
Speaker 1: with symptoms. Derek worked with a guy named Chris Smalls,
Speaker 1: who would soon become the face of worker dissatisfaction with Amazon.
Speaker 1: Here's Chris, the colleague that I work hand in hand
Speaker 1: with um. She was sick, her eyes were bloodshot, read,
Speaker 1: she was walking around sluggish. She already been there for
Speaker 1: a number of days, for ten hours shifts, so I
Speaker 1: know she's been around hundreds of people already. That was
Speaker 1: the red flag. I said, you need to go home
Speaker 1: immediately until your results come back. So Chris tells his
Speaker 1: bosses that he thinks COVID is in the building, and
Speaker 1: he was surprised when management told him someone had already
Speaker 1: tested positive two weeks prior. They told me not to
Speaker 1: tell anybody that somebody was already positive. They didn't want
Speaker 1: to cause a panic. It didn't make any sense to me.
Speaker 1: You're telling me that somebody has been positive in the
Speaker 1: building two weeks prior. We had no idea. We don't
Speaker 1: know where they got it from, where it came from,
Speaker 1: how long it's been in the building. Chris comes out
Speaker 1: of the meeting and tells Derek what just happened. Derek
Speaker 1: said he was surprised. I just I got I was shocked.
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, they don't want workers they know, like,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't they want us to know about the first
Speaker 1: coronavirus case? And he was just like, look, man, I
Speaker 1: don't know. This is this is scary. Amazon was initially
Speaker 1: secretive about the cases in their warehouses because they wanted
Speaker 1: to avoid employee panic. A lot of big employers of
Speaker 1: frontline workers were in the same position, but this would
Speaker 1: blow back on Amazon in a big way. Late that March,
Speaker 1: Chris and Derek organized an employee walk out. So then
Speaker 1: the company told Chris to stay at home because he
Speaker 1: had possibly been in contact with an infected colleague, but
Speaker 1: he returned to the building anyway and he got fired.
Speaker 1: What happened next would turned Staten Island into the epicenter
Speaker 1: of controversy over Amazon's COVID response, and it would give
Speaker 1: hope to organize labor, which had been trying unsuccessfully to
Speaker 1: organize Amazon workers for years. While all this is happening,
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos' leadership group had a meeting about the situation,
Speaker 1: and a transcript was leaked to Vice News. In it,
Speaker 1: Amazon's chief council David Zapolski, suggested that the company should
Speaker 1: focus attention on Chris Small's because he wasn't quote smart
Speaker 1: or articulate. I should note that Chris is black, and
Speaker 1: many critics saw the comment as racially charged. Here's Chris again.
Speaker 1: I'd never forget that moment. Now. Of course, the definitely
Speaker 1: upset me saying these racist remarks. You know, call it
Speaker 1: what it is. It's definitely a stigment of black community
Speaker 1: calling us not smart, articulate. The leaked transcript was a
Speaker 1: huge story. It gave people a rare look inside Amazon's
Speaker 1: leadership team, where the focus appeared to be on stopping
Speaker 1: a fledgling union movement rather than listening to the safety
Speaker 1: concerns of workers. Later, sapul Sky, the chief attorney, apologized
Speaker 1: for his comments. He said he hadn't known Chris was black.
Speaker 1: He told me, quote, I shouldn't have used that characterization
Speaker 1: for any Amazon employee. It was incredibly regrettable. As for Chris,
Speaker 1: he threw himself into union organizing. Ironically, Uh, they said
Speaker 1: to make me the face of the whole unionizing efforts
Speaker 1: against Amazon, And from that moment forward, that's when I
Speaker 1: really started to get involved in organizing on a larger
Speaker 1: scale nationwide. And now I'm trying to make them eat
Speaker 1: those words. As of this recording. In April, Chris and
Speaker 1: Derek led Amazon employees to victory in the union election
Speaker 1: in New York City. It marks organized labor's first ever
Speaker 1: foothold in Amazon in the US, historic wind that will
Speaker 1: now lead to an epic challenge negotiating a contract with
Speaker 1: the company to improve the lives of its workers. Almost
Speaker 1: two years to the day after he was fired by Amazon,
Speaker 1: Chris stood in front of a group of supporters and
Speaker 1: pop champagne history. Do you have a method for Jeff Beziness. Oh,
Speaker 1: we want to thank that basis were going to space
Speaker 1: because when he was up there Amazon. He's thanking Bezos
Speaker 1: for going to space because while the former CEO was distracted,
Speaker 1: Chris was building a union. This could mean big changes
Speaker 1: for Amazon unless they somehow get it overturned in court.
Speaker 1: The implication are huge unions can make it harder for
Speaker 1: Amazon to dictate things like the length of breaks and
Speaker 1: when employees are compelled to work extra time. This is
Speaker 1: the kind of flexibility that Amazon depends on to meet
Speaker 1: those unexpected surges and lulls and online shopping. It's a
Speaker 1: significant challenge to their business model. But back in Chris
Speaker 1: Small's also succeeded in drawing lots of attention to Amazon's
Speaker 1: pandemic response. Sixty minutes dispatched a crew to check it out,
Speaker 1: which is never a good sign. The journalist Leslie Stall
Speaker 1: interviewed Chris as well as Dave Clark, the executive who
Speaker 1: built the Amazon transportation network and now ran the entire
Speaker 1: retail part of the company. So, how many positive cases
Speaker 1: have you discovered at Amazon? The actual sort of total
Speaker 1: number case isn't particularly useful because it's relative to the
Speaker 1: size of the building and then the overall community infection rates.
Speaker 1: So you you don't know, or you're just not going
Speaker 1: to tell us how many cases have been discovered. I
Speaker 1: don't have I mean, we know, I don't have the
Speaker 1: number right on me at this moment because it's not
Speaker 1: a particularly useful number. It wasn't a good look people
Speaker 1: wanted to know what was going on inside Amazon's warehouses. Finally,
Speaker 1: the company did reveal its COVID numbers later that year.
Speaker 1: About twenty of its one point four million workers had
Speaker 1: gotten sick by the fall, and that number didn't include
Speaker 1: the drivers, who are contractors not employees. Amazon argued this
Speaker 1: was lower than the infection right and surrounding communities, and
Speaker 1: that many of these employees could have gotten ill at
Speaker 1: home instead of work. In August, and Amazon spokesperson gave
Speaker 1: us this statement, quote, we are monitoring the situation closely,
Speaker 1: and we'll continue to follow local government guidance and work
Speaker 1: closely with leading medical healthcare professionals. Now, I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time reporting on Amazon's pandemic response from my book,
Speaker 1: and I think the problem was they had to competing
Speaker 1: interests serving customers and protecting workers. They did institute safety
Speaker 1: precautions in the warehouses, like social distancing and COVID testing,
Speaker 1: but it was really impossible to do both, particularly in
Speaker 1: the early days of the pandemic, and because serving customers
Speaker 1: has always been Amazon's guiding principle. Again, it came first.
Speaker 1: I remember feeling surprised by how engaged Jeff Bezos was
Speaker 1: from his ranch in West Texas. He led weekly meetings
Speaker 1: devoted to COVID and employee safety. Amazon hired epidemiologists to
Speaker 1: guide them through the crisis. Bezos wanted to convey the
Speaker 1: image of a CEO in control and sympathetic to the
Speaker 1: plight of employees. In April, he visited an Amazon warehouse
Speaker 1: and a Whole Foods market in Dallas, his first public
Speaker 1: visit to the online in years. Nice to be decided out,
Speaker 1: thank you, But this was a pre battle that Amazon
Speaker 1: really couldn't win. Amazon sales jumped during the crisis. Amazon's
Speaker 1: market capitalization increased by about seven hundred billion dollars, and
Speaker 1: Jeff bezos personal net worth rose by about seventy five billion.
Speaker 1: So at a time when people in businesses were suffering
Speaker 1: and employees were panicking, Amazon and Bezos were thriving, it
Speaker 1: felt unsettling that the very thing that was shutting down
Speaker 1: the world was filling the company's coffers. Navigating this pr
Speaker 1: maelstrom was one of the biggest challenges Bezos had ever faced,
Speaker 1: and just eight months later he decided to step down
Speaker 1: from the CEO job. I don't think the pandemic is
Speaker 1: necessarily the reason he left, but certainly it was another
Speaker 1: illustration that running the company was getting to be a
Speaker 1: lot less fun, and Bezos did want to have fun.
Speaker 1: He wanted to have adventures. He wanted to embrace the
Speaker 1: kind of risk that might scare the shareholders of a big,
Speaker 1: publicly traded company like Amazon. He wanted to go to space.
Speaker 1: Will visit Van Horn, Texas for Jeff Bezos is highly
Speaker 1: controversial trip to space Next. In July, my colleague Spencer Soper,
Speaker 1: and I traveled to Van Horn, Texas. It's a small
Speaker 1: town of about two thousand people. When you drive around,
Speaker 1: you see trailer parks and roadside motels. Bezos owns a
Speaker 1: massive ranch about forty minutes away. It's one thousand acres
Speaker 1: of mountains and brush that resembles his grandfather's Texas ranch
Speaker 1: where he spent idyllic summers as a child. He secretly
Speaker 1: scouted this land back in two thousand three, and then
Speaker 1: later announced his plan to a local newspaper. He wanted
Speaker 1: to build a launch site on the property for his
Speaker 1: private space company, Blue Origin. Spencer and I were in
Speaker 1: Van Horn to witness something pretty wild yep. Just a
Speaker 1: few weeks after he formally departed the CEO job at Amazon.
Speaker 1: Bezos was leaving Earth. Here's Spencer, who brought along a
Speaker 1: microphone to document this unusual event. Just getting checked into
Speaker 1: Van Horn, Texas. And uh, folks in town, you know,
Speaker 1: some are pretty stoked about it, and some, you know,
Speaker 1: man not so much. You know, so say they'd rather
Speaker 1: have have rain than a than than a spaceship because
Speaker 1: they've been dealing with some drought for a while. Many
Speaker 1: of the townspeople seemed completely unaware of this billionaire space project.
Speaker 1: Spencer met Barbara while he was pumping gas. Bezos people
Speaker 1: know much about him down here. Um, I'm not really
Speaker 1: in not that I'm aware of. Do you do you
Speaker 1: shop on Amazon? Yes? I do? So he runs that company,
Speaker 1: he founded it. Yeah, really, Yeah, that's that's the guy
Speaker 1: going to space. He's the guy who found it, that
Speaker 1: clown and okay, well sharing how much I know that's
Speaker 1: how he made his money. Wow. Spencer also caught up
Speaker 1: with local sheriff Arvin West the night before the launch
Speaker 1: at a small canteena outside Van Horn. The sheriff, who
Speaker 1: had other things on his mind, was not impressed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it did never blew my scard up.
Speaker 1: So one never no big deal to me. Well, the
Speaker 1: billionaires are going to space, maybe they'll stay there. There's
Speaker 1: actually a petition say don't let him back one thing
Speaker 1: about it. We don't have to worry about him checking
Speaker 1: their green card coming in. They only even do that
Speaker 1: for the border. Well that's one guy's opinion. Anyway, we
Speaker 1: were not alone in van Horn that week. Reporters and
Speaker 1: satellite TV trucks descended on the scene rocket to make
Speaker 1: for pretty compelling television. And there was always the possibility
Speaker 1: that Bezos sent his colleagues might die in a fiery crash.
Speaker 1: Here's a pretty dark confession. I actually had to pre
Speaker 1: write his obituary just in case. Here's Spencer again. So
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos will be fulfilling his boyhood drained today. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's fifty seven now. He said he's been dreaming about
Speaker 1: space travel since he was five years old, and this
Speaker 1: is basically an expedition he can take due to his
Speaker 1: wealth created from founding Amazon dot Com, which is now
Speaker 1: the world's largest retailer. Today's rocket won't go into orbit.
Speaker 1: It will it will go into a suborbital space, letting
Speaker 1: the astronauts experience a few minutes of weightlessness. At two
Speaker 1: in the morning, Spencer and I met up with the
Speaker 1: other journalists at the local community center. Rental car headlights
Speaker 1: glowed in the parking lot. Blue Origin had been working
Speaker 1: on the New Shepherd rocket for about fifteen years and
Speaker 1: conducted fifteen unmanned flights. This was the first one with
Speaker 1: people on board. Bezos was a guinea pig of sorts,
Speaker 1: along with three others, his younger brother Mark, an astronaut
Speaker 1: trainee in her eighties, and an eighteen year old July
Speaker 1: actually turned out to be a frenzied month for the
Speaker 1: space tourism industry. Bezos's launch was nine days after Richard
Speaker 1: Branson had his launch with Virgin Galactic. A key goal
Speaker 1: of space pioneers like Bezos, Brandson, and Elon Musk is
Speaker 1: creating spaceships that can be reused like airplanes. Rather than
Speaker 1: plunging into the ocean, the rocket booster lands upright and
Speaker 1: can be flown over and over again. This lowers the
Speaker 1: cost of space travel and makes the commercialization and exploration
Speaker 1: of space more feasible. New Shepherd took off in a
Speaker 1: little after eight am, Texas time. Watching it watching any
Speaker 1: rocket launch is a pretty profound experience. You think of
Speaker 1: human potential, incredible scientific achievement, and of course the safety
Speaker 1: of the people on board. I just have to add
Speaker 1: the new Shepherd is extraordinarily phallic looking. Five four command
Speaker 1: engines start to one. Of course, Basos and his crew
Speaker 1: landed safely. After the launch, we got on busses again
Speaker 1: to go to another facility for the post trip press conference.
Speaker 1: A Country Western soundtrack was playing on a loop, and
Speaker 1: I remember thinking how choreographed the entire day was, Like
Speaker 1: Bezos wanted to conjure images of Clint Eastward and John Wayne.
Speaker 1: Bezos showed up in a cowboy hat. Reporters crammed onto
Speaker 1: folded chairs on one side of the root and the
Speaker 1: astronauts family sat on the other side, and how it felt.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, My expectations were high and they were
Speaker 1: dramatically exceeded. But when you get up above the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: what you see is it's actually incredibly thin. It's this tiny, little,
Speaker 1: tragile thing, and as we move about the planet, we're
Speaker 1: damaging it. That's a very profound It's one thing to
Speaker 1: recognize that intellectually, it's another thing to actually see with
Speaker 1: your own eyes. This was the most excited I've ever
Speaker 1: seen Bass. He was almost like a kid. But he
Speaker 1: made one comment that ruffled some feathers. He was trying
Speaker 1: to make a joke while conveying gratitude toward the people
Speaker 1: who facilitated Amazon's rise, which created his fortune. I also,
Speaker 1: I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer,
Speaker 1: because you guys paid for all this. This is what
Speaker 1: Christmas was talking about after his union win. We played
Speaker 1: this tape in a previous episode. Remember an Amazon delivery
Speaker 1: person said he quit when he heard it because Azos
Speaker 1: said this just months after the controversies around Amazon's pandemic
Speaker 1: response and the dangerous to warehouse workers. It went over
Speaker 1: very poorly. Afterwards, we had a chance to go to
Speaker 1: the launch site and snap more photos. Then Bezos made
Speaker 1: a surprise appearance. He was on a convoy of electric
Speaker 1: trucks made by Ribban, a startup that Amazon invested in
Speaker 1: and ordered one hundred thousand electric delivery trucks from. This
Speaker 1: was a victory lap and he was clearly relishing the attention.
Speaker 1: Reporters shouted questions at Bezos, so Bezos just showed up
Speaker 1: with the other three astronauts and they're walking onto the
Speaker 1: landing pad. How soon do you want to go back?
Speaker 1: It looks like it's I'm just gonna cost me. In
Speaker 1: the middle of the scrum, Spencer blessed him, took his shot.
Speaker 1: See little guys, thank you. What a great day. Hey,
Speaker 1: give us an update on the billion in stock you
Speaker 1: got itself to bankroll it. We heard that one the
Speaker 1: last four years ago. He looked at me, got into
Speaker 1: the car, shut the door, and drove off. You know,
Speaker 1: I think there was a slim pickens on questions today.
Speaker 1: Bezos was driving away from the press, but he wasn't
Speaker 1: leaving the public stage. This was his future, not conducting
Speaker 1: company meetings in Seattle conference rooms. In fact, I thought
Speaker 1: the most revealing thing he said at the press conference
Speaker 1: was when he was asked how he was now going
Speaker 1: to focus as time. Yes, so I'm gonna split my
Speaker 1: time between Blue Origin and the Bezos Earth Fund, those
Speaker 1: two things, and there's gonna be a third thing, um
Speaker 1: and maybe a fourth thing, but I don't know what
Speaker 1: those are yet. I'm not very good at doing one thing.
Speaker 1: Did you notice he didn't mention Amazon? I think to
Speaker 1: surprise some people back in Seattle. Bezos's feet were leaving
Speaker 1: the earth literally and kind of figuratively too. He now
Speaker 1: belonged to a different orbit of space dreams, celebrity global
Speaker 1: travel with his girlfriend and their life of extraordinary wealth.
Speaker 1: As for Amazon, well, it was now Andy Jassy's company.
Speaker 1: The deputy would have to find his own way. We'll
Speaker 1: tell that story next. So Jeff Bezos announced he was
Speaker 1: stepping down from the CEO role, and I remember a
Speaker 1: lot of commentators assuming he's going to stay involved. Of course,
Speaker 1: Bezos was a famous micromanager. It just seemed impossible that
Speaker 1: he would change a style and be hands off at
Speaker 1: the company he nurtured for two decades. But after the
Speaker 1: space launch, Bezos devoted himself to his charity. He also
Speaker 1: went on vacation and popped up in places like Hawaii, Greece, Bora, Bora,
Speaker 1: and Mexico. It became pretty clear, for the first time ever,
Speaker 1: Amazon was going to have to make its way without
Speaker 1: its founder. Andy Jassey was the new guy in charge.
Speaker 1: I've known Jasse for years and followed his career. He's
Speaker 1: an impressive executive. He built a WS into the most
Speaker 1: profitable and fastest growing part of Amazon, and he learned
Speaker 1: directly from Bezos, in part by following him around everywhere
Speaker 1: during Amazon's early days as his chief of staff. But
Speaker 1: as Amazon made its way through the COVID crisis, it
Speaker 1: became apparent that the company needed something more, someone who
Speaker 1: could mend its relationship with employees and fix its reputation
Speaker 1: among regulators, the press, and customers. Jesse has tried to
Speaker 1: thread this needle. A few days before he took over Amazon,
Speaker 1: the company added two new entries to its list of
Speaker 1: leadership principles. These are the codes that govern all decisions
Speaker 1: like who gets hired and promoted. The new principles were
Speaker 1: strive to be Earth's best employer, and success and scale,
Speaker 1: bring broad responsibility. These are some pretty lofty goals. In
Speaker 1: other words, Amazon was finally acknowledging its critics for its
Speaker 1: first twenty seven years. Satisfying the almighty customer had been
Speaker 1: the company's first and only north star. Now it was
Speaker 1: admitting that workers were another crucial constituency. Here's Jasse speaking
Speaker 1: at an internal Amazon event called Deep Dive in July. So,
Speaker 1: if I start with um strive to be or It's
Speaker 1: best employer, I think that we always felt like it
Speaker 1: was self evident that we cared about employees, and that
Speaker 1: we cared about building the best place to work, and
Speaker 1: we cared about our culture. Uh but you know, as
Speaker 1: we step back, we we kind of thought it made
Speaker 1: sense to be a little bit more intentional here at
Speaker 1: this point and to make it clearer to employees um
Speaker 1: that this was something we were going to focus on.
Speaker 1: But keeping all those workers happy and motivated, particularly amid
Speaker 1: the Great Resignation, was going to be costly. In the
Speaker 1: span of a few months, the company raised a starting
Speaker 1: hourly wage for new hires to an average eighteen dollars
Speaker 1: an hour. It also doubled base pay for new office
Speaker 1: and tech workers. As a result, Amazon's expenses went way up,
Speaker 1: and as the pandemic faded, shopper started to return to stores.
Speaker 1: So Amazon stock price started to stagnate. Yeah, Amazon shares sliding.
Speaker 1: Of course, online sales not that great, weakest growth since
Speaker 1: the start of the pandemic, so huge boost that they
Speaker 1: got starting to fade. Another challenge is continuing to invent
Speaker 1: new products. Remember Alexa, the Kindle, and Aws pretty much
Speaker 1: sprang from Jeff Bezos's head. It remains to be seen
Speaker 1: if Jaz sees as an inventor at anywhere near the
Speaker 1: same level. It's the Amazon Astro, kind of like an
Speaker 1: Alexa on wheels that can follow you around the house.
Speaker 1: Early in Jesse's tenure, Amazon announced a one dollar rolling
Speaker 1: home robot that uses Alexa called Astro, but strangely, as
Speaker 1: of this recording, Amazon really hasn't started selling it yet.
Speaker 1: Another thing to watch is whether Jasse pushes Amazon further
Speaker 1: into the healthcare industry. The global healthcare market is huge
Speaker 1: and estimated twelve trillion dollars. It's also pretty technologically backwards,
Speaker 1: so it's a big opportunity. But that's still really hypothetical.
Speaker 1: So can Jasse pull it off, impress Amazon investors once
Speaker 1: again and right the next chapter of this epic business story.
Speaker 1: If he does, it probably won't be due to guidance
Speaker 1: from his mentor. By the beginning of it really felt
Speaker 1: like Bezos had moved on. He was fifty eight after
Speaker 1: the rocket launch. He bought a massive vacation property on
Speaker 1: Maui for seventy eight million. He built one of the
Speaker 1: largest yachts in the world, which cost an estimated five
Speaker 1: hundred million. He also sent TV personality Michael Strahan and
Speaker 1: Captain Kirk himself William Shatner on the same Blue Origin
Speaker 1: rocket to the edge of space. The most profound experience.
Speaker 1: I'm so filled with emotion about what just happened. I
Speaker 1: I just it's extraordinary. Shatner clearly enjoyed the ride, but
Speaker 1: there was a lot of mockery of these launches, particularly
Speaker 1: from late night comedians who couldn't get over the rockets
Speaker 1: conspicuously phallic shape. Captain, it's a giantistical Meanwhile, basis trying
Speaker 1: to improve his image by drawing attention to his increased
Speaker 1: philanthropic activities. Here he is in the fall at the
Speaker 1: when Climate conference. Nature provides, it gives us life. It
Speaker 1: is beautiful, but it is also fragile. I was reminded
Speaker 1: of this when I went into space with Blue Origin.
Speaker 1: Bezos earmarked ten billion dollars to fighting climate change. He
Speaker 1: was the sixteenth biggest philanthropist according to Forbes. Now, whatever
Speaker 1: you think of that ranking, it was significantly overshadowed by
Speaker 1: the person at number five, his ex wife, Mackenzie. She
Speaker 1: changed her last name from Bezos to Scott after the divorce.
Speaker 1: Mackenzie said she wanted to give her money away as
Speaker 1: fast as possible, and alongside her donations, she published thoughtful
Speaker 1: online essays where she almost seemed to be trolling her
Speaker 1: ex husband. Here's my colleague reading a particularly pointed passage.
Speaker 1: We are all attempting to give away a fortune that
Speaker 1: was enabled by systems in need of change. In this effort,
Speaker 1: we are governed by a humbling belief that it would
Speaker 1: be better if disproportionate wealth we're not concentrated in a
Speaker 1: small number of hands, and that the solutions are best
Speaker 1: designed and implemented by others. It's actually quite savage. She's
Speaker 1: implying that her sixty billion dollar fortune and divorce money
Speaker 1: came from a rigged system rather than Bezos's ingenuity and inventiveness,
Speaker 1: and that the uber wealthy are the wrong people to
Speaker 1: fix the world's problems. She almost seemed to be citing
Speaker 1: with her ex husband's fiercest critics. It's funny. Back in
Speaker 1: the day, Beazos always praised Mackenzie's intelligence. He'd like to
Speaker 1: say she was smart enough to get him out of
Speaker 1: a third world jail. Now Here, she was effectively relegating
Speaker 1: him to a new sort of prison, one built on
Speaker 1: a critique that his fortune was earned in an unfair system.
Speaker 1: If Bezos cared about this, he never showed it. He
Speaker 1: became prolific on Instagram documenting a new life. He was
Speaker 1: frolicking in Hawaii with Lauren Sanchez, right in luxury yachts,
Speaker 1: partying with other celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and The Rock
Speaker 1: and in the stance of the super Bowl. He looked
Speaker 1: like he was having a great time. To a long
Speaker 1: time Bezos watcher, I have to say this was just
Speaker 1: so surprising. Bezos had started his technology career as a focused,
Speaker 1: kind of nerdy business leader. He was disciplined, he stayed
Speaker 1: out of the limelight, and he evangelized long term thinking,
Speaker 1: not living in the moment. Remember way back when Bezos
Speaker 1: explained his regret minimization framework, it was all about looking
Speaker 1: back with pride and your accomplishments when you're eighty. And
Speaker 1: he said he didn't believe in carpe d M, making
Speaker 1: the most of the present day with a little thought
Speaker 1: of the future. It was not carpe d M. It
Speaker 1: was not wine women in song. No, no, no no,
Speaker 1: I don't go in for carpet d M. I go
Speaker 1: in for regret minimization framework. Absolutely well, Bezo seemed to
Speaker 1: have him race Carbadum, he ended up as an entirely
Speaker 1: different person. I guess in some ways it's fitting. The
Speaker 1: Amazon story is, after all, the story of dramatic change,
Speaker 1: how one company transformed the way we all shop, read,
Speaker 1: and even the character of our communities, So it makes
Speaker 1: sense that this is also the story of how one person,
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos, was also changed. It's interesting that so many
Speaker 1: people are disappointed by this current incarnation of Bezos. I
Speaker 1: feel a little at down at times. Two. I think
Speaker 1: that those of us who admired him for his inventiveness
Speaker 1: or his business acumen feel that he's kind of wasting
Speaker 1: his talent. His extreme wealth almost amounts to having a superpower,
Speaker 1: and I think we want to see our superheroes use
Speaker 1: their powers to save the world, not to fly around
Speaker 1: to vacation spots or to retreat to a mega yacht.
Speaker 1: Maybe Bezos will recommit to Amazon one day, maybe Andy
Speaker 1: Jassey won't need his help, or maybe Bezos will apply
Speaker 1: his keen intellect and deep resources to not only go
Speaker 1: into space, but to really getting into the trenches in
Speaker 1: the fight against climate change with the same success as
Speaker 1: he's had building Amazon. Whatever you think of Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: and his greatest creation, we should probably all be rooting
Speaker 1: for him to float back down to Earth. This season
Speaker 1: of Foundering was hosted by me brad Stone. Sean When
Speaker 1: is our executive producer. Spencer Sober contributed reporting to this episode.
Speaker 1: Ray Mondo is our audio engineer. Molly Nugent is our
Speaker 1: associate producer, Mark Million and vandermay Robin Agello and Molly
Speaker 1: Shoots our story editors. Special thanks to Mark Bergen, Eileena Pang,
Speaker 1: and Brodie Ford France. Jsica Levi is the head of
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and if you like
Speaker 1: our show Leaver review. Most importantly, tell your friends see
Speaker 1: you next season.