AI Is Making Top Performers MORE Overworked, Not Less! | Ex-Amazon VP Ethan Evans

0:00 Many of the big companies are in trouble. They are in the IBM position and it's going to be very hard to be nimble into the future. I actually think the forces of AI are honestly pushing against because if one worker now does the work of 10, great, but you have to organize 10 times as much work. The current belief, at least for many middle to senior-level ICs, is AI has made them more productive, but also more overworked. I'm relatively negative on the same large corporations that frankly made me successful and wealthy. I'm rooting for those companies because I own their stock, but I'm actually like in this podcast talking myself into some selling.

0:51 >> On today's episode of the First 10 Podcast, we have a guest who has lived almost every chapter of a technology career. Ethan Evans started in startups, helped scale companies from a handful of people to hundreds, then spent more than 15 years at Amazon, where he rose from engineering manager to vice president, leading teams of 800 plus people and helping invent businesses you've definitely used like Prime Video and Prime Gaming. And then he just walked away.

1:19 After reaching the executive ranks at one of the world's most influential technology companies, Ethan chose to retire from Amazon in 2020. Then he built a second career coaching engineers and managers on how one can go from being a great individual contributor to being a leader people actually want to follow. Through his coaching, courses, writing, and his widely followed Level Up community, Ethan helps ambitious engineers and leaders navigate promotion, leadership, executive presence, and increasingly how to remain valuable in an AI-driven world.

1:51 Today, we're going to dig into Ethan's story career, why he chose to spend his retirement coaching the next generation of leaders and his honest to read on whether management is still a job worth wanting in an AI first world. Ethan Evans, welcome to the First 10 podcast. >> Thank you so much, Boris. It's good to reconnect and anytime I hear an introduction like that, I think, "Wow, I want to be that guy." >> that's incredible what one's, you know, career can often look like when looking when looking back at it.

2:18 >> Yeah, well, when when when people look at in from the outside, I think, "Geez, I'm not sure I did all that." But, of course, I I did. It just, you know, it's it's a lot. and so, thank you for the kind words. >> Of course, of course. And you you just got back from some from some travel, I understand. How's how's the world the the world out there? >> Yeah, well, you mentioned I'm assuming you're retired. So, when I'm not coaching or teaching, I tend to travel. And in this case, I was exploring Eastern Europe, an area I haven't spent much time in, ending in Romania, which is an amazing country I look forward to visiting again.

2:54 >> Incredible. Let's get out there. What what's on your what what's your what's the top country you've yet to visit? >> well, I'm doing sort of a trip of the lifetime later this fall. I'm going to follow the Silk Road, which takes you to all the countries that end in stan. So, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan. which obviously I'm trying to get off the beaten path there. It's not like you know, it's sort of not like Ibiza or Phuket or Bali, sort of places everyone goes, and that's intentional.

3:30 >> I love that. We have a we had a recruiter at Bain who was from Tajikistan, and then he moved back to Tajikistan. I think he might be, you know, the king of Tajikistan now. I I don't even know. But, if you need a friend in Tajikistan, let me know. we'll we'll get you connected. >> I love having local connections, so let's talk offline. Yeah, so a funny rule I have I'm always telling my wife is I don't want to go any place that there's a United Colors of Benetton. That's like my signature, like this place has jumped the shark, it's gone, you know, it's catering to tourists now, so.

4:05 >> I love that. I love that. Well, let's jump let let's jump into it. So, I'm I'm curious. So, in 2005, you joined you joined Amazon. Maybe catch us up. Maybe give give us a brief a brief bio and you'll catch us up on what what what got you there. >> Amazon and then I I'm very curious about your life there. >> So, we'll go super way back just cuz it's fun story. When I was a kid, I got an Apple computer. they were new. I had an Apple II.

4:30 and when I was getting ready to go to college, I actually wrote Apple a letter. There was no email yet. I wrote Apple a letter and said, "Hey, I want to build Apple computers. what do I need to do?" And I got back this handwritten letter, very Apple. It was from a real engineer, but in this beautiful sky blue ink. you know, not just regular ink. And it said, "Well, we only hire people from five universities." Which this must have been very early Apple.

4:57 And they said "Caltech, Stanford, Berkeley, all in California." And I was living in Ohio. MIT and Carnegie Mellon. Well, I wasn't going to California. So, that left two. And I was admitted to Carnegie Mellon. I went there. fast forwarding, I spent I when I graduated, I didn't immediately go to Apple. In fact, I've never worked for Apple. But I spent 12 years in startups and then Amazon called me.

5:29 And in 2005, Amazon was still just a bookstore. There was no AWS. There was Prime existed, but it was only fast shipping. there was no Alexa, Kindle, any of that. but I needed a job. And as a recruiter, you know, the the time was right. The call came at the right moment. >> It always does. >> Yeah, exactly. and so I went out and interviewed at Amazon and they made me a very strange job offer as a recruiter. You can imagine trying to sell this. They would not tell me what I would be doing. It was a secret project and it was take it or leave it. We'll tell you what you'll do when you get here.

6:08 luckily for them, I needed a job or wanted one anyway. And so I took it blind and it turned out, lucky for me, the job was build Prime Video. so it was like an amazing job but they wanted to keep it under wraps so they weren't even telling candidates. And so I launched the first few versions of what became Prime Video. in the beginning it had a terrible name. It was called Unbox Video and it went through several bad names before becoming Prime Video.

6:41 >> >> And then I moved around in Amazon. I built Amazon's Appstore. That's where my team size grew to 800. I switched to gaming. worked at Twitch for a while, a subsidiary we acquired. but along the way I started thinking to myself, there's nothing wrong with giving people movies or apps for their phone or games, but it's not saving the world or changing the world in a sort of legacy way. And that's when I started thinking, well, how do I want to make more of an impact? And that is what led me to want to coach and teach more. And ultimately Amazon wasn't interested in letting me express that internally, at least not as anything except bonus work.

7:27 and so in 2020 you know, having had a great 15 years at Amazon, accumulated a good nest egg, I stepped out to go do that and that's what I do when I'm not into Gikas Lab. >> Incredible. And what what what a what an incredible time to be, you know, doing what you're what you're doing where you know, I I I work primarily with startups and I spend a lot of time talking to, you know, folks that are ex- in- either interested in startups or exploring or, you know, are are potentially or or maybe wanting to dabble in it and managers are a very kind of, you know, talked about class of professional right now with the advent of AI. So, what a what a novel time to be doing what you're what you're doing. I'm excited to get into the get into the get into that topic. But be- before we do that, so I want to want to capture some of your moments at at Amazon. So, you were there for for 15 years. You grew to VP. What does it mean to be a VP at Amazon? Like, how many VPs are there? how kind of exclusive is this club?

8:28 >> Well, it's interesting. it's not going to sound very exclusive. when I became a VP, there were about 300. and I think today there's probably it varies and I don't have a perfect count, but the last I knew it was about 700. What you have to understand though is it's a company of 1.4 million. 1.4 1.5 million. So, those are big jobs. the other thing to understand is 700 VPs, the last I looked at Amazon's annual revenue about 700 billion.

8:58 So, an average VP, if there is such a thing, is responsible for a billion dollars in revenue. So, yes, there are 700 of them and it sounds like, well, that's no big deal. But on the other hand, you know, if you were running a billion-dollar company, you'd be considered like, wow, you're on the New York Stock Exchange and you're in the Fortune 500 and you're a CEO. So, there is you're you're both a CEO and not in some ways, but I ran several businesses that were in the hundreds of millions when I was there and now we're in the several billion in scale as Amazon has grown.

9:33 so, it's a big job and that's what it at Amazon anyway, they have a concept called being a single-threaded leader. Which means you're responsible for the whole P&L. You may own everything from marketing, sales, and business development to product design and tech. They're miniature business units. And that's a very interesting holistic job, and it's why many VPs who choose a different path than I do either end up on corporate boards when they leave Amazon or as CEOs of mid-size companies because they've done that work.

10:09 >> Fascinating. So, what what does it take to be successful at a company like Amazon? >> well, it takes certainly the ability to lead at scale. I mean, if you're talking about the leadership role, do Were you asking about leaders or were you asking about successful at Amazon in general? >> You know, I don't know. I'm I'm thinking from the lens of there there there are people that achieve your terminal status. I think the concept of the terminal status at thing is is is very common. And there are people that seem to you know, have found a way to you know, progress and grow whether an individual contributing or in in leadership. Like, what does it take to be successful at either at Amazon or even at a you know, even broader at a at a at a large kind of thing type of company?

10:51 >> Yeah, well, at the at the lower levels or individual contributor, it's a lot about personal technical expertise, being able to get a lot of work done, you know, impact, drive. I think I spent my career I moved to leadership very early. Speaking from a leadership lens, it's a lot about influence and relationships. And some people dislike both those words because when you say influence or relationships, what they hear is politics and manipulation. And those things exist, but influence is a real thing. Communication is a real thing in terms of aligning people to a vision and a goal, explaining what we're going to do, getting the resources you need. And in the end what it takes is delivering results that make money.

11:37 The bottom line, whether you're at a startup or a big company, is at some level you're either delivering something that helps the company make money or you're not. Now, of course, everyone can cite someone that's like, "Wow, that that man or that woman has only ever delivered political BS and they don't, you know, they seem to move from failure to failure. What you're saying isn't true." I would say that's the exception. In the end, success is tied to are you helping a company make money?

12:09 The The skills to do that at the leadership level, though, are organizing groups of people. You're not doing the work yourself. When I had 800 people on my team, no amount of work I could do myself would be a drop in the bucket to what 800 people could do. And so, it was all about getting them on the right track with the right resources and the right clarity and the right leadership under me to deliver something. And I think my superpower was getting things out the door.

12:36 you know, if we look back at my career at Amazon, I shipped the first versions of Prime Video. I shipped the first versions of the App Store. I shipped the first version of Prime Gaming. I helped commercialize Twitch. Each of those things was a first. It was a new launch. It was a new business. There are other new businesses I started and then matured. What made me successful was I could go from here's a piece of paper with an idea to here's something customers are paying for.

13:12 And that was the path to success. Now, you know, to some people again somehow find a way to hang on in a company and never really do anything. I think in larger companies sometimes they do. but I think that's a minority. >> Yep. >> Very interesting. You know, so something I heard from from what you shared is in terms of your specific journey is taking something from from nothing to to something from zero to one. And that that that's a talked about, you know, concepts or in the world we work in in in startup land.

13:44 I I'll sometimes talk to talent that has built, you know, something zero to one inside of a company like an Amazon and then we'll try to kind of, you know, we'll we'll we'll explore what that can likely look like at a startup building something zero to one. Can you compare what what does it take to build something zero to one at an Amazon and as compared to building a zero to one at a at at a startup? Are there parallels?

14:08 Is it is it really different? >> There are for sure parallels. There are probably some differences as well. essentially with all startups you have to ask what's the funding source. Are you bootstrapping? Is it an angel round? Is it VCs? A seed round? Etcetera. the funding source inside a company is always the management. Right? The the CEO ultimately, but whatever leadership is above you is either approving or denying a project. See, you begin with the same question of how are you going to get something green-lit if it's new.

14:41 in the startup world you're asking how do I get this funded? How much funding do I need and how do I get it done? In a business you're asking again, how much funding do I need? How many people? What kind of budget? But then what do I have to do to get it approved or on the company priority list? So it's the same idea but different process. the second thing is what you're building from. In a startup you're almost always building from nothing except what you can buy on the open market. You don't have anything else around you.

15:12 I think one of the things that makes Amazon interesting, of course you have a lot of existing infrastructure and now you have AWS and all these other tools. At Google you would have had G Suite and at Microsoft, you'd have had Azure. So, you have all these resources, but I think the biggest difference on the zero-to-one journey is go-to-market. when a startup, no matter what they build, it can be brilliant, good engineering, bad engineering, somehow they have to get people to know about it.

15:44 Amazon and the other companies as well have two tricks up their sleeve that really gives them a leg up. First, if they announce something and put it on their homepage, it's going to get some, you know, amount of traffic that that a startup would dream of for free, even if it sucks, right? If you take If you imagine the worst possible idea that you can have, I I don't know what that would be, you know, a blender that's supposed to make margaritas but in your toilet. It's a terrible idea, but if I put that on the homepage of Google, everyone is going to know about the toilet margarita blender.

16:23 And it's going to be a meme that day. Whereas if you put up that website, you know, it's going to be crickets. that's one thing that really helps products succeed is at least they'll get a try. The other one though is the ability to package or bundle them. to make that really concrete, Amazon video, which is what I officially joined Amazon to build a video product for Amazon, struggled in a backwater until the decision was made to bundle it into Prime.

16:55 And and to tie it to something that everybody already had and say, "You know what? This is now included in your Prime subscription. And that when once you all get addicted to it, then we'll raise the price of Prime to pay for it." But it was taking something already successful, Prime shipping, a Prime program, and tying a video service into it that really got it in everyone's household and like people thinking about because everyone is using Netflix.

17:29 and the question was, well, how would you know about anything else or why would you use anything else? Oh, wait a minute. Well, there's this other stuff that's completely free in Prime. Why don't I check that out once my Netflix queue is empty? And that's what allowed it to you know, come up somewhat on par. large companies have this advantage that's very difficult for startups, which is why as a startup expert you would see lots of startups that build to the launch phase and then sell out because they they get to where like, oh, see my tech is good, but I can't market it. I'm going to have to join, you know, take the whatever, hopefully 10 or 50 or 100 million, but sometimes 3 million from Google because they can take what I've built and leverage it in a way I just can't.

18:19 >> Very fascinating. What What What advice do you have for founders who aspire to build, you know, the next Amazon? Like what did Amazon get right from its kind of original ethos that a founder could benefit from? >> Well, I okay. you know, it's funny. I was both at Amazon early and late. meaning I joined in 2005. It was about a 15,000 person company. So, and it was also approaching its 10th year anniversary. I got there just before the 10th anniversary. So, you're asking about the founding story of Amazon in some sense. How did it get started? I know a lot of those people, but interestingly, even though I was there, the company grew a hundredfold after I was there.

19:01 I was also there when it was already a big company. But to answer your question, what did Amazon get right? First, focus. Jeff always had this idea of we're going to sell everything. But he looked at what everything meant and said, you know, we can't do it all at the beginning. We're going to start with just books. And he picked books for a number of reasons I won't go through, but he narrowed down from everything Amazon sells, which was always his vision, to where can I get a toehold? And this maybe follows the the old book Crossing the Chasm, like find your find your toehold.

19:41 Second, Jeff built in very early a very strong culture of what he wanted the company to be. I always tell people, if you go look at the URL relentless.com, it goes to Amazon. And the reason is before Jeff came up with the name Amazon, he knew he wanted his company to have this relentless tenacity. So he bought the URL relentless.com. He eventually realized like that isn't a very good brand name. Where are you shopping? Oh, relentless. That doesn't sound too good.

20:17 But he kept the concept. So Jeff had a saying, which is you want to be tactically impatient, but strategically patient. What that meant was you want to work as hard as possible every day to advance your goal, but realize that good things take time. That that, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day, no matter how hard you're swinging the hammer. Well, with Amazon, he had the benefit of the dot-com era where he could lose money for many years building the vision.

20:51 And now there was a tricky moment that Amazon had some luck. they happened to raise a lot of money right before the dot-com bust, which allowed them to like weather, you know, when a lot of other famous dot-com bust companies like pets.com went under, Amazon had just built enough of a war chest to get through that period. But, I think what people can learn is focus down, find one thing that works, and be really tenacious. you know, there are all these stories of early Amazon.

21:29 I remember my boss, my vice president, when we were trying to build Prime Video was telling me about trying to build the DVD business, the DVD sales business on Amazon, and going to the studios and trying to explain to them how Amazon worked. And he was sitting with a studio head and demonstrating Amazon and saying, "If you sell your DVDs, it'll work like this. You go on our website and you pick what you want and you put in your credit card." And the guy said, "Oh, wait, I'm not doing that. I'm not putting my credit card on the internet."

21:59 Well, of course, now we all buy hundreds of things, you know, if not a day, a week online. We don't even think about it. But, you had to fight through friction of being new. And I think for a lot of startups, the challenge is if your startup's going to be successful, it's a new idea, which means people don't get it. Because if people got it, someone would have done it. >> It already exists, yeah. >> And so, you're always evangelizing something that most of your potential customers are looking at you and going, "Why the hell would I want that?"

22:33 And and fighting through that why the hell would I want that reaction is, I think, you know, and figuring out ways to say, "No, no, no, actually, you're going to love this." And and making it lovable is a huge challenge. because rare is the startup that's like instantly Yeah, let's take Uber, another unicorn. In the beginning, before Uber existed, if I said, "Hey, I've got a great idea. You're going to as opposed to getting in a nice yellow taxi run by a company, you're going to use an app on your phone and some random dude is going to drive up in his car and take you somewhere."

23:17 You're going to be like, "That sounds like a great way to end up chopped into pieces and chucked in a dumpster." You know, it's just it sounds horrible. Same thing like I have another great idea. Rather than going to a nice Hilton hotel room, you're going to get on an app and you're going to crash on somebody's couch in a town for less money and we're going to call this Airbnb. These ideas when they first come out sound terrible to some people and I think startups have to push through that.

23:51 >> I love that. I I I personally know founders that are going to get a kick out of this hearing this hearing this clip. It'll motivate them for that the actual bit of relentlessness that I know they'll they'll need. I want to fast forward to the to the present day. So, you run a coaching community specifically focused on people that are looking to level up their careers moving up into the management ranks. In the at So, in today's present day, right? So, you have a AI companies that can't grow fast enough. My understanding is that large companies are going through layoffs. They're flattening. I'm hearing a lot from managers that they just were relieved of their management responsibility because their team was their team was flattened. They're there's an emphasis on building like like what's going on in the in the community right now? Where Where are the heads of people in the community you're coaching right now?

24:44 >> Yeah, well, definitely it is a confusing time. There is a push and a I get I get a question in the last year that I've never heard before in my life basically, which is should I abandon management as a career track and go do I need to go back to being an IC? >> Great question. >> And that's being pushed by certain leadership cohorts, you know, and famous leaders like Jensen Huang and and others just CEO of Nvidia.

25:17 It's being pushed to flatten orgs and to say, "Look, we don't need as many managers." The thing I would say about this is this approach is running into some reality challenges. It's running into a reality where where groups that are being made where individuals are being made more productive by AI, you actually need more coordination, not less. So, if a previous engineer or product manager is now churning out five times as minute much work that's awesome. But, what we're finding is that five times as much work isn't usually translating to even two times as much productivity or even, by the way, 1.1 times as much productivity within the large company end to end.

26:09 Amazon is not, as far as I know, even though I'm sure, you know, there'll be some people who might contradict my claim or point to oh, this one thing is faster. Amazon as a entity or Google, they are not shipping more than they did. And the reason is all that massive ability of engineers code faster still has to make its way into Gmail or whatever and get approved for release. And that's still a management process and task and herding cats. So, I think at the moment a lot of leaders are predicting a magical future where managers aren't needed that I actually think the forces of AI are honestly pushing against because if one worker now does the work of 10, great.

27:05 But you have to organize 10 times as much work. And so what I do think is true is managers are being pushed to understand the tools. You can't just float above it. You have to do something yourself. We want you to have your hands in AI. How are you going to lead AI if you're not doing it? And so I think the management job or the leadership job is changing. But in fact, what I'm telling people is if you're an engineer who's now producing what a whole team used to do or a product manager who's vibe coding what a whole team used to do, you need more management skills, not less, because you're going to have to like explain that work to others and get their buy-in and get their agreement in way that you never had to do before. You could just sit in your cube and do what you were told. So I see it differently than the prevailing direction. we'll see.

27:59 >> We we we will start to see that. That's one of the fun reasons I I like doing these podcasts, to capture the moment in the moment in time. I you know, you know, funny anecdote at the beginning of the beginning of last year, we talked live on the podcast. We went in search of a job posting that required agentic development experience. Like the concept of agent didn't exist at the beginning of last year. We couldn't find a single one. And now it seems like everyone's building in in the in the agent space. So yeah, we shall we shall certainly see. You know, another funny anecdote is I have a I have I have a I have a friend who's like super into building agents and he he showed me his whole kind of agent stack. And he has like, you know, almost a dozen of them.

28:39 I'm like, "At what point do you have to like dedicate resources to actually manage? Like these are like a mini mini people, right? So at what point do you have to dedicate energy to to manage them? You say, "Oh, well, I'll just build an agent manager that'll then manage all clear I have I guess at some point a human has to manage all this all this stuff, right?" So, it seems like the >> Is is that's exactly my point, which is if you have I I talk to people all the time, they are spending a lot of time managing their agents. Now, they're not managing them in the sense of like tell me about your career path, you know, when are you going on vacation, but they are managing them in the sense of how do I coordinate them, how do I get them talking to each other, and how do I what do I do with all this output? If I have 10 agents and they're producing 10 people worth of work, you know, my job what we're we're seeing reports now of senior engineers and senior PMs being stressed out by the fact that their agents are on 24 hours a day sending stuff to them for them to then action. And so, the current belief, at least for many mid-senior level ICs, is AI has made them more productive, but also more overworked, not less, because now they have to learn about all this technology and stay up-to-date with it, one huge challenge.

30:02 They have to do whatever their work is, their normal old job, and now they have to sort of manage and interact with all this AI-generated output that they still have to check. Cory Doctorow I don't know if you know of Cory, but he's a blogger, he's written a number of books. He wrote a book last year called Insitification. he's now out promoting a new idea and a new book about I can't remember. are you a centaur or a reverse centaur?

30:33 And the idea is he calls one of the models people who are AI their only job is to review what AI tells them and to be the last human on the hook if it's wrong. And he's like, "This is a horrible job." And his example is an Amazon driver who's surrounded by cameras watching how he drives and checking all his metrics. And he's like, "The only thing the Amazon driver is there for is to be the goat if the system doesn't like what he does.

31:05 This is a horrible dehumanizing job." And his positive version is the person who's like an engineer or somebody who's enabled by AI but has all this ability and autonomy. Well, I think in large companies we're making more of these people who are micromanaged by AI expectations that who are empowered. and so, AI can be either utopian or dystopian depending on how it's applied around your job. and I think that's a that's a it's unknown how much how many people will fall into each stand.

31:41 >> Yeah, that's interesting. I've I've found myself lately just given all the the layoffs that are happening at large Fang companies either on the impacted side of a layoff, they they had just been impacted trying to figure out what to do with their careers, or they're still working at the company but there's like you know that the fear of layoff like there's no there there there's no you know good sleep happening on either side of the of the equation.

32:06 you you you're a VP at Amazon. If you were a VP today, you'd probably be tasked with figuring out who to keep, who to who to who to let go. Who what did like what should people be doing maybe if they work inside of a Fang to you know stay on the favorable side of employment? If they just got laid off, where should they be you know like leaning in to stay valuable in today's in today's market?

32:29 >> Yeah, so the first thing I should say openly is I'm relatively negative on the same large corporations that frankly made me successful and wealthy. I think the moment, you know, the Fang corporations, Amazon in particular, where I'm most familiar, it grew a hundredfold while I was there. It can't do that again, right? It employs 1.4 billion people, or, you know, 1.5, 1.6. It's not going to employ 150 million people, you know, that's the entire working population of the US. So, the the rapid growth of those companies is over. and so, what I did can be done elsewhere, but it can't be done at Amazon again.

33:10 rewinding your specific question, I think people who get booted from those companies should look to bootstrap something new and small because small companies can change and adapt faster, and they can not just use AI for your job, but actually they don't have this big bureaucratic thing that is going to be in the way of letting your AI work get to market or have impact. I was speaking yesterday with a former Amazon director, who now has built his own video game on his own, and he says, "Look, I'm as productive as 30 people.

33:50 my game is making a thousand bucks a week. I don't need to do anything else, and I've done it all myself. And by the way, this will horrify some engineers, he's an engineer, but he's not looked at a single line of code in his game. He's just vibe coded the whole thing." So, that world has changed, and AI allows you to be strong in small teams. So, I'm bullish on startups, which is your world. That said, at a big company, to be valuable right now, I think you have to be adapting quickly to how can I use these tools to still deliver value given that I'm trapped in a bureaucracy that was designed not for this system. And what's happening that is a flaw, and I'm glad we've gotten to this point, is it's way easier for me as a manager or as a leader to set a mandate for use of AI than to actually change the infrastructure of the company to allow that to matter. I can push on you and say, "Are you adopting the tools? We're going to monitor your keystrokes and your token usage and whatever to see if you are."

35:01 But what I What's much harder is for me to go redo the whole process flow in a company like that to streamline it so that can go to market. Amazon at this point, these are very old statistics, which but they'll still illustrate the point. Decades ago, Amazon launched Italy as a retail country, amazon.it, and then like amazon.sp. And at the time, they reported like, "Oh, we had to bring 90 teams together to launch Italy, and it took 110 teams coordinating to launch Spain."

35:37 Well, I launched the first version of Amazon video with a team of six. Amazon Prime video now has a team of several thousand. How you're more individually productive, but what does it take for the current leaders of Prime video to change that so that my productivity, I'm an engineer, I have a great idea, I built a new thing, doesn't have to coordinate with all those other three or 4,000 people around the globe? That's a very hard change.

36:12 How do we So, answering the question, how do you become valuable? You need to figure out how to be effective in the old structure, but look like and I'm an AI guy or AI, you know, I'm an AI user. I do think that's a little performative at this moment because it's looking like you're on the program of using the new tools while being trapped in the old structure that is very hard to change. Because remember, all the leaders in that structure want to defend their jobs and you know, their fiefdoms. And that's not because they're bad people, it's because they've been taught my process is valuable and my reviewing your work matters and I'm paid to be the security team or the infrastructure team or you know, it's really and some of that process has value.

37:10 We don't actually want a thousand engineers randomly changing the credit card code on Amazon with an agent where they're only glancing at the code. That's a terrible idea. But then if it has to go through a central like security review, that's a bottleneck. And I would just call that a currently unsolved problem. So, I understand my answer of how to stay out of the line of the layoffs at a large company is a bit wandering. It's because I'm unclear on it. It feels it feels and the data seems to support that there is a contradiction between AI productivity mandates which work at the individual level and these companies that evolved for one world and now have not yet changed for another.

38:05 I think it's a huge disruptive wave and some of the large companies are going to be dethroned because they're not going to figure out how to restructure. Amazon's 25 years old. 25 years of best practices that worked in a human world for an agentic world. As an Amazon shareholder, I sure hope Andy Jassy and the Amazon leadership figure it out. And I'm a Google shareholder, you know, same thing for right? I want them all to figure it out. But, not all of them are going to.

38:42 >> Yeah, I I always wonder how that's going to how that's going to play out. I I I see a world where, you know, I talk about like the chat GPT moment, right? And then, you know, the the insane growth of the you know, new wave of AI companies, Open AI and Anthropic, and you know, the the whole you know, world of startups. And then, you have the FANGs that are doing their best to adapt to and you you could you could kind of see like, you know, like the large mothership kind of like slowly slowly moving. I think that some some of the teams within that, you know, demographic are are doing an an okay job. I I do wonder if they're going to make it, how they're going to make it, if some will if some will fall off.

39:22 You know, I I'm curious on you maybe just kind of popping out to the to the market level. You you you said some interesting things that are are, you know, contradicting to each other. Like, on the one hand, we all do need to lean into AI. That was what I heard as the commonality, whether you're at a FANG or not. And I heard that, you know, productivity isn't really adapting. Are Could Are we Are we in an AI bubble right now? Do you think it's going to pop and kind of revert? Do you think that it's real and AI will kind of take over and large companies will kind of, you know, have a tough time adapting and may go away?

39:57 >> Yeah, so you're asking many questions. Let me Let me try my a little bit. You know, we know if history doesn't completely repeat itself, it does rhyme. So, when the internet, all the FANG companies we're talking about were founded as startups in the internet era. Why is that? Like, why is it that Barnes & Noble couldn't do the Amazon thing? Or by the way, Walmart or Target or any of the retailers. Why Amazon? it's this problem of defending its its a book you probably know called The Innovator's Dilemma. That was about defending your existing high-margin product, but every company that was big before the internet had the opportunity to be first on the internet and instead we now think of them as dinosaurs, right? So, IBM or even to some degree the one somewhat counterexample is Microsoft. They managed to go from being desktop to being Azure and some other things.

40:56 But, if we look, everything else was a new invention, a clean start, and there it's not like we didn't have famous tech companies. We had Hewlett-Packard. We had IBM. We had company after company. We also had the big retailers, the big banks. you know, you worked for a while a while, I believe, at Robinhood. Like, why didn't Bank of America do what Robinhood did? Well, because Bank of America, right? That's the whole explanation. They're Bank of America.

41:26 There no no further explanation required, I think. I think many of the big companies are in trouble because they're now in the IBM situation. And they're all you know, some of my friends at Amazon and leaders and if any of the other leaders at the big tech companies are listening, which they, you know, who's this upstart who would say you're now IBM, you're the one who's in trouble? They would be offended. I will stand by that. They are in the IBM position and it's going to be very hard to be nimble into the future. So, I am incredibly bullish on AI. A piece of my history you don't know, probably, is I was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute doing a PhD in AI. I chose to leave that because it turned out I didn't have that much interest in school.

42:23 But I've been bullish on AI for 30 years. I believe it will transform our future. I think unfortunately that includes disrupting many of the incumbents and that's why I struggle to tell you if you're working in one of those incumbents the history lesson is go look at who survived in IBM as it fell from grace. Plenty of people did. If you want to stay at those companies, figure out their skill set cuz that's the new skill set of surviving in a a you know a a gentrifying business. I was going to say geriatric which is even worse than gentrifying.

43:04 Again I'm I'm rooting for those companies because I own their stock but I'm actually like in this podcast talking myself into some selling. >> So what what does the future look like given the you know continued proliferation of of AI? >> I think it looks like either companies that do manage to wholesale overhaul their internal process to harness AI or individuals and startups that figure out how to be a what's called AI first to design around what AI does and they will be the new internet companies who were freed from the old understandings.

43:50 Oh, you need an office. Oh, you need infrastructure. You need a physical location. You need storefronts. These things that people thought you needed that I don't know what the things you don't need anymore are in AI but there clearly are some and I think that will be the new wave of unicorns or fangs will be the companies that figure out what do we still need from the past and what don't we need and then scale with AI.

44:20 there's a story you've I'm sure many of your our listeners have seen it and you probably have as well where the CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman and some others talk about when will there be the first one-person billion-dollar company? Like they believe this will happen. Well, I'm not so sure that like I do believe that will happen. I'm not sure how soon. In the meantime I think that building from scratch or from little and really throwing off the old shackles, the rebels have their moment and it's the same that the rebels have their moment you know, 25-30 years ago with the internet and there will be terrible ideas pets.com that don't work out and great ideas Google that do. If I knew how to separate those, I'd go join a VC. That's, you know, kind of not my expertise but I wish it was.

45:22 That would that would be great. >> It it it it feels like now is the time to be picking just given that every founder seems to be building right now and you even like you mentioned your friend who you know, moved on from the company and they're building everyone seems to be building right now. I mean you just built Ethan Evans AI, yeah. >> Yeah, take your shot. Take your shot at building for sure. Well, I think I think particularly if you want to fast-growth career, how are you going to have a fast-growth career which is what I try and help people get in one of the large companies that's shrinking?

45:53 It is possible to find like the magic path in that company. for sure it's possible and some people will, but overall again, I I remind people I started with a team of six in Amazon. I ended up 9 years later with a team over over 800, because the company was in the process of growing by 100. So, it grew by 100, and I basically grew by 100. Okay, that's called surfing the wave. Well, the wave has stopped. It's like dead flat calm, or you know, even we're draining the swimming pool to take this tortured water analogy as much as possible.

46:30 The water was rising and lifting me. Now, it's flat to shrinking. How are you going to have a fast career in that world? You're not. And so, you got to get out. You got to go somewhere that has growth. And that isn't, you know, again, I have friends at Amazon who are going to be, "Oh my god, you got on a podcast and told my team to leave." Well, I told them to do math. I had 100x growth. What is your team growing this year? Oh, it's not. We're We're going to cut 20% of heads, and we're going to de-level managers.

47:03 Okay. Well, why the hell should I stay? If I want to grow. Like, so, for you as a recruiter, good news, I'm telling, you know, you can you can clip this out and say, "Hey, if you're thinking about where to be for your high-growth career, how about we do some math together? How much did your company used to grow? How much is it growing this year? Oh, it went from up to down? Take the night. Let's I won't try and convince you anymore. Go sleep on that, and tell me what you think of it tomorrow." Like >> I love that. I will I will I will borrow that clip. And I am working with startups that are literally doubling with within within months. And so, that Yeah.

47:42 >> And that's the rising tide. That's That's surfing the wave. you know, I'm reading Scott Galloway's book right now called The Algebra of Wealth. And one of the things Galloway says, he's a, you know, good thinker. He's got his plusses and minuses, as we all do, but he says in the short-term markets matter more than individual performance. Being in the right market the right environment is better than being really good short-term.

48:14 And I think he's right because I love to pat myself on the back of how smart I am and how great my career was because I'm human. But it's kind of BS in the sense that I joined Amazon. Yes, I had to be good enough to stay on the ship. But it grew a hundred times while I was there. That is insane. Out of everyone I know who started with me who didn't get fired is now a director or VP.

48:44 Everyone, every single person who was a peer of mine as a manager in 2005 is a vice president or director either in Amazon or somewhere else because of that wave. Because again going with the wave analogy waves sweep dead wood into shore. It's what they do. And I'm not saying be dead wood. I I am saying at least be a surfer or a swimmer. But the fact is the wave pushes the log up to the beach too.

49:15 And so being where the waves are matters. And that's your startup that's growing 2x every 3 months. >> I love that. So I've had I'm I'm going to ask you a prediction question. So I've had guests on that predicted that winter was coming. And I've had I had a Wharton professor on who said no net difference. It's just a technology like anything else. Then I've had I had two young founders on one who dropped out of college who couldn't be more optimistic about the the world ahead of them. What's your prediction for the for the for the for the future?

49:47 >> I lean I as a person I actually lean pessimistic on some things. I just it by nature, I look at problems first. The level of investment in AI technology outstrips anything we've ever seen. If you just look at again at the math and the numbers, the the more than a trillion dollars being poured into data centers. We have seen this story before with the internet. You know, again, I have the advantage I see a little silver in your hair. We have the advantage of having some years.

50:16 I think there is something of a bubble. What people forget about bubbles is good things come after them or through them. So, all of the FANGs weathered or came out of a bubble, the internet bubble. I think we have an AI bubble that will pop. I think there will be some devaluation and I think also the optimistic part, there will be some amazing new companies created from that. So, overall, I would agree with your professor who says that we short-term winter is coming, but going with that analogy, what comes after winter? Spring and summer. So, I do think winter is coming at least in some places and then a spring and summer.

50:56 >> I love that. Ethan, thank you so much for spending time with us. Where can people reach you and what should their first message to you be? >> the place to reach me is my website ethanevans.com. The best place to benefit from what I do is either my newsletter, my LinkedIn Substack newsletter called Level Up, or or take one of my classes, which are all on my website. Because I would love to try and help you succeed in this challenging environment. And I think it's very possible. It's just different, you know, it's the old book Who Moved My Cheese? The cheese has moved.

51:28 >> I love it. Such a fascinating time to be doing what you're what what you're doing. thank you again for joining us, Ethan. >> My pleasure. Thank you for the chance.