The 1 HIDDEN Trait Amazon Uses to Hire & Promote

0:00 There's a trait that separates people who get what they want from those who don't. It's not talent, connections, or luck. After nearly 20 years at Amazon, I realized it's the single biggest thing they look for when hiring and the big thing they use to determine performance rating and promotions. And the best part, you can develop it immediately once you know what it is. In this video, I'll show you exactly how. When I joined Amazon in 2006, we were basically a big online bookstore. Over the next 20 years, I watched this launch AWS, now bigger than Oracle and IBM combined.

0:33 Prime Video competes with Netflix. There's Alexa, Whole Foods, a logistics network that's one of the biggest in the world. Each of these would be a Fortune 500 company on its own, and I didn't even list them all. Amazon did hire an army of people, including software developers, but that alone is not the secret to their success. They specifically selected for one trait on top of tech skills. And when you apply the same trait to your career and life, everything accelerates. Since leaving Amazon last year, I've started a YouTube channel, built a newsletter to 30,000 subscribers, launched a podcast, started two side businesses, and I'm almost finished with my book. I'm not special.

1:12 I just naturally applied this trait that Amazon selects for. Since I left the company last year to do my own thing, I realized what it is and why Amazon didn't burn me out the same way that it does to so many other people. The trait is called high agency. High agency is the belief that you're in control of outcomes no matter what your circumstances are. You don't wait for permission. You don't accept blockers. You act like an owner, not a victim. And here's why this matters. While everyone else is explaining and complaining why they're stuck, high agency people are already finding solutions. Let me show you exactly what I mean with an example.

1:51 Picture this. You're on a team and there's this one person who always gets the good projects, the interesting and impactful work, the stuff that gets visibility. Meanwhile, you're stuck with the grunt work, the routine tasks, and the stuff that nobody else wants to do, the stuff that doesn't leverage your abilities or give you that fulfillment. Month after month, they're presenting to leadership while you're spinning your wheels. You know, you can't get promoted without those important projects, but your turn never comes. Low agency looks like this. This isn't fair. My manager plays favorites. I've been here longer.

2:26 I deserve those projects. I'm just as good or better than they are. I guess I'll just keep doing good work and eventually someone will notice. You wait. You hope. You complain to your partner and friends. You do that menial work and mutter that this is beneath you. Another month passes, but nothing changes. You're a victim of office politics. You're convinced that it's not possible to get to the next level because the world won't let you. High agency, it's 100% different. You think, "I need these projects to grow. Waiting isn't working. So, what can I do?" You message your colleague, "Hey, I'd love to shadow you on that project. Can I join the planning meetings?" You tell your manager, "I want to lead the next initiative. What do you need to see from me to make that happen?"

3:13 While you're doing the work that's beneath you, you identify a problem that no one's solving. Make a quick prototype and do a writeup. Create your own high visibility project. If nothing changes, you update your resume, start preparing for interviews, and go and get that job that pays you more and gives you the work that you deserve. Low agency and high agency people live in the same world, but they don't have the same outcomes. They don't live the same lives. You have to ask yourself the question, which life do you want? If you're a software developer or scientist who's ready to flip that high agency switch and actually do something about your career, I'm opening up a small number of spots in my program, Speedrun to promotion. This is your chance to work directly with me every single week.

3:58 I'll show you exactly how to build high agency and apply it to get that exceeds expectations or top tier rating and promotion to the next level as quickly as possible. You'll learn how to get the visibility, projects, and recognition that actually drive career growth. I've helped hundreds of people all the way up to L7 principal level, navigate politics, build better communication skills, and become technical leaders. Look, you can watch this video, nod along, and go back to waiting your turn.

4:27 Or you can be high agency right now and invest in changing your trajectory. The link is in the description. So, how do you actually build high agency? It starts with a fundamental shift. You have to stop being a victim of your circumstances and start being the owner of your outcomes. This sounds simple, but most people get it completely wrong. At Amazon, the ownership principle says leaders are owners. They think long-term and don't sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. But here's what people don't realize. Amazon literally makes you an owner as an employee. The majority of your compensation is equity, actual shares in the company. When I started, I thought this was all about retention.

5:10 But it's actually a genius psychology. When you own shares, you don't think like an employee. Every decision affects your company's value. Think about it like this. When you rent an apartment, you do the minimum. You're a little rougher with the place. You don't improve anything because why would you? It's not yours. But when you own your home, you treat it with care. You're constantly improving it. You'll buy the nicer paint. You care about it. You invest in it because every improvement makes your asset more valuable. Low agency people rent their careers. They do the minimum. They wait for others to further their careers. They never invest in skills unless forced to. High agency means you own your career. You're constantly upgrading, improving, investing in yourself because it's your asset. Here's what changes when you shift from renter to owner. The victim says, "The project's late because the other team missed their deadline." The owner says, "My project is late, so I'm going to help unblock that team." The victim says, "I can't get promoted because my manager doesn't see my value." The owner says, "I need to demonstrate my value better." Same situation, but one person is renting, the other owns it. Now, here's what you're probably thinking. But Steve, what if it's actually not in my control?

6:30 What if the other team is causing delays and they refuse my help? This is where 99% of people give up on ownership. They tried once half-heartedly, and it didn't work. So, they're going to go back to being a victim. See, I told you it wasn't my fault. But those with agency keep going. Okay. The team refused your help. Have you told your manager? Have you escalated to the project lead? Does senior leadership know that there's a dependency that's blocking progress and they're refusing help? A renter stops at the first no. An owner finds ways to influence the outcome. Ownership means being the person who raises uncomfortable truths that nobody else will say. Now, here's the thing. You're right. You can't control everything, but you can always control your response.

7:16 You can always take another action. The moment you say, "There's nothing I can do." That's the exact moment you choose to be a renter. High agency is when you keep asking, "What else can I try?" until you've exhausted every option. But ownership without action is just accepting responsibility for problems. The second key to high agency is that you have to act. At Amazon, we call this bias for action. Here's how most people live. They're watching a movie of their own life. They watch themselves get mistreated. They watch their potential get wasted. They watch other people live better lives. And they critique the movie. This plot sucks. The main character deserves better. But they never realize they can stop watching and start directing. High agency people aren't watching the movie. They're writing it scene by scene. Let me paint you a picture. You know you're underpaid because you just learned the new guy without any experience is getting paid more. Your manager is toxic, takes credit for your work, throws you under the bus in meetings, plays favorites, and you're not one of the favorites. The deadlines are insane. Sunday night, you get that pit in your stomach. Monday morning, you wake up for a second and hope it's a nightmare. Then reality hits. You have to get up and go to work.

8:35 You know you need to leave. Low agency looks like this. I'll start looking when things calm down. They don't calm down. You half-heartedly apply to a couple of jobs. You didn't get a response. Reddit says that nobody's hiring right now. 6 months pass. Finally, a company calls you back, but you bomb the interview. Nothing changes. Years pass. You're watching the movie of your suffering, waiting for the script to magically change itself. High agency. That same Sunday night with that pit in your stomach. You open up your laptop and you update your resume. You apply to many, many jobs. You work your network for referrals. You start preparing for interviews. You don't hear back from anybody. Fine. You send follow-up emails to the recruiters and nudge the people that gave you referrals. You go to a meetup and go to networking events. You contribute to an open- source project.

9:30 You get your friends with a job to look at your resume and tell you what's missing. And you go fill in those gaps. Maybe you need to gain a new skill or take a class. Who would you bet money on to get a job first? They're in the exact same situation, but their reaction, the only thing that they can control, those reactions are vastly different. Action comes before motivation, not after. You don't feel ready and then act. You act and then you start feeling ready. Every email you send, every application you submit, every interview you do badly, that's your writing of the script. Low agency people wait for courage. People with agency act while they're scared.

10:12 They do it while they're shaking. They do it imperfectly. But they do it because staying in the audience watching yourself suffer is so much worse than failing on stage. But here's the thing. You can own your outcomes. You can take massive action. But if you don't know where you're going, you're just running in circles. This is the third key to high agency. You have to know what you want. Amazon has a fundamental belief built into their DNA. Customer obsession.

10:42 Every decision, every action, every investment points towards delighting their customers. They believe as they do that, business success follows. It's their north star. Everything else, the profits, the growth, that's just the result of saying obsessed with that one clear goal. For your career in life, you need the same clarity. If you don't know what you want, someone else is going to use you to get what they want. You become an NPC in somebody else's game. Your manager rides you to hit their targets and get the glory. Your company uses you to build their vision. Even well-meaning family uses you to fulfill their ideas of success. Your acting in everybody else's movie except your own.

11:23 Redard Kipling wrote, "If you don't get what you want, it's a sign that you didn't seriously want it or that you tried to bargain over the price." When I read that quote, it hit so hard. If you're watching this video, I'm convinced you can have anything you want. You want to be a principal engineer, a VP of technology, your own company, financial freedom, that Lamborghini, as long as it's not physically impossible, you can have it. But here's what nobody tells you.

11:50 There's a price to everything, and it's usually not denominated in dollars. If you could have one thing in your career, what would that be? Not like success or happiness. That's too vague. Get specific. Is it staff engineer at a fang company by age 35? Is it running my own startup? Is it $1 million total compensation? Picture it. See yourself there. What does that life look like? What does a typical Tuesday look like in that life? Now do what Amazon does. Work backward from that place. If you want to be a staff engineer, what needs to happen? You need to lead cross team initiatives. Okay. How do you get there?

12:29 You need to build influence beyond your team. How? Start writing design docs that other teams use. Well, what are you going to write about? You need to do research into what would be impactful. When do you need to do it? This quarter. What's the first step? Let's study the documents that others wrote that were influential and ask the authors how they approached it. That's high agency. You know the destination, then you reverse engineer the path. People fail when they try to bargain over the price. I want a new job, but preparing for interviews is too much work. I want to start a company, but I don't want to risk failure. I want a beautiful wife, but I don't want to approach strangers. You can't negotiate with reality. The price is the price. High agency means accepting the full cost and paying it willingly because you know exactly what you're buying. All of Amazon's success comes down to this ownership, bias for action, customer obsession, and working backwards. In other words, being high agency. Every other leadership principle stems from this core. My theory for why Amazon is both wildly successful and has a reputation for being stressful.

13:39 They're constantly pushing for what they want and actually getting it. That intensity comes from an entire company of high agency people refusing to accept good enough. If you understand this, you'll have a real advantage in interviews. Get a high performance review year after year and get promoted quickly. I survived there for nearly 20 years because I understood this intuitively. I was comfortable with the intensity because I had agency too. But then something shifted. I realized I was getting too comfortable. I was using my agency to excel at someone else's dream.

14:10 What I really wanted was to work for myself and to help other people accelerate their careers. So I retired from software development at the principal level and went allin on content creation. That's high agency. Recognizing when your current path, even a successful one, isn't your path. You already have everything you need to build the career in life you want. The question isn't can you do it. The question is will you? Because the moment you decide your outcomes, act before you feel ready, and pursue what you actually want, that's the moment your real life begins. Everything else, that was just the trailer to the real movie. If you found this video helpful, none of it matters if you can't deal with ambiguity. Check out this video on my personal method for what to do when you don't know what to do next. If that's not a problem for you, check out this video on how to be a force multiplier.