Welcome to the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, where I’ll talk with the Amazonians who helped build Amazon.com into one of the world’s most valuable companies. This weekly podcast is for entrepreneurs, future business leaders, and all students of history (not to mention, people interested in getting hired at Amazon!). The goal of the podcast is to capture the Amazon Creation Stories and create a historical archive... before we forget all the details -- that’s it. My name is Dave Schappell (and no, I’m not the comedian). I first joined Amazon in 1998 as a Product Manager. Over two stints working at Amazon, I spent more than 11 years building innovative products and services alongside incredible co-workers. Those services include successful products like Amazon Marketplace and Amazon Web Services and less-than-successful products like Amazon Auctions and zShops. But this podcast isn’t about me -- rather, I’ll be interviewing key members of launch teams to get the stories behind Amazon’s product launches over the years. Please subscribe to the ‘Invent Like An Owner’ podcast in your favorite podcast store - the first episode drops in early April 2021. And if you’re a little old school and would like email updates, sign up for my email newsletter at www.InventLikeAnOwner.com. Onward!
Invent like an Owner with Dave Schappell
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Podcast Overview
Welcome to the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, where I’ll talk with the Amazonians who helped build Amazon.com into one of the world’s most valuable companies. This weekly podcast is for entrepreneurs, future business leaders, and all students of history (not to mention, people interested in getting hired at Amazon!). The goal of the podcast is to capture the Amazon Creation Stories and create a historical archive... before we forget all the details -- that’s it. My name is Dave Schappell (and no, I’m not the comedian). I first joined Amazon in 1998 as a Product Manager. Over two stints working at Amazon, I spent more than 11 years building innovative products and services alongside incredible co-workers. Those services include successful products like Amazon Marketplace and Amazon Web Services and less-than-successful products like Amazon Auctions and zShops. But this podcast isn’t about me -- rather, I’ll be interviewing key members of launch teams to get the stories behind Amazon’s product launches over the years. Please subscribe to the ‘Invent Like An Owner’ podcast in your favorite podcast store - the first episode drops in early April 2021. And if you’re a little old school and would like email updates, sign up for my email newsletter at www.InventLikeAnOwner.com. Onward!
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4/1/2021
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Recent Episodes
July 14, 2021
How Amazon Raised the Bar on Recruiting Talent | John Vlastelica
<p>Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with John Vlastelica to talk about how Amazon scaled recruitment. They’ll discuss the origin and impact of the Bar Raiser program, where select employees helped pick top notch applicants, the birth of Making Great Hiring Decisions, Amazon’s behavioral interviewing training, how Matt Round’s MRT was designed for the interviewers not recruiters, and the challenges companies face scaling a high hiring bar. </p><p><br></p><p>John Vlastelica joined Amazon in 1998 as the Tech Recruiting Manager and then later became a Director of Recruiting. He helped build out the recruiting organization, programs and infrastructure during his 6 years there for what would become foundational to Amazon’s incredible employee growth.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Episode Resources:</strong></p><ul><li>John Vlastelica’s <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnvlastelica/" rel="nofollow">LinkedIn</a></li><li>Consulting and Training from John’s company, Recruiting Toolbox <a href="https://recruitingtoolbox.com/" rel="nofollow">Website</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/RecruitToolbox" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></li><li>Learn about the pros and cons of Bar Raisers: <a href="https://go.recruitingtoolbox.com/how-to-raise-the-bar-on-talent" rel="nofollow">Barraisers.com</a></li><li>Download the Hiring Manager Maturity Model and Culture of Recruiting Best Practices: <a href="https://go.recruitingtoolbox.com/hiring-manager-maturity-model" rel="nofollow">https://go.recruitingtoolbox.com/hiring-manager-maturity-model</a></li><li>Find Dave on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveschappell/" rel="nofollow">LinkedIn</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/daveschappell" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>What to Listen For:</strong></p><ul><li>00:00 Intro</li><li>01:55 What is the Bar Raiser Program?</li><li>08:33 Hiring people that will make the overall team better</li><li>10:22 Embedding high hiring standard into every interview process</li><li>12:17 Tech teams and non-tech teams have different bar standards</li><li>16:34 Amazon’s Interview Training Program - Making Great Hiring Decisions</li><li>20:00 The art of behavioral interviewing</li><li>25:04 Some of the drawbacks of the Bar Raisers program</li><li>28:30 How to scale a high hiring bar</li><li>32:43 People want to hire smart folks and they depend on proxies</li><li>37:21 Questions and scenarios to raise the bar mentality in the early days</li><li>38:48 Spent the last 16 years building Recruiting Toolbox</li><li>42:07 Overinvest in your hiring standards early</li><li>44:20 Bringing ownership into the recruiting culture</li><li>46:53 How John helps companies through Recruiting Toolbox</li><li>51:18 MRT shifted recruiting to more pipeline oriented, and allowed feedback on interview feedback, a very amazon thing to do </li><li>55:53 Creating a culture of ownership and recruiting ownership</li><li>59:03 Advice for CEOs and startups</li></ul>
July 7, 2021
What It Was like to Be Amazon’s 5th Software Engineer | Eric Benson
<p>Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Eric Benson to discuss his myriad early software engineering projects at a time when Amazon was rapidly growing as a company. He implemented Book Matcher (which didn’t last long) and the Similarities feature, and later built the original version of Weblabs that helped test which Amazon features were optimal. Eric also mentored many of the new software engineers, and later worked to port Amazon from Digital Unix to Linux (along with Bob Vadnais, and others).</p><p><br></p><p>Eric Benson joined Amazon in 1996 as the 5th software engineer. He is currently a Software Consultant at United States Digital Service (USDS), a government agency composed of a group of technologists from diverse backgrounds working across the federal government to transform critical services for the people. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>Episode Resources:</strong></p><ul><li>Eric Benson’s <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-benson-75017128/" rel="nofollow">LinkedIn</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/eb00" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></li><li>Find Dave on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveschappell/" rel="nofollow">LinkedIn</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/daveschappell" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>What to Listen For:</strong></p><ul><li>00:00 Intro</li><li>02:39 Amazon's multi-day outage in 1997</li><li>05:15 Back then there was no backup server, just one customer database</li><li>07:09 Joining Amazon in 1996</li><li>10:00 Improving the website software was one of the first tasks</li><li>12:52 Book Matcher: people get recommendations after posting a rating</li><li>15:36 Developing the Similarities feature</li><li>24:10 Instant Recommendations </li><li>25:31 Promoting unusual items to show up in recommendations</li><li>27:00 Building v1 of Weblabs</li><li>34:16 People get burned out when there’s too much information</li><li>37:34 CatSubst is putting marks in the HTML file to notify the software it serves</li><li>39:44 Experimenting between showing 3 and 5 similar items</li><li>41:09 Is every new feature slowing down the site?</li><li>42:54 The biggest problem with CatSubst</li><li>45:11 The hardware cost per unit was very high</li><li>49:21 Hardships of the engineering team while using Linux</li><li>53:27 Rufus the Dog and several site launches</li><li>57:26 Helping new engineers with language and coding</li><li>01:01:13 Software engineering at Amazon was too advanced for packaged software solutions from 3rd parties</li><li>01:04:05 From a small business to becoming a huge company</li></ul>
June 30, 2021
How Amazon Prime’s Subscription Management Service was Invented | Neil Roseman & Jorrit Van der Meulen
<p>Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Neil Roseman & Jorrit Van der Meulen. The discussion revolves around Amazon's DVD rental business which was launched outside of the US, the significance of the Subscription Management Service, and the transition to the Agile/Scrum product development methodology at Amazon.</p> <p><br></p> <p>Neil Roseman is the former VP for Software Engineering at Amazon. He is currently the Technologist in Residence at Summit Partners - a funding company committed to finding and partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs to help them accelerate their growth and achieve dramatic results. Jorrit Van der Meulen originally joined Amazon in 1999 and left in 2005. After working at Zillow for nearly four years, he left and rejoined Amazon in 2008 as the VP for Content Sites. He's currently the VP for Amazon European Retail.</p> <p><br></p> <p><strong>Episode Resources:</strong></p> <ul><li>Neil Roseman’s <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilroseman/" rel="nofollow">LinkedIn</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/neilr" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></li><li>Jorrit Van der Meulen’s<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorrit-van-der-meulen-b5a0341/" rel="nofollow"> LinkedIn</a></li><li>Find Dave on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveschappell/" rel="nofollow">LinkedIn</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/daveschappell" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></li></ul> <p><br></p> <p><strong>What to Listen For:</strong></p> <ul><li>00:00 Intro</li><li>02:51 Many people who don't live in the UK or Germany weren’t aware of Amazon’s DVD rental business</li><li>08:13 What happened after DVD rental was launched in the UK and Germany</li><li>10:27 Figuring out how to ship DVD’s and then taking them back into rotation</li><li>12:18 The window people want to rent a DVD is super short</li><li>16:05 Reducing complexity by picking a market that was more solvable</li><li>19:35 How Jorrit joined Amazon</li><li>21:37 Launching the Subscription Management Service and moving to agile development</li><li>26:43 It was process that was both business and technical</li><li>28:33 Meeting with Jeff Bezos and the Subscription Service team</li><li>33:15 Key features of the Subscription Management Service</li><li>36:43 The difficult (and easier) aspects of creating Amazon Prime</li><li>40:52 Focus on creating an appealing pricing program</li><li>46:06 Integrating the business and development functions</li><li>49:26 Jorrit runs Amazon’s retail business in Europe</li><li>50:17 Neil is currently the Technologist in Residence at Summit Partners</li></ul>
15 total episodes available
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