Former Amazon Consumer CEO Wilke on Why He Left, Unionization and 'Nomadland'
Ben Bergman is the newsroom's senior finance reporter. Previously he was a senior business reporter and host at KPCC, a senior producer at Gimlet Media, a producer at NPR's Morning Edition, and produced two investigative documentaries for KCET. He has been a frequent on-air contributor to business coverage on NPR and Marketplace and has written for The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review. Ben was a 2017-2018 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic and Business Journalism at Columbia Business School. In his free time, he enjoys skiing, playing poker, and cheering on The Seattle Seahawks.
In March, Jeff Wilke quietly stepped away from Amazon, the company he was instrumental in building from an online book retailer to one of the most valuable and influential corporations in the world.
As CEO of Amazon Worldwide Consumer since 2016, he oversaw the company's vast retail business, Prime, the Amazon marketplace, Amazon stores, marketing and Whole Foods.
When Wilke joined Amazon in 1999 to oversee operations the company was doing about $2 billion of revenue a year. Now it brings in about $1 billion every day and last week announced its sales grew by an astonishing 44% year-over-year.
Wilke was long considered the second most important person in the company behind Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who shocked the world by announcing his own departure in February.
Bezos called Wilke his tutor and he was seen as a likely successor, but that job instead went to Andy Jassy, the chief executive of Amazon Web Services.
In a wide ranging conversation with dot.LA – among his first since leaving – Wilke says he has no regrets and felt it simply time to do something else.
Wilke also talked about what it was like to work for Bezos and his reaction to last month's failed unionization vote at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You left Amazon only a few weeks ago. What's it been like these past couple of weeks, not being at the helm of that giant operation?
Jeff Wilke: It's certainly been an adjustment and I'm still adjusting. I was there over 21 years and it's a part of me in so many different ways. I have so many connections there still and friends who are there. I spent the first two weeks learning to code in Python, which I thought would be a really good way to stay connected to the engineers that build Amazon every day and upgrade my skills since I hadn't written code in modern languages.
So you're not on the golf course. You're learning Python?
Yeah, it was super fun. It was very immersive. It was a reminder to me of how coding compounds creativity and invention.
Why did you want to depart Amazon?
I just said it was time. I didn't spend any time through the years carefully charting some course. We were building what we hoped would be a lasting, important company and worrying about the customer experience and I got to a point where I felt like it was time to do other things.
Did the job become not as fun with all of the scrutiny from Washington and organized labor and just the giant pressure you were under with all that?
The job was just as fun when I started to think about leaving, which was well before the pandemic. And it was really meaningful last year in terms of all that was accomplished. But it just felt time for me to move on.
Did you want to be the next CEO?
I never really thought about it because I always imagined Jeff doing it forever. When I was making my decision that wasn't what I was thinking about.
But when you heard he was stepping down, were you like, "I should have just stuck around a little longer?"
No. I was super excited and I am super excited for [new Amazon Worldwide Consumer CEO] Dave Clark and for Andy Jassy.
Were you surprised when the other Jeff said he was leaving?
Yes
It's interesting that both of you who had been there over 20 years and in his case founded the company decided at this moment to leave. Do you think he took some inspiration from you?
(Laughs) That's hard to say but I think in many ways the last year or so has been quite a time of self-reflection for many people. It's not surprising to me that if people were maybe thinking in the back of their mind about making a change, the events of the last year would have caused them to think even harder about it. I don't know for sure why Jeff chose the particular time he chose, but he has so many things in his life that he wants to focus on, too. And I'm just really happy for him.
How do you think the company will be different under Andy Jassy?
Andy was a part of the S-team [Amazon's senior leadership group] for a long time and contributed materially to a bunch of the things that are part of the culture. He and I worked with a group of people on a couple of the revisions to the leadership principles that really have guided the company for nearly two decades. And of course the business and culture that he built with the team and AWS is a big part of Amazon and certainly a big part of the technical underpinnings of the way Amazon works. And that's not going to change at all. So I think it's a terrific team with a great mission and a lot of runway because of the businesses that they're in. I'm going to remain a fan.
What was Jeff Bezos like to work for?
You vote with your feet at work, and if I didn't think he was somebody that I enjoyed working for and that I could learn from, I wouldn't have had him as my boss for over 20 years. He and I have different strengths in different areas where we were able to help each other out by learning from each other and of course Amazon is more than just one or two or 10 people – it's thousands and now actually over a million people.
In those early days what did you see Amazon becoming? Did you just think it would be a big bookseller or could you have seen this global colossus?
I don't think anybody could have imagined what actually happened. Too many things had to fall into place. For instance, there was no iPhone or Android system in 1999 when I joined. People weren't carrying around what are basically supercomputers in their hands, which radically changed the way people interact with the World Wide Web. The delivery networks were not nearly as capable as they became over those 20 years. There's a ton of work to do to get costs to a point where you could afford to offer something like Prime. We didn't have a studio so the idea that we would be creating movies and TV shows as a complement to the delivery services as part of the subscription program called Prime – I think it would have been hard to envision all these things in detail.
What was your reaction to the union vote in Alabama failing by a pretty wide margin?
Jeff hit this well in the shareholder letter; the company can always be better at taking care of employees. If I were still there, I wouldn't have hung my hat on the outcome of that particular vote. I would have said there are some signals that we're receiving that say we have more work to do. We should be proud of what we've done – proud of our safety record and proud that we pay industry leading wages and proud that we have 20 weeks of family leave for people who started an unskilled hourly job on day one, which is really unheard of. So, we have all these things that we've done that are great and then there's a lot of things that we can do to get better.
What did you think of "Nomadland"?
The work camper thing was something that sort of naturally evolved. There were groups of people who had come to work only for the holiday at Amazon and they showed up in campers and they were making great money and then they left post-holiday. They started coming back every year. They really enjoyed it. They built email networks together and they coordinated their work. They asked Amazon to help with finding parking lots for the campers and we were happy to do that. But it was really an organic thing. It just sprouted up. I really enjoyed my trips to the fulfillment centers, hearing their stories and then seeing them come back year after year.
Is it hard when you order something now from Amazon and it doesn't arrive on time and you're like, "why did this happen?" Is it hard to get that out of your system after all these years?
Of course. I mean, the team knows any time there's a defect, I'm going to send an email and that's not going to change.
Part two: Jeff Wilke reveals his next chapter.
Lead illustration by Eduardo Ramón Trejo.
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Ben Bergman is the newsroom's senior finance reporter. Previously he was a senior business reporter and host at KPCC, a senior producer at Gimlet Media, a producer at NPR's Morning Edition, and produced two investigative documentaries for KCET. He has been a frequent on-air contributor to business coverage on NPR and Marketplace and has written for The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review. Ben was a 2017-2018 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic and Business Journalism at Columbia Business School. In his free time, he enjoys skiing, playing poker, and cheering on The Seattle Seahawks.
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LA Venture: Serial Entrepreneur Jessica Jackley on Pursuing a Goal: 'Just Take More Steps Anyway'
On this episode of the LA Venture podcast, Untapped Capital, Alltruits and Kiva founder Jessica Jackley talks about her experience supporting entrepreneurs across the world, and offers advice to founders on what to do when encountering doubt -- from themselves or others.
"The pursuit of an opportunity, a vision, like an imaginary world that you want to make real. You're running after this thing, you're pursuing it without regard to what you have in front of you," she said. "So there's always going to be something wrong."
Jackley's journey as an entrepreneur started when she founded Kiva, a nonprofit that lends money to low-income entrepreneurs. She started the company and moved to East Africa where she heard stories of people starting businesses with just $100.
"I wasn't asked to swoop in and help or save. I was asked strategic questions about where they could access loan capital, where they could access business training," said Jackley. She added that the individuals she met through the service didn't want handouts.
Kiva offered $200, $300 loans at no interest. That model helped build successful small businesses. Every year, they saw a raise on how many loans they could offer. The company has so far facilitated $1.5 billion in loans since the business started in 2005.
More recently, Jackley founded Untapped Capital and Alltruits. Untapped gave her opportunities to invest in unexpected companies and watch them rise, much like Kiva. Alltruits was born out of the pandemic.
"I really wanted to figure out a way, especially as we were on lockdown, like how do we not just have our lives be waiting for the doorbell to ring and another package is dropped off and we just consume it, right? What, what would it look like to reach back out into the world in a way that is helpful," said Jackley.
She created a box subscription service that provides kids with activities that can benefit them and the world. The company's last box focused on making a pollinator hotel for bees.
From her ventures, Jackley recognized when pursuing your dreams, something will always go wrong.
"There's going to be days when you are told, or you're telling yourself, 'well, I'm not old enough', 'I'm too old'. 'I don't have enough experience'. 'I have the wrong experience', whatever," said Jackley. "Just take more steps anyway towards that thing. Cause that's what great entrepreneurs do."
Hear more of the episode, in which Jackley talks about her goal to disrupt the volunteer economy and more.
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Read Activision's Letter to Staff After Firing 20 Employees
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Samson is also a proud member of the Transgender Journalists Association. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Activision Blizzard addressed ongoing employee concerns over workplace culture in a letter to staff Tuesday, and said it disciplined 40 employees for inappropriate workplace behavior.
The letter was written by Blizzard's Executive Vice President for Corporate Affairs (and former U.S. Homeland Security adviser) Frances Townsend, who joined the company in March and sent it to employees via email the afternoon of Oct. 19.
Recently 20 Activision Blizzard employees were fired and 20 more were reprimanded following widespread accusations of sexual harassment and discrimination based on gender.
In a copy of the letter viewed by dot.LA, Townsend said Activision did find misconduct had taken place after conducting its own investigation, and claimed it disciplined the offenders accordingly.
Townsend also said the company has seen an increase in harassment and workplace culture-related reports in recent months, both new and from years ago, as people began to talk more openly about the issue. She promised increased investment in training resources and more transparency about the investigation process and its results.
Activision wouldn't disclose which employees were reprimanded or let go but Townsend said in the letter that Activision Blizzard management is encouraged to "not hesitate to terminate or discipline those who violate our policies and fail to contribute to a positive culture that treats all members of our team with respect."
In July, Activision employees walked out to protest the game publisher's misogynistic and allegedly harmful company culture.
The walkout happened a week after the state of California filed a lawsuit against Activision for discriminating against female employees and having a "frat bro" culture where sexual misconduct and outright harassment were accepted. The lawsuit noted that women accounted for only 20% of the game publisher's staff.
Last month the Securities and Exchange Commission launched its own investigation into Activision. The Wall Street Journal reported the investigation is looking into how the company handled allegations of discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace.
Take a look at the letter in its entirety below.
Today, Activision Blizzard's Executive Vice President for Corporate Affairs Fran Townsend shared the following email update with our employees:
Everyone,
As one of the world's largest and most influential companies, our future depends on fostering a company culture where all feel safe and heard. That comes with the responsibility of earning our employees' confidence that, when they speak up, we'll do the right thing. We must earn our team's confidence that, when they speak up, they will be heard. I have been quietly listening over the last few months to your comments, concerns, and observations. I am grateful to everyone who shared their points of view – especially those who challenged us to do better. It's important to me that you know how seriously I take this, and how committed I am to the next steps we will take together. We are working tirelessly to ensure that, moving forward, this is a place where people are not only heard, but empowered.
We have a committed team dedicated to this work. However, in listening to feedback over the past several months it is clear to me that we need to do more, and with a renewed urgency. We have expanded our compliance team and have even greater initiatives already underway to enable meaningful improvements to our company's culture.
Working with Jen Brewer and the team, we have thoroughly evaluated our broader compliance, employee relations, and investigative procedures, including how we handle claims and communicate with the members of our team who are involved. And today, I would like to highlight our progress on all these goals, along with some changes to build a more accountable workplace and culture.
Among the input we have received, there have been several clear and actionable recommendations, from many of you and from our Ethics & Compliance team. Among them, three key themes emerged:
First, do not hesitate to terminate or discipline those who violate our policies and fail to contribute to a positive culture that treats all members of our team with respect.
Second, be transparent, not only about our investigations processes, but also about the actions we take.
Third, invest resources and people into ethics, culture, and training.
First, I wanted to give you a sense of the work we've been doing to investigate all claims and concerns raised by members of our team:
- Ongoing Investigations: Nothing is more important to me - and the entirety of Activision Blizzard leadership - than making sure everyone feels safe and equal in this workplace. There is no place for harassment, discrimination, or retaliation in this company.
In recent months, we have received an increase in reports through various reporting channels. People are bringing to light concerns, ranging from years ago to the present. We welcome these reports, and our team has been working to investigate them, using a combination of internal and external resources. Based on the information received in the initial report, they are assigned into different categories, and resources are allocated to prioritize the most serious reports first. In connection with various resolved reports, more than 20 individuals have exited Activision Blizzard and more than 20 individuals faced other types of disciplinary action.
We continue to look into any issues or reports raised through the many channels that are available. But it bears repeating: Reports can be submitted anonymously, and there is zero tolerance for retaliation of any kind.
Second, we have begun work to improve how we address complaints, including the restructuring of two teams, Ethics & Compliance and Employee Relations, to more efficiently and effectively handle the investigation of complaints.
- Ethics & Compliance Team Leadership: I am very happy to announce the promotion of Jen Brewer to Senior Vice President, Ethics and Compliance. Jen has already been skillfully guiding the compliance function for many years. More importantly, she has been instrumental in helping me to reimagine how our investigative, training, and employee relations functions can work better together, along with the resources those teams will need to make our company better.
- Way To Play Heroes: These are the Ethics & Compliance program's unsung heroes. They volunteer their time to build bridges – by helping fellow members of our team navigate their reporting options, championing speaking up, and advising us on how we can strengthen the Ethics & Compliance program. The Heroes are crucial to our success. We are expanding the program by adding more Heroes and investing resources to better support the work they do. I am pleased to announce that effective immediately, Heroes will receive one additional vacation day a quarter to recognize their contributions to this very important work.
- Investigation Team Resources: Ensuring we have the capability to properly look into reports is critical. In the past couple months, we have already added three full-time positions to address the workload. Moving forward, we plan to scale this significantly, adding 19 full-time roles to our overall Ethics & Compliance Team, which include team members dedicated to investigations, including the ability to take live calls, as well as data analytics and communications, to help us understand how we're doing and help us better convey results of our work. Two of those roles will be specifically dedicated to overseeing investigations related to the EMEA and APAC regions.
- Investigation Team Structure: We are combining our investigations groups into one centralized unit within a central ABK Ethics & Compliance Department, which will be separate from business units and other groups like Human Resources or Employee Relations. This will allow investigators to be more efficient and coordinated, aligned on approach, and enable consistent decision making. It also allows us to scale resources more appropriately versus considering how to allocate team members across disparate units.
- Employee Relations Team: Alongside improving how we investigate concerns or claims, we need to consider how best to communicate with members of our team affected by these issues. Working with Chief People Officer Julie Hodges, this will be a key focus for the Employee Relations team. This will allow us to better bridge our improved investigative process to a recommended action, whether it's discipline, additional training, or other next steps. Our goal is to broaden our team of individuals with considerable human resources experience, ensuring we handle complaints and concerns with the care and attention they deserve.
- Transparency: We are working on additional materials that document our investigative procedures and outline what members of our team who report misconduct can expect during the investigative process. We are also working to ensure communications are transparent and time sensitive for any members of our team involved in investigations. Even more, we want to provide data reporting so we remain accountable, even if we can't always share what is happening behind the scenes. We know there's a desire to know about the outcome when misconduct is reported. Sometimes, there are privacy reasons we can't share. But where we can, we will be sharing more information with you. We will also be providing you regular aggregate data about investigative outcomes.
- Improving Training: We are preparing to triple our investment in training resources. Our intent is to deliver meaningful, real-life, scenario-based live and online training required for all members of our team, including executives - covering bystander training, speaking up, and training managers to recognize concerns and understand their obligations to escalate situations urgently and appropriately.
We are committed to making meaningful and positive change, and this is just the start. We will be sharing additional updates in the coming weeks and months. We know there is always more work to do. We are committed to continuing that work. Please continue to share your ideas and suggestions, in whatever ways you want to send them. We will work hard every day to earn your trust and confidence. Together, let's ensure that we always have a safe, inclusive, and ethical workplace that makes us all proud.
Best,
Fran
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Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Samson is also a proud member of the Transgender Journalists Association. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
CarbonCapture Raises $35 Million for Climate Change-Reducing Tech
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Samson is also a proud member of the Transgender Journalists Association. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
The largest driver of global warming, carbon dioxide is at its highest level in our atmosphere than any point over the last 8,000 years. And as carmakers and politicians race to come up with solutions, one Pasadena-based firm called CarbonCapture has a bold plan to help humans remove emissions from the air and in doing so innovate a way out of climate change.
"We are at a tipping point and right now we've run out of time," said CarbonCapture CEO Adrian Corless. "What really scares me is the current projections that we're actually going to continue to increase emissions through 2035."
CarbonCapture raised a $35 million Series A round Tuesday to grow its team and begin deploying a network of machines that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using renewable energy. The system works by trapping carbon molecules in the air and storing them to be broken down or safely released elsewhere, like underground.
The company aims to have device prototypes up and running within two years. Capturing and dispelling carbon dioxide from the air at a global scale hasn't been possible yet, and it's a more lofty aspiration for solving climate change than some other more common ground-based solutions -- like using less fossil fuels or limiting energy consumption.
To really work at the highest level, every country would need to be using a vast number of the CarbonCapture devices to remove carbon dioxide at scale. It's a challenge, but Corless said he thinks it's possible to create new tech to help us escape the damage of climate change.
"There's all sorts of industries that scale up and deliver things like this," he said. "The solar industry was a great example, it took a couple decades, but they are able to deliver of hundreds of millions of panels per year (now)."
Several other companies, including Climeworks, Global Thermostat and Canada-based Carbon Engineering, where Corless used to be CEO, are working to tackle this problem of erasing carbon dioxide from the air. Government incentives are a key way to get private companies on board, Corless said, and they're more common now in "progressive parts of the globe" like the U.S., Canada and the E.U.
Tax breaks for carbon neutrality will "take you a long ways towards solving a problem and integrating a huge industry," Corless said, but noted it'll be hard to get other high-emitting countries like China, Russia, Brazil and India to get on board.
CarbonCapture was launched at Bill Gross' Pasadena startup incubator IdeaLab in 2019. Since then, it's raised over $43 million to date. Gross is a co-founder of CarbonCapture and serves as its chairman in addition to leading Heliogen, a Pasadena-based energy company working to replace fossil fuels with sun energy.
The raise was led by Prime Movers Lab. Two Idealab funds –Idealab Studio and Idealab X – joined the round alongside Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who invested through his company TIME Ventures, as did international mining company Rio Tinto, a new investor which will use the prototype devices at its mining site in Minnesota.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that even though more people stayed at home during the global coronavirus pandemic, the world still hit new record high levels of carbon dioxide in 2020 -- and since 2000, carbon dioxide levels have increased 12%.
"We're really in a scary point in the Earth's history right now, so there's consensus that we need to shift the narrative, we need to reduce emissions," Corless said.
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Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Samson is also a proud member of the Transgender Journalists Association. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him