Invent like an Owner with Dave Schappell Dave Schappell

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.

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.

Episode Resources:
John Vlastelica’s LinkedInConsulting and Training from John’s company, Recruiting Toolbox Website and TwitterLearn about the pros and cons of Bar Raisers: Barraisers.comDownload the Hiring Manager Maturity Model and Culture of Recruiting Best Practices: https://go.recruitingtoolbox.com/hiring-manager-maturity-modelFind Dave on LinkedIn and Twitter
What to Listen For:
00:00 Intro01:55 What is the Bar Raiser Program?08:33 Hiring people that will make the overall team better10:22 Embedding high hiring standard into every interview process12:17 Tech teams and non-tech teams have different bar standards16:34 Amazon’s Interview Training Program - Making Great Hiring Decisions20:00 The art of behavioral interviewing25:04 Some of the drawbacks of the Bar Raisers program28:30 How to scale a high hiring bar32:43 People want to hire smart folks and they depend on proxies37:21 Questions and scenarios to raise the bar mentality in the early days38:48 Spent the last 16 years building Recruiting Toolbox42:07 Overinvest in your hiring standards early44:20 Bringing ownership into the recruiting culture46:53 How John helps companies through Recruiting Toolbox51:18 MRT shifted recruiting to more pipeline oriented, and allowed feedback on interview feedback, a very amazon thing to do 55:53 Creating a culture of ownership and recruiting ownership59:03 Advice for CEOs and startups

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).

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.

Episode Resources:
Eric Benson’s LinkedIn and TwitterFind Dave on LinkedIn and Twitter
What to Listen For:
00:00 Intro02:39 Amazon's multi-day outage in 199705:15 Back then there was no backup server, just one customer database07:09 Joining Amazon in 199610:00 Improving the website software was one of the first tasks12:52 Book Matcher: people get recommendations after posting a rating15:36 Developing the Similarities feature24:10 Instant Recommendations 25:31 Promoting unusual items to show up in recommendations27:00 Building v1 of Weblabs34:16 People get burned out when there’s too much information37:34 CatSubst is putting marks in the HTML file to notify the software it serves39:44 Experimenting between showing 3 and 5 similar items41:09 Is every new feature slowing down the site?42:54 The biggest problem with CatSubst45:11 The hardware cost per unit was very high49:21 Hardships of the engineering team while using Linux53:27 Rufus the Dog and several site launches57:26 Helping new engineers with language and coding01:01:13 Software engineering at Amazon was too advanced for packaged software solutions from 3rd parties01:04:05 From a small business to becoming a huge company

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.



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.



Episode Resources:

Neil Roseman’s LinkedIn and TwitterJorrit Van der Meulen’s LinkedInFind Dave on LinkedIn and Twitter


What to Listen For:

00:00 Intro02:51 Many people who don't live in the UK or Germany weren’t aware of Amazon’s DVD rental business08:13 What happened after DVD rental was launched in the UK and Germany10:27 Figuring out how to ship DVD’s and then taking them back into rotation12:18 The window people want to rent a DVD is super short16:05 Reducing complexity by picking a market that was more solvable19:35 How Jorrit joined Amazon21:37 Launching the Subscription Management Service and moving to agile development26:43 It was process that was both business and technical28:33 Meeting with Jeff Bezos and the Subscription Service team33:15 Key features of the Subscription Management Service36:43 The difficult (and easier) aspects of creating Amazon Prime40:52 Focus on creating an appealing pricing program46:06 Integrating the business and development functions49:26 Jorrit runs Amazon’s retail business in Europe50:17 Neil is currently the Technologist in Residence at Summit Partners

Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with John Rossman. They talk about how the Merchants@ program was built from scratch, why working directly with third party sellers prompted the principle of seller obsession, launching the Apparel and Sporting Goods categories, developing smaller teams within the retail organization, and essentially, how Amazon’s Leadership Principles led the way to writing his book, “The Amazon Way”.

John Rossman is the former Director of Merchant Integration and Enterprise Services at Amazon. He spearheaded the launch of the Merchants@ program, one of the largest B2B networks with thousands of sellers, offering products in new categories such as apparel, sporting goods, consumer electronics, health and beauty, and home.

Episode Resources:
John Rossman’s LinkedIn and TwitterThe Amazon Way BookThe Amazon Way WebsiteFind Dave on LinkedIn and Twitter
What to Listen For:
00:00 Intro02:39 What is the Merchants@ Program?04:41 Prior to Amazon, John was in a startup technology company09:04 While there was Customer Obsession, they needed to create Seller Obsession12:43 Inventory and catalog refreshes from daily to hourly14:06 Account management team within the retail organization15:51 Engineering and design work for customer and seller experience17:43 Gently enforcing the parity clauses of the seller agreements19:03 Building a three-option integration path for sellers22:36 Working directly with third party sellers24:30 The big launch for the Apparel category, followed by Sporting Goods27:31 The evolution of Item Matching30:59 Knowing when to have and not to have patience on something31:49 A big no to “handshake’ credit card deals to maintain customer trust34:15 Self service registration, so that seller’s could register without talking to anyone35:50 Product promotions and processing refunds38:26 Merchant.com was essentially a business outsourcing arrangement41:44 Classification is one of the tricky parts in creating a great customer experience44:17 M.com business wasn’t winning 45:41 How "The Amazon Way" book came to be47:41 Being good has never been the bar at Amazon49:36 Truly understand the nature of experimentation in the business51:42 Getting clarity in your thinking and getting senior leaders to sit down and listen54:36 Startups should focus on instrumentation and metrics56:36 You don't want to scale when you don't understand your unit cost basis

Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Josh Petersen and Matt Round. The conversation takes us back to Amazon’s early years, when the Personalization team was put together and built on features such as Similarities, Instant Recommendations, Cart Recommendations and more. The team strove to iteratively improve key features; over time, the Personalization and Automation worked toward Jeff Bezos’ vision of “a store for every customer”. They also talk about the effectiveness of small cross-functional teams, feature testing through Weblabs, MRT (Matt’s Recruiting Tool) - a tool still being used today, and much more.

For over 20 years at Amazon, Josh Peterson helped create highly visible and innovative technologies used by millions of customers. He was the Director for the Personalization team and then led different teams at Amazon including Prime Photos/Cloud Drive, AWS, and Bots/NLU. Matt Round is the former Director of Software Development, and later became the Managing Director responsible for establishing the Amazon Development Centre in Scotland (a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com) including full responsibility for team building, project selection and implementation oversight.

Episode Resources:
Josh Petersen’s LinkedInMatt Round’s LinkedInFind Dave on LinkedIn and Twitter
What to Listen For:
00:00 Intro02:01 Personalization feature examples05:17 How Personalization features were evaluated08:00 Item to item similarities versus collaborative filtering09:40 Personalization aims to build out a store for every customer12:17 Putting together a team focused on Personalization14:12 Tracking which features were generating which results17:12 How do Weblabs work?20:17 Big wins for the Personalization features24:22 How did Personalization work for new customers?28:53 Impact on Editorial team when Personalization became more automated32:30 Amazon’s customer reviews34:14 Emergence of advertising on Amazon39:29 Two Pizza Team model: small cross-functional teams with a narrow focus42:57 Personalized merchandising and Automated merchandising 47:27 Matt’s Recruiting Tool (MRT): a simple tool to manage the interview process50:24 The Amabot Story54:46 Iquitos: the first successful microservice at Amazon 59:10 Pressure from the product side produced innovation on the technical side01:00:14 By testing a lot of things, you learn about things you don’t know.01:02:56 Listening to data is very important

Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Rebecca Allen. They travel through memory lane by talking about the restructuring of Amazon’s catalog using Base 36, the complications of recycling ISBNs that led to the creation of Amazon’s Standard Identification Number (ASIN), how the Title Authority feature helped customers find books through associations, the seemingly impossible to accomplish Used Books category, and so much more.

Rebecca Allen is a former Software Engineer at Amazon from March 1996 to September 1998. She helped in the programming of creating and maintaining the book catalog, creating tools to modify the Amazon catalog, and much more.

Episode Resources:
Rebecca Allen’s LinkedInInterview with Amazon’s Technical Co-founder And Employee #1, Shel KaphanInterview with engineer Paul Davis (Second Employee at Amazon)Find Dave on LinkedIn and TwitterSponsored by Skilljar.com founded by ex-Amazonians Sandi Lin and Jason Stewart. Skilljar is transforming the way enterprises onboard, engage, and retain their customers.
What to Listen For:
00:00 Intro02:36 Discovering Amazon and then joining the team05:25 Hired to work on catalog and search engine07:12 The original catalog sources weren’t customer facing10:16 Who made the requests to edit the catalog 11:27 Developing the typo tool to allow the catalog department to fix content errors14:03 The complications of recycling ISBNs; building the Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN)21:31 People were worried about the backward compatibility of ASINs24:09 ASINs have been increasing rapidly over the years27:37 Base 36 is a really unique solution, but has worked extremely well29:26 Definition of Biblio Records34:38 What is Title Authority?37:21 Helping readers find what they want through associations41:38 Have ASINs been licensed or was it built just for Amazon?42:35 Introducing the Used Books catalog from the Library of Congress45:36 Order database broke down when Used Books was launched48:47 Differing opinions and the pressure to convince people50:58 Coming up with alphabetical search results54:21 How the catalog set up Amazon competitively57:00 “If you know your problem, your solution will be better.” - Rebecca Allen