New PM in Amazon
I’m starting in Amazon (SF office) as a senior PM in a few weeks. Any advice? Thanks!
Prepare to work hard, build good relationship with people, know that your performance will be measured by how many documents (pr-faq, narratives, etc) you deliver. If not already, learn to receive feedback on the face, even if sometimes those feedback are unreasonable. Do not argue/defend when receiving feedback on your docs. There are things called team goals - be on top w.r.t. progress on those. Get to know your customers and data in the first 2 months. PM’s are valued at Amazon. If you do not find a great fit, think of internal transition or change before 1 year. Good luck.
The general trend at Amazon is to feel happy at the beginning, run into serious rough patches between months 3-5, then gradually feel better again after 6-8 months. PMs effectively run Amazon. You will have the latitude to bulldoze engineering into doing what you want, but avoid that temptation. Build strong relationships with SDMs and UX if available in your org. Really work to understand the tech side of things. And docs. Prepare to spend a lot of time writing and revising documents. Learn how to write compelling first paragraph (what’s being built and the benefits of it) and second paragraph (the existing customer problem being solved). And if you don’t know SQL learn as much as you can. PMs at Amazon are rewarded for writing good docs and launching things. There’s surprisingly little attention paid to how successful something is. Lots of PMs vie to launch “neat” things with high visibility to get promoted to L7, and then move into other roles from there.
What's your TC?
Stop coming to blind for a while. I’m serious, the negativity here can be quite a downer. Or checkin very occasionally. You need the first few months to be in your most positive outlook to make that impression. And it goes without saying, be very customer focused and data driven at Amazon and work stupid hard for at least the first year