Dissecting Amazon Leadership Principles (LPs), for Amazonians & Non-Amazonians with Ethan Evans & David Anderson

Level Up with Ethan Evans (retired Amazon VP)

​​​​​​​​​Level Up Newsletter & Community paid members and the Scarlet Ink Newsletter paid members were invited to join this live event with Ethan Evans (retired Amazon VP) and David Anderson (former Amazon GM) dissecting Amazon Leadership Principles (LPs) followed by a live audience Q&A.

​David came to work for Ethan in his final role at Amazon (in Amazon Games) kicking off a friendship that has continued to flourish as they both enjoy teaching and writing on career advice in their post-Amazon lives.

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Show Notes:

00:00 Introduction

00:58 David's Career Journey

04:40 The Power of Amazon Leadership Principles

07:44 Evolution and Application of Leadership Principles

18:52 Ownership and Personal Reflections

22:18 Challenges and Controversies in Leadership

40:36 Identifying the Weakest Link

41:50 Hiring for Leadership Principles

44:01 Teaching Leadership Principles

47:49 Addressing the Empathy Gap

51:51 Amazon's Cultural Challenges

56:23 Handling Leadership Conflicts

59:32 The Importance of Company Culture

01:11:11 Final Thoughts and Personal Insights

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About Ethan Evans

​​​​​​​​​​​​​Ethan retired from Amazon as a Vice President after 15 years where he led global teams of 800+ and invented businesses such as Prime Video, Amazon Video, Amazon Appstore, Merch by Amazon, Prime Gaming (formerly Twitch Prime), and Twitch Commerce.

• ​​​​​​​​70+ patents.
• ​​​​​​​​Reviewed 10,000+ resumes, conducted 2,500+ interviews, and 1,000+ hires.
• ​​​​​​​​Was an Amazon Bar Raiser and Bar Raiser Core Leader, responsible for training and maintaining Amazon's group of interview outcome facilitators.
• ​​​​​​​​Helped advocate for and draft the Amazon Leadership Principle (LP) “Ownership” — the words, “They never say ‘that’s not my job.’” are Ethan's (read the story).

​Ethan retired from Amazon as a Vice President in September 2020.

​Join Ethan's Level Up Newsletter & Community to get ongoing career advice and leadership networking access.

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About David Anderson

​David is the author of Scarlet Ink, a popular technology leadership newsletter.

​He spent more than 12 years at Amazon, moving from the lowest level development manager, to a Technology Director and GM. During the majority of those years, David was also a bar raiser and member of the bar raiser core leadership group (helping direct how the bar raiser program operates).

​At the beginning of the pandemic, David was asked to help Bezos Academy get started as their CTO. He spent a year at Bezos Academy building the Technology foundation for the school system, and hiring an excellent IT leadership team.

​David left the corporate world to pursue his passion for writing, and raising chickens.