Amazon.com - and you're done

Greetings, one and all! Welcome to the first of what promises to be a series of entertaining and enlightening blog posts covering my summer internship. If you enjoy reading about life as a MBA intern in the U.S., you’ve come to the right place.

Perhaps some introductions are in order. I’m a first-year Ross MBA student (the school endearingly refers to us as “rising MBA2s”) from Singapore who will be interning at Amazon this summer as a product manager with the Kindle division. While I do know the general scope of work, the full details will only be revealed to me once I get to Seattle due to the relatively sensitive – some might call it secretive – nature of the product.

Having come off a demanding MAP (Multidisciplinary Action Project) with Chrysler, I’ve gotten reacquainted with regular working hours for the past 7 weeks or so and am expecting myself to be able to hit the ground running when I start in Seattle at the end of this month. If you’re reading this and thinking about applying to Ross, make sure you stick in references to MAP no fewer than 15 times in your “Why Ross?” essay.

Amazon’s summer internships are known to be pretty intense, sink-or-swim affairs. While this may be a deal-breaker for some, I’d like to think that I’m ready for it having been thrown straight into the deep end many times in my previous career as a consultant. This really is an opportunity for me to explore the technology/e-commerce industry in-depth while working in one of the big four tech firms (Google, Apple and Facebook being the other three) that are set to define the future of the industry. In particular, Amazon’s Kindle is a key area of interest for me given its importance to the firm, with Bezos touting the Kindle Store in the company’s latest earnings report. Surely it can't get more exciting than that?

That wraps up my introductory post. Stay tuned for future episodes where I share more fascinating stories on Seattle, Amazon and what will likely turn out to be a burgeoning Starbucks addiction.

What I didn’t do

(MBA, Amazon)

These days I was discussing with another Rosser what was the most valuable point of the internship. In doing so I had to go through an exercise of exploring all the positive points and picking only one. This is unfair with the other points but is a good exercise. Among the positive points I can highlight the city, the group of interns, the learning and the company itself. I have already mentioned the first couple points on a previous post so I’ll focus on the company and the main point.

It is very exciting to be part of a company that is making history. Amazon has now over $25bi in annual revenues and is still growing at over 40% a year. Not many other companies, if any, have done the same. It is definitely changing the face of the Retail. And being part of this transformation is an invaluable opportunity. There is yet a more propounding transformation Amazon is causing: the way we transfer knowledge, through e-books.

But among all, I believe that the most valuable point of my internship is this bad taste I now have in my mouth. I have now this inquietude for knowing what impact I’m going to cause in the world. Recently, I have seen the speech Jeff Bezos delivered to Princeton graduates . I learned a little bit more about his trajectory and I was profoundly uncomfortable to learn he started Amazon when he was 30. He speaks about choices and leaves us to think about what choices are we making. Jeff was able to able to impact the world twice (the face of retail and the e-books revolution) and who dares to doubt he could do it again?

If I can point out only one positive aspect of my internship, it’s definitely going to be the uneasiness I am left with. Yes, I have made new friends, yes I have enjoyed the city, yes I have learned a lot. All of this is very valid. But the best of all is what I haven’t done… yet!