Working for the "other"

Summer internship has started and I see myself working for the other: other country, other industry, other coast, and other business.

My internship experience starts 2.400 mi from Seattle. I decided to take the opportunity to get to know US a little bit better and I chose to drive from Ann Arbor to Seattle.

RoadTrip Stats:

Duration: 6 days;

Distance: 2650 mi;

Consumption: 125 gal of gas;

States visited: 9;

Pictures taken: 7940

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Yes, this country is really huge and driving all the way to Seattle prepared me to the changes to come. I've seen beautiful landscapes changing from the absence of hills in Michigan to the absence of pretty much everything Wyoming; from the cosmopolitan Chicago to the far-west little cities on the way to Yellowstone national park; from 85F at Ann Arbor to a snow storm 10000ft above see level at the top of Wyoming Creek; and obviously... people were changing too. But that was just the beginning.

Working in US is considerably different than working in South America. Americans tend to be much more focused on their work than I was used to. In Brazil it is not uncommon to have little “social breaks” during the workday. I would not say it is a complete waist of time. It is during those breaks, with the excuse to have a coffee that a lot of social interaction happens and you end up getting to know your coworker better. Ultimately, a lot is accomplished because the social networks formed this way are a very powerful shortcut to the natural processes. It is also not natural for me to see most of the people having lunch at their desks. I guess that Latinos tend to value the lunchtime much more. The counterpart is that one is actually able to manage the work-life balance much better.

Coming back to the industry after 2 years working as a consultant has been very interesting. I am adapting myself to once more navigate within an organization. The biggest challenge here is to work bottom-up rather than top-down. As a consultant you can move much quicker past the obstacles just because you have the sponsorship of a VP or a CXO. On the other hand, as an MBA intern you are typically on the bottom of the pyramid and you have to exercise negotiation and influence skills much more. Probably, the most noticeable difference between consulting and Amazon is that the first targets the short term profit and the later long term free cash flow.

Finally, I’m working on the “other” business: at least according to the Amazon’s annual financial report. I’m working for a group within Amazon that probably shares only the name and the culture. AWS is a cloud-computing provider and as such has a completely different business model than the e-retail. It grows even faster than Amazon and is a very dynamic environment. The “not so good” side of it is that I’m really far from Amazon’s core business.