Almost done

I am at the final stretch now, with two weeks left to my final presentations. All interns in my VP’s team do a five-minute presentation demonstrating their summer project during a 2-hour meeting at the end of the internships. All the other interns are software developers. Since I am the first and only MBA intern this team has had, my presentation will be unique. The first thing I learned in a communication class I took at Berkeley Haas last year was “Know Thy Audience” (no that is not how the professor phrased it). I have to tailor my presentation for software engineers and tech gurus, which I hope will not be too hard since I was a software engineer not too long ago. The second presentation is the famous Amazon white paper – a six page executive summary of my research, findings, results etc. I will present this white paper to 6 to 10 people during a 45 minute meeting. As with everything else, everyone is incredibly helpful. I hope to have it reviewed by a couple of people over the next two weeks.

This project reinforced a few beliefs I already had and taught me many new things. First, I do love numbers. Time flew by when I was working in excel on projections and models. I love a data driven job where I am analyzing trends to make recommendations. Second, there is a lot of room for me to improve when analyzing data. One of the principles at Amazon is to dig deep. I learned early in my internship through feedback that I needed to do more of that -- get to the core of the data, figure out what the underlying assumptions are, figure out what the methodology for collecting the data is. I initially hesitated to follow up with people because I did not want to disturb them or take too much of their time, but I learned that it is okay and even encourage to ask many questions. The biggest take-away from the summer is that I should foster my curiosity and that applies to all aspects of my life.

Amazon: Work Hard, Have Fun, Make History

I can definitely check the first two off the list. Am I making history? Time will tell I guess, but I sure hope so! So my last month at Amazon just began this week. Time really has flown by. I have learned a lot about Amazon through other interns, the frequent speaker series (where Senior VP talk about their teams and careers), and through speaking with Ross alumni at Amazon. It seems that each team has its own sub-culture, but the common theme at Amazon is “casual intensity”.

Intensity: Everyone is very passionate about the customer, their work and their business segment. People work very hard and are very absorbed in their work. People love to get involved in different aspects of the business. For instance, engineers brim with ideas for solving business problems and marketing managers get involved with the technology architecture and bug fixing. I also love the meeting culture here. Meetings longer than 30 minutes are unusual. Attendees focus on the topic at hand and so meetings are very efficient. In fact, efficiency and frugality are also a common theme at Amazon, which contributes to innovation at every step.

Casual: In a nutshell - T-Shirts, Shorts, Sandals, Wii games, and Dogs. The culture at Amazon is very casual. On a sunny day, I often see people play Frisbee or picnic in the parks at work. People come to work in shorts and t-shirts and sandals (and that’s not just on Fridays). Even senior management dresses very casually. We have bi-weekly happy hours at work at the end of Friday that one sub-team puts together. And once in a while we have Happy Hours on other days for no reason except TGIF. There were local brews, dart boards, a Wii game set-up on a big projection screen and a heated discussion about Ninjas vs. Pirates at an impromptu Happy Hour organized by our senior VP just a few days ago. And, I also appreciate how dog friendly the company is. Employees can bring thier dog to work. In fact there is an off-leash dog park on campus, and every reception has a jar of dog cookies. There seems to be one dog for every 6 employees here at Amazon. My floor has gone to the dogs, said a colleague when introduced to two new puppies in the past month.
Here is a hilarious video by Woot, a recent Amazon acquisition that touches upon the company culture:

Fun, work and vistas

In addition to the 30-odd Rossers here, there are over 150 MBA interns in Seattle this summer, from B-Schools all over the U.S. We have a Facebook page and google groups where people have signed up for different activities. It has been great to hang out with them over the weekends for BBQs, Kayaking and Movies. It is not possible to meet over the week, but I make it a point to see other people every weekend, and I got to know a few of them very well.

Amazon organizes a lot of events for its interns. We have weekly happy hours. And one of my favorite parts of the internship is the speaker series. HR invites Senior VPs and VPSs from different divisions to talk to the intern group about their teams, career and the company as a whole. These are very educational, and provide another opportunity to spend time with the rest of the interns. As for networking, I meet a lot of people in relation to my project. And I reach out to people in groups that I find interesting. I found people here very open to talking to interns and happy to make time for us.

I have found the workload to be reasonable for an internship. My days vary quite a bit. I usually meet one or two people per day about my project. I spend several hours writing my findings or recommendations down. I also spend a few hours doing secondary research for my project. Due to the flexibility Amazon employees enjoy, every once in a while I work at the office café or lounge so that the change of scene and beautiful Seattle vistas can inspire me. I am very impressed by how every Amazon building has great views.

Full Steam Ahead (MBA, Amazon)

The last two weeks at Amazon have gone by very quickly. I presented my research to 12 technical managers last week and delivered two reports this week. I am certainly kept on my toes and love it. Working with supervisors is interesting, because I have been given so much freedom to run my project. I chat with my manager once or twice a week to bounce my ideas off him. I work closely with two other managers, and I took up a tiny side project for one of them. I also meet weekly with my mentor, who is incredibly helpful when I am stuck on an issue.

My summer project evolved quite a bit in the first two weeks. It was quite exciting to turn a broad business idea and problem into a structured 3-month plan. My MAP project really helped with that. My manager had presented me with a set of projects/issues I could help with, and I thought through them to pick the ones I would work on this Summer. My decision was based on my potential impact on the project, my interests, skills and learning objectives. I communicated these with my manager, and together we came up with a set of goals for me. I broke down those goals into actionable items, and talked to my mentor about what was achievable.

I also learned that setting hard deadlines for myself, and communicating those with the rest of the team helps me focus and push forward on my work. I try to deliver a document every week, so that I time-box myself. Documenting my findings also helps me when a question is asked of me, or when I am trying to drive towards solutions. So it’s a tactic I recommend to everyone. Besides, it improves writing and presentation skills.
Here’s yet another video of Jeff Bezos, this one is more current, from the Princeton graduation:

Amazon 101

I moved to Seattle-town 2 weeks ago. This city reminds me a bit of my San Francisco, where I lived before school. It’s a beautiful and green town, with an edge to it. It has been fun to meet so many new people at Amazon and other MBA interns. Two weeks into my internship and I already feel like I have learned a ton. I have talked to many people, read more than 20 industry reports, and visited a lot of websites. In fact, I will be doing a presentation in a week to talk about all I have discovered about my project so far. It has been interesting to compare and contrast the culture at Amazon with that of Dolby (my previous gig). Both are laid-back, but in different ways. The dress code at Amazon is very casual. I often see very senior managers in shorts and flip-flops. There are at least 5-6 dogs on the floor I work on. I love that part as breaks are so much more interesting. At the same time, meetings are not as casual as they were at Dolby. People get down to business right away, and raise an eyebrow if a meeting is scheduled for more than 30 mins.

As for my project, it is a classic marketing and strategy project that I get to work on from soup, and 2/3^rd the way to nuts. All the concepts and acronyms (5Cs, 4 Ps, STP, Porters) learned in Strategy and Marketing are rushing back and being deployed in real time. The frameworks have really helped my structure my internship. Over the next few weeks, I will be interfacing with managers in different segments of the company. I look forward to learning even more about the business through those interactions. I will leave you with a video from Ted.com, of Jeff Bezos discussing the analogy between the dot com boom and the gold rush.

Looking forward to an Amazing Summer

I am Upneet Bhatia. I was born in India, but I haven’t lived there since I was 7. I grew up in a small quiet country called Oman, and then moved to the U.S 10 years ago to go to school at UT, Austin. So, I consider myself a global citizen. This summer I will be interning at Amazon. I consider myself very fortunate to have gotten an internship with one of my top choices! I will be interning as a Product/Retail intern with the Website Application Platform team. I will be responsible for the marketing strategy for a new service by Amazon that will be launched in a few weeks. This project will also utilize some of my software engineering background. So I am glad that I will be able to leverage my past experience.

I am expecting to learn a lot about Amazon, and to work in cross-functional teams through this internship. I will also be able to build on my network by interacting with interns from other business schools. I am excited about living in the apartment complex with a 100 other MBAs and meeting new people. I look forward to building my business chops and working hard. Since I am a career switcher, I am nervous about whether I have the skills to succeed in my new role. However, I am confident that I will have plenty of support this summer.

Hopefully, the next time I blog, I will be able to reveal more about my project.