Yesterday, we had the opportunity to visit Amazon! My first impression of the building (once we got to the correct location since we originally ended up at an alternate Amazon), was that it was fascinating. It was an all glass building, but there was no large sign like I had thought there would be to display the company name. Once we got inside, several members of the group started taking pictures of the lobby, but we were quickly instructed by the employee at the front desk to put our phones away since absolutely no pictures were permitted. Due to this, I only really have photos of the welcoming rug (pictured below) and the outside of the facility. While we were in the lobby, a few of us did find out, however, that we were the first U.S. group that the company took on a tour which was extremely exciting!!
Once we put our phones away, we were told that we all had to sign a non-disclosure agreement which honestly just made the site visit seem more formal and legitimate. When we were walking back to the conference room, I noticed that their office space seemed to be similar to that of Google’s. There were bright colors, Foosball tables, and large bean bag chairs. We made our way into a conference room which is where we all officially met with Steven McGoyer who is an HR recruiter for the company. He was extremely welcoming, considerate and cheerful which most definitely made my first impression of the company a good one. After we settled down with our coffee and tea, Steven introduced us to our first speaker – Gavin O’Duffy. Gavin is a senior manager of Alexa services and he is primarily responsible for driving and managing technical relationships with strategic Alexa Voice Services (AVS) partners. He introduced us to the Alexa Lamp and demonstrated some of her unique functions such as her ability to create a natural way of talking while informally understanding a variety of accents and tongues. He also explained that the company was working to add other languages and he was adamant that they would never going to stop innovating due to uncertainty. I also found it fascinating that Gavin brought up the point that they were working to add extra functionality to the technology while pairing with other businesses. With this, users could tell Alexa to “Order me an Uber” or “Buy me a pizza” without ever having to pick up their phone. In the future, the company is looking forward to the endless possibilities such as connecting with doctors for a diagnosis, talking to banks for financial advice, and even sharing personal conversations with Alexa. With these new features quickly being added, Alexa now has over 40,000 skills which I found shocking! I’ve interacted with the technology before, but there are clearly functions that I have never been exposed to.
After Gavin completed his presentation, we got to meet Alan Reddy who is the AWS Premium Support Operations Manager. Alan talked at a very high technical level, but he shared some valuable insight with the class. He focused his time on the application process for Amazon along with some interviewing tips. My personal favorite was to “let the interviewer know what they didn’t ask you.” Basically, if you get to the end of an interview and you still have valuable skills or experiences that you would like to share, then do it! The interviewer will never know about all of your capabilities unless you make them clear. I found this aspect of his presentation highly fascinating because I was able to take away useful skills that I will be able to apply in the future.
Our final speaker was Steven McGoyer who was the same gentleman that had originally introduced himself to the group at the beginning of the site visit. He dove into the history of Amazon, but what caught my attention the most was the quote that the company tries to function by. He stated that “it is always day 1.” This means the employees should always stay focused, concentrate on the results instead of the process, look outside the company and make decisions. I respected the idea that such a large and successful company focused so much time, energy and money into the concept that innovation is key. They never wanted to get behind the curve and they weren’t really focused on their competition. Steven mentioned that their goal was to continuously improve while never stopping their mission to come up with new products or services.