Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company
Amazon, a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, Washington, is the global leader in e-commerce. Since Jeff Bezos started Amazon in 1995, we have significantly expanded our product offerings, international sites, and worldwide network of fulfillment and customer service centers. Today, Amazon offers everything from books and electronics to tennis rackets and diamond jewelry. We operate sites in the Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and United Kingdom and maintain dozens of fulfillment centers around the world which encompass more than 26 million square feet.

 

Technological Innovation
Technological innovation drives the growth of Amazon, offering our customers more types of products, more conveniently, and at even lower prices. We offer a personalized shopping experience for each customer, book discovery through "Search Inside The Book", convenient checkout using "1-Click® Shopping", and several community features like Listmania and Wish Lists that help our customers to discover new products and make informed buying decisions.

Building the Platform
In 2000, Amazon began to offer its best-of-breed e-commerce platform to other retailers and to individual sellers. Now, big-name retailers work with Amazon Services to power their e-commerce offerings from end-to-end, including technology services, merchandising, customer service, and order fulfillment. Other branded merchants also leverage Amazon as an incremental sales channel for their new merchandise; you can find products from top retailers across our retail site. Finally, independent software developers also derive value from the platform--through Amazon Web Services--by building profitable applications and services that cater to Amazon customers and sellers.

We've Only Just Begun
This evolution of Amazon from Web site to e-commerce partner to development platform is driven by the spirit of innovation that is part of the company's DNA. E-commerce is still in its infancy. In the years to come, you'll see Amazon create new technologies, expand into more geographies and continue to improve the lives of shoppers and sellers around the world.

Learn More
To learn more about Amazon today, explore our website. Check out the stores, read some customer reviews and learn about our programs. You can also visit our investor relations and PR sites to review our last annual report and read recent announcements about partnerships and product launches.

Amazon Leadership Principles

Whether you are an individual contributor or a manager of a large team, you are an Amazon leader. These are our leadership principles and every Amazonian is guided by these principles.

Customer Obsession
Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.

Ownership
Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job”.

Invent and Simplify
Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here”. As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.

Are Right, A Lot
Leaders are right a lot. They have strong business judgment and good instincts.

Hire and Develop the Best
Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others.

Insist on the Highest Standards
Leaders have relentlessly high standards - many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.

Think Big
Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.

Bias for Action
Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking.

Frugality
We try not to spend money on things that don’t matter to customers. Frugality breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and invention. There are no extra points for headcount, budget size or fixed expense.

Vocally Self Critical
Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. Leaders come forward with problems or information, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.

Earn Trust of Others
Leaders are sincerely open-minded, genuinely listen, and are willing to examine their strongest convictions with humility.

Dive Deep Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details and audit frequently. No task is beneath them.

Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.

Deliver Results
Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.

Amazon currently employs more than 51,300 people around the world. Our employees work in corporate offices, fulfillment centers, customer service centers and software development centers across North America, Europe and Asia. Employees in our offices contribute in a variety of functions and jobs, including:

Software Development
Our engineers tackle some of the most complex challenges in large-scale computing. Software development engineers, technical program managers, test engineers, and user-interface experts work in small teams company-wide to contribute to the e-commerce platform that's used by:

• Over 152 million active Amazon customer accounts
• Over 2.0 million active seller accounts
• Hundreds of thousands of external developers

Retail Product Management and Merchandising
Our team of product managers, designers, buyers, and merchandisers builds and launches new product categories and stores around the world as it offers customers greater selection, lower prices, more in-stock merchandise, and a best-in-class shopping experience.

Information Technology
Our IT team oversees the company's technology environment. These system, database, and networking experts build and operate highly reliable, scalable distributed systems with terabyte-sized databases and infrastructure that can handle a massive number of transactions.

Operations and Customer Service
During the 2010 holiday season, our fulfillment centers shipped to more than 178 countries worldwide. Our operations teams oversee and operate all aspects of supply chain management, fulfillment, transportation, and customer service. People on these teams range from optimization specialists and business analysts to fulfillment and customer-service managers and associates. Regardless of their role, however, they're completely focused on meeting individual customer promises every day, around the globe.

Finance and Administration
Financial professionals at Amazon operate as business partners within functional teams throughout the company. They have leadership roles in teams such as Retail, Operations, Business Development, and Software Development in addition to more traditional roles in Accounting, Treasury, Investor Relations, etc. Financial professionals help teams evaluate business investments, understand historical performance, and develop forward-looking plans in addition to providing objective perspectives to their business partners.

Human Resources
Our HR function comprises HR Business Partners, Recruiters and Specialists in areas like Learning & Development, HRIS and Compensation & Benefits. The teams engage with our business leaders to deliver our goal of finding, developing and retaining the best and brightest people in the market. By partnering with our businesses leaders and employees we develop long term career paths inline with Amazon's unique culture.

Legal
Our legal team advises business leaders on complex legal issues in a dynamic, high-growth environment. They oversee Amazon's intellectual property and patent efforts, drive public policy initiatives, and resolve all litigation.

Build your future with Amazon!

Random forests, naïve Bayesian estimators, RESTful services, gossip protocols, eventual consistency, data sharding, anti-entropy, Byzantine quorum, erasure coding, vector clocks ... walk into certain Amazon meetings, and you may momentarily think you've stumbled into a computer science lecture.-- Jeff Bezos, 2010 Shareholder letter.

Amazon... a place where builders can build. We hire the world's brightest minds and offer them an environment in which they can invent and innovate to improve the experience for our customers.

Many of the problems we face have no textbook solution, and so we -happily-invent new ones - Jeff Bezos, 2010 Shareholder letter.

We want you to help share and shape our mission to be Earth's most customer-centric company. Amazon's evolution from Web site to e-commerce partner to development platform is driven by the spirit of invention that is part of our DNA. We do this every day by solving complex technical and business problems with ingenuity and simplicity. We're making history and the good news is that we've only just begun.

Invention is in our DNA and technology is the fundamental tool we wield to evolve and improve every aspect of the experience we provide our customers - Jeff Bezos, 2010 Shareholder letter.

To read the full shareholder letter, visit 2010 Shareholder Letter

We've revolutionized the online shopping experience, cloud computing and the book... join us and see what's next!