At an all-hands meeting in October, Amazon Web Services employees questioned executive Matt Garman about the company's harsh working conditions.
According to a recording of the meeting obtained by Business Insider, the head of cloud sales quickly dismissed the question, saying working at AWS must be “difficult.” He said employees need to create a positive working environment while building excellent service.
“We love that they are difficult, challenging and solving difficult problems,” Garman said. “And to serve customers in that environment, you need people who can perform at their best.”
Mr. Garman's outspoken approach has earned him a “bulldozer” reputation for being intensely focused on achieving business goals before other priorities, people familiar with his approach told BI. It's also what catapulted him to his AWS CEO job, a promotion that makes him one of the most high-profile executives in the technology industry. Garman, an 18-year veteran of Amazon, will soon be in charge of the cloud giant's computing operations. This cloud computing needs to find ways to continue to grow rapidly even as AI competition intensifies.
Garman replaces Adam Selipsky, who took over as CEO just three years ago. In a memo to staff Tuesday, Selipsky said he plans to spend more time with his family before deciding what to do next. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a separate company-wide email that Selipsky will assume the top job at AWS in 2021 under an informal agreement that he will step down after several years of training for his successor. said. Garman will officially take over on June 3.
“Matt brings exceptional skills and experience to his new role, and he knows our customers and business, as well as people around the world, and we look forward to working with him,” said Amazon spokesperson Patrick. I look forward to watching him and his management team continue to invent the future.” Neihorn told BI.
early concerns
Garman, 48, first joined Amazon as an intern in 2005 while a student at Northwestern's business school. An engineer by training with a degree in industrial engineering from Stanford University, Garman then spent more than a decade running technical teams at his AWS company.
Garman took on a new role as head of sales and marketing for AWS in 2020, a move that surprised some people, according to a former executive who worked closely with him. The person said Garman was not a good public speaker and did not seem polished in front of clients. His candid feedback and negative comments about customers in company discussions made other salespeople uncomfortable.
Garman essentially had to learn how to be a better salesman, this person said. Those who spoke to BI about Garman requested anonymity so they could freely discuss his abilities.
Whatever adjustments Mr. Garman made, they appear to have won the trust of Amazon's leaders and investors alike. He had already begun to become the public face of AWS in the months leading up to Tuesday's promotion, according to several company officials.
Analysts at Mizuho Securities on Tuesday noted Garman's experience in engineering, sales and marketing, saying, “This appointment fits well with what we believe is the company's customer focus. I think so,” he wrote.
AI issues
Garman takes over a business that is recovering from slowing growth. AWS generated $25 billion in revenue last quarter, an increase of 17% year over year. This is a big difference from the 30%-40% growth rates AWS saw a few years ago, but it's still an improvement over last year, when it hovered around a record low of 12%. doing. In recent years, due to the pandemic and economic uncertainty, customers have started increasing their spending on AWS after closing their wallets.
AWS believes that AI will drive its growth over the long term. The reality may be more complicated.
For example, to compete with Nvidia's GPU processors, AWS released its own AI chips called Inferentia and Tranium. It is unclear for now how successful this move will be, as most AI model developers still prefer to use Nvidia's platform.
“We're excited to offer our customers the widest range of computing choices, and our Inferentia2-based instances deliver up to 40% better price performance than other comparable Amazon EC2 instances,” said Amazon. spokesperson Neighorn told BI.
Last month, AWS made Q Chatbot generally available. However, previous preview releases were hasty and flawed, leaving employees and industry experts questioning Amazon's future in AI, BI previously reported. One of his AWS employees pointed out to BI that Amazon Q is several months behind his launch of Microsoft's AI Copilots.
AWS does not believe that a single AI model will dominate the market. So the company released Bedrock, a cloud service that allows customers to access models from multiple providers, including his Cohere and Mistral AI.
AWS also announced its own model called Titan, but it's not as powerful as OpenAI or Google's models. Amazon also invested $4 billion in Anthropic, a startup with a top AI model called Claude.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Associated Press
Outside of AI, AWS has struggled in its core startup and small business sector, and missed its revenue goals last year, as BI previously reported. These customers are especially important to his AWS because AWS built its early business by embracing that market. “Startup capital is decreasing around the world, so startup spending on everything, including cloud, is decreasing,” Selipsky, the outgoing AWS CEO, told employees in February, according to a transcript of an internal meeting obtained by BI. “It's decreasing,” he said.
'1 team'
One of Garman's areas of focus in recent years is the “one team” concept within AWS.
A great example of that strategy is a new sales initiative called Delivery Point of View (DPOV), according to internal documents obtained by BI. Under DPOV, his AWS software consultants, previously involved only in service implementation, will also be encouraged to find sales opportunities, blurring the lines between consultants and traditional salespeople.
Additionally, Garman completed a major organizational change earlier this year, eliminating duplication and redundancy in roles. The new approach eliminates the need for different teams to contact the same customer, saving costs on closing deals, according to people familiar with the change. AWS sales and marketing teams are now organized primarily by industries, such as finance, media and technology, rather than the traditional regional model, people familiar with the matter said. Some praised Garman for taking the initiative to solve a long-overdue problem.
Garman's sales and marketing organization was also one of the first to roll out a new career development program called Growth Conversations, according to people familiar with the program. One-on-one programs give employees the opportunity to speak with managers about career opportunities and milestones they should pursue for the year.
Last month, when Amazon Q became publicly available, Garman wrote an email to his team encouraging all employees to work as a team to promote the product.
“Let's spread the word by sharing this news with your network on social media to let your customers know that AWS is the best place to innovate with generative AI,” Garman's email said. I was there. “Now, let's go win!”
Do you work at Amazon? Any tips?
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