Amazon’s massive success has made it a popular poaching ground for executive talent. Many of the departed executives had more than a decade of experience building key parts of Amazon’s business, and have joined hot startups or young public companies that would benefit from the adult guidance these experienced leaders could provide. In return, these people get fresh opportunities and a relief from the more bureaucratic culture of a big company.
For example, Gunningham, who spent over 10 years at Amazon, took the vice chairman role at WeWork. Greg Greeley, another highly-regarded executive responsible for building the Prime membership program, left to join Airbnb in March. Tim Stone, former VP of finance, is now Snap’s chief finance officer. Other companies that recruited Amazon’s executives this year include SoFi, Tesla, and Robinhood.
Gene Munster, managing partner at Loup Ventures, said the departures are more a symptom of success than a sign of turmoil at Amazon. Many of them are likely motivated by Amazon’s soaring stock price, which nearly quadrupled over the past five years, he said, because it gives these people incentive to sell their stock — which in most cases are worth millions of dollars — and the flexibility to pursue new opportunities.
“These executives are cashing in on their past success and often parlaying them into start-up careers,” Munster said.
While it’s true that many of the executives have become incredibly rich and have left on their own volition, not all departures seem to have been voluntary, according to James Thomson, a former Amazon manager and partner at BuyBox Experts, who works closely with the company. Amazon often reviews its organizational structure and pushes out executives when necessary, he said, and it’s possible the company saw layers of overlapping VP positions that needed to be streamlined after its workforce grew to over 610,000 this year.
Either way, the void left by these executives shouldn’t be a concern for Amazon, Thomson added, because of its deep bench of talented executives who can fill in those positions immediately.
“These people are expensive to pay, and quite frankly it doesn’t make any sense to have too many of them if you don’t need them all,” Thomson said. “But Amazon will be fine because there’s so much talent.”
Here’s a list of the most notable high-profile executives that left Amazon in 2018 and what they’re doing now:
- Diego Piacentini; SVP of international business —-> Unknown
- Sebastian Gunningham; SVP of marketplace —-> Vice Chairman at WeWork
- Greg Greeley; VP of Prime —-> President of Homes at Airbnb
- Jim Freeman; VP of Alexa Communications —-> SVP of Engineering at Zalando
- Tim Stone; VP of Finance —-> Chief Financial Officer at Snap
- Assaf Ronen; VP of Voice and Nui Shopping —-> Head of Product at SoFi
- Craig Berman; VP of Global Communications —-> Unknown
- Peter Faricy; VP of marketplace —-> CEO of Global Direct-to-Consumer at Discovery
- Mark Mitchke; VP of marketplace business —-> CEO at Delta Dental
- Allen Parker; VP of finance (Amazon Device & Appstore) —-> CFO at Zillow
- Derek Andersen; VP of finance (Amazon digital video biz) —-> VP of finance at Snap
- Jeff Yurcisin; VP of softlines private brands —-> CEO at Zulily
- Sanjay Shah; VP of North American Fulfillment Centers —-> SVP of energy operations at Tesla
- Darcy Penick; CEO of Shopbop/East Dane (Amazon subsidiary) —-> President at Bergdorf Goodman
- Jason Warnick; VP of global finance —-> CFO at Robinhood
- Jeremi Gorman; Head of global advertising sales —-> Chief Business Officer at Snap
- Ashwin Ram; Senior Manager, Alexa AI —-> Technical Director of AI at Google Cloud
from Update News Zone https://ift.tt/2CmsEWJ
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