In the era of Bezos' heir, top managers leave Amazon... Is the company sinking?
Since the gradual exit of Jeff Bezos from the picture, the American company "Amazon" is experiencing a clear management crisis that some fear may affect its future.
Dozens of executives decided to resign from their posts within a short period of time and for similar reasons, which some called"the abandonment of Bezos by adults". Do these changes affect the future of the online shopping giant?
Bezos is building Amazon from scratch
To understand the administrative changes that are taking place, it is necessary to go back to the beginnings; Amazon was established on the fifth of July 1994 by Jeff Bezos as a bookselling site, and its name at that time was "Cadabra", before its name was changed to Amazon later in 1995.
At the beginning of the third millennium, Amazon developed significantly, offering the service of registering members on the site, giving them many features such as free shipping, streaming, shopping, and reading.
In 2007, the company launched the electronic store "Kindle" specializing in browsing, reading and buying books, magazines and newspapers.
And in about the same period Amazon launched a comprehensive cloud computing platform for customers to access their resources and services faster, and also provided many tools for their management and easy control by customers.
And the first offer was launched in 2006 and was a special offer for websites and applications by the customer, and began to spread and flourish.
Since the establishment of Amazon to this day, the parent company has created a lot of its subsidiaries that provide various and unique services.
Bezos leads Amazon with"s-team"
Jeff Bezos founded the so-called" s-team ", a team of senior executives who take over decision-making in the company and conduct periodic meetings among themselves.
The "ES Team" consists of:
- - Jeff Bezos-former CEO of Amazon: he is the founder of Amazon, and has led and directed the company since 1994.
- - Andy Gacy-current CEO of Amazon: he has been the CEO of the company since 2021, and was previously the CEO of Amazon Web Services, known as "AWS" subsidiary.
- - Dave Limp-Senior Deputy Executive Director in the field of digital management: responsible for the digital management and development of Amazon devices, its business and applications, including the Kindle project,"Alexa" and the emerging Android application "Astro".
- - Beth Galetti-senior deputy executive director in the field of human resources: responsible for recruitment, salary system and bonuses for Amazon employees.
- - Neil Lindsay-deputy director in the field of marketing and marketing plans around the world: responsible for advertising, sales management, promotion, working in the money market and measuring the returns on marketing investments of the company around the world, he is the CEO of the subsidiary "Amazon Prime".
- - Brian Olsavsky-Senior Deputy CEO in the field of financial relations and economics: Amazon's CFO and responsible for concluding financial deals for the company.
- - David zabolsky-Senior Deputy CEO and general counsel: he has been Amazon's general counsel since 2002 and is responsible for organizational matters at the company.
- – Jay Carney-senior deputy CEO: he is the public relations man in the company, as he is responsible for the company's Affairs and Public Relations Department, and he is the newest member of the team, having joined the company in 2015.
Top managers abandon Amazon
Since the beginning of 2021, more than 90 CEOs and vice presidents have left Amazon at different times of the year, the latest of them were Greg Zahr and Tom Taylor also announced his retirement on the same day that Zahr gave his colleagues notice that he would be leaving the company on October 11, 2022.
Many of these managers who retired went to look for other job opportunities in startups or competing companies, some of them started their own business, others actually retired.
It is strange that a huge company like Amazon would lose such a huge number of senior employees in just two years, especially since it is known for retaining its senior employees and managers for decades.
These top employees have been leaving their jobs at the company since Amazon announced the appointment of Andy Gacy as CEO instead of Jeff Bezos.
The departure of Zahr and Taylor was confirmed by Amazon, which will leave a huge gap in the leadership of large businesses and projects, because they are one of the oldest veteran employees in the company, and Zahr is also the inventor of the Kindle tool and store.
And Taylor is the main supervisor of Alexa tools, but the company confirmed that the void was filled and new managers were appointed from within the company, and that the Alexa and Kindle projects are still continuing with the same strength and momentum.
Are Amazon affected by the resignations
Following a series of big resignations, Amazon is going through a big set of blunders in the global financial market, as it announced its loss and a decrease in the percentage of sales in the financial market for the second time in a row; in the second quarter of 2021.
The losses amounted to two billion US dollars, and in the previous quarter the loss amounted to 3.8 billion US dollars, and the company's e-stores business recorded a decline of 4%, which are huge losses.
The losses announced by Amazon coincided with the beginning of a series of resignations of managers at the beginning of 2021, and the company is currently suffering from slowing consumer demand from the company's stores and rising costs for goods at the same time.
But the company's CEO Andy Gacy expressed optimism about the company's future, as he stated that despite the continued inflation pressures in fuel, energy and transportation costs, the company is making progress in manageable costs such as the costs of electronic goods.
He also pointed out that Amazon's stock price improved by more than 10%, which is higher than expected after the senior managers left the company, and the sales percentage increased by 7%, reaching 121 billion dollars compared to 113.1 billion dollars in the second quarter of 2021.