Ethan Evans

Evans characterizes Amazon's work-culture phrases as euphemisms for demanding long hours.

“a lot of euphemisms to say, yes, we're a sweatshop in a slightly more acceptable way”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 24:48

Evans explains that question mark emails meant leaders had 24 hours to explain and resolve a customer complaint Bezos forwarded.

“we called these question mark emails and everybody knew what that meant, which is it meant you have 24 hours to get back and explain what's going on”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 20:08

Evans argues that in a business as large as Amazon, a reliable leader who lifts a failing area to a B can be more valuable than a high-variance leader.

“in a business as big as Amazon, sometimes all you need is a B because there's some other A product that's gonna drag through the revenue”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 12:07

Evans says Bezos instructed that anecdotes should be trusted over data because even a 1% failure rate at Amazon's scale affects millions.

“Jeff said between data and anecdotes, trust the anecdotes”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 19:23

Evans attributes Bezos's ability to quickly find flaws in proposals to pattern recognition from years of document reviews.

“He literally spent 10,000 hours reading those documents, and giving feedback”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 10:32

Evans says one of Bezos's flaws was giving only critical, corrective feedback.

“And that only criticism, only corrective feedback, that was one of his flaws”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 4:05

Evans says his Twitch career-advice streams gave him practice that now makes him hard to throw with questions.

“why can't I be thrown by most questions, right? And it's because I've answered 10,000 questions live”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 1:11:22

Evans says he expects to earn $700,000-800,000 this year coaching about 20 hours a week, versus low-million pay for 50-60 hour weeks at Amazon.

“this year I'll end the year at like seven or $800,000, but as opposed to 50 to 60 hours a week plus travel”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 33:22

Evans believes Bezos holds free-market views that customers should be given choice in what they buy.

“he's also very much a libertarian and a free market guy. And his viewpoint is give customers the choice”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 56:33

Evans says Bezos repeatedly declined to enter finance, travel and other industries, generally avoiding heavily regulated or mature sectors.

“he generally tried to avoid things with lots of regulation because that slowed down his ability to do whatever he wanted”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 42:24

Evans explains the $25 free-shipping threshold worked because it required buying two items, generating enough profit to cover shipping.

“$25 was this magic number that meant you had to buy two. you had to put two things in the box”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 50:27

Evans says Prime began as 'Project 100', a fast-delivery program Bezos pushed to have good news for investors ahead of a weak quarter.

“Prime was originally called Project 100 because they had to figure out how to announce it and start doing it in 100 days”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 48:40

Evans says Twitch burned over a billion dollars in its first five years under Amazon while repeatedly forecasting profitability in three years.

“over the first five years burned over a billion dollars of cash with no real sight to profitability”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 30:53

Evans says Amazon's stock rise during the earn-out left Twitch engineers vesting about $2 million a year, causing many departures when it ended.

“we had engineers whose market salary anywhere else was say 200, 250K back then, vesting out at 2 million a year”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 2:11

Evans recommends delivering hard truths by first caring about the person, an approach he draws from Leadership and Self-Deception.

“you have to see the person as a human, not as a machine to fix. So I have to care about the person first”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 1:12:43

Evans says Amazon's key design principle was page load speed rather than visual appeal.

“the overall design principle, I guess I'm telling you that was hidden behind the scenes was speed equals sales”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 53:32

Evans believes Bezos's success depended partly on timing, arguing that being ten years older or younger would likely have changed his outcome.

“And that's no insult to Jeff. I just think for anybody, there's something about timing”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 35:17

Evans argues that Bezos came to believe his vision was perfect after being right often, which led to the Fire Phone failure.

“having been right a lot, he started to believe his vision was perfect. And that's what led to the Fire Phone disaster”

My First Million: Ex-Amazon VP tells us what it’s really like working with Jeff Bezos (Oct 28, 2026) · Listen from 5:30