Surviving Amazon: Work, life, and bias inside one of the world's most ambitious businesses

Working at Amazon can be “really exhilarating,” says Kristi Coulter, who spent 12 years at the company. “I got to work on things I never would have at more sane companies, or companies with less money.” However, she says, she would look around and think, “these people are so good, so brilliant. … What if they weren't also fried and exhausted and desperate? They could probably be even better, and it just didn't seem sustainable.”

That is one of the takeaways from Coulter’s conversation with guest host Ross Reynolds about her book, Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career, on a new episode of the GeekWire Podcast.

• A central theme of the book is gender bias. She says has been heartened to hear that women inside the company have been passing her book around with notes to one another. But men have thanked her for opening their eyes to unconscious bias.

• Her advice for people considering a job at Amazon: Go in with an exit strategy. “Lots of wonderful people work there, but the system of Amazon really doesn’t care if you are a well person or not, and it will absolutely spit you out.”

Read more and listen here, and subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

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