Annual Letter From Amazon: The Virus

The 2019 Annual Letter From Jeff Bezos Is Focused on the Covid-19 Virus

The annual letter from Amazon founder and leader Jeff Bezos has become a regular read, similar in tradition to the Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway annual letter.

The letter begins with the central economic and social focus dominating everything:

The Covid-19 Virus and its impact. Bezos talks about what the company is doing, including a focus on essential goods and services, and work conditions. It will be interesting to see what follows in terms of employee treatment over this decade.

It’s clear there’s a focus on Amazon portraying itself as good corporate citizen but all of this has to be seen in the broader context of both how all companies will be dealing with a post- Covid-19 world and if this will be in contrast to the past decade’s record.

Just as there’s a push to worker safety signalling, there’s also a reminder of the prominence of Amazon’s AWS Cloud and Alexa services at the same time various public assistance efforts have been highlighted.

The next big subtopic is Climate policy with a goal of “net zero carbon” 10 years ahead of the Climate Accord - by 2040. This also served as an opportunity to highlight an investment in electric delivery vans. It will be interesting to see how they balance this push to be more carbon efficient while they also maintain and grow their brick & mortar operations (i.e. Whole Foods and other Amazon brick & mortar).

Circling back to AWS, the letter highlights the competitive energy efficiency of AWS data centers.

Back to human beings, the Bezos reminds everyone about the jobs creation aspect of the company in combination with a minimum wage that is double the federal standard. While they do offer full time employees benefits, the unspoken question would involve the less than full time worker and what it would take to onboard these team-members to full time status. Job training and education appears to be how the company addresses what it can do in terms of providing non-monetary benefits.

The letter ends with a quote from Dr.Seuss:

As always, the letter ends with a reminder that it is “Day 1” along with a copy of the 1997 annual letter.

I would suggest that it is indeed Day 1 for Amazon in terms of addressing the last decade’s growth in sharp contrast to the economic fate and path of its many rank and file workers, temporary and permanent.