Taking control of your career | Ethan Evans (Amazon)

People think invention takes all this time, but you only need two hours once a month. The thing is, once you have one good idea, it often takes years to express that. So you had the idea to have a newsletter. I know some of the history of your newsletter. You've been working on the expression of that idea for years now. Jeff and Amazon had ideas like, "Let's have Prime shipping." Prime is still getting better and still being worked on. It's a 20-some-year-old idea. You know, the Kindle, a decades-old idea now, still getting better. The point here is, you don't need very many good ideas to be seen as tremendously inventive.

(instrumental music) Today my guest is Ethan Evans. Ethan is a former vice president at Amazon, executive coach, and course creator focused on helping leaders grow into executives. Ethan spent 15 years at Amazon, helped invent and run Prime Video, the Amazon Appstore, Prime Gaming, and Twitch Commerce, which alone is a billion-dollar business for Amazon. He led global teams of over 800, helped draft one of Amazon's 14 core leadership principles, holds over 70 patents, and currently spends his time executive coaching and running courses to help people advance in their career, build leadership skills, and succeed in senior roles. In our conversation, Ethan shares an amazing story of when he failed on an important project for Jeff Bezos, and what he learned from that experience. We spend some time on something called the Magic Loop, which is a very simple idea that I guarantee will help you get promoted and advance in your career. We also get into a bunch of other career advice, primarily for senior ICs and managers. We get into advice for standing out in interviews, plus some of Amazon's most important and impactful leadership principles, and much more. I learned a lot from Ethan, and I'm excited to bring you this episode. With that, I bring you Ethan Evans after a short word from our sponsors. Let me tell you about a product called Sidebar. The best way to level up your career is to surround yourself with extraordinary peers. This gives you more than a leg-up. It gives you a leap forward. This worked really well for me in my career, and this is the Sidebar ethos. When you have a trusted group of peers, you can discuss challenges you're having, get career advice, and just gut check how you're thinking about your work, your career, and your life. This was a big trajectory changer for me, but it's hard to build this trusted group of peers. Sidebar is a private, highly-vetted leadership program where senior leaders are matched with peer groups to lean on for unbiased opinions, diverse perspectives, and raw feedback. Guided by world-class programming and facilitation, Sidebar enables you to get focused, tactical feedback at every step of your career journey. If you're a listener of this podcast, you're already committed to growth. Sidebar is the missing piece to catalyze your career. 93% of members say Sidebar helped them achieve a significant positive change in their career. Why spend a decade finding your people when you can meet them at Sidebar today? Join thousands of top senior leaders who have taken the first step to career growth from companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta by visiting sidebar.com/lenny. That's sidebar.com/lenny. Let me tell you about a product called Sprig. Next-gen product teams like Figma and Notion rely on Sprig to build products that people love. Sprig is an AI-powered platform that enables you to collect relevant product experience insights from the right users, so you can make product decisions quickly and confidently. Here's how it works. It all starts with Sprig's precise targeting, which allows you to trigger in-app studies based on users' characteristics and actions taken in-product. Then Sprig's AI is layered on top of all studies to instantly surface your product's biggest learnings. Sprig's surveys enables you to target specific users to get relevant and timely feedback. Sprig Replays enables you to capture targeted session clips to see your product experience firsthand. Sprig's AI is a game-changer for product teams. They're the only platform with product-level AI, meaning it analyzes data across all of your studies to centralize the most important product opportunities, trends, and correlations in one real-time feed. Visit sprig.com/lenny to learn more and get 10% off. That's S-P-R-I-G dot-com slash Lenny. Ethan, thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the podcast.