First week at work

So the first week at my new job at Amazon is over. Its been a fun and exciting first week! Day 1 started off with a 4 hour orientation starting early in the morning. Orientation was in the Pac Med building which is one of the 4-5 buildings in downtown Seattle where Amazon offices are housed. Jeff Bezos and some of the other senior executives also have offices in this building which is a Seattle landmark.

The Pac Med Building

The Pac Med is one of my favorite buildings in Seattle because it has a distinct character of its own. The orange brick facade glows red in the setting sunlight and it towers majestically over the city because it on top of Seattle's Beacon Hill. The art deco and brick facade reminds me of film noir and musty detective movies.

Anyways, orientation was great. I had to complete the customary paperwork but then noticed a new knapsack next to my chair. Initially I didn't pay much attention to it, but during the break I heard other people exclaiming that they had discovered new laptops in their bags. On closer examination I found a new dell laptop in mine. The coolest part of the orientation was a trivia contest which required us to form teams of 4 - it was a great way to have some fun. learn more about the company and make some friends. The guy next to me had just finished his Masters from UIUC while the two other two people were also switching jobs.

My manager came to pick me up after orientation, we had a really quick lunch together and then headed up to my office. The first week has been great so far. Ive been impressed by the efficiency and organization at Amazon. For example my manager had already prepared a plan for me on my first day which helps me identify what needs to be done in the upcoming days and how. My login and network creds worked immediately - unlike Microsoft there was no waiting around for things to happen in the first week. Im still getting used to waking up really early commuting all the way to Seattle, but the commute should be over soon after I move to Seattle at the end of the month

So while the work week has come to close, our tennis season moves into high gear. We have won our USTA 4.0 division and are in local playoffs. Starting tomorrow, the top 6 teams from the 3, 4.0 division battle it out for the title of Seattle champions. We play two grueling back to back fixtures tomorrow (2 singles and 3 doubles) and hopefully will make it in to the finals on Sunday. More updates on how we did later....

I know, I know... Ive been away for a while and I feel guilty about it. I can come out into the open now :) As of 5 pm tomorrow I will no longer be a Program Manager at Microsoft. No more sending mails which start with "Adding person_blah" and passing the buck along... hehe!

After all isn't that what PMs are supposed to do ?! I think it was Brian Valentine (VP running Windows, before he made a graceful exit to Amazon last year) who joked at one of the legendary Friday unwinders that he saw a PM trying to sell mattresses at the corner of the street. Well, to be honest being a PM has been very interesting experience - I have learnt a lot about process (at times a lack thereof or an excess of it), how to work with a ton of teams at the same time (some of them remote ones) and more importantly what makes me tick (bad/good managers, the need to innovate, targeting real customers with products/services they can use etc)

I will be following BrianVs example and joining Amazon from Monday as a Technical Product and Program Manager. I am pretty excited about it! Ive been wrapping things up at work, cleaning up and going through the surprisingly few processes before my last day at Microsoft. My team has been great to work with and I am sad to leave them. But a new job and beckons. To make things more interesting, I will be working in downtown, in the tallest building in Seattle, Columbia Towers.



Columbia Tower is the tall black building (office is on the 20 the floor)

Commuting from Redmond where I currently live is going to be a pain so Ive spent the past couple of weekends looking a scores of places in Belltown, Fremont, First Hill, Queen Anne and South Lake Union (SLU) neighborhoods. Each neighborhood has a distinct flavor, but SLU struck me as a very exciting one - its an up and coming neighborhood to the south of Seattle's Lake Union. My friend Saad and I spent quit some time checking out the neighborhood and Vulcan's ultra-cool discovery center



Paul Allen's firm Vulcan owns 50+ acres in the area between the lake and downtown and is developing the area by constructing condos, rental buildings, retail space a street car going to downtown as well as improving the park next to the lake. So... I was hooked to the area but wasnt able to find anything within my budget. Luckily my tennis buddy Phil hooked me up with a friend and I ended up finding a great new condo a block away from the 5 start Pan-Pacific hotel which houses a new Whole Foods in the 1st floor. The street car is also a block away. Here are some pictures of the condo (model)


Nice kitchen a stone/chalk tops, maple cabinetry


A view of the living room attached to the kitchen - I love the 13 foot window wall


A view of the complex at night - the taller building in the foreground houses the whole foods and is adjacent to the Pan Pacific Hotel


A snapshot of the floor plan

In the next few days Im going to use my creative juices on how to arrange my furniture in the new apartment and how to lay things out. I also promise to post on my first day and week at my new job - I know more than a few people are curious to find out what things are like at Amazon (you know who you are!)