Big Technology
How Amazon Automates Work in Its Corporate Offices: A Conversation With Elaine Kwon
The question isn’t what’s going to get automated. It’s what’s going to get automated last.
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As I wrote Always Day One, my book about tech giant culture, I learned of a massive automation program inside Amazon’s corporate offices called Hands Off The Wheel. The initiative took tasks once performed by white-collar employees within Amazon’s retail organization — core work like purchasing, price negotiation, merchandising, and product promotion — and turned them over to the company’s machine learning systems. Elaine Kwon, co-founder and partner at Kwontified, was a vendor manager at Amazon when the company turned her tasks over to the machines. She joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the experience and what we can learn from it.
Alex Kantrowitz: You joined Amazon in 2014 as a vendor manager. What does a vendor manager do?
