#34 You're talking about Amazon scale and that's the problem
- Mel Fox Dhar
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
Here's something nobody prepares you for when you leave Amazon:
You've spent years communicating to people who already know you. Your VP knows your scope. Your skip-level knows your track record. Your peers were in the room when the decision got made. You've never had to explain what you do from scratch — because your audience always had the context.
And then you're out. And suddenly the audience is... everyone? Hiring managers you've never met. Recruiters who've skimmed your profile for eight seconds. A friend of a friend at a coffee shop who asks "so what do you do?"
None of these people know your company. Sure, they've heard of Amazon or Microsoft or whatever — but 99% of the time, the thing they associate with it isn't what you worked on.None of them know your level. And most of them have no idea what to do with the numbers you're leading with.
A client of mine was targeting a fintech startup recently. Smart. Experienced. The kind of person who built things at Amazon that most companies couldn't dream of.
And a contact at the company said it to him directly:
"You're talking about Amazon scale and Amazon resources, which is very different. You'll have to convince my leadership that you're not just an Amazon person."
That landed hard. Because it wasn't wrong.
Here's what happens: you lead with the biggest number, the widest scope, the most complex system — because at Amazon, that's how you prove impact. But the hiring manager on the other side is doing math they can't solve. $4 billion in impact. OK — what does that mean here? We're a 200-person company. Is this person going to be bored? Can they even operate without an army of support? When people don't understand something, they don't ask for clarification. They move on.
The fix isn't to hide your Amazon experience. It's to translate it.
Percentages land better than dollar amounts. "We reduced fraud by 25% year over year" creates context. "$400 million in recoveries" creates questions.
And "I built a scrappy solution with no budget that the VP didn't even know was a problem until it worked" — that's a startup story. That's what they want to hear.
The question to ask yourself before every conversation: not "what did I build?" but "what problem is this company trying to solve right now, and how have I done something like that?"
One thing to try this week:
Take whatever you’d say if someone asked “what do you do?” and say it to someone who doesn’t work in tech. Not your partner — they’ve heard it too many times. Someone fresh.
Time yourself. If it’s over 30 seconds or they look confused, it’s not tight enough yet.
And if you want to work on how you show up in higher-stakes conversations — I’m speaking at the Executive Interview Summit on April 21st about how to hold authority when the interview tries to take it from you.
Chat soon,
Mel
P.S. The irony is that your resource-constrained wins at Amazon are usually more compelling to startups than your biggest scaled programmes. We just have to find them and put them front and centre.