Interview: Amazon Sr. Financial Analyst (Amazon Web Services)

Summary

Joe, a senior financial analyst at Amazon's AWS Business Insights and Analytics team, shares his career journey from equity research to corporate finance at Red Hat and his MBA at Duke. He discusses his Amazon interview process, the importance of preparation and referrals, and his current role's focus on managing business reviews and financial metrics. Joe highlights the cultural shift to Amazon's fast-paced environment, the challenge of work-life balance, and offers advice for aspiring Amazon finance professionals, emphasizing the importance of understanding one's goals and the value of learning from diverse roles.

Takeaways

• 😀 Joe is currently a Senior Financial Analyst at Amazon, working on the BIA team within AWS.
• 🎓 Early in his career, Joe aspired to work in equity research on Wall Street but pivoted to financial data providers and pursued his CFA.
• 🏫 He transitioned from equity research to corporate finance at Red Hat, where he also earned his MBA through Duke's weekend executive program.
• 🤝 Joe's first interview with Amazon resulted in a job offer for a Financial Analyst role, not the Senior Financial Analyst role he interviewed for.
• 📈 He initially took a role at a late-stage startup for management experience but was laid off during COVID, which led to his current opportunity at Amazon.
• 🔄 Joe's role at Amazon involves managing daily and weekly business reviews, focusing on revenue and growth metrics for AWS.
• 💼 The cultural shift from Red Hat to Amazon was significant, with Amazon valuing speed and directness more than consensus-building.
• 📝 Amazon's emphasis on writing skills was a new challenge for Joe, requiring clarity and structure in communication.
• 🚀 Joe enjoys the visibility his role provides into AWS's financial performance and the opportunity to interact with senior leaders.
• 🤔 The biggest challenge for Joe is the tactical distance from the details of specific services, requiring reliance on other teams for insights.
• ⏰ Work-life balance at Amazon is a personal responsibility, requiring clear communication with managers about workload and priorities.

Q & A

What is Joe's current position at Amazon?

Joe is currently working at Amazon as a Senior Financial Analyst on the BIA (Business Insights and Analytics) team within AWS.

Why did Joe change his career from equity research to corporate finance?

Joe wanted to get closer to the business and understand what it's like to be within a company itself, rather than being an outsider in equity research.

How did Joe prepare for his interviews at Amazon?

Joe prepared for his interviews at Amazon by getting referrals, seeking perspectives from classmates who worked at Amazon, and even doing a mock interview which helped him with direct feedback.

What was Joe's experience with the interview process for Amazon's finance roles?

Joe's interview process involved behavioral questions and a case question during his first interview, but no financial modeling exercises. His second interview also did not include case or financial modeling questions.

What are the three primary objectives of Joe's team at Amazon?

The three primary objectives of Joe's team are to manage the daily business review (DVR), the weekly business review (WBR), and similar work on a monthly basis.

How does Joe's role at Amazon differ from traditional finance roles?

Joe's role is non-traditional as it does not involve forecasting or building robust financial models in the traditional sense. It focuses more on managing business reviews and analyzing metrics.

What cultural aspects of Amazon did Joe find challenging?

Joe found the speed of decision-making and the culture of writing at Amazon to be challenging, especially the need to prioritize and communicate clearly about his workload and boundaries.

What advice does Joe have for those wanting to join Amazon in the finance field?

Joe advises potential candidates to understand their motivations for joining Amazon, to be prepared to work backwards from their goals, and to focus on the visibility and communication skills they can gain from the role.

How does Joe handle work-life balance at Amazon?

Joe handles work-life balance by prioritizing his tasks, communicating his workload with his manager, and being clear about his boundaries to ensure that he is not overwhelmed.

What is Joe's perspective on the visibility and communication aspects of his role?

Joe appreciates the visibility his role provides into the overall organization and the opportunity to participate in senior leadership meetings, which allows him to understand how they think about the business.

Outlines

00:00

😀 Introduction and Career Transition

Joe, a senior financial analyst at Amazon, discusses his career journey, starting with aspirations to work in equity research on Wall Street. However, due to the financial crisis, he began working with financial data providers and pursued his CFA. After gaining experience, Joe decided to transition into corporate finance at Red Hat, where he also earned his MBA through Duke's weekend executive program. He then interviewed with Amazon but initially took a managerial role at a startup. After being laid off during COVID, he re-applied to Amazon and has been in his current role for about seven to eight months.

05:02

📈 Insights on Amazon's Interview Process and Role

Joe shares his experience with Amazon's interview process, highlighting the importance of referrals and insights from former classmates who worked at Amazon. He emphasizes the value of mock interviews and the need to prepare a variety of examples. He also discusses the differences between his first and second interviews, noting the absence of financial modeling exercises in his second interview. Joe's current role in the AWS BIA team focuses on managing daily and weekly business reviews, providing financial metrics and insights to leadership. He explains that his role is non-traditional, as it does not involve extensive financial modeling or forecasting.

10:03

🌟 Navigating Amazon's Corporate Culture and Work-Life Balance

Joe talks about the cultural shift he experienced moving from Red Hat to Amazon, noting the importance of speed and prioritization in decision-making at Amazon. He discusses the learning curve associated with Amazon's culture of writing and the emphasis on clear communication. Joe also addresses the challenge of maintaining work-life balance, stressing the need for individuals to set boundaries and prioritize tasks effectively. He appreciates the visibility his role provides into AWS's financial performance and the opportunity to participate in high-level business reviews.

15:04

💼 Advice for Aspiring Amazon Finance Professionals

In the final paragraph, Joe offers advice for those interested in joining Amazon's finance team. He encourages prospective candidates to understand Amazon's 'working backwards' approach and to consider the broader learning opportunities beyond traditional financial roles. Joe suggests focusing on the visibility and communication skills one can develop, even if the role isn't heavily focused on financial modeling. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining a clear vision of one's future goals and using those to guide current work and learning.

Keywords

💡Senior Financial Analyst

A Senior Financial Analyst is a professional responsible for analyzing financial data, creating reports, and offering insights that inform business decisions. In the video, Joe works as a Senior Financial Analyst at Amazon on the Business Insights and Analytics team within AWS, highlighting his role in reporting financial metrics and supporting leadership decisions.

💡AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon providing on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs. Joe's work revolves around providing insights and financial analysis for AWS, where he helps manage reports such as the Daily and Weekly Business Reviews for AWS CEO Adam Selipsky.

💡MBA

An MBA, or Master of Business Administration, is a graduate degree focusing on business and management skills. Joe completed his MBA at Duke University through a weekend executive program, which helped him transition into higher-level finance roles and gain the skills necessary for his career progression.

💡Referral

A referral is a recommendation made by someone within a company to support an applicant’s job application. Joe mentions that a friend named Young referred him to Amazon, which helped him get noticed and eventually secure an interview for his current position.

💡Financial Modeling

Financial modeling involves creating representations of a company’s financial performance to forecast future earnings or evaluate investments. Joe reflects that his role at Amazon does not involve traditional financial modeling, a change from previous roles, though he discusses his prior experience in this area during interviews.

💡Behavioral Interview

Behavioral interviews focus on past experiences to assess how candidates handle situations. Joe discusses how Amazon's interview process largely consisted of behavioral questions, highlighting the importance of preparing relevant examples and stories to succeed in such interviews.

💡WBR (Weekly Business Review)

The Weekly Business Review (WBR) is a report that provides updates on AWS's financial performance, including revenue and growth metrics, to the leadership team. Joe is responsible for preparing sections of this report, focusing on financial call-outs and metrics to help leadership track performance.

💡Corporate Culture

Corporate culture refers to the values, beliefs, and behaviors that shape how a company's employees interact. Joe compares the cultures of Red Hat and Amazon, noting Amazon’s fast-paced decision-making and individual accountability for prioritizing work, which contrasts with Red Hat’s consensus-driven culture.

💡Prioritization

Prioritization involves organizing tasks or responsibilities based on their importance. Joe emphasizes how at Amazon, employees must proactively communicate their priorities and manage workloads to maintain a healthy work-life balance. He shares how learning to prioritize has been a challenge in his role.

💡Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance refers to maintaining a healthy boundary between work responsibilities and personal time. Joe discusses how work-life balance at Amazon can be tough, but it is largely up to the individual to set boundaries, communicate their workload, and manage their priorities effectively.

Highlights

Joe, a senior financial analyst at Amazon, discusses his career transition from equity research to corporate finance.

He shares his experience working on the BIA team within AWS, focusing on business insights and analytics.

Joe's initial aspiration was to work in equity research on Wall Street, influenced by the financial crisis.

He details his journey from financial data provider roles to earning his CFA.

The decision to move from equity research to corporate finance to gain insider business understanding.

Joe's experience at Red Hat in corporate finance and obtaining his MBA at Duke.

His first interview with Amazon, the learning curve, and not getting the desired role.

The importance of having a strong network and doing mock interviews for Amazon's interview process.

Joe explains the difference between financial roles at Amazon and traditional finance positions.

He describes his role's focus on managing daily and weekly business reviews for AWS leadership.

The cultural shift Joe experienced moving from Red Hat's consensus-driven culture to Amazon's speed-focused approach.

Amazon's emphasis on writing and the training resources available to improve communication skills.

Challenges in work-life balance at Amazon and the importance of self-advocacy for setting boundaries.

Joe's advice for those interested in finance roles at Amazon, emphasizing the importance of understanding one's goals and the company's culture.

The concept of 'working backwards' at Amazon and its impact on Joe's approach to his role.

Joe reflects on the visibility and communication aspects of his role that he finds most rewarding.

He discusses the challenges of understanding detailed service performance from a corporate finance perspective.

Transcripts

start from backwards why do you want to

do it what is it that you're hoping to

get thank you joe for joining us today i

really really appreciate it would you

please tell me a little bit about

yourself

yeah absolutely thank you for having me

super excited to have this conversation

so my name is joe

i currently work at amazon as a senior

financial analyst on the bia team a

business insights and analytics team

within aws

so for me early in my career i kind of

graduated from college wanting to work

on wall street specifically in equity

research

but that was also at the height of the

financial crisis around 2008 and 2009 so

awful timing but got to work for some

financial data providers and then also

study for my cfa

did that for about four or five years

and then how did i change a heart

the way that i saw it was equity

research is

they're great i love the financial

modeling understanding the business from

numbers perspective but they're more

outsiders

and don't really understand how the

sausage is made from the inside out so

want to get closer to the business and

understand what it's like to you know be

within a company itself

so that's when i transitioned into red

hat where we met and got great

experience on corporate finance

and actually during that time also went

and got my mba at duke through their

weekend executive program

and afterwards i actually interviewed

with amazon

this was about a year and a half ago

went through the entire process got a

job offer

but actually got a job offer for a

financial analyst role instead of a

senior financial analyst which is what i

was interviewing for

fortunately i had another job offer at a

late stage startup as a manager so i

really wanted to get that experience of

being a people manager so ended up

taking that role

throughout covid unfortunately got laid

off

and which was a blessing in disguise

looking back got to spend a lot of time

with the family and then

got another chance to apply to amazon

and here i am today

i've been in this role for about seven

months now eight months

awesome awesome um

so can you tell me a little bit about um

your

process of getting into the company

amazon uh you said you interviewed

before and then you interviewed again

and then joined the company uh can you

share a little bit about like did you

have a referral did you have you know

like what did the interview process look

like and all that

yeah so i had a referral his name is

young

[Laughter]

so that was super helpful but what was

also helpful i had classmates um

from the mba program that went on to

work at amazon and then throughout the

time they kind of different people

interviewed so it was really helpful to

get those perspectives you know what was

the interview process like i even had

one person that was willing to do a mock

interview with me which was extremely

helpful it

helped to relieve a lot of the kind of

butterflies in the stomach just knowing

some kind of questions that they could

ask and then getting direct feedback

immediately after that was really

helpful

um i think the first time around when i

prepared

i didn't have enough examples lined up

you know i thought having six to eight

would be enough didn't realize during

the loop that i would burn through them

much very very fast and so i found

myself kind of limited in the

answers that i had prepared and i think

that ultimately

blocked me from you know getting the job

offer for the sfa role as opposed to

that fa rule

so that that definitely was a learning

experience and helped me tremendously in

the second time around

i'm curious about the financial like

like finance roles interviews because i

i was told that there's some sort of

assessment or like a case or something

that's like you got to do modeling or

something or is that true or was it just

like whole behavior questions throughout

the time

yeah so for me

the first time around there was no

financial modeling

assignment or in both interviews i

didn't have any financial modeling

exercise but in the first interview

there was a case question it was mainly

around you know

launching a new prod product how do you

go about them pricing it you know what

are the different avenues that you need

to look at so a pretty standard case

question that i wasn't fully prepared

for unfortunately and so i think i could

have done much better looking back at it

the second time around there was no case

questions no financial modeling

questions but i will caveat that with my

current role is a bit

non-traditional um from a finance

standpoint where we're not really

forecasting the business we're not

building robust financial models in the

traditional sense so that could be a

part of it

okay interesting interesting

so it was most outside of those

or outside of that specific case

question it was more so around

traditional behavior questions what

amazon uses okay

yeah interesting

um yeah so

can you tell me a little bit about what

you do as a senior financial analyst at

amazon sure

so as i mentioned i work in the aws

business

our team i'd say there's three primary

objectives for the team

one is to manage the daily business

review we call it the dvr for adam

szlovsky the ceo of aws so this is a

report just on a daily basis overall aws

revenue

and then broken out by different

services regions so that

adam and his leadership team have daily

visibility as to how much revenue is

coming in what the year-over-year growth

rate is and what the daily changes are

the other piece is managing the wbr the

weekly business review for the same

audience

and so we put together you know part of

the team puts the entire deck together

and then for me specifically i put the

financial metrics and prepare call-outs

to identify what's happening week over

week and what are some of the things

that are worth calling out and then the

last piece is doing similar work on a

monthly basis so

very similar nature but changing the

time really changes the perspective and

helps prepare the leadership on what the

overall trends are and how to connect

the dot across the business

so those are the three things that we

work on for me

a lot of my time has been focused on the

call-outs themselves during wbr trying

to understand the different metrics the

nuances being able to understand what's

relevant and not relevant to leaders

and then translating that into the

monthly analytic stock which i'm

currently working through it's what what

are the primary drivers month over month

what are potential risks what are some

of the longer trends as we look at you

know over the course of four or five six

months

so you said this role that you're in is

not a traditional finance like corporate

finance role

um was so like coming from

you know a traditional corporate finance

uh working in red hat and then the cloud

bees company that you work for uh was it

did you have a lot of learning curve

coming in and then if yes like what were

some of the resources that you

took to uh took a look into

yeah

so i'd say i'm still going through it

being less than a year old at this

company but i think i'd break it down

probably into two different pieces i

think there's a big cultural component

at amazon that i that was a big learning

curve for me i think more so coming from

a company like red hat which was more

open source so at red hat open source

company it was all about consensus

building so coming out of a meeting

first you had a lot of participants in a

meeting then coming out of a meeting

there weren't clear action items even

when you come to a decision there are

still discussions afterwards try to keep

everybody together and aligned on the

mission that we're going through what

i've noticed here is speed matters and

it matters a lot you go into a half hour

meeting you typically have decisions

being made action items assigned and

then timelines following that to move

things forward and things

seem to move really fast so that was one

cultural thing that i've noticed

the other thing is around priority

it's really on you as an individual to

prioritize and raise your hand to say i

have xyz going on these are the

priorities on my list i can't take on

other things

obviously you can you you keep it in the

backlog but you have to be very clear to

all the people that you work with in

terms of what your priorities are to

ensure that you aren't overwhelmed and

you can kind of meet your commitment

so i'd say those are the big kind of

learning curves for me culturally but to

the specific job itself just there's so

many different metrics and we sit at a

corporate level so just trying to

understand the nuances of the different

metrics and then getting access to a lot

of the data because we are so dependent

on other teams like the services team

not just for the data but for the

insight i think that's been a bit of a

challenge just building that

relationship and understanding how to

ask the right questions

uh yeah so what do you like the most and

maybe what do you like the least about

uh your role

yeah

so i'll start with what i like i think

what i like is the kind of visibility

being able to see

how much you know

visibility in terms of the overall

organization so how much is aws making

you know where is that contribution

coming from by different services

regions

and industries so being able to have a

big overall picture of what's happening

with the company is really cool

and then you know i alluded to this

earlier just being able to participate

in the wbr was the seniors leader there

senior leaders there and just trying to

understand how they think about the

business what are some of the

pain points and challenges that they

have and in those meetings they

typically have three different services

come and do business presentations so

that's a really great opportunity to

learn about different businesses across

aws

i'd say the biggest challenge with this

rule would be more on the tactical side

because we stayed at a corporate level

it's hard to really understand the

details so for example if there's a

specific service that's performing

really well

you know it's hard for us we can

identify that service but it's hard to

understand why and what's driving that

so we have to rely on the service team

to kind of dig into it oftentimes the

priorities aren't aligned because they

have their own priorities that they're

working on so just trying to get that

support in a timely manner

could be challenged just because we

because of the audience are

we can't necessarily plan for things all

the time so things might come up

randomly and that could not really work

out for the you know our partners that

are

needed more and more lead way

yeah no that makes sense yeah so you

mentioned something about you know

um amazon's culture being a little bit

different from what you have been

experiencing in the past

um like can you maybe tell me a little

bit about the company's culture um and a

little bit maybe about like work-life

balance yeah yeah

so

i i still think i'm learning you know

one of the things that i heard

just kind of talking to a lot of

different folks at the company is

give yourself a year at the very least

it takes about a year to understand the

culture and then after that you know

once you move to a different role at

least you'll understand the culture and

then you can kind of focus on the

functional nature of the role and try to

understand it so i think i'm still going

through that growing pain

but one couple things aside from what i

mentioned earlier

that stands out to me is the culture of

writing

that's been

a good unique challenge for me it's a

big

point that i not a strong suit for me

personally so it's been a good learning

experience in terms of how do you write

to certain audiences what's the level of

detail that you need to include not

include how do you structure a simple

email and how do you structure it so

that you have the what happened why it

happened what's being done about it

so all those things have been really

helpful

there's a lot of training available for

writing as well so i've attended a few

and they've been incredibly helpful as

well

so i think that's been a really

interesting cultural learning for me

work-life balance has been tough that's

largely

the reason why it's been tough is what i

realize it's a lot on you to kind of

push and protect your own boundary so

again i talked about priority

prioritization

i think that is for me the biggest

defense mechanism if you will for myself

is to have a constant list of x y and z

that i'm working on

be clear and over communicate my with my

manager on what those priorities are

and be very honest to say these are the

priorities if i need to swap things out

i can swap it out but it has to be

swapped out anything added to it is

going to be more work which i'm open to

doing but you just got to be clear about

when you're working over hours and

whether that's necessary or not because

my manager and i've had clear

conversations around we shouldn't work

late you know weekends need to be

protected

um things of that nature and i think the

intention is there it's just a matter of

the responsibility as on the individual

to say i have too much on my plate

either i need support or i need a deep

prioritized bt prioritize certain things

and that's been a

tough and ongoing challenge and a

learning for me personally

yeah i know that makes total sense i

think you know just being able to

prioritize stuff

and being able to kind of talk to

your manager about that i think is a

good thing um that you can do

okay my last question is advice for

those who want to join amazon

in the finance world

yeah

um

you know one of the

one of the concepts at amazon that i

really like and enjoy is the idea of

working backwards

and i feel like that's just a general

good practice um to kind of get used to

so i'd say that same thing about you

know wanting to join amazon and wanting

to work in a finance professional as a

financial professional just trying to

understand start from backwards why do

you want to do it what is it that you're

hoping to get

and part of that is if amazon's such a

big company um even within finance

there's so many different varying roles

and that's kind of where i found myself

or this is a non-traditional financial

what i've had to do is

not get upset that this isn't the kind

of financial model building forecasting

kind of role that i would enjoy but to

think about what are some of the

positive things that i can take away

from this and what i've realized for

myself is

the visibility the ability to

communicate the ability to kind of

ask the right questions to get certain

answers that i need

and so keeping that in mind with the you

know being anchored with where i want to

be in the future i think has helped me

tremendously especially when times get

tough and feel overburdened overwhelmed

with the work i think that's helped me

keep

just be in a better mental state

yeah no i

that's that's definitely yeah you got

you got a

it's not about what you want to do all

the time it's just like what you also

learn that's that's the important piece

as well yeah plenty of opportunities to

learn at this place awesome yes yes

plenty of plenty of things to learn

yeah um joe that was it for today thank

you so much for your time really

appreciate it absolutely it was a lot of

fun thank you for having me thank you