Chris Wheeler's Worldly Inferno

As many of you may know, I worked for Amazon.com several years ago working my way up from a Quality Assurance Engineer to a Technical Program Manager with my entire tenure spent with the email team.  As much as I enjoyed it, an immediate family member fell ill and I had to relocate back home to Texas to be within striking distance if/when things went badly.  This limited my employment options geographically and unfortunately severed my stint at Amazon.

Fast forward to now.  My mom has overcome the cancer she was diagnosed with (both types).  I’ve given ESPs a shot while working from Austin but those engagements didn’t work out.  I’ve been looking for a job passively the last few months (putting more importance on finding “the one” rather than a paycheck) and have found myself to be in an extremely fortunate situation.  After receiving several offers from different prestigious companies and having a great time getting to know even more incredibly bright folks in the industry, Amazon.com made me an offer to rejoin my original team.  After traveling up to Seattle to reconnect with my old management chain, it was apparent that it was akin to coming home for a family reunion.  The folks on the email team are just as doggedly determined and head’s down in their work as I remember but did take some time to hang out with me over a few meals.

The opportunity to work with really amazing technology again, participate in an ever increasing global footprint and join a company that I already know intimately was too good to pass up.  I’ll be starting in June as a Technical Program Manager for the Email Platform Team (same title but varied responsibilities), which handles all Amazon.com generated email for marketing, transactional and secondary purposes.  It will be a challenge, no doubt, as I do remember working my ass off.  But, if you don’t constantly challenge yourself, though, you become stagnant.  Ick.  When you have no down time with countless dollars in revenue and users’ experiences hanging in the balance, you must innovate and maintain simultaneously.  I’ll be driving efforts around email deliverability, vendor management, external industry interfacing on behalf of the company and building out new email features which will help reinforce why their ecommerce platform in conjunction with email is one of the most successful in the world.

I am also looking forward to getting back to Seattle this time of year.  As the heat cranks up here in Austin, Seattle will be plateauing at a balmy 70 ° when we arrive.  Getting some Salty’s for a Sunday brunch, strolling through Pike Place, and relaxing (with Blackberry in hand of course) on the Pacific Science Center promenade awaits.

If anyone finds themselves in the area, I’ll be glad to pick up the first meal!