Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon

by Colin Bryar

Someone asked Stewart to describe a typical day at Flickr. His answer was surprising. He said that about half the day was probably the same as it was for many of the people in the audience—scrambling to keep their technology platform one step ahead of the rapid growth of their business. They worked on scaling their databases, web servers, software, and hardware. Stewart said they did not spend as much time as he would like on innovating things that were unique to Flickr. After the meeting, Jeff and I had a brief chat about Stewart’s comments. We’d both noticed the same thing—a phenomenon that Amazon would later refer to as “undifferentiated heavy lifting,” that is, the tasks that we could do for companies that would enable them to focus on what made them unique. This was an opportunity.