Amazon's Talent is Being Scooped Up By Instant Commerce Disruptors

A brain drain has hit Amazon over the past couple of years.

The exodus of talent was seemingly kickstarted by the COVID-19 pandemic and was later inflamed by leadership changes and the company's compensation policies.

First spotted by Insider in early 2021, Amazon hemorrhaged at least 45 senior-level executives from early 2020 to April 2021. But the drain didn't stop there as the e-commerce and tech titan's most prominent employee, Jeff Bezos, officially stepped back as CEO in July 2021. Bezos' departure spurred yet another wave of top-level talent to look for the door as his successor, Andy Jassy, reorganized the company and its S-team in his image.

These departing Amazon employees went to a plethora of industries—its SVP of Global Media and Entertainment, Jeff Blackburn, left for the VC world before boomeranging back just five weeks later. However, one emerging category has benefitted from Amazon's talent pool above all else: instant commerce.

What is instant commerce?

Even if you haven't heard the term instant commerce, also called quick-commerce or q-commerce for short, you likely know its major players: Gopuff, Jokr, Gorillas, Getir, Fridge No More and Buyk. These companies promise near-instant delivery times, typically around 15 minutes, for basic household items and groceries, the kind of stuff that can be found at a neighborhood bodega, market, CVS or Walgreens (minus the prescription medication).

The logistics behind these startups is complex and requires a steady supply of perishable products and robust network hyper-local micro-fulfillment centers to ensure their goods quickly get where they are going. This is no small task and requires a veteran hand to execute without any hiccups.

“Today we have about 2000 to 3000 items at each hub and we’re starting to expand that assortment to 5000 to 10,000 items to become more of a supermarket,” Jokr’s U.S. CEO Tyler Trerotola shared with The Org. “We source locally from mom and pop shops in the area.”

Building “Amazon on steroids”

"We are building Amazon on steroids," Jokr co-founder Ralph Wezel told Reuters when the startup debuted in April 2021.

Jokr and its competitors searching for quick delivery expertise have looked no farther than Amazon for talent, as the company already operates a global network of warehouses and standardized next-day delivery. For instance, Gopuff has already recruited three former Amazon logistics executives—ex-VP of Global Logistics Tim Collins, ex-VP of North American Customer Fulfillment Sanjay Shah and ex-VP of North American Logistics Kerry Person—to improve its operations amid a national and international expansion.

Talent from a logistics giant like Amazon can help guide these young startups as they expand their suite of services. For example, Trerotola told The Org that while Jokr has started out as an instant grocery platform, it wants to add more options for customers and “that could be moving to a space where we have scheduled delivery as an option.”

Bigger than supply chain talent

But the hiring benefits don't just stop on instant commerce companies' supply chain teams; they extend to all facets of their businesses. It pays to hire finance, legal, ad sales and engineering leaders that already know how to operate in a logistics organization at scale, which is likely why Gopuff has poached at least 106 former Amazon employees to its ranks in the past year alone.

The phenomenon is not constrained to Gopuff, as other startups have also raided Amazon's talent pool. For example, Istanbul-based Getir nabbed its current Head of Supply Chain from Amazon in December 2021 on top of the more than 100 employees with prior Amazon experience it already employs, according to data The Org sourced from LinkedIn. At the same time, Germany's Gorillas added Deena Fox, a former HR executive at Amazon, as its Global Chief People Officer in August 2021.

Even Instacart, which is rumored to be working on a 15-minute delivery offering, has gotten in on the metaphorical feeding frenzy, poaching at least 94 Amazonians in the past year to bolster its ad sales and engineering teams. The Information ascertained at least 57 of the departures were software engineers.

To respond to this talent exodus, Amazon has plans to double its maximum base salary for white-collar workers, which had been considered low compared to other major corporations. However, the company may need to improve other aspects of its workplace including its reportedly unremitting pace and cutthroat environment to appease burnt-out employees that see instant commerce startups as appealing landing spots.