Summarizing: Shareholders $21B Employees $91B 3PSellers $25B Customers $164B Total $301B If each group had an income statement representing their interactions with Amazon, the numbers above wouldbethe“bottomlines”fromthoseincomestatements.Thesenumbersarepartof thereasonwhypeople workforus,whysellers sell through us, and why customers buy from us. We create value for them. And this value creation is not a zero-sum game. It is not just moving money from one pocket to another. Draw the boxbigaroundallof society,andyou’llfindthatinventionistherootof allrealvaluecreation.Andvalue created is best thought of as a metric for innovation. Of course, our relationship with these constituencies and the value we create isn’t exclusively dollars and cents. Moneydoesn’ttellthewholestory.Ourrelationshipwithshareholders,forexample,isrelativelysimple. Theyinvest and hold shares for a duration of their choosing. We provide direction to shareowners infrequently on matters such as annual meetings and the right process to vote their shares. And even then they can ignore those directions and just skip voting. Ourrelationship with employees is a very different example. We have processes they follow and standards theymeet.Werequiretrainingandvariouscertifications.Employeeshavetoshowupatappointedtimes.Our interactions with employees are many, and they’re fine-grained. It’s not just about the pay and the benefits. It’s about all the other detailed aspects of the relationship too. DoesyourChairtakecomfortintheoutcomeof therecentunionvoteinBessemer?No,hedoesn’t.Ithink weneedtodoabetterjobforouremployees.Whilethevotingresultswerelopsided and our direct relationship with employees is strong, it’s clear to me that we need a better vision for how we create value for employees – a vision for their success. If you read some of the news reports, you might think we have no care for employees. In those reports, our employeesaresometimesaccusedof beingdesperatesoulsandtreatedasrobots.That’snotaccurate.They’re sophisticated and thoughtful people who have options for where to work. When we survey fulfillment center employees, 94% say they would recommend Amazon to a friend as a place to work. Employeesareabletotakeinformalbreaksthroughouttheir shifts to stretch, get water, use the rest room, or talk to a manager, all without impacting their performance. These informal work breaks are in addition to the 30-minute lunch and 30-minute break built into their normal schedule. Wedon’tsetunreasonableperformancegoals. We set achievable performance goals that take into account tenure and actual employee performance data. Performance is evaluated over a long period of time as we knowthat a variety of things can impact performance in any given week, day, or hour. If employees are on track to miss a performance target over a period of time, their manager talks with them and provides coaching. Coachingis also extended to employees who are excelling and in line for increased responsibilities. In fact, 82%of coachingispositive, provided to employees who are meeting or exceeding expectations. We terminate the employment of less than 2.6% of employees due to their inability to perform their jobs (and that numberwasevenlowerin2020becauseof operationalimpactsof COVID-19). Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work Thefactis, the large team of thousands of people who lead operations at Amazon have always cared deeply for our hourly employees, and we’re proud of the work environment we’ve created. We’re also proud of the fact that Amazon is a company that does more than just create jobs for computer scientists and people with advanced degrees. We create jobs for people who never got that advantage.