Dave Clark, the chief government of Amazon’s client enterprise, who was the architect of its huge warehouse operations, introduced on Friday that he would depart the corporate after 23 years. He didn’t say what he would do subsequent, and the corporate didn’t instantly identify a successor.
“It’s time for me to construct once more,” he said in a word on Twitter. His final day is July 1.
Andy Jassy, Amazon’s chief government, said in an email to the corporate’s management that he hoped to have an replace on succession plans “over the following few weeks.”
“The previous few years have been among the many most difficult and unpredictable we’ve confronted within the historical past of Amazon’s Shopper enterprise,” Mr. Jassy stated, “and I’m significantly appreciative of Dave’s management throughout that point.”
Mr. Clark rose by the ranks of Amazon’s operations to supervise one of many largest capital investments in company historical past, as the corporate moved to develop its personal infrastructure to meet and ship orders by air, truck and vans. Below his watch, the corporate’s work power swelled to greater than 1.6 million.
On the similar time, the mannequin Mr. Clark constructed has confronted rising pressures. Policymakers and staff have questioned the corporate’s employment mannequin, which supplies a mean minimal wage above $18 an hour however depends on a stream of staff biking out and in of the corporate. Staff on Staten Island this 12 months voted to kind a union, which the corporate is contesting.
The corporate’s newest monetary outcomes confirmed that Amazon overexpanded, having extra warehouse and labor capability than buyer demand because the pandemic-fueled enhance in e-commerce receded. The corporate’s executives stated it was trying to rebalance its spending.
“Our groups are squarely centered on bettering productiveness and price efficiencies all through our achievement community,” Mr. Jassy stated in a press release on the time.
Mr. Clark was an aggressive defender of Amazon. In a tweet he has since deleted, final 12 months he goaded Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont impartial, who was supporting staff making an attempt to unionize. “I usually say we’re the Bernie Sanders of employers, however that’s not fairly proper as a result of we truly ship a progressive office,” Mr. Clark wrote. In one other tweet that was deleted, he wrote that Mr. Sanders ought to “save his finger wagging lecture till after he truly delivers in his personal yard.”
The highest of Amazon’s ranks has gone by the most important modifications in its historical past over the previous two years. Mr. Clark was promoted to run the buyer enterprise when Jeff Wilke, a longtime government, retired. Then Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, stepped down as chief government final 12 months and named Mr. Jassy his alternative.
Below Mr. Bezos, Mr. Clark had vital autonomy to construct Amazon’s operations. Mr. Jassy, who had constructed and run Amazon’s cloud computing operations earlier than moving into the chief government function, has been digging into components of the corporate that had not beforehand been underneath his direct management. He has vowed to systematically address worker issues.
Final fall, Mr. Clark moved from Seattle, the place Amazon has its headquarters, to Dallas, the place the corporate doesn’t have a significant company presence, which some individuals within the group noticed as an indication that his time with the corporate could possibly be coming to an finish.
