The last I edited this blog, I was in Singapore and concentrating on my career in SP ecommerce, the eCommerce arm of Singapore Post. However, as the winds of change might be, there was a seismic shift in the strategy of the company, which caused a significant shake-up in the management of the company. With nearly the entire leadership gone (this has happened to me twice in my career), I decided it was probably not ideal for me to sit around to discover how deep the rabbit hole goes.

It is not my usual self to high-tail out of a job, because I believe that it is important that we control our purpose and what we want out of a role/job. People come/go, but as long as where you are allows you to still find your purpose and learn what you need, you should stay. However, in this situation, this company was one that I would have never joined in the first place (Singapore Post) if not for my previous boss who convinced me that he has created a very different, start-up style kind of environment, which he did. Therefore, there was not much in terms of company prestige, culture, purpose that appealed to me.

It was coincidental that at this point of time, Amazon had announced that they were going to go big in Singapore. At this point, I was thinking, if I want to really join a start-up, it would be great to join the biggest start-up in the world. We have all heard of the amazing innovations/advancements that Amazon has made, but this has always been rather removed, as Amazon had not made a physical presence in Singapore except for AWS. And since AWS was more a B2B business, not many mainstream consumers like myself will have a brand affinity for Amazon.

Now, I had a previous manager (again), who has gone on to work in Amazon Japan. He and I have a healthy respect for each other’s abilities, and I reached out to him to inquire on a possibility of joining the Amazon SG business. It was serendipitous that he was looking exactly for a person of my skill sets in Japan.

Fast forward 4 months. On the 4th of May, I landed in Japan. The land of the rising sun. I am currently working for Amazon Japan, using innovative ideas to solve customer problems.