For those of you who have been in the industry for a while, this probably won’t be too interesting. However, if you’ve joined since things like Slack and Zoom became commonplace, it might be a little more novel.
I joined Amazon in 2010 after graduating. Back then we didn’t have Zoom or Slack. We didn’t have Microsoft Teams. We didn’t even had Skype for Business. We had Microsoft Office Communicator. It looked a bit like the old MSN Messenger, and no one really cared for it.
But this isn’t a story about that. This is a story about:
Back when I joined Amazon, everyone was issued one of these.
Since we didn’t have Zoom (or whatever), it wasn’t uncommon when you wanted to have a synchronous conversation with an engineer in a different location, that you would do this:
- Find their name on in internal website called the phone tool
- Find a 5 digit extension on their page
- Push physical buttons one at a time
- Pick up a physical handset and proceed to hold it against your ear like a cave person for the next 30 mins or whatever.
Our phone system also supported voicemail, so sometimes you’d come back to your desk and there would be a flashing red light indicating you had a voicemail.
To listen to it, you’d again have to push a series of buttons, enter your pin, and LISTEN TO THE MESSAGES ONE AT A TIME just like in medieval times.
But all of that is just background…
This isn’t a story about phones. This is a story about my phone. Or specifically, my extension.
Every employee was allocated an extension out of a (at the time) 4 digit namespace, I believe randomly.
My extension was: 0….0….0….1
That’s right. Somehow they gave me, a lowly SDE 1, extension number 1. [0] Again, I believe this was completely random.
It is also important to know that all Amazon extensions mapped to a full 10 digit number, which was done by prefixing a the area code (206) plus the first 3 digits (let’s say 266 in this case, because that’s what it was). That made my phone number 206-266-0001.
Surprisingly, this did not lead to me getting lots of spam calls, as spammers crawled the Amazon corporate phone namespace.
It did however, lead to some confusion with Amazon’s main corporate phone number: 206-266-1000.
Me: “Hello?”
Them: “Uh…hello. Is this…Amazon?”
Me: “Yes, I am Amazon. Speaking?” [1]
I did have people call me trying to return things. Or sue me. However, all in all, it was surprisingly uncommon.
But wait, there’s more…
It wasn’t just the public that would be confused. My extension also led to some internal confusion.
On one occasion, I was hard coded as the test phone number for some automated test suite, because they thought why would extension 1 be actually allocated to anyone.
A more interesting time, for a few weeks, every time I came to the office my phone had several voicemails in Mandarin, from other Amazon extensions. This one took a while to sort out because I do not speak Mandarin. It turns out some internal wires were crossed and for a short period I had become the IT helpdesk for one of the offices in Beijing.
Conclusion
One of the hard parts of leaving Amazon to join Stripe was knowing that I was giving up this extension. I actually had the same desk phone for my almost 10 years at the company, and continued to use it periodically. (Most often, to call candidates during phone interviews.)
Because it was a VoIP phone, the phone (and my extension) followed me to wherever there was a PoE Ethernet jack available.
Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take it with me to Stripe.
I’ll miss you little Polycom.
[0] Amazonians will be quick to point out that this is technically incorrect, because all extensions started with 6. Technically, mine was 60001, but only the last 4 digits were variable.
[1] No, not really. Usually I would just say they had the wrong number and tell them to dial 206-266-1000.
