Have you ever wondered what it's like to work at Amazon or Microsoft?
Manny Medina is someone very particular. It belongs to the growing number of Seattle technology experts who have worked for both. And although both companies share a reputation as pioneers in the industry, he said the experience showed him some important differences.
""If you want to get a job at Amazon or Microsoft, you must have a technical mindset and be able to see how your work is applied throughout the business. But both companies take quite different approaches, "Medina told CNBC Make It.
Amazon, where Medina began his career with web services people in 2003, adopts a bottom-up approach for businesses, observing minutiae and small incremental gains, he said. Microsoft, meanwhile, works from top to bottom and focuses on the overall end goal.
"Microsoft is obsessed with the strategy," said Medina, who left Amazon for Microsoft's business development team in 2005.
Those different approaches have to do with their business models, he said. As a retailer, Amazon's margins are smaller, so each individual decision must demonstrate a general value. On the other hand, Microsoft's technology business has a greater margin, which means it can have a more general vision.
But the leadership present to each one has a lot to do, he continued.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO remains fairly involved in the everyday aspects of Amazon. That means potentially meeting a lot with him, and also being prepared to respond to him.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has seen several CEOs since its launch by Bill Gates in 1975, and has evolved under different leaders, most recently CEO Satya Nadella. As a result, he emphasizes "good communication and the staff does not have to touch all areas of the business," Medina said.
After eight years working in coveted positions of Amazon and Microsoft, in 2011 Medina decided to abandon the ship and launch his own startup, something that, in retrospect, he said he wished he had done before.
"My life is not a very good example of a life well lived," he said. "If I had to do it again, I would work in a startup immediately."
"The amount of experience you get with your own company is much greater, and the amount of problems you can work on a given day is so great and insightful that it can satisfy any curiosity."
However, his experience learning from two of the best has certainly been useful. After his first business failed, Medina and his three co-founders created Outreach, a communications platform for vendors, which today is valued at US $ 500 million.
"Economically we look like Microsoft," Medina said, referring to the company's business model based on high margin services, "but we also took knowledge from Amazon," he continued, noting that, despite its great growth, Amazon has maintained a "First Day" mentality, which provides a good model for start-ups.
"Although it feels like we are winning, we are growing, you can not deviate from your goal: the market is very vast," added Medina, "therefore, as CEO, I try to understand the details: I use Amazon's tactics to get the growth of Microsoft. "