Amazon’s first employee says the company scares him

Amazon‘s first employee says he’s concerned about how big the company has become.

Shel Kaphan, who joined Amazon after it was founded in 1994, gave a rare interview to PBS Frontline for its two-hour special, “Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos,” which aired on Tuesday. Kaphan served as Amazon’s chief technology officer and was a key architect of the website, before he left Amazon in 1999.

“I built a substantial part of the early system that allowed them to come into existence, so I feel responsibility because of that,” Kaphan said. “On one hand, I’m proud what it became, but it also scares me.”

Kaphan said he thinks there’s some merit to the idea of breaking up Amazon, given its current size and influence over small businesses’ ability to thrive online. It’s an idea that’s currently being weighed by U.S. antitrust enforcers and has been brought up on the campaign trail by candidates including Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

“I think the characterization of Amazon as a ruthless competitor is true,” Kaphan said. “Under the flag of customer obsession they can do a lot of things which might not be good for people who aren’t their customers.”

Representatives from Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Several Amazon executives who appeared in the documentary pushed back on that idea, including the CEO of Amazon’s consumer business, Jeff Wilke. Wilke acknowledged that Amazon and “everything that’s large in the economy and in society” deserves scrutiny, but stopped short of saying Amazon has dominated industries. He said Amazon competes with a number of companies in retail, such as Walmart, Target, Costco and Alibaba.

“We’re in a lot of verticals, yes. There’s video and there’s commerce, and there’s web services. But in every one of them, we have intense competition,” Wilke said. “…If we were everywhere, that means we’re talking about the global economy, not just global retail. It’s so vast. We’re just – you know, we’re a speck.”