[HN Gopher] Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
___________________________________________________________________
Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
Author : marc__1
Score : 897 points
Date : 2021-02-02 21:07 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.aboutamazon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.aboutamazon.com)
| latchkey wrote:
| 1-Click was terrible for the internet.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea,
| and it had no name.
|
| It had a name, and that name was "Cadabra".
|
| It didn't become Amazon until Jeff watched a documentary about
| the Amazon River. His lawyer had already turned up his nose at
| "Cadabra", and Jeff was looking for something else.
|
| It's also worth noting that the idea didn't grow over time - Jeff
| always intended to build something like "Sears for the 21st
| century". The bookstore was just the way in, not the long term
| plan.
|
| ps. amazon employee #2
| obenn wrote:
| Was it ever named "relentless" at some point? I've heard that
| was the original name, relentless.com still redirects to
| Amazon.com.
| trts wrote:
| They must have turned off the redirect sometime in the past
| few years. diapers.com also used to land on amazon.com :)
| ngold wrote:
| Gotta hedge your bets, but I'm glad that I don't shop at
| diapers.com.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Incidentally, books.com was taken early on (say 1990) by
| an outfit in Ohio. Pre-web, they had a telnet interface.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| That does sound vaguely familiar. Jeff did have a handful of
| other "name candidates" sitting around, and this seems like
| one in keeping with the sort of thing he was thinking about.
| I don't specifically remember it though.
| [deleted]
| danellis wrote:
| > It's also worth noting that the idea didn't grow over time
|
| I doubt that he started out imagining he would build the
| world's biggest cloud hosting platform or open the first chain
| of checkoutless grocery stores.
| biztos wrote:
| Does AWS have a Sears-type analogue or was that a new concept?
|
| Just curious, no agenda, I grew up on the Sears Catalogue.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| No, AWS was definitely not part of Jeff's early vision. And
| as many people have said, major credit to Jassy for making it
| what it is today.
| biztos wrote:
| Thanks, appreciate the reply from an authoritative voice.
| chrshawkes wrote:
| We're you writing Perl primarily back in those days?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Perl got used for some backend tasks. Nothing related to the
| webserver.
| naqeeb wrote:
| Thank you for the candidness! I've found it interesting how the
| story of a startup's early days morph into legends / fables.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Something that always stuck with me is I remember reading in a
| book about the internet long ago about how innovative the name
| Amazon.com was and how it was the future of internet business.
| It said it needs to be more memorable. You aren't going to buy
| your books on Books.com you are going to use Amazon. Turned out
| to be very right. And this was in the pets.com era. Everyone
| thought you needed the most generic name possible and that if
| you got something like books.com or travel.com you had cornered
| the market on it.
| oblio wrote:
| It depends. facebook.com or messenger.com aren't super
| memorable.
|
| Microsoft also made it work by adding something else next to
| the name. Microsoft Excel. Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft
| Access.
| jacobwal wrote:
| Hadn't heard the documentary story, thanks for sharing!
|
| Were there any choices in the first few years that you think
| made a particularly big difference in setting Amazon up for
| what it is today? Anything you're particularly proud of that
| you did there?
| [deleted]
| warent wrote:
| Out of curiosity has it ever seemed to you that Amazon's
| success changed Jeff? Or has he always been largely the same
| person you knew from the start?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I haven't communicated with Jeff for more than 20 years. His
| public persona seems largely consonant with the person I knew
| 27 years ago.
| xtracto wrote:
| That's kind of sad. I feel somewhat related to this: I was
| 1st developer of a startup (outside of the US) and at that
| time I was super close to the CEO. After leaving we kind of
| grew appart which is a bit sad because I consider him a
| really good person, and I still own stock in the startup.
| Of course, absolutely nothing compared to Amazon (hopefully
| at some point it will... we always said that we wanted to
| be the Amazon of Financial services)
| rabidonrails wrote:
| I think it's probably lost on a number of people who you are
| (even though you call it out).
| GreenWatermelon wrote:
| This is my first time hearing about him.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davis_(programmer)
| SEJeff wrote:
| Thanks for the candid comment :)
|
| Also, hello mr famous internet person:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davis_(programmer)
| pjfin123 wrote:
| Oh wow JACK and Ardour are awesome, didn't know about the
| Amazon connection
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| > His lawyer had already turned up his nose at "Cadabra"
|
| True. I've heard (employee #20k-something, joined in early
| 2008) that the issue with Cadabra was its resemblance to the
| sound of the word "cadaver".
| hehehaha wrote:
| I like that Jassy is taking over. He really helped transform the
| world with AWS and Bezos' stubbornness to keep failing is what
| allowed that business to grow.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| _As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon
| initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on
| the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington
| Post, and my other passions. I've never had more energy, and this
| isn't about retiring. I'm super passionate about the impact I
| think these organizations can have._
| 1-6 wrote:
| Amazon Mobility?
| wheybags wrote:
| > I don't know of another company with an invention track record
| as good as Amazon's
|
| Come on man, that's just bs. From wikipedia:
|
| > Researchers working at Bell Labs are credited with the
| development of radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the
| photovoltaic cell, the charge-coupled device (CCD), information
| theory, the Unix operating system, and the programming languages
| B, C, C++, S, SNOBOL, AWK, AMPL, and others. Nine Nobel Prizes
| have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Upvoted; and thanks for sharing these details. They might be
| obvious for you, but I had only a limited knowledge of all that
| innovation happening at Bell Labs.
| wheybags wrote:
| You're in today's lucky 10,000 (https://xkcd.com/1053/) :)
| underseacables wrote:
| At some point you just have so much money that continue working
| full-time doesn't really make much sense
| nodesocket wrote:
| I am shocked Amazon stock in after hours is actually up on this
| news. I would have expected Bezos stepping down as CEO would be a
| negative.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Hopefully this will precipitate a change in how engineers are
| treated? Maybe they'll be nicer to their employees and/or stop
| the practice of arbitrarily culling large portions of engineering
| talent..
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I remember meeting Jeff over snacks at the O'Reilly Etech
| conference in 2003. We talked about art, if I recall...
| jzer0cool wrote:
| I still have the very first book I bought from Amazon when they
| were a very young company. Not too many choices. I bought
| "Relativity : the Special and General Theory" - Einstein.
|
| Decades later. We see in fact they are "to the moon" financially
| and with Blue Origin. Well played. Well played.
| pjmorris wrote:
| Same here. In 1998, my aunt recommended I read 'The Call' by
| John Hersey. Local bookstores didn't have it, Amazon did.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Musk made his initial money at PayPal and then went on to do much
| weirder stuff. I wonder what kind of weird stuff we can expect
| from Bezos, having secured Amazon-scale seed money for it.
| the_duke wrote:
| He's already pumping a billion a year into Blue Origin, which
| incidentally has quite a few management issues.
|
| So that would be a logical step, although I'm doubtful how
| effective the Amazon principles would be for spaceflight.
| maverickJ wrote:
| Love him or hate him, Jeff Bezos has been a legendary figure in
| the world of business for over 25 years now. His focus on the
| long term has led to the tremendous success Amazon has undergone.
|
| When he started selling just books, he was laughed at; but he had
| a why behind starting off with books. One thing is certain, Bezos
| has stayed consistent on his principles. His annual letters to
| his shareholders contain a lot of business wisdom.
|
| I wrote about him covering the theme: Thinking as a means of
| leverage in https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/jeff-bezos-
| amazon-an...
| tomcam wrote:
| I was there as a developer and a consumer. I don't remember
| anyone laughing at him for selling books. It was an obvious
| play to most of us.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Back before the .com crash Amazon was one of the few .coms
| with an actual business plan.
| chrshawkes wrote:
| BS dude. He wasn't laughed at. The man went to Princeton. Right
| next to other billionaires like Andy Florence. His family was
| rich etc... He was already a millionaire. It's not a rags-to-
| riches story by any stretch.
| javert wrote:
| He probably had enough, after all the nastiness coming from DC.
|
| For instance, being paraded in front of Congress committees so
| each member can get a little sound bite shitting on him.
|
| Truly, we didn't deserve Bezos. Maybe he's realized that.
| Beefin wrote:
| Don't know why you're being downvoted, those interviews were
| vile. They were just probing for self-incriminating answers and
| when they didn't moved on.
| 0zymandias wrote:
| The takeover of tech by MBAs continues. It has now happened at
| the top 4 largest tech companies in the US.
|
| We will have Apple (Tim Cook), Amazon (Andy Jassy), Alphabet
| (Sundar Pichai), Microsoft (Satya Nadella & Steve Ballmer) all
| taking over from non-MBA founders. Facebook is next in size and
| has Sheryl Sandberg as COO but don't know if Mark Zuckerberg
| would ever hand over the reins.
|
| Why don't non-MBAs manage to get to the top?
| vivekl wrote:
| Don't hold having an MBA against Jassy :). I have been in those
| ops meetings at AWS when Andy Jassy and Charlie Bell used to
| hold court. There wasn't much MBA-speak there. Jassy can burrow
| through deeply technical issues, spot fundamental flaws and
| process a monumental amount of information on the spot - skills
| they sure as hell don't teach at any B-school I know of...
| brendanmc6 wrote:
| > Why don't non-MBAs manage to get to the top?
|
| Because smart and talented people who are interested in
| business or administration tend to go on and study it. It's
| self selecting. I think maybe you are imprinting "MBA" as some
| sort of personality? I know designers, coders and biologists
| with MBAs. It's just an accreditation.
|
| Every business has its roots or foundation with makers. But
| that doesn't mean a chef should be running McDonalds, or a
| woodworker should be running Home Depot...
| daniel-thompson wrote:
| I'm as skeptical of MBAs as you are but this is a bad take
| considering Pichai and Nadella were both actual engineers
| first.
| paulpan wrote:
| Errr...both Sundar and Satya were software engineers first?
| meetups323 wrote:
| Clearly the CEO should have _no_ formal business training,
| regardless of their prior work.
| mywittyname wrote:
| An MBA has always been the way to signal that you want to
| move from engineering to senior management. Almost every
| senior manager I've met with an engineering background has an
| MBA (or a PhD). I have to assume that MBA programs teach the
| kind of stuff one would need to know to rise up the ranks.
| cbhl wrote:
| I believe that Sundar was a PM, but definitely seems to have
| climbed the ranks internally. (As opposed to, say, Alphabet
| CFO Ruth Porat, who was a VP at Morgan Stanley until she was
| hired in '15.)
|
| I believe Sundar got his MBA while he was at Google.
| Wikipedia says his original degrees are in metallurgy and
| materials science (which is definitely further in the realm
| of Real Engineering than Software).
| jozen wrote:
| Disagree on Sundar.
| momothereal wrote:
| Three of the four have engineering degrees and have previously
| worked as engineers. Maybe having an MBA on top is not a bad
| thing to run a trillion-dollar company?
| jl2718 wrote:
| The CEO role comes with a lot of mundane responsibility (and
| potential liability) that I'm surprised he held onto for so long.
| I would expect a guy like Jeff to want to get on another rocket
| ship (unsure if literal or figurative).
| thinkling wrote:
| He had pushed a lot of it down to Jeff Wilke (retail business)
| and Jassy (AWS) but apparently wanted more time for other
| projects.
| paxys wrote:
| It is as mundane as they want it to be. It mostly comes off
| that way because the majority of CEOs are the MBA types. If you
| look at Steve Jobs, Elon Musk etc., their day to day
| involvement could hardly be called mundane.
| xpe wrote:
| Why do you think it is mundane?
| ianai wrote:
| I'm just going to piss into the wind a little. After seeing what
| happened to Microsoft and Apple after they lost their founder
| CEOs, I don't welcome this news as freely as others might. We're
| not necessarily likely to see the company go directions that are
| for the better. (Maybe though this is really a rant about Cook.
| Amazon has lots of room to improve. Looking at all those forged
| brand names, for instance.)
| hbosch wrote:
| Apple and Microsoft are arguably much better off today with
| their new leaders than they might've been. I don't see your
| point?
|
| I think Facebook, too, could use a new face at the top as a
| matter of fact.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Big difference: Andy Jassy is an execution machine, AND has a
| really good sense of vision and strategy. AND has worked at
| Amazon for ~25 years.
|
| Source: my humble opinion, and I worked at AWS and met him
| several times.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| What is it you perceive that happened to MS? They appear to be
| doing well and are the top competitor to Amazon's AWS.
| orev wrote:
| MS completely missed on mobile phones and tablets, despite
| trying so many times at it. The "Windows everywhere" approach
| prevented them from doing what really had to be done (make
| something new for these new devices). That was all under the
| Ballmer era.
|
| It's only now that they have a new CEO who is happy to pursue
| other approaches that they have been able to start going in a
| better direction again.
| ianai wrote:
| Exactly. Bill stepped down in 2008. Balmer was CEO until
| 2014. Oddly that's when their products started to turn
| around significantly.
|
| Cook has made a lot of original Mac power users completely
| pissed. He's gutted entire software products that people
| relied upon using. He's probably why we had the half decade
| of MBPs developers didn't like. Etc. His best
| accomplishment has been the services stuff and maybe the
| M1.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| But they did have a rough patch under Ballmer.
| giarc wrote:
| Apple under Cook is a juggernaut. I'm not sure why you would
| use Apple as an example. Same with MS and Satya. You could
| argue MS floundered with Ballmer.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Apple is doing quite well under Cook. Same with Google under
| Pichai. Microsoft had some pains during the Balmer years, but I
| think that's partially due to the anti-trust suit making them
| gunshy and Balmer being a generally poor choice as a tech CEO,
| but they are doing very well with Nadella.
|
| I expect Amazon to be as ambitious as ever. Though, I am
| slightly afraid of a shift in focus towards AWS over retail.
| But I suspect Jassy's selection had to do with fears that a
| pick from the retail side may see Jassy as a threat and may
| seek to undermine AWS in an effort to keep him in check.
| thinkling wrote:
| > I suspect Jassy's selection had to do with fears that a
| pick from the retail side may see Jassy as a threat
|
| Amazon had (has) three CEOs: Bezos as overall CEO, Jassy as
| CEO of AWS, and Jeff Wilke as CEO of the "Consumer" business,
| i.e. the retail operation.
|
| Wilke announced last year that he would be leaving and that
| SVP of Operations Dave Clark would replace him as head of the
| Consumer business.
|
| The question is whether Bezos chose Jassy and that made Wilke
| leave, or whether Wilke leaving left Jassy as the only
| remaining choice to replace Bezos.
| easton wrote:
| Google isn't doing all that well under Pichai, they haven't
| launched a successful product under him since Chromebooks (I
| guess GCP, but when you are that size and <10% of market
| share, I don't know if it's successful), and they are just
| coasting on ads, YouTube and GSuite. Whereas Apple (say what
| you will about Cook) has launched AirPods, the Apple Watch
| and Apple Silicon-based Macs, which are all raking in cash _.
| It's possible that Google is only ever going to be an ads
| company, but based on their corporate rhetoric I don't think
| that was the goal.
|
| _ Apple Silicon Macs aren't really raking in cash yet, but
| Mac sales are up $1B in the last quarter, so by time
| transition is complete they will be.
| thinkling wrote:
| Weren't Jassy and Wilke co-CEOs already? I guess Jassy was "CEO"
| of AWS and now gets to be (actual-) CEO of Amazon.com?
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| Jassy was the CEO of AWS. I'm not sure what role he had
| regarding leadership of the entire company, but his title was
| CEO of AWS.
| _nickwhite wrote:
| I remember in the late 90's when Amazon competed with Barnes and
| Noble (here in the US) to sell books online. An interesting fact
| that stuck with me about Amazon back then is they didn't use any
| crazy javascript or front-end emerging tech- it was really basic
| HTML that drove the website and shopping cart.
|
| Their current logo, which smiles from A to Z (buy everything from
| A to Z!) hasn't always been the logo- as they started out just
| selling books with a vastly different image.
|
| Here's an interesting journey through the logos:
| https://www.freelogodesign.org/blog/2018/09/10/the-amazon-lo...
| y04nn wrote:
| And amazon.com today still works exactly the same with
| JavaScript turned off or on.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > they didn't use any crazy javascript or front-end emerging
| tech- it was really basic HTML that drove the website and
| shopping cart.
|
| javascript didn't exist.
|
| existing retail mail order couldn't deal with "almost in time"
| inventory.
|
| there were no "web frameworks".
|
| so it wasn't a choice to write it ourselves, it was the only
| possible thing to do.
| fullshark wrote:
| Great interview with Bezos from 1997
|
| https://youtu.be/rWRbTnE1PEM
| InTheArena wrote:
| The lead that is a bit buried here is that AWS is so essential to
| Amazon now that it's Amazon's future is AWS not necessarily
| retail.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I wonder if he doesn't want to be the one to deal with what looks
| like increased regulatory pressure...
| somethoughts wrote:
| Perhaps following Larry and Sergey's Alphabet playbook -
| gracefully fade into the background so your legacy can be
| untarnished!
| Hankenstein2 wrote:
| Either doesn't want to or recognizes that anyone not him, i.e.
| not as polarizing, would be more effective.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Note that Bezos announced that he _will_ retire...in Q3 2021.
| Amazon uses the calendar fiscal year, so this means sometime Jul-
| Sep.
|
| AWS head will take over as new CEO.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| Now I'm waiting to see how will Elon Musk insert himself into
| this news story. It's a matter of time, mark my words.
|
| (This is a snarky comment that deserves to get downvoted,
| couldn't help it.)
| [deleted]
| d_silin wrote:
| 1.3 million employees, wow!
| matsemann wrote:
| > _Today, we employ 1.3 million talented, dedicated people_
|
| All those creating the value. Many of them having poor working
| conditions and living off social welfare programs. One guy at
| the top skimming everything. Is he really worth all those
| billions? Could he survive on a little less and share with
| those doing the work? Or is his contribution really more than
| all those million combined..?
| ngcazz wrote:
| The downvotes must mean that, as always, welfare is missing
| the point.
| deegles wrote:
| They had about 35,000 employees at the beginning of 2011. We
| struggle to hire a handful of developers per year :D
| iSloth wrote:
| Would be interesting to know how they are split by geography
| and function
| waisbrot wrote:
| And pay. With the discussion in other threads about whether
| corporations should be able to compete with nations, is
| Amazon's wealth-distribution better or worse than various
| nations?
| greggyb wrote:
| Function should be obvious - the vast majority in fulfillment
| centers and logistics and customer service.
| lend000 wrote:
| I'm excited that this will really accelerate the space race. I
| think his relative lack of attention paid to Blue Origin
| (compared to Musk and SpaceX) is why they've fallen so far
| behind.
| mft_ wrote:
| You really think it's a big factor? I suspect there's just a
| very different culture and ethos there.
|
| And Musk also has Tesla (including solar), Open AI, Boring,
| Neuralink, and lots of tweeting...
| Aperocky wrote:
| What happened to Boring? I think the big difference with
| Boring is that the tech that goes there are vastly different
| than the software-hardware integration in his other
| companies.
|
| Boring is probably mostly hardware with very little software.
| munificent wrote:
| I really wish billionaires would focus on fixing this planet
| before worrying about others. But I guess many of them consider
| a planet a resource to be exploited.
| stevewodil wrote:
| Jeff Bezos has mentioned a strategy of doing things that
| pollute the Earth somewhere else in space and bringing back
| the goods that are created from it to Earth
| ilaksh wrote:
| Bezos achieved amazing things. But Amazon stole more than $60
| million in tips from delivery drivers. If Bezos knew about it
| then he should go to prison.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Getting ready to run for President in 2024?
| somethoughts wrote:
| It will be interesting to watch how Andy Jassy as head of AWS
| (dealing with building out data centers, SW partnerships, API
| uptime, negotiating with Intel, designing Graviton CPUs, etc.)
| will be able to transition to such things as Prime Video content
| licensing discussions and goal setting for Whole Foods and the
| nuances of warehouse distribution labor disputes.
|
| As a founder of Amazon - having built Amazon from nothing, Bezos
| probably had certain in-built persona and gravitas which probably
| helped with leadership talent acquisition and vision setting in
| all domains of the business universe. The opportunity to report
| to Jeff Bezos was probably a huge selling point - no matter what
| industry you were coming from.
|
| Its interesting Amazon never attempted to give Andy Jassy a trial
| run as a public facing COO running both sides of the house.
| kevan wrote:
| If I remember right from The Everything Store Amazon hasn't had
| a COO title since a rough experience with Galli in 99-00.
| somethoughts wrote:
| That's an interesting bit of history I forgot about.
| paxys wrote:
| Anecdotally I have heard that Amazon as a company does
| delegation very effectively. Individual departments have
| complete autonomy over their own business decisions, and this
| applies on the engineering side as well.
|
| I do agree that the shitstorm over warehouse workers,
| automation, unionization etc. is only going to get a lot worse
| over the next few years, and Jassy may even find handling that
| becoming his primary job.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Jeff is a man of contradictions. I've heard him micromanage
| to the level that individual AWS launch pages were reviewed
| and approved by him; so were the choice of databases (oracle
| vs MySQL) and SOA. At the same time, he gives extreme leeway
| and time for product teams to prove their mettle. The general
| assumption is you have 7 years from start to profitability.
| It's a long time by tech industry standards. (Just look at
| Google).
| somethoughts wrote:
| Yes - that's part of magic - as the founder you have the
| latitude to go to any level of the corporate stack and
| critique things. Jeff could probably go to any Amazon
| distribution center on any random day and start critiquing
| at how things were being packed inefficiently in boxes and
| people would fix things in the next hour. It'll be
| interesting to see if Andy Jassy can metaphorically do
| similar things.
| ngoel36 wrote:
| So is it finally Day 2?
| streetcat1 wrote:
| Probably due to the coming wealth tax or capital gain tax
| changes.
| paxys wrote:
| It was public knowledge that Bezos stopped running Amazon day-to-
| day a while ago. It was headed by the two execs under him (Andy
| Jassy for AWS and Jeff Wilke for retail). Jassy even had the CEO
| (of AWS) title. With Wilke announcing his retirement a few months
| ago, Jassy was the clear frontrunner to take over from Bezos. In
| hindsight I guess Wilke retired _because_ Jassy was picked over
| him. The timing of the announcement is unexpected, but nothing
| else.
| desireco42 wrote:
| Sounds like Jeff Wilke felt a little bit left out?
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Anyone that high up in Amazon is going to be laughing all the
| way to the bank regardless.
| fortran77 wrote:
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cry_all_the_way_to_the_bank
| Traster wrote:
| That does tell us something about the corporate structure
| though - whilst a lot of people think AWS would be better off
| being spun out, there's no way you hire the head of AWS as CEO
| of Amazon if you think that's the direction forward.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| It buys you time. You tell the antitrust: give us a few more
| months, we'll find a new CEO and then spin out the company.
| IMHO.
| hrktb wrote:
| My mental image is that people want to spin off AWS for
| society's benefits because Amazon grew too big and abuses the
| integration. Amazon squarely resisting this idea seems
| uncontroversal.
| airstrike wrote:
| People argue companies like Walmart don't want to pay their
| rival Amazon for cloud hosting, but the truth is if AWS is
| the best cloud provider, it makes business sense to go with
| them
| libria wrote:
| Yes, a bit of shakeup at the top. Jassy now CEO, Dave Clark
| stepping into Jeff Wilke's role as head of retail. I assume
| Charlie Bell will step up as head of AWS.
| temp0826 wrote:
| Listening to cbell rip someone apart in the weekly ops
| meeting while watching the #wtf peanut gallery whilst sipping
| my coffee are probably my fondest memories of working at AWS
| randallsquared wrote:
| I'll try "Places I wouldn't want to work" for 400K, Alex.
| hintymad wrote:
| It's actually a rare opportunity that someone smart can
| "rip me apart" for the right reason. Candid truth does
| not hurt. It stimulates growth. In contrast, the worst
| place is where everyone is nice, but does not tell you
| what you does wrong.
| paxys wrote:
| Candid truths can be shared in blameless postmortems and
| a hundred other ways. An executive shouting at someone in
| a large meeting is an ego trip, nothing more.
| Spinnaker_ wrote:
| It's funny how differently people respond to that type of
| stuff.
|
| I grew up playing pretty competitive sports. Being ripped
| apart in front of my peers was a once a week occurrence
| for me for most of my life. I had no interest in doing it
| to anyone else, but it didn't seem like a big deal, and
| didn't bother me much.
|
| My first job was at a company where it happened a lot. I
| didn't realize how toxic it was until I started talking
| with co-workers who were having panic attacks from it.
| mabbo wrote:
| Thing is, cbell doesn't make it personal (in any of the
| calls I've seen). It's about raising the bar. He demands
| quality, and he gets it. His weekly ops meetings have been
| imitated by other orgs, terribly, because they don't
| understand the point. They think ripping into people is the
| goal.
|
| I've got a project this year that I'm told is on his radar.
| I'm not terrified. I'm excited, because it means I have to
| deliver the best I am capable of and I'll get help to do
| it.
| [deleted]
| enraged_camel wrote:
| End of an era. I wonder what he'll do next.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| run for president, seems like a thing for Billionaires these
| days.
| remoquete wrote:
| I think the odds are quite high.
| akhilcacharya wrote:
| He'd be better at it than the last guy, a low bar though.
| aerophilic wrote:
| I suspect he will focus on his space venture (blue origin)...
| but maybe that is wishful thinking.
|
| That said, I think it can use his focus more than anything else
| (and he is investing 1B/year in it)
| sjg007 wrote:
| Turn a lot of cash into rocket fuel.
| 1-6 wrote:
| It's a good time for another CEO to take center stage at a
| different company. Any suggestions?
| sjg007 wrote:
| I think the CEO as influencer is on the wane and with
| antitrust and regulatory reform coming we will be looking
| more for politicians who can unite and provide social
| leadership. Trump took a lot of oxygen out of the room and
| now is a good time for up and comers like Buttieg and AOC.
| s3r3nity wrote:
| He mentioned a few focus areas:
|
| - Day 1 Fund
|
| - Bezos Earth Fund
|
| - Blue Origin
|
| - The Washington Post
|
| So a combination of philanthropy, crazy cutting-edge tech, and
| media. He'll still be pretty busy haha
| samizdis wrote:
| From his email to staff:
|
| _As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon
| initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus
| on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The
| Washington Post, and my other passions. I've never had more
| energy, and this isn't about retiring. I'm super passionate
| about the impact I think these organizations can have._
| baxtr wrote:
| Mars.
| lai wrote:
| Buy all the bitcoin supply.
| virtualmachine7 wrote:
| They could do one better and cheaper - start their own coin,
| make Amazon accept that (and no other coins) and it'd
| probable dwarf bitcoin in market cap.
| mc32 wrote:
| Maybe he'll take a cue from Bill Gates and get involved in
| philanthropy. Alternatively he might get more involved in Blue
| Origin?
| mssundaram wrote:
| Perhaps Bill Gates truly has developed compassion for the
| less fortunate, however moving his money into the foundation
| is a very convenient tax strategy, and I suspect he enjoys
| the challenges and influence he has, and less so the warm
| fuzzies from helping people.
|
| (I anticipate this comment will not go over well, as it seems
| I must just not see the truth that Bill Gates is a perfectly
| benevolent being who has ascended from human qualities)
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| _I anticipate this comment will not go over well, as it
| seems I must just not see the truth that Bill Gates is a
| perfectly benevolent being who has ascended from human
| qualities_
|
| He's not benevolent or lead a perfectly good life. But he
| decided to spend his billions on trying to improve the
| world and you all are still hung up on the anti trust
| things he did at Microsoft. Or think he's doing it to "gain
| power and influence" or as a tax dodge.
|
| You don't have to forgive him. But stop coming up with
| weird conspiracy theories about why he's spending his money
| and let go of the unscrupulous business decisions.
| dhnajsjdnd wrote:
| I think there's a common misunderstanding about how tax
| write-offs work. If you donate _x_ dollars, and your
| marginal tax rate is _t_ , you end up losing x - xt
| dollars. That means you have less money than if you didn't
| donate, even after accounting for the write-off. Arguments
| that somebody only donated money for the tax write-off
| usually don't make sense.
|
| Possibles exceptions to this include hard-to-value assets
| like art, where someone could potentially exaggerate the
| value by at least 1/t to defraud the tax authorities, but
| this doesn't seem relevant to donating publicly-traded
| Microsoft stock. Bill Gates would be richer if he didn't
| make these donations.
| sjg007 wrote:
| The US and the world really need an organized approach to
| pandemics and it needs to be free of political influence.
| Said work is going to require a lot of academic and
| government support. If Gates can bootstrap that, that would
| be a good legacy.
| acomjean wrote:
| Bill Gates was a ruthless business man, but through the
| influence of his wife/father/Warren Buffet or some
| combination, he's soften a bit and seems to have decided to
| give a lot away and convince others to do so as well.
|
| https://givingpledge.org/About.aspx
|
| There's lots of weirdness in society about having the
| wealthiest having influence starting to approach government
| program status, but here we are. (perhaps they're trying to
| blunt the income inequality complaints, but maybe they
| really have come around to caring...)
| mlyle wrote:
| It's actually the other way around: Buffett followed
| Gates' lead on large-scale philanthropy, designating the
| Gates Foundation as the benefit of his largesse. Yes,
| each man had long-standing intentions for philanthropy,
| but it really reached fruition together.
| mssundaram wrote:
| I can get behind the idea of his wife helping him to
| soften, but not his father, who was just as ruthless in
| his own profession
| Avalaxy wrote:
| What does Bill Gates care about optimizing tax? He is old,
| isn't planning on giving his money to his children and he
| has so much money he wouldn't even be able to spend it if
| he wanted to. It makes no sense. Im pretty sure he does
| care about his legacy on the other hand.
| idownvoted wrote:
| _isn 't planning on giving his money to his children_
|
| 1. none of "giving pledge" signees pledged 100% - they do
| pledge most of it, although inheriting "almost nothing"
| of billions is still pretty comfy.
|
| 2. the biggest cushion the heirs of Giving Pledgers will
| inherit is something money can't buy: influence. After
| all the Gates foundation is a family trust and as such
| will be run by the trustee's heirs, when their parents
| die [1]
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/201
| 7/jul/2...
| bobo_legos wrote:
| I think he's probably bored at this point. Whats there really
| left to do at Amazon? AWS and the website are eating the
| world. He's 57. Why not at this point go play with his
| rockets and spend time inside that WaPo newsroom that he
| loves.
| catacombs wrote:
| > spend time inside that WaPo newsroom that he loves.
|
| Investing in journalism is actually a very good thing.
| mmmeff wrote:
| Definitely. So many tax loopholes to exploit.
| fakedang wrote:
| Especially if you can change the narrative from "evil
| capitalist who forces his workers to piss in buckets" to
| "pioneer O'Reilly tube colonist"
| filoleg wrote:
| WaPo has publicized quite a few articles critical of Jeff
| Bezos and Amazon, even after WaPo was acquired. So this
| is something that seems to be just another baseless "jeff
| bad" take.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Americans adopt that narrative voluntarily when it comes
| to entrepreneurs, he doesn't need to interfere with the
| Wapo newsroom for that. (and to my knowledge hasn't).
| saagarjha wrote:
| As long as it's unconditional investing...
| mongol wrote:
| I have no problem with conditional investing. If I owned
| a media company, I would like to be involved.
| sjg007 wrote:
| As chairman and being involved in the WaPo newsroom and
| possibly K street would actually help Amazon. But you'd
| probably have to enjoy politics and does Bezos? Bezos built
| Amazon so is he OK with it being chopped up if it comes to
| that or not?
| codq wrote:
| He's one of the richest men in the world... and single.
|
| We're about to witness one of the most glorious midlife
| crises in history.
| mc32 wrote:
| I think having one in Musk is enough (though Musk is
| married now). Don't need planet of the billionaire
| bachelors in the midst of their midlife crises.
| jeofken wrote:
| Hopefully, the latter
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Hopefully the latter. We've got an excess of billionaires
| trying to mould society with their vast sums of wealth.
|
| Blue Origin would be a great use of his time. Massive long-
| term benefit to humanity, few implications on global
| governance or the lives of most individuals.
|
| Or his own private charter city, so people have to consent to
| live in his world.
|
| Or he could blow it all on yachts, hookers and blow.
| sjg007 wrote:
| I don't understand why space rockets and lunar lander is
| important except if they help us clean our planet. It's a
| long bet on a long time horizon. But maybe it's a good way
| to spend government money.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Imo, it's a good way to keep people who're functionally
| minor deities in terms of absolute power busy and
| somewhat productive for a long time.
| acomjean wrote:
| His ex gave away 4.2 billion last December FWIW.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/style/mackenzie-scott-
| pri...
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Maybe there's a little PR FOMO? The former Mrs. Bezos is
| making a name for herself as a very generous philanthropist
| [0].
|
| [0]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/business/mackenzie-
| scott-...
| igotsideas wrote:
| Hopefully, the former.
| ignoramous wrote:
| https://www.bezosdayonefund.org/
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Hopefully, the former_
|
| Either one is a win for humanity.
| afavour wrote:
| I hope philanthropy, I expect space travel.
| carabiner wrote:
| Maybe really take the reins of BO? The company has been
| floundering without strong leadership relative to SpaceX.
| pluc wrote:
| Become a supervilain/superhero. Not much else to do with that
| kind of money.
| km3r wrote:
| '?'
|
| After hours traders seem to like this move.
| bobo_legos wrote:
| Algos seem to be all over the place right now. But I think
| they're just confused by this news and the earnings report.
| bjtitus wrote:
| Kind of hard to tell how much the transition announcement is
| driving things given that they just announced predictably
| stellar Q4 results.
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| He has bought a new 0.5 billion dollar boat this year.
| https://themarketherald.com.au/magazine/the-pursuit-of-comfo...
|
| Bill gates is still renting.
|
| What do you think he was going to do with all that cash.
|
| After few years he will review his life after vacationing becomes
| dull for the workhorse.
| Tepix wrote:
| Too bad it's not a sailing yacht.
|
| He shares the vision of Gerard O'Neill. Making it reality will
| require large amounts of money.
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| It is really trendy for billionaires to be interested in
| space right now. I think they want to make money there. They
| believe that too big to fail on earth means that they should
| go where nobody has made any money.
|
| O'Neill was product of academia, a physicist and not a head
| of corporation.
| mrep wrote:
| Do you have an up to date source on bezos owning the flying
| fox as that one is based on a tweet that was deleted and
| everything I've read since says that was false including a
| quick google search.
|
| Also, I'm interested in how you think Amazon is too big to
| fail because I most certainly do not think they are.
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| If you mean the boat
|
| https://themarketherald.com.au/magazine/the-pursuit-of-
| comfo...
| mrep wrote:
| Yeah, you already linked to that article which mentions
| "A recent Twitter post" but of course has no link because
| it is probably the aforementioned deleted one because
| that website is probably complete BS. It does say january
| 2 but again, the twitter rumor was 1.5 years ago.
|
| Here is an article refuting that twitter rumor back in
| august of 2019: https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-
| bezos-rumors-own-400-mi...
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| Project Redwood.. LOL
|
| Maybe he is leasing it. Businessinsider does not have
| access to his personal account and neither does his
| company.
|
| They couldn't even get Trump's tax returns. They have no
| clue.
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| Amazon is buying all warehouses and displacing regular
| stores. If it fails people will have problems buying
| things that they use to buy from local stores.
| paxys wrote:
| > Bill gates is still renting.
|
| What does that mean?
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| He rents big boats for holidays rather than owning one which
| the feature of being retired or semi-retired billionaire.
| dleslie wrote:
| He's becoming Executive Chair, so he's not leaving the picture
| entirely.
| jvreagan wrote:
| Incredibly grateful for what Bezos has built. I learned more in
| my 6 years at Amazon that I have in my 20 other years in the
| industry. And Amazon gave my autistic spectrum son a chance when
| literally nobody else would.
|
| Thank you, Jeff.
| htrp wrote:
| AWS about to take over all those prime video projects
| mikojan wrote:
| I vomited into my mouth a little
| jacquesm wrote:
| Can we keep this kind of bs comment off HN please? Thank you.
| wiremine wrote:
| Crazy, he's one of those guys that you think will just be at the
| top forever. Hopefully the transition for Amazon is as
| (seemingly) seamless as the Steve Jobs/Tim Cook transition was
| for Apple.
| keanebean86 wrote:
| Retiring at 57 is pretty risky. Hopefully his savings hold out.
| He's looking at 30 more years of life. Personally I would be
| too cautious to leave this early.
|
| Edit: risking -> risky; fixed life sentence
| faangeng wrote:
| Yeah maybe he should've worked a few more years to shore up
| his net worth a bit, a 50% drop in the market might force him
| back to work
| mywittyname wrote:
| What a world we live in where a guy can work for 30+ years
| in Big Tech and still not be able to comfortably retire.
| genericone wrote:
| Hopefully he has enough saved up in his 401k, his situation
| may be better on traditional 401k vs roth.
| elindbe3 wrote:
| Yeah, he's just one health crisis from complete bankruptcy.
| What if he goes to the hospital complaining of a headache and
| they charge him $182 billion for an aspirin?
| paxys wrote:
| It's a joke but with the US healthcare system you never
| know..
| deegles wrote:
| He should have bought Bitcoin if he wanted to be _really_
| wealthy.
| bigiain wrote:
| He owns Blue Origin. He can literally go TO THE MOON if
| he tries. ;-)
| [deleted]
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Whether this is satire or serious, I love it.
| anewaccount2021 wrote:
| Yup health insurance is particularly expensive for older
| Americans!
| bigiain wrote:
| Super risky.
|
| Assuming he lives past 100, and gets zero interest/return on
| his ~200 billion net worth, he'll need to somehow keep his
| spending below about a thousand dollars a minute to survive.
|
| Sounds like real poverty to me...
| riversflow wrote:
| > Hopefully the transition for Amazon is as (seemingly)
| seamless as the Steve Jobs/Tim Cook transition was for Apple.
|
| I like Apple, but there is quite a seam with the Jobs/Cook
| transition. That seam is the overly minimalistic industrial
| design patterns witnessed in the butterfly keyboard, vanishing
| ports, trashcan Mac, etc. They seem to finally be coming around
| on this.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| That's because Ive left. The product pipeline is now getting
| to the post Ive point and you can see a distinct change.
|
| IMHO Apple are stepping back from the form over function
| precipice and are being more pragmatic, to the benefit of
| customers.
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| Time to spend the cash. The big money had been made.
| 1-6 wrote:
| I think retirement is more of a time to ponder life. I doubt
| he's going to pull some big expenditure. He'll probably invest
| in multiple companies.
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| I just posted a reference to his purchase of 0.4 billion
| dollar boat.
|
| He is retiring. Amazon is outcome of purchase of many many
| companies just like Microsoft.
|
| Gates is retired and Microsoft is still buying companies even
| hotels; anything and everything has been bought with the cash
| acquired from US's money printing machine.
| idownvoted wrote:
| _I doubt he 's going to pull some big expenditure_ - with a
| net worth of 182BN USD there isn't really an item available
| that would be "a big expenditure".
| Jonnax wrote:
| " Amazon is also announcing today that Jeff Bezos will transition
| to the role of Executive Chair in the third quarter of 2021 and
| Andy Jassy will become Chief Executive Officer at that time.
|
| "Amazon is what it is because of invention. We do crazy things
| together and then make them normal. We pioneered customer
| reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime's insanely-
| fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge,
| Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing,
| Career Choice, and much more," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder
| and CEO. "If you do it right, a few years after a surprising
| invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. That
| yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive. When you
| look at our financial results, what you're actually seeing are
| the long-run cumulative results of invention. Right now I see
| Amazon at its most inventive ever, making it an optimal time for
| this transition." "
|
| Here's the quote.
| matmann2001 wrote:
| _yawn_
| kaszanka wrote:
| Amazon _did not_ invent customer reviews.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Could you point me to another merchant who offered customer-
| readable customer reviews before Amazon? I'm not saying there
| isn't one, just that when we were implementing them, I was
| unaware of any precedents ...
| 1_2__4 wrote:
| It was the entire (original) business model of "Epinions".
| foobarian wrote:
| *on the web
| antoniobermuda wrote:
| Wasn't Netflix the first?
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Amazon started 3 years before Netflix did.
| savanaly wrote:
| Pretty sure that was meant to mean "customer reviews" the
| amazon product. See also in the list: "marketplace" which I
| don't think they expect anyone to believe they invented
| either.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Or insanely-fast shipping either, interstate phone orders
| were being affordably delivered in less than 24 hours at
| least in the 1980s.
| ses1984 wrote:
| Out of all those things the only two uniquely amazon are cloud
| computing and fast shipping.
| rrdharan wrote:
| Cloud Computing is uniquely an Amazon invention the way
| smartphones are uniquely an Apple invention.
|
| Which is to say there's a sense in which you're right and a
| sense in which this is an absurd statement..
| mr_toad wrote:
| There were data centres before Amazon, but there was
| nothing like EC2. Infrastructure as code made all the
| difference.
| adventured wrote:
| It's definitely not absurd, even if they only deserve a
| share of the credit.
|
| There's nothing absurd about the way Amazon and Apple
| defined cloud computing and smartphones. They deserve as
| much credit as anyone for the services / products we know
| today as cloud computing and smartphones. The version of
| the smartphone that took off in sales, took over the
| culture and has become a human staple globally, was
| entirely defined by Apple's iPhone. No other company did
| that, it was Apple, period. To not recognize them as the
| prime mover of smartphones would be absurd.
| jobroder95 wrote:
| One of the things underreported about Jeff Bezos is that he was a
| seed investor into Google. He tried to buy the company for $100
| Million dollars, I wonder how our landscape would have been
| different if the merger went through. It will be interesting to
| see how his other projects payoff.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Bezos email to employees:
| https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/email-from-jef...
| dang wrote:
| We've changed the URL to that from
| https://ir.aboutamazon.com/news-release/news-release-
| details.... Thanks!
| ksec wrote:
| From https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/email-from-
| jef...
|
| >Fellow Amazonians:
|
| >I'm excited to announce that this Q3 I'll transition to
| Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become
| CEO. In the Exec Chair role, _I intend to focus my energies and
| attention on new products and early initiatives._ Andy is well
| known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as
| I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full
| confidence.
|
| This reads to me as Jeff Bezos doesn't want the boring job of
| running AWS and Amazon anymore. He want something new,
|
| >As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon
| initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on
| the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington
| Post, and my other passions.
|
| There are plenty of Growth left in Amazon and AWS. But that is
| not as exiting as Blue Origin or Funding other initiative via Day
| 1 Fund.
|
| I still remember when Amazon was only selling Books. People
| laughed, Media Laughed, and I guess most of us laughed.
|
| Amazon is now a ~$1.6 _Trillion_ Dollar Company.
|
| What an era.
| hathawsh wrote:
| Another thing I find interesting is that Amazon's main business
| is so common that there's a single word for it: retail. They're
| just yet another middleman between distributors and consumers.
| Not long ago, a lot of the business world thought Walmart was
| the indisputable retail king. Amazon proved there's still room
| for growth in retail.
|
| Will this simple thing called retail produce yet more trillion
| dollar companies, or is it running out of gas? Will there be an
| Amazon killer? History suggests yes.
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| Some companies are moving towards selling directly to
| consumers, especially if they have a brand to protect. Nike
| is pulling back from retail a bit and focusing on their own
| website and app to promote and sell their products.
|
| The flip side is Amazon has empowered a lot of smaller
| manufacturers to get nearly direct access to consumers.
| Especially Chinese firms but even some small American
| companies have benefitted from the huge base of customers
| Amazon gives them access too.
| Aperocky wrote:
| retail IS the economy.
|
| Sure, you can pump money into building fighter jets and
| aircraft carriers, but those don't last long, nor are they
| helpful for economy in the long term.
|
| In the long term, the only backbone of the economy is making
| and selling things to people that they want, a.k.a retail.
| ilaksh wrote:
| What should kill Amazon is public protocols and fast
| cryptocurrency transactions.
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| US printing machines has funded the share printing machine that
| has allowed them to keep buying other companies.
| munificent wrote:
| For comparison, using national total wealth, that makes Amazon
| worth more than Saudia Arabia, Denmark, Portugal, or New
| Zealand.
|
| It's $280.5 billion in revenue in 2019 put it above the GDP of
| Romania, Peru, Ukraine, etc.
|
| Corporations should never be allowed to get this large.
| golemotron wrote:
| > Corporations should never be allowed to get this large.
|
| Countries either. Why did we allow it?
| handmodel wrote:
| I don't get the comparison here tbh. The valuation of of AMZN
| is based on assets + future time-discounted dividends. While,
| those wealth figures for Saudi Arabia are just assets. After
| all Saudi Aramco, which is mostly state owned, is worth about
| 1T.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Why should a global business never exceed the GDP of a 4
| million person nation? I don't see any inherent connection.
| Bostonian wrote:
| That's the equivalent of saying "corporations should be
| limited in what services they provide and to how many
| people". And I disagree with that.
| titzer wrote:
| It's equivalent to a lot of different sentences. Any given
| market has a maximum size, so if you want to limit the size
| of a corporations' market share, you are absolutely
| limiting "what services they provide and to how many
| people". Or are you totally for monopolies?
| spoonjim wrote:
| First, Amazon isn't even worth as much as the oil under Saudi
| Arabia, second, why is it better that murderer Mohammed Bin
| Salman controls that much wealth than Jeff Bezos?
| personjerry wrote:
| > Corporations should never be allowed to get this large.
|
| Why?
|
| Bonus question: Why should governments be allowed to get that
| big?
| mullingitover wrote:
| > Bonus question: Why should governments be allowed to get
| that big?
|
| I would argue that most of our current problems are
| happening because our governments are small, ineffective,
| and corrupt. I would prefer big, effective, smart, and
| transparent governments that can take decisive action any
| day of the week. I'd go so far as to abolish state
| governments entirely and split their powers between
| counties and the federal government; they were made for a
| time when our communications were limited by the speeds of
| our fastest horses.
| splistud wrote:
| They were made for a time when we were not so poorly
| educated that we trusted leadership to people so far
| away, with so little in common with ourselves and our way
| of lives.
|
| I tell you what, though. You design an effective, smart
| and transparent government and I'll never say a word
| about how big you would like it to be.
| dantheman wrote:
| small and corrupt, so let's make them bigger and corrupt?
| How much do you think the government should forcefully
| take from its citizens to get bigger?
| mullingitover wrote:
| I mean, that's not what I said at all, and then I see
| you're breaking out the old 'taxation is theft' sawhorse.
|
| Personally I'm a 'taxation makes civilization possible'
| man myself, and I find that the 'taxation is theft'
| people rarely make meaningful contributions to society.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| Governments exist as a collective to the public to do what
| one individual cannot do on their own.
|
| Corporations exist to enrich shareholders and nothing more.
| xherberta wrote:
| If the US hadn't dropped the ball on enforcing existing
| antitrust laws in the 80s and 90s, we wouldn't have to ask.
| Perhaps many more regular people would own productive
| enterprises, and wouldn't be looking to government to
| address inequality.
|
| Now that both corporations and government are so big and
| intrusive that they're somewhere between a nuisance and
| prohibitive toward small-scale enterprise, we should at
| least think about ways to sic them on each other.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Yeah GP is unlikely to answer
| jcranmer wrote:
| The retort to your bonus question is that the government
| doesn't get to "spend" its GDP. Although the counter-retort
| is to bring up government revenue instead, where Amazon
| instead slots in between Mexico and the Netherlands.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Let's start with the premise that "representative
| government is the union of the people" and "profit motive
| is not always the best incentive for action in society",
| and go from there.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| I dispute that premise. I'd hardly call America "unified"
| at the present moment; we are in such a state of disunity
| that many are refusing to accept election results.
| Pervasive as Amazon, Google, et al. may be, they are
| still much easier to escape than the United States
| government.
| sbarre wrote:
| I would argue that America is a terrible example of
| government and governing, and that you shouldn't be using
| it as a comparison in your argument.
|
| Good government is hard, but it's certainly better than a
| corporation that is legally obligated to put profit ahead
| of anything else.
| adventured wrote:
| Corporations are not legally obligated to put profit
| ahead of everything else. That's a bad myth that refuses
| to die. There is absolutely no substance to that claim.
|
| There is no legal obligation to maximize shareholder
| value.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I don't know of anyone claiming it's a _legal_
| obligation. It 's a _natural_ obligation, and it 's
| worse.
|
| The shareholders want profit maximised, and with that
| end, decide upon the board of directors, who decide upon
| the CEO. If the CEO does not maximise profits, the CEO
| will not remain the CEO. Therefore, the CEOs of
| (publicly-traded) companies are obliged to maximise
| profits - those who do not feel such an obligation are
| not CEOs.
| adventured wrote:
| There's nothing new about the US not being united. The
| Democrats dispute every election they lose, just as they
| did in 2016. There is nothing new about it. The US has
| rarely been united throughout its history in fact. It's
| borderline a fluke that it has survived this long as one
| nation.
|
| And if you think it's bad now, it's going to get
| dramatically worse yet. The largest groups that make up
| the US today, that dominate its politics and culture,
| have absolutely nothing in common with eachother and will
| grow further apart as the years pass. The rancor will get
| much worse. The populism will get worse. The end result
| is obvious and unavoidable (and I'm not talking about
| civil war, that's a redneck fantasy; it's tyranny,
| oppression, endless strife, and ever worsening
| dysfunction as the Feds try to contain the unspooling and
| get ever more paranoid).
| Judgmentality wrote:
| There's something to be said for Facebook being the cause
| of America's division right now (amongst many other
| things obviously).
| ryall wrote:
| I'd hardly call America a country with a governmental
| system that's representative of the people
| lnanek2 wrote:
| What about starting with the premise that "a successful
| corporation offers goods or services people want for less
| cost than competitors" whereas a successful government
| organization "exhausts their budget every fiscal quarter
| and successfully demands more". Which is doing more good
| for the people? I've worked for both and know which I'd
| choose.
| viraptor wrote:
| Because someone will soon realise that "a successful
| corporation offers goods or services people want for less
| cost than competitors" is a great reason to introduce
| slave labour to increase efficiency. Gig economy without
| employment rights and stopping unions is just a step
| towards that.
|
| Also "exhausts their budget every fiscal quarter and
| successfully demands more" applies just as much to
| corporate projects. And given we gov agencies rarely can
| solve the whole problem, why expect them not to exhaust
| their budget?
| [deleted]
| splistud wrote:
| I don't see any reason to accept either of those
| premises. Empirical evidence says you're 0 for 2.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| If you think profit motive, rather than ethics and
| benefit to society, should control prisons, the
| provisioning of healthcare, or the education of citizens,
| there is no middle for us to meet on.
| danbolt wrote:
| Neither have to be that big. If something's going to be so
| big and pervasive into people's lives though, then I'd
| rather be able to have a democratic say in a government
| than the Shinra Electric Power Company.
| arcticbull wrote:
| What do you mean by "get this big"?
|
| Governments aren't defined by a market cap, but rather by
| the services they provide to their citizens.
|
| Consider that a private company's only goal is to enrich
| its shareholders, and they have no responsibility to the
| people or places around them. They are only accountable to
| their shareholders and the government.
|
| A governments responsibility is solely to its citizens who
| also control it by vote.
|
| The bigger your biggest companies are, the more powerful
| your government must become to keep them in line - to
| ensure they don't break the rules. If you want a small
| government that is able to retain order and fairness, you
| must also limit the size of the companies within its
| purview.
| basilgohar wrote:
| That's a pretty narrow definition of a government. I
| hardly think that's been the case for most of history and
| I don't think that's actually the case in the majority of
| nations to date, even at the surface.
| splistud wrote:
| "A governments responsibility is solely to its citizens
| who also control it by vote"
|
| And most Western governments are now abdicating this
| responsibility in the name of political ideals and the
| stated notion that non-citizens have the right to demand
| a place in the nation of their choosing.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > And most Western governments are now abdicating this
| responsibility in the name of political ideals and the
| stated notion that non-citizens have the right to demand
| a place in the nation of their choosing.
|
| Nobody is doing that. However, I'd suggest that even if
| they were, it wouldn't invalidate anything I'm saying.
|
| Non-citizens are permitted to immigrate under various
| circumstances, defined under naturalization law.
| Sometimes that's on the basis of being refugees.
| Sometimes its on the basis of skills and needs. Sometimes
| its granted in the face of exigent circumstances.
|
| In the case of the DREAMers, it's based on the notion
| that if you're brought into the country as a toddler,
| then you didn't intentionally commit a crime and the fair
| thing to do is to let you remain - in no small part due
| to the _huge_ role these folks play in the economy. The
| parents who committed those crimes are not granted any
| sort of amensty.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| Consider that politicians' only goal is to get re-
| elected. While the rare exception may exist, that's also
| true of companies. While governments are accountable in
| theory, that rarely holds true in practice. I don't think
| that a "bigger" government, id est one with more
| regulatory oversight, would help; rather, use the
| existing court system to enforce what we have. If we lack
| political will to enforce the existing measures, adding
| more will not help. A government need not be "big" to
| have effective court systems and pass some rules on what
| certain companies can and cannot do.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Monopoly rules only exist and matter because of the
| government. It's pretty obvious that even with them,
| there's a real pressure for consolidation (and that's
| efficiency of scale).
|
| The natural state of a company is a monopoly. Once you
| are a monopoly, you don't need to worry about getting
| "re-elected" any more than a despot does.
|
| The free society exists only in the space between these
| two clashing titans.
| andrewjl wrote:
| One of the ideas behind federalism was that government /
| the state need not have a monopoly on everything.
|
| Corporate monopolies usually only persist due to two
| reasons: regulatory barriers or technological stagnation.
| Both are solvable.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| If not for regulatory barriers, do you really think Bell
| Systems would ever have lost its monopoly over US
| telecoms?
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Governments are defined by the populace and land they
| have sovereign authority over, not the services they
| provide. That's not terribly different from a corporation
| being defined by its assets and employees
| tal8d wrote:
| Warmer... but not quite. Governments are defined by a
| monopoly on force. Whoever distinguishes "murder" from
| "homicide" is the government, and that government's
| territory stretches as far as those definitions are in
| effect.
| [deleted]
| Quinner wrote:
| A corporation that didn't take its customers demands into
| account would be quite likely to fail. There are many
| governments that continue to exist by enriching and
| providing for a small segment of society, and uses force
| to suppress the demands of the rest of society. A
| corporation generally doesn't shoot dissatisfied
| customers.
|
| Even in relatively liberal democracies, governments are
| clearly more beholden to forces other than citizens and
| their vote. There's a reason why US governments did
| little to respond to massive BLM protests this summer, as
| government viewed its responsibility as more aligned to
| police unions than citizens.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > A corporation that didn't take its customers demands
| into account would be quite likely to fail.
|
| Meeting customer demands is only one way to compete. A
| better facebook is going to still have a hell of a time
| not being out-competed by facebook. Likewise with amazon
| sometimes throwing its weight around to take a loss to
| undercut competitors until they starve.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > A corporation that didn't take its customers demands
| into account would be quite likely to fail.
|
| Without a government to enforce monopoly rules, it'll
| just aggregate all its competition into one big blob, and
| you won't have any choice. Efficiencies of scale mean
| there's a natural pressure towards consolidation. The
| terminal state is always one blob that owns everything.
|
| Once they do, they can smash any new upstarts, by
| undercutting prices, or by just buying them too.
|
| > A corporation generally doesn't shoot dissatisfied
| customers.
|
| Sure does shoot dissatisfied union leaders though [1] and
| enslave children to farm cocoa [2], and take down a
| democratically elected government kickstarting a 36 year
| long civil war [3]. Also substantially all of the trans-
| atlantic slave trade [4, 5].
|
| These things were all allowed to happen because the
| governments in those respective jurisdictions weren't
| (and in the case of child slave labor, aren't) strong
| enough to stop them.
|
| The idea that "a corporation generally doesn't shoot
| dissatisfied [people]" is a privileged western position
| to take based on the current system working _pretty
| well_. In places that have weak government, your
| statement simply does not hold.
|
| [1] https://prospect.org/features/coca-cola-killings
|
| [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/business
| /hershe...
|
| [3] https://www.umbc.edu/che/tahlessons/pdf/historylabs/G
| uatemal...
|
| [4] https://www.britannica.com/topic/East-India-Company
|
| [5] https://dutchreview.com/culture/history/voc-dutch-
| east-india...
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "If you want a small government that is able to retain
| order and fairness, you must also limit the size of the
| companies within its purview. "
|
| Why does the government needs to be big (in size?).
|
| It just needs to be strong enough and really connected to
| its people it represents. Then also a very small country
| (with a small government) can set up and enforce clear
| rules on multinational companies, doing buisness within
| that country.
|
| The rules just need to be simple. If they are
| complicated, it just means, those with the best lawers
| will win and they are usually working for the
| corporations.
| ufmace wrote:
| I don't think the "responsibility" part is all that
| important. There are many points about it that can be
| argued, but I think the more important part is means.
|
| Private companies' only effective means to do anything
| are to produce a product that people freely choose to buy
| and attract people to work for them (absent a few rare
| exceptions).
|
| Governments have effectively unlimited means to compel
| people. They can spy on anyone, fine them, throw them in
| jail, kill them, all for as much and as long as they feel
| like.
| notJim wrote:
| That's not what national total wealth refers to. It refers
| to the wealth of all citizens.
|
| > National net wealth, also known as national net worth, is
| the total sum of the value of a nation's assets minus its
| liabilities. It refers to the total value of net wealth
| possessed by the citizens of a nation at a set point in
| time.
|
| Given that multi-national corporations exist, it seems
| obvious that companies will have greater wealth than
| nations.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| > Given that multi-national corporations exist, it seems
| obvious that companies will have greater wealth than
| nations.
|
| That doesn't follow because every non-totalitarian
| country has multiple corporations operating in it, in
| most countries a much larger number than the maximum
| number of countries a corporation could possibly operate
| in.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Market Cap is stupid.
|
| What's the value of 1 million shares of Amazon stock? If
| every single share of Amazon stock went on the market today,
| would it be worth share price * number of units? Hell no.
| SllX wrote:
| > Corporations should never be allowed to get this large.
|
| Make your case instead of dropping your groupthink
| everywhere. Why? And: What is the maximum size a corporation
| should be _allowed_ to grow? Who gives that permission now?
| ufmace wrote:
| Would also want to know, once you decide the maximum size
| of a corporation, exactly what happens to it once it
| exceeds that size, and who determines that it has infact
| exceeded it, and carries out whatever the plan is for what
| happens at that time.
| burkaman wrote:
| In the US, Congress decides the rules, the FTC and the
| Department of Justice decide when they believe a
| corporation is too large, and the court system decides if
| they're right. The corporation can then be stopped from
| acquiring other businesses, stopped from executing
| certain business practices, or broken up into smaller
| companies. Generally a judge ensures that the plan is
| carried out.
| burkaman wrote:
| Because money is power, corporations are not democratic,
| and putting so much power in the hands of one person or a
| handful of people is dangerous to society. I would also
| refer you to the entire history of US antitrust law, which
| will be hard for anyone to summarize in a comment. The
| whole field of competition law is a question of how to
| balance the rights of those running a business with the
| rights of those affected by the business. Often those
| rights conflict, and there is no way for the law to be
| "neutral", it has to take a position on how to strike the
| right balance.
|
| I don't have an answer for how to determine when a
| corporation is too large, it's a very difficult question
| that I am not qualified to answer. As for who determines
| that, I think a democratic government should decide. I
| disagree with how the current US government makes these
| decisions, but I still think it is the right organization
| for the job.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| > corporations are not democratic, and putting so much
| power in the hands of one person or a handful of people
| is dangerous to society.
|
| Citation needed. Democracy is not a sufficient nor even
| necessary requirement for prosperity or "good" in
| general.
| burkaman wrote:
| Not really possible to give you a citation, it's an
| opinion, or a philosophy. If you have a different idea of
| an ideal society, we're not going to cite our way to an
| agreement.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| If you're going to dictate an opinion over an entire
| social structure, then it better be proven to work. My
| idea of an ideal society has already been proven to work
| in the past (look at the Islamic Golden Age). However,
| many of those in power today won't allow it to happen
| since it is against their interests.
| woofie11 wrote:
| Perhaps.
|
| Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all
| the others. I'm a firm believer in continuing to innovate
| and improve governance. I don't think it's just an
| abstract philosophical argument. These things can be
| modeled with game theory (cite: The Dictator's Handbook).
|
| There are opinions and philosophies about evolution,
| vaccines, and lots of other things, but at the end of the
| day, those can be resolved through rational discourse.
|
| I'd like my government to look out for my interests. I'd
| like it to be competent and not corrupt. There are lots
| of ideas for how to get there, and I'm really not
| comfortable with the imperialism of democracy.
|
| China had good ideas with civil service exams, which
| select for competence. Aristotle and Confucius had good
| ideas around moral philosophy of rulers. Marx had some
| nice ideas too. They didn't play out as well in practice
| as capitalist democracy, but that doesn't mean we should
| toss up our hands, give up, and quit trying. Especially
| now that we have tools for corrupting democracy like
| never before, and conversely, ways to model governance
| like never before.
| beowulfey wrote:
| Well, one way to think about it is to consider what the
| effect of the growth might be. What good is a corporation
| doing getting that large? Who benefits from the amassing of
| so much wealth? Are they acting for the benefit of many
| people, or are they more like a black hole -- mindlessly
| absorbing money and growing over time?
|
| Certainly if a corporation can grow to get so large, it's
| hard to argue against it. It becomes a bit like a force of
| nature in that sense. But there are possibly repercussions
| to that, just as there would be repercussions if a black
| hole were to suddenly appear in our solar system.
| pgsimp wrote:
| So far, people seem to be benefitting from Amazon.
| nicoffeine wrote:
| > I do not believe that in the four administrations which
| have taken place, there has been a single instance of
| departure from good faith towards other nations. we may
| sometimes have mistaken our rights, or made an erroneous
| estimate of the actions of others, but no voluntary wrong
| can be imputed to us. in this respect England exhibits the
| most remarkable phaenomenon in the universe in the contrast
| between the profligacy of it's government and the probity
| of it's citizens. and accordingly it is now exhibiting an
| example of the truth of the maxim that virtue & interest
| are inseparable. it ends, as might have been expected, in
| the ruin of it's people. but this ruin will fall heaviest,
| as it ought to fall, on that hereditary aristocracy which
| has for generations been preparing the catastrophe. I hope
| we shall take warning from the example and crush in it's
| birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare
| already to challenge our government to a trial of strength,
| and to bid defiance to the laws of their country.
|
| --Thomas Jefferson, 1812 [1]
|
| When private power eclipses democratic power, you cease to
| have a democracy. You have a dominant
| aristocracy/oligopoly, which is not functionally different
| for 99% of the populace than a monarchy. Extremely large
| corporations are filled to the brim with powerful but
| incompetent people who got there through connections and
| political warfare instead of merit.
|
| A corporation should be allowed to grow until the point
| where they own enough of the government to make their own
| rules and avoid paying taxes like the rest of us. As soon
| as they do that, they should be split across state lines so
| there is more democratic control over their behavior, and
| they are small enough to audit and tax accordingly.
|
| [1] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-10
| -02-0...
| airstrike wrote:
| > Corporations should never be allowed to get this large.
|
| Ok, I'll bite. Why? It's not like there's some natural law
| against it, so you need to provide an argument for why you
| think they shouldn't.
| cj wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com
| +...
| andrewjl wrote:
| It's very hard for a corporation to get large without
| explicit or implicit government support. Truly competitive
| markets do not allow monopolies to develop in the long-
| term.
| TLightful wrote:
| I just thought of a new concept. I call it 'monopoly'. I'm
| going to write a book on it and sell it on Amazon.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| The obvious argument is the adage that "If a company's only
| goal is to grow at any cost it is not a company. It's a
| cancer." Secondary item is that a company of this scale has
| the ends and means to ward off any competitor and
| eventually set the wages for an industry. Companies scaling
| to this size is evidence that the taxation system is too
| lax and allows money to be funneled out of the loop.
|
| Think of it like a pool pump that has sprung a leak. It
| keeps sucking in but not pupping out into the pool, Amazon
| is amassing this money by NOT spending it on the economy.
| Eventually your pool will be stuck at the lowest line of
| the pump inlet.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > Amazon is amassing this money by NOT spending it on the
| economy
|
| as the sibling comment notes, amazon is not amassing
| money. rather, amazon has amassed value.
|
| you might want to familiarize yourself with what a
| corporate valuation is, and means.
| dantheman wrote:
| Amazon is amassing money by transforming the world and
| increasing efficiency. Everyone is richer, it's not a
| zero sum game.
| andrewjl wrote:
| Why is increasing efficiency always net good?
| mullingitover wrote:
| > Amazon is amassing this money by NOT spending it on the
| economy.
|
| Quite incorrect on this point, Amazon has pretty small
| cash reserves compared to peer tech companies. Even then,
| if Amazon were merely putting that money in the bank,
| where is it going? It's getting loaned out to other
| companies and consumers, who are spending it, investing
| it, etc via fractional reserve banking.
| [deleted]
| titzer wrote:
| > Corporations should never be allowed to get this large.
|
| This is partly why I left Google.
| cafed00d wrote:
| > It's $280.5 billion in revenue in 2019 put it above the GDP
| of Romania, Peru, Ukraine, etc.
|
| > Corporations should never be allowed to get this large.
|
| Or maybe we should convince a larger swath of humanity to
| unite behind an idea larger than "nationhood" or "my
| country".
| ep103 wrote:
| a larger organization... like a corporation?
| yourself92 wrote:
| Maybe I'm just pessimistic but I doubt that will happen
| until there is a clear existential crisis for humanity.
|
| It will always be a matter of "us vs them" it's just a
| matter of who is "us" or "them"
| splistud wrote:
| An existential crisis for humanity is absolutely NOT the
| kind of climate that would cause humans to stop valuing a
| nation, a people, a culture, or their ancestry. I would
| argue that it is only the benign environment that most
| humans have enjoyed for the last 60 years or so that has
| caused these values to mean less than they always have.
| WitCanStain wrote:
| A for-profit corporation seems like a terrible candidate
| for such a position.
| dantheman wrote:
| Why it actually provides things people want and is based
| on voluntary interaction.
| Jetrel wrote:
| The crux of the argument really focuses on that "for
| profit" bit, and that's really a conundrum in corporate
| governance. The problem isn't at all "corporations",
| which are just assemblies of humans for a common purpose,
| but is the specific, legally-arguable requirement that
| their ultimate purpose is maximizing profit. The
| contrasting idea is the "public benefit corporation",
| where you're (presumably? IANAL) legally obligated to
| funnel your profits back into doing the job of the
| business better).
|
| From a legal/ideological standpoint, this might be a
| powerful soft-pivot that would solve a lot of problems.
|
| There's a famous line from Walt Disney, during Disney's
| golden age, where he said "we don't make movies so we can
| make money - we make money, so we can make movies". That
| really hits at the heart of it.
|
| The interesting thing is that, to a large degree, most of
| the meaningful corporations that improve the world -
| despite nominally being for-profit companies, generally
| tend to operate halfways into public-benefit territory.
| Partly because the benefit provided by them is
| essentially what the owners are "buying for themselves".
| To put it in perspective - if you're an extravagantly
| wealthy patron who wants to - themselves - have animated
| films to watch, you can't just hire some off-the-shelf
| people to do it, because they don't exist unless an
| industry to train them, exists. There's not really a
| "more narrowly selfish" way to do it - you're best served
| by building some outfit like Disney to build a brain
| trust of people to produce what you want.
|
| Similarly with Amazon; sure, an extravagantly wealthy
| individual could probably accomplish the shipping part of
| it with personal couriers, but the information-gathering
| part of it where all the products-available-to-buy are
| laid in front of you as choices would be nearly
| impossible to match. Like, you could try to match it with
| some awful, personal, potemkin setup. But by the time you
| put in all of that effort ... I mean, you're basically
| already building what could be a business that could
| serve others, so you may as well.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| It doesn't have deep, grounding values.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Voluntary interaction plays a necessary but insufficient
| role in the existence of corporations of this size.
| viraptor wrote:
| It's only voluntary if they don't get too large. See:
| company stores. Or basically any megacorp in cyberpunk
| genre.
|
| Also it's can appear voluntary... "Sure you can pay 2x
| the cost for your insurance or you can get insurance,
| food, accommodation conveniently provided by Amazon"
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Some other effects of "voluntary interaction":
|
| "Concealment at scale is the secret to Amazon's success.
| Customers enjoy a seamless one-stop shop experience from
| the comfort of their homes. Out of sight is a ruthless
| game of regulatory arbitrage, as Amazon installs itself
| in low-tax jurisdictions and exploits legal loopholes
| around the world. Even further away from the customer
| lies Amazon's environmental impact, scorching frontline
| communities in the global south while executives in
| Seattle roll out their latest greenwashed PR campaign."
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/01/ama
| zon...
| IntelMiner wrote:
| How do you volunteer not to interact with a monopoly?
|
| Not saying Amazon IS a monopoly. But a "nation
| corporation" would effectively be company scrip on a much
| larger scale I suspect
| grey-area wrote:
| Until you consider that everyone is born into a quasi-
| feudal arrangement where they owe fealty and taxes to a
| country culture and government they didn't choose, and
| the only choices of leader are limited to those willing
| to climb the greasy pole of politics - typically self-
| selecting sociopaths.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| Consider all the horrors that large nations have
| inflicted on this world. You might conclude that they are
| an even worse fit for the position.
|
| In my country it is illegal not to subscribe to the state
| TV channel. The same cannot be said about Amazon Prime.
| godelski wrote:
| > In my country it is illegal not to subscribe to the
| state TV channel.
|
| Just curious: 1) What country 2) Do you have to pay?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Moreover, Politicians are largely corrupt and in pretty
| much every country, they have a bad rep. Why should they
| rally up the public to support them?
| frenchy wrote:
| So, replace our democracies with capitalistic
| dictatorships?
| bwship wrote:
| I would say in terms of anti-monopoly, that there is some
| natural cutoff that companies are forced to split. For
| instance, AWS and Amazon can easily be two separate companies
| as the missions and revenue streams of each are vastly
| different.
| dleslie wrote:
| It has 1.3 million employees and employs a great deal more
| through its distribution partnerships, sellers using Amazon
| storefront and so on. The amount of folks who rely on Amazon
| for their living is probably comparable to some of those
| countries you listed.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I think corporations should get absurdly large.
|
| You know, I'm saying things without substantiating them. No
| offense, but anti-Corp is cool these days. Virtue signaling
| without thinking on one's own.
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| Being pro too large to fail corps has always been
| suspicious.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Don't compare revenue to GDP. Especially for a low margin
| business.
| s3r3nity wrote:
| Yeah - the man is 57, and at this point does NOT have to work
| anymore...probably for the rest of his life.
|
| Looks like he still intends to run his philanthropies, Blue
| Origin, and the Post, but after the type of run he has had,
| he's probably taking some more free time while he's healthy.
|
| I try not to fall into the "cult of personality" trap, but
| Amazon is where it is _because_ of Bezos, and it'll be
| fascinating to watch how the transition plays out with the
| Jassy era.
| fossuser wrote:
| I think you pass the point of not having to work somewhere
| prior to 130B net worth.
|
| I'm worried about what happens to Amazon with Bezos gone. A
| good outcome would be something like Apple and Tim Cook. A
| bad one would be Microsoft and Ballmer, it will take a while
| to see which type this ends up being.
|
| Either way losing Bezos as CEO is a bummer.
| petre wrote:
| Don't know, but I like Gates better since he stepped down
| as MS CEO and brought positive change to more unfortunate
| people's lives. Maybe Bezos would do similar things?
|
| I don't like the press release, it keeps repeating Amazon
| every sentence. It's a tiring read, much Like Andy Warhol's
| repeating patterns. That alone pretty much says a lot about
| the current Jeff Bezos.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| You raise a great point. I did _not_ like Gates the CEO
| but I _deeply_ respect gates the Philanthropist. We can
| only hope Bezos turns out the same. I wonder how one
| could change the world with 130B dollars.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| > probably for the rest of his life. At a net worth of $1
| billion and assuming he lives to 100 that is $23 million
| dollars a year to spend, which reasonably, he could only
| spend around $5-10 Million if he tried.
|
| He is worth what, $150 Billion? By the fall he probably will
| be.
|
| He could find a group of 10,000 people of the same age, spit
| the money evenly and each person would have $340k per year, a
| large enough sum to reasonably travel all year long around
| the world for each person never working agin.
|
| Nobody should ever have a $1B worth.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Nobody should ever have a $1B worth.
|
| How does this work? Forced sale of assets? Who determines
| the market price of the assets, if they're not highly
| liquid?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| When you get issued stock options at a company, you
| immediately become liable for taxes on them, since they
| are treated as income. This is true even if there is no
| public market for the shares at that time (something that
| caused headaches for many early dotcom stock option
| grantees).
|
| It's is an obvious precedent for taxing somebody who has
| "received" wealth via the route that Bezos has done.
| creddit wrote:
| > When you get issued stock options at a company, you
| immediately become liable for taxes on them, since they
| are treated as income.
|
| This is false, right? It's only taxable on exercise. That
| or I know 1,000s of people at major companies that owe
| back taxes.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How about land? IP? Or a private company? Surely, only
| people that get issued options aren't subject to a $1B
| max.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| no need to set a max. Just set the marginal rate so high
| that earning (or, if a wealth tax, owning) more than some
| amount becomes pointless.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| And disincentivize people from working? That's not a
| sustainable economic system. For a properly sustainable
| system, consider how Islam solved this problem over 1400
| years ago. Zakat is the only form of "tax" if you will
| that is mandated. Interest and other predatory practices
| are prohibited (e.g. shorting). Once the fundamentals are
| correct, everything else naturally falls into place. It
| has been reported that during the rule of Umar II, there
| were no poor people left in Iraq to accept Zakat
| (charity) since everyone paid their share. It would be
| nice to see that happen again, but the modern financial
| system won't let it happen.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| One might argue that having $1B of assets (certainly
| _liquid_ assets) is a fairly major disincentive to
| working.
|
| High marginal tax rates on super-high levels of income
| and/or wealth doesn't discourage working. It just makes
| doing something to add another chunk to your
| income/wealth require something other than financial
| renumeration. There's plenty of evidence that humans do
| their best work when they have intrinsic and not
| extrinsic motivation.
|
| Bezos is a case in point. I believe him to have an almost
| absurdly high level of intrinsic motivation (I worked
| with him for 15 months). He might like the wealth he has,
| but the things he will continue to do with his life, just
| like Amazon itself, get done for reasons beyond money.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The question is how to determine the value of non liquid
| assets in order to implement a maximum wealth tax.
|
| Suppose I own land or a private company or a collection
| of copyrights that become very valuable. Who and how
| determines when it crosses the $1B threshold, and how am
| I brought under said threshold. What if the asset is not
| easily divisible?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| These are legitimate questions. In some ways they have
| analogs that have already been "solved" (perhaps not
| satisfactorily). Who and how determines the property tax
| you owe on a building or land? But I agree that these are
| not trivial to answer in satisfactory ways. Societies
| frequently have to come up with imperfect answers.
| vasco wrote:
| Why would you give that money to worse allocators of
| capital? He's generated 1.3 million jobs. How many jobs
| would you sacrifice in order to limit Bezos to whatever
| wealth cap you think is appropriate? By definition you will
| sacrifice them, so the question is at what cost is it too
| much and how much money is too much money? Also who decides
| that, is it you?
| anotherman554 wrote:
| The demand for products has generated 1.3 million jobs.
| It's a fallacy to think the jobs wouldn't exist without
| _this_ company or _this_ billionaire.
| dralley wrote:
| How are you measuring "efficient allocation of capital"?
|
| Amazon has been very successful at squeezing "efficiency"
| out of their employees, where "efficiency" is defined
| largely as abusive conditions and poor wages. While they
| may be a large employer in raw numbers, vast numbers of
| their employees depend on public assistance. UPS, USPS,
| and FedEx seem to pay consistently higher wages. And on
| top of that, like most "supermassive" companies, they are
| very "efficient" at dodging taxes.
|
| Yes, this is "efficiency" in the financial sense, but it
| is by no means net positive at the societal level.
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazons-
| turnove...
|
| https://www.ttnews.com/articles/amazon-thrives-fedex-
| deliver...
| bluedino wrote:
| How many companies has Amazon out out of business?
| mft_ wrote:
| "probably"?
| uptown wrote:
| "...probably for the rest of his life."
|
| Ya think?
| jozen wrote:
| If he buys a house in SV, he may end up bankrupt
| boringg wrote:
| Replace probably with "there's a chance" he won't have to
| work for the rest of his life....
|
| Assuming he has managed to figure out how to live forever
| ... at some point this wealth would get depleted.
| kayoone wrote:
| > at this point [he] does NOT have to work anymore...probably
| for the rest of his life.
|
| that was already true a long time ago, you don't need to be
| one of the wealthiest people on the planet before you don't
| have to work anymore.
| paxys wrote:
| Bezos's net worth was $12 billion after Amazon's IPO in 1997.
| Him and a dozen generations after him would be set for life
| on that much wealth. Whatever the reason for stepping away
| might be, it's definitely not money.
|
| As a company Amazon is definitely too big to fail at this
| point. Its fate will probably be like Google's after
| Page/Brin/Schmidt stepped away. In the worst case it will
| start to fade away in another decade or two.
| leipert wrote:
| With his wealth he doesn't need to work anymore since a long
| time. See e.g. here: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-
| wealth/
|
| In my opinion there is hardly a justification or a _need_ for
| an individual to own billions. But I think we haven't found a
| good way to redistribute money, apart from billionaires self-
| pledging to give their wealth away.
| redisman wrote:
| > I still remember when Amazon was only selling Books. People
| laughed
|
| Did we? I just remember thinking oh neat and buying a bunch of
| books.
| boringg wrote:
| I imagine he's pretty burnt out of running the day to day. Time
| for something new after 2 decades. Love or hate Amazon it has
| been a force on the planet.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Absolutely. I could see him shifting more in the Gates or
| Musk kinda life, funding more fun projects or philanthropies.
| Not gonna lie running Amazon after 20 decades probably isn't
| as fun as running an aerospace company or other pet projects.
| He probably has lots of ideas he wouldn't mind throwing money
| at and investing in.
| dang wrote:
| We've changed the URL to that from
| https://ir.aboutamazon.com/news-release/news-release-
| details.... Thanks!
| almost_usual wrote:
| All of that and he's probably exiting because he's jealous of
| Musks' success.
| [deleted]
| rainhacker wrote:
| I feel it can be an uncertain transition when a
| founder/entrepreneur steps down, and an employee of the company
| takes the place. Looking forward to how Amazon will evolve under
| the new leadership.
| astrojams wrote:
| I worked for AWS for a few years under Andy. He's a good pick for
| CEO of that company.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| without Andy (and AWS), I'd posit that Jeff would just be
| another regular old billionaire who'd own a sports team, but
| otherwise folks would not know much about.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Ask outside tech bubble and 9/10 never even heard of AWS,even
| though half of the things they use run on it. The retail
| front-end is the PR, while AWS is a magic money tree.
| Slump wrote:
| I mostly agree but I also think AWS is probably more in the
| public consciousness than most people would think (in the
| US anyway). They have TV advertisement slots with NFL for
| crying out loud. That said, most people probably don't
| actually know what it is, just that they've heard of it.
|
| As "cloud" and "AI" become more and more accepted generic
| terms for technology to the public and I think AWS may even
| over take the PR position.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Fair point,I was commenting from European point of
| view,where tech companies are often invisible,apart from
| maybe Google or Apple with their ads plastered all over
| the place.I reckon an average American is more likely to
| tell what Oracle or AWS is just purely because of the
| amount of ads they've been exposed to, compared to an
| average European
| edanm wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you're wrong.
|
| Most people have no idea what AWS is, but know what Amazon
| the consumer business is.
|
| AWS is only well known among tech circles.
| karmasimida wrote:
| > Most people have no idea what AWS is
|
| Actually no. Most people I know even not in Tech, know
| Amazon has this 'cloud' business. Whether they know it is
| called AWS or not, is different.
| Axsuul wrote:
| I think OP was alluding to the cash cow that AWS has
| become.
| rileyphone wrote:
| AWS has been buying a zillion ads in NFL games, not
| entirely sure why but it's hard to ignore.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I kind of agree. But without AWS, Amazon could never have
| become the Amazon that we know today. AWS brings in the
| vast majority of the profits (sometimes >100%) for Amazon,
| despite being a modest proportion of revenue (~10%).
|
| This is what generates the funding necessary for Amazon to
| do the crazy things that make Amazon amazing. Amazon - AWS
| = digital Walmart. Big and profitable, but not Amazon.
| dimator wrote:
| I think gp means that bezos would not be a mega billionaire
| without aws. He would be like any other nameless CEO in the
| public's knowledge.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| without AWS would Amazon have been able to dominate?
| paxys wrote:
| While regular consumers may not know what AWS is, Amazon's
| core business was able to sustain losses for 10+ years only
| because of profits coming from there.
| randomsearch wrote:
| I see the future of Amazon as ~ 100% AWS. Do you think this
| will change that outcome?
| tinyhouse wrote:
| How did you get to that conclusion?
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Spending too much time around other developers.
|
| In the current environment, E-commerce is a less
| interesting space for startup founders vs. cloud SW. This
| led parent commenter to assume the cloud is more important
| than E-commerce.
|
| This is a fallacy, of course, since E-commerce is probably
| the largest / most important market on the internet, it
| just doesn't FEEL that way b/c Amazon has an unprecedented
| control over nearly the entire thing.
| treis wrote:
| AWS has 40 billion in revenue, 12 billion in profit and
| is growing 30% YoY. It's got great profit margins, huge
| lock in, and is a natural monopoly. Not sure how much it
| would be worth on the open market, but wouldn't surprise
| me that it's 50%+ of Amazon's market cap.
| paxys wrote:
| I'd say AWS + first-party products and services (Prime Video,
| Echo, Kindle, Grocery delivery). I can definitely see their
| pure retail business take more and more of a back seat as
| time goes on.
| treis wrote:
| Could even see it breaking up at some point. Retail,
| Consumer Tech, and AWS. There's no real tie between AWS and
| the rest of Amazon at this point. In fact, it might be a
| liability as competitors of Amazon retail & Consumer tech
| don't want to use AWS.
| DoctorNick wrote:
| Will he stop immiserating the warehouse workers that work for
| them?
| missedthecue wrote:
| a living wage (as defined by the internet's favorite vermont
| politician) is immiserating?
| dr-detroit wrote:
| Hes going to buy Mar A Lago and urinate on all the linens
| screencap this post
| ww520 wrote:
| Wow. I still remember when Amazon started as an online bookstore
| selling books and people kind of laughed at the idea, and the
| time Amazon kept losing money and refused to post an earning and
| people got mad. Amazing long game.
| jl2718 wrote:
| Interestingly, it seemed at the time that books were just about
| the least exciting things being sold on the Internet, and the
| shipping costs looked fatal to the business. You could buy just
| about anything, and everybody was going out of business trying
| to compete on big ticket items like electronics and movies and
| games and beanie babies. Not much competition on books online
| (anybody remember the "Duwamish book store demo" from
| Microsoft?). It seems to me that he looked way out and thought
| about how things would be done 20 years hence, regardless of
| what made sense at the time, and chose to start on the piece of
| that future with the weakest competition.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| By his words[1] it was because books had a large possible
| inventory, allowing him to build a store larger than any one
| physical store could manage.
|
| Though i imagine a lot of reasons justified books.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| There was competition. Bookstacks.com had been in business
| with a telnet-only interface for more than a year before
| Amazon.
|
| As noted by others, the shipping cost-to-item-average-cost
| ratio is precisely why Jeff chose books to start with. But
| yes, he also looked way out (even if he couldn't see as
| clearly as some people seem to think he could).
| orev wrote:
| Shipping books was/is one of the cheapest things to ship, as
| they need minimal packaging, and the USPS offers a special
| media mail rate. This allowed him to work out all the
| logistics behind the scenes, and then make incremental
| improvements to handle other products.
| [deleted]
| zhdc1 wrote:
| I was a (young) kid when I overheard a news report making fun
| of an internet bookstore calling itself Amazon.
|
| It's amazing what he's been able to do. Good for him.
| fugazithehaxoar wrote:
| $15 minimum wage is not something to be proud of. That's just
| over $30k a year. If you know someone that makes that little, you
| know how personally unsustainable that level of income is.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea,
| and it had no name._
|
| Jeff's pitch at the time (1997); so on point, so precise:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM
|
| > _The question I was asked most frequently at that time was,
| "What's the internet?" Blessedly, I haven't had to explain that
| in a long while._
|
| Here's Jeff explaining the Internet (at a TED talk):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMKNUylmanQ
|
| > _Invention. Invention is the root of our success. We've done
| crazy things together, and then made them normal... If you get it
| right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing
| has become normal. People yawn. And that yawn is the greatest
| compliment an inventor can receive._
|
| Jeff speaking about innovation, invention (based on first
| principles), making data-driven decisions (and also when to not
| trust data), learned helplessness at Stanford (2005):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhnDvvNS8zQ
|
| > _When times have been good, you've been humble._
|
| Heh. Reminds me of this 2008 lecture where Jeff is selling AWS to
| startup school students:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKfFHuouzA Classic.
|
| > _Amazon couldn't be better positioned for the future. We are
| firing on all cylinders, just as the world needs us to._
|
| Not sure about that last part, Jeff.
|
| So long, and thanks for all the fish.
| draw_down wrote:
| Good grief.
| techlatest_net wrote:
| And here is the video from 1999 [1] showing his obsession with
| customer which is why customer support is in the DNA of Amazon
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxwjzVW7z5o
| afavour wrote:
| I'd argue that the customer experience of Amazon has declined
| dramatically in the last few years. Maybe there should be
| more internal viewings of that video.
| ValentineC wrote:
| I agree. Amazon's upper management should really do a
| mystery shopping exercise themselves to see how
| dysfunctional their (both Amazon.com's and AWS's) support
| has become.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Might be hard to change anything when you have a core
| metric that looks like this:
|
| https://www.google.ca/search?q=amazon&tbm=fin
| judge2020 wrote:
| Link is broken.
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| Do people do any analysis anymore or do they just repeat
| memes? i.e. "we put the customer first".
|
| For reference, I'm someone who hadn't used amazon (i'm in
| Australia, and I've just had no need). These holidays was my
| first real experience with the amazon brand and the amazon
| website.
|
| What I saw was an incredibly user hostile site: reviews
| mashed together from all over the world, and you can't even
| be sure whether they're reviewing the right product or the
| seller. Search that doesn't work and you're never really sure
| what you're getting and from whom. I was searching for
| keyboard trays and it quickly became apparent various
| products were all the same but just re-labelled cheap chinese
| output.
|
| When I went to check out, i had at least 3 dark patterns
| encountered where Amazon was directly trying to screw me:
| trying to trick me to sign up for prime, promising free
| shipping on the click but then default you out of it when you
| check out until you go searching for it, and continually
| spamming me with offers for whatever their streaming service
| is.
|
| They weren't "customer first", they were actively customer
| hostile. I don't understand how this keeps getting repeated,
| unless their tech side is completely different from their
| consumer side...
| victor106 wrote:
| That video is pure gold. Lots of lessons you can use even
| today for any business.
| ciupicri wrote:
| Amazon's customer support is mediocre at best. I tried to buy
| something from them and the card transaction failed because I
| had some protections in place. Instead of them trying again,
| they asked for all kinds of documents to prove the ownership.
| I sent them a receipt from a local store, but it wasn't good
| enough for them. I guess they don't want my money :-)
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