[HN Gopher] Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
___________________________________________________________________
Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
Author : marc__1
Score : 1889 points
Date : 2021-02-02 21:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.aboutamazon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.aboutamazon.com)
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _As Amazon became large, we decided to use our scale and scope
| to lead on important social issues. Two high-impact examples: our
| $15 minimum wage and the Climate Pledge._
|
| Perhaps I'm overly cynical, but I don't think they made these
| moves because of altruism. They do pay their warehouse employees
| more than some warehouses, and people talk about changing jobs to
| work at Amazon because the pay is better. But they also talk
| about how demanding/grueling it is. I'm not sure Amazon could get
| people to do this work, for this many hours on end (in some cases
| allegedly without sufficient bathroom breaks) for less than
| $15/hr.
|
| As for the climate, I think they would have been clobbered by
| environmentalists had they not done this. So while it's good that
| they pay their employees more than minimum wage, and they make
| efforts to reduce their environmental footprint, I view both of
| these moves as being in service of the bottom line.
| [deleted]
| astrange wrote:
| Amazon was paying less than $15 minimum pretty recently; they
| changed after Bernie started yelling at them, although I'm sure
| they figured it was a win-win anyway.
|
| Before that I think they had an adaption of the pay scale for
| higher-earning employees where part of compensation was in
| stock. But if you're making minimum wage you probably don't
| want to deal with selling shares, waiting for vesting,
| reporting taxes etc.
|
| > As for the climate, I think they would have been clobbered by
| environmentalists had they not done this.
|
| For a tech company moves like this are critical for hiring.
| Amazon's reputation has always been a place to work out of
| college until your shares vest, and then you quit because
| management is abusing you. So they probably would like to be
| thought of as less evil.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Looks like they announced their $15 minimum wage in 2018. The
| Wired subhead is telling: "The company didn't act purely out
| of the goodness of its heart."
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/why-amazon-really-raised-
| minimum...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Everything they do in service of that to some extent, or they'd
| not be able to function. That balancing act is hard to get
| right.
| PointyFluff wrote:
| "So long, thanks for all the fish"?
| 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
| reilly3000 wrote:
| Hi Paul, I :heart: JACK and spend lots with Amazon, cheers.
|
| I wonder if you have an opinion on this bit of gossip: Is there
| any relationship between Jeff's departure and this FTC Tips
| scandal? https://komonews.com/news/local/amazon-took-
| away-62-million-... The only evidence I see is relating to
| their very similar timing of publication.
| not_knuth wrote:
| Coincidentally, I saw this recently:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25671097
|
| Giving it the benefit of the doubt, I could not help but wonder
| if this was the Usenet post you saw back in the day that made
| you apply for a job at Amazon :)
| exadeci wrote:
| >Your compensation will include meaningful equity ownership.
|
| I'd wonder how much that's worth today.
| 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.
| benatkin wrote:
| Now he can make it redirect to blueorigin.com - or not. IDK.
| nytesky wrote:
| I believe Bezos was a huge fan of Shackleton's Endurance
| expedition; so it could have been homage to that.
| 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.
| gxqoz wrote:
| There are a couple of institutions in the Seattle area
| that have pretty good generic domain names, presumably
| because of the tech connections in the area. For
| instance, the Washington State Fair has the domain
| thefair.com.
| mmmrtl wrote:
| Local zoo is zoo.org!
| gxqoz wrote:
| Oh yeah, forgot about that one.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Imagine the Seafair pirates or Almost Live! shaking
| everyone down for domain names.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| IIRC amazon bought-out diapers.com; it was certainly
| _some_ diaper startup that they are accused of using
| predatory pricing against.
| 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]
| rexreed wrote:
| By any chance do you remember virtumall.com?
| rsync wrote:
| Cutco ... Interslice ...
| abhiyerra wrote:
| I thought it was endless.com that also redirects to
| Amazon.com
| spullara wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless.com
| davidrupp wrote:
| "Bezos and his wife grew fond of another possibility:
| Relentless.com. Friends suggested that it sounded a bit
| sinister. But something about it must have captivated Bezos:
| he registered the URL in September 1994, and he kept it. Type
| Relentless.com into the Web today and it takes you to
| Amazon." -- Stone, Brad. The Everything Store (p. 31).
| Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.
|
| N.B.: "Today", in the context of that quote, is ca. 2013,
| when the book was published. relentless.com redirected to
| amazon.com for me this morning (2021-02-03).
| tybit wrote:
| I've also heard this and still think `relentless` is the best
| way to describe Amazon's behaviour I've heard, love em or
| hate em.
| croes wrote:
| And one of Bezos first ideas for a name was Relentless.
| cercatrova wrote:
| relentless.com redirects to Amazon.com
| 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.
| eganist wrote:
| The former, probably not. But the latter fits within the
| context of "21st century Sears"
| breakfastduck wrote:
| The internet - the only place you can find a snarky comment
| doubting the validity of a statement made by the actual 2nd
| ever employee of Amazon, who knows infinitely more about what
| Jeff Bezos wanted to achieve than the doubting commenter.
| 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.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Well the way they're adding services I suppose they could
| make a "paper" version of it soon.
|
| Would be a fun conceptual project
| 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.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| How early do you mean by early? I remember Amazon at campus
| recruiting (Cornell, 2000) describing something akin to AWS
| and LoudCloud came up. I asked what business a bookstore
| had to do with outsourced computing and recall a fair bit
| of vision even at the time.
|
| In light of what we now know, I'm the only one who didn't
| have sufficient vision...for not pursuing that job
| opportunity more seriously.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I was at amazon from 1994-1996. That's what I mean by
| "early".
| nly wrote:
| Apologies if this question is a bit in the nose, but why
| did you leave?
| biztos wrote:
| Thanks, appreciate the reply from an authoritative voice.
| wuschel wrote:
| > ps. amazon employee #2
|
| I hope it worked out for you! Early days employees bear a high
| risk.
|
| How was Amazon back then when only a handful people ran the
| show? Any lessons to be learned?
| acvny wrote:
| Probably `Cadabra` came from `Abracadabra`:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abracadabra
| polynomial wrote:
| What did his lawyer have against "Cadabra"?
|
| Offhand it sounds a bit too close to cadaver for the marketing
| dept, but what would a legal objection be?
| suyash wrote:
| So Cadabra came from Abra-Ca-Dabra is it?
| redthrowaway wrote:
| >ps. amazon employee #2
|
| Please tell me you held onto your stock
| 2rsf wrote:
| 90% of startups fail, in Las Vegas you have a 14% chance to
| win now make your choice. I sold my stocks (not Amazon but a
| very early employee at a small company that still exist and
| somewhat profitable) as soon as I could and ended up selling
| at an all time high so YMMV
| codezero wrote:
| Put into perspective that the dot boom happened around
| 1999-2001 and the dot bomb set in hard by 2003. Between 1996
| and through that roller coaster people went through a lot,
| and since then there have now been two financial crises in
| the US, one ongoing.
|
| It probably doesn't feel good to be asked this question. I
| say this as an early employee of three startups.
| danans wrote:
| Why would it matter if they didn't? All they would have if
| they held it is more money on top of the gobs they already
| had.
|
| When you have that kind of money, if you want to grow it the
| surer strategy is to invest in lots of stuff, not keep it all
| sunk in your previous employer. It's probably more fun too.
|
| And beyond a certain point that stock and the accompanying
| valuation in AMZ probably isn't so gratifying in itself, and
| unless one has a juvenile obsession with out net-worthing
| others, you need to find something more personally meaningful
| to do with it, whether that is start a new industry (Elon
| Musk) or address pressing global health issues (Bill Gates).
| It sounds like the GP has spent some of his funding free
| software.
| 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.
| mypalmike wrote:
| Perl will never die at Amazon. So much build and deploy
| tooling is still glued together by Perl.
| zoover2020 wrote:
| Config files! And Gurupa, right?
| chrshawkes wrote:
| Awesome. Thank you for responding!
| teh_klev 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".
|
| This seems like nitpicking. Lots of projects start out with
| long forgotten names. I'm involved in one that's pretty
| successful, but you can see from the code base the name evolved
| over time (~15 years). Codenames and attempts at product
| placing in the market evolve, stuff becomes myth or forgotten.
| I can absolve Bezos (this once) of not remembering exactly what
| that embryonic Amazon was to begin with, or was called, because
| it was ~25 years ago, probably during a period of great
| turmoil.
|
| And the tone of this comment feels like someone who checked out
| of the company too early and feels a bit sour at doing so. I
| say this as a single digit employee who could have made a small
| fortune a couple of times but either bottled it, or the gig
| wasn't right for me. I missed out on some nice payouts, but I'm
| not that sour about it. It was my choice.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I have _ZERO_ regrets about checking out of Amazon when I
| did. I 've had an awesome life, raising my daughter, writing
| a DAW, living. I want for nothing, really.
|
| There's a lot of historical revisionism regarding the early
| history of corporations. Claiming, specifically, as Jeff did,
| that 27 years ago (1994) that he had no name for his idea is
| ... not really true. It's likely true that when he actually
| started working out what the business might be, he didn't
| have a name. But who does?
|
| Does it matter? Obviously that depends on your perspective.
| Probably not much. But it's not even particularly hard to
| read up on the early history (e.g. Brad Stone's "Get Big
| Fast"), so memory is not really required.
| hartator wrote:
| > This seems like nitpicking.
|
| I don't know if it's nitpicking. If it's true that the Amazon
| #2 employee took time to post this here, Jeff Bezos should
| have remembered and be precise in his speech.
| teh_klev wrote:
| > Jeff Bezos should have remembered
|
| Who cares? It's getting into deep time (internet-wise),
| memories fade, do we care, I don't despite opening my first
| Amazon account ~1998. It was called "something", big deal.
| Not everyone has photographic memories of these things,
| perhaps Paul does, but wasn't asked to recall those
| memories. Again, who cares? And they might have worked
| through twenty other names after Paul left. I'm 54 I would
| have trouble remembering exact details of important things
| from 25 years ago, and Jeff is older than me, so give the
| guy a break, it's likely off of his event horizon until he
| writes "the book".
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| 1) The name "Amazon.com" was chosen in 1994 (or possibly
| January 1995). 2) Subsequently, the company never
| considered any other name 3) I'm older than you and Jeff
| 4) I don't have a photographic memory 5) I've been asked
| twice in court, on Amazon's behalf, to remember things
| that happened/took place/were done back then.
|
| [ EDIT: added "subsequently" for clarity ]
| teh_klev wrote:
| Ok fine, but in your original post you don't provide any
| dates, and you assert that:
|
| > It had a name, and that name was "Cadabra".
|
| Now you're saying something different. So it's one thing
| or another. Maybe just clarify the "when" of these things
| as you remember them. Not having a go at you.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| This seems like nitpicking.
|
| Especially because "Amazon" being chosen in '94 doesn't
| mean Cadabra wasn't the name it was chosen to replace.
| How is Paul "saying something different"?
| melomal wrote:
| I read somewhere that there was also a mention of calling it
| 'Relentless'. I'll do my best to remember where it was that I
| read this.
| stefap2 wrote:
| Is it true he used doors as tables to save money ? :)
| krisfreedain wrote:
| Yes. :) Here is an interesting link / video about it:
| https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/how-a-door-
| became...
| frombody wrote:
| This is something that literally everyone that owns a garage
| and saw horses does.
|
| In fact having saw horses and a flat surface in your garage
| is superior to having a regular table, because all the pieces
| are easily movable.
|
| Nobody is going to ask you, why are there saw horses and a
| door in your garage, but they will ask you why you have a
| table in your garage.
| broknbottle wrote:
| That's still true for the most part.
| knuthsat wrote:
| Was employee #1 (not at AMZN) and saw the origin story change
| in front of my eyes.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| What advice would you have for us solo founders in terms of
| maintaining healthy relations with our first employees?
|
| I won't ask what Jeff did wrong for obvious reasons, but what
| did he do really well?
|
| I loved your other comment on here about living a fulfilled
| life. Thanks for sharing.
| richardknop wrote:
| > ps. amazon employee #2
|
| Oh wow that's nice. Yeah, Amazon was definitely a better name
| choice.
| 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.
| OrbitRock wrote:
| And nowadays if you're trying to search something related to
| the Amazon rainforest Amazon.com stuff comes up first...
| ma2rten wrote:
| It seems like amazon was started around the same time as
| lycos, yahoo, altavista. Pets.com was started 3 years later.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I wonder if the browsers themselves weren't responsible for
| the reversal of this trend. Back in the day, if you typed
| something into address bar, there wasn't a "fallback to
| search" like we have today.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Well, some older browsers would try slapping .com at the
| end, and adding www at the start too, if no domain was
| found...
|
| So just typing sex could be fruitful...
| purple_ferret wrote:
| Except Yahoo was already one of the biggest names on the
| internet and it was a head scratcher to everyone I knew on
| first hear.
| kevstev wrote:
| I think you are leaving out a really important aspect of the
| early internet- content discovery was really hard for users.
| If you were looking for something about Pets until google
| became dominant, you were just as likely, if not more likely,
| to type pets.com into your browser as you were to go to a
| search engine.
|
| Getting the initial traffic to your site was really hard in
| those days, the domain was _really_ important for that.
| iso1631 wrote:
| If you weren't in yahoo you weren't online
|
| On the other hand if you were in yahoo you were online.
| Type "books" into yahoo though and you'd be more likely to
| find books.com than amazon.com as the top page, and clearly
| "books.com" would sell books, who knows what "amazon.com"
| sells, something about Brazilian rivers?
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I used AltaVista and Hotbot all the time, as well as other
| search engines and curated pages, and there was no problem
| finding things. I believe most people used search engines
| and aggregation pages since entering the address in the
| browser bar would simply yield an error if you entered it
| wrong. Connecting the address bar to a search engine is
| fairly recent and was disputed a lot.
|
| Google did nothing particularly innovative or new, they
| just had the cleanest interface, their page was fast, and
| provided good results. That's what made them successful.
|
| _Edit: On a side note, I feel really old now. :(_
| rusk wrote:
| Google had the best results by far. I remember around
| 2000 most "regular people" had pretty much given up on
| the web. It was google and maybe Napster that got people
| interested again...
|
| I wonder what it'll be to fix the Internet this time
| around?
| mathewsanders wrote:
| I also used Altavista and Hotbot (although I don't
| remember why I could choose one over the other for a
| certain search).
|
| I do remember one point of difference was Google's "I'm
| feeling lucky" option that just sent you to the first
| search result.
|
| I really liked that feature, but I'm guessing was removed
| in favor of growing impressions and ad revenues.
| autokad wrote:
| Altvista's edge over the competition at the time was that
| it indexed the most content. But google came in with
| pagerank and had superior results. There was a 3 year
| span or so where people just attributed google's success
| to minimalism. in terms of minimalism, hotbot was a
| disaster, but it was the algorithm that truly set google
| apart.
|
| minimalism has its good points, but falsely attributing
| it to google's success probably focused too much
| attention to it in the internet of the 2010s.
| iorrus wrote:
| Exactly, the single feature that made me use google over
| yahoo/altavista was the clean interface, I was using dial
| up back then and it loaded very quickly the others were
| covered in ads.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| I can totally second this as someone who began surfing web
| in 1997 as a university student.
|
| Content discovery was next to non-existent. You had these
| directories like Y! or Lycos which more or less mirrored
| yellow pages. My group of friends would exchange
| interesting site links over e-mail, floppy disk or the good
| old way, write them down in a note book. Before you ask,
| internet surfing was only available in expensive public
| kiosks so browser book marks weren't of much use. Only when
| I got my own PC + internet in 2000 did I began using
| browser bookmarks.
|
| And then Google became popular around 2002 just when I
| entered post-graduation and changed web surfing forever.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| People were commonly using Lycos and Yahoo as search
| engines by 1997. Sure, some of the more exciting content
| wasn't stuff you'd think to search for and thus would
| often get shared via word of mouth (like the "Bert is
| evil" site that parodied the Sesame Street character in
| compromising photos...after all, which sane persons would
| search "Bert +hitler" ?)
|
| I think the limited time many people had on the internet
| (as you said, in some instances at Internet kiosks where
| you'd be limited to an hour at a time. Or on expensive
| dial up) probably contributed to people curating and
| sharing links offline between friends. But I do remember
| using search engines in that era specifically because
| AltaVista was widely regarded between myself and my peers
| to be the best search engine in terms of keyword syntax
| and the accuracy of the results. Remember this was the
| era before search engines popularised entering in natural
| language as a search query. Ask Jeeves (later renamed to
| just "Ask") was actually the first to popularise that and
| even that was pre-2000 (it also largely sucked compared
| to keyword driven queries but I guess the tech wasn't
| quiet there yet).
|
| I think it was 1999 when my friends and I first
| discovered Google. Back then Google was keyword query
| based too. The natural language side of Google came much
| later (mid-2000s at a guess). But what sold Google was
| its minimalist home page and the accuracy of its results.
| The minimalist home page was novel because search engines
| were considered internet portals before Google. Yahoo!
| Would have online games, chat rooms, site recommendations
| and email all accessible from its landing page and it was
| a similar story for many of the other search engines as
| well. They considered themselves the homepage of the
| internet (and in many ways they were right). Whereas
| Google went the opposite way and said "let's strip as
| much guff from our landing page as possible" and is modem
| uses really welcomed that (plus the accuracy of its
| results too). It's ironic just how heavy Google's landing
| page has become.
|
| By 2000 the web had already felt like it had shifted from
| its adolescent years of anything goes and was starting to
| grow up. The stigma of meeting strangers online was
| fading and businesses were adopting the web as more than
| just a niche marketing tool - in part helped by Online
| payments becoming a thing with PayPal, WorldPay etc.
| chx wrote:
| If memory serves, we started searching on AltaVista,
| moved to Northern Light and then to Google. Certainly
| directories played a role but really, AltaVista / NL was
| the bees knees.
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| > Yahoo! Would have online games, chat rooms, site
| recommendations and email all accessible from its landing
| page and it was a similar story for many of the other
| search engines as well. They considered themselves the
| homepage of the internet (and in many ways they were
| right).
|
| Still a winning business model, because this line could
| easily describe Facebook.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| That's more a symptom of the lifestyle of any popular
| software project than it is an example of it being a
| winning business model.
|
| Time and time again you see these big monolithic
| applications get displaced by newer more focused
| applications and people love them because these newer
| applications run faster / is easier to use / etc etc.
| Then as those applications gain popularity new features
| need to be built to continue growth. Whether it is
| through feature requests, to fight off competitors with
| other features, or just the businesses way of finding new
| ways to look individuals into a walled garden....soon
| this focused application becomes yet another behemoth
| that people start to moan about. Eventually something
| new, shiny and focused grabs the public's attention and
| we flock to that like the fickle herd of pack animals
| that we are.
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| Speaking of yellow pages, I had an Internet-specific
| yellow pages, I think it came from an order from
| Outpost.com. It was a physical book, just like the
| original phone book.
|
| I think I still have it, and if I can find it I'll reply
| with details.
|
| It was fantastic for finding things, because you could
| explore it, and because search was garbage back then.
| janlaureys wrote:
| This brought back a long lost memory of when before we
| had internet at home. My dad took me to an internet cafe
| and I had printed a whole list beforehand of sites I
| wanted to visit. I had just guessed a bunch of random
| domain names based on my interests and things I thought
| would have a cool website. Stuff like porshe.com,
| titanic.com, mountainbiking.com, spaceshuttle.com.
| u801e wrote:
| > the early internet- content discovery was really hard for
| users.
|
| It wasn't as good as google is now, but search engines of
| the time did allow for discovery.
| iorrus wrote:
| I thought it was much better back then, you could find
| niche sites that were of interest.
|
| Google seems to have banned all the interesting wild
| content that made the internet so fascinating in its
| early days. Blogs seem to have disappeared completely for
| instance and I have to specify the site to search to find
| anything e.g. site:Reddit.com
|
| However it does have an amazing ability to find comments
| on stackoverflow relevant to my needs based on a few
| keywords.
| asdefghyk wrote:
| In about 1994 I recall the aim was to find a good page of
| links to whatever topic interested a person.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Oh yeah, I remember discovering some great content from
| pages like that back in the day. I also vaguely remember
| the idea of content rings being a thing.
| eloisant wrote:
| This, also search engines used to give a lot of weight to
| workds in domains so if you searched for "book", the search
| engine was likely to give you books.com as first result.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| To that end, it's worth reading up on the history of
| sex.com. The domain historically (and currently?) generates
| tonnes of revenue through advertising, and has been
| hijacked more than once.
| TMWNN wrote:
| I wonder if it's because people are likely to try
| `sex.com` in a web browser for laughs (and get surprised
| when it turns out to be a real site), but aren't likely
| to do so with `books.com` or `travel.com`.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| there used to be (sadly not anymore) a very active forum
| on fuckyou.com and it was mostly populated by people that
| had just randomly typed it in one day.
| toyg wrote:
| You have too much trust in people's wholesomeness. We all
| know the internet is for pr0n ("...so grab your d##k and
| double-click...").
| codezero wrote:
| This is somewhat second hand but I worked with someone
| who claimed to know the person who owned sex.com (he was
| trying to buy it from him at the time, and I'm trying to
| be deliberately un-assertive) in the mid 90s (also fair
| warning, this was a long time ago and I probably
| misremember stuff) and said he paid a ton of money in
| bribes to the search engines/portals back then - which
| was what most people assumed, but those companies
| insisted wasn't true, so it fit a narrative people liked.
|
| I don't think sex.com was an expected direct hit back
| then - and if I'm remembering correctly, even in the
| later 90s, you would have had to type http://www.sex.com
| to get it to even load right - there wasn't a ton of
| convenience and most browsers relied on a heavy set of
| built-in bookmarks to get people into portals and search
| engines.
|
| That said, I believe it was totally true that they likely
| paid six or seven figures for a year or longer deal to
| guarantee top three for a ton of porn search terms. I
| assume that area was allowed to be seedy in order to
| mitigate risk of even allowing that content to be
| included in the first place, and companies didn't feel
| bad getting money from porn sites who had a lot to throw
| around.
| ryanlol wrote:
| > and if I'm remembering correctly, even in the later
| 90s, you would have had to type http://www.sex.com to get
| it to even load right
|
| This wasn't a technical requirement though, sex.com
| would've loaded just fine if it had an A record set.
| codezero wrote:
| Many sites didn't do this right even large ones and often
| browsers if my memory serves right automatically put www
| and .com on any single word typed by default. That said
| yes, that should have worked, I just remember it not
| working enough that it wasn't a normal or expected UX
| pattern until Google and maybe even Chrome.
| codezero wrote:
| Should add that as I understood it the business model was
| that sex.com resold front page space to affiliates that
| were relevant to the search terms that led to their paid
| listing being listed higher for a particular keyword.
| That's how they could afford to bribe/partner with
| portals/search engines pre-Google.
|
| For context, squatters would often land you on some bad
| sites and URI syntax was unforgiving, so it just isn't
| something I remember most doing. There was a general
| desire for simple branding on the off chance you can get
| it typed in or printed on a business card or in an ad,
| but it was not the common entry point.
|
| Also of note: UX expectations back then didn't trust
| typing into a box and seeing any result first - it really
| was the solid ranking of Google results that made that UX
| something browser vendors adopted or more cynically, that
| Google pushed first with partnerships then with ownership
| of Chrome.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Pre-2000 porn was a wild ride. You were never more that 1
| click away from crashing your computer under the weight
| of a hundred pop ups!
| codezero wrote:
| And the implicit threat of your bank "outing" you via the
| transaction if you try to cancel. I may be misremembering
| but I felt like there was a good chance what I was
| viewing legally may end up suddenly illegal with the way
| online legislation was going in the late 90s, and I'm
| talking just like laughably soft core stuff by comparison
| to today, and that permeated the online porn business and
| kept it seedy for a long time.
| dialamac wrote:
| No idea what you're talking about. There was the run up
| to the communications decency act and obscenity
| prosecutions but these were far more risky for the
| peddlers, not the consumers (and some were prosecuted).
| There was the old hilarious CP80 initiative by the
| Mormons (with a nice tie-in to the SCO v Linux debacle)
| but that never had any serious legs to stand on.
| Meanwhile discreet billing for naughtiness predates the
| internet and was especially notable in the days of 900
| numbers - assuring discretion was pretty well stated.
| Considering that child porn was essentially legal and you
| could walk into adult stores in broad daylight on Times
| Square not too long ago I think you are misremembering
| things or probably too young for context.
|
| What changed is the cultural mainstream acceptance.. that
| something like PornHub can be a mainstream company. The
| market itself was alive and well pretty much the day
| after the movie camera left Menlo Park.
| codezero wrote:
| Probably an age thing I was a teen in the 90s and the
| internet was the first and only place any porn
| legislation/business was made aware to me.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Back in the early days 94/95 people quite often used to
| type single word domains just to see what was out there.
|
| This is back when you could fire up mosaic and read the
| what's new on the internet today :-)
| Communitivity wrote:
| I remember being on Tymnet and just trying addresses via
| a program to see if I found anything. Most interesting
| thing I found was a Fed Reserve address once (did not do
| anything with that).
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| I used to work for Tymnet the TEC in the UK :-)
|
| People used to do that on the x.25 network to find
| interesting sites.
| drzaiusapelord wrote:
| I remember that era pretty fondly and I don't ever recall
| just typing in random URLs, except maybe jokey ones like
| sex.com or fuck.com for kicks. We had Yahoo's search engine
| at the time and worked well enough. And to a lesser extent
| Lycos/Hotbot/Inktomi/DMOZ. The pre-Google web was pretty
| interesting and a bit more sophisticated than gets credit
| today. I also feel you were less likely to discover
| retailers on the web randomly. You'd more than likely hear
| about them first on the news or from friends and go from
| there. I don't think it was common to just discover some
| random e-tailer like we do today, put in our credit card,
| and expect the package in a couple days. You learned about
| Amazon from 60 minutes or your friend who subscribed to
| Wired magazine or the guy at the software store, not from a
| search engine.
|
| I think the whole pets.com and travel.com is just the usual
| marketing logic at work and not really related to the
| limitation of search engines. Its just shady marketing
| tricks, a bit like how we see the .biz and other gimmicky
| tlds today.
| devlopr wrote:
| It was really common to type in random words as domains
| expecting something. People would make mistakes so people
| would buy domains with common spelling mistakes.
| toyg wrote:
| Browsers also tried to autocomplete <word> as
| www.<word>.com (and .net and .org, iirc) and send you
| there if it resolved. At some point they switched to
| sending you to search engines instead, but i bet there
| are flags somewhere in Firefox' bowels that will still do
| that for you if you really want.
| kindall wrote:
| Or you just hit Ctrl-Enter
| mortenjorck wrote:
| I have a random memory of the website at hanson.com
| having a banner alerting visitors that the website of the
| popular late-90s boy band was in fact at hansonline.com,
| and that you would only find information about guitars
| made by the Hanson company should you further browse the
| site at which you currently found yourself.
|
| Curiously, that domain now redirects to some concrete
| company, Hanson guitars existing instead at hanson-
| guitars.com.
| jaredsohn wrote:
| Even today, nissan.com is Nissan Computer rather than the
| car company. Copyright 1994-2021.
| NDizzle wrote:
| The early internet, for me, was a 1-800 number BBS called
| Starfire. It had a splash page to the "internet" section
| that I'd assume was curated by the operator. This was
| probably 94 and 95.
| Zsolt wrote:
| The first time I had the chance to use the internet I typed
| in "whitehouse", hit enter and whitehouse.com loaded. It
| turned out to be a porn site, the teacher saw and I got
| banned from using the internet - in 40 seconds.
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| In late high school or maybe during college, my wife was
| going to look for something at Dick's Sporting Goods by
| navigating to a domain that any ordinary person might
| expect. The result was not what she expected.
| pbrb wrote:
| LOL, I used to fuck with people by getting them to type
| this into the browser. Unfortunately, these days it
| actually takes you to Dick's Sporting Goods.
| fma wrote:
| I knew someone who tried to go to hotmail.com but went to
| hotmale instead...
| jdironman wrote:
| White House was the first time I ever seen porn / naked
| women. Cue me spending the next 6 months sneaking to load
| the page on dialup all hours of the day. To be a kind
| again. Now we have TBs of data but tend to be uncontent
| sometimes.
| rusk wrote:
| Anybody ever type alta-vista.com by mistake? The search
| engine had no hyphen, this address went to something else
| ...
| jdwithit wrote:
| Heh, was about to post this one myself. My buddy got in
| big trouble in the high school computer lab making this
| typo. I wonder what percentage of domains in the late
| 90's were simply "adult" sites trying to capture traffic
| via typos. It certainly felt like a lot.
| jstarfish wrote:
| Then there was expertsexchange.com, which was always
| bound to disappoint one of two demographics.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| what search engine was the culprit?
| divingdragon wrote:
| Some browsers automatically "fix" addresses by appending
| `.com` for you. I think even Firefox used to do that
| until mid 2010s.
| taeric wrote:
| This begs the question of if things are better today. For
| shopping, is it?
| paxys wrote:
| Absolutely. If you know what you want to buy, it takes
| seconds to find the absolute cheapest place on the
| internet to buy it. Then it's up to you to decide whether
| you trust the site or not. Brand name helps with
| perception, but definitely not discovery.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > Brand name helps with perception
|
| That used to be true with Amazon. Not anymore, not for
| me. Now I have to decide if I trust and endless array of
| 3rd party sellers. It is often just easier to buy from a
| manufacturer's website since I know I'm getting the real
| thing and it's not expired or otherwise screwed up. Maybe
| I pay a few more bucks, but I'm ok with that for a lot of
| things. (Exception: books and used)
| gambiting wrote:
| It's always interesting to me how people on HN almost
| universally have such poor experiences with Amazon. I've
| had over 200(!!!) orders from Amazon last year alone and
| didn't have any problems with any order. In fact when my
| guaranteed next day delivery was late by a day they just
| gave me a month of prime for free.
|
| And every time I decide to buy directly from the
| manufacturer I get punished - bought a Lenovo laptop
| around September, laptop turned up with a broken screen.
| Took over 3 weeks to get Lenovo UK to replace it and it
| was an exercise in absolute frustration, I could write a
| small essay about it. I was so upset at myself for not
| buying it from Amazon - I know if I did and had the same
| problem I would literally have a replacement posted to me
| the following day without having to fill out a dozen
| forms and spend hours on the phone with customer support.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I also prefer to order direct, if possible. If I think I
| might need to return it, Amazon.com is the way to go (or
| Bol.com for local stuff). It's always a pain to return to
| the manufacturer, they're incentivized not to take back
| the return while a retailer is incentivized to take it
| back.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Yeah. Direct retail is booming and so are established
| small specialty bricks and mortar distribution and
| retail. I spent $5k last month on clayking.com. They have
| a central location and drop-ship a lot of stuff that
| manufacturers aren't direct selling, yet. Same thing over
| at theceramicshop.com and Bailey pottery.com. They are
| all slammed and taking quite a while to fill
| orders...manufacturers included.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Amazon has just become an AliExpress reseller.
|
| So many people are trying to get rich quick by buying
| aliexpress stock, selling it through Amazon. There's just
| so much crap on the website now
|
| And being Chinese, most of it likely isn't even legal to
| sell without a genuine CE mark
| taeric wrote:
| Right, but if you knew to that level of specificity back
| then, search was just as good in most places. Now,
| selection was lower, somewhat obviously.
|
| As then, though, if you are not specific or willing to
| lean on a name brand, search is effectively broken.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Early search engines were pretty dumb and heavily weighted
| on keywords, which a generic domain name helped with as
| well.
|
| Again, less of an issue now with more intelligent search
| engines. (Although strong brands still tend to a get a lot
| of traffic via searches on their name...)
| avereveard wrote:
| early on you went to directories
| kls wrote:
| And if you did not you where usually only 3 links away
| from Goatse.cx .
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Hmmm... That is not how I remember it.
|
| I could gopher topics by early 90's, and Infoseek, Yahoo,
| WebCrawler, etc. were a full text search of pages by mid
| 90's.
|
| I distinctly recall searching usenet across multiple
| servers.
|
| Even before this, when data only flowed through uucp (or
| Fido), search was albeit queued, readily available.
|
| Your mileage may have varied; i just want to be clear that
| it was not that it did not exist, but new-comers would have
| a steeper learning curve. Today, it is expected, nay,
| demanded as a human right to be able to search the entire
| internet from a uniform and single klick search box. (yes,
| old crotchety, "in my day..." :) )
|
| (edit: misspelurating stuffage)
| Retric wrote:
| Yes, the earliest directories / search engines worked
| extremely well in large part because there minimal
| content. When there where 7 knitting websites they don't
| need to worry about SEO. It was only after the users
| started getting hundreds of results for most searches
| that search engines needed to worry about filtering and
| prioritization.
| usefulcat wrote:
| The fact that you had even heard of gopher would have put
| you in a very small minority of internet users once dial-
| up internet access become relatively accessible (so,
| post-1995ish or so).
| autokad wrote:
| another issue I don't see talked about much in these
| comments is trust. Amazon had to develop a name that
| people could trust. I remember when people would agonize
| on whether to make a purchase because they were afraid
| they would be scammed.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| There were manual indexes for sure, but my very first
| experience with the web was someone excitedly showing me
| how they could dial in, open this web browser thing, and
| then... nothing, because they didn't know any websites.
|
| We typed in a few things, but it didn't go anywhere.
|
| I remember he called the browser a "web crawler", which
| was probably the search engine someone told him to use to
| find sites. We had no idea.
|
| Otherwise, I have a lot of memories exploring the web by
| typing in words followed by TLDs and writing down the
| interesting ones. It was another year or two before
| aggregators cropped up, copying and returning the first
| ten results of any manual index.
| piva00 wrote:
| > I could gopher topics by early 90's
|
| So you weren't a normal, mainstream, new user to the
| internet. You knew how to use it, you knew where to go to
| search.
|
| I was the same in the 90s (minus Gopher skills), I
| learned about Yahoo, Altavista, Infoseek, etc. and became
| a wizard to my friends and some relatives because I could
| find things on the internet, didn't need to know the
| website address beforehand or click somewhere in AOL.
|
| It did exist, it just wasn't accessible and generally
| available, nor it was a tool people knew how to use.
|
| So domain names up to the early 2000s were pretty
| important to capture the mainstream market, not the
| Gophers.
| vegesm wrote:
| I remember my school ran a contest where you had to find
| obscure information on the net. Things like when the
| inventor of the saxophone was born? You had to submit an
| URL so using the library was not an option. It was
| insanely hard, nowadays it's just one wikipedia click
| away.
| blihp wrote:
| Actually that was very normal for a new Internet user of
| the time. In the _early_ 90 's there was no web as far as
| the public was concerned so Yahoo (1994)/Altavista
| (1995)/Infoseek (1994) did not exist yet. For users of
| the pre-1993/1994 Internet, to use it you had to learn a
| hodge-podge of protocols and software including UUCP,
| gopher, FTP, telnet, NNTP etc. since that _was_ the
| Internet back then. It wasn 't until online services like
| AOL started providing web gateways (1995/6?) when
| 'normal' people really started flooding onto the 'net and
| it took a few years longer before there were useful web
| frontends for the majority of services.
| blueside wrote:
| And it's been September ever since
| Daho0n wrote:
| That wasn't the average user and not even the average
| computer geek. Most browsed webrings.
| kevstev wrote:
| As a smart but not necessarily brilliant teenager getting
| on the web in mid-late 90s- Maybe Christmas 1996 I- well
| my family really- got a computer that could get on the
| internet, search engines were mediocre at best. I did
| have a family friend come over who was an old hand at the
| internet and knew all the tricks of the day- using
| operators like AND, OR, NEAR, NOT etc- and he was able to
| yield much higher quality results, but I was personally
| never able to replicate his abilities.
|
| Google and Pagerank changed all that, but up until then,
| it was all very tricky and each search engine had its
| niche- Yahoo with its directory, Ask Jeeves had a user
| friendly interface, lycos and altavista had some niches
| of their own as well that I can't quite recall- or maybe
| they just each had brief shining moments in the sun. At
| one point I had desktop software that was a meta crawler
| that would enter a query into each one. The full text
| searches on keywords that may or may not really be
| relevant to what you wanted were really not all that
| good.
| josefx wrote:
| I find it funny that you mention half a dozen ways to
| search the web and everyone seems to be focusing on just
| gopher because that is the only thing they can explain
| away. Google must have dug up Steve Jobs reality
| distortion field.
| II2II wrote:
| I wonder how much that was linked to trust? People were leery
| about online shopping in the beginning, and a name like
| books.com sounds a little too generic.
| bryanmgreen wrote:
| Speaking as someone who works for a company called
| "BoardGameTables.com", we really like our obvious name.
|
| Nothing wrong with something broad. We sell more than board
| game tables, but everything is connected and it gets us a lot
| of traffic and search juice.
|
| With SEO getting so much money and attention dumped into it,
| the usefulness has kind of come back around for a name like
| this.
| lfowles wrote:
| > We sell more than board game tables
|
| Had to check and verify that claim. I'm familiar with the
| brand in general but had no idea!
| andredz wrote:
| I liked the website. You seem to have quite a few cool
| products. :)
| spoonjim wrote:
| I don't think naming actually matters. In retrospect it seems
| important. But names as bland as Facebook and as zany as
| Yahoo! and as creepy as Tungle.Me have all succeeded.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| One often overlooked fact is that fixed-price book policy of
| a lot of countries (like here in Germany where we have it to
| this day) helped amazon a lot. Books have a margin of around
| 30% and - by law - you must sell them at a fixed price which
| is the same in every bookstore in the country. That allowed
| Amazon to offer free shipping, as the resulting margin was
| still high enough.
|
| And since you as a consumer have to pay the same price for a
| book no matter where you buy it anyways, it became a lot
| easier to just order a book online instead of driving to a
| bookstore to collect it (oftentimes the shop had to order
| them anyways and you had to come back a day later to pick it
| up). Once Amazon was a serious player in the book business
| with existing logistics, payment etc. it was an easy move for
| them to expand to other products.
| 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.
| oconnor663 wrote:
| Fwiw, a "face book" is a thing you would get at Harvard
| (and Yale and presumably lots of other schools too but I'm
| not sure), kind of like a yearbook but at the start of
| freshman year instead of the end. So for the earliest
| thefacebook.com users, the name was actually familiar.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Its a thing in all US high schools - so for US searchers
| it would be very obvious
|
| Back in the 70's in the UK one of our American teachers
| mentioned then in our general studies class when we where
| doing America one term - she refused to show us her entry
| :-)
| astura wrote:
| No, definitely not a thing at "all US high schools."
|
| I can believe it's a thing at really posh high schools
| though.
| infermore wrote:
| It's definitely not a thing in all US high schools. I'm
| pretty sure yearbooks are the thing most US high schools
| have.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Might be regional our American English Teacher was from
| the posh east cost and a "facebook" was what she called
| it.
| ourcat wrote:
| Also Microsoft's "Internet Explorer" at the time became so
| popular due to the word 'Internet' compared to a
| 'Netscape'. So many non-technical people just thought that
| was the 'way in' when they bought their first PC.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Is that the real reason? Being bundled with the OS as the
| default browser for 95% of all computers seems like a
| bigger driver!
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Neither of those are the reason, speaking from experience
| both as a family tech support and as a web dev. It's
| because everyone recognized the big "e" icon. My brother
| got my dad a Mac and he already knew the main browser was
| Safari, but he still called me (knowing I had used Macs
| for years longer) and just asked:
|
| 1. What the hell is Safari (no kidding he didn't even say
| hello).
|
| 2. Can I use the Internet Explorer?
|
| Edge now (correctly) accounts for this by... having a big
| "e"-looking icon and basically otherwise being a skin
| over Chromium.
| mrunkel wrote:
| I think you're confusing cause and effect here.
|
| Yes, the `e` became synonymous with the Internet for a
| lot of users, but that's only because of the two reasons
| listed. Not the other way around.
| goto11 wrote:
| Internet Explorer became popular because it was bundled
| with Windows.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| At the time, IE was also dramatically faster than
| Netscape Navigator, because it wasn't just bundled, it
| was built in.
| powersnail wrote:
| I feel that the importance of optimizing brand name is
| over-hyped. A lot of it is retrospective reasoning, arguing
| why such name is good for popularity _after_ the brand
| becomes popular.
| skynet-9000 wrote:
| I don't know, I was going to start an auction site with
| the memorable name "eBay", but then someone beat me to
| it.
|
| (Counterpoint: it _is_ pretty short and pronounceable..)
| laurent92 wrote:
| Legend says Steve Jobs told his two cofounders, who were
| scratching their heads over an innovative name, that if
| they didn't find a name within 24hrs he would incorporate
| as Apple.
|
| Which is good enough and no reason to hold up the whole
| process for a decent name.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| It's also in front of Atari in the phonebook.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| Plus, wasn't the default Android sms/mms client once called
| Messenger? So, not only not memorable, but also confusingly
| generic.
| varenc wrote:
| Facebook was founded a decade after Amazon. 2004 vs 1994.
| Google was already dominate and it IPO'd the same year.
| They're both old at this point but Amazon is in a whole
| different class of "early internet".
| vmception wrote:
| People still think you need the most generic name possible,
| they just don't understand that the reason
| QuantumSpiritualCrystals.com was still available is that it
| wasn't generic.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Books.com is just as memorable as Amazon.com,
| what matters is the execution.
| einpoklum wrote:
| I don't know about you, but I would go by books at books.com
| - or rather, I would if I were in the US.
|
| By the way, books.com redirects to barnesandnoble.com
| MisterTea wrote:
| The irony is domains like books.com sounded like a sure
| winner but that only works for books. How would Jeff be doing
| today if he ran books.com and just sold ... books.
| bookswebservice (BWS) doesn't have that same ring to it.
| felipelemos wrote:
| And you can't have a copyright in that name, specially if
| you are selling books.
| dialamac wrote:
| Names are not copyrightable in any case. You mean
| trademark.
| treis wrote:
| In retrospect the idea of selling everything online was the
| first great idea. Even if it was a bit of rehash of Sears I
| think they were the only one that had that vision.
|
| Second great idea was free 2 day shipping with Prime. Great
| for their cash flow and customer retention.
|
| Third great idea was AWS.
|
| Still TBD are advertising and the marketplace. They make a
| lot of money but at the long term risk of customer
| satisfaction.
|
| Also TBD are the media plays (Twitch, video,music,.etc.).
| Not clear if they will ever make money.
| sharkweek wrote:
| For fun... what are the major "bad" plays they've made?
|
| The phone is probably the first that comes to mind.
|
| That big MMO they tried to release was pretty bad.
|
| I'm gonna try and predict the future and suggest their
| LotR original series will be bad.
| treis wrote:
| The phone is the most notable miss.
|
| They've also made a clone of pretty much every other
| ecommerce site without any real successes.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Eh? The MMO seems to be doing ok in pre-release. It was
| the MOBA that bombed hard.
| sharkweek wrote:
| Ah that might be what I was thinking of, haven't played
| either.
| wyclif wrote:
| _We are firing on all cylinders_
|
| And yet, reviews are still horribly broken and have been
| for years. Also counterfeit products and books are
| everywhere on the site.
|
| Amazon is going to have to fix those hugely important
| things before I'll buy the Kool-Aid that they're "firing
| on all cylinders", which is just CEO pep talk.
| deaddodo wrote:
| The marketplace makes me use Amazon less now. I don't
| care if there are 40 5v-DC power bricks and 10 of them
| are 10% cheaper. I care about vetted products and the
| confidence I'm buying the product I'm looking for.
| geogra4 wrote:
| Honestly for little stuff like that I'd rather go
| straight to the source from aliexpress than bother with
| Amazon as the middleman
| laurent92 wrote:
| The media part could be about owning the consumer, even
| at a loss, or owning the providers, or preventing Google
| from approaching the user login market to tight, etc.
| yoube wrote:
| BWS is actually an Australian liquor store brand. Beer-
| Wine-Spirits. Memorable enough once you get used to it as
| well.
| standardUser wrote:
| I've always hated the name, though I obviously can't argue
| against its efficacy. The Amazon river and rainforest are
| symbolically and literally among the most significant
| features of our natural world. Now, it's better known as the
| name of a company that can send us every kind of new junk to
| replace our old junk.
| 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]
| lalwanivikas wrote:
| > He is also an ultra-marathon and touring cyclist. Some
| excellent accomplishments have included the 298 mile Cannonball
| in 14:01, and a five-week tandem camping tour from Amsterdam to
| Athens.
|
| Got this from your Wiki entry. Hats off to you dear sir!
| 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.
| thecupisblue wrote:
| I'd imagine you'd pour beer with him and tell old war
| stories. Why not say hi? I bet he'll have more time for it
| now :)
| 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
| exikyut wrote:
| It says "[Paul] went on to fund the development of" those
| two projects. That's interesting; I wonder how that worked?
|
| Ah, for the day someone figures out the Amazon of funding
| open source software...
| toyg wrote:
| Sometimes I think I'm wasting time on HN, then a comment like
| that comes around and it makes it all worth it.
| [deleted]
| erikbye wrote:
| A couple of Paul Davis' submissions on HN deserve more
| discussion. Especially relevant to open source.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=PaulDavisThe1st
| ma2rten wrote:
| Do you have any interesting anecdotes from your time at amazon?
| WallyBalls wrote:
| To be fair, "Sears for the 21st century" is not what Amazon is
| today. It's a whole lot more than that. And that does seem to
| have grown over time. Stuff like AWS and Alexa and all of that.
| That's likely what he's referring to.
| 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".
| jasoncrawford wrote:
| I heard the same story (I joined in 2004). The version I
| heard was that Jeff was driving cross-country NY -> Seattle
| and was on the phone with his lawyer about incorporation
| papers, and the lawyer misheard "Cadabra" as "Cadaver".
| That's when Jeff knew he needed a better name.
| lostlogin wrote:
| This instantly reminded me of the story about Microsoft
| posting a dev a dead fish.
|
| https://olhardigital.com.br/en/2020/05/23/news/the-
| strange-s...
| astrange wrote:
| This is not the most interesting story about Scott
| Forstall and Microsoft. Did you know he invented WordArt?
|
| https://twitter.com/natbro/status/1339600779531833344
| eneveu wrote:
| Indeed, Jeff talks about it in this 2001 interview :
| https://youtu.be/p7FgXSoqfnI?t=7m05s
| gxqoz wrote:
| It's also harder to spell. Some people are going to put an
| extra d or b in there. Maybe get a vowel wrong.
| xibalba wrote:
| > It had a name, and that name was "Cadabra".
|
| Lol, so your take is that you have a better handle on the
| history of Amazon than its founder? He is likely referring to a
| point in time when Amazon was just an idea.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| The second employee is probably actually more trustworthy
| than PR signed by the founder.
| meepmorp wrote:
| >> ps. amazon employee #2
|
| You know, there's actually a pretty good chance that he's not
| pulling this out of his ass.
| [deleted]
| herpderperator wrote:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-jeff-bezos-chose-
| comp...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| This story is incorrect. I don't know how Brad Stone could
| have got this wrong, because I told him the actual origin
| of the name. It did not come from looking up words in a
| dictionary. It came from a documentary that Jeff watched
| about the Amazon river. The concept that particular stuck
| with him was that the Amazon is not just the biggest river
| in the world, but is 10x larger than the next largest
| river. In addition to the alphabetic sorting benefits of
| the name (important back then), Jeff _loved_ the size
| metaphor.
| narcissismo wrote:
| Whose idea was it to put a sketch of a penis underneath the
| word 'Amazon'?
|
| That logo is brilliant.
| snickms wrote:
| Lately I've seen boxes marked with just the penis - no
| 'Amazon' at all.
| newbie578 wrote:
| Oh wow, so awesome to see someone like this. You are basically
| part of history. I just want to ask two things if it is
| alright.
|
| 1) Any cool anecdotes from Amazon that you can tell?
|
| 2) Any advice you have for young entrepreneurs looking to
| uproar an industry?
| loosetypes wrote:
| > the idea didn't grow over time
|
| I always find retrospective and hypothetical discussions of
| idea genesis and maturation fascinating.
|
| Amazon retail aside, I wonder if you (or anyone else) would be
| willing to give perspective on AWS:
|
| Was it similarly fully formed on conception?
|
| I've heard the (potentially stylized) stories about holiday
| traffic bursts, selling off-season compute to startups, etc.
|
| But assuming AWS the idea did need to grow with increased
| perspective, the times, and experience - do you think AWS could
| have become what it is today if that had been the goal from the
| onset?
| ayewo wrote:
| There was a large thread recently [0] where Paul already
| answered a similar question. He had left (Jan 1996)[1], long
| before AWS became a thing.
|
| 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25693618
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25697941
| hn2fast wrote:
| Yeah, I imagine that managing one's expectations is the most
| vital at the formation stages, which could be what is meant.
| [deleted]
| zuhayeer wrote:
| "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."
| annadane wrote:
| "btw fuck your unions lol"
| lookalike74 wrote:
| (Email from Jeff Bezos to everyone in corporate because the
| larger culture in Amazon is nothing like this)
| CryptoGhost wrote:
| They sent the email to literally everyone, even people without
| amazon email accounts through the employment website but yeah
| you are right. There is a caste system within Amazon that even
| working out of corp office or having a tech job won't save you
| from.
| 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.
| codeulike wrote:
| When he talks about 'invention' he means inventing new ways to
| trick people into accidentally signing up for Amazon Prime
| hit8run wrote:
| Just split up that monopoly. Amazon is not a success story it's a
| fail story for market regulation.
| 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.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Also, XEROX. Invented the laser printer, the mouse, and the
| GUI. Those are a _bit_ more significant than one-click
| checkout...
| rajansaini wrote:
| Didn't Yann LeCun do important work on CNNs there as well?
| lr1970 wrote:
| Yes, this was after ma Bell was broken up and Yann ended up
| in the AT&T Research. And then AT&T management closed the
| whole project. Glory days of Bell Labs are all in the distant
| past, unfortunately.
| 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/) :)
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Otherwise known as a blind spot: https://memestatic1.fjcdn.
| com/comments/Heckifiknowcomicscomp...
| nomercy400 wrote:
| Lucent Technologies once made a video, with many of Bell
| Labs' inventions, captured in a song.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFfdnFOiXUU
| 93po wrote:
| And Amazon has great inventions like... the fire phone.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Don't forget the dash button to replenish charmin ultra at
| the snap of a finger.
| hashkb wrote:
| But not fast enough for emergencies.
| julesFromPulp wrote:
| Amazon hardware always seems like it has been a means to and
| end. That end being buying stuff off amazon.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Plus...
|
| * public cloud computing -- Amazon got it to work in a
| scalable and secure way.
|
| * S3 object storage
|
| * Dynamo -- A distributed, key-value store that ended up in
| products from S3 to Cassandra
|
| * Redshift -- First cloud SQL data warehouse with ground-
| breaking ease of use
|
| * RDS -- Cloud relational databases
|
| * Amazon Aurora -- Relational DBMS that pushes the log and
| store into a virtualized, replicated storage layer
|
| They've been particularly innovative in applications related
| to data.
| 93po wrote:
| Crediting amazon for "public cloud computing" is pretty
| ridiculous. Managed VPS services were a thing when Amazon
| was still a book store.
|
| Yes, Amazon's services make things easier and in some
| instances cheaper. None of it was really inventive, though,
| and definitely not comparable to the list of Bell
| inventions.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| Amazon has had (and continues to have) its share of failed
| products, a very lot of them in fact. But then that's just
| how they operate[1]. Given their DNA they wouldn't have been
| where they are without those failed experiments. One could
| argue it's just one of those PR angles. But it's not. My last
| stint at Amazon was in Kindle tablet team. And boy did they
| experiment with hardware! ~2012 was the year when Amazon made
| a conscious choice to enter the hardware market to complement
| their AWS offering. There were close to a dozen devices being
| worked upon at that time. I think about 5-6 of them failed,
| some didn't even launch. But then, Eco succeeded and how! And
| now just look at the hardware devices they have launched.
|
| I tend to look at Amazon and Apple and wonder. Both of them
| are valued at trillion dollars but the path couldn't have
| been more different. Apple being very deliberate, very long
| term, sometimes decade or more long, planning. Amazon on the
| other hand, hundreds of experiments, most fail and some
| succeed spectacularly. I remember an Amazon exec comparing
| these experiments to Cambrian explosion and I think it
| beautifully captures Amazon's DNA.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/03/jeff-
| bezo...
| 93po wrote:
| Echo came years after Google Now and Siri and Cortana.
| Taking years old concepts and putting them into a speaker
| isn't really that inventive. No one is getting a Nobel
| prize for the Echo.
| runarberg wrote:
| Worth noting also is the _company_ qualifier. To exclude
| universities from innovations seems arbitrary. Another line of
| attack is asking how much profit Amazon got from these
| innovation vs. how much they paid back to the various education
| systems that produced the skilled labor required.
|
| Jeff Bezos bragging about this is for sure illustrative of the
| dissonance billionaires have over the value of their companies.
| Green_man wrote:
| Or maybe he said "company" because Amazon is one, and isn't a
| university. While an interesting conversation could be had
| about large companies/small companies/university/individual
| contributions to progress and invention, Bezos isn't
| necessarily having that conversation, and certainly isn't
| obliged to contextualize Amazon's achievements that way.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| I can't be the only one who read "Come on man" in Joe Biden's
| voice.
| rob74 wrote:
| Yeah, that quote is management hyperbole at its best. I
| wouldn't even call what Amazon does "invention", maybe
| "innovation" - but Ok, you have to call it "invention" if you
| want to patent it, like the (in)famous "one-click patent".
| getlawgdon wrote:
| Invention is the lower rung. ATT is the much more inventive +
| innovative company. Innovation disrupts/transforms. Invention
| sparks anew. In fact, what makes Amazon so wildly successful
| is not even particularly inventive but optimization driven.
| sib wrote:
| Not to be difficult, but how many of those were invented in the
| past 27 years? Bell Labs is (barely even) a shadow of its
| former self.
|
| If you want to read a great book about when Bell Labs was
| really Bell Labs:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005GSZIWG/
| vvanpo wrote:
| Jeff said
|
| > I don't know of another company
|
| He didn't say _contemporary_ company.
| denysvitali wrote:
| Well, maybe he is right, he might not be aware of Bell Labs
| or he might have forgot about it before typing that email
| pwinnski wrote:
| Or, and hear me out here, he might have lied.
|
| It's funny how many people on this page are having
| trouble acknowledging that this is a prevaricating puff
| piece. He wants to tell a story of his success, and leave
| in a way that doesn't tank the stock. So he lies a bit
| about the origin of the company, lies a bit more about
| their accomplishments, and so on.
| denysvitali wrote:
| I should have added a /s
|
| I'm not protecting him, this is more like a PR stunt
| rather than a letter to his employees. Given the history,
| I can safely say that he might not care _that much_ as
| shown in this open letter
| arp242 wrote:
| There are quite a few caveats with all of the items he lists:
|
| > 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.
|
| 1-click was hardly an "invention" IMO, the Kindle was "just
| another e-book reader" (arguably the best, but they did not
| "invent" the concept), Alexa is a Siri clone, and so forth.
|
| Only "infrastructure cloud computing" is something there
| Amazon really took the lead and invented stuff. Not a small
| thing, but also hardly worthy of the bold claim in the
| article. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Sun, and many other
| companies seem to have done more invention than Amazon.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _Only "infrastructure cloud computing" is something there
| Amazon really took the lead and invented stuff. Not a small
| thing, but also hardly worthy of the bold claim in the
| article. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Sun, and many other
| companies seem to have done more invention than Amazon._
|
| Amazon's secret sauce is in their operational efficiencies
| and logistics. AWS is great but utility computing
| conceptually it's a mainframe bureau from the 1970s.
| newswasboring wrote:
| I think we should not discount "Prime's insanely fast
| shipping". That is an amalgamation of several innovations
| and has truly changed the world.
|
| Of course, all this if Amazon has actually invented that
| and I am not just misinformed.
| rob74 wrote:
| > 1-click was hardly an "invention" IMO
|
| Well, it is according to the US Patent Office
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click#Patent), and
| unfortunately that's the only opinion that counts in this
| case (at least as far as the US is concerned)
| garyrob wrote:
| They did NOT pioneer personalized recommendations. Believe
| me, I know, because out-of-the-blue I got a phone call from
| Jeff Bezos back in the day, who was interested in my pre-
| existing recommendation technology. They didn't have any.
| In the end they got it from a company called Net
| Perceptions. Eventually they built their own, but the
| technology was firmly established all over the place by
| then.
| cachvico wrote:
| Indeed, 1-click remains the most egregious land grab of the
| web yet.
|
| "I'm going to patent shopping".
| getlawgdon wrote:
| Bezons didn't say "recently." He said he didn't know of
| another." That includes any/all. And it is bloviation.
| Aperocky wrote:
| It's too bad that as soon as AT&T gets to commercialize the lab
| it ran it to the ground.
|
| Previously, the lab was protected by an agreement between the
| US and AT&T where AT&T has a lawful monopoly but there were
| only so much it can earn and X% will always go to fundamental
| research, and that's why the lab was so successful.
|
| That all changed when the federal government decided to break
| AT&T up in 1983. The for profit baby bells had no incentive to
| keep the lab and they proceeded to ruin it.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| The profit motive spurs innovation.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| This assumes peopleare only motivated by greed. That's
| wrong. In the current class climate it would be fair to say
| that desperation is feeding innovation. Whether peoplecan
| be a more innovative when they're not desperate, stressed
| out, overworked, and surrounded by people worse off than
| them is a fair question but I suspect that's not where you
| were going.
|
| Anecdotally, I'm not a fraction creative or innovative when
| I'm desperate. My risk tolerance increases but that's a
| disingenuous measure of innovation.
| woobilicious wrote:
| The conflation of greed and profit is disingenuous.
|
| profit, or economic surplus is a requirement for
| innovation, doesn't matter if it's private, or public
| spending, what matters is that day to day costs to
| operate a business or society at large are met before
| money is spent on risky R&D.
|
| Every rational entity does this, you take your revenue,
| and spend it on necessities to sustain yourself (like
| food and shelter), sustain your income (transport etc),
| and then only spend the surplus on higher risk items
| (stocks, vacation, luxury foods etc).
|
| If you were on an island, and grew your own food, I
| assume you would also follow the profit motive, keeping a
| healthy excess in production for a drought or taking
| Sunday off to relax, or fixing your dwelling.
|
| We can have a rational discussion about how a company and
| society at large distributes it's profits, whether it's
| internally back to employees, R&D or explicit focusing on
| shareholder value, or using taxes to fund R&D.
|
| But what I assume most people have a problem with is not
| economic profit, but prioritizing excessive shareholder
| profit, over everything else. Using shareholder value as
| an excuse to ignore the real needs of your employees or
| customers, or even the long term sustainability of the
| company.
|
| We also have to remember that value is subjective, and
| when economists talk about profit, they're talking about
| something subjective. someone who collects stamps for
| fun, is profitable if they maintain a surplus of stamps.
| Just like one might buy GME stock to gain in something
| like social capital.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| That might be one of many things they spurs innovation, but
| the neoliberal idea that greed is the only human impulse
| that matters is false, primitive, and very sad.
| closeparen wrote:
| Bell Labs levels of excellence don't normally show up in
| projects that are just for compliance or government
| relations. This can't be the whole story.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Bell Labs are also ran by the scientists themselves, with
| AT&T largely not caring because it has to spend that money
| anyways.
|
| You can get a good grip of what's going on in the lab in
| Brian Kernighan's <Unix, A history and a memoir>. It's a
| good read.
| pjmorris wrote:
| I once attended a talk by Ron Graham (mathematician who'd
| once worked at Bell Labs) where he explained that they had
| applied graph theory to minimize the distance of cable runs
| to minimize the amount of copper they had to buy.
|
| And, transistors are certainly cheaper and more reliable
| than the vacuum tubes they replaced.
|
| Economics is still a factor in regulated environments.
| jacobolus wrote:
| For an idea about telecom monopolies, read Tim Wu's book
| _The Master Switch_.
| avrionov wrote:
| IBM also has 5 Nobel prize winners, but this was different
| time. I don't think we'll see it again.
| pjmorris wrote:
| And IBM invented the hard drive, (arguably) computer product
| lines, the relational database, and standardized the 8-bit
| byte. Pretty sure I'm leaving stuff out. They're not quite
| Bell Labs, but they're incredibly influential.
| newswasboring wrote:
| I always find it surprising that things we take for granted
| today needed to be standardized. Like I can't even imagine
| computers not using a 8 bit byte.
| tim333 wrote:
| First computer I used had 36 bit bytes (PDP-10)
| tgv wrote:
| Nitpick: they were called words.
| TheTrotters wrote:
| Some mentioned to me recently that most teenagers may
| have never used a non-touch phone. It's obvious to them
| that iPhones and iPads are around and work the way they
| do.
|
| But I still remember first using the iPhone 3G in 2008
| and how it felt like magic to control a device with my
| fingers, to zoom into a photo with a simple gesture.
|
| I wonder what technology will make them (and me too!)
| feel like this. Perhaps an electric car? I've never
| driven (or even been in one) but from what I hear they're
| much quieter. Maybe it'll feel like magic if I ever get
| one.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I remember going to the Expo in Spokane in 1974. AT&T had
| a booth there, where you could dial the same number on a
| rotary phone and a touch-tone phone, and it would time
| you so you could see how much faster touch tone was. As a
| 12-year-old kid, that was my "meet the future of the
| phone" moment.
| 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.
| corin_ wrote:
| They announced quarterly earnings of literally double what
| analysts were expecting at the same time, which would have sent
| the stock to a bigger rise had it not been balanced by his
| news.
| 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..
| xyst wrote:
| "The king is dead, long live the king!"
| 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.
| xkgt wrote:
| Given the recent discussions in hn on how Intel's fortunes
| declined under Bob Swan, it is interesting to note that Andy
| Jassy is also from a non-technical background. Same can be said
| about Jeff Bezos.
|
| Perhaps tech vs non-tech background is not that important a
| factor for being a successful leader of technology company. Or
| can we say that Amazon/AWS and Intel are different kinds of
| organization based on their core competencies?
| agnosticmantis wrote:
| Doesn't Bezos have degrees in EE and CS?
| xkgt wrote:
| Sorry, yes you are right.
| __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 by some
| people; 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.
| maverickJ wrote:
| There were those who saw his play. However there was another
| group of people that wondered the Amazon approach at that
| time.
| bhupy wrote:
| Obviously Amazon employees would be bought in. It was people
| on the outside that laughed at him: https://twitter.com/jimpe
| thokoukis/status/123124591376463872...
| 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.
| earthtobishop wrote:
| I always find comments like this interesting. This is similar
| to the comments I see whenever anyone says something remotely
| nice about a wealthy person on HN. What does going to
| Princeton have anything to do with being laughed at for
| selling books on the internet ? Who claimed he had a rags-to-
| riches story ? It oozes insecurity and envy.
| paxys wrote:
| He went to Princeton because he was smart, not because his
| family was rich. It isn't a school of billionaires or
| something. The majority of Ivy League enrollment is regular
| kids from working class families. They all have the best
| need-based scholarship programs in the country.
|
| His dad was a Cuban immigrant who worked as an engineer at
| Exxon.
| yashap wrote:
| I don't disagree that he is/was super smart (and
| hardworking), but he came from a fairly wealthy family too.
| When he was starting Amazon, his parents invested $300,000
| to help get it off the ground. You don't have $300K to pour
| into your son's startup if you aren't wealthy. Also, when
| he was growing up his maternal grandparents owned a 25,000
| acre ranch in Texas, which suggests significant wealth too.
| From what I understand his family wasn't ultra wealthy, but
| they were well off.
|
| Creating a mega-successful company is extremely difficult.
| Most people who do so are incredibly smart, incredibly hard
| working, got very lucky with the idea they chose to pursue
| (right place, right time), AND come from a wealthy family
| that can invest in their idea and make it feel like much
| less of a risk to found a company. Bezos fits all of these
| criteria, as do most successful tech founders.
| xxpor wrote:
| I seem to remember some study (probably on the front page
| here) that the most successful people usually don't come
| from Wealthy with a capital W or poor backgrounds,
| because in both cases there usually isn't the parental
| involvement in people's lives needed to instill the right
| values. This isn't a criticism of poor parents btw, it's
| just a fact of life for most of them because they're out
| there surviving.
|
| The most successful people on average have upper middle
| class/rich but not titan of industries parents. Rich
| enough that they have time to spend with their kids, pay
| for tutoring, that sort of stuff, but not rich enough to
| have the nanny raise the kid.
| yashap wrote:
| I haven't read the study, but that certainly seems
| believable and reasonable to me.
| runarberg wrote:
| Note mentioning that "smart" in this context usually
| means "able to get a large return on investment". Making
| it a redundant trait description.
|
| "Good at business" is a better description. But people
| aren't normally satisfied with calling billionaires "good
| at business" so they add this glittering "smart", as if
| he is somehow a better person then you or I, which is a
| ridiculous statement.
| yashap wrote:
| From his Wikipedia page:
|
| > _He was high school valedictorian, a National Merit
| Scholar, and a Silver Knight Award winner in 1982._
|
| > _... In 1986, he graduated summa cum laude from
| Princeton University with a 4.2 GPA and a Bachelor of
| Science in Engineering degree (B.S.E.) in electrical
| engineering and computer science_
|
| > _... After Bezos graduated from Princeton University in
| 1986, he was offered jobs at Intel, Bell Labs, and
| Andersen Consulting, among others. He first worked at
| Fitel, a fintech telecommunications start-up, where he
| was tasked with building a network for international
| trade. Bezos was promoted to head of development and
| director of customer service thereafter. He transitioned
| into the banking industry when he became a product
| manager at Bankers Trust. He worked there from 1988 to
| 1990. He then joined D. E. Shaw & Co, a newly founded
| hedge fund with a strong emphasis on mathematical
| modelling in 1990 and worked there until 1994. Bezos
| became D. E. Shaw's fourth senior vice-president at the
| age of 30._
|
| Yes, he's very good at business, but he's clearly very
| "book smart" too.
| solipsism wrote:
| > The majority of Ivy League enrollment is regular kids
| from working class families
|
| HN does so much moderation, with dang slapping people for
| being nasty. Why is obvious, egregious misinformation like
| this not subject to moderation?
| vixen99 wrote:
| No, the smart thing to do is to let readers do the job
| with comments that show up such nonsensical statements.
| This is how we get to the truth, not by authoritarian
| censorship (as against the application of reasonable
| rules for a site like HN).
| ineedasername wrote:
| No, most families at Princeton are not typical working
| class families. The median family income of a student's
| family is about $180,000.
|
| Yes, if you're accepted, you really don't have to worry
| about the price tag because of their financial aid. But
| poorer families are more likely to go to lower quality
| schools that may not even offer AP courses and do very
| little test prep. Families are also unable to afford top-
| tier test prep services either. On average, if you come
| from a poor family you've probably had to work harder, or
| be smarter, to get into Princeton.
|
| I'm not saying this is a problem for Princeton to solve.
| I'm just saying that it's really not an institution highly
| accessible to middle/lower class. Just take for example the
| fact that they favor children of past alumni heavily:
| something like 30% of the class comes from "legacy"
| students whose parents(s) attended as well.
| starpilot wrote:
| HN seems to think most of the world is a meritocracy. The
| reality is that a dumb rich kid is much more likely to
| get into a good university than a poor brilliant one.
| There is a "glass floor":
| https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/26/well-off-
| fam...
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Most of the world, definitely no. When it comes to
| education (and healthcare etc.), most if not all Europe
| definitely is.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > The median family income of a student from Princeton is
| $186,100, and 72% come from the top 20 percent. About 1.3%
| of students at Princeton came from a poor family but became
| a rich adult.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-
| mobilit...
| paxys wrote:
| $180K is like 1-1.5x the median family income in a high
| CoL area in the US, so that's actually about what in line
| with what I would expect. You're not poor, sure, but it's
| not close to the kind of rich the original comment is
| implying when clubbing him with billionaires. A kid whose
| family earns $186K/yr isn't exactly on the fast track to
| becoming the next Jeff Bezos.
| starpilot wrote:
| $180k is not "working class," period. I don't make $180k
| and I live in Seattle working in a tech-adjacent field.
| You claiming that it is is like saying a 14 year old is
| almost 15 which is almost legal driving age and basically
| an adult in terms of responsibility, so it's pretty much
| the age of the majority at 18.
|
| I went to a big state school that was respectable but not
| Princeton. I still wouldn't say most students there were
| from the "working class" by the common definition:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_class
|
| > The working class (or labouring class) comprises those
| engaged in waged or salaried labour, especially in
| manual-labour occupations and industrial work.
|
| How many Princeton kids had parents who worked
| construction? Plumbing, drywalling, tar roofing? I'll
| guess: very few.
| ineedasername wrote:
| About the fast track portion sure, but otherwise, really,
| no. The median household income in NYC is about $100,000.
| San Francisco is about $90,000. Even at the high end of
| your estimate that's falling up to 25% short of $180k.
|
| Also it's really not proper to take the highest cost of
| living areas in this situation and say "it's okay they're
| kind of close to $180,000!"
|
| Taking the outliers as examples to support the idea that
| the average family meets it is close to the median is
| really a bad comparison. Most of the country doesn't live
| in those areas. It would only be an appropriate
| comparison if Princeton received most if their students
| from those areas, and they don't.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Median household income in nyc proper is 50k. It's only
| 100k if you include the burns further out.
| caddemon wrote:
| I agree with your general point but take a look at the
| map on this page: https://admission.princeton.edu/how-
| apply/admission-statisti...
|
| Princeton definitely does (unintentionally) bias
| admissions towards major metro areas. It's just way
| easier to have a good application in these places.
| lwf wrote:
| Harvard disagrees with you:
|
| > HARVARD COLLEGE has almost as many students from the
| nation's top 0.1 percent highest-income families as from
| the bottom 20 percent. More than half of Harvard students
| come from the top 10 percent of the income distribution,
| and the vast majority--more than two-thirds--come from
| families in the top 20 percent.
|
| https://harvardmagazine.com/2017/01/low-income-students-
| harv...
|
| (They _do_ have great financial aid for low-income
| families)
| gkya wrote:
| That's a nice song you're playing to yourself.
| maverickJ wrote:
| Some did. It's quite easy using hindsight bias to see how
| everything worked out.
| milchek wrote:
| I'm curious, what was the reason for starting with books?
| hehehaha wrote:
| It's quite simple: generally standardized product sizes and
| media mail. Don't think it's farfetched to say Amazon
| benefited greatly from USPS in its early days.
| willhslade wrote:
| There are a million titles, so no physical store will be able
| to compete with a warehouse. There are no refrigeration or
| unusual logistics with books. They are fungible: generally
| speaking, one book is as good as another, identical book.
| searchableguy wrote:
| Profit margin and ability to ship/store easily.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Something other folks haven't mentioned yet but it also means
| direct access to middle class households which are more
| likely to be buying books.
| alphabet9000 wrote:
| I wanted to read this, I really did, but the Time Indicator
| stated that it was a 2 min read. I'm sorry, that is too long. I
| ended up not reading; I simply do not have the time. Perhaps Jeff
| Bezos can get to the point a little bit quicker, the next time he
| steps down from a key management position in the future. A 1 min
| read would be acceptable. Thanks to Amazon for including a
| reading time indicator, I might have wasted my time otherwise.
| telltruth wrote:
| It is utterly surprising that even Bezos couldn't resist choosing
| a business MBA guy as his successor just like Steve Jobs, Larry
| Page and Bill Gates did! They talked ALL their lives about
| importance of "product person", innovators, disruptors,
| technologists and derided "business" CEOs. But when it came down
| to it, they ALL chose the safest possible suit at their disposal
| to run their ships. Steady as it goes...
| hehehaha wrote:
| But Jassy is not a typical MBA guy. He trailblazed the entire
| cloud industry.
| biztos wrote:
| And Tim Cook trailblazed the world's most valuable supply
| chain, IIRC. I don't think the parent was implying these are
| talentless drones, just that they are the obvious safe
| choices for succession.
| scns wrote:
| Is value is the only metric worth looking at?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26013895
| monadic3 wrote:
| ....can MBAs not apply existing business patterns to new
| industries? How low are your expectations for MBAs that this
| is a surprise? I fully expect most people could do the same
| in the same position with similar education.
| scns wrote:
| I found it baffling, that someone manage to predict how that
| would work out: https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-
| is-steve-ball...
| 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.
| [deleted]
| jozen wrote:
| Disagree on Sundar.
| [deleted]
| 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.
| telltruth wrote:
| They are not. On the surface revenues keeps growing, profits
| are enormous but underneath there are virtually no new
| product lines. If you look at Microsoft of 1990s, there were
| _new_ $1B business each year - MSSQL, Sharepoint, Dynamics
| etc etc. For Apple, Jobs made it a point for one new product
| line every 2-3 years. For Google, you had new stuff like
| Gmail, Maps keep coming. Now its mostly barren land. Amazon
| had a lot going on with Alexa, pharmacy, Fire tablets, prime
| video etc. Don 't expect these stuff 2-3 years down the road
| with new business suit at the helm.
|
| There are real impact of not having a "product person" at
| helm. Business suits will squeeze out revenues and profits no
| matter what but there are no more tech that truly leap frogs
| existing art.
| ianai wrote:
| Exactly. Expect Prime membership to cost more and deliver
| less. New suits aren't going to be beholden to Jeff's mode
| of thinking and this historical precedent. We may well see
| Video culled outright or spun off into another media
| subscription, etc.
| hbosch wrote:
| I think consistently improving existing products is just as
| good as, and oftentimes preferable to, creating entirely
| new products.
| ianai wrote:
| I think it's more the case that so many years have passed
| that it's not like they were likely to fail. They just failed
| to succeed quite as much as their original CEOs could have
| made them. Steve left Tim a cash machine.
| 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.
| telltruth wrote:
| Looks like a typical MBA business suit to me. Could you
| elaborate on vision/technical aspect? I'd think he would
| delegate those to others.
| 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.
| smabie wrote:
| No one cares about the technical users. They are, by and
| large, irrelevant.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| But they did have a rough patch under Ballmer.
| neilv wrote:
| I'd guess that Bezos's genes are pretty well baked into the
| company.
|
| With Jobs, it sounded like there was a singular personality
| role that was a chaotic influence in the company. That wasn't
| the only thing that made Apple great, but were people
| throughout the company inspired to be more like Jobs?
| telltruth wrote:
| Please also include Google in your list.
| ianai wrote:
| That's actually a really good example too. The fact I didn't
| shows how far they've slipped of late.
| 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.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah, I think Cook and Apple are doing well.
|
| Google is doing poorly, but they have a monopoly on web
| advertising. If they lose that they'd be in trouble. They
| also weren't doing better when lead by Page (Google+ era).
|
| Microsoft was on the path to irrelevance during the Ballmer
| years and Nadella has pulled off a miracle to save them.
|
| I hope Amazon is more of a Tim Cook story than a Steve
| Ballmer one.
| kart23 wrote:
| I'd argue Pixel has been pretty successful for them.
|
| Nest and Fitbit were decent acquisitions, Google as a whole
| is doing ok.
| 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.
| googlerx wrote:
| I liked this until I got to the end and saw Jeff is still doing
| that "Day 1" BS. _groan_
| alimbada wrote:
| Any chance the new CEO has a conscience and will do something
| about the atrocious track record Amazon has in how it treats its
| employees?
| _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.
| jedberg wrote:
| Stock market seems happy about this. They are up 1% after hours.
| someguy2021 wrote:
| Amazon all the way !!!
| 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.
| f430 wrote:
| This was a smart move to avoid being caught up in the inevitable
| anti-trust suit
| taf2 wrote:
| My favorite quote
|
| " Keep inventing, and don't despair when at first the idea looks
| crazy. Remember to wander. Let curiosity be your compass. It
| remains Day 1.". - Jeff Bezos
| 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.)
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| [deleted]
| awill88 wrote:
| "I've never had more energy, and this isn't about retiring"
|
| [imitates Bezos]
|
| With that said, I'm out. Don't call me, I'll call you. If I don't
| show up for a meeting, it's because I'm paid and gonna do
| whatever tf I feel like for the rest of my life. Peace!
| williamsharris wrote:
| We all want a CEO like him.
| 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..?
| mhh__ wrote:
| Although I know what you mean, in Amazon's case the people
| making the "value" are paid very well. Its blunt but true,
| Amazon prints money from AWS not selling lightbulbs.
|
| Similarly, the idea that if you put 1.3 Million warehouse
| staff in a big room Amazon will come out the other side is
| really really stupid.
| 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.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Boring is also by far the stupidest with putting cars in
| tunnels about the least efficient thing one can do with a
| tunnel.
|
| The fundamentals of TBMs aren't so drastically sub-optimal
| to make that misallocation easy to compensate.
| 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
| efwfwef wrote:
| > As Amazon became large, we decided to use our scale and scope
| to lead on important social issues. Two high-impact examples: our
| $15 minimum wage and the Climate Pledge. In both cases, we staked
| out leadership positions and then asked others to come along with
| us. In both cases, it's working. Other large companies are coming
| our way. I hope you're proud of that as well.
|
| This, son, is the market at play. Without regulations to raise
| the minimum wage for everyone, companies are supposed to raise it
| to compete. Amazon has chosen to raise it for publicity, to
| compete, or by pure generosity. In the mean time, most American
| workers are paid well below minimum wage, and the situation is
| not getting better, I should even say: the situation is getting
| worse. Amazon has given ammunition for people to claim that see,
| companies are doing the right thing, all is well.
| 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.
| giomasce wrote:
| "As Amazon became large, we decided to use our scale and scope to
| lead on important social issues".
|
| A bold claim for a company widely known to exploit and underpay
| workers in distribution warehouses.
| scotty79 wrote:
| When you praise the software your team wrote you don't pay
| respects to how hard transistors work to make the whole thing
| possible.
|
| Lowest workers for Jeff are just cogs in the machine.
| Jamieee wrote:
| And their anti-union movements.
| https://www.doitwithoutdues.com/
| wiz21c wrote:
| your comment deserve 1000 votes. The whole message from Bezos
| is so much about what the management team has done and so few
| about the people who actually move boxes around.
|
| I also wonder what's the overall CO2 footprint of Amazon and
| what's their record about recycling, repairing, etc. I know
| they propose some tools to help for that and they may even be
| more efficient than others, but as a company with "lead on
| social issues", it needs to have more than "a lead", it needs
| to question its very own existence. So the mail of Bezos, is,
| in my view, not ambitious at all.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| I have some karma to burn, so let's do this again. Underpay
| compared to what?
|
| There has to be some comparison here. You can't say "underpay"
| and leave it at that.
|
| You might try and weasel and say "underpay compared to a decent
| living wage". Well, I have news for you - even that's relative.
|
| A fair comparison would be "underpay compared to the rest of
| the warehouse industry". Which begs the question - why do
| people go work for Amazon, then? Are they trapped by not being
| able to leave the small towns where Amazon hires? Doesn't sound
| likely. Could it be that their overall conditions are more or
| less on par, or quite probably somewhat better than the rest of
| the industry?
|
| I'm going to call your bullshit and say what I think directly:
| Amazon is a cheap target for young idealists simply because
| it's visible, it's fashionable to attack, makes a lot of money
| overall, and most people attacking it have no idea what's a
| good pay for that kind of work because they never did that kind
| of work.
| me_me_me wrote:
| > Amazon is a cheap target for young idealists
|
| Maybe its a target because is a behemoth of a target.
|
| Amazon is so big US states were competing in a bezos d*k
| sucking competition to have their hq built in their state.
|
| A company famous for paying zero taxes and its biggest slice
| of workforce are being optimised like a computer program to
| squeeze every last $ they can produce at the expense of the
| workforce.
|
| So if amazon is a bad target what else should be then? Or
| maybe everything is fine and the invisible hand is going to
| fix all of the problems?
| notSupplied wrote:
| States and cities competing to undercut each other in
| offering sweet deals for Amazon HQs and sports team
| stadiums had always felt extremely wrong to me. If anything
| has a natural right to behave like a cartel when
| negotiating against businesses, it is municipal and state
| governments.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| That's a _very_ fair practice to attack, although to be
| honest once the rules have been written it would be kinda
| stupid not to play the game this way. But allowing cities
| to offer huge allowances and tax breaks is hugely unequal
| to other businesses in that area, and creates perverse
| incentives where the auction ends up with a likely negative
| value, just so some politician can brag that he brought X
| or Y or Z in his city.
|
| To note that this is the opposite of free market: the crux
| of the problem is allowing politicians to write checks/tax
| deductions to businesses for purely political purposes.
| giomasce wrote:
| Quite agree that Amazon is a cheap target: they do very bad
| things and they are able to do them at scale; one might argue
| even in a monopoly situation. Doesn't make stuff fairer. Rest
| assured it's not my only target, if that's what troubles you.
|
| Amazon's choice to exploit workers might very well be an
| industry standard, but this doesn't make it a choice any
| less: Amazon boasts about leading on important social issues,
| but that's the real bullshit. They just do as the others, no
| virtue at all. Being in the strong position, they might have
| the opportunity to make the industry fairer, but they
| willingly decided not even to try.
|
| I like how in your world megacorp automatically get the
| benefit of doubt, while people pissing in their pants because
| they cannot go to the bathroom are "relatively" fine.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > Amazon is a cheap target for young idealists simply because
| it's visible
|
| Easy targets are the best targers.
|
| Amazon is the raise of centralized retail and computing.
|
| Furthermore replacing store workers with fully appized gig
| delivery drivers is probably no net gain for small towns.
|
| You don't have to be a "young idealist" to be worried about
| Amazon eating everyones lunch.
| niek_pas wrote:
| How about "underpay relative to the value they produce"?
| bhupy wrote:
| They produce the same value as a Sears warehouse worker, or
| a Circuit City warehouse worker.
|
| The reason that Amazon is successful, but Sears and Circuit
| City aren't isn't because of the warehouse workers.
| hntrader wrote:
| That's true for every commercial transaction including
| every labor market transaction, and it's the reason why
| voluntary transactions are positive sum to both parties
| (ignoring the negative externalities to uninvolved third
| parties, and edge cases like a diminished ability to make
| an informed decision such as with a gambling addiction)
|
| You paid $1000 for an iPhone because you thought the
| subjective value that it brings you is worth $1500. If
| Apple was asking you for $1501, you wouldn't make the
| purchase.
|
| Google hired you as a dev for $300k because they think you
| bring more value to the table than $300k. If you were
| asking for more than what your value is to them, then they
| wouldn't hire you. Same for every other hiring arrangement
| including the ones Amazon makes and the ones you make in
| your personal life (such as if you hire a cleaner, book an
| uber, etc)
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| That's basically what the word "employ" means in a
| capitalist economy.
| gregjw wrote:
| So long and thanks for all the fish.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Getting ready to run for President in 2024?
| mrfusion wrote:
| It's weird he mentions 1-click as one of their crowning
| achievements. Couldn't any software engineer do that in an
| afternoon?
| mannykannot wrote:
| Getting it patented was the achievement.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| 1-click ordering is a product innovation, not a technical one
| mrfusion wrote:
| Well then a business person could think of it in an
| afternoon.
| 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.
| safog wrote:
| I think it'll be more like Jassy saying: Dave (Clark), make
| sure retail top-line grows x%, profitability grows y% and keep
| an eye on Walmart.
| somethoughts wrote:
| I think the challenge is when it comes down to resource
| allocation between different business units in radically
| different industries. Like how does someone who is not Jeff
| Bezos go about deciding whether Amazon should use its free
| cashflow to make big bold bets such as acquiring LionsGate
| for Prime Video content, expanding Amazon fulfillment centers
| globally, acquiring Humana for a push into Amazon health
| insurance or buying a chip fab to make Graviton chips.
| Perhaps the fact that Andy Jassy actually comes more from a
| business background means he'll do well.
| ngoel36 wrote:
| So is it finally Day 2?
| ElectricMind wrote:
| I wanted to work for Amazon then I read "The Everything Store..."
| and how brutal this guy is even to his loyal people. How he
| treated initial people who supported him. Amazon is part of the
| club- I don't want to work companies. Facebook, Google, Reddit,
| Twitter, LinkedIn, Tesla, SpaceX and adding more
| neolefty wrote:
| Are there large companies that you _would_ like to work for?
|
| Keeping a healthy culture in a small company seems feasible.
| Not sure about large companies?
| monadic3 wrote:
| Find a better job, employees.
| 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
| [deleted]
| 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.
| paxys wrote:
| Antitrust aside, has there ever been a business reason to
| split up Amazon? I doubt anyone inside the company ever took
| that talk seriously.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Their fast growing ad network can be seen as a conflict
| worth splitting out.
|
| Probably similar or maybe even clearer than Google since
| more people understand a store selling their own products
| than Google owning every single step (with huge non
| transparent and evidently according to TX colluded margins)
| in the ad transaction, in addition to all the user data,
| and their own products.
| baskire wrote:
| the market caps of each department spun out is likely
| greater than the current market cap of Amazon today.
|
| That is assuming the companies would all be as successful
| being spun out.
| sobani wrote:
| In a way that's the case with every company. Each part is
| more valuable on it's own, unless it's more valuable
| together with another part. :P
|
| btw, it looks like you have some sort of shadowban. I
| don't see any terrible comments among your last 20 or so,
| so you might want to ask @dang if he can look into your
| case.
| newswasboring wrote:
| Why do you say this person is under shadow ban? As far as
| I know if they are in shadowban only they can see their
| comments?
| 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.
| granzymes wrote:
| Has the government filed an antitrust suit against Amazon?
| It could take half a decade to go from filing to a
| (potential) final appeal at the Supreme Court.
| 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
| Alupis wrote:
| At the scale Walmart operates - 25th largest GDP in the
| world if considered as a nation[1], supporting over 2.2
| Million employees[2], in over 27 countries[3] - it's
| simply more cost effective to do your tech in-house.
|
| Amazon is huge... but Walmart is truly massive... over
| double Amazon's size in just about every metric. They
| clearly have the resources to handle things on their own.
|
| [1] https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=034072126
| 0780250...
|
| [2] https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/company-
| facts#:~:text....
|
| [3] https://corporate.walmart.com/askwalmart/in-which-
| countries-....
| dreamer7 wrote:
| Yet, Walmart seems to rely on GCP and Azure for atleast
| some of their cloud requirements
| ac29 wrote:
| See, for example, Walmart Labs:
| https://careers.walmart.com/technology/technology-
| software-d...
|
| (6000 employees in 2018, per wikipedia)
| airstrike wrote:
| It's a matter of corporate strategy... Amazon is like a
| combination of different entities, one of which is AWS,
| and AWS arguably does cloud better than anyone else
|
| Walmart doesn't have the same capabilities. Being larger
| doesn't mean they _can_ do it.
| allanmacgregor wrote:
| Been part of some of those conversations, some companies
| are wary of hosting with Amazon not due to paying their
| competitor but due to the amount of power they are
| putting on a direct competitor hands.
| hrktb wrote:
| Was in the industry for a stint, and the issue was not
| only about money going to Amazon. There was a serious
| fear for their usage data to be used as a window into
| their business (if not fear of more illegal and unethical
| access to their data)
|
| The case of Amazon using internal market place data to
| guide their own product strategy has already been made
| over and over, so the precedent exists.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| It does for marketplace but no aws as far as I know.
| Still makes sense that folks would be skeptical though.
| echelon wrote:
| They can pay Microsoft.
| hrktb wrote:
| They do, as far as I know Microsoft has a pretty good
| hold on retail. Some go with GCP but Google is less
| "enterprisy" for their taste in a lot of ways.
| [deleted]
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| AWS is arguably worth more than Amazon.com - so it might be
| that AWS is going to spin out the website instead of the
| other way around.
| megablast wrote:
| He retired because he wasn't going to get Ceo. This tells
| you've lot about the future of amazon.
| newsclues wrote:
| Or it tells you about the people who compete for top jobs.
| noncoml wrote:
| I just hope Andy Jassy will not bring the AWS customer support
| to retail, because Amazon is screwed if he does.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| AWS support is pretty great in my experience. That's with a
| paid plan, but I consider it great even for a paid plan.
| Typically instant chat with someone who can usually fix it is
| a game changer.
|
| I think it's a little unreasonable to expect free support for
| such a technical product to be as good as that for the retail
| site.
| Corrado wrote:
| Nah, its just that you'll have to change your perspective of
| customer support. Any questions will be answered in 5 days by
| pointing to the FAQ and each response will take an additional
| 5 days. If fact, you'll probably find the answer yourself
| before support helps you. Finally, the feedback mechanism
| will be so generic as to be useless.
|
| Unless you want to pay 10% of your order for expedited
| service. Then those days drop from 5 to 3.
|
| /s
| 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
| senderista wrote:
| I had to substitute for my manager once in the ops meeting
| and I've never been so terrified watching that roulette
| wheel spin...
| bscanlan wrote:
| I miss #wtf. I hope it lives on in Slack.
| joolsbot wrote:
| Its still alive :)
| 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 have done 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.
| mabbo wrote:
| I listen to the calls weekly. No one shouts. No one
| degraded others. Cbell's power is that he doesn't have an
| ego in these calls.
|
| The blameless postmortems are reviewed in these meetings,
| and the findings challenged, to ensure they really got to
| the root cause and lessons are learned.
|
| I once almost got to present my post mortem, but it
| wasn't high enough priority that week. I wish it had
| been. It would have been ripped apart, but I would have
| gotten the feedback from the smartest people in the
| company on how to make my system better.
| ehaughee wrote:
| As someone who has been on these calls multiple times, I
| think "rip someone apart" was an attempt to portray the
| bluntness with which feedback was provided but (as other
| commenters have mentioned) not to import any ad hominem
| attack characteristics to the feedback. Although
| admittedly the language used was contrary to that. While
| Amazon certainly has its flaws and has _plenty_ of room
| to grow in the hospitable work environment category,
| cbell 's feedback on weekly calls is not one of those
| areas imo.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Blameless is often pointless because sometimes something
| about the person is the problem. If the project failed
| because Bob ran it and Bob is too risk averse, then you
| can't fix it without talking about Bob. Bob either needs
| to figure out how to be less risk averse (hard and time
| consuming journey) or Bob shouldn't run projects that
| require risk taking.
|
| Doesn't mean Bob is bad or gets fired, but he is part of
| the picture.
|
| The whole blameless thing is so weak - if there's
| something about you that caused the failure, don't you
| want to know?
| ehaughee wrote:
| The key mental shift (for me anyway) is that if a system
| can be brought to its knees by a single person, then the
| system is very likely flawed. You need to design a better
| system when the flaw in the system is the people. What
| that often looks like is changing/instituting processes
| such that quantitative measure (metrics, checklists, etc)
| governs decisions (thereby removing much, but importantly
| not all, of the human element), or you design processes
| in such a way that one person is not in charge of making
| the decision (the "two person rule", CRs, leadership
| approval). There are of course other tools but these two
| are pretty common in my experience.
| adwn wrote:
| > _if a system can be brought to its knees by a single
| person, then the system is very likely flawed._
|
| That just means that the person who designed the system
| deserves the blame.
|
| I'm only half-joking here. You can't just rely on the
| "system" - someone needs to be responsible, either for
| the decision or for creating the system that makes the
| decision.
| ehaughee wrote:
| Having a system/process is not about removing
| accountability, it's about reducing discretion/cognitive
| load where it's been identified as risky. In fact, having
| a system/process in place to point to and say "this
| individual did not follow the steps/process/rules" makes
| an unbiased conversation about their performance much
| more possible.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Yes and this works when you're doing something for the
| 10th time. It totally doesn't work when you're doing
| something innovative and risky, which I assume is the
| kinds of conversations we're talking about here (this
| subthread is contextual to a senior amazon exec, he's
| probably not PMing someone forgetting to change the
| backup tapes)
| hamburglar wrote:
| If your root cause analysis leads to a preventative fix
| that amounts to "humans should not make mistake X" you
| haven't done anything to prevent recurrence.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I am not constraining my statement to the narrow set of
| problems where your statement applies.
| 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.
| ygjb wrote:
| Yep. Not sports here, but military. I will take a
| dressing down, public or otherwise, over office politics
| and some of the corporate shenanigans that I have
| encountered in my private sector career. Give it to me
| straight, let me know how bad I fucked up, and what we
| can do to fix it, or walk me out the door.
|
| That said, I also understand that this doesn't work for
| alot of people.
| [deleted]
| clausok wrote:
| Same for me. My high school and college hockey coaches
| could really let you have it. They never pulled you aside
| and did it in private either. My college coach had
| episodes that would make even Bobby Knight look like a
| pussycat. He once had a roll-on-the-floor grappling fight
| with a teammate in the locker room between periods.
| (Coach had a big tactical advantage: he wasn't wearing
| skates) When I ended up working on a trading desk the
| impromptu performance review broadsides -- in front of
| everyone -- felt very familiar.
| 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.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Like you, I don't think those meetings were particularly
| brutal but merely kept plain and honest, and more
| importantly, were of great learning value besides being a
| fantastic demonstration of leadership by cbell.
| gowld wrote:
| "ripping into people" was famous Bezos/Amazon culture
| from the start.
| myroon5 wrote:
| > His weekly ops meetings have been imitated by other
| orgs, terribly, because they don't understand the point
|
| couldn't agree more. Almost every day of the week now
| with AWS, org, service, and team level ops meetings, and
| most of them miss the forest for the trees
| QuinnyPig wrote:
| Smart money is on Matt Garman.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| Small point but my mind just boggled at the figure of 1.3 million
| employees. This is getting towards the size of a small country.
| Absolutely amazing!
| someguy2021 wrote:
| Say what you like, hate how much you can but Amazon is a truly
| inspiring story and one of the best engineering companies in the
| world. There impact has been huge !!! Jeff is a true leader and
| visionary !
| dannykwells wrote:
| Microsoft, Google, Amazon... Wondering who the next major CEO
| will be to "promote" himself to the board will be. Mark? Elon?
| [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.
| mssundaram wrote:
| _stop coming up with weird conspiracy theories about why
| he's spending his money_
|
| Well firstly, no I don't have to do any of that. And
| secondly, it's not a theory about a conspiracy. It's more
| of a speculation. Finally, I highly doubt his
| benevolence, that's my whole point as I said in my
| original post - he probably enjoys the influence a lot
| more than he enjoys helping people.
| 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.
| catacombs wrote:
| Ah, yes. Because owning a news organization, one filled
| with people who can do investigations, presents numerous
| opportunities to avoid paying taxes.
| 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.
| morelisp wrote:
| The questions shouldn't focus on what he lets get printed
| - we still live in an age where journalism seems to have
| minimal consequences no matter the quality - but what
| happens if e.g. the WaPo Guild takes action in solidarity
| with an Amazon union.
| catacombs wrote:
| > The questions shouldn't focus on what he lets get
| printed
|
| Bezos has no say in what can and can't be published.
| morelisp wrote:
| There is a difference between "does not have editorial
| oversight" - which I believe - and "has no say in what
| can be published" - which is trivially false since as
| owner he could do anything from hire only sports
| reporters to shut the whole thing down if he wanted.
| filoleg wrote:
| >but what happens if e.g. the WaPo Guild takes action in
| solidarity with an Amazon union?
|
| Luckily, we don't need to wonder, because WaPo has
| actually posted that kind of an article just yesterday,
| and it was extremely critical of Amazon's anti-
| unionization efforts [0]. The article's headline is
| "Amazon's anti-union blitz stalks Alabama warehouse
| workers everywhere, even the bathroom". Even the headline
| itself wasn't sugarcoated or softened in the slightest.
|
| 0. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/02/a
| mazon-...
| morelisp wrote:
| This is not an especially a sympathetic article to either
| side, but I'm talking about things beyond the core remit
| of a newsroom. If Amazon workers strike, what happens if
| the WaPo Guild refuses to cross the picket line by
| accepting Amazon deliveries, using AWS, or run articles
| alongside Amazon ads?
| 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.
| wolfhumble wrote:
| So now ONE person dictates what 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.
| irrational wrote:
| My college student just called me saying, "Jeff Bezos is not the
| head of Amazon anymore, but if he thinks this will fix his
| problem he is wrong." Me, "What problem?" Her, "That we all hate
| him." Me, "Who is we?" Her, "Everyone who sees how the
| bourgeoisie are the enemy." Me, "Um, do you think Jeff Bezos
| actually cares enough about your thoughts on him to remove
| himself from the head of Amazon?" Her, "He's just hoping to
| survive the revolution." Me, "So, how are your marxist courses
| going at college again?"
| 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.
| omega3 wrote:
| Looking at the lists of early employees and the
| compensation/wealth of the execs has there ever been a company
| where the wealth created went in a such disproportionate way to
| the founder?
| 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.
| the-dude wrote:
| If it floats, flies or <insert your choice of words here>,
| rent it.
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| LOL.
|
| Apparently his rental is hydrogen powered.
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/08/bill-gates-
| becom...
|
| Another mystery about whether he actually owns it.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2020/02/13/myster
| y-s...
| xibalba wrote:
| I know there is a lot of hate toward Amazon going around these
| days, including calls for regulation and/or break-up (to which I
| am not necessarily opposed).
|
| But, for my money, the world is an immeasurably better place for
| the presence Jeff Bezos and Amazon.
|
| Thanks Jeff!
| 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
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Absolutely, totally nothing to do with the "billionaire tax"
| brewing in Washington state. But, you know, the timing probably
| doesn't hurt.
| 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.
| riversflow wrote:
| Exactly. It seems that while Jobs was able to
| balance/direct Ive in a constructive way, Cook was not. So
| at least from the outside Ive started to have an outsized
| impact on the final product, to the detriment of the
| product's final quality. It took Ive's departure for things
| for things to go back to normal.
| 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".
| DennisP wrote:
| Nightly news said he's going to focus his next efforts on
| philanthropy, the Washington Post, and space travel. Maybe we'll
| see a little more from Blue Origin soon.
| daltonlp wrote:
| "It remains day 1 for you suckers. $15 minimum wage, isn't that
| great? I hope you are as proud of our inventiveness as I am. I
| think you should be.
|
| "For me, it's day 2. I'm excited about this transition."
| 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.
| impalallama wrote:
| Pioneered is the key word here. The way Amazon does reviews
| has become something of the industry standard.
| 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 ...
| GraffitiTim wrote:
| My memory is there were some stores that had "customer
| reviews" before Amazon, but they were all screened by the
| company before being published. So every product would only
| have 5 star reviews.
|
| When Amazon came out with real reviews, it seemed crazy to
| many at the time -- like why would you want to share bad
| things about your products on your own website? I thought
| it was awesome.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| OK, so now this hinges on the idea that such stores had
| an online e-commerce-y presence before amzn. Again, I'm
| not ruling it out, but I don't remember us having any
| real models for this.
|
| Amazon's customer review system was created as a barrier
| to entry for competitors, as much as anything else.
| GraffitiTim wrote:
| Your memory would be more credible than mine certainly!
|
| Perhaps I'm remembering my/people's reaction to first
| seeing reviews on Amazon.
| ajliu wrote:
| I'm not quite sure about the timeline of which was first,
| but didn't ebay have heavy emphasis on seller/buyer reviews
| early on?
| 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.
| amelius wrote:
| How about IMDB then?
| 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.
| amelius wrote:
| > We pioneered customer reviews
|
| Perhaps, but you didn't get them right (nobody did so far).
|
| > 1-Click
|
| Reminds me of the guy who invented "half-click" buying, i.e.
| you buy on the mousedown event.
| 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..
| mark-r wrote:
| And Thomas Edison didn't invent the light bulb. History
| doesn't look on him any less kindly for that.
| mr_toad wrote:
| There were data centres before Amazon, but there was
| nothing like EC2. Infrastructure as code made all the
| difference.
| Aperocky wrote:
| This. No one before used RPC calls to provision actual
| infrastructure as a public business.
| progval wrote:
| > but there was nothing like EC2. Infrastructure as code
| made all the difference.
|
| I believe Grid5000 did it before Amazon [1].
|
| It opened in 2005 and allowed users to automatically book
| hardware (with OAR [2]) and install their own images
| (with Kadeploy) on dedicated hardware.
|
| [1]: https://www.grid5000.fr/w/History [2]: https://www.g
| rid5000.fr/w/Getting_Started#Reserving_resource...
| koolba wrote:
| Amazon invented cloud computing the way Ford invented the
| automobile.
| bernulli wrote:
| I'd argue everyone who has heard of Ford is most likely
| familiar with Mercedes, whereas the number of people
| familiar with Amazon will likely be many orders of
| magnitude larger than the people who know who invented
| cloud computing. Not quite an apt comparison, imho.
| 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.
| rrdharan wrote:
| > Amazon and Apple defined cloud computing and
| smartphones
|
| Absolutely. You'll note that the OP's word choice was
| _invented_ - _defined_ would indeed be appropriate and
| not at all absurd.
| scottyah wrote:
| I'm certainly no expert on what makes a phone a
| smartphone, but it seems like Blackberries with their
| email and small web functionality really kicked off the
| movement of phones being able to do more than calls and
| texts.
| xxpor wrote:
| Don't forget windows mobile. And Palm!
| 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.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Jeff was an early investor in Airbnb and Uber, too. And I am
| sure many more companies as LP via other VC firms.
| 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!
| devilduck wrote:
| Too bad he doesn't care about the people who work for him
| Donckele wrote:
| Thanks for the motivation:
|
| "Keep inventing, and don't despair when at first the idea looks
| crazy. Remember to wander. Let curiosity be your compass. It
| remains Day 1.
|
| Jeff"
| 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.
| telltruth wrote:
| To me he looks like retiring. Working on new projects while
| _someone_ else is CEO hasn 't worked out well. Ask Bill Gates,
| Steve Jobs (when Scully became CEO) and Larry Page. Bezos had
| been buying massive houses and spending a lot more time there.
| He had been seen with his girlfriend a lot more these days.
| Before his affair, he barely had time for anything other than
| Amazon. I think he is done with all ambitions more or less.
| 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.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > They were made for a time when we were not so poorly
| educated that we trusted leadership to people so far
| away,
|
| How do we define 'far away'? I can have a face to face
| conversation with someone at the opposite end of the
| country with near-zero effort.
|
| > with so little in common with ourselves and our way of
| lives.
|
| I strongly disagree with this. Partisan politics try to
| paint people from different regions of the US as being
| wildly different, and I flatly reject this notion. I've
| lived in urban, rural, and in areas separated by
| thousands of miles. Americans are far more alike than
| different. There are the same (minor) cultural
| differences within the average state as between states on
| opposite ends of the country.
|
| > 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.
|
| I don't have all the answers, but I would start by
| outlawing the bribery of public officials via campaign
| donations, and I'd put the legislative process in version
| control.
| 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.
| atq2119 wrote:
| > Pervasive as Amazon, Google, et al. may be, they are
| still much easier to escape than the United States
| government.
|
| Like it or not, there's always going to be _some_
| powerful entity who you cannot escape because it rules
| the land. The only question is what shape you want that
| entity to have. Accountability matters, and so democracy
| is generally a good place to start.
| 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.
| sbarre wrote:
| Sure sure, you know what I meant.. Legally in the sense
| that for _most_ companies, if they don't prioritize
| profits, they can potentially face shareholder lawsuits,
| or management gets ousted and replaced by the board,
| etc..
| 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.
| astrange wrote:
| It's odd to claim companies are obligated to maximize
| profit in a thread about Amazon, whose retail operation
| isn't profitable and basically exists because Bezos
| hypnotized investors into giving him free money forever.
| [deleted]
| sokoloff wrote:
| Literally two posts above yours, the one your parent is
| replying to, are the words "legally obligated to put
| profit ahead of anything else."
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Hmm. I could argue that technically there're sometimes
| contracts with investors, but that's not about public
| trading; they probably just didn't understand where the
| obligation comes from.
| sokoloff wrote:
| To clarify: I _don't believe_ that companies are legally
| obligated to maximize profits.
|
| I do believe that there are _people who claim_ that
| companies have that legal obligation, which is what you
| said you'd not observed.
| 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?
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| A successful corporation performs its mission smartly and
| reliably.
|
| This may or may not include specified behaviors, tasks,
| growth, marketing, sales, profits, goods, services,
| employees, competitors, etc.
|
| Even corporations without any shareholders are common,
| found in the non-profit sector, but you do need corporate
| officers regardless.
|
| Would it be better if there were a couple non-profit
| corporations with one or two million employees each the
| size of Amazon or Wal-Mart, to go along with what we have
| now?
| [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.
| astrange wrote:
| The right-wing (libertarian?) belief here is usually that
| doing things for the benefit of society doesn't actually
| benefit society, because irony always wins.
|
| I don't know if this is true, but you'll only talk past
| each other if you don't acknowledge it.
| 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.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Curious what definition you would use? Beyond the
| obvious, monopoly on the use of force.
| 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.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Sure regulatory capture can entrench interests, but
| there's no reason to believe that in the _absence_ of
| regulation one big company wouldn 't aggregate every
| major market and just destroy all competition.
| 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...
| solidsnack9000 wrote:
| As a practical matter, without government to to enforce
| contracts and protect IP, most of the monopolies we've
| seen over the last ~120 years or so would never have
| existed. There would not have been much to MSFT if
| software piracy were a nonissue at the corporate level.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Without rules I think you'd see a lot more violence.
| They'll get their way domestically, in the same way large
| enterprise has leveraged violence the world over to get
| their way.
|
| Someone has to have a monopoly on violence or you're
| going to have a bad time.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Thats not really true. There are tons of industries out
| there that are highly competitive, and are not
| aggravating into a monopoly, and those industries are
| highly competitive without much action from the
| government.
|
| Sure, there are some industries that have huge network
| effects, such as telecom, that have a tendency towards
| monopolies.
|
| But such industries are not the rule. There are instead
| many industries where monopolies are not forming,
| competition is working on its own, without the government
| doing much to enforce that competition.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Do you have some examples out of curiosity?
| stale2002 wrote:
| Like almost every single major market where people spend
| a large percentage of their money on?
|
| Are restaurants a monopoly? Obviously not.
|
| Cars? There are lots of options for cars
|
| grocery stores? There are certain some big players, but
| the 10 corner stores, target, safeway, and whole foods
| within 5 blocks of where I live show that it is not a
| monopoly. MAYBE you could argue geographic monopoly for
| grocery stores, in certain limited exceptions in a few
| small towns, but that is not the vast majority of people.
|
| Housing? There are 10s (or Hundreds?) of millions of
| people own their own home, or rent it to others. Clearly
| That is pretty competitive
|
| Lets now pick some random things that I see within
| eyesight of me.
|
| What about refrigerators? There are multiple refrigerator
| companies.
|
| Furniture? Probably a lot of companies make furniture.
|
| What about shoes? Clothing? There are lots of clothing
| companies.
|
| And before someone says it, yes I am sure that every
| example that I gave has some big players in the market.
|
| But my main point is that I simply do not consider the
| existence of some big players in a market, to be anywhere
| even close to the same thing as a monopoly or similarly
| non-competitive market. There is a huge gap between those
| two things.
|
| The only major exception to all of these examples, is
| some of the new tech companies that have significant
| network effects in winner take all markets. Sure, maybe
| there is an argument that Google is getting to the point
| where it almost has a monopoly on ads.
|
| But, just looking around my room, and looking at the main
| things that I buy in my life, which is food, shelter,
| transportion, and clothing, it seems pretty clear that
| most of these things have lots of competition, even if
| there are some big players in these markets.
|
| That is unless someone is going to make a silly argument
| that the only markets that could be considered
| "competitive" are ones in which there are 10 thousands
| small businesses of equal size or something.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I mean, all of these exist in regulated markets that have
| antitrust regulations. Mergers simply would not be
| approved. This is a function of the system working as
| designed.
|
| The trend however is clear.
|
| It's extra clear in a market like air travel. Just two
| decades ago the US domestic airline market was actually
| _competitive_ until...
|
| 1. 2001 saw TWA fold into AA.
|
| 2. 2005 saw America West fold into US.
|
| 3. 2008 saw ATA fold into SouthWest.
|
| 4. 2008 saw Northwest fold into Delta.
|
| 4. 2009 saw Midwest fold into Frontier.
|
| 5. 2010 saw United fold into Continental to form
| "United".
|
| 6. 2010 saw AirTran fold into SouthWest.
|
| 7. 2013 saw US Airways (and by extension America West and
| TWA) fold into AA.
|
| 8. 2016 saw Virgin America fold into Alaska.
|
| When the government is asleep at the wheel, consolidation
| happens. The only reason the Big 4 aren't the Big 3 is
| because of regulators.
|
| Out of your identified markets, the trend towards
| consolidation is very clear - except where no meaningful
| economy of scale efficiencies can be realized (such as
| real estate, or taxis).
|
| Cars, for instance, consolidated to such an extent that
| only 14 car companies control 54 brands [1]. Again the
| only reason there isn't more consolidation is because of
| regulators.
|
| Fridges are another great example. The market has seen
| huge quantities of consolidation, and likely the only
| reason it has hasn't progressed further at this time is
| because of regulators. [2]
|
| You're mistaking the system working for it not being
| there at all.
|
| [1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/14-companies-
| control-entire...
|
| [2] http://www.appliance411.com/purchase/make.shtml
| stale2002 wrote:
| > It's extra clear in a market like air travel.
|
| Sure, that is a market with large amounts of geographic
| network effects. I already said that markets with large
| network effects could have competition problems.
|
| IE, with air travel, on any given route between two
| cities, there might only be 1 or two airlines servicing
| it. So yes, thats a problem.
|
| Most things that people spend their money on do not have
| much network effects, so my original point stands.
|
| > to such an extent that only 14 car companies control 54
| brands
|
| So not a winner take all market then? Got it. I already
| said that it would be ridiculous to claim that a market
| would need to have 10,000 companies of equal size, in
| order to be considered "competitive".
|
| So yes, I consider the car market to be fairly
| competitive, and not one where you only have "no choice".
|
| > Fridges are another great example.
|
| You just posted a link that shows that there are a bunch
| of competitors, and that it is not a winner take all
| market.
|
| So I stand by my point that neither cars nor fridges are
| in any way similar to something like internet service,
| where someone might only have 1 or 2 choices, or
| something like the Google ads business, where Google has
| a huge amount of power in the market that is no way
| comparable to the fairly competitive car market.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I posit these markets only have many players because
| regulation prevents their consolidation.
|
| Cars went from 54 to 14 establishing clear directionality
| and benefit. It's not going from 14 to 1 _only_ because
| of laws against further consolidation in the space.
| Regulators would simply deny their request to consolidate
| further. Stopping at 14 isn 't some magical constant or
| some natural end state.
|
| My point is that the natural direction in each of these
| markets is consolidation, then at a point it hits a dead
| stop. Why is consolidation only useful up to a certain
| threshold? It's not. Regulation steps in and keeps it
| competitive.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > only because of laws against further consolidation in
| the space
|
| No, because these markets don't have some huge geographic
| network effect.
|
| The markets are pretty different than something like home
| internet service.
|
| The traditional example being that of water pipes, where
| there is zero benefit to laying the pipes twice to a
| house.
|
| You should be able to see how a situation where laying
| the pipes twice to a house is pretty different than a
| situation where there absolutely could be benefits to
| another car company being created, to manufacture new
| cars.
|
| > Regulation steps
|
| I am not sure how you can claim with with a straight
| face, that anti-trust laws/regulation is being strongly
| enforced these days, and that this is the reason why most
| industries are not turning into monopolies.
|
| Anti-trust law isn't really enforced even in obvious
| cases where it should be enforced these days , and yet I
| see a world where there is lots of new companies entering
| markets, and lots of competition, in most markets,
| despite regulators failing to enforce regulation in the
| exceptional and rare cases where it _should_ be doing so.
|
| It is quite clear that regulation is not stepping in,
| even in the obvious cases. So no, I do not believe that
| the non-existent enforcement of regulation is doing
| anything. Instead, we are living in a world that has lots
| of competition, despite the fact that the regulators
| aren't doing anything even in the blatant and exceptional
| cases where it should, such as in telecom/internet/app
| stores/ect.
| 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.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Strength only comes in numbers.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Not really.
|
| With numbers come also internal struggles, that weaken
| the whole system.
|
| Look at switzerland or norway for example. They are small
| in numbers, but don't get really screwed by big
| corporations either.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I suspect that's in large part due to their
| interconnectedness with the European Union. Neither are
| Schengen countries, or Eurozone countries, but they both
| participate in the Single Market - and Norway is a full
| participant in the EEA. [1,2]
|
| Roughly speaking they coordinate on all major rules and
| policies and practices with the entire rest of the EU and
| therefore are effectively part of the EU for regulatory
| and trade purposes.
|
| The UK on the other hand, obviously just wrapped up its
| Seppuku process of leaving the EU, and we're already
| seeing the relative increase in their being taken
| advantage of by corporate interests due to their much
| weaker position.
|
| Switzerland and Norway take advantage of the power of the
| EU to push back on corporate interests, and the UK is
| getting kicked around as its negotiating power just went
| down by a factor of 10.
|
| [1] https://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-and-
| regions/coun...
|
| [2] https://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-and-
| regions/coun...
| 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.
| DickingAround wrote:
| I think the problem is that it's not obvious why getting
| super big is bad. Anti-trust is a law around abuse of
| customers by cornering a market. But what if they haven't
| abused customers? What if they treat customers really
| well and otherwise provide a lot of value? Why stop them
| from becoming that big?
|
| (It is a big company, but I also appreciate being able to
| order on-demand compute, or getting like a hundred
| million things in under a day delivered to my door)
| telltruth wrote:
| Imagine a $2T company. One day CEO decides that his
| company should stand for only Republican values, donate
| them handsomely, buy newspapers for them, start TV
| channels for them, only offer employment to republican
| leaning persons, introduce new laws through lobby... All
| of these is in fact legal. When a company becomes too
| big, a single person can control its resources towards
| hurting political system, general public good, tilt
| opinions and so on. You are then relying on this one
| person to knowingly or unknowingly not make a bad move.
| Most often, they will.
| notSupplied wrote:
| EU anti-trust takes harm to competing business into
| account, but American anti-trust is totally focused on
| consumer harm, and specifically harm from higher prices.
|
| So unsurprisingly, American tech monopolies are usually
| middleman-monopolies that offer low (often free) prices
| while squeezing businesses on the other side.
| Facebook/Google sells the user as the product, while
| Amazon is GREAT for low prices, but not so great, and
| sometimes ruinous for the sellers.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art
| icl...
|
| The consumer welfare principle post-dates anti-trust.
| burkaman wrote:
| I guess it's similar to arguing against a benevolent
| dictatorship. And I don't mean that to be snide, I think
| if I met someone living under a truly benevolent dictator
| I would have a very hard time explaining to them why I
| think it's a bad and dangerous form of government.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| For one, if you don't like something, you don't get to
| air your displeasure, find common ground with others who
| feel the same and then band together to do something
| about it, say, vote out the people who are the reason for
| it. Benevolent dictatorships tend to bare their teeth
| once the spotlight of scrutiny hits them.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The parallels to Amazon's response to unionization
| efforts are uncanny.
| SllX wrote:
| You're going to have to try harder than this.
|
| Money is a _form_ of power, it is not equivalent to
| power.
|
| Amazon is valued at $1.6T and this is a calculation that
| directly correlates to how much individual shares of
| Amazon. Shares can be sold for money, but this decreases
| the share of power the shareholder has by the exact
| amount of shares they sold to the buyer, which increases
| their shares and power over the company. The act of
| buying and selling shares affects the stock price which
| can increase or decrease the market valuation of Amazon.
|
| If Amazon were a lone behemoth sitting on top of the
| stock market and second place wasn't even close, I think
| you would have a stronger case.
|
| Checking literally thirty seconds ago, Amazon isn't
| sitting up there all by its lonesome, it is the bronze
| medal with Apple and Microsoft sitting above it, Apple up
| above the $2T barrier, and Google lagging pretty closely
| behind at 1.3T.
|
| Now these market valuations will be a bit different
| tomorrow, or next week, or next month, but none of this
| is literal money in the bank. Money in the bank comes
| from the products and services these companies sell.
|
| They are also both cooperators and competitors with each
| other and companies like Facebook ($761B), Walmart ($395B
| I think it was) and Adobe ($232B).
|
| The power they can leverage from these assets is immense,
| but it is in competition with other motivated actors who
| are throwing more actual cash around.
|
| If we do nothing, it is likely there will be more
| trillion dollar companies this decade than the ones we
| are discussing now, some of those will be in different
| market sectors altogether, and some of those will be
| competitors, and some of those will be semi-competitors.
|
| Companies with far less cash than this already lobby for
| their interests in places like the Capitol, and the
| amount of money they're using to successfully (and
| unsuccessfully) lobby is measured in the low millions,
| not the billions, and certainly not the trillions.
|
| So what exactly is the problem that reducing the size of
| these companies valuation and theoretical power supposed
| to solve? How does this benefit society? Is society being
| harmed by Amazon at $1.7T or Apple at $2.2B? Is the
| problem their size or their practices?
|
| Break this down. It's easy to say "no company should be
| this size", it's a lot harder to say why, and I am not
| convinced yet. There's plenty of people in the PRC with
| billions, and that hasn't stopped the PRC from soliciting
| them for "voluntary" contributions, so maybe lots of
| money < lots of guns and a big Army in the overall
| economy of power.
| tovej wrote:
| You are confusing a whole lot of concepts here, and at
| times it seems you are arguing against yourself(?).
|
| First you argue against great concentrations of capital
| also being great concentrations of power, in this "yes,
| but no" sentence:
|
| >Money is a form of power, it is not equivalent to power.
|
| This sentence seems to mean absolutely nothing. "not
| equivalent to power" is some sort of vague semantic
| argument about what power "is", that is not interesting
| to the discussion.
|
| Wealth _is_ power in the sense that you can use money to
| affect change in the world. Wealth is the simplest and
| most flexible form of power, because it can be directed
| at anyone or any organization, and transformed into other
| forms of power. And it even grows by itself!
|
| You then talk about the market cap of Amazon. Why? The
| market cap, while also representing a sum of money, is
| not really relevant to the discussion. You even seem to
| realize this yourself, but you do not really explain the
| reason for bringing it up.
|
| Are you trying to say that competition exists and
| therefore everything is good?
|
| That would be fine if it weren't for the fact that the
| companies you mentioned do not compete in the same
| markets. They share some markets, e.g. AWS vs GCP, but
| you offer no evidence that this market is healthy.
|
| Competition is key if you want a healthy market, as is
| aligning corporate goals with societal ones. You could
| even argue that competition for customer business is the
| main mechanism for achieving alignment.
|
| If you allow any one business to get too much power,
| competition will weaken. Excessive power can come in the
| form of excessive capital concentration. It can also come
| in the form of other bargaining chips that come with
| excessive capital concentration, such as: control over
| resources used by direct competitors in a market, e.g.
| the marketplace itself; the ability to create jobs,
| politicians love jobs; the ability to invade a new market
| by subsidizing a new department with capital from
| elsewhere in the organization; or even an information
| asymmetry created by a huge data collection operation.
|
| Amazon exhibits all these forms of power and more. Some
| of the other companies you mentioned exhibit these as
| well. It would be in the interest of society to break up
| monopolies and other concentrations of power that are
| actively impeding competition in the way that Amazon is.
|
| These ideas aren't new, developed nations typically
| create institutions to maintain healthy competition. In
| the US, the federal trade comission and the DOJ are
| tasked with keeping competition healthy by enforcing
| antitrust law. They used to be a lot more active than
| they are now, e.g. when they broke up Bell. I wonder what
| has made them slip...
| SllX wrote:
| Power takes differing and subtle forms: political,
| electoral, military, obligation, legal, sexual and
| official (as in the power practiced by an office holder).
| Monetary power is precisely one type of power, it is
| powerful, but is not power's only form. Everyone has a
| price, except when they don't. Is a billion dollars
| enough to make up for the loss of your son? What about a
| trillion? Only if the value you placed in him could only
| be measured in money.
|
| > You then talk about the market cap of Amazon. Why? The
| market cap, while also representing a sum of money, is
| not really relevant to the discussion. You even seem to
| realize this yourself, but you do not really explain the
| reason for bringing it up.
|
| You've lost the thread. Let me help:
|
| ============
|
| >>> 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.
|
| >> 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.
|
| > 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?
|
| ===================
|
| > Amazon exhibits all these forms of power and more. Some
| of the other companies you mentioned exhibit these as
| well. It would be in the interest of society to break up
| monopolies and other concentrations of power that are
| actively impeding competition in the way that Amazon is.
|
| Sure, they exhibit power, they use their power, but is it
| actually too much power? We can use any measure you like
| that isn't market cap, now that we've re-established the
| thread and where that came in. Pick your measurements,
| and demonstrate how they show that Amazon is _too
| powerful_ , not merely powerful.
|
| > These ideas aren't new, developed nations typically
| create institutions to maintain healthy competition.
|
| As a general rule, although not a hard rule, I don't have
| nice things to say about the laws of other nations. Your
| task is much easier leaving them out of it.
| burkaman wrote:
| I'm not trying to convince you, I just wanted to answer
| your question. I don't think it's possible to convince
| you in the space of one comment, and if it is, I'm not
| the one to do it. This is a centuries-old argument with
| absolutely no expert consensus that seems to get more
| difficult the more you study the issue.
|
| If you want an easy to read modern political argument you
| can read Break Em' Up by Zephyr Teachout. If you want a
| more academic approach I would look up the syllabus of an
| antitrust course and read some court cases, but different
| syllabi will probably give you wildly different
| conclusions. Supreme Court cases from a couple decades
| apart will give you different conclusions. As I said
| earlier, there is no right answer, it's about balancing
| inherently conflicting rights and deciding where to draw
| the line.
| SllX wrote:
| > I'm not trying to convince you, I just wanted to answer
| your question.
|
| Sure it is, if there is a good convincing case, you can
| in the space of a single comment at least get me to
| seriously question and re-evaluate my priors, check out
| your book recommendations, and I would do the rest from
| there whether I ended up agreeing or disagreeing in the
| end.
|
| Let's start with what is the impetus for action? Inaction
| is easy, it's the default, but if my Representative
| (presently Pelosi) or US Senators or their eventual
| opponents and/or replacements trotted that line about how
| a company shouldn't be able to get this big, out without
| an attempt at a good explanation as why we should cap the
| size of a corporation's growth, I would throw them from
| the average politician column into the crazy column. Not
| just because they are taking that position, reasonable
| people can disagree, but because they would be seeking
| power on that position and they would be seeking an
| expansion of Federal power and action with that position
| without justification, without a limiting principle,
| frankly it looks arbitrary and capricious like an
| imaginary line that exists only in their mind that no
| company's market valuation must ever cross without
| consequence.
|
| The political will to power that led to the anti-trust
| legislation, prosecution and conviction wasn't that the
| defendants were merely too big for their britches; it was
| their abuse of a market dominant position that it was
| argued harmed the public. Even today reasonable people
| can disagree on whether this was a justifiable course of
| action on the part of the government, but I am not here
| to re-litigate historical events.
|
| Is the present position of Amazon and its close peers and
| the other >$100B companies as measured by their market
| valuations, not market share, not cash and other assets,
| but present market valuations, equivalent or _like_ to
| the situations in the past where the government was
| willing and able to successfully pull the trigger of the
| antitrust gun? To reiterate, what is the impetus that we
| _must_ act given the facts that we have about these
| contemporary corporations with such immensely high
| valuations?
| burkaman wrote:
| Ok, this thread is mostly about Amazon, so let's talk
| about impetus for action against them.
|
| 1. Documented examples of Amazon knowingly using
| predatory pricing to put a competitor out of business,
| most famously with Diapers.com. Amazon saw them as a "#1
| short term competitor", lowered their prices and took a
| loss so Diapers.com couldn't compete, and then raised
| prices again once they were able to acquire their
| competitor. https://twitter.com/HouseJudiciary/status/128
| 855628101652070..., https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl
| es/2020-07-29/amazon-em..., https://www.ftc.gov/tips-
| advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...,
| https://academic.oup.com/antitrust/article-
| abstract/7/2/203/...
|
| 2. National "competition" that convinced hundreds of city
| and state governments to offer billions of dollars in
| subsidies that most economists agree are harmful to the
| places that offer them. You can blame this on incompetent
| governments if you want, but the incentive must have been
| pretty strong if so many of them fell for it. Maybe too
| strong?
|
| 3. Amazon controls its market and is also a participant,
| so it can promote its own products above competitors'. It
| can give its own stuff a bump in the search results, or
| give it a nice looking "Amazon's Choice" badge, or
| advertise it next to competition, whatever. Even the
| potential of abusing this power is a problem.
|
| 4. If Amazon were to ever abuse its position to harm a
| seller or employee, they cannot be sued:
| https://prospect.org/labor/biggest-abuser-forced-
| arbitration...
|
| 5. Amazon has enormous market share of online retail, but
| sees third party sellers as competition and often works
| against them. Many sellers simply do not have a realistic
| alternative, even if they don't like Amazon's terms. This
| is a news article with a lot of allegations that you may
| not immediately believe, but I think it can at least be
| considered an impetus for investigation: https://www.wash
| ingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/01/amazon-...
|
| 6. Amazon Alexa has a nearly 70% market share in the US,
| an absurdly high number. Alexa is not a standalone
| product, it is deeply integrated into the Amazon
| ecosystem and is used to promote other business lines.
|
| You can also search for Amazon in here for some better
| researched claims: https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfi
| les/competition_in_dig...
| SllX wrote:
| #1: I did some sleuthing, Diapers.com, originally
| 1800Diapers, LLC and later Quidsi, Inc. after they had
| expanded into other lines of business started in 2005,
| and you can read a PR statement from the time here: https
| ://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2005/06/08/1800diapers-
| co...
|
| From the PR statement, you can see their growth hack:
|
| > 1800Diapers also recently added a large selection of
| very popular diaper bags, also at low prices with free
| shipping. The Company actually guarantees the prices for
| its diaper bags are the cheapest on the Internet or it
| refunds the difference.
|
| Price matching, which is not illegal.
|
| So let's take a look at the website from 2005:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20050301022607/http://www.180
| 0di...
|
| The best unit price on that page is $0.16 for 8 to 15 lb
| babies, which after about 16 years of inflation, comes
| out to $0.21 today. Pampers Baby Dry. The exact same
| diapers are, at the time of this writing, have a unit
| price of $0.21 on Amazon. Getting a link from the Amazon
| app on my iPad where I'm typing this is amazingly
| unobvious, so here's the item model # to search:
| 037000862215 <------------ posted this comment and I see
| my iPad thinks this is a phone number. I advise readers
| not to click on it should the option present itself.
|
| The company, Quidsi, Inc. was eventually purchased by
| Amazon for $545M in 2010. It is not apparent that diaper
| buyers were harmed by this transaction. The price beats
| Walmart's at least, yet Walmart continues to sell
| diapers, and you can find competitive prices at Costco,
| though you cannot find the same model. At worst, diapers
| are slightly more expensive today, and at best, this
| whole line of argument is a wash. Yes, Amazon took
| aggressive steps against a competitor, but was it an
| abuse of their market power? Mind this is when Amazon was
| far from the size they are today by any objective
| measure, and ultimately the shareholders of that
| competitor made out well for themselves. 1800Diapers was
| also measuring their prices against their competitors on
| the front page, March 2005, with an estimated 6% sales
| tax rate baked into the price of their competitors, and
| very prominently advertised the lack of sales tax. Amazon
| was their only major competitor for which such a tactic
| would not work so 1800Diapers price matched.
|
| #2: The people I most hold responsible for cronyism are
| the government officials which participated and bent over
| backwards so that Amazon could try to get a discount on
| some New York and Northern Virginia real estate. Not to
| absolve Amazon, they hold responsibility for initiating
| it, but cronyism falls squarely on the soldiers of the
| officials willing to sellout their own tax base, and is
| arguably an abuse of _their_ power.
|
| #3: Correct. As does Safeway, Whole Foods prior (and
| after) to the Amazon acquisition, Lucky's, Albertson's
| (which owns Safeway, they might own Lucky's too) and
| Costco. Amazon is a website you buy stuff, and some of
| that stuff is Amazon products, and some of that stuff is
| Amazon white-label products. There are other means of
| buying and selling on the internet, and we are starting
| to see the infrastructure for that develop now.
|
| 15 years ago Walmart was the 800 pound gorilla destroying
| retail. 30 years before that, Sears was untouchable.
| Clearly it is possible to have a competitive retail
| landscape even in the face of an enormously dominant
| competitor. The small businesses that can't make it on
| Amazon are in a tough business, in 10 years many of them
| won't be around, but other products and service providers
| will.
|
| #4: There has been a lot of FUD around private
| arbitration; I have yet to see solid investigative
| reporting on it. The enabling law, not surprisingly from
| the 1920s when a lot of crap law was written, is the
| Federal Arbitration Act of 1926. The specific entity that
| Amazon uses is the American Arbitration Association, and
| only for claims that would not qualify for small claims
| court if their agreement is to be believed.
|
| #5: The WaPo article is less scandalous than I thought it
| would be. 30-35% of dollars earned by 3rd parties goes
| back to Amazon, but a lot of it in additional spend on
| ads, which is basically priority placement like what you
| would see in any supermarket, and additional services. So
| it can be as high as 30-35%, but not every third-party
| seller is paying that much.
|
| They also have additional options to sell in.
|
| Retail is a tough life. You can pursue your own path and
| start a small business, but you're not entitled to
| succeed in doing so. It sounds like for many small
| businesses, Amazon is an enabling technology that makes
| much of what they do _possible_ , and maybe even
| profitable enough to continue doing so.
|
| #6: 70% of the voice assistant market? I can believe
| that. I am not a fan of this entire product category, but
| Amazon moved early, it offered a compelling product and
| it is kicking ass in name ID, the quality of the
| assistant and price. They offered a compelling package,
| and people bought it. Other than being overly aggressive
| in invading the privacy of their customers who seem to
| both know and not care, is there a specific harm in Alexa
| dominating voice assistants in a world where a decent
| number of people are walking around with devices in their
| pockets that can respond to either Siri or Google
| Assistant?
|
| I do appreciate the effort on your part, but I want you
| to see where I am coming from: it is easy to make bold
| claims based off nothing more than emotions and bad PR.
| Amazon has had a lot of PR, I won't buy anything I can
| put in my body from them and I do the bulk of my shopping
| elsewhere for various reasons.
|
| However it is a difficult proposition to simply look at
| big numbers, bad PR and come to the conclusion that this
| company is simply too big! How could it get this big?!
| How could we as a society allow this?
|
| Turns out, it is mostly just that Amazon.com and many of
| their products and services actually are compelling. I
| remember when the iTunes Music Store was the only
| compelling game in town in its category, until the Amazon
| MP3 Store came in and easily took 20% of the market
| simply by being good and compelling on its own terms, and
| with a clear value proposition to potential customers.
| Now it is all about Spotify, Pandora, my beloved Rdio was
| gobbled up by Pandora and killed, Google has their own
| music service, Amazon has a subscription, and most people
| don't seem to be buying music anymore. C'est la vie.
|
| If you're going to make the bold claims of this or that
| entity in a world where no one person or group of people
| seems to have all that much freestanding power anymore,
| put the legwork in, make a real case. Power is relative,
| and not always applicable, as in literally applicable in
| every circumstance depending on the type of power it is
| you are holding.
|
| I will review the final link you sent at my leisure. For
| me, the hour is late. Good night, if you respond by
| morning, I will see it, but will likely be busy until
| evening. For what it is worth to you, I'll even revisit
| my priors, but it's going to be a tougher sell because
| your position _used_ to be mine several years ago, but
| not so far long ago that I don't remember.
|
| That WaPo article is a good example of how I see things
| differently than you now. If you see a bunch of horrible
| claims levied against Amazon, I see a bunch of small
| business owners who have problems, some of them
| legitimate maybe, some of them not, but are a small
| fraction of the 2.5M 3rd party sellers the WaPo says are
| on Amazon making a living somehow. That's a decent number
| of people doing what they do to really not have any other
| choice for making a living, and I'm sure I can round up a
| thousand of them to complain about Amazon shafting them
| if I tried. For reference, there's about 2 million farms
| in America.
| burkaman wrote:
| I think we just have different value systems. For me,
| even the potential of abusing these powers is enough to
| break up Amazon, and I see very little reason to hold
| back. It's like trying to prevent a country from
| developing nuclear weapons, even though they have a great
| government and there's no evidence they would ever abuse
| them.
|
| Basically, Amazon's "right to grow" or whatever is not
| important at all to me, and I don't see what harm is done
| by breaking them up. I guess a few executives and large
| shareholders might lose some money, but everybody keeps
| their jobs, their products will continue, it just feels
| as obvious to me as your position feels to you.
| Corporations don't have rights and are not innocent until
| proven guilty, there's no need to convict them of a
| crime. It's like city planning: if the community would be
| better served by removing a highway and putting in some
| dedicated bus lanes, you just take a vote and then do it,
| you don't have to wait until there's a 20 car pileup on
| the highway to take action.
| 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.
| burkaman wrote:
| I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean by "proven to
| work". Give me any society in the history of the world,
| and I'll give you a moral framework that makes that
| society ideal. There is no right answer, there is no
| reference society we can use as a baseline.
|
| Do you want me to cite some philosophers that try to
| justify the value of democracy?
|
| > However, many of those in power today won't allow it to
| happen since it is against their interests.
|
| Is this bad? Can you prove it? The idea that the few
| shouldn't rule over the many without their consent is a
| political opinion.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| The modern West thinks that their version of democracy is
| the only way to success or prosperity, conveniently
| ignoring what it took them to get there. I read an
| interesting article that was making the argument that
| it's because the modern West is already prosperous that
| they have the luxury to run their nations under their
| version of democracy, not that democracy caused them to
| become that way.
|
| The end goal is to have a functioning, stable, and just
| society. Unless we're willing to stick to rules that are
| proven to work, we're going to keep fumbling and
| wondering why things are the way they are. I bring up the
| Islamic Golden Age because Islam places a set of rules
| which dictate things like government and finance,
| basically red lines that should not be broken. However,
| everything within those lines are up to society to decide
| as it sees fit based on the times.
|
| I don't want to say that Islam is "democractic" because
| that would give the wrong impression that it is fully in
| line with the West's current practices. It isn't.
| However, it has a concept known as "Shura", a form of
| consultation if you will, that allows society to
| determine how things are run within the boundaries I
| mentioned, even including the ruler (but not in the free
| for all manner how elections are run in the West). It's
| more nuanced, and it's been proven to work.
|
| You can cite philosophers, and I can also cite
| philosophers that oppose democracy (again in the Western
| sense). It won't get anywhere, it's all hypothetical.
| What I did do is show you a system that has been
| historically proven to work. Today's system is a fumbling
| mess and we keep crying about it.
| burkaman wrote:
| I guess I'm stuck on the phrase "just society". Your
| position, which is perfectly reasonable, is that a stable
| society that achieves economic, scientific, and cultural
| prosperity is a good society. Some people value having an
| equal voice in their government above _all_ of those
| things. It is not just posturing, it is a genuine belief
| sincerely held by many people. They would consider the
| Islamic Golden Age to be an unjust society. Other people
| sincerely believe that the current system in America is
| working, by their metrics. They don 't want anything to
| change. Some people would rather die than live in a
| society where they can't practice their religion, some
| people think any religion is incompatible with a just
| society, some people think society can't be considered
| just until everyone follows their religion. Since there
| is no such thing as objective justice, there is no way to
| "prove" that any of these positions work. They work if
| you think they work.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| > Some people value having an equal voice in their
| government above all of those things.
|
| You're going to have to elaborate more, because Islam
| definitely allows people to have their voices heard.
| Furthermore, it not only allows people of different
| faiths to live on its lands, their rights are heavily
| protected by the law:
|
| http://qaalarasulallah.com/hadithView.php?ID=23053
|
| Note that the word "contracting man" here refers to a
| non-Muslim.
|
| If this isn't the manifestation of justice, I don't know
| what is.
| burkaman wrote:
| I was just responding to your statement that Islam isn't
| exactly democratic in the modern sense, and there are
| some "boundaries". Presumably that means there are some
| issues where an average citizen doesn't get a vote? I am
| not making a value judgement, I am just trying to explain
| how it is possible for someone to believe differently
| than you.
|
| > If this isn't the manifestation of justice, I don't
| know what is.
|
| Now imagine somebody saying that exact sentence in
| response to, for example, a man being stripped of his
| possessions because his caste is not allowed to own
| property. Clearly that kind of law is not reconcilable
| with your idea of a good society, and yet you both
| consider these contradictory things to be perfect
| justice. Does that illustrate my point?
|
| Or: the next verse says that certain taxes should only be
| leveled on non-Muslims. I don't care whether or not you
| agree with this, the point is that _both views are
| possible_. It 's impossible to prove that religious
| discrimination is just or unjust. It's an opinion! A
| society could survive perfectly well with or without that
| rule. Different value systems will come to different
| conclusions about whether that rule is a good idea.
| ibn_khaldun wrote:
| Your username implies a gross bias.
|
| > Now imagine somebody saying that exact sentence in
| response to, for example, a man being stripped of his
| possessions because his caste is not allowed to own
| property.
|
| Is this in reference to an Islamic position? If so please
| provide a source.
| burkaman wrote:
| Not it isn't, it was an example intended to be completely
| contradictory to the Islamic position, to illustrate how
| two people can both believe their completely
| irreconcilable systems are the pinnacle of justice.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| > Presumably that means there are some issues where an
| average citizen doesn't get a vote?
|
| Look up Shura laws on how these things work. Topics are
| delegated to experts in their respective fields who have
| the obligation to act out of interest of the society, a
| form of "meritocracy" if you will. This doesn't mean that
| average citizens cannot be consulted.
|
| > for example, a man being stripped of his possessions
| because his caste is not allowed to own property. Does
| that illustrate my point?
|
| No it doesn't, because Islam does not prohibit non-
| Muslims from owning properties. You have not shown what
| issues you have with the Islamic system so far other than
| conjecture.
|
| > the next verse says that certain taxes should only be
| leveled on non-Muslims
|
| Because non-Muslims are not required to pay Zakat,
| Muslims are already "taxed".
|
| I feel that the discussion went on a tangent. The fact of
| the matter is that it is perfectly not only possible to
| build a society without the dangerous practice of
| interest, but it is in the benefit of the entire society
| to do so (except a relative few who stand to benefit
| extremely from interest and other similar practices).
| We've known about it for a long time now.
| burkaman wrote:
| I agree this is a tangent. The point that I am failing to
| make is that even if you and I agree that the Islamic
| Golden Age was the perfect society, we cannot "prove"
| that, and many people believe it was a terrible society
| by definition, because they have very different value
| systems than us.
| 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.
| burkaman wrote:
| A discussion about vaccines can be resolved through
| rational discourse only if everyone agrees that diseases
| are bad for you. If I think disease is good, you can't
| convince me that vaccines are good for society, even if
| we agree on their effects.
|
| That's a contrived example, but this kind of disagreement
| is very common in discussions about government and
| society. If you believe that individual choice is
| important and all humans are born with equal rights, and
| I believe that individual choice is unimportant and some
| humans are born superior to others, we are never going to
| agree on an ideal form of government. We can have full
| agreement on the facts and full disagreement on what we
| consider to be a "good" outcome.
|
| You mentioned game theory, but you can't design one model
| that will satisfy one person who wants to maximize
| outputs for all players, one person who wants to weight
| players in different castes differently, and one person
| who wants to set a hard cap on all players because too
| much material comfort leads us away from God.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| The solution is to look at systems that have been proven
| to work. I brought up the Islamic Golden Age in this
| thread. It doesn't have the nonsense of putting a hard
| cap on anyone's wealth. It actually encourages people to
| work and gather wealth morally, and spend it correctly.
| The best of both worlds so to speak.
| woofie11 wrote:
| ... and it comes with a built in wealth tax (zakat),
| which is just about the best economic idea EVER. And it
| prevents loans with interest. And there are versions
| which embody economic free trade (the whole debate about
| political borderds). And...
|
| ... it's almost as if Mohammed was an economist who
| foresaw all the economic problems of the 21st century,
| and built protections around them.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| > ... it's almost as if Mohammed was an economist who
| foresaw all the economic problems of the 21st century,
| and built protections around them.
|
| Peace be upon him. It's simply more evidence of his
| prophethood :)
| woofie11 wrote:
| That's not really my experience.
|
| (1) Right now, virtually everyone agrees that individual
| choice is important and all humans are born with equal
| rights
|
| (2) If they don't, it's often possible to come up with
| solutions which work for everyone. The problem is when
| people jump to solutions ("democracy") rather than
| problem-statements and first principles.
|
| The early US is a good examples of -- actually quite
| exactly -- your contrived example. The South had slavery.
| The North didn't. There was an overarching federal
| government which dealt with military and foreign
| diplomacy. It worked for a bit over a half-century until
| it didn't, mostly for reasons unrelated to why it worked
| as long as it did (the expansion of northern culture west
| upset the design, as it had an upper hand in congress).
|
| My claim is that there are systems of government which do
| a better job of protecting individual choice and equal
| rights than capitalist democracy. My claim is that if you
| articulated your value system completely (probably not on
| a web forum but over an hour-long coffee), we could
| probably design a better one around your values, which
| also did better for most people's values. My claim is
| also that if you've signed an NDA, you probably don't
| have all that much individual liberty.
| 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.
| px43 wrote:
| I like that Jeff has the funds to dump into important
| projects like Blue Origin, and General Fusion, etc.
| Projects that have zero chance to be profitable at a
| small scale, but significant benefits to humanity once
| things start working.
|
| Elon is probabally the prime example of a crazy
| billionaire who dumps his wealth into wildly unprofitable
| ventures to get things done for the betterment of
| humanity.
|
| Of course most billionaires end up like Larry Ellison,
| whose only drive seems to be increasing the size of his
| boat collection. He has every right to be doing his own
| thing, but it would be nice if there was a way to
| incentivize incredibly risky projects with a potential
| for significant public good.
| smabie wrote:
| while there are exceptions, most companies sell products
| and therefore mostly grow by selling products. That is,
| they grow because people think there is value to the
| product and fork over there hard earned money.
|
| As such, it's pretty clear that Amazon is providing
| tremendous value to society.
| 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...
| SllX wrote:
| Jefferson spent his public life defending the sanctity of
| private life and actively fighting against expanding the
| size, capacity and capabilities of the Federal government
| beyond what he saw as virtuous.
|
| The United States is without a King nor aristocrats who
| hold seats in a House of Lords by their birth; it is
| without a House of Lords!
|
| What you advocate is anti-Jeffersonian in both its intent
| and nature, and therefore you are without just cause
| citing Jefferson.
|
| So if you wish to break with Jefferson and make your own
| advocation, do so without citing the dead when you
| clearly have no business doing so, and put your own
| thoughts and words behind that arrow.
| megablast wrote:
| It's obvious. Too much power under one non elected person
| with very few checks. It's similar to a dictator of a small
| country, with global scope.
| SllX wrote:
| That's not obvious. They don't have diplomatic immunity,
| issue passports or visas, have the power to pass laws, do
| not have the power to detain, arrest, prosecute, convict,
| imprison or kill, and they have no military power.
|
| In what way are they like dictatorships by engaging in
| commercial activities and being worth a large sum of
| money based on what their shares are bought and sold at?
| astrange wrote:
| All people only have 24 hours a day even if they're rich.
| It's easy to combat them if you care more than they do;
| all these huge tech companies have surprisingly little
| political power and constantly lose local battles to
| activist groups and retired homeowners.
|
| Bezos can hire people to do things for him, but clearly
| this has limits, he isn't sending hitmen after Amazon
| critics even if he could pay them $1 billion Amazon
| shares each.
| Artistry121 wrote:
| I'm glad Amazon is larger and more powerful than most nation
| states.
| 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?
| dantheman wrote:
| Because we get more than we had before. As costs go down,
| the risk of innovation goes down, we're able to be more
| responsive, able to do new things. People are able to
| have more variety to meet their individual needs and
| preferences.
|
| In short we get more or work less and the overall quality
| of life for everyone increases.
| 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 can appear voluntary... "Sure you can pay 2x the
| cost for your insurance or you can get insurance, food,
| accommodation conveniently provided by Amazon who is also
| your employer for a good discount"
| 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...
| snakeboy wrote:
| To be fair, Amazon has probably the worst corporate
| reputation among public-facing companies, up with Walmart
| when it comes to labor issues. So I find it hard to
| believe that anyone is being convinced that Amazon is a
| net positive here.
|
| And at a certain point it's consumerism that's driving
| all of this. I don't know if it's fair to blame Amazon
| for this any more than it is to blame McDonalds for
| obesity. We live in a society where people are free to
| make their own choices, and as long as these "hidden
| costs" aren't well regulated, a lot of people will take a
| cheeseburger at the cost of a few extra pounds, and some
| 2-day shipped plastic junk at the expense of some poor
| over-worked employee's vacation.
|
| Meanwhile, these consumers are putting additional strain
| on the healthcare system, and encouraging companies like
| Amazon to get away with all of its labor abuses.
| astrange wrote:
| > To be fair, Amazon has probably the worst corporate
| reputation among public-facing companies, up with Walmart
| when it comes to labor issues.
|
| The US healthcare system, oil, gas and coal companies,
| weapons manufacturers, factory farms, fast fashion
| sellers, soft drink and dessert companies?
|
| I mean, Amazon and MS are in ESG investing indexes, so
| they must be doing okay. Those indexes won't even allow
| nuclear power in.
| snakeboy wrote:
| I think my phrasing was poor. I meant specifically about
| labor issues, not the general impact on society/the
| world. Everyone in the country jokes about how Amazon
| employees have to run, skip bathroom breaks, etc. to meet
| warehouse quotas. Whether this is entirely true anymore,
| I don't know, but that's the reputation.
| 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.
| atq2119 wrote:
| This is unfortunate, but it's also an invariant of human
| behaviour. The alternative is to get leaders through
| inheritance, which isn't any better.
|
| So the best thing to do is to try to nudge the system in
| a direction where the worst tendencies are mitigated:
| build institutions in which non-sociopaths can thrive
| politically, and allow a reasonable path for outsiders to
| join the political process.
|
| The US in particular is _very_ bad at both. First past
| the post election systems don 't provide a path for
| outsiders to join, which makes them seem stable until
| they suddenly become very volatile. And the fact that all
| elections in the US are personalized favours sociopathy
| over competence in politicians (compare the US system to
| one where you vote for a party instead of a person; in
| the former, people who are competent but lack charisma
| can still rise in the ranks of a party and get to power,
| while in the latter everything devolves to low-quality
| popularity contests).
| 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.
| sumedh wrote:
| > Consider all the horrors that large nations have
| inflicted on this world.
|
| The British East India company was a corporation when it
| took over large parts of India.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The British East India company was a corporation when
| it took over large parts of India.
|
| Corporations are chartered by governments and reflect the
| chartering government's values (which may be _laissez-
| faire_ , but in the case of the British East India
| Company--and it's state-granted monopoly, violations of
| which were punishable by indefinite term of imprisonment
| --were decidedly _not_.)
| arp242 wrote:
| It's not like corporations really have a better track
| record. Quite a few of the colonisation efforts were done
| by corporations or under private management (not
| "nations"). Corporations hid and obscured facts about
| asbestos, smoking, climate change, etc. for decades.
| Various corporations are not exactly well known for their
| excellent treatment of people in various less well-off
| regions (Shell in Nigeria, Dole in South-Africa, etc.),
| abuse of monopoly positions has a long history, and when
| corporations really screw things up it's up to the
| nations to provide some sort of relief (1930s, 2008,
| housing crisis in various countries).
|
| "Illegal not to subscribe to the state TV channel" seem
| like small fries.
| logicchains wrote:
| >It's not like corporations really have a better track
| record.
|
| The governments of Russia, Germany and China killed over
| a hundred million of their own people last century, no
| corporation comes anything near that.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Many of those governments _had help_. It 's not the Nazis
| killed millions with their bare hands.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben#Zyklon_B
| atq2119 wrote:
| > In my country it is illegal not to subscribe to the
| state TV channel.
|
| This is, frankly, a very silly thing to get hung up on.
|
| First of all, I assume you mean you have to make some
| payment that goes to that channel, not that you're forced
| to watch it.
|
| Second, this means you're essentially passing a
| presumably small tax that is earmarked for that channel.
|
| In other words, it's not any different from all the other
| taxes: paying them is part of life in society, and you're
| never going to agree with _all_ their uses.
|
| I bet there are far bigger items in your government's
| budget that you disagree with.
| 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?
| midasuni wrote:
| Certainly not the U.K, many people don't pay for a
| license fee, there's no law saying you have to. Everyone
| pays elevated prices for itv even though we don't watch
| it though as the funding comes from tesco, sainsburys,
| etc increasing prices to pay for it.
|
| a lot of European counties pay for state tv from a tax on
| things like electricity, but saying "it's illegal not to
| pay tax" is an odd statement.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| 1) I'd rather not say, although you can probably figure
| out from my post history if you really want to know
|
| 2) Yes
| oarsinsync wrote:
| Arguably, this could be the UK to some degree, given that
| if you have a TV, you're expected to pay for a "TV
| license", the funds of which go entirely to the state run
| broadcaster.
| arp242 wrote:
| It's not mandatory to get a TV license, but they will
| harass you and strongly imply you're a fraud if you don't
| get one. You can fill in a declaration stating that you
| don't need one to make the harassment go away for a year.
| I refused to do so out of principle and eventually I got
| a letter saying they "opened an investigation" in to me,
| but I never heard more about it. _shrug_.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Actually, (if I guessed your country right) since 2019 it
| is replaced by a "general public service fee", which is a
| tax that is earmarked for public service uses.
|
| You might not like where your taxes go, but at least you
| can vote for that to change. In a company you have no
| such freedom unless you have the financial ability to buy
| stock.
| 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.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Depends on the country/jurisdiction. In some places it is
| upon issue, in some places it is upon exercise or a mix
| thereof.
|
| Sadly over here in Belgium a non trivial tax (18%, but it
| varies according to some parameters such as runlenght) is
| due upon issue, turning stock options into a potential
| substantial risk.
| 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.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| In the 1990s, I knew dozens of people who faced major
| financial problems because they immediately owed taxes on
| options they had just exercised, on shares that were not
| tradable. These were just regular developers (or in some
| cases, shipping crew), and they didn't have $50-500k
| sitting around to cover taxes like that.
|
| Maybe the rules have been changed since then? I do know
| that by the early 2000's there were financial services
| companies offering wierd loans to help cover the taxes
| (obviously using the stocks as collateral).
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| "they immediately owed taxes on options they had just
| exercised"
|
| On exercise yes, but not on issue. I think you're mixing
| up people buying their options (exercise) with issuance
| of the options.
|
| No taxes are owed at grant or vest on options, whether
| NSO or ISO.
|
| Upon exercise (buying - regardless of whether there's a
| sale) of NSO a tax is owed on the spread between the FMV
| (usually the 409a valuation, if pre-ipo) and the strike
| price at grant. This can be considerable and I'm sure is
| the tax event you're thinking of.
|
| Savvy employees with a cooperative employer often
| exercise at grant time -- before the options vest --
| writing a check almost immediately after hire. This is an
| early exercise. If this takes place before the value
| changes (before the board updates the 409a valuation)
| then there is a taxable event but the spread is $0. The
| employee then follows up with an 83(b) election to notify
| the IRS that they wished to be taxed now, rather than
| later at vest, which ensures that income tax on the
| spread is never paid. It all becomes regular capital
| gains.
| azinman2 wrote:
| This is the difference between RSUs, NSOs, and ISOs. ISOs
| don't make you pay taxes until you exercise it (a
| qualifying event), which means you actually took this
| piece of paper and converted it into tangible value. I'm
| not sure how they could have exercised it and not had it
| turn into cash (perhaps their company got acquired and
| they got options of another non-IPO'd company?).
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Let's put it like this. The year after I exercised my one
| and only set of amzn stock options, I owed US$43k in
| taxes based on their nominal value. The stock was not
| publically traded at the time, and I had to find savings
| to cover the tax bill. I retained the piece of paper and
| started selling later that year after the IPO. At least
| one other early hire at amzn owed a _lot_ more than this.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah - options are taxed on exercise, _not_ on grant
| (that's the dispute with your original comment).
|
| Also, you're taxed on the spread at exercise between the
| strike price and the fair market value at the time of
| exercise.
|
| If you're able to exercise when the shares are granted
| (which early employees can often do by early exercising
| unvested shares) then there is no spread and there is no
| tax (at time of exercise, you still pay tax when you
| eventually sell the shares). Doing this and filing an 83b
| election with the IRS is important for people joining a
| startup where they hold lots of equity that's valued near
| zero.
|
| It's even a little more complicated than that if you get
| ISOs since you can exercise some of them tax free until
| you hit AMT (but AMT has not increased over time so this
| is less useful than it used to be). NSOs don't have this
| ability.
|
| RSUs are different and you do get taxed on grant and some
| are withheld to cover (FB started this and they're
| colloquially called FB-style RSUs). This is a relatively
| recent invention that started because private companies
| with high valuations had options with strikes too
| expensive for normal employees to exercise prior to the
| mandatory ten year expiration. Also old employees who
| held the option contracts wouldn't be able to pay the
| exercise tax on the spread you mention and would hit the
| 10yr expiration (at which point they need to make a loan
| shark deal or risk floating a lot of cash). This used to
| not be an issue because companies didn't stay private
| this long. With RSUs employees don't have to worry about
| any of this, but they lose more on grant to income tax
| than they could by exercising and holding options
| optimally.
|
| RSUs aren't strictly better though because if you can
| exercise options you can hold the stock for 1yr and get
| long term cap gains which is 15% up to 400k and 20%
| after. This is a lot more potential upside than just
| getting hit with income tax. Though in CA you still get
| hit with a large percentage state income tax on it
| anyway. (13% after 1M I think).
|
| All of the above commentary is unrelated to a wealth tax
| (or capping net worth) which I think is dumb policy.
|
| This grew into a kind of long comment, but if you're
| dealing with equity it's worth learning this stuff for
| yourself since leveraging equity effectively is probably
| the best way to actually get wealth in a timeframe
| shorter than a lifetime of index funds investing.
| azinman2 wrote:
| What did you exercise them to do other than sell?
| sprice wrote:
| I only know Canada where one owes taxes when an event
| occurs. Being issued stock is not an event. Exercising
| options for stock is an event.
|
| IANAL nor an accountant and this is not financial advice.
| 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.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Umar II is the one Umayyad caliph whose tomb wasn't
| sacked by the Abbasids when they took power. Would you
| care to enlighten us as to how this system went so wrong
| (Hint: it was Arab Muslims accumulating property and
| wealth over non-Arab Muslims, let alone non-Muslims)
| 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.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| First, I really appreciate your response :)
|
| > High marginal tax rates on super-high levels of income
| and/or wealth doesn't discourage working.
|
| Do we have precedence for this? From what I'm aware, even
| when the US had high marginal tax rates which some dems
| seem to be calling to bring back, no one ever paid those
| rates because there are always ways for the very rich to
| reduce their income on paper, while still increasing
| their wealth.
|
| I do agree with you that it takes a very special kind of
| person to have the wealth of Elon or Bezos and still
| continue to want to work, it's obviously more than money
| at that point. But those people are outliers. I know I
| wouldn't be motivated to spend more effort if it meant a
| proportional decrease in the total amount of money I
| would end up pocketing due to increased taxes.
| ibn_khaldun wrote:
| As salaamu alaykum,
|
| I enjoy reading your discourses in support of Islaamic
| economics. Do you have a blog, email or social media
| account?
|
| Wa salaam.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| Wa alaikom assalam,
|
| Thank you brother. Please feel free to reach out to me at
| zmadaniia@gmail.com
| fossuser wrote:
| Worse than disincentivizing people from working, it
| disincentivizes people from risking money on growth
| (building companies, doing startups, angel investing).
|
| Interest isn't predatory, it encourages growth and
| investment in building businesses. Look at the enormous
| wealth created by capitalism. Economic growth helps the
| most people the fastest, this model works.
|
| That doesn't mean there shouldn't be protections on the
| lower bound and human rights, there should be. It also
| doesn't mean there shouldn't be environmental protections
| or regulations to effectively coordinate and prevent
| tragedy of the commons style failures. We should also
| prevent wealth being able to leverage political power
| (which isn't easy).
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| > Interest isn't predatory
|
| It is by the very fact that the lender is owed money in
| the contract by doing basically nothing. Proper
| investment balances the risk between parties, so that one
| party does not have an inherent advantage over the other.
| This is part of running a moral and just society.
|
| > Look at the enormous wealth created by capitalism
|
| Red herring. The system is fundamentally unstable, by the
| very fact that people are on the lookout for the next
| economic crash because it's built into the system. When
| that happens, people with money are able to acquire even
| more assets, increasing the divide.
|
| I'm all for people making money, as long as they do it
| the moral way. Interest is immoral and predatory.
| fossuser wrote:
| The lender is paid for the service of lending money out
| (which incurs risk). You want to incentivize this
| behavior.
|
| Without interest, it would be harder for people to get
| loans. Lots of financial services wouldn't exist (or
| would demand some other form of payment). This would keep
| people who aren't already rich unable to access capital.
|
| People react to incentives, good incentives lead to
| beneficial behavior. Interest is extremely net positive,
| both for lenders and for borrowers (and society).
| Everyone wins.
|
| Crashes aren't really built into the system or a fault of
| capitalism, they happen because problems are hard to
| predict and the environment changes. The wealth created
| isn't only for the rich:
| https://press.stripe.com/#stubborn-attachments everyone
| benefits from economic growth.
|
| I think Islamic law (or really any religious framework)
| has very little of value to say on the topic of morality
| or running a productive society.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| > The lender is paid for the service of lending money out
| (which incurs risk). You want to incentivize this
| behavior.
|
| Not all forms of payment are ethical or moral (e.g.
| prostitution). This is an exploitative practice, and
| should definitely not be incentivized as we've seen time
| and time again the destructive effect it has on society
| and the economic system.
|
| > This would keep people who aren't already rich unable
| to access capital.
|
| This is why Islam has Zakat laws to ensure the poor are
| lifted out of poverty. We keep seeing the dems trying to
| solve the problem by increasing taxation, but to no
| avail. Islam solved the problem over 1400 years ago.
|
| > I think Islamic law (or really any religious framework)
| has very little of value to say on the topic of morality
| or running a productive society.
|
| Morality does not exist without religion. Secondly, Islam
| has proven to have run one of the most successful
| societies of all time, and definitely the most moral
| since Islam came. We still benefit of the discoveries
| made during the Islamic Golden Age.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| So, how is ISIS doing on the Islamic morality scale?
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| Terribly. I do not want to be in their place when they
| face God.
| fossuser wrote:
| > "Not all forms of payment are ethical or moral"
|
| Ok sure, but interest is fine.
|
| > "This is why Islam has Zakat laws to ensure the poor
| are lifted out of poverty."
|
| Charity isn't as good as letting people get access to
| capital that they can leverage for themselves.
|
| We're not going to agree on this so can probably leave it
| here.
|
| I will say I think morality exists in spite of religion.
|
| It's not hard to pick out examples where Islam fails on
| the morality issue, see: women's rights and the recent
| Charlie Hebdo murders, both driven by ideology.
|
| This is off-topic flame war material though.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| > Ok sure, but interest is fine.
|
| As I originally pointed out, interest is prohibited in
| Islam, Judaism, and Christianity (at least) for a good
| reason. It's not ethical nor moral, in fact, it's
| destructive and parasitic.
|
| > Charity isn't as good as letting people get access to
| capital that they can leverage for themselves.
|
| It lifts people out of poverty to get them on their feet.
| There are many funds that provide people with access to
| capital (e.g. accelerators). Capital is not limited to
| interest bearing loans. The simplest example is pitching
| an idea to investors who in return own a portion of a
| potential company. If it works out, both parties benefit,
| otherwise, both parties equally took on the risk.
|
| > women's rights
|
| Those are cherry picked by anti-Islamic rhetoric drivers
| who have shown their ignorance and lies time and time
| again, and whose arguments fall apart the moment they're
| critically discussed. It's really meaningless talk that
| gets thrown around.
|
| > and the recent Charlie Hebdo murders,
|
| Easy refutation: you're going to have to show that Islam
| itself condones or required such murders to take place.
| fossuser wrote:
| You just state it's destructive for ideological reasons
| because of religious law, that's not a good argument and
| it ignores contrary evidence. Why is taking a percentage
| of someone's company better? If anything that's _more_
| exploitive.
|
| On women's rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An-
| Nisa,_34
|
| You're the one cherry picking here and rationalizing
| anything that doesn't fit into a narrative you've already
| decided is true. There won't be any ability for us to
| agree, because you _can't_ update based on new evidence.
|
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CqyJzDZWvGhhFJ7dY/belief-
| in-...
|
| You can pretend Charlie Hebdo and any other negative
| action that's clearly driven by ideologically motivated
| Islam is not "true Islam", but then you're just creating
| some special reference class that ignores the bad stuff.
|
| I'm not trying to get into a fight. It's rare for
| religious people to break free from their religion, but
| it's possible. I succeeded when I was young and seeing
| counter arguments is part of it.
| 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.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I know we can't expect perfect solutions, but arbitrary
| blanket statement such as capping wealth at $1B make no
| sense to me.
|
| Wealth (or money) is a proxy for power, and if the goal
| is to limit one's power, I don't see the purpose of an
| arbitrary dollar amount maximum that is extremely hard
| and probably litigious enforce to enforce.
|
| It would be better to suggest capping the number of
| companies' boards one can sit on, or limit the number of
| non broad market index fund investments one can have, or
| some other solution that directly attacks the problem of
| concentration of power.
| 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.
| SilasX wrote:
| Yeah that was true by the time of his 1999 interview on 60
| minutes, when the interviewer joked about him driving a
| cheap Honda:
|
| https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/this-jeff-
| bezo...
| 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.
| fao_ wrote:
| "I don't know of another company with an invention
| track record as good as Amazon's," - Jeff Bezos
|
| Excuse me?
|
| Maybe we should consider -- oh I don't know, Bell Telephone,
| which had Bell Laboratories?
|
| Which won 13* Nobel Prizes for revolutionary, groundbreaking
| research about the Transistor and created and funded a "Legal
| Typesetting System" on which 90% of overall computer operating
| systems are descended from!
|
| Even ignoring Bell Laboratories, we could look at IBM, which
| created the modern home computer market! Or Xerox PARC! Or Apple!
|
| * - or 9, my brain is giving me two numbers on that and I don't
| remember which one it was
| steve76 wrote:
| Burn down the country. Then cash out and hit the road.
| hippich wrote:
| So... Now that Jeff is retiring, whom I should address emails
| after various support teams fail at their jobs? Before it was
| jeff@amazon.com, now, I would assume, andy@amazon.com?
| beyondcompute wrote:
| I wish Amazon would tackle its "ridiculously useless at this
| point, overrun with scammers reviews" problem though. :)
| krapp wrote:
| Their stock is worth 3K a share, that's clearly not a problem.
| At least not for them.
| [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?
| zmmmmm wrote:
| Interestingly, if you go international, Amazon is either
| not present at all or a niche player as an online store in
| many countries. But in terms of cloud infrastructure
| they've become the universal global default / premium
| service. It is fascinating to me that they have beaten
| players like Microsoft, IBM, Oracle etc. to this status. I
| actually have to mount a business case in my organisation
| NOT to use AWS even though all the desktops and half the
| servers are pure Microsoft stack.
| 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.
| randomsearch wrote:
| AWS is 57% of Amazon's profit in 2020.
|
| Cloud has barely begun.
| 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.
| adamcstephens wrote:
| I could see it breaking up at some point, when our
| antitrust regulators wake up to the monopoly that Amazon
| has become and splits the company into multiple parts.
| randomsearch wrote:
| I think the main reason AWS will breakaway will be that
| it'll just be so different from the rest of Amazon.
|
| I think (for better of worse) the cloud providers - A/G/M
| + maybe a newcomer yet to be announced - will come to
| dominate computing in a way most people do not foresee.
|
| Yes, right now they dominate the hardware provision and
| that will accelerate. But through that, their services
| will dominate software engineering, and eventually they
| will dominate not just IDEs and devtools (hence GitHub
| purchase and VS Code for MS) but they will define
| programming languages and even what constitutes
| programming.
| 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?
| adamcstephens wrote:
| Amazon just settled with the FTC for stealing Flex drivers'
| tips. Likely that's just the tip of the iceberg in their
| screwing over the people who make their products move.
| 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).
| jasoncrawford wrote:
| My understanding was that it was also about the long tail.
| With millions of titles in print, and a minimum selection
| of thousands to make a decent bookstore, you can't print a
| decent catalog and mail it. Before Amazon, the biggest
| mail-order books business was the Book-of-the-Month Club.
| Perfect case for an online catalog.
| 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.
| gcheong wrote:
| When I was working in Tokyo in the 90's, English technical
| books were somewhat hard to come by and fairly expensive so
| co-workers would often pool together to do bulk purchases.
| There was one book site that I don't remember the name of now
| that almost always beat Amazon when it came to purchase price
| plus shipping at least in the beginning so we would always
| comparison shop. Maybe not sexy but online bookstores were
| certainly something of a lifeline in our case and I would
| often look forward to the arrival of a book order like a kid
| waiting for Christmas.
| digitaltrees wrote:
| I think AWS ended up subsidizing the rest of the company.
| Amazon stumbled backwards into a highly profitable business
| that allowed them to continue playing the long game to create a
| monopoly in distribution.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Amazon's stock went up like a rocket since its IPO. Wall Street
| didn't laugh at Bezos.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Even then the P/E has only been ridiculous for a few of those
| years - the stock is valuable, but the company walks the walk
| too.
| [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.
| nojito wrote:
| The median income for the US is 31k.
| GizmoSwan wrote:
| But how much work is Amazon extracting from them. https://www
| .washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/02/amazon-...
| herewegoagain2 wrote:
| Who was responsible for the decision to not offer help with
| vaccinations under Trump? I had always defended Amazon, until
| that moment, when they declared they would let people die for
| their ideology.
|
| Now I am trying to purge Amazon from my life, and it is hard.
| Much more difficult than Google. I had even started to use their
| grocery deliveries during Covid lockdowns. Maybe if it was Jeff's
| doing, and he is gone, I could justify continuing to buy from
| Amazon. But I guess not.
|
| Interesting that many say AWS is the actual business of Amazon,
| and they may get rid of the rest. It seems to me AWS would be the
| easiest to replace, after all, there are lots of cloud standards.
| Can't you just take your Docker images and publish them somewhere
| else?
|
| It seems much more difficult to me to replace the aggregation and
| efficient logistics. In fact I don't see any competition.
|
| Now that they want to see me dead, I want to see Amazon dead, but
| I have little hopes for it.
|
| Their achilles heel might be trust - online reviews are almost
| completely broken now, and complaints about fake products are
| rising. Their answer to the latter seems to be to steal
| successful products and sell them as "Amazon Basics", but that is
| evil and also won't work for having "everything".
|
| Another issue could be people returning their stuff or even
| damaged goods. I see a surprising number of people who have no
| ethical qualms about returning things they already used or that
| are broken.
|
| Maybe the future will be to buy directly from producers? That
| seems to be the only way to avoid the fake products? So someone
| should come up with ways to make it easy for producers to sell
| their products online, or at least provide a chain of trust.
| tlholaday wrote:
| > Who was responsible for the decision to not offer help with
| vaccinations under Trump?
|
| Trump was responsible for that decision, that's who.
| herewegoagain2 wrote:
| That doesn't make sense. You claim Trump rejected the offer
| that Amazon secretly made to him?
| 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.
| travbrack wrote:
| He sounds like a time traveler from the future. He talks like
| it's a given that the Internet is going to take over the world
| but back then it really wasn't.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Ostensibly it was going to take over the world? I think you
| mean to say it was non obvious. But unless we've split
| timelines that is exactly what was going to happen.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Thank you for sharing the video. I liked seeing Bezos on
| startup phase. I had not heard the story, so I learned that he
| started as a quant on Wall St and left that job to start Amazon
| later in life. Many people expect tech startups to happen in
| your college dorm room, but Bezos took a completely different
| route.
| hooande wrote:
| I was at that Startup School lecture in 2008. I still have
| strong memories of his body language and affect. He wasn't at
| all what I was expecting
| hn2fast wrote:
| In what way, if you don't mind? I always have the impression
| that he is practical to a fault, and consistent in his
| prescription for engineering above all.
| 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.
| smhg wrote:
| Anecdotally, I disagree. I recently contacted their support
| when I didn't understand why final ordering prices slightly
| differed from the listings on Amazon EU websites.
|
| The reply was very on-topic, ridiculously customized and
| clear for an otherwise complicated topic (reason: VAT is
| calculated on the shipping location within EU). Almost as
| if someone with real EU accounting knowledge had taken the
| time to investigate and reply (which I can't imagine?). And
| this was from a non-business account. It was easily one of
| the top-3 customer service experiences I ever had.
| afavour wrote:
| I don't deny that Amazon are capable of good customer
| service. But the site is full of fake products and fake
| reviews. Returning a product is a breeze but I'd really
| rather not have to be returning them in the first place.
| And Amazon knows about the problems. A few times I've
| reported receiving an offer for a gift voucher in return
| for a positive review of an item I bought and they've
| taken zero action on it.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| One of the main reasons I use Amazon in France is their
| service.
|
| I never ever had any issues, our biggest fight was about
| the 2EUR they charged me once to send back a 100EUR item.
| They gave up after the 2nd email.
|
| I will pay 10% more for the Amazon price, for the peace of
| mind.
| mlindner wrote:
| I disagree. Amazon has many times refunded my order in full
| with a simple call, and for orders internationally they do
| it entirely faith-based and will send you another version
| without having to even return the original.
| kypro wrote:
| They're great for this. I once ordered the wrong tablet
| which was totally my mistake and I even ended up unboxing
| it, but they still allowed me to return it. It's one of
| the main reasons I use them because I know there's no
| hassle if anything goes wrong with my order.
|
| Unfortunetly I know a few people who have been abusing
| Amazon's refund policy recently. I don't come from the
| best background so I know a few people who have ordered
| phones and other electrics from Amazon just because they
| know if they complain they were stolen from their
| doorstep they might get a free phone. From my experience
| working at ecomerce and insurance companies it's hard to
| have a relaxed returns policy when you also have to
| accept that the majority of the claims will be
| fraudulent.
| 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.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| It's supposed to be the stock chart.
| judge2020 wrote:
| looks like
| https://www.google.com/finance/quote/AMZN:NASDAQ works
| for me, based in the US.
| hinkley wrote:
| A/B testing is awesome for first order problems with your
| web site design. By the time you're down to third order
| problems it's reductive and cynical.
|
| Immoral techniques always find support from amoral tools.
| Dark patterns are justified by A/B testing. And shitty
| people.
| tootie wrote:
| I recall reaching out to the customer service more than
| once pre-2010 or so and they were incredibly responsive and
| helpful. I guess they just couldn't scale human
| interactions past a certain point.
| billti wrote:
| They still are. I had to contact support for some
| purchases I didn't recognize a couple weeks back. I was
| dreading the usual "support call" experience, but they
| were super friendly and within 5 mins I was refunded and
| they deactivated an old device from my account for
| safety.
| telltruth wrote:
| "declined" is a major understatement. Too many practices at
| Amazon is now decisively anti-customer:
|
| - Fake reviews have been happening for years but almost no
| progress from Amazon
|
| - Huge number of fake products and/or misleading specs
|
| - Sponsored products trumps organic results every time
|
| - Sellers use whatever brand they wish instead of their
| real names giving appearance that they are "official"
| vendors of that brand
| ekianjo wrote:
| oh yeah? have you ever returned products on other online
| stores?
| Corrado wrote:
| I don't know, I just returned a faulty smart light bulb and
| the process was beyond easy. Just select it from my
| previous orders, submit a request to return it, and choose
| how to send it back. Pretty easy.
|
| As a "bonus" I was able to send it back through a Kohl's
| store so my wife got a 25% off coupon that she used to
| purchase some masks and socks (and stuff). Yes, I know,
| they got us to purchase more stuff, but she really likes
| shopping there and it was a "we're going there anyway" kind
| of thing. Plus I didn't have to box up the return or print
| a label or anything. Just show the clerk the QRCode and
| hand them the bare light bulb.
| ImaCake wrote:
| My anecdata counterfactual to this is that I recieved an
| empty package and couldn't even figure out how to make a
| complaint to Amazon let alone return it. It was a cheap
| item so maybe they care more if it passes some threshold
| value?
| brazzledazzle wrote:
| I had the same issue. I had to use the chat option. It
| took a little bit but wasn't too long and they gave me a
| refund without requiring I send back an empty package. I
| would have eaten the cost (<$12) if I hadn't been able to
| work it out though. Wasn't worth getting flagged as a
| potential scammer.
| Cro_on wrote:
| My $2 book purchase anecdata from last summer runs
| counterfactual to yours. The product never arrived and
| within 48hours of complaint the cash had been returned.
| codeulike wrote:
| Practically have to do backflips to avoid accidentally
| signing up to Amazon Prime. Dark patterns deployed front
| and centre.
| matttb wrote:
| And canceling Amazon Prime requires you to click a button
| saying you want to cancel four times.
| ROARosen wrote:
| The "customer" is at the heart of everything, not the
| _ex_ -customer (or wanna-be ex, according to Amazon).
| codeulike wrote:
| I'm still a customer, I just don't want to buy their
| bundle-of-services-I-dont-need. The tricks they pull with
| tiny hard to find 'continue without signing up to Prime'
| links are disgusting
| laurent92 wrote:
| I contacted support twice in 2 years for Prime
| subscription I didn't want. Each time: "Are you sure you
| didn-- Yes I'm sure, I knew intended to avoid it, so it's
| clearly not me." Both times they correctly cancelled it.
| jacobwilliamroy wrote:
| The system is mostly designed to prey upon inattentive
| seniors with disposable incomes.
| billti wrote:
| Anecdote for what it's worth:
|
| I've been a heavy customer for many years. While I bemoan
| the rampant knock off products and fraudulent reviews, by
| shopping carefully I've actually never had a bad product
| delivered, and the very few times I've needed to call
| support, they've been super responsive and remedied the
| issue quickly. (Mostly refunds for digital content
| purchased incorrectly).
|
| They may not be perfect, but that have that "Macdonalds"
| aspect now; you know what you're getting and it's
| consistently pretty good. Which is often more reassuring
| than trying something new.
| codeulike wrote:
| I used to trust them, in the last few years the dark
| patterns have been deployed with gradually increasing
| intensity and it leaves a bad taste
| mvanbaak wrote:
| I had bought a product on amazon.de, it arrived with some
| cosmetic damage (product worked, little scratch). To be
| honest, it was one of the best customer support experiences
| I had seen. Select order, select product, click button
| 'problem', describe what the problem was, get return info,
| DHL picked up the next day, two days later I had a
| replacement product.
| [deleted]
| 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...
| astrange wrote:
| The customer friendliness is 1. free fast shipping 2. they
| will cancel and refund things 3. if you make multiple
| orders they'll combine them 4. the website loads really
| fast.
|
| Competitors have gotten better at many of these, but it's
| still hard to impossible to cancel orders many other
| places, and if I have to chat to Amazon they still refund
| and replace things very easily.
|
| I have used amazon.com.au and noticed the selection is
| pretty bad there. amazon.jp is great though, and worldwide
| shipping is amazingly fast. The customer service is even
| more important there because Japanese companies hate
| cancelling things or special requests (omotenashi/"Japanese
| customer service" means you do what they tell you, not the
| other way round.)
| dingaling wrote:
| > and you can't even be sure whether they're reviewing the
| right product or the seller
|
| I distinctly remember the point when I lost trust in
| Amazon, after being a customer since 1997.
|
| There were reviews for two books on the same topic, but
| different authors, mixed together under one title. I
| emailed Amazon to point this out and... they did nothing.
|
| Nowadays the review section is a dark pattern itself, you
| have to keep your wits about you. What used to be a great
| public resource in the Internet has been lost.
| prepend wrote:
| This is the "new amazon." Old Amazon was really customer
| focused. Back when prime was a good value ($80/year for 2
| shipping) everything just worked. You could find products
| easily, order, automate reorders.
|
| In the past five years, every visit to Amazon involved
| wading through ads for bad products (eg, search for
| Iphone7, see sponsored ads for Samsung phones). There are
| more sponsored line items than actual results.
|
| Prime's price has almost doubled and I had 6/25 packages
| take longer than 2 days in the last year I had prime
| (compared to 99-100% for the previous 15 years).
|
| One click doesn't work because if I try it, I get charged
| for shipping even though free is available. I have to
| manually go into every over and uncheck 1-day shipping for
| $5.99 (or whatever) and select free 2-day. Every time. And
| I have to click through a screen to manually say I don't
| want to buy prime.
|
| Amazon sucks now. They abandoned their customers.
|
| Comically, Walmart has a better (easier, faster, less
| bullshit, cheaper) experience than Amazon. I never would
| have guessed.
| blabitty wrote:
| My experience with Walmart is poorly packed boxes handled
| roughly by FedEx leading to a bunch of damaged orders. At
| this point Amazon's delivery service itself is a
| differentiator for me, and I don't love the company or
| paying for prime.
| prepend wrote:
| That was mine with Walmart for a long time. In 2020, I
| tried using them and find that they seemed to have
| improved. Normally packed boxes, speedily shipped. For
| me, I usually get UPS.
|
| But I think the biggest thing for Walmart is the site as
| shopping for hard drives shows you hard drives instead of
| whatever people pay for ads. I was able to find the
| product I wanted more easily.
| victor106 wrote:
| That video is pure gold. Lots of lessons you can use even
| today for any business.
| swalsh wrote:
| The last experience I had with Amazon customer service was so
| bad I decided to stop using them as much as is physically
| possible. If your situation does not fit in a simple bucket,
| they will force it into one even if its bad for them and you
| at the same time.
| 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 :-)
| jdmichal wrote:
| I would never take a receipt as proof of card ownership. If
| I were to find a wallet, what's the chance that there's a
| random receipt stuffed in there along with the card?
| ciupicri wrote:
| The receipt wasn't old. It was for shopping done after
| they asked me for proof.
| FpUser wrote:
| I think Amazon's search quality going down the drain lately.
| Too much's been taken by promotions.
| astrange wrote:
| Amazon's search and recommendations were never any good,
| though. You've always had to search a page or three, and
| buying a TV recommends you more TVs.
| efwfwef wrote:
| "this is day 1".
|
| I'm wondering for what else it is day 1, right now.
|
| I know cryptocurrencies have been booming, it's not clear
| exactly if they will continue to boom but the space is already
| so big that one has to really read a lot to catch up.
|
| What else seems like a promising field that one could go 100%
| into right now to bet on?
| julesFromPulp wrote:
| Yes cryptocurrencies are one thing but look at the
| possibilities afforded with having a decentralized,
| distributed ledger in all areas of life. Having a source of
| truth in things like law or politics. This would be a
| fundamental shift for society as a whole not just finance.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Quibble: to me "This is day one" is less about "what market
| can we get in on the ground floor of and ride a wave". It is
| more to underscore we are driving the innovation or market
| and that we are always starting from zero, never too late to
| change / pivot and we're still aggressively growing
| everything, or that is the goalline.
|
| That isn't meant to take away from your question. As a
| developer I'm often focused on leaf concerns. Your question
| is more about broad strokes and I have to remind myself to
| think about fundamental changes.
| throwaway568 wrote:
| I think cryptocurrency is more akin to personal computer.
| DeFi- the internet.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I am in robotics and it seems well poised to grow. There's a
| lot of big problems left to solve at the research level but
| deep learning seems to be slowly knocking down big problems
| left and right.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _What else seems like a promising field that one could go
| 100% into right now to bet on?_
|
| Biotech/bioinformatics/bioengineering.
| petters wrote:
| > Jeff's pitch at the time (1997); so on point, so precise:
|
| Agreed! He knew exactly what he was doing.
|
| Interesting that he talks about attention being a scarce
| resource. Things did not improve from that point....
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