Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way • Hacker News Board

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#81

Post by sokoloff » Sun, Aug 23, 2015, 12:25 PM UTC

johneth wrote: post #80

chambo622 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reality is, he's a master manipulator, a poor business man, and terrible at technology and leadership. Your argument really breaks down here. Reality contradicts these assertions.

> terrible at technology and leadership While I'm not suggesting that he's not successful in many ways, he's also been (and still is) quite bad at these two things. On the technology front, the terribleness that immediately comes to mind are the Fire Phone, Prime Instant Video's UI, Amazon's UI in general, their godawful search, and so on. On the leadership front... well... there are all these accusations of an awful…

It appears self-evident that he's at least an adequate technology leader. He's leading a company that is the undisputed (current) leader in cloud computing and running an extremely fast growing and profitable technology business there. IMO, that put his well into the top 0.1% of technology leaders, but even if you don't agree with that, if results mean anything, I think you can agree that he's not terrible at it.

The Amazon UI might not be to your taste or beautiful, but there's no question that it's efficient at enabling customers to find and buy their retail items at a rapid clip. IMO, Prime Pantry's search is pretty decent; the selection over which they're searching is poor, but the search itself seems decent.

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#82

Post by morgante » Sun, Aug 23, 2015, 2:20 PM UTC

jmgtan wrote: post #65

Been reading a lot of Amazon articles the past few weeks. I'll be joining AWS next month as an SA. I met the hiring manager during the interview loop, and he seems like a cool guy. Funny thing is when I told my family and friends that I'll be joining AWS they all emailed me the NYT expose. Well I do hope it's not as bad as it's portrayed. I do want to see my son grow up (he is turning 2 years old).

May I ask why you are planning to join Amazon? It's reputation for being a bad employer is well-established and known in the tech community.

If you're skilled enough to get through an Amazon interview loop, you could also get a job at a company which actually respects its employees (Facebook, Google, even Microsoft).

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#83

Post by jmgtan » Sun, Aug 23, 2015, 3:04 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #82

jmgtan wrote: post #65

Been reading a lot of Amazon articles the past few weeks. I'll be joining AWS next month as an SA. I met the hiring manager during the interview loop, and he seems like a cool guy. Funny thing is when I told my family and friends that I'll be joining AWS they all emailed me the NYT expose. Well I do hope it's not as bad as it's portrayed. I do want to see my son grow up (he is turning 2 years old).

May I ask why you are planning to join Amazon? It's reputation for being a bad employer is well-established and known in the tech community. If you're skilled enough to get through an Amazon interview loop, you could also get a job at a company which actually respects its employees (Facebook, Google, even Microsoft).

I love the AWS platform, I find the entire thing very elegant. I wanted to move away from software development and get into more high level stuff (hence the SA role), and I'd rather join a company where am passionate about their products.

I have friends working in AWS, and so far none of them have been complaining about work life balance, so am assuming that it's different from the retail side.

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#84

Post by justinv » Sun, Aug 23, 2015, 4:27 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #72

justinv wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a former intern from AWS (6 month non-tech internship). Now I work in a completely different part of the company full time. My experience is exactly like what 'onaplane' wrote. Internship was great & very rewarding from a career/working on cool stuff perspective. What I saw was that people who worked long did it because they wanted to (I work(ed) long sometimes because I wanted to!). 40-50 was the norm for AWS &…

> You're doing the exact same thing in reverse. Could you explain what you mean by that? It sounds like you're suggesting that he's part of an anti-Amazon cult, which I'm having trouble making sense of.

In the sense that the poster is perpetuating that there is no good at Amazon at all. That everything is awful and that no one could possible like/want to work there.

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#85

Post by wpietri » Sun, Aug 23, 2015, 7:53 PM UTC

justinv wrote: post #84

wpietri wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're doing the exact same thing in reverse. Could you explain what you mean by that? It sounds like you're suggesting that he's part of an anti-Amazon cult, which I'm having trouble making sense of.

In the sense that the poster is perpetuating that there is no good at Amazon at all. That everything is awful and that no one could possible like/want to work there.

I disagree entirely. His point wasn't that onaplane was saying good things when only bad things ever happen. His point was that onaplane was caught up in a cult dynamic.

If you're only reading him as saying "Amazon is 100% bad", you're missing the point. Cults that are 100% bad don't work; they quickly fall apart. The cult dynamic is only stable when it provides a fair dose of good to go along with the abuse and control.

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#86

Post by studentrob » Sun, Aug 23, 2015, 11:21 PM UTC

veidr wrote: post #51

This story has got to be really hurting Amazon by now. (I don't mean this specific piece, but the exposure of Amazon's terrible cult-like culture and workplace environment as a whole.) Most engineerish people I know, myself included, had already heard through the grapevine that working at Amazon sucks (friends, friends of friends, posts on forums like this). But now everybody knows it sucks -- Amazon is a shitty plac…

Yup. I remember hearing about it years ago. You've got to believe that this culture comes from the top. The fact that Bezos is trying to pass the buck and takes no responsibility is telling. Awesome guy, and you have to believe he doesn't want Amazon to be that way, but if he can't take some responsibility for the culture he grew, it can only stay the same or get much, much worse as everyone below him will follow his lead and point fingers.

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#87

Post by dredmorbius » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 7:46 AM UTC

autotune wrote: post #40

jaimebuelta wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact is that those things (small, stupid disrespectful moments) are the kind of triggers for quitting or to start looking other stuff. When I go back, the things that most angered me about managers or companies hasn't been "big stuff" (crunching time, low pay, etc...), but those kind of "stupid serious conversations" (not liking the amount of time spend for lunch, that's just "behold! I need to MANAGE because I d…

From my perspective the job of a manager is 4 fold: 1) Manage schedules. 2) Set expectations for performing well and be motivational (optional in my case but appreciated). 3) Prevent corporate politics and bullshit from getting in the way and keep the team in the loop about potential bullshit that is bound to come our way. 4) Manage or help manage hiring/firing process and promotion process. A manager should act as a…

You're omitting a key element: providing the team with what they need to get the job done.

Re: Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way

#88

Post by autotune » Sat, Sep 05, 2015, 7:04 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #87

autotune wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my perspective the job of a manager is 4 fold: 1) Manage schedules. 2) Set expectations for performing well and be motivational (optional in my case but appreciated). 3) Prevent corporate politics and bullshit from getting in the way and keep the team in the loop about potential bullshit that is bound to come our way. 4) Manage or help manage hiring/firing process and promotion process. A manager should act as a…

You're omitting a key element: providing the team with what they need to get the job done.

In my experience that's been provided through other existing departments and the manager simply ensures you know how to request access to what's already there, but in a smaller shop or a more centralized team definitely.