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Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

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Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#141

Post by organsnyder »

MichaelGG wrote: post #44
darkclarity wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like being that irresponsible one. Though it is impressive that Amazon has turned a delivery fee - that most people don't like paying - into an exclusive subscription service. A service that customers fall over themselves to sign up for when it's offered at a discount.

I cancelled it because Amazon's abusing their position. Refusing to sell Chromecast and Apple TV, then lying, repeatedly, about the reason when asked? I've been an Amazon customer for 13 years. I was rather annoyed to see them go with the anti-Wikileaks and try to be "sensitive" by banning certain cultural items. But this shows they've zero commitment to selling products customers want. Edit: And it really hurts. Som…

I cancelled my Prime subscription for the same reason. I've been experimenting with using eBay the same way I used Amazon (mainly for computer-related purchases—we never got into the habit of using it for many household goods).

So far, I've found eBay to be in many ways better than Amazon was. Amazon has gotten to the point where you're often buying from some unknown vendor anyways, so in many ways it's already similar to eBay. However, eBay was built from the start to be a simple middleman, so I find its reputation system and expectations for sellers and buyers to be superior in many ways. Of course, I still have to be careful when evaluating sellers, but if I stick to the high-volume 99.5%+-positive sellers, there's rarely an issue.

I mainly only do this for small purchases—rechargeable batteries, game system controllers, cables, etc. For larger items, I try to find a niche vendor that offers more specialized customer service—ideally a local brick-and-mortar, but often an online seller.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#142

Post by pmontra »

shuri wrote: post #3

You have to love this sentence "We want Prime to be such a good value, you’d be irresponsible not to be a member."

I recently took advantage of Prime but I don't buy from them often enough, not even every year. I cancelled before the 30 days free trial expired. If they somewhat manage to get me buy stuff on Amazon often, I'll be back.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#143

Post by karmelapple »

inopinatus wrote: post #31
sharkweek wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Seattle and am friends with a lot of Amazon folks. Most work very hard and complain from time to time, but I only know one who left for another job because most who are there now actually really like their jobs. One friend put it best after he transitioned from a small department in the ecommerce side of the business to one of AWS's early-ish hires, that most young departments have the thrill of working at…

I'll echo that from personal experience. I left AWS to start my current company. I had a regret-prevention imperative to do so, but it was still the toughest call. Amazon's culture is highly polarising. The emergent properties of which are all the truths and lies you ever read about the place.

Can you confirm any truths or deny any lies?

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#144

Post by chris_wot »

buro9 wrote: post #100
shuri wrote: post #3

You have to love this sentence "We want Prime to be such a good value, you’d be irresponsible not to be a member."

Then Amazon is going to have to become much much better. I live in London, UK and do not use Prime. I've almost stopped using Amazon altogether now. Why? 1. Delivery - For our flat, their network either fails to deliver, mis-delivers or screws up in some other way far more than they succeed. There is no option to choose the one postal service that shines for my property: Royal Mail. Anything I order from Amazon may t…

I tried to by the Dragon Book as an eBook. I managed to purchase it, paid good money and it was revoked as I wasn't a U.S. citizen. I was never refunded.

I grabbed a copy from... elsewhere... and then never shopped at Amazon again.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#145

Post by OliverJones »

preordained wrote: post #101

I work at a small software company, and too often our CEO and company will latch onto nuggets from material like this and use it to justify a "swing for the fences", "nothing ventured nothing gained" sort of mindset. All well and good, but they blithely overlook the "we fail all the time" parts, and sometimes we take risks where the potential losses are not easy to absorb, or we don't have the vast resources of a big…

Agreed. At least Bezos's letter is online where everybody can read it. At least we all know what the shiny little nugget looks like that people are chasing.

That's better than chasing some shiny buzzword from a business professor writing in the Harvard Business Review. With a public-company shareholder letter, everybody can know the context.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#146

Post by discodave »

simonh wrote: post #110
lubos wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad example. New factory is an asset, not an expense. Therefore it will have little impact on profitability.

The AWS data centres aren't an asset? I'd have thought comparing funding expanding Amazon's data centre capacity from revenue is very comparable to Tesla building out it's manufacturing capability the same way.

The DCs are assets with 5-20 year lifespans but the servers depreciate over 3-5 years.

Amazon has also been doing a bunch of capital lease shenanigans so they could expand AWS without having to report GAAP losses over the last few years.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#147

Post by austinjp »

appleflaxen wrote: post #137
reustle wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, TIL Amazon doesn't sell Apple TV or Chromecast, but instead immediately suggests their own competitors. For a company trying to replace all retail, that's pretty lame.

Great point. Doesn't this directly contradict his statement of "focus on the customer, not the competition"?

Indeed. There's plenty in there that contradicts the "customer first" myth, particularly the "flywheel" part.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#148

Post by huac »

srt146 wrote: post #75
danblick wrote: post #51

Am I the only one who read "Type I and II decisions" and thought "System I and II decisions" (from Thinking, Fast and Slow?). I like the idea of distinguishing reversible from irreversible decisions, I just wish he'd come up with better names...

I wouldn't read into it too much. Amazon has adopted every stupid management fad and religion under the sun from six sigma to kaizen to lean to 5s to agile, etc. The idea being that if you are an expert on something totally made up you must deserve that big fat raise and promotion. I feel sorry for all the people who are going to have to go through Bezos method decision making training (black belt omega critical OT l…

Amazon has a history of hiring MBA's - they hired a ton from HBS before the crash - when other tech companies didn't. Maybe it's Bezo's Wall Street background.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#149

Post by buro9 »

lmm wrote: post #130
buro9 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then Amazon is going to have to become much much better. I live in London, UK and do not use Prime. I've almost stopped using Amazon altogether now. Why? 1. Delivery - For our flat, their network either fails to deliver, mis-delivers or screws up in some other way far more than they succeed. There is no option to choose the one postal service that shines for my property: Royal Mail. Anything I order from Amazon may t…

> 1. Delivery - For our flat, their network either fails to deliver, mis-delivers or screws up in some other way far more than they succeed. There is no option to choose the one postal service that shines for my property: Royal Mail. Anything I order from Amazon may turn up eventually, but certainly isn't going to arrive whenever they claim. This is my #1 reason for abandoning Amazon. Very few online stores give you…

> Very few online stores give you a choice of delivery service.

The ones I'm now using all do.

The different options of exigency are usually different providers, which is very convenient.

> Oh?

As a quick experiment I built a bike from components and accessories last year and couldn't find any of the items I wanted on Amazon, but have just tried again.

No Rohloff hub, Enve rims, Gilles Berthoud mudguards, Schmidt dynamo hub, etc.

Only the brake pads for Hope brakes, not the brakes themselves.

The only bits of an entire bike that I managed to find was the Carradice bag and the Fizik saffle. No other part was on Amazon.

> Amazon options are good enough a lot of the time

They're only "good enough" if having them means that you do not have the Netflix, Spotify and other things in place. A quick survey of the people sat around me with Prime is that every one still has those subscriptions elsewhere.

It's not a saving if it's in addition to other costs.

> If they're not honouring their warranty, do a credit card chargeback.

A warranty period is measured in years, a chargeback period is measured in days... 60 days is usually the upper limit.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#150

Post by sombremesa »

rifung wrote: post #122
sharkweek wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Seattle and am friends with a lot of Amazon folks. Most work very hard and complain from time to time, but I only know one who left for another job because most who are there now actually really like their jobs. One friend put it best after he transitioned from a small department in the ecommerce side of the business to one of AWS's early-ish hires, that most young departments have the thrill of working at…

I also live in Seattle and worked at Amazon. When I was interviewing, a conversation I had often went something like this.. "Oh, I see that you were at Amazon; we've interviewed many people from there. I'd ask you why you left but I think I already know." I think it really just depends on your team though. Most of the people I worked with didn't particularly like Amazon (or working in general) but it was a job and pa…

They don't pay as well as most companies in Seattle, unless you're only looking at tiny companies or something.

Maybe the new hire offer is market rate, but at 1+ years you are definitely going to be paid more anywhere else.

Amazon's job levels are also structured to have higher requirements and lower pay than equivalent positions elsewhere.

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