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Employee #1: Amazon

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Re: Employee #1: Amazon

#61

Post by georgewsinger »

> He connected us with Jeff because he knew that Jeff was going to leave to start a web-related business that he had analyzed for this hedge fund. For whatever reason, that company didn’t want to pursue it but Jeff did.

This makes it sound as if (i.e., connotes that) the idea for Amazon was DE Shaw's, not Jeff's. Is this true?? I was under the impression that Bezos personally brainstormed a bunch of ideas for businesses that he thought would be useful with the new internet -- with books being low on the list -- and then, over time as more analysis was done (by Jeff), it rose to the top. I'm sure he talked with fellow DE Shaw employees about his thought process along the way. But the idea was his.

I got this from internet folklore + reading the Jeff Bezos bio that came out a few months ago. Am I right or wrong here? I find this historical fact pretty interesting, so want to get it right :)

Re: Employee #1: Amazon

#62

Post by rwmj »

georgewsinger wrote: post #61

> He connected us with Jeff because he knew that Jeff was going to leave to start a web-related business that he had analyzed for this hedge fund. For whatever reason, that company didn’t want to pursue it but Jeff did. This makes it sound as if (i.e., connotes that) the idea for Amazon was DE Shaw's, not Jeff's. Is this true?? I was under the impression that Bezos personally brainstormed a bunch of ideas for busines…

The "idea for Amazon" being "bookshop" + "on the internet" is not a something that can or should be owned or protected.

Re: Employee #1: Amazon

#63

Post by rahul003 »

Benjammer wrote: post #54
mikeleeorg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. So, so true. So true that I often question technical interviewing practices that look solely for ability to memorize complex algorithms exactly, vs ability to seek out an even better solution and apply it effectively.

I recently went through a final-round interview process, and a large piece of the technical part of the interview involved handing me a laptop connected to the internet and the interviewer saying "Build a REST API that can handle these 4 curl requests and respond correctly. Use any technology you want. You have access to Google and anything else you can find. You have about an hour, I'll be back to check on you in 20…

That is a good way to see how someone goes about approaching actual work. Which company was this?

Re: Employee #1: Amazon

#64

Post by bluedino »

skaphan wrote: post #47
nocarrier wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was more Lisp influence than just the CS macros you mention here. Eric Benson was a major contributor to Lucid Emacs and many early Amazon engineers had Lisp experience. SICP was practically issued to every new software engineer--it was that popular. The template language for Amazon's website at the time (catsubst) was a Lisp-inspired prefix notation language with a relatively small number of functions. For exa…

EB and I both worked at Lucid, which produced a Common Lisp system, not to my knowledge a version of Emacs (though maybe so after I left in 1989?). Some other early employees knew and liked Lisp, but we didn't use it on any core functionality. The text substitution logic you mention, that I wrote, was really simple and not particularly Lisp-like. Though again, after I handed it off, who knows what happened.

Didn't jzw work at Lucid as well? I'd love to see a list of famous programmers that works there.

Re: Employee #1: Amazon

#65

Post by mrlambchop »

Benjammer wrote: post #54
mikeleeorg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. So, so true. So true that I often question technical interviewing practices that look solely for ability to memorize complex algorithms exactly, vs ability to seek out an even better solution and apply it effectively.

I recently went through a final-round interview process, and a large piece of the technical part of the interview involved handing me a laptop connected to the internet and the interviewer saying "Build a REST API that can handle these 4 curl requests and respond correctly. Use any technology you want. You have access to Google and anything else you can find. You have about an hour, I'll be back to check on you in 20…

This was a great test - I just gave myself this test (I'm usually working in embedded systems so this wasn't something I do all the time) - completed in 30 mins, most of it waiting for installs or reading the web. I think it might be possible to add postgres and OAUTH2 into this as well (assuming one can grok OAUTH2 in 30 mins...).

Re: Employee #1: Amazon

#66

Post by creeble »

Well, yeah. Those days were still before everything that’s happened with glorifying startups. If you were going to do a startup business, there wasn’t a huge expectation that it was going to be glamorous in any particular kind of way. You were going to work really hard and maybe it was going to work, though probably not.

Indeed.

Some might even go so far as to say:

  if (glorifying_startups > BUBBLE_MAX) { kaboom(); }
Anyway, great stories!

Re: Employee #1: Amazon

#67

Post by blang »

DINKDINK wrote: post #59

>We were even talking about possibly locating it in Santa Cruz. This was in spring of ‘94. Jeff went back home to New York and started thinking about where he wanted to locate. We were looking at office space in Santa Cruz but as he learned more about mail-order business he eventually decided it made more sense to be in a smaller population state or one that didn’t charge sales tax. How California lost out on hosting…

Not true. Washington has a high sales tax rate. Washington won out because of its smaller population.

Re: Employee #1: Amazon

#68

Post by grahamburger »

cookiecaper wrote: post #53
grahamburger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a previous job I put this in to practice. I would give interviewees a short list of questions on a piece of paper and after the interview they could use a browser and take as much time as they needed to answer the questions. Some were logic type questions that would be difficult to Google, some were just process questions that very few people would know off the top of their head but should be able to Google. The i…

HR should have no input into technical hiring processes. I don't understand the thought process by which they feel they should have this authority. HR interference was a MASSIVE pet peeve of mine at a previous employer. I eventually was able to strong arm them into forwarding me all resumes directly, but it was a battle.

Agreed, it was very frustrating. They required that we follow the exact same set of interview questions for every candidate, verbatim. We were not allowed to ask technical questions or do any kind of proficiency questioning / testing, etc. When pressed, they said that we could ask follow up questions to their set of questions, and that we should be able to determine technical proficiency by inquiring about past experience.

Re: Employee #1: Amazon

#69

Post by skaphan »

bluedino wrote: post #64
skaphan wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EB and I both worked at Lucid, which produced a Common Lisp system, not to my knowledge a version of Emacs (though maybe so after I left in 1989?). Some other early employees knew and liked Lisp, but we didn't use it on any core functionality. The text substitution logic you mention, that I wrote, was really simple and not particularly Lisp-like. Though again, after I handed it off, who knows what happened.

Didn't jzw work at Lucid as well? I'd love to see a list of famous programmers that works there.

If you are referring to Jamie Zawinski (jwz), yes, but after my time there.

Re: Employee #1: Amazon

#70

Post by RyJones »

blang wrote: post #67
DINKDINK wrote: post #59

>We were even talking about possibly locating it in Santa Cruz. This was in spring of ‘94. Jeff went back home to New York and started thinking about where he wanted to locate. We were looking at office space in Santa Cruz but as he learned more about mail-order business he eventually decided it made more sense to be in a smaller population state or one that didn’t charge sales tax. How California lost out on hosting…

Not true. Washington has a high sales tax rate. Washington won out because of its smaller population.

no income tax in Washington, as well. B&O[0] taxes can make up for that, though.

[0] http://dor.wa.gov/content/findtaxesandrates/bandotax/

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