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Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

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Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#91

Post by Androider »

nebabyte wrote: post #74
x2f10 wrote: post #66

I might be shunned for beating the dead horse, but while he talks about 'True Customer Obsession', he allows counterfeit goods erode his customer's trust in Amazon. I'd argue Amazon's 'process as proxy' in dealing with counterfeits is the careless return process. 'Oh, it's counterfeit? We're sorry! Here's your money back!' does not solve the issue. Sure, thanks for the $10 back, but now I must think twice (or thrice!…

Why would Amazon have an interest in dealing with counterfeits? It just primes the market for them moving in with their brand of the thing.

Because it used to be a no-brainer to buy things on Amazon, one click and done. Now I have to very carefully vet the listing before buying, inspect the product once received etc. Certain categories of items I would now never buy from Amazon in its current state (vitamins, fish oil etc.)

Amazon has built a great reputation and trust with their customers, and they're going to lose it the way they're going.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#92

Post by fbonetti »

nebabyte wrote: post #74
x2f10 wrote: post #66

I might be shunned for beating the dead horse, but while he talks about 'True Customer Obsession', he allows counterfeit goods erode his customer's trust in Amazon. I'd argue Amazon's 'process as proxy' in dealing with counterfeits is the careless return process. 'Oh, it's counterfeit? We're sorry! Here's your money back!' does not solve the issue. Sure, thanks for the $10 back, but now I must think twice (or thrice!…

Why would Amazon have an interest in dealing with counterfeits? It just primes the market for them moving in with their brand of the thing.

Because it erodes trust in the platform, obviously. Would you buy something from a website if you were concerned it might be counterfeit?

That being said, I've been a prime customer for years and I've never encountered this issue. I'm actually surprised to hear that's even a thing.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#93

Post by inopinatus »

devopsproject wrote: post #62
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #41

You have to admire the grit and tenacity it takes to maintain that kind of ethos for 23 years straight. What Jeff is basically saying here in this letter is that the pedal is to the metal, forever: We can't have process as the foundation because it ossifies the organization! Be nimble to the rules of the game. When translated however, that means you are either empowering your organization to change and make new proce…

By almost every account, Amazon is terrible place to work: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-... This isn't the type of leader you want to be.

That article is an egregious example of selection effects. Practically no-one who enjoys or enjoyed their time at Amazon talks about it. The company instils a strong sense of secrecy, so if you're still there, or might imagine rejoining someday (I am in this latter group) you likely say very little or nothing, and certainly not at length to journalists. Combine that with a very strongly flavoured i.e. polarising company culture and you have all the conditions for the NYT's hatchet job.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#94

Post by miheermunjal »

criley2 wrote: post #53
_gi12 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a surprisingly common trap to fall into. I worked at a startup in which the CTO criticized my dev team for not having a perfectly linear burn down chart. Every week in our retro we had the same discussion about how to improve the shape of our burn down chart; we tried putting higher valued stories at the front of the queue, involving QA earlier in the sprint, and cranking out 1 pointers mid week to tweak the…

I'm dealing with a similar problem, except on 4 week sprints. It's not management, who doesn't care, it's the team itself which continues to be FIXATED on a burn down chart, to the extent that they massage story points, avoid doing work late in sprints, and are way too concerned with burndown in general. Shipping valuable features without regressions is my metric of success. Not y=mx+b applied to story points. Burn d…

this is exactly the CON of the burndown chart. it's a guide, nothing more. I wouldn't say its bad to learn from what the chart gives you, except if its trying to get a linear burn. In fact.... one may argue there is value in underfilling sprints (from a capacity standpoint) and then overdelivering, every time. otherwise known as... momentum or GTD

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#95

Post by nebabyte »

avar wrote: post #50

Odd to see Bezos cite number of Oscars & Emmies as a measure of competence, as opposed to revenue. A lot of movies that win awards aren't particularly good investments.

Why would that matter to him as a businessman.

Awards are attention for the works you're creating, equating to more money.

If some "better" award came along tomorrow which had the same implications, he'd be tracking those too.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#96

Post by ctdonath »

plandis wrote: post #76
x2f10 wrote: post #66

I might be shunned for beating the dead horse, but while he talks about 'True Customer Obsession', he allows counterfeit goods erode his customer's trust in Amazon. I'd argue Amazon's 'process as proxy' in dealing with counterfeits is the careless return process. 'Oh, it's counterfeit? We're sorry! Here's your money back!' does not solve the issue. Sure, thanks for the $10 back, but now I must think twice (or thrice!…

You're 1.) implying that Amazon isn't actively trying to fix it (otherwise they would be "walking the walk") and 2.) that it's a widespread issue (all I've heard about counterfeit products are from a few HNers)

Oh, it's an issue. You just may not have gone after high-value easy-to-copy products as others have.

I haven't had a problem with top products being counterfeit, but maybe because I tend to buy them directly from the manufacturer (Apple) or from brick-and-mortar stores where I have the goods in-hand before purchase (Nikon); I'm willing to pay a more those ways for the assurance that I'm getting what I think I'm getting.

The bigger problem I've found is counterfeit & knock-off accessories. Once I've paid US$X,000 for a products, I can't trust Amazon to show me suitable batteries, chargers, lenses, etc - there's so much money in selling those things, and it's so easy to make crap that ...works... but which is problematic somehow (dangerous knock-off chargers, batteries that swell or die, etc).

Amazon is great for stuff that nobody would seriously try to copy & undercut in a deceitful manner. Yes, you can get great deals on stuff people would seriously try to deceitfully copy & undercut, but with enough money riding on it working right, I'll spend a few bucks more elsewhere to be sure I'm getting the real thing.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#97

Post by [deleted] »

x2f10 wrote: post #66

I might be shunned for beating the dead horse, but while he talks about 'True Customer Obsession', he allows counterfeit goods erode his customer's trust in Amazon. I'd argue Amazon's 'process as proxy' in dealing with counterfeits is the careless return process. 'Oh, it's counterfeit? We're sorry! Here's your money back!' does not solve the issue. Sure, thanks for the $10 back, but now I must think twice (or thrice!…

[deleted]

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#98

Post by pikzen »

nebabyte wrote: post #88
smokeyj wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which leads to the next question. Why are we voting for a human at all? If members of an organization want a resolution passed anyone should be able to propose it - and if the magic threshold is met - then whala - the resolution is law. I want to be able to vote everyday. I want to be able to pick who I want to represent my vote - and change it at will. I want to be able to pick Bill Gates to represent me on technolo…

> If members of an organization want a resolution passed anyone should be able to propose it - and if the magic threshold is met - then whala - the resolution is law. ...You just described the legislative branch. Direct democracy has its own problems; even if you scale for proportions of people, the people leading their everyday lives do not have the time to inform themselves en masse of particulars about issues, and…

*voila.

Unless you really meant "raped", but for some reason I feel like this isn't it :^)

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#99

Post by lubesGordi »

fbonetti wrote: post #30
wjamesg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burn down chart?

It's a common metric used in the Scrum methodology. You start off the "sprint" with a set number of "story points" (say, 30 points), and end the sprint with zero points. When you graph the team's progress over the course of the sprint, it should ideally form a linear, downward slope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_down_chart

This kind of thing makes sense if you were doing something like digging a trench, where the progress can be linear because the task A is the same as task A - 1. Why would anyone think that given a variety of tasks that each would take the same amount of time?

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#100

Post by creaghpatr »

x2f10 wrote: post #66

I might be shunned for beating the dead horse, but while he talks about 'True Customer Obsession', he allows counterfeit goods erode his customer's trust in Amazon. I'd argue Amazon's 'process as proxy' in dealing with counterfeits is the careless return process. 'Oh, it's counterfeit? We're sorry! Here's your money back!' does not solve the issue. Sure, thanks for the $10 back, but now I must think twice (or thrice!…

The counterfeiters are also Bezos' customers he has to show them some true customer love too /s
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