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Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

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Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet by every account that mattters it doesn't, right? I understand that people who are there can certainly wish that the place and culture were different in some significant way, but the only barometer that should have some weight is the ease or difficulty that Amazon has in attracting and retaining top talent -- and that to the extent that it is harming their ability to deliver results. Which, from the outside, it c…

> but the only barometer that should have some weight is the ease or difficulty that Amazon has in attracting and retaining top talent They have terrible retention. One of the worst and in many years the absolute worst. A few years back workers were passing out from working in 100 degree temps. They were disciplined for performance and instead of installing air conditioning, they lined up ambulances and paramedics to…

To be clear their retention is only bad in the fulfillment centers. Those are generally low skill, low pay, seasonal employees meant for short term stints - of which there is a near infinite supply.

For their core engineering, BD etc... teams in Seattle, retention is great.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#122
post #35
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how I feel about our democratic process. The process is you pick one of two parties. Then you get into a face bloodying fight with the other party. Nothing gets done, then you pat yourself on the back for doing your part. When you come to the realization that nothing has been accomplished, you blame those who didn't participate in the brawl. Suggesting that people work ON the process rather than IN the proces…

This comment seems to be well received based on the points. I think about this often and it drives me nuts that the two party system is the best we have. It's like we're trying to optimize an operating system at every level EXCEPT THE KERNEL. Suggesting that you don't buy into the two party system is met with skepticism, as if you're a closet supporter of one party. Or worse, that by not supporting a party you're imp…

It should not drive you nuts that the two-party system is the best we have. The two-party system is the natural mathematical consequence of our electoral system, "divide the land into districts and each district holds a first-past-the-post vote." Fixed-point theorems are sufficiently robust and human intellectual attitudes sufficiently squishy that we will always be coerced into this. Abstract mathematics literally caused the US civil war, and it will keep amping up the anger and mistrust and divisiveness over and over, again and again, because the fixed point of our electoral system is two parties who both say "you're either with Us or Them, you have to choose."

[I have seen a recent push of progressive voices against gerrymandering, including both political sides (e.g. Schwarzenegger on the right and John Oliver on the left)... It is important to understand that the elimination of gerrymandering would help make the parties a little more volatile and would thereby help things get done, but it is very much a "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" measure, the polarization and 50/50 split would stay there even if you used mathematical methods to do redistricting.]

We have a fine proportional system that we use to allocate our Representatives to the States, and it is worth remembering explicitly that the House was created to solve one big problem: we have a bicameral legislature because the Founding Fathers were split between people who said "every person should have an equal say in terms of what laws are passed" (House) and "every state should have an equal say in terms of what laws are passed" (Senate). People from low-population states did not want city-folk running over them, and that is what the Senate guarantees.

What we need is to use this same proportional system to allocate our House Representatives to the various national Parties. The founding fathers did not want to think in terms of political parties because they were all big intelligentsia egos who figured that you'd want to really know who you were voting for. What they didn't consider is that in a fork-o-philic model, someone can basically just make their own party about their personality and they'll get one or more seats if they're influential enough. (A great example is Trump's analogue in the Netherlands, a man named Geert Wilders, who basically just made a party that was about him and his own isolationist nationalism and it has been remarkably successful as the Netherlands has similar pressures to those that got Trump elected.)

No more gerrymandering, no more 50/50 partisan split: for the House, everyone gets an equal vote for a party, and the parties get proportional representation in the House via their Webster allocation of delegates. While the party composition starts off Republican vs. Democrat, in short order the Freedom Caucus and Green Party and Libertarians and so on will have their own representation there, too. The 50/50 split in the Senate will probably still infect the House, and your parties in the House will consistently be "left-ish" and "right-ish", but the openly nonpartisan House politics will also feed back into the Senate and kill some major road-blocks.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#123
post #46

I encountered "process as proxy" today dealing with Cisco. We were requesting a replacement for a defective part, they asked us for our serial number, which we provided, but then responded to us that our serial number was invalid. Likely because it wasn't registered. We were told that we had to contact our sales manager, or open a TAC with a different department because they department only deals with technical issue…

One of my most memorable customer service examples was memorable merely because it didn't go poorly. The vibrate function on my Ericsson T39 cell phone failed. I was dreading calling support, because I knew they'd tell me to piss off. It was a grey-market phone. I bought it on eBay unlocked, shipped to my home in the US. I wasn't the first owner, for that reason. It came with a UK charger. They didn't even sell the p…

I had a similar experience with Sony back when I was younger. Although, I did purchase the PS2 legitimately.

Something went wrong with the disc reader after a year or so. Sony told me to send it in. Then they sent me a replacement PS2 to keep... and a couple weeks later I received my old PS2, with the disc reader fixed. All free of charge.

I've been loyal to Sony ever since that fantastic experience.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. As a long time prime user, it's been the rise in counterfeit goods that has really shook my unwavering loyalty to Amazon. I used to order everything on there, without thinking twice. Now, I'm much more careful about what I buy on there, and often just avoid purchasing on Amazon entirely.

I'm mystified by this personally. I frequently purchase from Amazon, and haven't(to my knowledge) received counterfeit goods. Generally I stick to "fufilled by Amazon" or otherwise first-party sellers, so that may have something to do with it. Maybe I'm not purchasing niche enough products to run into this issue.

Try buying an Apple charger or cable on Amazon (even sold by Amazon directly):

https://9to5mac.com/2016/10/19/amazon-fake-apple-chargers-ca...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2016/10/23/apple-n...

Apple has the clout to force Amazon clean up their listings, most manufacturers don't. Why does Apple have to coerce Amazon to do this, instead of them being proactive?

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yet by every account that mattters it doesn't, right? I understand that people who are there can certainly wish that the place and culture were different in some significant way, but the only barometer that should have some weight is the ease or difficulty that Amazon has in attracting and retaining top talent -- and that to the extent that it is harming their ability to deliver results. Which, from the outside, it c…

Slavery lasted for thousands of years, and it's REALLY hard to argue with the "business results" of slavery.

Having "success" be the metric is a very slippery slope.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#127

Reposting this thought from the other discussion[0]: >Third, use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?” By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probabl…

I worked at Amazon for almost five years. Like every leadership principle, this one was easily perverted. Many people I worked with took this to heart, and among peers there was often an honorable sense of "OK, I will disagree and commit on this one".

But I also spent a few years in an org where I don't think I ever saw someone more senior disagree and commit to the opinion of someone more junior. At each level of the hierarchy it was used as a way to excuse "you will do what I say". That's fine if it happens once or twice, but laughable if it's always flowing in one direction.

The other leadership principles were perverted in similar ways. You wouldn't believe the range of things I saw justified as "customer obsession".

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#128
post #76
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)

TRX workout sets are notoriously counterfeit on Amazon.

Example: https://www.amazon.com/TRX-PRO-Suspension-Training-Kit/produ...

More recently, I got a counterfeit fitbit charger that flat out didn't work. It got replaced, but it's still annoying.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#129
post #120
post #117

Conspicuously missing are a couple of other ingredients of Amazon's success. There are plenty of companies out there with "customer obsession" and a "day 1" mentality. There are few others with such good investor relations that money keeps pouring in after two decades of paltry or negative earnings [1]. With this kind of "infinite runway" you can sometimes afford to lose $100 million over three months to drive a comp…

He didn't start out with that kind of size. He built it from nothing, with strong competitors like Walmart who had more volume for physical goods that could negotiate better deals with UPS and FedEx for years. AWS is beating Google, Microsoft, etc. Those companies had as much free cash flow and more engineering resources. He has good investor relations because he produces great returns. So, yes, your facts are correc…

And how do you account for survivor bias? I don't think the CEOs of Blackberry or Nokia would have agreed that they cared less about the customer than Jeff Bezos. "Customer obsession" is not actual, actionable advice because it's not even measurable. It's nice rhetoric, but other companies were judged on hard metrics of profits and dividends.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#130
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Are you implying that what OP says is not true, or just pointing out the obvious?

>Are you implying that what OP says is not true

That Jeff Bezos is "allowing" counterfeit goods on Amazon to ruin the customer experience? Yes, that's untrue.

I'm sure if he could snap his fingers and fix the problem, he would. But the problem is a bit more nuanced than that, and can't be solved over night (perhaps ever, if the analogy is digital piracy).

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