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Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

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Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#131

Post by lutorm »

TheGRS wrote: post #25
dpark wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s not that rare to hear a junior leader defend a bad outcome with something like, “Well, we followed the process.” - Bezos > We sought volunteers and then followed our involuntary denial of boarding process - Munoz Ouch

Yea, I'm not going to share which airline or which branch (other than to say it wasn't United or Chicago), but I have a relative who works at a pretty high position in one of them and they were, to my great surprise, in defense of United and the police in that episode earlier this week. Statements like "airlines bump people all the time", "they can't offer anymore than what they did, its a set rule", and "if they jus…

"they can't offer anymore than what they did, its a set rule"

That's complete BS. It may be a United rule, but the law only defines how much they are required to compensate people who are denied boarding. When asking passengers to voluntarily not get on the flight, they are free to negotiate any deal that is acceptable to the two parties.

That the airline doesn't have to offer more before they execute the involuntary denial of boarding somehow has gotten twisted into the fact that they can't. That's simply not true, they just chose the cheapest way out.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#132

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

#133

Post by mtw »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #103
rubicon33 wrote: post #75

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 searching for UnderArmour clothing or other popular clothing. Generally you will find items priced 30% to 50% less than elsewhere.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#134

Post by lutorm »

TheGRS wrote: post #72
positivejam wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: the notion that "airlines bump people all the time", there are those arguing that while it is indeed lawful and routine for airlines to bump passengers due to overbooking, this was not a case of overbooking, and once a passenger has taken their seat they have very different rights than when they are still waiting to board the plane. I am by no means an expert, but I found this article (posted on HN yesterday) to…

As I understand it they followed the procedures and rules just as they are defined and in the law. Had the guy willfully gotten out of his seat he would have been compensated the "involuntary bumping" rate that is set by the Dept of Transportation. But the fact that United got to that point is the problem. They had the option to offer more money for volunteers, they even had the option to find a different flight for…

As I understand it, it's unclear whether they followed procedures and the law. The law and procedures governing oversales allow "involuntarily denied boarding" if there aren't enough seats. However, a completely different section of the contract governs the circumstances under which a passenger may be removed from a plane, and that basically comes down to safety.

Some people argue that "boarding" continues until the plane is in the air and that the airline can execute their right to involuntarily "denying boarding" to any passenger up to that point. Others argue that the plain meaning of the word means that once you are "aboard" the aircraft, you can no longer (legally) deny someone boarding. They argue that since the contract of carriage does not define "boarding", it must be construed to have the plain language meaning (as in the United CEO in his statement saying that "the flight was fully boarded".)

Airlines may do it all the time but, as far as I can tell, a court has never ruled on when "denying boarding" ends and "removal from aircraft" starts. Maybe now we will find out.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#135

Post by devopsproject »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #121
devopsproject wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If you are going to make those claims, please provide a source.

This is pretty good rant from the technical\engineering side: https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX

There is no need to fetishize amazon and if amazon is your model I feel sorry for your employees.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#136

Post by sib »

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

It's one of the misunderstood pieces of scrum to think that burndown charts should be linear. If a team of 5 has established a velocity of 65 story points / 2-week sprint, and they accept 5, 13-point tasks for the next sprint, you'd expect a burndown chart that would look almost horizontal for the entire sprint until the very end, when it would drop vertically to the x axis. You might get linearity if there were 65, 1-point tasks...

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#137

Post by thaumasiotes »

dmode wrote: post #112
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!…

I once tried to purchase a pair of sunglasses from Amazon. That space is littered with counterfeits. The product page proudly proclaimed "Sold by Prada", but if you look carefully it is fulfilled by some shady company. Then you read the comments and realize that this item is not a original Prada item.

> Then you read the comments and realize that this item is not a original Prada item.

There is a very interesting discussion in Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah of how major fashion brands produce clothing:

First, the brand (e.g. "Calvin Klein") decides what they want - color, cut, material. They go to a bunch of shady Italian clothing manufacturers (the book is about the Italian mafia) and hold an auction to determine the price they'll pay for finished clothes and the amount they'll receive.

Once that auction completes, giving a price, quantity, and deadline, every manufacturer is permitted to accept the terms. Those who do are given the materials (cloth) at Calvin Klein's expense.

Every manufacturer who accepted the terms is then in a race to deliver. The first one to do so is paid. Everyone else is left with what would have been high-priced clothing if they'd finished making it a little faster; that stuff, obviously, often meets with an illegitimate branding tag and sells in counterfeit markets.

So my question to you is: suppose I go to an underground Italian market and buy a shirt made to Calvin Klein's exact specifications from material provided by Calvin Klein. Also, the branding tag on the shirt saying "Calvin Klein" is used without permission. Have I been cheated? Of what?

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#138

Post by mschuster91 »

tootie wrote: post #119
GVIrish wrote: post #79

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. You are describing this far more charitably than I would. I would describe it as idiocy. For some (idiotic) reason some management types have this belief that when they measure some metric, it should fit some ideal shape when they put it on a graph, whethe…

We had a client pushing us on our velocity. Our team was doing a quality-first approach which took far more time than the other team's approach to pitch stuff over the wall to QA and wait for bugs to roll in. Our leadership took the deliberate approach of gaming the points system to improve our appearance while keeping the team 100% focussed on deliverying quality work at the same pace we had been all along. We didn'…

> We didn't change a thing except inflate our estimates and the client was happy :)

Or, in other words, you follow the good old "Scotty engineering estimates" ;)

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#139

Post by cowardlydragon »

mstank wrote: post #2

"A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp." Seems like this is exactly the kind of issue companies like United Airlin…

Step 1 is the ticket wall.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#140

Post by nradov »

TheGRS wrote: post #80
AdamN wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sympathetic to the airline execs who feel this way - they're right (technically). However, they're missing the forest for the trees. Their processes are so bad that this type of thing actually ends up happening–which is the symptom of a marge larger loss of trust. I fly less than I otherwise would if it was a dignified experience. Right now smart VCs are thinking about how to reinvent airlines and let's hope they…

There's a quote that goes something like "never let a good catastrophe go to waste" or something like that. This would be a pretty good time for a start-up airline to step in and shake things up. Problem with the airline industry is that its about as far from free market as you can get. The routes are set by the DOT and auctioned and traded among airlines like football players on an NFL team. And just like the NFL it…

The DOT doesn't set routes. The limitation is on landing slots and gates at the busiest airports; existing airlines have those locked up and so new entrants are forced to smaller outlying airports. The FAA does impose some air corridors which might prevent you from flying a direct path, but that's for safety and traffic management.
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