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Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

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Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#231

Post by jjeaff »

fbonetti wrote: post #54
Diederich wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was happening at a startup ? How common is this kind of process slavery in startups?

Yes, it was a VC-funded, early-stage startup. On top of the large amount of process and the one week sprints, we also four different dev teams each working on their own microservice app which was tightly coupled to the other apps in the company. Every team had to deploy at the same time, and if one app went down, the other apps went down with it. The company's platform was essentially an ecommerce site that could hav…

But haven't you heard the VC driven truth that it takes one woman 9 months to make a baby... But 9 women can make a baby in one month.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#232

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#233

Post by phil21 »

ethbro wrote: post #192
jerdfelt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Amazon does not appear to keep different sellers products separate in the warehouse. All it takes is one seller sending counterfeit products to the warehouse for their inventory to be contaminated by counterfeits. This makes "fulfilled by Amazon" more risky in some respects.

If this is true (and I suppose Amazon's the only one who really knows, absent a supplier orchestrating a test), then I can't believe there wouldn't be grounds for a class action lawsuit. Because, crucial, Amazon also comingles reviews for the same product. I'd assume they have boilerplate in their legal agreements that waive rights to do so. But it seems blatantly obvious that if I put a novel item on Amazon, attract…

> If this is true (and I suppose Amazon's the only one who really knows, absent a supplier orchestrating a test)

This is true, and Amazon admits it. Co-mingling is a large part of their delivery platform.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#234

Post by 6stringmerc »

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 don't respect Jeff because of exactly the reasons you point out. He's a smart fella. He's not out of the loop about this shit unless he chooses to be. A fish rots from the head down. Even as a customer of sorts via Amazon Story Writer, I still think Jeff is essentially a Robber Baron in new clothes unless he finds humanity like Gates did and tries to use his war chest for good.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#235

Post by thaumasiotes »

gutnor wrote: post #214
thaumasiotes wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Have I been cheated? Of what? First of all, let's get things straight. A copy that matches the exact original specification with the same material is the mythological unicorn of the knock off business. Finding something genuine in an underground world that thrive on selling counterfeit goods is probably an adventure on its own. You don't get cheated buying a stolen car if you were looking to buy a stolen car. Same…

So, this is common in clothing because, as described above, the purchasing process guarantees the production of many illegitimate copies for every one legitimately branded item of clothing. (Also common: two brands who serve different social classes contract with the same factory to purchase the exact same clothing, then sew different labels onto the identical clothing to create a large difference in retail price.)

I have no reason to believe the supply chain for sunglasses is anything like the supply chain for clothing. But I do have reason to believe that people who think sunglasses are less valuable by virtue of not being Prada are more interested in the brand than in the functionality.

If you want Prada sunglasses because you're The Right Kind Of Person and that kind of person wears Prada, getting genuine-but-discount items isn't really better than getting "fakes". Cheaply purchasing expensive sunglasses fakes a signal that you can afford them, but the fact that you can't will still be instantly apparent to the same people you were hoping to fool.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#237

Post by SyneRyder »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #141
throwawaymsft wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Amazon is not an authorized seller of apple products.

Are you sure? Amazon were on Apple's official list of authorized internet resellers back in June 2016, before the page was deleted from Apple's website:

http://web.archive.org/web/20160609091210/http://salesresour...

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#238

Post by kbart »

baddox wrote: post #174
paulmd wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certain types of products are extremely commonly counterfeited. I would never consider ordering luxury goods like cologne/perfume/handbags, flash memory cards or sticks, or small mass-market electronics like chargers. Due to the way Amazon commingles their stock at the SKU level, there is simply no way to guarantee that what you're getting is genuine, even if you order "sold and shipped from Amazon". Even from an aut…

I've bought lots of flash cards, flash drives, chargers, and cables from Amazon and have never had a problem (or they were great counterfeits, in which case I'm not too upset). I don't do much research either, choosing mostly based on search results, brand name, reviews, and shipping/sold by Amazon.

I'd strongly advise against high-voltage/power, questionable quality electronics, because even counterfeit charger will work fine most of the time, until one day, it fails and burns your home down. It's usually not functionality that differs between cheap/counterfeit and quality electronics, but protection, failsafe mechanisms, durability and quality control. I do order myself plenty of cheap, low quality electronics, but nothing that touches more than 12V.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#239

Post by RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u »

baddox wrote: post #174
paulmd wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certain types of products are extremely commonly counterfeited. I would never consider ordering luxury goods like cologne/perfume/handbags, flash memory cards or sticks, or small mass-market electronics like chargers. Due to the way Amazon commingles their stock at the SKU level, there is simply no way to guarantee that what you're getting is genuine, even if you order "sold and shipped from Amazon". Even from an aut…

I've bought lots of flash cards, flash drives, chargers, and cables from Amazon and have never had a problem (or they were great counterfeits, in which case I'm not too upset). I don't do much research either, choosing mostly based on search results, brand name, reviews, and shipping/sold by Amazon.

As a counter anecdote, I ordered ("[s]hips from and sold by Amazon.com", not "[f]ulfilled by Amazon"; just double-checked) a branded microSD card a few months ago, and did a full device write / read on it, and it died on the read pass. I wasn't even thinking that it could be counterfeit at the time: this is just a basic smoke test I do on all new storage devices. But now that I think of it it does seem awfully suspicious.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#240

Post by mrunkel »

fbonetti wrote: post #178
sib wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I think you're getting at the heart of why burn down charts are so pointless. The shape changes sprint to sprint, depending on what kind of stories you take on. If the sprint is entirely high pointed stories, your chart will be mostly horizontal. If the sprint is entirely 1 pointers, the graph will look like an exponential decay. Since the shape is always different, there's virtually zero useful information to take a…

Exactly.

My insistence is always that what happens inside the Sprint is the concern of the development team and nobody elses.

However it's important to remember that the team itself should set their velocity in negotiation with the product owner. This shouldn't be set by some external force.

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