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Bezos: A CEO Who Can Write (2018)

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11–20 of 47 posts

Re: Bezos: A CEO Who Can Write (2018)

#11
>There was no centralized repository of all the letters, so I decided to collect all of them here. I’ll keep updating this list every year. Let me know your feedback/ideas regarding this collection.

This is bullshit, there are many sites hosting the letters. Literally the first google hit [1].

[1] https://www.cbinsights.com/research/bezos-amazon-shareholder...

Re: Bezos: A CEO Who Can Write (2018)

#12
I wish one of Amazon's "Principles" were openness/transparency, because I think it'd be great to see some of the internal memos Bezos writes to colleagues and how they debate their thinking in writing. Amazon has always been a "skate where the puck is going" kind of company, unrivaled for customer obsession, and I think it'd be great to see their thinking on things like the Whole Foods acquisition, the Fire flop, the surprising growth of AWS, the future of UPS/FedEx, Kindles in a multi-device world, last mile drone delivery, surprising stickiness of Prime, entry into display ad server market, among any number of other topics. I imagine internal Amazon mailing lists for execs are like a rich archive of Stratechery posts but written by hundreds of smart thinkers/writers (and perhaps moderated by Bezos himself!)

Re: Bezos: A CEO Who Can Write (2018)

#16
“The diversity of products demands that we employ modern regression techniques like trained random forests of decision trees to flexibly incorporate thousands of product attributes at rank time….Now, if the eyes of some shareowners dutifully reading this letter are by this point glazing over, I will awaken you by pointing out that, in my opinion, these techniques are not idly pursued — they lead directly to free cash flow.”

I often myself hating Amazon for what I see as a potentially cancerous machine of economic consolidation. Still, can't help but appreciate this mans vision. Very prescient of him. I find stepping back to get a systematic view of things extremely difficult. The box really does trap you. Bezos should be praised for his ability to do this with a company and product as large and deep as Amazon. His attention to detail and his ability to synthesize has clearly paid off big for Amazon.

Re: Bezos: A CEO Who Can Write (2018)

#17

...clear directives to upper management that workers' attempts to secure living wages and humane workplaces will not be tolerated, and that Rule of Acquisition number 211 must be rigorously adhered to at all times.

Thanks. I had not heard of these before. For anyone else interested: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition

Re: Bezos: A CEO Who Can Write (2018)

#18
post #8

It may seem surprising that a corporate executive is able to read and write, but research shows that literacy among CEOs is rapidly increasing. According to the IMF, executive literacy rates are on target to pass 50% by as early as 2022. Of course, there are still many challenges to overcome, but I think we can agree that Jeff's story here is an inspiration to many around the world.

[deleted]

Re: Bezos: A CEO Who Can Write (2018)

#20
> Amazon Prime subscriptions have topped 100M

I'm not surprised. I had trouble stopping them giving me free subscriptions for a week or a month at a time. The kicker is it automatically rolls over into a paid subscription so I need to keep my wits about me in case I've been signed up.

I wrote to them many times saying I don't want to be signed up to Prime. They always apologise and cancel my subscription but then it happens again. The only thing that seems to have worked is removing my credit card.

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