21–30 of 93 posts
Asshole managers who copy Jeff Bezos are just this tech generation's version of asshole managers who copied Steve Jobs that we had to deal with 20 years ago.
Asshole managers who copy Jeff Bezos are just this tech generation's version of asshole managers who copied Steve Jobs that we had to deal with 20 years ago.
Was it cool to copy his asshole traits before he was kicked out the first time? I would have been too young to know. I am not sure how widely they were publicized.
Anyway, I am not the biggest Amazon fan, but if what they are imitating are things like "customer focus" as claimed in the article and it's not a euphemism or lip service then that sounds good. Seems like they could do that without being jerks too.
Yup, and it’s filling out every other company in Seattle with people conditioned to be assholes - this isn’t a leadership principle but it is how you act over time after being ranked according to the leadership principles.
I’m a strong advocate of the leadership principles. My organization knows when to cut the noise and get down the business but we have a fairly diverse workplace where opinions are valued but being rude, insulting coworkers, arrogance, etc are not tolerated. Creating an environment where people don’t feel safe means that place won’t be around very long.
Given the number of people Amazon employs, I’m sure some people aren’t the most flattering, but to say we’re conditioning anyone to be assholes isn’t based on reality at all.
Usually people who scream the loudest about others being assholes are the ones who can’t get along.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon is VERY far from the stagnation that happened at Microsoft in the Ballmer era. In fact I'd say they are moving faster than ever. Why would you say they need a "turnaround"?
The website hasn´t changed and notably hasn´t improved in over a decade. The customer feedback has gone from being the reference for buying products to only being able to trust the 1 star reviews. It´s flooded with stuff relayed from China, and consequently its cheaper to just buy direct from China. Here in the UK we have creepy corporate amazon stakhanovite "we just love pushing these parcels" ads to endure all chri…
The consequence has been ruining the storefront experience, but that’s not really what they care about anymore.
I'm guessing that business processes in a company as big and successful as Amazon are well beyond the point of turning into a religious cult. And now we see adepts of such cults, sometimes familiar with only a single cult, without much understanding why this cult was there, reproducing that cult to build new companies. And funny thing, it sometimes is a success.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a better summary of the habits of alumni from management consulting firms.
I was just reading here on HN how Amazon recently quietly replicated and replaced UPS and FedEx with their own fleet. These companies are $82.92 billion and $65.45 billion companies respectively so I was pretty impressed.
I think you'd be a lot less impressed if you'd received any packages through their fulfillment services. Literally every single driver I've had has lied about attempting a delivery, usually multiple times, then flat out lied and said the package was delivered. The package will then show up 2-3 days later, defeating the purpose of paying for prime or faster shipping. Customer support for these issues is kafkaesque. "H…
What I hear from Amazonians in Seattle is that the culture is markedly different today than it was 5-10 years ago. That shouldn’t be surprising. Things are slower now and layered. VPs report to VPs who report to VPs. More politics. More focus on competitors. Less belief in the upside. Using Jeff’s words: We are well into Day 2. As a result, great people are leaving in droves. Satya managed an incredible cultural and…
Are we sure that Amazon is stagnating right now like Microsoft was though? A more appropriate question might be along the lines of who could prevent sliding into the Ballmer-Microsoft-like Stagnation.
Have a look: [1] [2] - what changed really was simply the price/earnings multiplier, not really the underlying fundamentals. Though this is very important, I don't think it's the most important part of the Ballmer culture era.
Revenues and product line expansion grew phenomenally, Ballmer brought huge new business lines and the cloud into the fore.
The culture may have been perceived as toxic by some, but it's debatable if that's just hearsay or if it had a real effect on productivity etc..
That Ballmer failed on a few points (slow to embrace Linux) is fine - no big companies win everywhere and neither will Satya. MS failed at search? Well Google failed as social as well. Neither of them are hard done by it, there are other unassailable market leaders who do it better somewhere else anyhow,
Satya is obviously a welcome shift, and culture change was probably timely along with embrace of open source etc. (right man for the right time) - but Ballmer was good for MSFT. He was the right man for the right time as well, and probably good that he left when he did.
My experience is that it's really, really hard to judge culture from the outside - and literally different buildings/groups have completely different culture.
Amazon will be a case study in that stage of growth however - it may have a lot to do with how much Bezos cares to deal with it, or play with rockets all day like Larry and Sergei. I wonder how very few companies have done that really well - i.e. gone from 15K -> 100K and maintained dynamism. Probably few if any.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global...
[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/sto...
What I hear from Amazonians in Seattle is that the culture is markedly different today than it was 5-10 years ago. That shouldn’t be surprising. Things are slower now and layered. VPs report to VPs who report to VPs. More politics. More focus on competitors. Less belief in the upside. Using Jeff’s words: We are well into Day 2. As a result, great people are leaving in droves. Satya managed an incredible cultural and…
My husband and I invested north of $200K in Amazon back in 2014. Their stock alone has performed tremendously for me.
I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I haven’t cashed out. I’m betting on Papa Bezos for the long term.
One thing I respect about Amazon is how they figure out stuff that isn’t working and kill it. Amazon Restaurants is now gone.
I work at another big tech company - I’m in Kirkland ;) My employer pays me better than Amazon pays for a similar role, so I get best of both worlds...
I do have friends at Amazon as well.
What I hear from Amazonians in Seattle is that the culture is markedly different today than it was 5-10 years ago. That shouldn’t be surprising. Things are slower now and layered. VPs report to VPs who report to VPs. More politics. More focus on competitors. Less belief in the upside. Using Jeff’s words: We are well into Day 2. As a result, great people are leaving in droves. Satya managed an incredible cultural and…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The website hasn´t changed and notably hasn´t improved in over a decade. The customer feedback has gone from being the reference for buying products to only being able to trust the 1 star reviews. It´s flooded with stuff relayed from China, and consequently its cheaper to just buy direct from China. Here in the UK we have creepy corporate amazon stakhanovite "we just love pushing these parcels" ads to endure all chri…
That’s because Amazon knows retail is already dead. Either they get beat out by a competitor or the fed breaks up the company and retail is doomed without the integration. AWS is just quietly milking the cash out of retail and funding the science projects.