Former Amazon employees bake Bezos principles into their startups

Post by pmiller2 » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 5:12 AM UTC

krustyburger wrote: post #52

pmiller2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just articulated basically every complaint I have about buying anything from Amazon. It seems unarguably true that I can’t buy anything from them if I can’t find it. So, why is it so hard to search for anything I don’t already know the exact name of?

So much of the result of a search is now explicitly advertising. Amazon now has a new incentive to sell ads and display those ads as often as possible, whereas before their only goal was to return relevant results to the customer making the search.

Post by nappy » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 5:18 AM UTC

jariel wrote: post #27

remarkEon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There was never any stagnation at Microsoft other than in the stock price. 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…

Post by shantly » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 5:30 AM UTC

ng12 wrote: post #62

manigandham wrote: post #29

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Amazon doesn't need a turnaround. Entire industries are afraid of its relentless march to perfect execution at the lowest possible price. It's only accelerating in new developments and innovation and is far from its peak.

> to perfect execution Their retail business is pretty far from perfect. Just a few days ago I got my first obviously fake product that was "sold by Amazon".

Post by asveikau » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 5:38 AM UTC

jerkstate wrote: post #43

asveikau wrote: post #22

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Was it cool to copy Jobs 20 years ago, after NeXT but before OS X, iPod, and iPhone? I don't think so. 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 euphemi…

I would say if there was any lull in Jobs' popularity it would have been between when he was fired in '85 to the early '90s, by '96 Pixar had released Toy Story and Jobs had been Acqui-hired back by Apple. OS X, iPod, and iPhone are far from his first successes. Through this time he worked with thousands of people and was an asshole the whole time, so when people saw his trajectory in the 90s after his fall in the 80…

Post by jariel » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 5:49 AM UTC

pmart123 wrote: post #49

jariel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was never any stagnation at Microsoft other than in the stock price. 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…

From my recollection, Ballmer continually overpaid for random acquisitions that screamed “in the moment hot thing” versus well-thought, strategic. From an outsiders view, the whole we must take over the world syndrome manifested into trying to buy a way into everything that could be big versus fit well with Microsoft.