Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#61

Post by ksec » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 3:13 PM UTC

WhyKill wrote: post #13

Amazon sucks now. I can't buy most of the specific items I use in my work, and when I do find something it's swimming in a sea of clone crap. The best thing it does still is books. Anything else is a mizxed bag. AMZ is just Ali Baba for people who can't wait for the ship.

Amazon first solved the Discovery problem, and they went and solved distribution, but somehow Discovery was completely lost after they solved Distribution.

You cant make distribution work without huge selection and volume. And selection is the enemy of discovery. It is a hard balance.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#62

Post by aka1234 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #18

WhyKill wrote: post #13

Amazon sucks now. I can't buy most of the specific items I use in my work, and when I do find something it's swimming in a sea of clone crap. The best thing it does still is books. Anything else is a mizxed bag. AMZ is just Ali Baba for people who can't wait for the ship.

Not to mention their treatment of workers, whether it's in the warehouse or the ip restrictions on white collar employees.

What IP restrictions? Must be different in other orgs. But I've never run into any IP restriction whatsoever.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#63

Post by ianleeclark » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 3:24 PM UTC

agundy wrote: post #21

WhyKill wrote: post #13

Amazon sucks now. I can't buy most of the specific items I use in my work, and when I do find something it's swimming in a sea of clone crap. The best thing it does still is books. Anything else is a mizxed bag. AMZ is just Ali Baba for people who can't wait for the ship.

Books aren’t even reliably great with certain knock offs and or different version/condition substitutions. No Starch Press has had issues With counterfeit printed books. https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-counterfeits-no-starch...

Another huge problem is translations between versions. An example of this is the paperback and hardcover versions of a book being well-translated by person X, but the Kindle version being a poor translation done by person Y. All of these will be on the same "book" page, even though they're fundamentally different.

I love my kindle, but translation + kindle is an awful experience.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#64

Post by GhettoMaestro » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 3:29 PM UTC

jdm2212 wrote: post #17

sah2ed wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get up to speed on Amazon's sub-par attitude to warehouse workers' welfare, prior to Bezos re-assuming day-to-day leadership, start here: 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22759575 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22770092

Did Bezos care about warehouse worker safety when he ran things day to day? I thought there have been sporadic reports of warehouse worker mistreatment going back years, like that story about the one warehouse that had to have an ambulance parked outside to pick up workers who got heat stroke because it was cheaper than installing A/C. (No idea if that story's true. Just, this stuff has been circulating for a while.…

I'm calling horseshit on that story - prove me wrong.

Why? Simple math and risk analysis. One death that can be proven to have been preventable (and more important, negligent) is going to cost multiples more than a stupid AC unit.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#65

Post by coder1001 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 3:29 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #30

coder1001 wrote: post #25

Is this a good or bad sign? What problems exist that only the founder can solve and require his involvement? or is that just what he wants to do?

It's a good sign. In cases of normal business operation, normal corporate management, delegation, and accountability techniques generally work quite well. Decisions are extensively researched and weighed before being taken. Doing things right, not quickly, is the goal here. In times of urgent emergency, normal management techniques fail because they can't respond quickly enough. Not because they're inferior, but beca…

Thanks, appreciate the answer. Makes a lot of sense.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#66

Post by sytelus » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 3:35 PM UTC

WhyKill wrote: post #13

Amazon sucks now. I can't buy most of the specific items I use in my work, and when I do find something it's swimming in a sea of clone crap. The best thing it does still is books. Anything else is a mizxed bag. AMZ is just Ali Baba for people who can't wait for the ship.

It is surprising that their relevance algorithms isn't able to show diverse results. If you look 4 or 5 pages down the search, you can still find innovating items but they are literally in the sea of almost exact same looking white-label items. My guess is that there are SEO businesses making ton of money by SEOing the hell out of Amazon for white label products off of Alibaba.

If Amazon did nothing else but allowed to filter products by where was it made/designed, the problem will be solved in significant way.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#67

Post by cambalache » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 3:39 PM UTC

bedhead wrote: post #34

WhyKill wrote: post #13

Amazon sucks now. I can't buy most of the specific items I use in my work, and when I do find something it's swimming in a sea of clone crap. The best thing it does still is books. Anything else is a mizxed bag. AMZ is just Ali Baba for people who can't wait for the ship.

Literally any article about Amazon on HN inevitably devolves into a bunch of useless anecdotes about how much Amazon supposedly sucks. You could set a watch to it. It's beyond tiresome. If you did nothing but read HN you'd think Amazon was filing for bankruptcy imminently.

But Jeff you have to understand why people act that way.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#68

Post by sytelus » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 3:40 PM UTC

jdm2212 wrote: post #6

sytelus wrote: post #4

This is quite significant given market is very bullish on Amazon (Goldman is just all over it). The expectations are set sky high to do well during these times. But if you look at things as consumer, it doesn't look so good. Personally, I've significantly less orders on Amazon these days because of huge delivery times. Sure, orders for "essentials" might have gone up but can that offset the gap? Also, sellers are ver…

This is sort of a "no one goes there anymore, it's too crowded" criticism. Huge delivery times are because they're getting so many orders (which means so much revenue, which means so much profit).

> Huge delivery times are because they're getting so many orders

From my limited probing, it doesn't look like that. Instead my guess is that operations are violently broken right now at Amazon. You can find lot of non-essentials shipping in 2-3 days while a lot more important items with waits exceeding 3 weeks. This would explain Bezos turning off self-drive button and taking the wheels.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#69

Post by krazyk8s » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 3:51 PM UTC

guylepage3 wrote: post #20

Maybe he should set his sites lower and get some work done to fix Amazon Fresh. I have tried to order something everyday since Mar 12 and no time slots have been available.

I'm willing to give Amazon a pass on this one for the moment. I haven't been able to use any grocery delivery services in weeks. If there are time slots available they are getting filled pretty much immediately when they open up, and I've not been lucky enough to catch it.

Re: Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon

#70

Post by iagovar » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

lnsru wrote: post #57

iagovar wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I used to read this comments and think it only applied to the US. Also happening to Spain. Amazon has become useless. Rankings are weird, quality stuff is is very hard to find and I have to resort to forums that point to Amazon links that you cannot find using Amazon search. Also, I'm more and more attracted to specialized shops again. For example for the last two years I've been buying most electronic stuff fr…

Same in Germany. Started training archery in the woods as sport and needed arm protector. Amazon offered plenty of them, most the same as in AliExpress. Or the ones as in specialized archery stores with 20% higher prices. Sadly there were no archery store near by to walk in and I was limited to online shopping.

Niche stores tend to be better, at least the feedback from clients means something, unlike amazon where sellers just open up with another account. And some of them test what they buy.