Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products

#381

Post by caralombardo » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

throwaway_aws wrote: post #12

"An Amazon spokesman said the company doesn’t use confidential information that companies share with it to build competing products" Maybe...but in the past, AWS proactively looked at traction of products hosted on its platform, built competing products, and then scraped & targeted customer list of those hosted products. In fact, I was on a team in AWS that did exactly that. Why wouldn't their investing arm do the sa…

Hi throwaway_aws: I'm one of the reporters and would like to hear more about your experience. Mind sending me an email at cara.lombardo@wsj.com so we can connect?

Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products

#382

Post by neilk » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 10:02 PM UTC

caralombardo wrote: post #380

former-aws wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cannot up vote this enough. During my time both at Retail and AWS it was perfectly normal to trawl production customer data and come up with ideas to launch competing products. Prices were always set lower or free offering justified as data-driven and customer obsession. I hated the gas lighting their customers and left in disgust of the company and its leadership which encourages that behavior.

Hi former-aws: I'm one of the reporters and would like to hear more about your experience. Mind sending me an email at cara.lombardo@wsj.com so we can connect?

caralombardo: Please don't ask people to admit to felonies over email. That goes double for any FAANG employee; their employers have many options to surveil them. Your employer has a page listing better options

https://www.wsj.com/tips

Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products

#383

Post by neilk » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

daiwaka wrote: post #361

former-aws wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cannot up vote this enough. During my time both at Retail and AWS it was perfectly normal to trawl production customer data and come up with ideas to launch competing products. Prices were always set lower or free offering justified as data-driven and customer obsession. I hated the gas lighting their customers and left in disgust of the company and its leadership which encourages that behavior.

As I said to throwaway -- if you are of the mind to share, i am here to listen. my email is dai.wakabayashi@nytimes.com

Come on NYTimes! You can do better than email.

Don't ask someone to admit to felonies over email. Tech employers have a LOT of power to investigate their employees' digital behavior.

How about this instead: https://www.nytimes.com/tips

Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products

#384

Post by simonebrunozzi » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 8:21 PM UTC

neilk wrote: post #382

caralombardo wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi former-aws: I'm one of the reporters and would like to hear more about your experience. Mind sending me an email at cara.lombardo@wsj.com so we can connect?

caralombardo: Please don't ask people to admit to felonies over email. That goes double for any FAANG employee; their employers have many options to surveil them. Your employer has a page listing better options https://www.wsj.com/tips

In fact, I would add: do not trust a journalist that doesn't try to protect his/her source. Nothing personal, Cara Lombardo.

Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products

#385

Post by exy » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:02 AM UTC

conductr wrote: post #331

burtonator wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the problem is corruption begets corruption. They WANT do to these things because you're going to get a massive bonus when the product you 'invented' does well because you stole the idea from an Amazon customer. Amazon needs to be properly taxed so that this crap doesn't happen anymore. The idea that they shouldn't pay taxes simply because they're large should absolutely enrage everyone.

This topic has nothing to do with taxes. They will always be trying to increase their bottom line whether that line is before or after taxes makes no difference. What is needed is a whistleblower. Not just a “when I worked for Amazon we did bad stuff”. We need that person to contact startup X, whose software and customer list was compromised. And then, this is key, share knowledge and proof of these accusations. Hell…

Here's the thing it's not just Amazon they're just the biggest fish in the manufacturing pond in NA. Who's fault is it exactly? The system is designed to MAKE SHARKS LIKE THIS.

You're a fish, eat other fish and evolve into a shark, you eat other sharks and become a whale shark, you start eating everything and then become godzilla.

A whistle blower isn't going to fix this. This is the system. The system MAKES godzilla sharks like this.

Oh yeah sure a whistle blower will do what? Get amazon fined for how much? Then they just change tactics. Outsource. Make agreements and partnerships and farm out doing the same thing just with different proxies. I mean come on man this is a company that can buy other countries.

And let's not forget Microsoft was pulling the same shit until they got put under the same charges and then all of a sudden years later after Bill got tired of stabilizing his empire and making sure it would live without him he became a saint all of a sudden. Cuz like yeah if I was richer than 99% of the people on the planet yeah I could start being a nicer person and shit too.