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Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

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Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#281
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of many ex amazon employee anecdotes where people were “taken in the night” (didn’t have a job in the morning), and had their credentials and their teams credentials rotated due to a customer or seller data access overstep. As with most conspiracies the facts don’t add up super well in this case for Amazon - their whole company is based on trust. The cost of losing it would be huge, so they’d be super driven t…

When I worked at Amazon, I personally knew someone who put in their two-weeks notice, and the next day they found out they were fired when their badge didn't work. From anecdotes I've heard, this happens if Amazon suspects a person is leaving to join a competitor. Amazon is very serious about protecting their data.

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Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#282
post #242
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's way too simplistic since Amazon is not one person and not every person has the same morals or ethics in the company. I see this a lot -- personifying a company that is. It's not a good mental abstraction for making arguments about companies.

> I see this a lot -- personifying a company that is. Corporations are people, my friend - Mitt Romney.

Yeah so the law is a lot more nuanced then that and just because of certain legal affordances are made, certainly doesn't mean that the company is made of singular focused human beings all acting in the same way with the same goals.

Quite the opposite, the complexity is enormous there's even an entire area of study for it "Organizational Theory".

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#283
post #282
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see this a lot -- personifying a company that is. Corporations are people, my friend - Mitt Romney.

Yeah so the law is a lot more nuanced then that and just because of certain legal affordances are made, certainly doesn't mean that the company is made of singular focused human beings all acting in the same way with the same goals. Quite the opposite, the complexity is enormous there's even an entire area of study for it "Organizational Theory".

> certainly doesn't mean that the company is made of singular focused human beings all acting in the same way with the same goals.

Have you looked at ELon Musk, Steve Jobs and many others?

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#284
post #283
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah so the law is a lot more nuanced then that and just because of certain legal affordances are made, certainly doesn't mean that the company is made of singular focused human beings all acting in the same way with the same goals. Quite the opposite, the complexity is enormous there's even an entire area of study for it "Organizational Theory".

> certainly doesn't mean that the company is made of singular focused human beings all acting in the same way with the same goals. Have you looked at ELon Musk, Steve Jobs and many others?

There are hundreds to thousands of other people below them working on hundreds of different things. If anything those 3 are great examples of what I'm talking about. Even Jobs wasn't the singular person making all the decisions, you should look into Jony Ives, Cook etc

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#285
post #284
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> certainly doesn't mean that the company is made of singular focused human beings all acting in the same way with the same goals. Have you looked at ELon Musk, Steve Jobs and many others?

There are hundreds to thousands of other people below them working on hundreds of different things. If anything those 3 are great examples of what I'm talking about. Even Jobs wasn't the singular person making all the decisions, you should look into Jony Ives, Cook etc

Those hundreds to thousands of other people dont matter when the guy at the top sets the direction.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Amazon took my idea and did the same thing at lower cost" This isn't always the case, as many merchants have pointed it out. Sometimes (I'm sure not all the time), it's more "Amazon took my idea, and all the validation work I did in order to develop and prove it and build a market for it, and is selling it below cost in order to force everyone else out of the market" I'm not passing judgement on whether that is ok…

I'm not aware of any evidence that Amazon sells stuff below cost.

And really you're not going to get any direct evidence of this. Amazon is a private company that would have to willingly release this information related to their costs, and obviously won't.

However during congressional testimony last week Bezos was directly asked this in relation to Echo devices. His response was that "at list price" Echo devices "are not below cost", however stated "sometimes when it’s on promotion it may be below cost, yes."

Echo devices (for example) are "on promotion" a significant amount of the time.

Hell during Prime Day last year Amazon was selling Fire tablets for like $12 (although that was widely believed to be a pricing error that was still honored).

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any evidence that Amazon sells stuff below cost.

And really you're not going to get any direct evidence of this. Amazon is a private company that would have to willingly release this information related to their costs, and obviously won't. However during congressional testimony last week Bezos was directly asked this in relation to Echo devices. His response was that "at list price" Echo devices "are not below cost", however stated "sometimes when it’s on promotion…

> Amazon is a private company

Amazon is a public company.

> however stated "sometimes when it’s on promotion it may be below cost, yes."

Using hardware as a loss leader isn't unusual -- you get a discount on the hardware but on average they make it back on products/services that are complements of the hardware. Keurig and every printer manufacturer do this, too.

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