1.3 million employees, wow!
Would be interesting to know how they are split by geography and function
Function should be obvious - the vast majority in fulfillment centers and logistics and customer service.
Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
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Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
For comparison, using national total wealth, that makes Amazon worth more than Saudia Arabia, Denmark, Portugal, or New Zealand. It's $280.5 billion in revenue in 2019 put it above the GDP of Romania, Peru, Ukraine, etc. Corporations should never be allowed to get this large.
> Corporations should never be allowed to get this large. Why? Bonus question: Why should governments be allowed to get that big?
That's not what national total wealth refers to. It refers to the wealth of all citizens.
> National net wealth, also known as national net worth, is the total sum of the value of a nation's assets minus its liabilities. It refers to the total value of net wealth possessed by the citizens of a nation at a set point in time.
Given that multi-national corporations exist, it seems obvious that companies will have greater wealth than nations.
Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
For comparison, using national total wealth, that makes Amazon worth more than Saudia Arabia, Denmark, Portugal, or New Zealand. It's $280.5 billion in revenue in 2019 put it above the GDP of Romania, Peru, Ukraine, etc. Corporations should never be allowed to get this large.
> Corporations should never be allowed to get this large. Ok, I'll bite. Why? It's not like there's some natural law against it, so you need to provide an argument for why you think they shouldn't.
The obvious argument is the adage that "If a company's only goal is to grow at any cost it is not a company. It's a cancer."
Secondary item is that a company of this scale has the ends and means to ward off any competitor and eventually set the wages for an industry. Companies scaling to this size is evidence that the taxation system is too lax and allows money to be funneled out of the loop.
Think of it like a pool pump that has sprung a leak. It keeps sucking in but not pupping out into the pool, Amazon is amassing this money by NOT spending it on the economy. Eventually your pool will be stuck at the lowest line of the pump inlet.
Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
For comparison, using national total wealth, that makes Amazon worth more than Saudia Arabia, Denmark, Portugal, or New Zealand. It's $280.5 billion in revenue in 2019 put it above the GDP of Romania, Peru, Ukraine, etc. Corporations should never be allowed to get this large.
> Corporations should never be allowed to get this large. Ok, I'll bite. Why? It's not like there's some natural law against it, so you need to provide an argument for why you think they shouldn't.
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Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#155The takeover of tech by MBAs continues. It has now happened at the top 4 largest tech companies in the US. We will have Apple (Tim Cook), Amazon (Andy Jassy), Alphabet (Sundar Pichai), Microsoft (Satya Nadella & Steve Ballmer) all taking over from non-MBA founders. Facebook is next in size and has Sheryl Sandberg as COO but don't know if Mark Zuckerberg would ever hand over the reins. Why don't non-MBAs manage to get…
Errr...both Sundar and Satya were software engineers first?
Clearly the CEO should have no formal business training, regardless of their prior work.
Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
without Andy (and AWS), I'd posit that Jeff would just be another regular old billionaire who'd own a sports team, but otherwise folks would not know much about.
I'm pretty sure you're wrong. Most people have no idea what AWS is, but know what Amazon the consumer business is. AWS is only well known among tech circles.
> Most people have no idea what AWS is
Actually no. Most people I know even not in Tech, know Amazon has this 'cloud' business. Whether they know it is called AWS or not, is different.
Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
For comparison, using national total wealth, that makes Amazon worth more than Saudia Arabia, Denmark, Portugal, or New Zealand. It's $280.5 billion in revenue in 2019 put it above the GDP of Romania, Peru, Ukraine, etc. Corporations should never be allowed to get this large.
> It's $280.5 billion in revenue in 2019 put it above the GDP of Romania, Peru, Ukraine, etc. > Corporations should never be allowed to get this large. Or maybe we should convince a larger swath of humanity to unite behind an idea larger than "nationhood" or "my country".
a larger organization... like a corporation?
Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#158From https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/email-from-jef... >Fellow Amazonians: >I’m excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO. In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be a…
For comparison, using national total wealth, that makes Amazon worth more than Saudia Arabia, Denmark, Portugal, or New Zealand. It's $280.5 billion in revenue in 2019 put it above the GDP of Romania, Peru, Ukraine, etc. Corporations should never be allowed to get this large.
> Corporations should never be allowed to get this large.
Countries either. Why did we allow it?
Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#159From https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/email-from-jef... >Fellow Amazonians: >I’m excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO. In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be a…
Another thing I find interesting is that Amazon's main business is so common that there's a single word for it: retail. They're just yet another middleman between distributors and consumers. Not long ago, a lot of the business world thought Walmart was the indisputable retail king. Amazon proved there's still room for growth in retail.
Will this simple thing called retail produce yet more trillion dollar companies, or is it running out of gas? Will there be an Amazon killer? History suggests yes.
Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Corporations should never be allowed to get this large. Why? Bonus question: Why should governments be allowed to get that big?
Let's start with the premise that "representative government is the union of the people" and "profit motive is not always the best incentive for action in society", and go from there.
I dispute that premise. I'd hardly call America "unified" at the present moment; we are in such a state of disunity that many are refusing to accept election results. Pervasive as Amazon, Google, et al. may be, they are still much easier to escape than the United States government.