Live data from Hacker News

Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

aboutamazon.com

191–200 of 1001 posts

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#191
post #35

The CEO role comes with a lot of mundane responsibility (and potential liability) that I’m surprised he held onto for so long. I would expect a guy like Jeff to want to get on another rocket ship (unsure if literal or figurative).

It is as mundane as they want it to be. It mostly comes off that way because the majority of CEOs are the MBA types. If you look at Steve Jobs, Elon Musk etc., their day to day involvement could hardly be called mundane.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's something to be said for Facebook being the cause of America's division right now (amongst many other things obviously).

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Corporations should never be allowed to get this large. Why? Bonus question: Why should governments be allowed to get that big?

What do you mean by "get this big"? Governments aren't defined by a market cap, but rather by the services they provide to their citizens. Consider that a private company's only goal is to enrich its shareholders, and they have no responsibility to the people or places around them. They are only accountable to their shareholders and the government. A governments responsibility is solely to its citizens who also contr…

[deleted]

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#194
post #41

Time to spend the cash. The big money had been made.

I think retirement is more of a time to ponder life. I doubt he's going to pull some big expenditure. He'll probably invest in multiple companies.

I doubt he's going to pull some big expenditure - with a net worth of 182BN USD there isn't really an item available that would be "a big expenditure".

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 for-profit corporation seems like a terrible candidate for such a position.

Why it actually provides things people want and is based on voluntary interaction.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah - the man is 57, and at this point does NOT have to work anymore...probably for the rest of his life. Looks like he still intends to run his philanthropies, Blue Origin, and the Post, but after the type of run he has had, he's probably taking some more free time while he's healthy. I try not to fall into the "cult of personality" trap, but Amazon is where it is _because_ of Bezos, and it'll be fascinating to wat…

I think you pass the point of not having to work somewhere prior to 130B net worth. I'm worried about what happens to Amazon with Bezos gone. A good outcome would be something like Apple and Tim Cook. A bad one would be Microsoft and Ballmer, it will take a while to see which type this ends up being. Either way losing Bezos as CEO is a bummer.

Don't know, but I like Gates better since he stepped down as MS CEO and brought positive change to more unfortunate people's lives. Maybe Bezos would do similar things?

I don't like the press release, it keeps repeating Amazon every sentence. It's a tiring read, much Like Andy Warhol's repeating patterns. That alone pretty much says a lot about the current Jeff Bezos.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#197

The 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?

An MBA has always been the way to signal that you want to move from engineering to senior management. Almost every senior manager I've met with an engineering background has an MBA (or a PhD). I have to assume that MBA programs teach the kind of stuff one would need to know to rise up the ranks.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#198

The 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…

I'm as skeptical of MBAs as you are but this is a bad take considering Pichai and Nadella were both actual engineers first.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#199

Earlier 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.

[deleted]

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#200
post #66

From 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.

First, Amazon isn’t even worth as much as the oil under Saudi Arabia, second, why is it better that murderer Mohammed Bin Salman controls that much wealth than Jeff Bezos?
Post reply on HN