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Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

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Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#261

Post by Quinner »

arcticbull wrote: post #148
personjerry wrote: post #111

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…

A corporation that didn't take its customers demands into account would be quite likely to fail. There are many governments that continue to exist by enriching and providing for a small segment of society, and uses force to suppress the demands of the rest of society. A corporation generally doesn't shoot dissatisfied customers.

Even in relatively liberal democracies, governments are clearly more beholden to forces other than citizens and their vote. There's a reason why US governments did little to respond to massive BLM protests this summer, as government viewed its responsibility as more aligned to police unions than citizens.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#262

Post by sjg007 »

crocodiletears wrote: post #42
mc32 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he’ll take a cue from Bill Gates and get involved in philanthropy. Alternatively he might get more involved in Blue Origin?

Hopefully the latter. We've got an excess of billionaires trying to mould society with their vast sums of wealth. Blue Origin would be a great use of his time. Massive long-term benefit to humanity, few implications on global governance or the lives of most individuals. Or his own private charter city, so people have to consent to live in his world. Or he could blow it all on yachts, hookers and blow.

I don't understand why space rockets and lunar lander is important except if they help us clean our planet. It's a long bet on a long time horizon. But maybe it's a good way to spend government money.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#263

Post by ciupicri »

techlatest_net wrote: post #213
ignoramous wrote: post #70

> This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. Jeff's pitch at the time (1997); so on point, so precise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM > The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, “What’s the internet?” Blessedly, I haven’t had to explain that in a long while. Here's Jeff explaining the Internet (at a TED talk): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMKNUy…

And here is the video from 1999 [1] showing his obsession with customer which is why customer support is in the DNA of Amazon 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxwjzVW7z5o

Amazon's customer support is mediocre at best. I tried to buy something from them and the card transaction failed because I had some protections in place. Instead of them trying again, they asked for all kinds of documents to prove the ownership. I sent them a receipt from a local store, but it wasn't good enough for them. I guess they don't want my money :-)

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#264

Post by Dirlewanger »

personjerry wrote: post #111
munificent wrote: post #106

Earlier 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?

Governments exist as a collective to the public to do what one individual cannot do on their own.

Corporations exist to enrich shareholders and nothing more.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#265

Post by mr_toad »

tomcam wrote: post #228
maverickJ wrote: post #85

Love him or hate him, Jeff Bezos has been a legendary figure in the world of business for over 25 years now. His focus on the long term has led to the tremendous success Amazon has undergone. When he started selling just books, he was laughed at by some people; but he had a why behind starting off with books. One thing is certain, Bezos has stayed consistent on his principles. His annual letters to his shareholders c…

I was there as a developer and a consumer. I don’t remember anyone laughing at him for selling books. It was an obvious play to most of us.

Back before the .com crash Amazon was one of the few .coms with an actual business plan.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#266

Post by GizmoSwan »

Tepix wrote: post #233
GizmoSwan wrote: post #137

He has bought a new 0.5 billion dollar boat this year. https://themarketherald.com.au/magazine/the-pursuit-of-comfo... Bill gates is still renting. What do you think he was going to do with all that cash. After few years he will review his life after vacationing becomes dull for the workhorse.

Too bad it's not a sailing yacht. He shares the vision of Gerard O'Neill. Making it reality will require large amounts of money.

It is really trendy for billionaires to be interested in space right now. I think they want to make money there. They believe that too big to fail on earth means that they should go where nobody has made any money.

O'Neill was product of academia, a physicist and not a head of corporation.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#267

Post by Aperocky »

hathawsh wrote: post #159
ksec wrote: 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…

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, o…

retail IS the economy.

Sure, you can pump money into building fighter jets and aircraft carriers, but those don't last long, nor are they helpful for economy in the long term.

In the long term, the only backbone of the economy is making and selling things to people that they want, a.k.a retail.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#268

Post by Traster »

paxys wrote: post #52

It was public knowledge that Bezos stopped running Amazon day-to-day a while ago. It was headed by the two execs under him (Andy Jassy for AWS and Jeff Wilke for retail). Jassy even had the CEO (of AWS) title. With Wilke announcing his retirement a few months ago, Jassy was the clear frontrunner to take over from Bezos. In hindsight I guess Wilke retired because Jassy was picked over him. The timing of the announceme…

That does tell us something about the corporate structure though - whilst a lot of people think AWS would be better off being spun out, there's no way you hire the head of AWS as CEO of Amazon if you think that's the direction forward.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#269

Post by temp0826 »

libria wrote: post #67
paxys wrote: post #52

It was public knowledge that Bezos stopped running Amazon day-to-day a while ago. It was headed by the two execs under him (Andy Jassy for AWS and Jeff Wilke for retail). Jassy even had the CEO (of AWS) title. With Wilke announcing his retirement a few months ago, Jassy was the clear frontrunner to take over from Bezos. In hindsight I guess Wilke retired because Jassy was picked over him. The timing of the announceme…

Yes, a bit of shakeup at the top. Jassy now CEO, Dave Clark stepping into Jeff Wilke's role as head of retail. I assume Charlie Bell will step up as head of AWS.

Listening to cbell rip someone apart in the weekly ops meeting while watching the #wtf peanut gallery whilst sipping my coffee are probably my fondest memories of working at AWS

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#270

Post by ilaksh »

hathawsh wrote: post #159
ksec wrote: 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…

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, o…

What should kill Amazon is public protocols and fast cryptocurrency transactions.
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