Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

aboutamazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 1001 posts

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#301

Post by somethoughts »

8ytecoder wrote: post #223
paxys wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I have heard that Amazon as a company does delegation very effectively. Individual departments have complete autonomy over their own business decisions, and this applies on the engineering side as well. I do agree that the shitstorm over warehouse workers, automation, unionization etc. is only going to get a lot worse over the next few years, and Jassy may even find handling that becoming his primary job.

Jeff is a man of contradictions. I’ve heard him micromanage to the level that individual AWS launch pages were reviewed and approved by him; so were the choice of databases (oracle vs MySQL) and SOA. At the same time, he gives extreme leeway and time for product teams to prove their mettle. The general assumption is you have 7 years from start to profitability. It’s a long time by tech industry standards. (Just look…

Yes - that's part of magic - as the founder you have the latitude to go to any level of the corporate stack and critique things. Jeff could probably go to any Amazon distribution center on any random day and start critiquing at how things were being packed inefficiently in boxes and people would fix things in the next hour. It'll be interesting to see if Andy Jassy can metaphorically do similar things.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#302

Post by obenn »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #231

> This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. It had a name, and that name was "Cadabra". It didn't become Amazon until Jeff watched a documentary about the Amazon River. His lawyer had already turned up his nose at "Cadabra", and Jeff was looking for something else. It's also worth noting that the idea didn't grow over time - Jeff always intended to build something like "Sears…

Was it ever named “relentless” at some point? I’ve heard that was the original name, relentless.com still redirects to Amazon.com.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#303

Post by pjfin123 »

SEJeff wrote: post #280
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #231

> This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. It had a name, and that name was "Cadabra". It didn't become Amazon until Jeff watched a documentary about the Amazon River. His lawyer had already turned up his nose at "Cadabra", and Jeff was looking for something else. It's also worth noting that the idea didn't grow over time - Jeff always intended to build something like "Sears…

Thanks for the candid comment :) Also, hello mr famous internet person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davis_(programmer)

Oh wow JACK and Ardour are awesome, didn't know about the Amazon connection

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#304

Post by randallsquared »

temp0826 wrote: post #269
libria wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'll try "Places I wouldn't want to work" for 400K, Alex.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#305

Post by GizmoSwan »

mrep wrote: post #293
GizmoSwan wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have an up to date source on bezos owning the flying fox as that one is based on a tweet that was deleted and everything I've read since says that was false including a quick google search. Also, I'm interested in how you think Amazon is too big to fail because I most certainly do not think they are.

If you mean the boat

https://themarketherald.com.au/magazine/the-pursuit-of-comfo...

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#306

Post by somethoughts »

kevan wrote: post #232
somethoughts wrote: post #114

It will be interesting to watch how Andy Jassy as head of AWS (dealing with building out data centers, SW partnerships, API uptime, negotiating with Intel, designing Graviton CPUs, etc.) will be able to transition to such things as Prime Video content licensing discussions and goal setting for Whole Foods and the nuances of warehouse distribution labor disputes. As a founder of Amazon - having built Amazon from nothi…

If I remember right from The Everything Store Amazon hasn't had a COO title since a rough experience with Galli in 99-00.

That's an interesting bit of history I forgot about.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#308

Post by crocodiletears »

sjg007 wrote: post #262
crocodiletears wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Imo, it's a good way to keep people who're functionally minor deities in terms of absolute power busy and somewhat productive for a long time.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#309

Post by GizmoSwan »

mrep wrote: post #293
GizmoSwan wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have an up to date source on bezos owning the flying fox as that one is based on a tweet that was deleted and everything I've read since says that was false including a quick google search. Also, I'm interested in how you think Amazon is too big to fail because I most certainly do not think they are.

Amazon is buying all warehouses and displacing regular stores. If it fails people will have problems buying things that they use to buy from local stores.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#310

Post by TheCoelacanth »

notJim wrote: post #152
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?

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 greate…

> Given that multi-national corporations exist, it seems obvious that companies will have greater wealth than nations.

That doesn't follow because every non-totalitarian country has multiple corporations operating in it, in most countries a much larger number than the maximum number of countries a corporation could possibly operate in.

Post reply on HN