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Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

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Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#341

Post by GizmoSwan »

mrep wrote: post #315
GizmoSwan wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean the boat https://themarketherald.com.au/magazine/the-pursuit-of-comfo...

Yeah, you already linked to that article which mentions "A recent Twitter post" but of course has no link because it is probably the aforementioned deleted one because that website is probably complete BS. It does say january 2 but again, the twitter rumor was 1.5 years ago. Here is an article refuting that twitter rumor back in august of 2019: https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-rumors-own-400-mi...

Project Redwood.. LOL

Maybe he is leasing it. Businessinsider does not have access to his personal account and neither does his company.

They couldn't even get Trump's tax returns. They have no clue.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#342

Post by treis »

RC_ITR wrote: post #136
tinyhouse wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get to that conclusion?

Spending too much time around other developers. In the current environment, E-commerce is a less interesting space for startup founders vs. cloud SW. This led parent commenter to assume the cloud is more important than E-commerce. This is a fallacy, of course, since E-commerce is probably the largest / most important market on the internet, it just doesn't FEEL that way b/c Amazon has an unprecedented control over ne…

AWS has 40 billion in revenue, 12 billion in profit and is growing 30% YoY. It's got great profit margins, huge lock in, and is a natural monopoly. Not sure how much it would be worth on the open market, but wouldn't surprise me that it's 50%+ of Amazon's market cap.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#343

Post by xtracto »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #295
warent wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity has it ever seemed to you that Amazon's success changed Jeff? Or has he always been largely the same person you knew from the start?

I haven't communicated with Jeff for more than 20 years. His public persona seems largely consonant with the person I knew 27 years ago.

That's kind of sad. I feel somewhat related to this: I was 1st developer of a startup (outside of the US) and at that time I was super close to the CEO. After leaving we kind of grew appart which is a bit sad because I consider him a really good person, and I still own stock in the startup. Of course, absolutely nothing compared to Amazon (hopefully at some point it will... we always said that we wanted to be the Amazon of Financial services)

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#345

Post by naqeeb »

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…

Thank you for the candidness! I've found it interesting how the story of a startup's early days morph into legends / fables.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#346

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

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…

Something that always stuck with me is I remember reading in a book about the internet long ago about how innovative the name Amazon.com was and how it was the future of internet business. It said it needs to be more memorable. You aren’t going to buy your books on Books.com you are going to use Amazon. Turned out to be very right. And this was in the pets.com era. Everyone thought you needed the most generic name possible and that if you got something like books.com or travel.com you had cornered the market on it.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#347

Post by fortran77 »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #317
desireco42 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Jeff Wilke felt a little bit left out?

Anyone that high up in Amazon is going to be laughing all the way to the bank regardless.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cry_all_the_way_to_the_bank

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#348

Post by gher-shyu3i »

burkaman wrote: post #312
SllX wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Corporations should never be allowed to get this large. Make your case instead of dropping your groupthink everywhere. Why? And: What is the maximum size a corporation should be allowed to grow? Who gives that permission now?

Because money is power, corporations are not democratic, and putting so much power in the hands of one person or a handful of people is dangerous to society. I would also refer you to the entire history of US antitrust law, which will be hard for anyone to summarize in a comment. The whole field of competition law is a question of how to balance the rights of those running a business with the rights of those affected…

> corporations are not democratic, and putting so much power in the hands of one person or a handful of people is dangerous to society.

Citation needed. Democracy is not a sufficient nor even necessary requirement for prosperity or "good" in general.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#349

Post by treis »

paxys wrote: post #210
randomsearch wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the future of Amazon as ~ 100% AWS. Do you think this will change that outcome?

I'd say AWS + first-party products and services (Prime Video, Echo, Kindle, Grocery delivery). I can definitely see their pure retail business take more and more of a back seat as time goes on.

Could even see it breaking up at some point. Retail, Consumer Tech, and AWS. There's no real tie between AWS and the rest of Amazon at this point. In fact, it might be a liability as competitors of Amazon retail & Consumer tech don't want to use AWS.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#350

Post by ufmace »

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…

I don't think the "responsibility" part is all that important. There are many points about it that can be argued, but I think the more important part is means.

Private companies' only effective means to do anything are to produce a product that people freely choose to buy and attract people to work for them (absent a few rare exceptions).

Governments have effectively unlimited means to compel people. They can spy on anyone, fine them, throw them in jail, kill them, all for as much and as long as they feel like.

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