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Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

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Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#461

Post by newbie578 »

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…

Oh wow, so awesome to see someone like this. You are basically part of history. I just want to ask two things if it is alright.

1) Any cool anecdotes from Amazon that you can tell?

2) Any advice you have for young entrepreneurs looking to uproar an industry?

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#462

Post by sokoloff »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #373
adventured wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations are not legally obligated to put profit ahead of everything else. That's a bad myth that refuses to die. There is absolutely no substance to that claim. There is no legal obligation to maximize shareholder value.

I don't know of anyone claiming it's a legal obligation. It's a natural obligation, and it's worse. The shareholders want profit maximised, and with that end, decide upon the board of directors, who decide upon the CEO. If the CEO does not maximise profits, the CEO will not remain the CEO. Therefore, the CEOs of (publicly-traded) companies are obliged to maximise profits – those who do not feel such an obligation are…

Literally two posts above yours, the one your parent is replying to, are the words “legally obligated to put profit ahead of anything else.”

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#463

Post by mullingitover »

splistud wrote: post #327
mullingitover wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bonus question: Why should governments be allowed to get that big? I would argue that most of our current problems are happening because our governments are small, ineffective, and corrupt. I would prefer big, effective, smart, and transparent governments that can take decisive action any day of the week. I'd go so far as to abolish state governments entirely and split their powers between counties and the federal…

They were made for a time when we were not so poorly educated that we trusted leadership to people so far away, with so little in common with ourselves and our way of lives. I tell you what, though. You design an effective, smart and transparent government and I'll never say a word about how big you would like it to be.

> They were made for a time when we were not so poorly educated that we trusted leadership to people so far away,

How do we define 'far away'? I can have a face to face conversation with someone at the opposite end of the country with near-zero effort.

> with so little in common with ourselves and our way of lives.

I strongly disagree with this. Partisan politics try to paint people from different regions of the US as being wildly different, and I flatly reject this notion. I've lived in urban, rural, and in areas separated by thousands of miles. Americans are far more alike than different. There are the same (minor) cultural differences within the average state as between states on opposite ends of the country.

> I tell you what, though. You design an effective, smart and transparent government and I'll never say a word about how big you would like it to be.

I don't have all the answers, but I would start by outlawing the bribery of public officials via campaign donations, and I'd put the legislative process in version control.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#464

Post by bscanlan »

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 miss #wtf. I hope it lives on in Slack.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#465

Post by Alupis »

airstrike wrote: post #360
hrktb wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mental image is that people want to spin off AWS for society’s benefits because Amazon grew too big and abuses the integration. Amazon squarely resisting this idea seems uncontroversal.

People argue companies like Walmart don't want to pay their rival Amazon for cloud hosting, but the truth is if AWS is the best cloud provider, it makes business sense to go with them

At the scale Walmart operates - 25th largest GDP in the world if considered as a nation[1], supporting over 2.2 Million employees[2], in over 27 countries[3] - it's simply more cost effective to do your tech in-house.

Amazon is huge... but Walmart is truly massive... over double Amazon's size in just about every metric. They clearly have the resources to handle things on their own.

[1] https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=0340721260780250...

[2] https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/company-facts#:~:text....

[3] https://corporate.walmart.com/askwalmart/in-which-countries-....

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#466

Post by ourcat »

oblio wrote: post #390
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 po…

It depends. facebook.com or messenger.com aren't super memorable. Microsoft also made it work by adding something else next to the name. Microsoft Excel. Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft Access.

Also Microsoft's "Internet Explorer" at the time became so popular due to the word 'Internet' compared to a 'Netscape'. So many non-technical people just thought that was the 'way in' when they bought their first PC.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#468

Post by read_if_gay_ »

xibalba wrote: post #458
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…

> It had a name, and that name was "Cadabra". Lol, so your take is that you have a better handle on the history of Amazon than its founder? He is likely referring to a point in time when Amazon was just an idea.

The second employee is probably actually more trustworthy than PR signed by the founder.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#469

Post by lr1970 »

rajansaini wrote: post #419
wheybags wrote: post #368

> I don’t know of another company with an invention track record as good as Amazon’s Come on man, that's just bs. From wikipedia: > Researchers working at Bell Labs are credited with the development of radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the photovoltaic cell, the charge-coupled device (CCD), information theory, the Unix operating system, and the programming languages B, C, C++, S, SNOBOL, AWK, AMPL, and othe…

Didn't Yann LeCun do important work on CNNs there as well?

Yes, this was after ma Bell was broken up and Yann ended up in the AT&T Research. And then AT&T management closed the whole project. Glory days of Bell Labs are all in the distant past, unfortunately.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#470

Post by oarsinsync »

colonwqbang wrote: post #402
godelski wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my country it is illegal not to subscribe to the state TV channel. Just curious: 1) What country 2) Do you have to pay?

1) I'd rather not say, although you can probably figure out from my post history if you really want to know 2) Yes

Arguably, this could be the UK to some degree, given that if you have a TV, you're expected to pay for a "TV license", the funds of which go entirely to the state run broadcaster.
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