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Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

aboutamazon.com

501–510 of 1001 posts

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#501

One of the things underreported about Jeff Bezos is that he was a seed investor into Google. He tried to buy the company for $100 Million dollars, I wonder how our landscape would have been different if the merger went through. It will be interesting to see how his other projects payoff.

Jeff was an early investor in Airbnb and Uber, too. And I am sure many more companies as LP via other VC firms.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all those things the only two uniquely amazon are cloud computing and fast shipping.

Cloud Computing is uniquely an Amazon invention the way smartphones are uniquely an Apple invention. Which is to say there’s a sense in which you’re right and a sense in which this is an absurd statement..

Amazon invented cloud computing the way Ford invented the automobile.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#504

> 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…

Is it true he used doors as tables to save money ? :)

That’s still true for the most part.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perl got used for some backend tasks. Nothing related to the webserver.

Perl will never die at Amazon. So much build and deploy tooling is still glued together by Perl.

Config files! And Gurupa, right?

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#506
post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thing is, cbell doesn't make it personal (in any of the calls I've seen). It's about raising the bar. He demands quality, and he gets it. His weekly ops meetings have been imitated by other orgs, terribly, because they don't understand the point. They think ripping into people is the goal. I've got a project this year that I'm told is on his radar. I'm not terrified. I'm excited, because it means I have to deliver th…

> His weekly ops meetings have been imitated by other orgs, terribly, because they don't understand the point

couldn't agree more. Almost every day of the week now with AWS, org, service, and team level ops meetings, and most of them miss the forest for the trees

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1990s, I knew dozens of people who faced major financial problems because they immediately owed taxes on options they had just exercised, on shares that were not tradable. These were just regular developers (or in some cases, shipping crew), and they didn't have $50-500k sitting around to cover taxes like that. Maybe the rules have been changed since then? I do know that by the early 2000's there were financia…

This is the difference between RSUs, NSOs, and ISOs. ISOs don't make you pay taxes until you exercise it (a qualifying event), which means you actually took this piece of paper and converted it into tangible value. I'm not sure how they could have exercised it and not had it turn into cash (perhaps their company got acquired and they got options of another non-IPO'd company?).

Let's put it like this. The year after I exercised my one and only set of amzn stock options, I owed US$43k in taxes based on their nominal value. The stock was not publically traded at the time, and I had to find savings to cover the tax bill. I retained the piece of paper and started selling later that year after the IPO. At least one other early hire at amzn owed a lot more than this.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#508

> 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…

"this is day 1". I'm wondering for what else it is day 1, right now. I know cryptocurrencies have been booming, it's not clear exactly if they will continue to boom but the space is already so big that one has to really read a lot to catch up. What else seems like a promising field that one could go 100% into right now to bet on?

What else seems like a promising field that one could go 100% into right now to bet on?

Biotech/bioinformatics/bioengineering.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#509
post #494
post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be difficult, but how many of those were invented in the past 27 years? Bell Labs is (barely even) a shadow of its former self. If you want to read a great book about when Bell Labs was really Bell Labs: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005GSZIWG/

Jeff said > I don’t know of another company He didn't say contemporary company.

Well, maybe he is right, he might not be aware of Bell Labs or he might have forgot about it before typing that email

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#510

> 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…

Hi Paul, I :heart: JACK and spend lots with Amazon, cheers.

I wonder if you have an opinion on this bit of gossip: Is there any relationship between Jeff's departure and this FTC Tips scandal? https://komonews.com/news/local/amazon-took-away-62-million-... The only evidence I see is relating to their very similar timing of publication.

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