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Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

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Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#631

Post by woofie11 »

burkaman wrote: post #472
woofie11 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps. Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. I'm a firm believer in continuing to innovate and improve governance. I don't think it's just an abstract philosophical argument. These things can be modeled with game theory (cite: The Dictator's Handbook). There are opinions and philosophies about evolution, vaccines, and lots of other things, but at the end of the day, those can be reso…

A discussion about vaccines can be resolved through rational discourse only if everyone agrees that diseases are bad for you. If I think disease is good, you can't convince me that vaccines are good for society, even if we agree on their effects. That's a contrived example, but this kind of disagreement is very common in discussions about government and society. If you believe that individual choice is important and…

That's not really my experience.

(1) Right now, virtually everyone agrees that individual choice is important and all humans are born with equal rights

(2) If they don't, it's often possible to come up with solutions which work for everyone. The problem is when people jump to solutions ("democracy") rather than problem-statements and first principles.

The early US is a good examples of -- actually quite exactly -- your contrived example. The South had slavery. The North didn't. There was an overarching federal government which dealt with military and foreign diplomacy. It worked for a bit over a half-century until it didn't, mostly for reasons unrelated to why it worked as long as it did (the expansion of northern culture west upset the design, as it had an upper hand in congress).

My claim is that there are systems of government which do a better job of protecting individual choice and equal rights than capitalist democracy. My claim is that if you articulated your value system completely (probably not on a web forum but over an hour-long coffee), we could probably design a better one around your values, which also did better for most people's values. My claim is also that if you've signed an NDA, you probably don't have all that much individual liberty.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#632

Post by hn2fast »

loosetypes wrote: post #615
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…

> the idea didn't grow over time I always find retrospective and hypothetical discussions of idea genesis and maturation fascinating. Amazon retail aside, I wonder if you (or anyone else) would be willing to give perspective on AWS: Was it similarly fully formed on conception? I’ve heard the (potentially stylized) stories about holiday traffic bursts, selling off-season compute to startups, etc. But assuming AWS the…

Yeah, I imagine that managing one's expectations is the most vital at the formation stages, which could be what is meant.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#633

Post by [deleted] »

gnicholas wrote: post #571
astrange wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon was paying less than $15 minimum pretty recently; they changed after Bernie started yelling at them, although I'm sure they figured it was a win-win anyway. Before that I think they had an adaption of the pay scale for higher-earning employees where part of compensation was in stock. But if you're making minimum wage you probably don't want to deal with selling shares, waiting for vesting, reporting taxes etc.…

Looks like they announced their $15 minimum wage in 2018. The Wired subhead is telling: "The company didn't act purely out of the goodness of its heart." https://www.wired.com/story/why-amazon-really-raised-minimum...

[deleted]

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#634

Post by hn2fast »

hooande wrote: post #624
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…

I was at that Startup School lecture in 2008. I still have strong memories of his body language and affect. He wasn't at all what I was expecting

In what way, if you don't mind? I always have the impression that he is practical to a fault, and consistent in his prescription for engineering above all.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#635

Post by baskire »

paxys wrote: post #554
Traster wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Antitrust aside, has there ever been a business reason to split up Amazon? I doubt anyone inside the company ever took that talk seriously.

the market caps of each department spun out is likely greater than the current market cap of Amazon today.

That is assuming the companies would all be as successful being spun out.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#636

Post by stale2002 »

arcticbull wrote: post #531
stale2002 wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without a government to enforce monopoly rules, it'll just aggregate all its competition into one big blob, and you won't have any choice. Thats not really true. There are tons of industries out there that are highly competitive, and are not aggravating into a monopoly, and those industries are highly competitive without much action from the government. Sure, there are some industries that have huge network effects…

Do you have some examples out of curiosity?

Like almost every single major market where people spend a large percentage of their money on?

Are restaurants a monopoly? Obviously not.

Cars? There are lots of options for cars

grocery stores? There are certain some big players, but the 10 corner stores, target, safeway, and whole foods within 5 blocks of where I live show that it is not a monopoly. MAYBE you could argue geographic monopoly for grocery stores, in certain limited exceptions in a few small towns, but that is not the vast majority of people.

Housing? There are 10s (or Hundreds?) of millions of people own their own home, or rent it to others. Clearly That is pretty competitive

Lets now pick some random things that I see within eyesight of me.

What about refrigerators? There are multiple refrigerator companies.

Furniture? Probably a lot of companies make furniture.

What about shoes? Clothing? There are lots of clothing companies.

And before someone says it, yes I am sure that every example that I gave has some big players in the market.

But my main point is that I simply do not consider the existence of some big players in a market, to be anywhere even close to the same thing as a monopoly or similarly non-competitive market. There is a huge gap between those two things.

The only major exception to all of these examples, is some of the new tech companies that have significant network effects in winner take all markets. Sure, maybe there is an argument that Google is getting to the point where it almost has a monopoly on ads.

But, just looking around my room, and looking at the main things that I buy in my life, which is food, shelter, transportion, and clothing, it seems pretty clear that most of these things have lots of competition, even if there are some big players in these markets.

That is unless someone is going to make a silly argument that the only markets that could be considered "competitive" are ones in which there are 10 thousands small businesses of equal size or something.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#637

Post by GavinMcG »

teh_klev wrote: post #619
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) The name "Amazon.com" was chosen in 1994 (or possibly January 1995). 2) Subsequently, the company never considered any other name 3) I'm older than you and Jeff 4) I don't have a photographic memory 5) I've been asked twice in court, on Amazon's behalf, to remember things that happened/took place/were done back then. [ EDIT: added "subsequently" for clarity ]

Ok fine, but in your original post you don't provide any dates, and you assert that: > It had a name, and that name was "Cadabra". Now you're saying something different. So it's one thing or another. Maybe just clarify the "when" of these things as you remember them. Not having a go at you.

This seems like nitpicking.

Especially because "Amazon" being chosen in '94 doesn't mean Cadabra wasn't the name it was chosen to replace. How is Paul "saying something different"?

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#638

Post by woofie11 »

gher-shyu3i wrote: post #476
burkaman wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A discussion about vaccines can be resolved through rational discourse only if everyone agrees that diseases are bad for you. If I think disease is good, you can't convince me that vaccines are good for society, even if we agree on their effects. That's a contrived example, but this kind of disagreement is very common in discussions about government and society. If you believe that individual choice is important and…

The solution is to look at systems that have been proven to work. I brought up the Islamic Golden Age in this thread. It doesn't have the nonsense of putting a hard cap on anyone's wealth. It actually encourages people to work and gather wealth morally, and spend it correctly. The best of both worlds so to speak.

... and it comes with a built in wealth tax (zakat), which is just about the best economic idea EVER. And it prevents loans with interest. And there are versions which embody economic free trade (the whole debate about political borderds). And...

... it's almost as if Mohammed was an economist who foresaw all the economic problems of the 21st century, and built protections around them.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#639

Post by pwinnski »

denysvitali wrote: post #509
vvanpo wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Or, and hear me out here, he might have lied.

It's funny how many people on this page are having trouble acknowledging that this is a prevaricating puff piece. He wants to tell a story of his success, and leave in a way that doesn't tank the stock. So he lies a bit about the origin of the company, lies a bit more about their accomplishments, and so on.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#640

Post by somethoughts »

safog wrote: post #626
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…

I think it'll be more like Jassy saying: Dave (Clark), make sure retail top-line grows x%, profitability grows y% and keep an eye on Walmart.

I think the challenge is when it comes down to resource allocation between different business units in radically different industries. Like how does someone who is not Jeff Bezos go about deciding whether Amazon should use its free cashflow to make big bold bets such as acquiring LionsGate for Prime Video content, expanding Amazon fulfillment centers globally, acquiring Humana for a push into Amazon health insurance or buying a chip fab to make Graviton chips. Perhaps the fact that Andy Jassy actually comes more from a business background means he'll do well.
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