Email from Jeff Bezos to employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#661

Post by Retric » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 3:08 AM UTC

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #655

kevstev wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are leaving out a really important aspect of the early internet- content discovery was really hard for users. If you were looking for something about Pets until google became dominant, you were just as likely, if not more likely, to type pets.com into your browser as you were to go to a search engine. Getting the initial traffic to your site was really hard in those days, the domain was really important f…

Hmmm... That is not how I remember it. I could gopher topics by early 90's, and Infoseek, Yahoo, WebCrawler, etc. were a full text search of pages by mid 90's. I distinctly recall searching usenet across multiple servers. Even before this, when data only flowed through uucp (or Fido), search was albeit queued, readily available. Your mileage may have varied; i just want to be clear that it was not that it did not exi…

Yes, the earliest directories / search engines worked extremely well in large part because there minimal content. When there where 7 knitting websites they don’t need to worry about SEO. It was only after the users started getting hundreds of results for most searches that search engines needed to worry about filtering and prioritization.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#662

Post by atq2119 » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 3:08 AM UTC

grey-area wrote: post #290

WitCanStain wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A for-profit corporation seems like a terrible candidate for such a position.

Until you consider that everyone is born into a quasi-feudal arrangement where they owe fealty and taxes to a country culture and government they didn't choose, and the only choices of leader are limited to those willing to climb the greasy pole of politics - typically self-selecting sociopaths.

This is unfortunate, but it's also an invariant of human behaviour. The alternative is to get leaders through inheritance, which isn't any better.

So the best thing to do is to try to nudge the system in a direction where the worst tendencies are mitigated: build institutions in which non-sociopaths can thrive politically, and allow a reasonable path for outsiders to join the political process.

The US in particular is very bad at both. First past the post election systems don't provide a path for outsiders to join, which makes them seem stable until they suddenly become very volatile. And the fact that all elections in the US are personalized favours sociopathy over competence in politicians (compare the US system to one where you vote for a party instead of a person; in the former, people who are competent but lack charisma can still rise in the ranks of a party and get to power, while in the latter everything devolves to low-quality popularity contests).

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#663

Post by whalesalad » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 3:13 AM UTC

93po wrote: post #622

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…

And Amazon has great inventions like... the fire phone.

Don’t forget the dash button to replenish charmin ultra at the snap of a finger.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#664

Post by burkaman » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 3:14 AM UTC

SllX wrote: post #630

burkaman wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to convince you, I just wanted to answer your question. I don't think it's possible to convince you in the space of one comment, and if it is, I'm not the one to do it. This is a centuries-old argument with absolutely no expert consensus that seems to get more difficult the more you study the issue. If you want an easy to read modern political argument you can read Break Em' Up by Zephyr Teachout. If y…

> I'm not trying to convince you, I just wanted to answer your question. Sure it is, if there is a good convincing case, you can in the space of a single comment at least get me to seriously question and re-evaluate my priors, check out your book recommendations, and I would do the rest from there whether I ended up agreeing or disagreeing in the end. Let’s start with what is the impetus for action? Inaction is easy,…

Ok, this thread is mostly about Amazon, so let's talk about impetus for action against them.

1. Documented examples of Amazon knowingly using predatory pricing to put a competitor out of business, most famously with Diapers.com. Amazon saw them as a "#1 short term competitor", lowered their prices and took a loss so Diapers.com couldn't compete, and then raised prices again once they were able to acquire their competitor. https://twitter.com/HouseJudiciary/status/128855628101652070..., https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-29/amazon-em..., https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a..., https://academic.oup.com/antitrust/article-abstract/7/2/203/...

2. National "competition" that convinced hundreds of city and state governments to offer billions of dollars in subsidies that most economists agree are harmful to the places that offer them. You can blame this on incompetent governments if you want, but the incentive must have been pretty strong if so many of them fell for it. Maybe too strong?

3. Amazon controls its market and is also a participant, so it can promote its own products above competitors'. It can give its own stuff a bump in the search results, or give it a nice looking "Amazon's Choice" badge, or advertise it next to competition, whatever. Even the potential of abusing this power is a problem.

4. If Amazon were to ever abuse its position to harm a seller or employee, they cannot be sued: https://prospect.org/labor/biggest-abuser-forced-arbitration...

5. Amazon has enormous market share of online retail, but sees third party sellers as competition and often works against them. Many sellers simply do not have a realistic alternative, even if they don't like Amazon's terms. This is a news article with a lot of allegations that you may not immediately believe, but I think it can at least be considered an impetus for investigation: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/01/amazon-...

6. Amazon Alexa has a nearly 70% market share in the US, an absurdly high number. Alexa is not a standalone product, it is deeply integrated into the Amazon ecosystem and is used to promote other business lines.

You can also search for Amazon in here for some better researched claims: https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_dig...

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#665

Post by xkgt » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 3:14 AM UTC

Given the recent discussions in hn on how Intel's fortunes declined under Bob Swan, it is interesting to note that Andy Jassy is also from a non-technical background. Same can be said about Jeff Bezos.

Perhaps tech vs non-tech background is not that important a factor for being a successful leader of technology company. Or can we say that Amazon/AWS and Intel are different kinds of organization based on their core competencies?

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#666

Post by atq2119 » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 3:14 AM UTC

da_big_ghey wrote: post #160

unethical_ban wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's start with the premise that "representative government is the union of the people" and "profit motive is not always the best incentive for action in society", and go from there.

I dispute that premise. I'd hardly call America "unified" at the present moment; we are in such a state of disunity that many are refusing to accept election results. Pervasive as Amazon, Google, et al. may be, they are still much easier to escape than the United States government.

> Pervasive as Amazon, Google, et al. may be, they are still much easier to escape than the United States government.

Like it or not, there's always going to be some powerful entity who you cannot escape because it rules the land. The only question is what shape you want that entity to have. Accountability matters, and so democracy is generally a good place to start.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#667

Post by Ericson2314 » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 3:20 AM UTC

DickingAround wrote: post #627

burkaman wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the problem is that it's not obvious why getting super big is bad. Anti-trust is a law around abuse of customers by cornering a market. But what if they haven't abused customers? What if they treat customers really well and otherwise provide a lot of value? Why stop them from becoming that big? (It is a big company, but I also appreciate being able to order on-demand compute, or getting like a hundred million…

https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

The consumer welfare principle post-dates anti-trust.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#668

Post by awill88 » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 3:21 AM UTC

“I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring”

[imitates Bezos]

With that said, I’m out. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. If I don’t show up for a meeting, it’s because I’m paid and gonna do whatever tf I feel like for the rest of my life. Peace!

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#669

Post by pasquinelli » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 3:23 AM UTC

Aperocky wrote: post #484

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…

It's too bad that as soon as AT&T gets to commercialize the lab it ran it to the ground. Previously, the lab was protected by an agreement between the US and AT&T where AT&T has a lawful monopoly but there were only so much it can earn and X% will always go to fundamental research, and that's why the lab was so successful. That all changed when the federal government decided to break AT&T up in 1983. The for profit b…

The profit motive spurs innovation.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#670

Post by smabie » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 3:26 AM UTC

beowulfey wrote: post #331

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?

Well, one way to think about it is to consider what the effect of the growth might be. What good is a corporation doing getting that large? Who benefits from the amassing of so much wealth? Are they acting for the benefit of many people, or are they more like a black hole -- mindlessly absorbing money and growing over time? Certainly if a corporation can grow to get so large, it's hard to argue against it. It becomes…

while there are exceptions, most companies sell products and therefore mostly grow by selling products. That is, they grow because people think there is value to the product and fork over there hard earned money.

As such, it's pretty clear that Amazon is providing tremendous value to society.