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Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

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Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#731

Post by melomal »

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…

I read somewhere that there was also a mention of calling it 'Relentless'. I'll do my best to remember where it was that I read this.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#732

Post by clausok »

Spinnaker_ wrote: post #358
randallsquared wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll try "Places I wouldn't want to work" for 400K, Alex.

It's funny how differently people respond to that type of stuff. I grew up playing pretty competitive sports. Being ripped apart in front of my peers was a once a week occurrence for me for most of my life. I had no interest in doing it to anyone else, but it didn't seem like a big deal, and didn't bother me much. My first job was at a company where it happened a lot. I didn't realize how toxic it was until I started…

Same for me. My high school and college hockey coaches could really let you have it. They never pulled you aside and did it in private either. My college coach had episodes that would make even Bobby Knight look like a pussycat. He once had a roll-on-the-floor grappling fight with a teammate in the locker room between periods. (Coach had a big tactical advantage: he wasn't wearing skates) When I ended up working on a trading desk the impromptu performance review broadsides -- in front of everyone -- felt very familiar.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#733

Post by billti »

laurent92 wrote: post #536
codeulike wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically have to do backflips to avoid accidentally signing up to Amazon Prime. Dark patterns deployed front and centre.

I contacted support twice in 2 years for Prime subscription I didn’t want. Each time: “Are you sure you didn— Yes I’m sure, I knew intended to avoid it, so it’s clearly not me.” Both times they correctly cancelled it.

Anecdote for what it’s worth:

I’ve been a heavy customer for many years. While I bemoan the rampant knock off products and fraudulent reviews, by shopping carefully I’ve actually never had a bad product delivered, and the very few times I’ve needed to call support, they’ve been super responsive and remedied the issue quickly. (Mostly refunds for digital content purchased incorrectly).

They may not be perfect, but that have that “Macdonalds” aspect now; you know what you’re getting and it’s consistently pretty good. Which is often more reassuring than trying something new.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#734

Post by knuthsat »

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…

Was employee #1 (not at AMZN) and saw the origin story change in front of my eyes.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#735

Post by billti »

tootie wrote: post #700
afavour wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that the customer experience of Amazon has declined dramatically in the last few years. Maybe there should be more internal viewings of that video.

I recall reaching out to the customer service more than once pre-2010 or so and they were incredibly responsive and helpful. I guess they just couldn't scale human interactions past a certain point.

They still are. I had to contact support for some purchases I didn’t recognize a couple weeks back. I was dreading the usual “support call” experience, but they were super friendly and within 5 mins I was refunded and they deactivated an old device from my account for safety.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#736

Post by closeparen »

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…

Bell Labs levels of excellence don't normally show up in projects that are just for compliance or government relations. This can't be the whole story.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#737

Post by codezero »

codezero wrote: post #699
TMWNN wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it's because people are likely to try `sex.com` in a web browser for laughs (and get surprised when it turns out to be a real site), but aren't likely to do so with `books.com` or `travel.com`.

This is somewhat second hand but I worked with someone who claimed to know the person who owned sex.com (he was trying to buy it from him at the time, and I'm trying to be deliberately un-assertive) in the mid 90s (also fair warning, this was a long time ago and I probably misremember stuff) and said he paid a ton of money in bribes to the search engines/portals back then - which was what most people assumed, but tho…

Should add that as I understood it the business model was that sex.com resold front page space to affiliates that were relevant to the search terms that led to their paid listing being listed higher for a particular keyword. That’s how they could afford to bribe/partner with portals/search engines pre-Google.

For context, squatters would often land you on some bad sites and URI syntax was unforgiving, so it just isn’t something I remember most doing. There was a general desire for simple branding on the off chance you can get it typed in or printed on a business card or in an ad, but it was not the common entry point.

Also of note: UX expectations back then didn’t trust typing into a box and seeing any result first - it really was the solid ranking of Google results that made that UX something browser vendors adopted or more cynically, that Google pushed first with partnerships then with ownership of Chrome.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#738

Post by iamacyborg »

hrktb wrote: post #730
airstrike wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Was in the industry for a stint, and the issue was not only about money going to Amazon. There was a serious fear for their usage data to be used as a window into their business (if not fear of more illegal and unethical access to their data) The case of Amazon using internal market place data to guide their own product strategy has already been made over and over, so the precedent exists.

It does for marketplace but no aws as far as I know. Still makes sense that folks would be skeptical though.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#739

Post by janlaureys »

vishnugupta wrote: post #726
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…

I can totally second this as someone who began surfing web in 1997 as a university student. Content discovery was next to non-existent. You had these directories like Y! or Lycos which more or less mirrored yellow pages. My group of friends would exchange interesting site links over e-mail, floppy disk or the good old way, write them down in a note book. Before you ask, internet surfing was only available in expensiv…

This brought back a long lost memory of when before we had internet at home. My dad took me to an internet cafe and I had printed a whole list beforehand of sites I wanted to visit. I had just guessed a bunch of random domain names based on my interests and things I thought would have a cool website. Stuff like porshe.com, titanic.com, mountainbiking.com, spaceshuttle.com.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#740

Post by iamacyborg »

milchek wrote: post #614
maverickJ wrote: post #85

Love him or hate him, Jeff Bezos has been a legendary figure in the world of business for over 25 years now. His focus on the long term has led to the tremendous success Amazon has undergone. When he started selling just books, he was laughed at by some people; but he had a why behind starting off with books. One thing is certain, Bezos has stayed consistent on his principles. His annual letters to his shareholders c…

I'm curious, what was the reason for starting with books?

Something other folks haven’t mentioned yet but it also means direct access to middle class households which are more likely to be buying books.
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