Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

aboutamazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

751–760 of 1001 posts

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#751

Post by TaylorAlexander »

efwfwef wrote: post #457
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…

"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?

I am in robotics and it seems well poised to grow. There’s a lot of big problems left to solve at the research level but deep learning seems to be slowly knocking down big problems left and right.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#752

Post by ayewo »

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…

There was a large thread recently [0] where Paul already answered a similar question. He had left (Jan 1996)[1], long before AWS became a thing.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25693618

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25697941

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#753

Post by randomsearch »

RC_ITR wrote: post #136
tinyhouse wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get to that conclusion?

Spending too much time around other developers. In the current environment, E-commerce is a less interesting space for startup founders vs. cloud SW. This led parent commenter to assume the cloud is more important than E-commerce. This is a fallacy, of course, since E-commerce is probably the largest / most important market on the internet, it just doesn't FEEL that way b/c Amazon has an unprecedented control over ne…

AWS is 57% of Amazon's profit in 2020.

Cloud has barely begun.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#754

Post by Corrado »

afavour wrote: post #230
techlatest_net wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here is the video from 1999 [1] showing his obsession with customer which is why customer support is in the DNA of Amazon 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxwjzVW7z5o

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 don't know, I just returned a faulty smart light bulb and the process was beyond easy. Just select it from my previous orders, submit a request to return it, and choose how to send it back. Pretty easy.

As a "bonus" I was able to send it back through a Kohl's store so my wife got a 25% off coupon that she used to purchase some masks and socks (and stuff). Yes, I know, they got us to purchase more stuff, but she really likes shopping there and it was a "we're going there anyway" kind of thing. Plus I didn't have to box up the return or print a label or anything. Just show the clerk the QRCode and hand them the bare light bulb.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#755

Post by vmception »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #346
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…

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…

People still think you need the most generic name possible, they just don't understand that the reason QuantumSpiritualCrystals.com was still available is that it wasn't generic.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#756

Post by arcticbull »

hutzlibu wrote: post #215
arcticbull wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "get this big"? Governments aren't defined by a market cap, but rather by the services they provide to their citizens. Consider that a private company's only goal is to enrich its shareholders, and they have no responsibility to the people or places around them. They are only accountable to their shareholders and the government. A governments responsibility is solely to its citizens who also contr…

"If you want a small government that is able to retain order and fairness, you must also limit the size of the companies within its purview. " Why does the government needs to be big (in size?). It just needs to be strong enough and really connected to its people it represents. Then also a very small country (with a small government) can set up and enforce clear rules on multinational companies, doing buisness within…

Strength only comes in numbers.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#757

Post by arcticbull »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #645
arcticbull wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A corporation that didn't take its customers demands into account would be quite likely to fail. 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. Efficiencies of scale mean there's a natural pressure towards consolidation. The terminal state is always one blob that owns everything. Once they do, they can smash any new upstarts…

As a practical matter, without government to to enforce contracts and protect IP, most of the monopolies we've seen over the last ~120 years or so would never have existed. There would not have been much to MSFT if software piracy were a nonissue at the corporate level.

Without rules I think you'd see a lot more violence. They'll get their way domestically, in the same way large enterprise has leveraged violence the world over to get their way.

Someone has to have a monopoly on violence or you're going to have a bad time.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#758

Post by saiya-jin »

starpilot wrote: post #702
ineedasername wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, most families at Princeton are not typical working class families. The median family income of a student's family is about $180,000. Yes, if you're accepted, you really don't have to worry about the price tag because of their financial aid. But poorer families are more likely to go to lower quality schools that may not even offer AP courses and do very little test prep. Families are also unable to afford top-tier…

HN seems to think most of the world is a meritocracy. The reality is that a dumb rich kid is much more likely to get into a good university than a poor brilliant one. There is a "glass floor": https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/26/well-off-fam...

Most of the world, definitely no. When it comes to education (and healthcare etc.), most if not all Europe definitely is.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#759

Post by erikbye »

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…

A couple of Paul Davis’ submissions on HN deserve more discussion. Especially relevant to open source.

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=PaulDavisThe1st

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#760

Post by mhh__ »

WalterBright wrote: post #562
ww520 wrote: post #22

Wow. I still remember when Amazon started as an online bookstore selling books and people kind of laughed at the idea, and the time Amazon kept losing money and refused to post an earning and people got mad. Amazing long game.

Amazon's stock went up like a rocket since its IPO. Wall Street didn't laugh at Bezos.

Even then the P/E has only been ridiculous for a few of those years - the stock is valuable, but the company walks the walk too.
Post reply on HN