Email from Jeff Bezos to employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#761

Post by hnlmorg » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 8:04 AM UTC

codezero wrote: post #737

codezero wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’…

Pre-2000 porn was a wild ride. You were never more that 1 click away from crashing your computer under the weight of a hundred pop ups!

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#762

Post by bryanrasmussen » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 8:06 AM UTC

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…

I'm pretty sure Books.com is just as memorable as Amazon.com, what matters is the execution.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#763

Post by codeulike » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 8:07 AM UTC

billti wrote: post #733

laurent92 wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

I used to trust them, in the last few years the dark patterns have been deployed with gradually increasing intensity and it leaves a bad taste

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#764

Post by vixen99 » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 8:08 AM UTC

solipsism wrote: post #721

paxys wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He went to Princeton because he was smart, not because his family was rich. It isn't a school of billionaires or something. The majority of Ivy League enrollment is regular kids from working class families. They all have the best need-based scholarship programs in the country. His dad was a Cuban immigrant who worked as an engineer at Exxon.

> The majority of Ivy League enrollment is regular kids from working class families HN does so much moderation, with dang slapping people for being nasty. Why is obvious, egregious misinformation like this not subject to moderation?

No, the smart thing to do is to let readers do the job with comments that show up such nonsensical statements. This is how we get to the truth, not by authoritarian censorship (as against the application of reasonable rules for a site like HN).

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#765

Post by codeulike » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 8:10 AM UTC

ROARosen wrote: post #601

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.

The "customer" is at the heart of everything, not the ex -customer (or wanna-be ex, according to Amazon).

I'm still a customer, I just don't want to buy their bundle-of-services-I-dont-need. The tricks they pull with tiny hard to find 'continue without signing up to Prime' links are disgusting

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#766

Post by nomercy400 » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 8:10 AM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #376

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…

Upvoted; and thanks for sharing these details. They might be obvious for you, but I had only a limited knowledge of all that innovation happening at Bell Labs.

Lucent Technologies once made a video, with many of Bell Labs' inventions, captured in a song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFfdnFOiXUU

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#767

Post by rexreed » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 8:12 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #339

obenn wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it ever named “relentless” at some point? I’ve heard that was the original name, relentless.com still redirects to Amazon.com.

That does sound vaguely familiar. Jeff did have a handful of other "name candidates" sitting around, and this seems like one in keeping with the sort of thing he was thinking about. I don't specifically remember it though.

By any chance do you remember virtumall.com?

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#768

Post by swiftcoder » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 8:13 AM UTC

sharkweek wrote: post #724

treis wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In retrospect the idea of selling everything online was the first great idea. Even if it was a bit of rehash of Sears I think they were the only one that had that vision. Second great idea was free 2 day shipping with Prime. Great for their cash flow and customer retention. Third great idea was AWS. Still TBD are advertising and the marketplace. They make a lot of money but at the long term risk of customer satisfact…

For fun... what are the major “bad” plays they’ve made? The phone is probably the first that comes to mind. That big MMO they tried to release was pretty bad. I’m gonna try and predict the future and suggest their LotR original series will be bad.

Eh? The MMO seems to be doing ok in pre-release. It was the MOBA that bombed hard.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#769

Post by mhh__ » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 8:14 AM UTC

matsemann wrote: post #173

d_silin wrote: post #48

1.3 million employees, wow!

> Today, we employ 1.3 million talented, dedicated people All those creating the value. Many of them having poor working conditions and living off social welfare programs. One guy at the top skimming everything. Is he really worth all those billions? Could he survive on a little less and share with those doing the work? Or is his contribution really more than all those million combined..?

Although I know what you mean, in Amazon's case the people making the "value" are paid very well. Its blunt but true, Amazon prints money from AWS not selling lightbulbs.

Similarly, the idea that if you put 1.3 Million warehouse staff in a big room Amazon will come out the other side is really really stupid.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#770

Post by PeterStuer » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 8:15 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #252

lotsofpulp wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody should ever have a $1B worth. How does this work? Forced sale of assets? Who determines the market price of the assets, if they’re not highly liquid?

When you get issued stock options at a company, you immediately become liable for taxes on them, since they are treated as income. This is true even if there is no public market for the shares at that time (something that caused headaches for many early dotcom stock option grantees). It's is an obvious precedent for taxing somebody who has "received" wealth via the route that Bezos has done.

Depends on the country/jurisdiction. In some places it is upon issue, in some places it is upon exercise or a mix thereof.

Sadly over here in Belgium a non trivial tax (18%, but it varies according to some parameters such as runlenght) is due upon issue, turning stock options into a potential substantial risk.