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Amazon's First Job Listing

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Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#2

Post by DeathArrow »

>You must have experience designing and building large and complex (yet maintainable) systems, and you should be able to do so in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible.

I wonder if working nights and weekends was a bonus? What's wrong with being competent and putting out a reasonable amount of work and not being overworked and under pressure?

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#5

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

DeathArrow wrote: post #2

>You must have experience designing and building large and complex (yet maintainable) systems, and you should be able to do so in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible. I wonder if working nights and weekends was a bonus? What's wrong with being competent and putting out a reasonable amount of work and not being overworked and under pressure?

If you listen to the war stories, a large number of other successful tech companies or products like Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, the original iPhone, the original Blackberry, the post-iPhone Android, etc. would nove have been successes if everyone had strictly done their 9-5, Mo-Fr.

Success often means racing to get to market with significant lead over your competitors who are also working on solving the same problems you are and are most likely not sticking to the 9-5, mo-fr schedule either. Which is why probably not many market successes came out of Europe where everyone works 40h tops, unless it's their own company/passion project.

I was blown away by how many people in the original iPhone team claimed lost their marriages due to spending so much time grinding to iron out all the last minute issues and get the phone out the door on time. Jensen Huang said in the beginning their team was iterating to ship a new GPU design every 6 months with a tiny team. I bet everything I own they were not doing only 40h weeks back then.

I'm not endorsing this practice, which is why I don't work in start-ups, but succes in this racket for early stage start-ups was often correlated with burning the midnight oil and it seems like a lot of people were willing to make the sacrifice for enough equity in their mission to "change the world" and "make it".

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#7

Post by WJW »

DeathArrow wrote: post #2

>You must have experience designing and building large and complex (yet maintainable) systems, and you should be able to do so in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible. I wonder if working nights and weekends was a bonus? What's wrong with being competent and putting out a reasonable amount of work and not being overworked and under pressure?

There's nothing wrong with that, go get a job at any bigco and enjoy decent income at low variability.

OTOH if you put in the same amount of effort as most other people, you'll get the same results as most other people. That was not enough for highly ambitious people like Bezos, so he sought to build a team of other highly ambitious people to take a big bet with.

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#9

Post by ayewo »

gyzmau wrote: post #4
elaus wrote: post #3

Almost 30 years ago, that's insane to think about. > Your compensation will include meaningful equity ownership. I wonder to what that turned out today...

I wonder who got hired.

You are in luck! Amazon employee #2 hangs out on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26006656

EDIT: There’s also an interview of Amazon employee #1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12437322

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#10

Post by gyzmau »

ayewo wrote: post #9
gyzmau wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder who got hired.

You are in luck! Amazon employee #2 hangs out on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26006656 EDIT: There’s also an interview of Amazon employee #1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12437322

Wow, thanks. It's why I love HN.
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