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

Amazon's First Job Listing

groups.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 60 posts

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#31

Post by ukoki »

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?

I don't think the ad is asking for people who are willing to work three times longer hours, it's asking for people who can produce three times the output in the same hours.

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#32

Post by ceejayoz »

rjh29 wrote: post #24
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?

The people replying to this ad are now multi-millionaires/billionaires. If you want to work a reasonable amount of work you can do it at a normal company, and get a reasonable amount of money in return.

> The people replying to this ad are now multi-millionaires/billionaires.

Quite a few who answered ads just like it worked years below market rate only to see their theoretical equity dissolve, though.

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#33

Post by _visgean »

juujian wrote: post #11

I feel like I'm missing something. Why would you ever respond to that listing? No meaningful description of the company, no outstanding benefits, just the promise of being overworked?

my guess is that 1994 was very different and maybe ecommerce sounded way more exciting

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#34

Post by baxtr »

cafebabbe wrote: post #28
Dwolb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup you’re missing something. In addition to attracting qualified candidates, good job listings repel those who don’t agree with them. No one wants to sift through hundreds of applications. Here’s the main mission filter: “to help pioneer commerce on the Internet.” technical filter: “you should be able to do so in about one-third the time” and culture filter: “Expect talented, motivated, intense, and interesting co-w…

Now let's have look at similarly-worded ads for the 2000s dotcoms

On the other hand: if no-one ever tried something new, all would be the same always.

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#35

Post by intelVISA »

thumbuddy wrote: post #17
mrgill wrote: post #6

Fascinating that he wanted an expert C developer with a PHD who'd build stuff in one third of the time it takes others.

Hiring C developers back in the day was smart. It meant someone knew computers as much as they knew software.

Hiring C/C++/Rust devs and retraining (stupefying) them where necessary is prob a lifehack to get top talent without having to sift through 1000s of Js resumes.

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#36

Post by intelVISA »

ukoki wrote: post #31
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?

I don't think the ad is asking for people who are willing to work three times longer hours, it's asking for people who can produce three times the output in the same hours.

Exactly, output is not strictly a return from time spent; plenty of organizational factors as well as individual factors like skill and experience.

A 3x SWE can't produce 3x if they are in 6hrs of meetings a day. Likewise a 1x SWE can't produce 10x even working 12hour days.

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#37

Post by klik99 »

Dwolb wrote: post #19
juujian wrote: post #11

I feel like I'm missing something. Why would you ever respond to that listing? No meaningful description of the company, no outstanding benefits, just the promise of being overworked?

Yup you’re missing something. In addition to attracting qualified candidates, good job listings repel those who don’t agree with them. No one wants to sift through hundreds of applications. Here’s the main mission filter: “to help pioneer commerce on the Internet.” technical filter: “you should be able to do so in about one-third the time” and culture filter: “Expect talented, motivated, intense, and interesting co-w…

“to help pioneer commerce on the Internet.” - In 1994, this would have intrigued me, in 2004 I would view with skepticism, in 2014 I would laugh

“you should be able to do so in about one-third the time” - No matter the era, this kind of language is a big red flag to me - More often than not people who say this have no idea what they're talking about, the kind of people who call themselves "idea men"

“Expect talented, motivated, intense, and interesting co-workers.” - meaningless phrase

I don't know how recruiting messages were in 1994, but unless this is the Velvet Underground of influential recruiting messages (not many people got this email, but those who did started startups of their own) this reads like a generic recruiting email. Given the state of things in 1994 the "pioneer commerce on the Internet" would be interesting enough to learn more though.

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#38

Post by rjh29 »

bhickey wrote: post #26
rjh29 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people replying to this ad are now multi-millionaires/billionaires. If you want to work a reasonable amount of work you can do it at a normal company, and get a reasonable amount of money in return.

This is just survivor bias.

We all know what survivor bias is. The risk/reward proposition is still attractive to some.

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#39

Post by rjh29 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #32
rjh29 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people replying to this ad are now multi-millionaires/billionaires. If you want to work a reasonable amount of work you can do it at a normal company, and get a reasonable amount of money in return.

> The people replying to this ad are now multi-millionaires/billionaires. Quite a few who answered ads just like it worked years below market rate only to see their theoretical equity dissolve, though.

Yeah but we're not talking about those ads, I'm using this ad as an example of why some people might be interested in such a job posting. They knew the risks.

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#40

Post by pixelmonkey »

juujian wrote: post #11

I feel like I'm missing something. Why would you ever respond to that listing? No meaningful description of the company, no outstanding benefits, just the promise of being overworked?

It was 1994. There weren't that many jobs for UNIX-oriented C/C++ developers, working on large scale problems for the internet.

In 1994, MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 were the most popular desktop operating systems. Most internet access was dial-up. Windows 95 was yet to be released. Steve Jobs was working on NeXT and wouldn't return to Apple for another 3 years. The GNOME project didn't even start until 1997, which is 3 years later. Python 2.0 wouldn't be released for 6 years, in 2000. Heck, Netscape Navigator's first version wasn't even out yet (not for a few months) -- there were no distinctly popular browsers other than, perhaps, Mosaic, released only a year earlier.

No one was building web apps yet; pg started Viaweb in 1995, one year later. Internet commerce was not at all an obvious idea. Very few people were working on "internet companies", and very few people yet were working primarily on UNIX (outside of open source hobbyists). This job posting was appealing to UNIX enthusiasts and academic computer scientists who were hoping to turn their hobbies into a lucrative day job, in a world where 90%+ of "computer jobs" were rudimentary IT schlep.

The entire culture you describe in your comment -- of companies needing to distinguish themselves via strong benefits and mission alignment -- wouldn't grow up for a few years. This wasn't a job posting among a sea of web startup job postings; this was, instead, one of the earliest web startup job postings in a sea of enterprise IT management and DOS/Windows desktop software development postings.

The "competition" for these developers was startup versions of companies like Redhat and Netscape (maybe), of which there were only a handful of comparables. A good documentary you can watch to put yourself more into the mindset of this period of developer history is "Revolution OS" (2001): https://watch.amazon.com/detail?gti=amzn1.dv.gti.cf101954-e0... (Amazon Prime Video) -or- https://imdb.com/title/tt0308808/ (IMDB)

Post reply on HN