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Amazon's First Job Listing

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Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#41

Post by muskmusk »

klik99 wrote: post #37
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…

“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,…

As the comment above you pointed out, then this job wasn't for you.

If you made a job add for e.g. the job of an Olympic level swimmer most people would consider the add bonkers, not those who are actually olympic level swimmers.

Believe it or not there is in fact people who can maintain systems in 1/3 of the time most competent people think possible.

There is also people who love the thrill of going as fast as possible and who would prefer this over a more leisurely pace.

Of course the amount of people this applies to is probably less than 1%. But those people are going to really like the job.

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#42

Post by _ea1k »

hardware2win wrote: post #25
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…

Ehh, I think you are making this up and your theory is sound just because Amaz turned out big I see stuff like this weekly "blablabla need skilled engineers for my unique brilliant idea company blabla" Nothing is exciting about this

I feel like a lot of those look like imitations of the concept. I've certainly seen some wording like that which was transparently not relevant to the job.

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#43

Post by _ea1k »

klik99 wrote: post #37
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…

“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,…

IDK, if someone advertised an AI job like this in 2023, I bet it'd pique some people's interest.

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#44

Post by fer »

intelVISA wrote: post #35
thumbuddy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That pro-tip has been used on me, I haven't touched them in ages, leaving my C/C++ skills rusty (pun intended).

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#45

Post by wittycardio »

hardware2win wrote: post #25
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…

Ehh, I think you are making this up and your theory is sound just because Amaz turned out big I see stuff like this weekly "blablabla need skilled engineers for my unique brilliant idea company blabla" Nothing is exciting about this

[dead]

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#46

Post by muskmusk »

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.

If you play in the shark pool you might get bitten. It might also be incredibly profitable if you know how to navigate it.

If you can't tell whether the company you work for is going somewhere or just using you for cheap labor then that says as much about you as it does about the company. Employment is a two way street.

If you don't want risk, then don't choose risk. But there is nothing inherently wrong with risk.

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#47

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #5
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…

Maybe then. Right now you can work 30 hours, party and then get bought by another VC operated company.

This is what was missing when Apple and Amazon started and for the last decade this dirty VC business has stifled innovation and made people look only for an exit. That is why the biggest companies in the VC era has been companies like Uber and AirBnb instead of Apple and Amazon.

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#48

Post by kodah »

klik99 wrote: post #37
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…

“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,…

This job is aimed at people who make infrastructure software. I work primarily as an infrastructure SWE and although the community of people who work on such products is bigger than in 1994 it's still pretty niche. To a lot of folks the knowledge you need to have is viewed as esoteric.

The web has spawned off a number of jobs that are abstracted above the system level that require very little deep integration with the system(s). DevOps, web backend devs, web frontend devs, designers, etc all live a layer or two of abstraction above building OS tooling and services that serve as significant a purpose as the webserver. That's to say, he knows who he's talking to.

Re: Amazon's First Job Listing

#50

Post by w0m »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #40
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 ye…

thank you for a great summary.
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