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

Jeff Bezos at YC Startup School 2008 [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 35 posts

Re: Jeff Bezos at YC Startup School 2008 [video]

#11

Post by tsunamifury »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #6

One thing I think is so extraordinary about Jeff Bezos is his uncanny technical prescience despite not really being a technologist. For example, the famous Steve Yegge "platforms rant" blog post [1] about how Bezos basically made a company-wide edict for microservices was very much ahead of its time. Similarly, the vision of cloud computing was much more advanced and early than any of its competitors. Considering thi…

When you start to get an executive-height perspective, you begin to see jam-ups that normal people don't see for several years. You can conceptually articulate the fix/need and let the real engineers hammer out the implementation. The same applies for tech, financial and social trend-lines.

Re: Jeff Bezos at YC Startup School 2008 [video]

#12

Post by collinf »

cowmix wrote: post #2

Bezos quotes an article about AWS, "..in fact Amazon's real business down the line will be its cloud services. Amazon will be like a bookstore that sells cocaine out the back door. Book will just be a front."

Another point I recently heard, and I can't recall the exact quote off my head but it was along the lines of: "Amazon at this point is really just a cloud company that is using it's cloud earnings to subsidize its other business arms to grow to a big enough scale where it can choke out all other competitors."

Re: Jeff Bezos at YC Startup School 2008 [video]

#13

Post by scottlocklin »

josh2600 wrote: post #8
whoisjuan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the cloud computing vision came from Andy Jassy. In fact he wrote the original six pager for AWS. Equally impressive since Jassy isn't really a technologist either.

I hate this language of “so and so isn’t a technologist”. You don’t need to understand how a compiler works or grok segfaults to see the future. It’s obvious if you’re running a big data center yourself that you’d rather pay someone else to do that, it’s just that no one wanted to take on that operational burden because it’s a pain. It doesn’t take a technologist to realize that arbitraging pain is where you make mon…

Yeah, but it's hard to identify those people until their useful business lifespan is half over. Technologists are at least assumed to have some idea of the possibilities; plenty of "visionaries" come up with unworkable visions that we conveniently forget about in hindsight, because they were bad visions of the future.

Re: Jeff Bezos at YC Startup School 2008 [video]

#14

Post by collinf »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #6

One thing I think is so extraordinary about Jeff Bezos is his uncanny technical prescience despite not really being a technologist. For example, the famous Steve Yegge "platforms rant" blog post [1] about how Bezos basically made a company-wide edict for microservices was very much ahead of its time. Similarly, the vision of cloud computing was much more advanced and early than any of its competitors. Considering thi…

This is anecdotal, but I used to work at a large (Fortune 500) financial company. The CEO had no engineering experience, but every year they would do an annual summit of the goals of the company. Over 50% of the talk every year, they would drill down pretty deep into technical topics, I was always amazed that at that level he actually knew enough to be able to describe complex data engineering topics and machine learning models. Even if it was rehearsed, I always came off the talks super impressed with their ability to talk at that detail.

Also, Bezos was a Computer Science major and a developer for 4 years after graduation.

Re: Jeff Bezos at YC Startup School 2008 [video]

#15

Post by joshe »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #6

One thing I think is so extraordinary about Jeff Bezos is his uncanny technical prescience despite not really being a technologist. For example, the famous Steve Yegge "platforms rant" blog post [1] about how Bezos basically made a company-wide edict for microservices was very much ahead of its time. Similarly, the vision of cloud computing was much more advanced and early than any of its competitors. Considering thi…

This is off a bit, he's pretty technical, BS in Electrical Engineering and CS from Princeton. And his pre Amazon jobs were managing technical projects at D.E. Shaw and Bankers Trust.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos

Re: Jeff Bezos at YC Startup School 2008 [video]

#16

Post by justicezyx »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #3

Wow, the memories. I joined AWS in 2008 as a tech evangelist (left in 2014), and many of these metrics I still remember to this day.

I am actually curious if what AWS does, to show relatively clear numbers on the business, is a common practice.

Re: Jeff Bezos at YC Startup School 2008 [video]

#17

Post by rexreed »

Side note, why don't these videos show the slide content? That's just as useful, if not moreso, than seeing a video of the person speaking. You can hear the person without seeing them, but you can't hear the slides without seeing them, even if they're being described. A simple split screen with slides on one side and video on the other would work. Or even a picture-in-picture with the speaker. The top comment on the YouTube video has some real snark in reference to what I thought was a legitimate criticism of what would make this video much better.

Re: Jeff Bezos at YC Startup School 2008 [video]

#18

Post by breck »

joshe wrote: post #15
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #6

One thing I think is so extraordinary about Jeff Bezos is his uncanny technical prescience despite not really being a technologist. For example, the famous Steve Yegge "platforms rant" blog post [1] about how Bezos basically made a company-wide edict for microservices was very much ahead of its time. Similarly, the vision of cloud computing was much more advanced and early than any of its competitors. Considering thi…

This is off a bit, he's pretty technical, BS in Electrical Engineering and CS from Princeton. And his pre Amazon jobs were managing technical projects at D.E. Shaw and Bankers Trust. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos

+summa cum laude

Re: Jeff Bezos at YC Startup School 2008 [video]

#19

Post by whoisjuan »

josh2600 wrote: post #8
whoisjuan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the cloud computing vision came from Andy Jassy. In fact he wrote the original six pager for AWS. Equally impressive since Jassy isn't really a technologist either.

I hate this language of “so and so isn’t a technologist”. You don’t need to understand how a compiler works or grok segfaults to see the future. It’s obvious if you’re running a big data center yourself that you’d rather pay someone else to do that, it’s just that no one wanted to take on that operational burden because it’s a pain. It doesn’t take a technologist to realize that arbitraging pain is where you make mon…

I disagree with this. The vision wasn't a simple economic statement on why "we should rent out our unused server capacity". It was vastly more complex than that. It included technical details on how it should be approached and how to leverage and scale their existing infrastructure. It also laid down the ground for EC2 and S3 as foundational services.

Perhaps my error was saying that Jassy isn't a technologist. He is 100% a technologist and has an incredible ability to absorb and understand very complex technical topics. He just isn't a technologist by training or by trade. He simply has an innate technical ability to such extent that his first job at Amazon was being a technical liaison to Jeff Bezos.

Re: Jeff Bezos at YC Startup School 2008 [video]

#20

Post by [deleted] »

whoisjuan wrote: post #19
josh2600 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate this language of “so and so isn’t a technologist”. You don’t need to understand how a compiler works or grok segfaults to see the future. It’s obvious if you’re running a big data center yourself that you’d rather pay someone else to do that, it’s just that no one wanted to take on that operational burden because it’s a pain. It doesn’t take a technologist to realize that arbitraging pain is where you make mon…

I disagree with this. The vision wasn't a simple economic statement on why "we should rent out our unused server capacity". It was vastly more complex than that. It included technical details on how it should be approached and how to leverage and scale their existing infrastructure. It also laid down the ground for EC2 and S3 as foundational services. Perhaps my error was saying that Jassy isn't a technologist. He is…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN