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Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

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Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#121

Post by shykes »

cmelbye wrote: post #118
shykes wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DotCloud [1] is built from the ground up around distributed services. We use a custom rpc mechanism called ZeroRPC. It uses ZeroMQ [2] for transport, msgpack [3] for serialization, and some extra glue for RPC mechanics, discovery, event dispatching, etc. Among other neat tricks, it allows us to handle synchronous RPC calls and asynchronous message passing in a unified way. It also maps transparently to any ZeroMQ top…

Oh, awesome, thank you!. I never thought to use ZeroMQ, but that would work perfectly. Ironically, it doesn't seem like DotCloud supports these sorts of architectures very well yet, any plans to fix that? ;)

Absolutely - our job is to make developers happy and productive. Whenever we find a sweet tool that makes our lives easier, we're practically tripping over ourselves to share it with you

Our network team is working on some major goodies which should make you happy. Personally they bring tears to my eyes :)

In the meantime, my recommendation is to start with http. If you keep the RPC semantics simple, you can easily migrate to a different transport later. And you'll need HTTP to authenticate and encrypt at the boundaries anyway.

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#122

Post by nika »

TWADDLE wrote: post #37

Its funny how people seem to be whining about Amazon. In fact Amazon is one of the best places in terms of innovation. In addition to having a strong core business, they also have AWS, kindle, android app store. Who cares if their legacy codebase is 40 milllions lines of C++ and not your hip Ruby or LIPS nonsense. The truth is that they get work done. AWS is one of the best cloud computing system out there. Nothing e…

Let me guess- you've never worked at Amazon, have you?

There may be 40 million lines of C++ code there, I don't know, but I do know there was a massive Java code base, plus every other random hip language that had a moment of popularity. That was part of the problem- nothing was consistent or coherent, and you had to babysit a lot of old code written in the language of the moment by a team of ok programmers with bad management that has long since been dissolved (or if the code is only a couple years old) moved onto some other part of the platform.

AWS is a new code base, and it isn't very innovative. In fact I don't think it is a very good cloud system, but then my criteria are probably different than yours. The idea that "nothing comes close" seems kinda silly.

And no, they don't pay well. They don't even pay what they promise.

"Its sad to see HN turning into a language fanboi and apple fanboi club."

Your account was created within an hour of writing that. I think that the decline of HN is more due to the influx of people who think those who don't hate apple are "fanboi"s and think that name calling is appropriate. Personally, when I see the use of that term, it communicates to me that the person calling others "fanbois" is prejudiced against anyone who doesn't also hate Apple or "LIPS" [sic]

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#123

Post by JabavuAdams »

3pt14159 wrote: post #86
JabavuAdams wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. Sold a bunch of AMZN last week to buy AAPL, just before AAPL announced earnings. Looks like I should have kept AMZN. As a Canadian, the whole currency conversion thing adds another source of risk.

I was mulling over that exact trade, but figured the relatively small amount of AMZN I had didn't justify getting off my tush. Sold a couple hours ago with a solid 60% up in 10 months (usd -> usd) and 41% in CAD terms. I'm fairly bullish on AAPL, but I already own 200 shares (selling medium term call options, hence the 100s multiple) so buying some more probably isn't worth it. Just going to keep it in cash until I s…

Re Hedging FOREX: Nope. It's something I'm interested in learning about, though.

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#124

Post by iam »

adpowers wrote: post #87
cmelbye wrote: post #83

This is only slightly on-topic, but regarding the service-oriented architecture that he mentions at the beginning of the article, how would one implement this internal? Specifically, how would you communicate with your internal services? Just an HTTP API? Is that fast enough? Another thing I'm wondering is what's the best way to handle internal authentication between your frontend and some backend service for example…

I don't think it covers authentication, but take a look at Thrift: http://incubator.apache.org/thrift/ It provides an RPC framework and IDL.

If only thrift had some sort of signal/event support :(.

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#125

Post by billybob »

matwood wrote: post #117
danssig wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those things will produce a word document that looks exactly in Word like it did when I created it. This is the problem.

Word doesn't produce a document that looks exactly like the document you created unless only open and view that document on the same version of word you created it on. Everyone, even HR/business types, inherently know this from their years of dealing with Word. In short, if your format messes up a little bit no one cares.

And yet, having your format messed up is completely unnecessary. We have this format called PDF which exists solely to make the same document look the same for everybody. It works on every major platform and is supposed by lots of software.

Unless the HR department intends to edit your resume, why on earth wouldn't they accept PDF?

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#126

Post by billybob »

HockeyBiasDotCo wrote: post #29
daeken wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought about going to Amazon when I decided to get out of the startup world about 6 months ago. I went through the standard application process, and promptly closed the tab when I found that they would only accept my r�sum� in MS Word format -- rejected PDFs, HTML, and even plaintext. It may seem like a silly reason not to work somewhere, but I think that the hiring process says more about a company than just abou…

I am truly surpised by the rigidness displayed regarding Word docs. Limiting opportunities in your life because an HR department uses the most common document app in the world seems self-defeating. Why not rule out cmapanies that use a certain type of printer paper?

I wouldn't rule out an employer for this, but it's annoying.

I use Ubuntu at home. As someone who will need to work with Ubuntu Server at work, I think that's a good thing for my employability. Using Microsoft Word in Ubuntu is not an option for me.

So it's a Giant Pain in the Butt to produce a Word-formatted resume (no, OpenOfice and Google Docs don't make it reliably look good), and there's no reason they need that because they're not going to edit it.

On the other hand, it's easy for me to produce a PDF, which will look better anyway, and it can be done using the OS I will be using at the job I'm applying for.

Being told, effectively, "we require you to install Windows so that you can submit a nice-looking resume for this job working with Unix" is annoying. It's a small factor in how interested I am in the job, but a factor nonetheless, because it shows (to me) that technical people are not running the company.

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#127

Post by neuroelectronic »

jmatthews wrote: post #95
neuroelectronic wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for liberal definitions of "competing" The only similar cloud services are from Microsoft and Google and they are about the same price, definitely not "a song" territory.

I meant that given your app works within the restrictions of GAE you get the benefit of a lot of brainpower from men with long beards. Maybe the association was temporal as I'd just finished watching an IO presentation about how to scheme data for appengine where the detail was primarily the same as Bezos' first few paragraphs.

Like many conversations, this conflict was only a result of miscommunication.

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#128

Post by athst »

michaelochurch wrote: post #89
prpon wrote: post #3

That letter is so geeky, I doubt if 90% of amazon investors would get the things he was explaining. As a geek though, I love it.

My feeling about it was that it was written to appeal to top programmers, not investors except so far as "You can read this letter, in which I prove that I know the language one needs to speak to hire smart people".

Good point - maybe this is just the greatest recruiting tactic ever.

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#129

Post by athst »

spinchange wrote: post #31

This is instructive. Google's stock might not have tanked as hard the other week if LP had come out and placated the street with some jargon like this, re: Google's also ballooning expenses.

Bezos explicitly said it in this letter - he expects all of this stuff to make the company gobs of money in the future. For a lot of the stuff Google spends money on, I don't think investors are necessarily very confident that it will have the same impact on future profits.

Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D

#130

Post by esrauch »

smutticus wrote: post #39
esrauch wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the source of this is that they use third party tools that automatically store/index/rip apart your resume for keywords. Theres obviously no reason why the third party tools don't support plaintext files, but it seems that they don't. Considering Amazon didn't develop the system, I don't think the choice of software by the HR department is really something that is safe to make generalizations from.

All the effort we put into technology might not matter that much if we kept technology off to the side in some sort of R&D department, but we don’t take that approach. Technology infuses all of our teams, all of our processes, our decision-making, and our approach to innovation in each of our businesses. It is deeply integrated into everything we do. According to Bezos you're wrong. If technology infuses all of their…

I honestly think its a bit of a stretch to think that Bezos was talking about the HR department when he said that. Do you think he was talking about the people that vacuum the floors and sell sandwiches in the cafeteria too?
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