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Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

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Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#171

Post by mintplant »

bigtimeidiot wrote: post #130
mikestew wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that what OP says is not true, or just pointing out the obvious?

> Are you implying that what OP says is not true That Jeff Bezos is "allowing" counterfeit goods on Amazon to ruin the customer experience? Yes, that's untrue. I'm sure if he could snap his fingers and fix the problem, he would. But the problem is a bit more nuanced than that, and can't be solved over night (perhaps ever, if the analogy is digital piracy).

They're actively contributing to the problem and damaging trust in their brand by comingling inventory with third-party sellers.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#172

Post by xster »

x2f10 wrote: post #66

I might be shunned for beating the dead horse, but while he talks about 'True Customer Obsession', he allows counterfeit goods erode his customer's trust in Amazon. I'd argue Amazon's 'process as proxy' in dealing with counterfeits is the careless return process. 'Oh, it's counterfeit? We're sorry! Here's your money back!' does not solve the issue. Sure, thanks for the $10 back, but now I must think twice (or thrice!…

> I respect Jeff, TONS, but come on. You're talking the talk, but you're not walking the walk.

iunno man, I took a peek inside his mind via the Washington Post and it's dark

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#173

Post by baddox »

mintplant wrote: post #168
rubicon33 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. As a long time prime user, it's been the rise in counterfeit goods that has really shook my unwavering loyalty to Amazon. I used to order everything on there, without thinking twice. Now, I'm much more careful about what I buy on there, and often just avoid purchasing on Amazon entirely.

For me it's been shipping issues. At some point Amazon became really unreliable with their delivery date "guarantees". I've had four separate packages simply not arrive at all, and plenty more that were a few days to a week late. Confusingly, the Amazon app seems to mark a package as "delivered" when the estimated date is reached, regardless of its actual status. When you dig into the tracking information, sometimes…

That must be a highly local phenomenon. I had great shipping experiences in rural Missouri, then when I moved to San Francisco they became ridiculously great. I was getting packages the next day long before they started offering next day shipping.

In fact, I agree with other common complaints about Amazon (counterfeiting, higher prices) but still often go with them because I'm confident the product will show up quickly.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#174

Post by baddox »

paulmd wrote: post #156
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm mystified by this personally. I frequently purchase from Amazon, and haven't(to my knowledge) received counterfeit goods. Generally I stick to "fufilled by Amazon" or otherwise first-party sellers, so that may have something to do with it. Maybe I'm not purchasing niche enough products to run into this issue.

Certain types of products are extremely commonly counterfeited. I would never consider ordering luxury goods like cologne/perfume/handbags, flash memory cards or sticks, or small mass-market electronics like chargers. Due to the way Amazon commingles their stock at the SKU level, there is simply no way to guarantee that what you're getting is genuine, even if you order "sold and shipped from Amazon". Even from an aut…

I've bought lots of flash cards, flash drives, chargers, and cables from Amazon and have never had a problem (or they were great counterfeits, in which case I'm not too upset). I don't do much research either, choosing mostly based on search results, brand name, reviews, and shipping/sold by Amazon.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#175

Post by baddox »

throwawaymsft wrote: post #124
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm mystified by this personally. I frequently purchase from Amazon, and haven't(to my knowledge) received counterfeit goods. Generally I stick to "fufilled by Amazon" or otherwise first-party sellers, so that may have something to do with it. Maybe I'm not purchasing niche enough products to run into this issue.

Try buying an Apple charger or cable on Amazon (even sold by Amazon directly): https://9to5mac.com/2016/10/19/amazon-fake-apple-chargers-ca... https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2016/10/23/apple-n... Apple has the clout to force Amazon clean up their listings, most manufacturers don't. Why does Apple have to coerce Amazon to do this, instead of them being proactive?

It's not clear whether this refers to products on Amazon that claim to be made by Apple, or products on Amazon that just work with Apple products. As for the latter, I have bought a lot of Lightning cables and USB chargers and batteries from Amazon, mostly made by Anker, and I've never had an issue.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#176

Post by BurningFrog »

mintplant wrote: post #168
rubicon33 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. As a long time prime user, it's been the rise in counterfeit goods that has really shook my unwavering loyalty to Amazon. I used to order everything on there, without thinking twice. Now, I'm much more careful about what I buy on there, and often just avoid purchasing on Amazon entirely.

For me it's been shipping issues. At some point Amazon became really unreliable with their delivery date "guarantees". I've had four separate packages simply not arrive at all, and plenty more that were a few days to a week late. Confusingly, the Amazon app seems to mark a package as "delivered" when the estimated date is reached, regardless of its actual status. When you dig into the tracking information, sometimes…

You may also have a package thief.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#177

Post by mintplant »

baddox wrote: post #173
mintplant wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it's been shipping issues. At some point Amazon became really unreliable with their delivery date "guarantees". I've had four separate packages simply not arrive at all, and plenty more that were a few days to a week late. Confusingly, the Amazon app seems to mark a package as "delivered" when the estimated date is reached, regardless of its actual status. When you dig into the tracking information, sometimes…

That must be a highly local phenomenon. I had great shipping experiences in rural Missouri, then when I moved to San Francisco they became ridiculously great. I was getting packages the next day long before they started offering next day shipping. In fact, I agree with other common complaints about Amazon (counterfeiting, higher prices) but still often go with them because I'm confident the product will show up quick…

I've experienced it in both San Jose and San Diego. Not exactly the middle of nowhere.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#178

Post by fbonetti »

sib wrote: post #136
fbonetti wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a common metric used in the Scrum methodology. You start off the "sprint" with a set number of "story points" (say, 30 points), and end the sprint with zero points. When you graph the team's progress over the course of the sprint, it should ideally form a linear, downward slope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_down_chart

It's one of the misunderstood pieces of scrum to think that burndown charts should be linear. If a team of 5 has established a velocity of 65 story points / 2-week sprint, and they accept 5, 13-point tasks for the next sprint, you'd expect a burndown chart that would look almost horizontal for the entire sprint until the very end, when it would drop vertically to the x axis. You might get linearity if there were 65,…

I think you're getting at the heart of why burn down charts are so pointless. The shape changes sprint to sprint, depending on what kind of stories you take on. If the sprint is entirely high pointed stories, your chart will be mostly horizontal. If the sprint is entirely 1 pointers, the graph will look like an exponential decay.

Since the shape is always different, there's virtually zero useful information to take away from it.

Some people in this thread claimed that burn down charts are useful for finding out a team's capacity. I disagree - you don't need a chart for this. If your team has a target velocity of 30 points and routinely fails to meet it, reduce the target velocity. Likewise, if the team routinely completes all of their work well before the end of the sprint, slightly increase the target velocity.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#179

Post by tajen »

bigtimeidiot wrote: post #130
mikestew wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that what OP says is not true, or just pointing out the obvious?

> Are you implying that what OP says is not true That Jeff Bezos is "allowing" counterfeit goods on Amazon to ruin the customer experience? Yes, that's untrue. I'm sure if he could snap his fingers and fix the problem, he would. But the problem is a bit more nuanced than that, and can't be solved over night (perhaps ever, if the analogy is digital piracy).

> if he could snap his fingers and fix the problem, he would

Well, he invented the idea of losing traceability by commingling inventory "in good faith". He can reinvent traceability any time. As much as HSBC's business became moving drug money, it pretty much became Amazon's business to find gullible customers for counterfeit goods.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#180

Post by ronlaflange »

devopsproject wrote: post #135
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear their retention is only bad in the fulfillment centers. Those are generally low skill, low pay, seasonal employees meant for short term stints - of which there is a near infinite supply. For their core engineering, BD etc... teams in Seattle, retention is great.

If you are going to make those claims, please provide a source. This is pretty good rant from the technical\engineering side: https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX There is no need to fetishize amazon and if amazon is your model I feel sorry for your employees.

Not sure how relevant this rant is; the last time Steve Yegge worked at Amazon was in mid-2005. For reference, this was even before AWS launched publicly.
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