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

Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

sec.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 297 posts

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#241

Post by mahyarm »

andrewguenther wrote: post #187
mahyarm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me amazon just seems like a bad deal compensation wise compared to other BigCos like facebook, google, apple, msft . Back loaded stock grants, lower pay, etc. Then add a high pressure big-company culture on top of that. I'll be pleasantly surprised if I'm wrong!

The thing that I like about working at Amazon is that they don't push the "Kool-Aid" culture that I sense from Facebook, Google, and Apple. I come to work, I feel proud of what I've done, I go home. That is it. That is what I want out of a job. I don't want to be a "Googler," or be told that I'm "changing the world" as I deploy a new sticker pack of poop emojis to Messenger. I want a job, not a cult.

From interviewing and having friends that currently and have worked in facebook, google, apple and amazon, it's not like that at all.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#242

Post by [deleted] »

giarc wrote: post #178
kdamken wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but the point of the Apple store is to sell Apple products, and the Google Play store only sells google devices. Amazon supposedly sells everything. It wasn't created to only sell Amazon products, and it's misleading to consumers to not be more open about that. Case in point - they sell iPads. Why don't they just sell Kindles? The inconsistency comes off as sleezy.

Apple sells many products that are not owned by Apple. I can buy headphones by Bose, RHA, BlueAnt, Beats (were on store prior to Apple purchase). Amazon gets the criticism but they all do it. Remember, we had a store that was willing to sell all these products, it's called Best Buy and it's on the way out. As consumers we choose to boost Amazon into the leading online position.

[deleted]

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#243

Post by Yhippa »

andrewguenther wrote: post #191
karmelapple wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you confirm any truths or deny any lies?

My views don't represent that of my employer yada yada yada. Anything in the NYTimes piece that wasn't a personal story was grounded in truth, but spun as bullshit. It was a hit piece. There are bad teams, but at a company of this size, there will always be bad teams, and I am sorry for the poor experiences that people seem to have had, but I would hardly call them widespread. The entire article has really become a b…

You could probably find enough dirt in any Fortune 500 company, style it up, and put out an article similar to the Amazon one.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#244

Post by deanCommie »

cookiecaper wrote: post #223
hguant wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From wikipedia: "The name derives from the belief that various ritualistic acts will lead to a bestowing of material wealth." Basically, slavishly copying someone else's actions without actually understanding the underlying principle behind those actions. The most famous example is from WWII - Japanese and American armed forces built airstrips on underdeveloped islands, and either abandoned or shared what seemed like…

>Basically, slavishly copying someone else's actions without actually understanding the underlying principle behind those actions. And it should be noted that this works really well much of the time, which is why humans often do it. A deep understanding can be beneficial if you're capable of grasping it, but if we're honest, most people aren't.

Yeah but the idea of the expression is to apply it in situations where it clearly isn't working. If it works you don't call it a cargo cult anymore

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#245

Post by [deleted] »

cookiecaper wrote: post #223
hguant wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From wikipedia: "The name derives from the belief that various ritualistic acts will lead to a bestowing of material wealth." Basically, slavishly copying someone else's actions without actually understanding the underlying principle behind those actions. The most famous example is from WWII - Japanese and American armed forces built airstrips on underdeveloped islands, and either abandoned or shared what seemed like…

>Basically, slavishly copying someone else's actions without actually understanding the underlying principle behind those actions. And it should be noted that this works really well much of the time, which is why humans often do it. A deep understanding can be beneficial if you're capable of grasping it, but if we're honest, most people aren't.

[deleted]

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#246

Post by fabulist »

discodave wrote: post #146
simonh wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AWS data centres aren't an asset? I'd have thought comparing funding expanding Amazon's data centre capacity from revenue is very comparable to Tesla building out it's manufacturing capability the same way.

The DCs are assets with 5-20 year lifespans but the servers depreciate over 3-5 years. Amazon has also been doing a bunch of capital lease shenanigans so they could expand AWS without having to report GAAP losses over the last few years.

Genuinely curious, who sells, rebuilds, or otherwise "end of lifes" a datacenter after 5 years?

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#247

Post by avs733 »

kevando wrote: post #230
preordained wrote: post #101

I work at a small software company, and too often our CEO and company will latch onto nuggets from material like this and use it to justify a "swing for the fences", "nothing ventured nothing gained" sort of mindset. All well and good, but they blithely overlook the "we fail all the time" parts, and sometimes we take risks where the potential losses are not easy to absorb, or we don't have the vast resources of a big…

Do you understand why your CEO swings for the fences? It sounds like the mindset isn't what bothers you, it's why she swings for the fences.

I think the comment was meant more to indicate that the CEO doesn't know why they are swinging for the fences.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#248

Post by deanCommie »

twayamznacct wrote: post #234
jaibot wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't bother waiting for my signing bonus. I paid them to get out of there.

I was done after a year and a half. Owed them for moving expenses, etc. but I really didn't care. I spent 6 months doing nothing before I even considered getting another job. Easily the worst experience in my life and completely colored my entire impression of the tech industry negatively. I went from loving what I did to just doing this as a job for a paycheck (even at another company now that is leaps and bounds "b…

Which office was this?

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#249

Post by SilasX »

rwjwjuwjudf wrote: post #113
bonzini wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about "false acceptance vs false rejection" being better than "false positive vs false negative". False positive pretty much always means you give incorrect bad news; false negative means you give incorrect good news. "Acceptance" may mean either "ham" or "spam" depending on the context.

Positive means you found the special thing you are looking for; negative means you just found an ordinary thing. False positive means you thought you found the special thing but you didn't, it was just ordinary; false negative means you thought you found an ordinary thing but actually it was special. False positives mean you throw away ham as spam (terrible), false negatives mean you let some spam into your mailbox (…

But spam is more "usual" than ham, so ...

Re: Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders

#250

Post by School-Cotton »

giarc wrote: post #178
kdamken wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but the point of the Apple store is to sell Apple products, and the Google Play store only sells google devices. Amazon supposedly sells everything. It wasn't created to only sell Amazon products, and it's misleading to consumers to not be more open about that. Case in point - they sell iPads. Why don't they just sell Kindles? The inconsistency comes off as sleezy.

Apple sells many products that are not owned by Apple. I can buy headphones by Bose, RHA, BlueAnt, Beats (were on store prior to Apple purchase). Amazon gets the criticism but they all do it. Remember, we had a store that was willing to sell all these products, it's called Best Buy and it's on the way out. As consumers we choose to boost Amazon into the leading online position.

"We" made that choice before Amazon started banning competitors' products. That's a recent change.
Post reply on HN