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.
Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D
31–40 of 130 posts
Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like I'm missing something. As of this moment (9:42AM PDT) Amazon's stock is up 5.6% for the day and near a 52 week high. That doesn't seem like panicky shareholders to me. I'm not a stock maven, so it's possible that I'm missing some important detail.
AZMN stock climbed over 8% during the AWS outage, the market is disconnected from reality.
the market is disconnected from reality
Or perhaps, the impact of any EBS/AWS outage has very little impact on the overall health and success of the entire Amazon business.
Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D
#33Earlier 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've never applied for a job at Amazon but I have done the same thing with other companies. When I was last looking for a job, I found a couple of interesting positions whose HR systems would only take resumes in MS Word. I closed the tab and kept searching. For me, it's a practical and ideological thing. My resume is written in LaTeX (with a plain text version) and unless I'm missing something, there is no good or e…
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.
Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D
#34Earlier 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've never applied for a job at Amazon but I have done the same thing with other companies. When I was last looking for a job, I found a couple of interesting positions whose HR systems would only take resumes in MS Word. I closed the tab and kept searching. For me, it's a practical and ideological thing. My resume is written in LaTeX (with a plain text version) and unless I'm missing something, there is no good or e…
To convert LaTeX to word, use something like http://hyperlatex.sourceforge.net/ to convert it to HTML, and then rename it .doc.
Word should be perfectly happy reading that. And a lot of places that say they only accept Word won't notice the difference. (I don't know about Amazon.)
Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get the feeling that you're both right and wrong. Right in that a lot of the legacy Amazon code is probably burdened with huge technical debt. I also get the feeling they're pushing the boundaries in other areas. A bit of the "chase the shiny coin" syndrome. One of the issues is that none of us really know what goes on inside Amazon. They are notoriously secretive about most everything.
"Secrecy is the beginning of stupidity." It both reduces feedback, often dramatically, and wastes your time and energy in maintaining the secrecy.
unless its APPL....
Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D
#36Earlier 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…
You're talking about HR here; they have no idea how to use anything other than Word. The idea of opening a PDF is foreign to their way of doing business, not just because a lack of know how, but because these are people who are very rigid in their processes. If I were to disregard companies that require Word I'd probably be unable to get a job where I live. I just disregard it, and what their qualifications supposedl…
Word-only resumes indicate that the HR department is in control of the hiring process. This means that the company is passing up on excellent people for stupid reasons ("We're looking for people with "Unix" experience but this candidate only lists "Linux" and "BSD") and hiring incompetent people who happened to have won the Bingo game.
So the HR department is in the driver's seat on hiring is a good proxy for determining how good their engineering is.
Personally I think a better indicator than if a company is they Word-only or not is the quality of their job postings. HR is not competent to write job descriptions for engineers, and the idiotic descriptions that get passed around the internet are almost always an indicator that hiring is "HR's responsibility."
Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D
#37Its 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 else comes even closer. Dropbox, Heroku and Reddit all rely on them. Who cares if they take resume in word format, they pay well.
Its sad to see HN turning into a language fanboi and apple fanboi club.
The AWS EC2 outage did not even affect 0.01% of their revenue.
Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're talking about HR here; they have no idea how to use anything other than Word. The idea of opening a PDF is foreign to their way of doing business, not just because a lack of know how, but because these are people who are very rigid in their processes. If I were to disregard companies that require Word I'd probably be unable to get a job where I live. I just disregard it, and what their qualifications supposedl…
Word-only resumes indicate that the HR department is in control of the hiring process. This means that the company is passing up on excellent people for stupid reasons ("We're looking for people with "Unix" experience but this candidate only lists "Linux" and "BSD") and hiring incompetent people who happened to have won the Bingo game. So the HR department is in the driver's seat on hiring is a good proxy for determi…
Those job descriptions are stuff they find on the internet. It's divorced from the reality of the position; you only find that out when you do an actual interview. I'm not saying there aren't places where HR is in control of the hiring processes, but I also know from person experience that it can be the case where HR is in charge of posting positions and taking applications to simply hand off to Programming.
Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've never applied for a job at Amazon but I have done the same thing with other companies. When I was last looking for a job, I found a couple of interesting positions whose HR systems would only take resumes in MS Word. I closed the tab and kept searching. For me, it's a practical and ideological thing. My resume is written in LaTeX (with a plain text version) and unless I'm missing something, there is no good or e…
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 processes that also includes hiring.
And let's not forget Conway's law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Law
Everything matters. If only because good people will ignore companies that have stupid hiring processes.
Re: Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience, their tech job listings list tech degrees as a must-have . That seems to be a common attribute of companies that care more about HR box ticking than technical excellence, alas.
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…
Of course, that goes both way. Any engineer so fixated on not using Microsoft Word, and unwilling to submit a resume in the format requested by their potential employer, might not work out well in a number of environments where they might gasp be required to use operating systems, applications, and methodologies that they were unfamiliar with, or downright opposed to.
Works out well for everyone - so, to some degree, a valid filter.