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Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

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Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#681

Post by dragonwriter »

sumedh wrote: post #677
colonwqbang wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider all the horrors that large nations have inflicted on this world. You might conclude that they are an even worse fit for the position. In my country it is illegal not to subscribe to the state TV channel. The same cannot be said about Amazon Prime.

> Consider all the horrors that large nations have inflicted on this world. The British East India company was a corporation when it took over large parts of India.

> The British East India company was a corporation when it took over large parts of India.

Corporations are chartered by governments and reflect the chartering government’s values (which may be laissez-faire, but in the case of the British East India Company—and it's state-granted monopoly, violations of which were punishable by indefinite term of imprisonment—were decidedly not.)

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#682

Post by datavirtue »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #590
paxys wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. If you know what you want to buy, it takes seconds to find the absolute cheapest place on the internet to buy it. Then it's up to you to decide whether you trust the site or not. Brand name helps with perception, but definitely not discovery.

> Brand name helps with perception That used to be true with Amazon. Not anymore, not for me. Now I have to decide if I trust and endless array of 3rd party sellers. It is often just easier to buy from a manufacturer’s website since I know I’m getting the real thing and it’s not expired or otherwise screwed up. Maybe I pay a few more bucks, but I’m ok with that for a lot of things. (Exception: books and used)

Yeah. Direct retail is booming and so are established small specialty bricks and mortar distribution and retail. I spent $5k last month on clayking.com. They have a central location and drop-ship a lot of stuff that manufacturers aren't direct selling, yet. Same thing over at theceramicshop.com and Bailey pottery.com. They are all slammed and taking quite a while to fill orders...manufacturers included.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#683

Post by frombody »

stefap2 wrote: post #443
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #231

> This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. It had a name, and that name was "Cadabra". It didn't become Amazon until Jeff watched a documentary about the Amazon River. His lawyer had already turned up his nose at "Cadabra", and Jeff was looking for something else. It's also worth noting that the idea didn't grow over time - Jeff always intended to build something like "Sears…

Is it true he used doors as tables to save money ? :)

This is something that literally everyone that owns a garage and saw horses does.

In fact having saw horses and a flat surface in your garage is superior to having a regular table, because all the pieces are easily movable.

Nobody is going to ask you, why are there saw horses and a door in your garage, but they will ask you why you have a table in your garage.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#684

Post by danans »

redthrowaway wrote: post #593
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #231

> This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. It had a name, and that name was "Cadabra". It didn't become Amazon until Jeff watched a documentary about the Amazon River. His lawyer had already turned up his nose at "Cadabra", and Jeff was looking for something else. It's also worth noting that the idea didn't grow over time - Jeff always intended to build something like "Sears…

>ps. amazon employee #2 Please tell me you held onto your stock

Why would it matter if they didn't? All they would have if they held it is more money on top of the gobs they already had.

When you have that kind of money, if you want to grow it the surer strategy is to invest in lots of stuff, not keep it all sunk in your previous employer. It's probably more fun too.

And beyond a certain point that stock and the accompanying valuation in AMZ probably isn't so gratifying in itself, and unless one has a juvenile obsession with out net-worthing others, you need to find something more personally meaningful to do with it, whether that is start a new industry (Elon Musk) or address pressing global health issues (Bill Gates). It sounds like the GP has spent some of his funding free software.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#685

Post by xxpor »

yashap wrote: post #616
paxys wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He went to Princeton because he was smart, not because his family was rich. It isn't a school of billionaires or something. The majority of Ivy League enrollment is regular kids from working class families. They all have the best need-based scholarship programs in the country. His dad was a Cuban immigrant who worked as an engineer at Exxon.

I don’t disagree that he is/was super smart (and hardworking), but he came from a fairly wealthy family too. When he was starting Amazon, his parents invested $300,000 to help get it off the ground. You don’t have $300K to pour into your son’s startup if you aren’t wealthy. Also, when he was growing up his maternal grandparents owned a 25,000 acre ranch in Texas, which suggests significant wealth too. From what I und…

I seem to remember some study (probably on the front page here) that the most successful people usually don't come from Wealthy with a capital W or poor backgrounds, because in both cases there usually isn't the parental involvement in people's lives needed to instill the right values. This isn't a criticism of poor parents btw, it's just a fact of life for most of them because they're out there surviving.

The most successful people on average have upper middle class/rich but not titan of industries parents. Rich enough that they have time to spend with their kids, pay for tutoring, that sort of stuff, but not rich enough to have the nanny raise the kid.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#686

Post by xxpor »

scottyah wrote: post #430
adventured wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely not absurd, even if they only deserve a share of the credit. There's nothing absurd about the way Amazon and Apple defined cloud computing and smartphones. They deserve as much credit as anyone for the services / products we know today as cloud computing and smartphones. The version of the smartphone that took off in sales, took over the culture and has become a human staple globally, was entirely def…

I'm certainly no expert on what makes a phone a smartphone, but it seems like Blackberries with their email and small web functionality really kicked off the movement of phones being able to do more than calls and texts.

Don't forget windows mobile. And Palm!

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#687

Post by yashap »

xxpor wrote: post #685
yashap wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t disagree that he is/was super smart (and hardworking), but he came from a fairly wealthy family too. When he was starting Amazon, his parents invested $300,000 to help get it off the ground. You don’t have $300K to pour into your son’s startup if you aren’t wealthy. Also, when he was growing up his maternal grandparents owned a 25,000 acre ranch in Texas, which suggests significant wealth too. From what I und…

I seem to remember some study (probably on the front page here) that the most successful people usually don't come from Wealthy with a capital W or poor backgrounds, because in both cases there usually isn't the parental involvement in people's lives needed to instill the right values. This isn't a criticism of poor parents btw, it's just a fact of life for most of them because they're out there surviving. The most s…

I haven’t read the study, but that certainly seems believable and reasonable to me.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#689

Post by caddemon »

ineedasername wrote: post #570
paxys wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$180K is like 1-1.5x the median family income in a high CoL area in the US, so that's actually about what in line with what I would expect. You're not poor, sure, but it's not close to the kind of rich the original comment is implying when clubbing him with billionaires. A kid whose family earns $186K/yr isn't exactly on the fast track to becoming the next Jeff Bezos.

About the fast track portion sure, but otherwise, really, no. The median household income in NYC is about $100,000. San Francisco is about $90,000. Even at the high end of your estimate that's falling up to 25% short of $180k. Also it's really not proper to take the highest cost of living areas in this situation and say "it's okay they're kind of close to $180,000!" Taking the outliers as examples to support the idea…

I agree with your general point but take a look at the map on this page: https://admission.princeton.edu/how-apply/admission-statisti...

Princeton definitely does (unintentionally) bias admissions towards major metro areas. It's just way easier to have a good application in these places.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#690

Post by andredz »

bryanmgreen wrote: post #482
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that always stuck with me is I remember reading in a book about the internet long ago about how innovative the name Amazon.com was and how it was the future of internet business. It said it needs to be more memorable. You aren’t going to buy your books on Books.com you are going to use Amazon. Turned out to be very right. And this was in the pets.com era. Everyone thought you needed the most generic name po…

Speaking as someone who works for a company called "BoardGameTables.com", we really like our obvious name. Nothing wrong with something broad. We sell more than board game tables, but everything is connected and it gets us a lot of traffic and search juice. With SEO getting so much money and attention dumped into it, the usefulness has kind of come back around for a name like this.

I liked the website. You seem to have quite a few cool products. :)
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