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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

#71

Post by danudey »

natrius wrote: post #49
nerfhammer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone owns a copy of Word these days

That's ridiculous. There are plenty of programs that output MS Word format , or even RTF.

Sure, but most of them aren't 100%, and tend to lose formatting nuances. My resume looks awful when exported to MS Word, so I always have to load it up in a pirated copy or on someone else's computer, tweak it there, and then send it on. I hate the idea of using commercial software that I haven't paid for, so it just irks me that this is required.

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

#72

Post by dustinupdyke »

jordanb wrote: post #5

Judging from things Steve Yegge has written about Amazon, and from friends of mine who have worked there, I don't get the impression that Amazon is a company dedicated to technical excellence. In particular I seem to recall something about 40 million lines of C++ code in their core product, and about mediocre engineering talent and high levels of burnout due to the technical debt they're required to deal with... In f…

I don't see technical excellence having a lot to do with technical debt in terms of if you are excellent, you have little or no debt.

Business needs change too quickly for a system as large as Amazon; they simply cannot maintain net zero technical debt and not cripple their reaction time in the market.

The key is to know what level of debt is necessary and acceptable to take on and deal with going forward.

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

#73

Post by jsolson »

daeken wrote: post #15
petercooper wrote: post #6

Earlier 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…

This is... odd. I started at Amazon in January, and as of November, plain text was the preferred format for resumes. Then again, mine got into the system through the employee referral program, so perhaps it takes different inputs.

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

#74

Post by quanticle »

natrius wrote: post #49
nerfhammer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone owns a copy of Word these days

That's ridiculous. There are plenty of programs that output MS Word format , or even RTF.

Yeah, but the MS Word format is vague enough, that the only way to ensure that someone else sees the same document you're seeing is to ensure that they're opening the document on the same version of Word, with the same OS and the same fonts that you have.

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

#75

Post by metageek »

pkteison wrote: post #51
javanix wrote: post #24

The end result of all this behind-the-scenes software? Fast, accurate search results that help you find what you want. Has Bezos ever actually used Amazon's search functionality? I know it isn't the easiest problem in the world to solve, but their search is by far the worst of any of the major shopping sites that I use on a regular basis.

Specific examples? It seems pretty good to me. Which shopping site has a better search, and what makes it better? Exact keyword match is obviously fine. "harry potter and the sorcerer's stone" gives me various options for buying that book and a bunch of other harry potter related books, and i can sort by some useful options like reviews or bestselling. Harder problems, Google shopping vs amazon: Misspellings: Hairy P…

I agree that it's mostly pretty good, but here's one flaw that always annoys me: when I tell it I want something under $50, and I only want stuff sold by Amazon, they'll include an item even if Amazon's price is $60, as long as at least one seller has it for under $50.

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

#76

Post by pkteison »

Splines wrote: post #66
pkteison wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specific examples? It seems pretty good to me. Which shopping site has a better search, and what makes it better? Exact keyword match is obviously fine. "harry potter and the sorcerer's stone" gives me various options for buying that book and a bunch of other harry potter related books, and i can sort by some useful options like reviews or bestselling. Harder problems, Google shopping vs amazon: Misspellings: Hairy P…

In particular, searches for computer equipment is generally frustrating. I've also seen sorts result in a large number of irrelevant outdated used items getting filtered to the top.[1] I'm willing to cut them slack since it's good enough, but look at Newegg to see how it should be done. It's not a completely fair comparison (since Newegg specializes in this), but they do it so much better.[2] [1] http://www.amazon.co…

Thanks, great example. It looks like they don't account for the importance of certain terms in tech searches well enough. Like they're far too willing to throw away the "16gb" part of "16gb sdhc" when sorting by price, and sorting by relevance shows you expensive stuff, so there is no good way to say "show me cheap stuff but I'm not kidding about the 16gb part".

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

#77

Post by [deleted] »

kenjackson wrote: post #69
ZoFreX wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a "bad smell". Too many bad smells and you don't apply for a job, it's like Bayesian filtering.

Bayesian filtering that works both ways. In fact we currently take PDF/Word/txt/RTF at my job. I'd actual considering narrowing it down to just Word. The type of person who decides that they don't want to submit in Word is probably a type of person that's not a good cultural fit. And I guess we've already ruled out those that prefer to send their resume via smoke signals only. As an employer it is more important to f…

[deleted]

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

#78

Post by puredemo »

haberman wrote: post #42
jordanb wrote: post #5

Judging from things Steve Yegge has written about Amazon, and from friends of mine who have worked there, I don't get the impression that Amazon is a company dedicated to technical excellence. In particular I seem to recall something about 40 million lines of C++ code in their core product, and about mediocre engineering talent and high levels of burnout due to the technical debt they're required to deal with... In f…

I worked at Amazon from 2004-2007. On one hand, Amazon does some really excellent and novel work like Dynamo and AWS (S3, EC2, EBS, etc). They organize developer conferences and bring in really good people to lecture. They hire really solid distributed systems people like Pat Helland and give them reign to work with engineering teams to improve their designs. On the other hand, when you're in the trenches of a produc…

Too bad that Google doesn't touch the customer service standards at Amazon.

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

#79

Post by ghshephard »

tomjen3 wrote: post #68
ghshephard wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I am not sure it works as a filter - I personally wouldn't spend my time making a .doc resume since it would enable HR drones to "enhance" it. Yes that can also be done with a PDF, but it is difficult enough that they don't.

" personally wouldn't spend my time making a .doc resume since it would enable HR drones to "enhance" it."

You don't think that filtering out people who have issues with the HR organization processing resume's isn't a "Filter?"

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

#80

Post by tybris »

czhiddy wrote: post #16

Interesting how AMZN jumps 5% after missing earnings, yet GOOG drops nearly 10% with nearly the exact same results (increased hiring and expenses resulting in lower than expected profit).

Simple:

"Google made a 10% across-the-board salary increase, which is driving up expenses this year."

"[Amazon] spent ferociously to build more fulfillment centers and expand its technology offerings."

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