Email from Jeff Bezos to employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#791

Post by Daho0n » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 9:26 AM UTC

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #655

kevstev wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are leaving out a really important aspect of the early internet- content discovery was really hard for users. If you were looking for something about Pets until google became dominant, you were just as likely, if not more likely, to type pets.com into your browser as you were to go to a search engine. Getting the initial traffic to your site was really hard in those days, the domain was really important f…

Hmmm... That is not how I remember it. I could gopher topics by early 90's, and Infoseek, Yahoo, WebCrawler, etc. were a full text search of pages by mid 90's. I distinctly recall searching usenet across multiple servers. Even before this, when data only flowed through uucp (or Fido), search was albeit queued, readily available. Your mileage may have varied; i just want to be clear that it was not that it did not exi…

That wasn't the average user and not even the average computer geek. Most browsed webrings.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#792

Post by newswasboring » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 9:27 AM UTC

arp242 wrote: post #606

sib wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be difficult, but how many of those were invented in the past 27 years? Bell Labs is (barely even) a shadow of its former self. If you want to read a great book about when Bell Labs was really Bell Labs: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005GSZIWG/

There are quite a few caveats with all of the items he lists: > We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime’s insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more. 1-click was hardly an "invention" IMO, the Kindle was "just another e-book reader" (arguably the best, but they did not…

I think we should not discount "Prime's insanely fast shipping". That is an amalgamation of several innovations and has truly changed the world.

Of course, all this if Amazon has actually invented that and I am not just misinformed.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#793

Post by newswasboring » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 9:31 AM UTC

pjmorris wrote: post #608

avrionov wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM also has 5 Nobel prize winners, but this was different time. I don't think we'll see it again.

And IBM invented the hard drive, (arguably) computer product lines, the relational database, and standardized the 8-bit byte. Pretty sure I'm leaving stuff out. They're not quite Bell Labs, but they're incredibly influential.

I always find it surprising that things we take for granted today needed to be standardized. Like I can't even imagine computers not using a 8 bit byte.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#794

Post by giomasce » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 9:34 AM UTC

"As Amazon became large, we decided to use our scale and scope to lead on important social issues".

A bold claim for a company widely known to exploit and underpay workers in distribution warehouses.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#795

Post by herodoturtle » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 9:38 AM UTC

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…

What advice would you have for us solo founders in terms of maintaining healthy relations with our first employees?

I won't ask what Jeff did wrong for obvious reasons, but what did he do really well?

I loved your other comment on here about living a fulfilled life. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#796

Post by ElectricMind » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 9:38 AM UTC

I wanted to work for Amazon then I read "The Everything Store..." and how brutal this guy is even to his loyal people. How he treated initial people who supported him. Amazon is part of the club- I don't want to work companies. Facebook, Google, Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tesla, SpaceX and adding more

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#797

Post by nly » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 9:38 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #513

TuringNYC wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How early do you mean by early? I remember Amazon at campus recruiting (Cornell, 2000) describing something akin to AWS and LoudCloud came up. I asked what business a bookstore had to do with outsourced computing and recall a fair bit of vision even at the time. In light of what we now know, I’m the only one who didn’t have sufficient vision...for not pursuing that job opportunity more seriously.

I was at amazon from 1994-1996. That's what I mean by "early".

Apologies if this question is a bit in the nose, but why did you leave?

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#798

Post by goto11 » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 9:45 AM UTC

ourcat wrote: post #466

oblio wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends. facebook.com or messenger.com aren't super memorable. Microsoft also made it work by adding something else next to the name. Microsoft Excel. Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft Access.

Also Microsoft's "Internet Explorer" at the time became so popular due to the word 'Internet' compared to a 'Netscape'. So many non-technical people just thought that was the 'way in' when they bought their first PC.

Internet Explorer became popular because it was bundled with Windows.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#799

Post by VBprogrammer » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 9:45 AM UTC

asdefghyk wrote: post #648

kevstev wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are leaving out a really important aspect of the early internet- content discovery was really hard for users. If you were looking for something about Pets until google became dominant, you were just as likely, if not more likely, to type pets.com into your browser as you were to go to a search engine. Getting the initial traffic to your site was really hard in those days, the domain was really important f…

In about 1994 I recall the aim was to find a good page of links to whatever topic interested a person.

Oh yeah, I remember discovering some great content from pages like that back in the day. I also vaguely remember the idea of content rings being a thing.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#800

Post by Jamieee » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 9:47 AM UTC

giomasce wrote: post #794

"As Amazon became large, we decided to use our scale and scope to lead on important social issues". A bold claim for a company widely known to exploit and underpay workers in distribution warehouses.

And their anti-union movements. https://www.doitwithoutdues.com/