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Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

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Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#91

Post by neilv »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #88
neilv wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All in all, once an organization gets big enough, power does what power wants, and power wants what is good for them in the short term, regardless of what is good for the organization. This has the ring of truth. Has anyone solved this problem? Is anyone trying to solve this problem? (Or is everyone in a position to work on the problem just playing the game?)

If i’m honest I feel the issue is all the humans with human motivations. An AI run organisation may solve it?

So far, the majority of the "AI" adoption we're seeing since ChatGPT is reflecting some of those undesirable human motivations. (It's actually worse than I thought the baseline human motivations/intention were.)

Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#92

Post by throwaway435675 »

VaedaStrike wrote: post #23

This myth that Amazon is customer obsessed like what part of Amazon are you looking at?

It was at one time maybe, but like all things you have to adapt and move. I think the article got it right, we've shifted from buildings what's best for the customer to building what the customer *thinks* they want.

Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#93

Post by senderista »

Supermancho wrote: post #81
la64710 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has big enough global footprint of offices all over the world that even if someone loses their visa they can easily relocate back to their own country and work on the same projects from any of the massive offices there. And this actually happens all the time. Folks in Amazon move around as needed across border. The idea of h1-b servitude does not hold much relevance for companies like Amazon who have built mas…

> Amazon has big enough global footprint of offices all over the world that even if someone loses their visa they can easily relocate back to their own country and work on the same projects from any of the massive offices there Do you have any evidence that this has ever happened? It's a big company so I assume it's something that's demonstrable. I happen to think that it's unlikely that Amazon leadership would adapt…

This is BS since “return to hub” was decreed.

Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#94

Post by loosetypes »

apparent wrote: post #19

The "leaders are owners" bit is a great idea from the shareholders' perspective, but a bit of a raw deal for the employees. That is, every owner wants the employees to act as if he has as much skin in the game as an owner does. But the employees simply do not. They might have some equity, but at Amazon it would only be the tiniest sliver. If you can convince such employees to act as if they are owners, then good for…

Ownership without corresponding property rights.

Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#95

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

pm90 wrote: post #7

I have principles-fatigue after going through a number of companies that promise to abide by certain good sounding principles only to backtrack at the slightest pushback. I would actually trust a company more if it had no defined principles. Perhaps just honesty and transparency.

I wish all companies would just state the obvious and list the first principle as "Make Money".

Perhaps it should go without saying, but sometime around the 90s or so, many companies tried to pretend that they had these lofty, societal goals, and they tried to pretend that making money was almost secondary.

The reason I think it's important to list "make money" as the first, primary goal is that it makes it clear that all other goals are subservient to that one. The thing that makes my eyes roll about principles and mission statements is I've seen them all promptly thrown out the window when a company's money making machine is threatened. Essentially, they're principles when they're aligned with making money, but if circumstances change in the slightest, the principles will be jettisoned if they make it harder to make money (which kind of makes it hard to call them "principles" in the first place - maybe "guidelines" would be a better term?)

Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#96

Post by stevage »

pm90 wrote: post #7

I have principles-fatigue after going through a number of companies that promise to abide by certain good sounding principles only to backtrack at the slightest pushback. I would actually trust a company more if it had no defined principles. Perhaps just honesty and transparency.

They all have one principle: make money. Everything else is negotiable.

Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#97

Post by stevage »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #95
pm90 wrote: post #7

I have principles-fatigue after going through a number of companies that promise to abide by certain good sounding principles only to backtrack at the slightest pushback. I would actually trust a company more if it had no defined principles. Perhaps just honesty and transparency.

I wish all companies would just state the obvious and list the first principle as "Make Money". Perhaps it should go without saying, but sometime around the 90s or so, many companies tried to pretend that they had these lofty, societal goals, and they tried to pretend that making money was almost secondary. The reason I think it's important to list "make money" as the first, primary goal is that it makes it clear tha…

Yeah, I had a few months inside Facebook, and saw this in action on the internal FB. People would raise objections to unethical actions by the company, and the response was basically "Yeah, but it makes soooo much money."

Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#98

Post by stevage »

OrvalWintermute wrote: post #47
pm90 wrote: post #7

I have principles-fatigue after going through a number of companies that promise to abide by certain good sounding principles only to backtrack at the slightest pushback. I would actually trust a company more if it had no defined principles. Perhaps just honesty and transparency.

I can’t help but think of Google’s “Don’t be evil” mantra………. Before their heavy handed censorship machine ramped up

Yeah and the heartfelt promise by the founders to never ever introduce advertising on the Search page because of the unavoidable conflict of interest.

Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#99

Post by stevage »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #39
apparent wrote: post #19

The "leaders are owners" bit is a great idea from the shareholders' perspective, but a bit of a raw deal for the employees. That is, every owner wants the employees to act as if he has as much skin in the game as an owner does. But the employees simply do not. They might have some equity, but at Amazon it would only be the tiniest sliver. If you can convince such employees to act as if they are owners, then good for…

I don't understand how slivers of stock is supposed to incentivize anyone to do anything. Amazon has 1.5 million employees. Say that it's a completely fair co-op and I have a 1-in-1.5-millionth share of the whole company. Their market cap is about 2.5T, so this is about 1.6 million USD in stock that I own. (By amazing coincidence, their market cap in USD is about the square of the employee headcount) But if I'm a ran…

>For that impossible extraordinary 80-hours-per-week double effort, my stock would go up... a dollar, right? Roughly 1-in-1.5-millionth of my 1.6 million dollars of stock.

That might be the case if workers were bricklayers and output was measured in walls. But supposedly this incentive might cause you to have a brilliant idea that makes billions for the company, and then you're gaining more than a few bucks.

Re: Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

#100

Post by greesil »

pm90 wrote: post #7

I have principles-fatigue after going through a number of companies that promise to abide by certain good sounding principles only to backtrack at the slightest pushback. I would actually trust a company more if it had no defined principles. Perhaps just honesty and transparency.

Stock price is usually a principle. I've never heard of a company being completely nihilistic, but maybe there are some out there.
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