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Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

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Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#991

Post by tdeck »

laurent92 wrote: post #516
powersnail wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that the importance of optimizing brand name is over-hyped. A lot of it is retrospective reasoning, arguing why such name is good for popularity after the brand becomes popular.

Legend says Steve Jobs told his two cofounders, who were scratching their heads over an innovative name, that if they didn’t find a name within 24hrs he would incorporate as Apple. Which is good enough and no reason to hold up the whole process for a decent name.

I just ran across this talk where Jobs basically makes that claim:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0lvMgMrNDlg

He says it was also because he liked apples, and it was ahead of Atari in the phone book.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#992

Post by danellis »

breakfastduck wrote: post #880
danellis wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also worth noting that the idea didn't grow over time I doubt that he started out imagining he would build the world's biggest cloud hosting platform or open the first chain of checkoutless grocery stores.

The internet - the only place you can find a snarky comment doubting the validity of a statement made by the actual 2nd ever employee of Amazon, who knows infinitely more about what Jeff Bezos wanted to achieve than the doubting commenter.

Yes, it's wonderful that there's somewhere we're allowed to do that.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#994

Post by efreak »

lostlogin wrote: post #553
jasoncrawford wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard the same story (I joined in 2004). The version I heard was that Jeff was driving cross-country NY -> Seattle and was on the phone with his lawyer about incorporation papers, and the lawyer misheard “Cadabra” as “Cadaver”. That's when Jeff knew he needed a better name.

This instantly reminded me of the story about Microsoft posting a dev a dead fish. https://olhardigital.com.br/en/2020/05/23/news/the-strange-s...

That's an interesting story, but that article and others on the site have weird issues that can't be put down as non-native English. Extra words that make no sense (Steve Jobs founded us), and phrases added into the ends of sentences along with spacing/punctuation mistakes (But please, pretend you’re interested in everyone’s questions, ”Jobs said at the time, as carry* the website Windows Central.*) Odd issues to see on a news website. Also, all postings are double-dated, once within the text and once after.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#995

Post by atq2119 »

grey-area wrote: post #974
atq2119 wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unfortunate, but it's also an invariant of human behaviour. The alternative is to get leaders through inheritance, which isn't any better. So the best thing to do is to try to nudge the system in a direction where the worst tendencies are mitigated: build institutions in which non-sociopaths can thrive politically, and allow a reasonable path for outsiders to join the political process. The US in particular i…

The alternative is to get leaders through inheritance, which isn't any better. I refuse to believe that is the only alternative.

What would you suggest?

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#996

Post by tibbetts »

logicchains wrote: post #644
arp242 wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like corporations really have a better track record. Quite a few of the colonisation efforts were done by corporations or under private management (not "nations"). Corporations hid and obscured facts about asbestos, smoking, climate change, etc. for decades. Various corporations are not exactly well known for their excellent treatment of people in various less well-off regions (Shell in Nigeria, Dole in Sout…

>It's not like corporations really have a better track record. The governments of Russia, Germany and China killed over a hundred million of their own people last century, no corporation comes anything near that.

The capitalist colonization of North America, complete with genocide and chattel slavery, deserves at least honorable mention. Also the East India Company, and the Irish famines orchestrated by British landowners, and many more.

Just because the companies doing the murder are more numerous and regularly go out of business, doesn’t mean that capitalism’s hands are free of blood.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#997

Post by Tepix »

GizmoSwan wrote: post #266
Tepix wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad it's not a sailing yacht. He shares the vision of Gerard O'Neill. Making it reality will require large amounts of money.

It is really trendy for billionaires to be interested in space right now. I think they want to make money there. They believe that too big to fail on earth means that they should go where nobody has made any money. O'Neill was product of academia, a physicist and not a head of corporation.

I believe that saying it is "trendy" is missing the point. Both Bezos and Musk have been space nerds since their youth.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#998

Post by randomsearch »

RC_ITR wrote: post #985
randomsearch wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS is 57% of Amazon's profit in 2020. Cloud has barely begun.

This may seem like a silly question, but what is the point of the cloud if people don't buy goods / services over the Internet? If ecommerce remained flat for the rest of time, do you really think the cloud would grow?

I don't really see the cloud as attached to retail. But yes, if online retail remained flat, the cloud would still grow. Because most software will be built using the cloud, for the cloud, for the foreseeable future (I'd stake confidently 50 years, probably at least 100, perhaps forever).

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#999

Post by xibalba »

meepmorp wrote: post #473
xibalba wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It had a name, and that name was "Cadabra". Lol, so your take is that you have a better handle on the history of Amazon than its founder? He is likely referring to a point in time when Amazon was just an idea.

>> ps. amazon employee #2 You know, there's actually a pretty good chance that he's not pulling this out of his ass.

And Bezos, who wrote the email, was employee 0. So, by that logic, Bezos claim > employee #2's claim.

Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

#1000

Post by RC_ITR »

randomsearch wrote: post #998
RC_ITR wrote: post #985

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may seem like a silly question, but what is the point of the cloud if people don't buy goods / services over the Internet? If ecommerce remained flat for the rest of time, do you really think the cloud would grow?

I don't really see the cloud as attached to retail. But yes, if online retail remained flat, the cloud would still grow. Because most software will be built using the cloud, for the cloud, for the foreseeable future (I'd stake confidently 50 years, probably at least 100, perhaps forever).

I think you’re being very short sighted.

“Retail” is just the part of commerce that’s somewhat moved online today. “E-commerce” is any type of commerce moving online.

I really struggle to think of reasons as to why people will pay for software if it doesn’t ultimately lead to commerce.

EDIT: For context, BABA used it e-commerce lead in China to become the largest gateway for utility bill-pay. Very much not retail, but still e-commerce. The internet is a tool run by humans to serve humans, & if humans aren’t transacting using the internet, everything else about the internet is inherently less valuable.

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