

Leaving Amazon: What I learned over the last four years - iseff
http://www.iseff.com/post/90245011/leaving-amazon-what-i-learned-over-the-last-four-years

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neilo
I am envious of someone talking so highly of a company they are leaving. I
can't say I ever have. Good luck on your new adventure!

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visitor4rmindia
I agree completely with the point on "customer obsession". The last company I
worked for didn't have much of a customer focus while my current company is
truly obsessed with the value we deliver to the end customer.

Needless to say the earlier company has gone under while the current company
has been going from strength to strength.

I'm not to clear on the point of "frugality" though. My current company does
spend a lot on what could be considered trivial stuff to make us comfortable
and it makes for a rewarding working environment. Does anyone have an opinion
on "frugality"?

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wildwood
Frugality is probably relative to the industry you're in. Amazon is a retail
company, where margins are low, and the overall health of the company can
hinge a lot on managing all the seemingly small expenses that crop up in
running a business.

If you're in a higher-margin business like software, maybe the Frugality
trade-offs look different. Would Fog Creek be doing substantially better if it
spent substantially less per developer? They might be doing a little better,
but I doubt it would be enough to materially impact the business. And it may
require that they put more of the company's resources into recruiting and
hiring, to handle increased turnover.

I suspect that the author is heading to a startup as his next step, which may
be why Frugality is standing out to him. If you're not cash-flow-positive yet
in a business, then keeping your spend rate down by any means necessary can
make the difference between success and failure.

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daveambrose
My favorite line:

"But, I don’t think this is the only reason Frugality is a core value.
Amazon’s focus on customer experience means that they are always trying to
lower prices. If the company can do something more cheaply and pass those
savings on to the customer, they will."

~~~
erlanger
I still don't think that "doors for desks" is the right way to treat your
employees, no matter how bargain-crazy your vision.

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blasdel
I don't think you understand -- doors make terrific desks!

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arupchak
The point of the door desk is more than just saving money on a desk. It serves
as a constant reminder that you should not spend money on something that does
not help your customers. You can argue that this is a bad way to treat your
developers, but most people would agree that a desk is a lousy way to spend
money instead of, say, having better technical equipment.

~~~
erlanger
Developers are still people, and people do care about aesthetics.

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unalone
Can you link me to this "doors for desks" thing? This argument's interesting,
but I can't say I've ever heard of this before.

~~~
blasdel
Doors are large, sturdy, _finished_ pieces of flat tree-product. They are very
cheap compared to material intended for counters, and are available used for
free. They already have a hole (doorknob) for you to put your cables through.

For legs you can use some combination of: shelving, filing cabinets,
sawhorses, brackets+lumber, and a-la-carte legs.

At my parent's software startup they used doors for desks for their whole
20-year run. Be careful though -- with great surface area comes great
responsibility! Once my mom's desk clutter reached critical mass, it stayed
that way for 15 years (18" deep in the back, 2" in the front).

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sofal
Other perspectives:

<http://coderific.com/employers/7>

[http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Amazon-com-
Reviews-E6036.ht...](http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Amazon-com-
Reviews-E6036.htm)

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timr
_"This comes after three years of full-time work and a summer internship in
2005. Surprisingly (or not, if you know Amazon’s growth), that made me older
than something like 80% of all Amazon employees in Seattle, the headquarters
(and older than a much higher percentage of ALL Amazon employees)."_

The next time that someone tries to tell me that software development isn't a
young man's game, I'm going to point to this. Three years out of college, and
he's older than _eighty percent_ of the company's employees? Even for the
software industry, that's incredibly suspicious.

~~~
iseff
I guess I should've been more clear: "older" did not mean age, "older" meant
"at Amazon longer than others."

~~~
timr
Ah. Still suspicious, but in an entirely different way...

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RyanGWU82
I worked at Amazon from 2008 to 2009. There were a number of recent college
graduates there, but the average age felt a bit older than that. I don't have
any data to back this up, but Amazon most certainly does not hire an unusual
proportion of "young" people.

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njharman
Interesting, but I hoped author learned more than 2 things in 4 years.

~~~
Hexstream
Yeah, I expected he'd come up with a Top Ten(tm).

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radu_floricica
Damn, a fine post. Read somewhere a long time ago a common trait of long time
successful companies is a clear and commonly applied mission statement. It
doesn't have to be printed in the company brosure, but has to be a set of core
values which describe the company.

What's really nice in this post, and _very_ rare today, is that he stopped the
count at 2. It's such a simple thing, and yet so powerful. I have no idea who
this guy is, but I think highly of him already.

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wensing
Hey wait a minute! I totally know you. You went to the U(C)! Hah!

Also, I spotted a copy Founders at Work infiltrating your office:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/iseff/434121419/in/photostream/>

Do all devs at Amazon have offices with doors?

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jodrellblank
Since when is interrupting someone's life to shove an advert in their face
considered "helping the customer", "making their life easier" or "making their
experience with your company better"?

All advertising email is spam, "solicited" is just a weasel-word to sugar coat
the fact that you are trying to pound your company name into someone's head
harder than all your competitors are doing with their name, and keeping up the
status quo that this is an acceptable thing to be doing.

 _Obviously, not all customers find this to be the greatest experience_

Do _any_ customers find receiving an advert in the middle of their daily
workflow _the greatest experience_? A _great experience_ of any kind?

[Edit: transactional email, though, sure - make that more pleasant]

~~~
msg
I get worthwhile notice of new albums by my favorite bands once in a while.
Marketing isn't necessarily about self-promotion, it's also about making the
connection between what you have and what somebody else already wanted. In
good (Soviet) marketing, product searches for you.

