
The Day I Met Jeff Bezos - mike2477
http://blog.highfive.com/the-day-i-met-jeff-bezos-
======
incision
A couple of things irk me about this article, but that could simply be due to
the incredible vagueness.

 _> "He paused another moment and then said, “I know that’s not your plan
because it can’t be done. What is your real plan?”

He told us he wanted to see a new version the very next day. The request
didn’t seem to make much sense. In fact, to this day I’m not sure what the
product will be used for—but we dropped everything else we were working on and
scrambled to get the demo done in time."_

So the author worked (presumably quite hard) on something, received dismissive
feedback that didn't make any sense, didn't question any of it, scrambled to
re-implement on an uninformed guess for the next day then (surprise) got
slapped around again.

That honestly sounds more like a loyalty/submissiveness test of some sort than
anything else.

Ideally, that meeting was a great opportunity to challenge the man and earn
some respect from him or possibly lose some for him depending on how it plays
out.

 _> "He wasn’t thinking about the feature; he was thinking about the customer
experience."_

What is wrong in the culture / education of engineering that people have to be
taught this after they start working?

~~~
protomyth
"What is wrong in the culture / education of engineering that people have to
be taught this after they start working?"

I wonder how many universities make their engineers or developers actually
build something for an outside or even internal customer.

Strangely, vocational folks deal with customers quite a bit in learning and
learn to think in those terms. Nothing like having to redo the doors on a
cabinet or rerun some plumping to make you think first.

~~~
jasondemeuse
> I wonder how many universities make their engineers or developers actually
> build something for an outside or even internal customer.

Don't most?

At my alma mater, students in either Telecommunications or Comp Sci majors
were required to do a capstone project their final semester for an outside
client/customer. They made a big deal about the demo day for it and it was
always a cool event. Considering my school was a large public school that
isn't known specifically for its computer science/IT, it seems strange that
more schools don't do this. It seems like most CS friends from other schools
had the same experience as well.

It's really too bad if some people don't get a chance to do this. There are
countless things during that project that were good learning experiences, but
they would have been awful if it had happened when I actually had a real job.
I can definitely say that project determined a lot of my future plans.

~~~
protomyth
"Don't most?"

It doesn't seem like it, and I would bet it has something to do with local
population size and budget.

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bluedevil2k
Would have been nice to know the product in question, so he could relate
concrete examples of how Bezos is meticulous in his eye for detail and
customer experience. I mean, it'd be neat reading an article talking about the
first prototyped version of MayDay, and how Bezos laughed about it in the
first meeting, transforming it to what it's become today.

~~~
RyJones
I worked on one of a flotilla of related projects at Lab 126 - none of which
has seen the light of day in toto, but parts of which have escaped into
shipping projects. There's a reason he's reticent - amazon (in the personage
of lab 126), more than any other company I worked with, is insane about
internal security and rumor control.

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marincounty
Is this the way we kiss our bosses "ego" now? Hay Jeff--since you are so
concerned with the customer experience; vet your resellers more carefully--
especially the ones that have dozens of complains about wrong orders, or
counterfit goods? Put away the flying toys, get the ego in check, and go back
to what made you a billionaire--selling the right product, at the right price.
I know it's not glamorous, or stimulating anymore, but it's what the customers
want.

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dmit
Reminds me of this Yegge story:
[https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzV...](https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzVeRq).

~~~
bigs204
thanks. the OP is such a tease with all the missing details. long form ftw.

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hatred
"In fact, to this day I’m not sure what the product will be used for—but we
dropped everything else we were working on and scrambled to get the demo done
in time"

I wanted to know how other developers deal with this phenomenon when you
effectively don't know what your end product is or what it will be used for ?

~~~
RyanZAG
Generally flail around, make assumptions, and scramble to fix things after the
fact. It rarely works very well, but you get your pay check.

~~~
alttab
Yeah, at Amazon they wouldn't tolerate that forever...

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bitb
Who's the narrator here? Mike, Adam, someone else?
[http://imgur.com/gdR785r,iaaBddd#1](http://imgur.com/gdR785r,iaaBddd#1)
[http://imgur.com/gdR785r,iaaBddd#0](http://imgur.com/gdR785r,iaaBddd#0)

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nilkn
It's an interesting story to relate, but it seems to be missing details that
could really flesh it out, and it ended abruptly.

~~~
deleted_account
You can't expect actual content in these blog posts. It's vaguely self
deprecating promotional post with a high-value name drop in the title crafted
to get the link to the front page.

~~~
peterwwillis
With one important takeaway: focus on the customer, not on personal
engineering goals.

~~~
deleted_account
Therein lies the beauty of these types of posts. They allow the reader to fill
in the gaps with their own conclusions without the author risking actual
opinion.

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garg
>The request didn’t seem to make much sense. In fact, to this day I’m not sure
what the product will be used for—but we dropped everything else we were
working on and scrambled to get the demo done in time.

>The next day we returned and presented the feature to Bezos. I knew instantly
that he wasn’t satisfied. For two minutes we stood in silence as Bezos picked
our feature apart. He spoke as if he had already built the product himself.

How could this engineer even hope to solve a problem if he didn't understand
it? Jeff Bezos spoke as if he had already built it because he was probably the
only person who understood what he wanted. The entire story sounds like an
utter waste of time.

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fuzzythinker
Does that mean Bezos doesn't care about AWS? Not likely.. Probably because he
is not the target user.

~~~
JTon
Care you explain how you arrived to that conclusion?

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javert
Bezos must feel like he is surrounded by morons.

~~~
w1ntermute
Compared to Bezos, they probably _are_ morons. That doesn't mean they aren't
probably still well above the average person in terms of skills/intelligence.

~~~
freyr
Or, he's a smart man with a _lot_ more experience than a typical kid fresh out
of college.

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CmonDev
How do you get to present to Bezos "a few month" after joining as a graduate?

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bluishgreen
Feels like the article was an afterthought written around a nice title.

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notastartup
So my question is how do you view the software you created from a customer's
point of view? As someone who creates the software there must be a certain
creative blindness we experience.

I mean I'd love to create a software, revert my brain back to the idea state
and look at the software again.

What is the process of Jeff Bezo's? How does he "rip apart feature by
feature"?

~~~
alttab
The way I do it is try to envision the dumbest, most impatient, penny-pinching
DICK HEAD out there possible, and make him happy.

Any of the following statements destroy customer experience: \- "The customer
should understand that at this point..." \- "The customer already did X, so
its clear that Y..." \- "Waiting 20 seconds isn't that unreasonable." \- "Its
in the terms and conditions so we are covered." \- "What do they expect? We
can't message that perfectly every time."

Don't. Fucking. Compromise. Make the ass holes happy. You will have surpassed
everyone else's expectations by miles.

~~~
CyberpunkDad
Also, if making "the dumbest, most impatient, penny-pinching DICK HEAD out
there" fills you with disgust, disdain, rage, sadness, etc. it might be time
to reconsider your career choice. As much as we may wish it, the users never
go away.

~~~
notastartup
this is what I've been doing for a long time. However, it sometimes forces me
to create more features than I can chew because in my mind, it's a guy paying
$20 a month and wanting A-Z features.

~~~
meric
Keep in mind its often the quality of the features that matter more than the
number of them. No one is going to use a feature that is sometimes very fast
and sometimes take 20 seconds and doesn't work 20% of the time.

