
Job Posting for Amazon.com Before it Launched - capdiz
http://readwrite.com/2010/12/27/history_job_posting_for_amazoncom_before_it_launch
======
macavity23
'extremely talented c/c++/unix developers'... 'able to build complex systems
in about one third the time most competent people think possible'

This language conveys so much more competence than the standard 'seeking unix
ninja rockstar' stuff that seems to be de rigeur these days.

~~~
gutnor
Isn't that a sure way of not getting anybody competent ? Isn't that the
hallmark of incompetence to think that you are better than everybody else.

When I was younger, I was also producing software faster, doing in 1 week what
the senior were expecting in 1 month. Well, in reality it took the rest of the
month to make it really works, but in my mind at the time I made it faster.

Nowadays I would still beat the deadlines with working software _most of the
time_. _Most of the time_ is the kicker. I _know_ that I _could_ need 1 month
even though I will likely do it faster.

The more I know the more I find stuff that I don't and the less I would
present myself as "the best".

Unreliable, delusional, unexperimented people, ... will reply to that offer.

~~~
wilfra
Correct. And it seems people have only figured that out recently. Companies
that really do only hire the top 1% are starting to post jobs that look like a
whole lot more people are qualified for. See Instagram, for example:

<http://instagram.com/about/jobs/mobile-engineer>

Tons and tons and tons of people meet those requirements, and they surely get
a mountain of resumes, most of which never even get a phone screen. But they
don't scare away people who are actually qualified but just don't see
themselves as 'rockstars' or 'ninjas' or 'the best in the World' - even though
they are.

~~~
michaelochurch
_But they don't scare away people who are actually qualified but just don't
see themselves as 'rockstars' or 'ninjas' or 'the best in the World' - even
though they are._

Yah, they select against self-awareness. I think the dirty truth is that
_thinking_ you're the best in the world is more important to these companies
than actually _being_ good. If you have an outsized self-perception, you'll
put up with unreasonable deadlines and terrible conditions on account of
pride. That's attractive to someone who's in the business of exploiting
naivete.

I'm a mediocre (96-97th percentile) software engineer whose expertise pertains
more to the software ecosystem and economy. Knowing it (and myself) as well as
I do, I _know_ I'm not the best in the world. I even have that rare trait of
knowing what I'm missing, and there's quite a lot in that category. But I'm
more than good enough for 99.8% of the tasks that people need done, given
reasonable learning time.

~~~
aleyan
I am curious, how did you assign yourself such a precise percentile (96-97th)?

~~~
michaelochurch
The model is here: [http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/25/programmer-
au...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/25/programmer-autonomy-
is-a-1-trillion-issue/) . I don't claim that it's perfect, but it's the best
simple model of devonomics I can come up with.

These percentiles are a bit shady, I'll admit, because "programmers" isn't a
well-defined group. I have a pretty strong sense that I'm 1.7-1.8 on the
software engineer scale but a weak sense of how to define the population.
Whether I'm 96th percentile vs. 99th depends more on how tightly or loosely we
define "programmer". I tend to think of myself as about 94th because I define
it tightly, but I would usually say that I'm 96-97th in congruence with the
looser definition that a lot of people use.

------
Pwnguinz
Look at how similar this copy looks to any other SV startups these days (minus
some buzz words like "Cloud", "Social", "Disruptive", etc). It goes to show
that hiring (well) is hard. Even harder to gauge whether or not a company is
worth applying to from the job descriptions alone.

Phrases like: "You must have experience designing and building large and
complex (yet maintainable) systems" are so vague and ambiguous that if I
honestly saw this post from some guy named "Bezos" in '94, I would have
written off as a jokester.

At least in '94 they haven't started using the word "disruptive" as if it's
something you can do to a whole industry overnight. Thank goodness.

~~~
sspiff
I agree, based on this ad, I would discard the company as an overreaching
startup founder with a vague idea of how to reach out to developers and
destined to fail within the next two years.

In this case though, I would have been wrong.

~~~
btilly
The difference that you're missing is where the ad happened.

It happened on Usenet, before most people had heard of Usenet, naming
technologies that were brand spanking new. How new? The most popular browser
was Mosaic. Netscape was barely founded and had not released a browser yet.
<http://oreilly.com/gnn/> was the first commercial website and was under 1
year old.

That shows a lot of knowledge of the tech world of the day. "Overreaching
startup founders" weren't yet a significant concern. The target audience would
realize quickly that this was risky, but unlikely to be a BS ad.

~~~
DanBC
> It happened on Usenet, before most people had heard of Usenet,

Wait what? Usenet had been established for many years by 1994, and many people
were using it. You could access it via several online providers and their
Internet gateways. (Here's the first message from an AOL account:
([https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/comp.dcom....](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/comp.dcom.telecom/xms1mv6_g5k/9JO2ZvEZQM8J))
)

~~~
DavidAdams
That should say, "before most people were even aware of the internet, and who
would go on to use the internet having never even known that Usenet existed."
Back in '94, I think that most internet users used Usenet to some extent, but
certainly "most people" in the world had never heard of Usenet, and never
would, and still haven't.

------
ern
If you are looking for a list of significant USENET posts, including this one
by Bezos, go to: <http://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce_20.html>
The list was created in 2001, when Google Groups reconstructed a huge archive
of USENET postings.

~~~
reitzensteinm
I don't know why exactly, but it's really grating me that people have been
replying to them. It may go against the spirit of Usenet but it would have
been nice if Google disabled replies in their user interface, or at least
filtered the display somehow.

It's like going to a museum and seeing chewing gum stuck to the sides of the
exhibits. "OMG 30 Years..." - yes mate, thanks for that.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/net.genera...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/net.general/2pZYKaXpS0g/EiwFg5OMPaEJ)

~~~
mootothemax
_It's like going to a museum and seeing chewing gum stuck to the sides of the
exhibits._

I agree with you, but on a fun side-note, I remember climbing the bell tower
of a centuries-old church in the middle of nowhere, and being staggered by the
amount of Victorian-era graffiti carved in to the walls.

I guess that the need to write "TOM WOZ 'ERE" goes back a _long_ way.

~~~
pivotal
It's funny, new graffiti is vandalism, but old graffiti becomes history in and
of itself. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, they have an entire
Egyptian temple that at some point was shipped across the ocean, and to me the
most fascinating part of it was the graffiti left by occupying British
soldiers long after it was built. Go figure.

------
klon
But who got the job?

~~~
thinkling
Possibly Paul (Barton-)Davis [1]?

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davis_(programmer)>

------
krmmalik
That job posting has taught me so much in just a few paragraphs.

Even if I was the founder of a well-capitalized StartUp, I'd have great
difficulty in promising people that work for me that we were going to be big.
I just don't have that kind of confidence, yet it shows Bezos knew very
clearly and intuitively that he was going to hit it big.

Sense and definiteness of purpose i think contribute way more to success than
anything else.

I also think it's interesting to see that Bezos shares similar traits to Henry
Ford in that he knew intuitively that it _was_ possible to do certain things
that were seemingly against the grain.

So much learning. So impressed with that job post, even if i can see the
flipside for the candidates assessing that vacancy, since it does seem a
little "out there".

I do wonder if that technique would attract someone like that today. In my own
experience i've found hiring slowly and using non conventional methods for
bringing people into a business seem to work quite well, so perhaps the
economy has changed on this.

Either way, great posting.

Edit: spelling/grammar

~~~
Domenic_S
> _it shows Bezos knew very clearly and intuitively that he was going to hit
> it big._

This is ultra-common with startup founders. They believe unwaveringly in their
eventual success, which is why they're founding a company in the first place.
Who would choose to be a founder if they thought they'd be mediocre and eating
ramen forever?

Some are right, some are deluded. Sometimes with the really good ideas, you
can only decide which after the fact. For every Bezos there are 10,000 or more
guys with the same intuition that failed.

Ultimately, that unwavering belief is table-stakes as a founder. It's what
gets engineers and lawyers and marketing people to come on board and fight the
good fight with you.

------
equity
Why is the link to this job opening posted so often? I see it every 1 - 2
months here. It's not so interesting to see it posted as often as it is.

~~~
kayoone
regular HN reader here, but i have not seen this posted before.

~~~
Pwnguinz
Probably because they don't always make the front page.

See this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4845645>

Posted again, today (as of writing, of course).

------
agumonkey
Alan Kay quoted for truth.

~~~
lifebeyondfife
That's a really interesting snapshot of 1990s nettiquette. On Usenet or Email
you generally selected a pithy quote for your email footer. The trend went out
of fashion I'd say around the turn of the century.

~~~
Evbn
It does when the mailing public stopped using Unix and mail programs that were
smart enough to shell out to external programs to compute the signature. Now
we have webmail where only one company decides what programs you cannise to
compose mail.

------
werencole
I find it odd that this article from two years ago is now No. 3 on Hacker
News. :P

~~~
rpm4321
Are you concerned the subject matter will be out of date ;)

