
Bezos: A CEO Who Can Write (2018) - tapanjk
https://mondaynote.com/bezos-a-ceo-who-can-write-2f368ee36599
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DSingularity
“The diversity of products demands that we employ modern regression techniques
like trained random forests of decision trees to flexibly incorporate
thousands of product attributes at rank time….Now, if the eyes of some
shareowners dutifully reading this letter are by this point glazing over, I
will awaken you by pointing out that, in my opinion, these techniques are not
idly pursued — they lead directly to free cash flow.”

I often myself hating Amazon for what I see as a potentially cancerous machine
of economic consolidation. Still, can't help but appreciate this mans vision.
Very prescient of him. I find stepping back to get a systematic view of things
extremely difficult. The box really does trap you. Bezos should be praised for
his ability to do this with a company and product as large and deep as Amazon.
His attention to detail and his ability to synthesize has clearly paid off big
for Amazon.

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b_tterc_p
It always shocked me how bad most people were at writing having completed a
university degree. Just a simple ability to state a claim and then explain why
it is true is often out of reach.

~~~
BurningFrog
Writing was never part of my physics/CS degree, and I wouldn't have expected
it to be.

I did learn to write later by participating in internet forums like this one.

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jsty
Was there no labs / project component that you needed to do lab reports or
academic paper-style writeups for? I did joint Maths-Physics which was mostly
theoretical and still had a fair amount of (technical) writing to do as part
of my degree.

~~~
BurningFrog
There was the occasional one. I stumbled through them. There was very little
focus on that side.

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pixelmonkey
I wish one of Amazon's "Principles" were openness/transparency, because I
think it'd be great to see some of the _internal_ memos Bezos writes to
colleagues and how they debate their thinking in writing. Amazon has always
been a "skate where the puck is going" kind of company, unrivaled for customer
obsession, and I think it'd be great to see their thinking on things like the
Whole Foods acquisition, the Fire flop, the surprising growth of AWS, the
future of UPS/FedEx, Kindles in a multi-device world, last mile drone
delivery, surprising stickiness of Prime, entry into display ad server market,
among any number of other topics. I imagine internal Amazon mailing lists for
execs are like a rich archive of Stratechery posts but written by hundreds of
smart thinkers/writers (and perhaps moderated by Bezos himself!)

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jayd16
I'm told that Amazon meetings are focused around a prepared white paper on the
subject at hand with 10 minutes of document reading at the start of the
meeting. I find this idea fairly provocative and I'd love to see some of the
documents in question.

~~~
milesward
Works good :)

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Rainymood
>There was no centralized repository of all the letters, so I decided to
collect all of them here. I’ll keep updating this list every year. Let me know
your feedback/ideas regarding this collection.

This is bullshit, there are many sites hosting the letters. Literally the
first google hit [1].

[1] [https://www.cbinsights.com/research/bezos-amazon-
shareholder...](https://www.cbinsights.com/research/bezos-amazon-shareholder-
letters/)

~~~
arikr
There's also a Kindle book compilation of many of them.

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emit_time
One thing Tim Ferriss likes to talk about is how a difficult writing class he
took lead to improved grades in all of his other classes, and he think it's
attributed to the clarity in which he cultivated, and evaluated thoughts.

~~~
yura
Did he ever mention the name of the class?

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emit_time
I don't remember the name, but the teacher for the class was a famous
nonfiction author John McPhee[0], and I believe you needed to apply, or win a
lottery to get in the class.

John McPhee wrote "Levels of the Game"

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McPhee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McPhee)

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checktheorder
...clear directives to upper management that workers' attempts to secure
living wages and humane workplaces will not be tolerated, and that Rule of
Acquisition number 211 must be rigorously adhered to at all times.

~~~
wardbradt
Thanks. I had not heard of these before. For anyone else interested:
[https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition](https://memory-
alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition)

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ChrisSD
> Amazon Prime subscriptions have topped 100M

I'm not surprised. I had trouble stopping them giving me free subscriptions
for a week or a month at a time. The kicker is it automatically rolls over
into a paid subscription so I need to keep my wits about me in case I've been
signed up.

I wrote to them many times saying I don't want to be signed up to Prime. They
always apologise and cancel my subscription but then it happens again. The
only thing that seems to have worked is removing my credit card.

~~~
elliekelly
> The kicker is it automatically rolls over into a paid subscription

This is how I wound up an Audible subscriber for two years without knowing. I
only found out when the card I had on file with Audible (& Amazon) expired and
they charged my sister's card that she had used _once_ on my Amazon Prime
account and had since been deleted as a payment method.

I happened to be in the middle of a year-long backpacking trip at the time
otherwise I'm sure I would have needed to update my card info with Amazon for
one reason or another and then I wonder if I ever would have noticed the
Audible charges at all.

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solidasparagus
Links to all letters: [https://medium.com/@hooda/every-jeff-bezos-letter-to-
shareho...](https://medium.com/@hooda/every-jeff-bezos-letter-to-shareholders-
since-1997-b3cb57914cab)

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dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16955035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16955035)

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JohnJamesRambo
Wish I hadn’t read that Prime is going to $119 from $99. Maybe I’ll start
doing the free shipping thing instead.

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hoorayimhelping
It already has. This article came out last August.

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sadmann1
How can you make sure its not ghostwriting

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zaat
In 1997? when he was still riding his old battered Toyota?

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coldtea
Yeah, don't believe the hype. He studied at Princeton, worked for years at
fintech, became Project Manager at a bank, and then V.P of a hedge fund, and
he also got $300,000 from his parents to invest in his new company.

This wasn't a rags to riches story...

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bin0
300k -> 125b is still staggering growth. All though, Andrew Carnegie still has
him beat (in terms of inflation-adkusted wealth and starting position).

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pankajdoharey
The article was written by the founder of BeBOX and BeOS

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panic
It may seem surprising that a corporate executive is able to read and write,
but research shows that literacy among CEOs is rapidly increasing. According
to the IMF, executive literacy rates are on target to pass 50% by as early as
2022. Of course, there are still many challenges to overcome, but I think we
can agree that Jeff's story here is an inspiration to many around the world.

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mattkevan
Just £5 can provide a Fortune 500 CEO with a months’ supply of writing
materials. Text WORD to 089343 to donate today.

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pikapikamtf
i think it is best not to idolise anyone, especially a figurehead like the
subject of this article. This company's behaviour towards its employees is
notorious, how did the style of writing help those people?

