
Amazon War Story #1: Jeff Bezos (2011) - rhema
https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzVeRq#110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzVeRq
======
bambax
> _Jeff Bezos has all these incredibly intelligent, experienced domain experts
> surrounding him at huge meetings, and on a daily basis he thinks of shit
> that they never saw coming._

This isn't a story about Bezos' genius. It's a story about bad corporate
culture.

What's really happening is that people are afraid to think in the presence of
the boss -- not just afraid to express their thoughts, but afraid to have
them. All the boss has to do in those meetings is state the obvious, and all
the courtiers fall around in awe.

And indeed it's explicit in this story as well: note the "jury of VPs" who
wait for a clue from the boss to know whether they can laugh, and the people
who come back from a meeting with the boss "licking their wounds" and going
back to "a cave".

Obviously Bezos is very smart; it's possible he's "the smartest guy in the
room" most times; and it's likely he doesn't have a lot of patience for fools.
But what this shows is people are terrified of him, and he likes it, or at
least he doesn't do much to correct it.

~~~
abrookewood
And yet they continue to go from strength to strength. I think you're right,
and that the logical outcome should be poor company performance, but clearly
that's not the case.

~~~
sneak
And yet they built Lightsail instead of fixing Beanstalk to actually compete
with GAE/Heroku. The mind reels.

~~~
mcculley
What do you find wrong with Beanstalk that is addressed by GAE/Heroku?

~~~
sneak
Three clicks and my github commits on master trigger builds and deploys.

Beanstalk requires manually setting up lambda functions and other nonsense to
trigger stuff.

------
l33tbro
What's probably crucial to understanding this favourable appraisal of Bezos is
the "reply-all" gaffe that he mentions before the war story.

After speaking candidly about Bezos as a control freak and a tyrant in the
original post (1), it's no surprise he followed up with a gushing and face-
saving post about his genius and prescience.

(1)
[https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX](https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX)

~~~
saosebastiao
I don’t know. I have experienced Amazon and think it is a plague of a company.
If it is not the worst company culture in the world, I shudder to think what
could possibly supersede it. With that said, I still have a pretty high
opinion of Bezos. I just think he made a handful of mistakes that may have
accelerated his success at the expense of some long term stability (yes I
think Amazon will eventually see a fiery implosion). Intelligent people still
make mistakes.

------
rukittenme
"for the last six and a half years, I have never once ragged on Amazon
publicly."

glad to see _nothing_ changed with this post. its not even a war story. tl;dr
bezos likes direct communication because hes busy.

~~~
sparky_z
I think you're misinterpreting the context here. This is a followup to a post
where he _did_ say some unflattering things about Amazon. It was intended as
an internal communication, but he accidentally made it public. So this post is
damage control. "Sorry guys, I don't do that sort of thing on purpose, here's
a flattering story to even things out."

~~~
rukittenme
I see. I misread it as him posting unflattering things about Google.

~~~
hkmurakami
iirc he said negative things regarding AMZN within the GOOG platform rant G+
post, so your "misread" is sort of half correct.

------
TheDong
This references his "google platform rant". The original discussion for that
post can be found here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3101876](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3101876)

Since the original was deleted, you can find it under the "Originally shared
by" section in
[https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX](https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX)

~~~
peterwwillis
That rant was hilarious. Nearly everything he claims Google does right and
Amazon does wrong, ends up screwing Google, and makes Amazon more profitable.

------
sp527
Expecting a generalist software engineer to know data mining and machine
learning (well) is about equivalent to expecting your primary doctor to be
able to do cardiology and heart surgery.

~~~
tibbetts
I expect a generalist doctor to have a good understanding of those things
though she might not be in practice at specific surgical techniques. A primary
care physician who doesn’t know those things is a specialist in primary care
who will have difficult helping patients make decisions about more specialized
care.

Similarly a generalist software engineer should know what things are realistic
and possible with data mining and machine learning. Just like they should know
what is possible and realistic in cpu design or network protocols. They might
not know all the latest tricks but they will be able to design and advise on
systems which depend on these capabilities.

~~~
oblio
> Similarly a generalist software engineer should know what things are
> realistic and possible with data mining and machine learning. Just like they
> should know what is possible and realistic in cpu design or network
> protocols. They might not know all the latest tricks but they will be able
> to design and advise on systems which depend on these capabilities.

I'm sorry to say this, but your expectations are insane.

Or maybe I'm misinterpreting you. I know that a CPU has pipelines, multiple
cores, an ALU, a MMU, a FPU, several levels of caches, etc., but I have no
idea what's "possible or realistic" in CPU design. At least not in any way
that I'd be able to argue toe to toe with an actual hardware engineer working
on CPUs.

I also know about network protocols, L1/L2/L3/L4(7), IP, TCP vs UDP, etc., but
same thing, a real network engineer would wipe the floor with me regarding
"possible and realistic" network protocols.

Same for data mining or machine learning. Sure, if you held a gun to my head I
could probably design something, but I definitely wouldn't feel confident
going to production with it in any serious capacity unless I consulted some
people who actually know the field.

This field is way too broad for 1 person to cover everything at a decent level
of competence. I think that people who think otherwise are deluding
themselves.

Or you're thinking about a generalist providing a shallow level of advice.
Maybe that could apply, but I don't know who that would help...

------
kuharich
Prior discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3138826](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3138826)

------
nikofeyn
i absolutely hate this story every time i see it. it's so filled with
hyperbole and general fawning that it contains nothing useful. and i am sure
bezos is indeed intelligent, but this story's climax is him pointing out
something relatively mundane in what i am sure was a mundane presentation. and
i still have the same question i did when i first saw this on hacker news. who
is steve yegge and why should i care?

------
everdev
Great read. Reminded me that somehow Google+ is still around. Google usually
kills off poor performing apps.

~~~
elicash
Discussion of that here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15514990](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15514990)

------
pravinva
There ought to be a #TooOld similar to #TooSoon

