This rings very similar to the Startup Way, Eric Ries’s new book about how larger organizations need to functionalize entrepreneurship and the successor to the Lean Startup. I’m reading it right now and having started an internal startup at a public software company years ago, it’s really quite good. My guess is Ben is reading it right now based on some of the verbiage like “atomized teams” that Eric uses repeatedly in the book.
There is nearly a decade of precedent for complaint-free use of the amzn.com domain here on HN[0].
The amzn.com link I provided is as much an Amazon link as your expanded version (both domains are owned by Amazon[1]).
I choose not to use the official, shortest a.co option (growing in popularity here[2][3]) because it obscures a tiny bit more context (the Amazon Standard Identification Number is usually recognizable as such).
In this case Amazon promises the shorter url IS a permalink, it does not make the claim that the longer link will be permanent to the best of my knowledge, although it's a good guess they will also be retained.
