> When Warren Buffett studies a company, he doesn’t see a checklist of mental models he has to apply
He's probably trying to explain the guidance from Farnam Street. The most popular answer on their internal forum on how to use/apply mental models was to treat mental models as checklist. I was a Farnam Street member until last year.
...and it's not always simple to practice/apply mental models after reading them in a list. I used to be a member of Farnam Street until last year. Most of the members weren't sure how they could apply the mental models per their internal forum. The top answer was to use the list of models as a checklist.
It does matter because a company's valuation is driven by EBIDA and multiple, both of which depend on the type of business (e.g. SaaS, Cloud Services, Real Estate etc). In fact, Amazon's valuation jumped significantly starting 2015 primarily because of AWS, which is a pure tech play, not so much by its retail business. (In 2015 Amazon started reporting AWS revenue and margins)
In 2014-2015, if you were a PM / SR PM at Amazon/Google/FB and moved to Bangalore, you would've gotten a Director (at large tech companies) or VP role (at mature startups) easily and would've made the about the same comp as you were making the US. Not sure what the situation is now.
I’m not located in Seattle, but if I was there, and got the details, and was convinced Oleg is right I’d try to mobilize some like minded people, make sure there is no clause forbidding me to do so as I like to have a job, maybe give my boss a heads up (maybe he would even join) and I’d be happy to join his protest. But I believe this should start internally, it will look better to leadership if some of us for example write a one pager on this amazon good bad discrepancy and that the fact many teams are happy doesn’t cover the fact there are apparently some toxic ones. I love my job and I hate the fact the same company can cause others have the opposite experience, it hurts them but also much to lesser extent, hurts all of us at Amazon. Ego hurt, can intimidate candidates, lost prestige. Small problems but still should make us all concerned and driven for action to fix it.
> make sure there is no clause forbidding me to do so as I like to have a job
You realize that any retribution would be a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, right? You can't sign away your right to protest, unless you work for the government as a critical employee (read: firefighters, police).
Have heard many Amazon stories around review being used by managers as a revenge tool. A true incident - a friend of mine and his coworker (same level) didn't get along. Their manager left and this coworker was made the manager since he had longer tenure. My friend received a PIP in 2 months flat and ended up leaving the company rather than put up a fight.
A similar thing happened to me outside of Amazon. When the person I didn't get along with was made my manager I immediately went outside my reporting chain to find a place to transfer (though I considered quitting on the spot)
It didn't really work out though. New team was better but my past followed me and I let the whole experience get me down.
He's probably trying to explain the guidance from Farnam Street. The most popular answer on their internal forum on how to use/apply mental models was to treat mental models as checklist. I was a Farnam Street member until last year.