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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

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 9y ago
And yet they built Lightsail instead of fixing Beanstalk to actually compete with GAE/Heroku. The mind reels.
- mcculley 9y ago
  What do you find wrong with Beanstalk that is addressed by GAE/Heroku?
  - sneak 9y ago
    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.
thisisit 9y ago
> the logical outcome should be poor company performance, but clearly that's not the case. But how many years have passed for us to reach this conclusion? The same was said about Richard Fuld and Lehman Brothers under his leadership but it dint end well. To clarify, I am not predicting a poor performance by Amazon here but to think that they are infallible just because they are doing great now is incorrect. When and if they falter these stories will provide ample ammunition for people who "dint see it coming".
Meditato 9y ago
> I think you're right, and that the logical outcome should be poor company performance Wait what? Quarterly company performance is not the only metric for acceptable corporate behavior. That's might makes right logic. Steve Jobs created a hierarchy and corporate culture centered around him that couldn't really exist without him- a house of cards. Now it's eating Apple. Same issue.
ido 9y ago
It's hard to say actually - sorta like "google is super successful and gives out outlandish perks/benefits to its employees ergo it's good to provide such perks/benefits". Where is the direction of causality here, and is there even such? Maybe the perks in the above example actually harm google but their basic business is so strong as to cover for it (just an example, that's not what I'm actually arguing)?
wfo 9y ago
A healthy work environment is not economically optimal. Not even close. It is optimal to take as much from your employees as possible and to give them as little as possible in return; the opposite of a healthy environment and healthy workforce. Amazon practices this efficiency behind the developer console as much as they do in their warehouses. They just can't treat their developers quite as bad as the warehouse workers have it yet because of a temporary market inefficiency -- a dearth of skilled developers. The workplace is an area where if we let the market do its work, it causes social and moral catastrophe and forces all but the tiny few at the top to live in complete misery, which is why we fought and died over hundreds of years against optimal economic efficiency for worker protections, unions, weekends, worker's compensation, overtime pay, etc.

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 9y ago

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

mcculley 9y ago
What do you find wrong with Beanstalk that is addressed by GAE/Heroku?
- sneak 9y ago
  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.

thisisit 9y ago

> the logical outcome should be poor company performance, but clearly that's not the case. But how many years have passed for us to reach this conclusion? The same was said about Richard Fuld and Lehman Brothers under his leadership but it dint end well. To clarify, I am not predicting a poor performance by Amazon here but to think that they are infallible just because they are doing great now is incorrect. When and if they falter these stories will provide ample ammunition for people who "dint see it coming".

Meditato 9y ago

> I think you're right, and that the logical outcome should be poor company performance Wait what? Quarterly company performance is not the only metric for acceptable corporate behavior. That's might makes right logic. Steve Jobs created a hierarchy and corporate culture centered around him that couldn't really exist without him- a house of cards. Now it's eating Apple. Same issue.

ido 9y ago

It's hard to say actually - sorta like "google is super successful and gives out outlandish perks/benefits to its employees ergo it's good to provide such perks/benefits". Where is the direction of causality here, and is there even such? Maybe the perks in the above example actually harm google but their basic business is so strong as to cover for it (just an example, that's not what I'm actually arguing)?

wfo 9y ago

A healthy work environment is not economically optimal. Not even close. It is optimal to take as much from your employees as possible and to give them as little as possible in return; the opposite of a healthy environment and healthy workforce. Amazon practices this efficiency behind the developer console as much as they do in their warehouses. They just can't treat their developers quite as bad as the warehouse workers have it yet because of a temporary market inefficiency -- a dearth of skilled developers. The workplace is an area where if we let the market do its work, it causes social and moral catastrophe and forces all but the tiny few at the top to live in complete misery, which is why we fought and died over hundreds of years against optimal economic efficiency for worker protections, unions, weekends, worker's compensation, overtime pay, etc.