7 ms·

The Amazon Machine

183 points by runesoerensen 9y ago

andygcook 9y ago
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.
- j_s 9y ago
  https://amzn.com/B01MYG4MNA https://amzn.com/B01MYG4MNA
  - salemh 9y ago
    Please don't use shortener URLs. Expanded: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MYG4MNA/ref=cm_sw_su_dp https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MYG4MNA/ref=cm_sw_su_dp
    - j_s 9y ago
      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). [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=amzn.com&type=comment&sort=byDate&page=22 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=amzn.com&type=comment&sort=byD... [1] http://blog.go2.me/2009/04/amazon-has-integrated-url-shortener.html http://blog.go2.me/2009/04/amazon-has-integrated-url-shorten... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14162832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14162832 [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=:%2F%2Fa.co%2F&type=comment&sort=byDate https://hn.algolia.com/?query=:%2F%2Fa.co%2F&type=comment&so...
    - Nomentatus 9y ago
      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.
AJRF 9y ago
It’s hard to take anything Ben says seriously anymore. He uses his platform to shill Apple and trash Tesla all the time. This time it only took one sentence before he got cracking on it. Seriously look at his Twitter and its the same monotonous praise for Apple and trashing Tesla Ad nauseam
- mamby 9y ago
  True; he trash everything not apple: tesla, MS, etc. without verifiable evidence ...
- mingyeow 9y ago
  You can judge the post on its own merit - I do think a number of fairly legit and decent points were brought up.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- melling 9y ago
  “but Tesla has yet to build a machine that can manufacture Model 3s efficiently, reliable, quickly and at quality at the scale of the incumbent car industry. ” People love to call out the Model 3, but Tesla makes almost 2,000 cars a week. They obviously are having a problem with the battery for it. As a general problem, they are past making a few hundred cars a quarter.
  - carlmr 9y ago
    >People love to call out the Model 3, but Tesla makes almost 2,000 cars a week. They obviously are having a problem with the battery for it. As a general problem, they are past making a few hundred cars a quarter. They always overpromised by a few months. It's been a pattern since the start. Apart from the delay they have delivered on their promises after a while. I mean you can think of their estimations what you want. It could be a bit too much optimism (although can there be too much optimism for a startup?), it could be a marketing tactic. But they've consistently beaten the skeptics until now.
amelius 9y ago
Isn't it obvious that once you have a big selling platform, you can make it grow until you hit a competitor that is bigger than you? Which in the case of Amazon is not happening. Can we please turn "selling" into a utility function, so that the "digital economy" can perhaps turn into something useful instead of a detriment?
- TulliusCicero 9y ago
  > Isn't it obvious that once you have a big selling platform, you can make it grow until you hit a competitor that is bigger than you? How'd that work out for eBay? What is it with so many human beings where -- even in a clearly competitive environment -- we assume difficult things are dead simple and easy? History is rife with incumbents that failed on their own or were defeated by upstarts, you have to really go out of your way to pretend those don't exist or convince yourself that they were all full of the unusually stupid, and yet some people make it work.
  - amelius 9y ago
    > History is rife with incumbents that failed on their own or were defeated by upstarts (...) Yes, this may happen if the upstarts manage to grab the sales channel (portal). But this is not likely to happen with Amazon.
    - TulliusCicero 9y ago
      > But this is not likely to happen with Amazon. Agreed. But "unlikely to happen to [specific company]" is a wildly different assertion than "Isn't it obvious that once you have a big selling platform, you can make it grow until you hit a competitor that is bigger than you?" The implication of the latter statement is that once you're ahead, you're destined to stay ahead unless you hit upon a competitor that's already bigger. Obviously, that hasn't been true in the real world.
      - amelius 9y ago
        You could read it in a probabilistic sense. The bigger you are, the less likely that some other company will swoop you away. But it can happen, yes.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
srge 9y ago
As a CEO of a startup (10 employees, bootstraped) this post was very inspiring. I am spending my time improving my machine and growing it. But I spend no time at all building the blueprint from which the machine could build itself. Sometime words, or expressions in this case (« the machine that builds the machine ») can reveal or even create a new reality. That’s what I feel right now.
throwawayamzn88 9y ago
From the inside, it feels as though the machine is breaking down. Some easy to point out problems today: hiring freeze for a large swath of the company; the loss of the very-controversial feedback system[0]; changing leadership principles to remove 'vocally self-critical'; anti-customer behavior like removing Chromecasts. The biggest change that I see is the bureaucracy taking over. A metrics driven company has become a game of who can lie the best with statistics. The leadership principles aren't nearly as important as making your numbers look good. When problems happen, mechanisms like Cause-Of-Error reports, previously used to solve the root problem, become weapons to use against rivals. Blame is the name of the game, not solving problems. And of course you can't make any change without spending a day writing a request to make the change and getting 5 levels of managers to approve it. I think it will get worse. I think it's what will cause Amazon to eventually fail. A body growing fat and old, losing it's ability to fight off real cancers. [0] It was sometimes misused, but the anytime feedback system and end of year feedback helped me grow as a human. I miss it.
- beastcoast 9y ago
  Amazon is so decentralized that the anti-patterns you list are probably only under your VP. If anything I think the company is taking action to trim bloated orgs. For example there are internal efforts to prune middle management issues. (For those that don’t know, Amazon has only one middle manager level (L7); L6 is a frontline manager and L8 is a director. The anti-pattern is when you have L6 reporting to L6, L7 reporting to L7, L8 reporting to L8, L10 reporting to L10...)
  - throwawayamzn52 9y ago
    Having been within three separate orgs within AMZN within the last three years, it's hard to believe this is a problem specific to individual orgs. Too much growth too fast.
    - perseusprime11 9y ago
      Don't you read Bezos's letters? It is still Day 1...
nerdsaresingle 9y ago
Good read. Same goes with google. Google has self replicating talent machine built up which builds the talent machine recursively.
grapeshot 9y ago
This works for AMZN as long as customers don't get fed up with the results of this lack of attention to category detail: - reviews for different items aggregated together making them useless - counterfeits commingled with legitimate items with the same UPC - questionable packaging decisions - delivery drivers without consistent routes so they never learn how to find your address / get into your building
Nomentatus 9y ago
"If the machine is designed to do X, it will struggle at Y no matter how clever the people." Not quite true as stated - unless this means that excellent people doing excellent work on unfavored Y are overwhelmingly likely to be transferred to a team working on X. Many successful pivots were possible because the team assigned to do Y were unexpected stars and before they could be shifted to more central work, it became clear they had created a different and more viable business than the machine they were supposed to be a minor part of.

183 points by runesoerensen 9y ago

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.

j_s 9y ago
https://amzn.com/B01MYG4MNA https://amzn.com/B01MYG4MNA
- salemh 9y ago
  Please don't use shortener URLs. Expanded: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MYG4MNA/ref=cm_sw_su_dp https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MYG4MNA/ref=cm_sw_su_dp
  - j_s 9y ago
    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). [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=amzn.com&type=comment&sort=byDate&page=22 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=amzn.com&type=comment&sort=byD... [1] http://blog.go2.me/2009/04/amazon-has-integrated-url-shortener.html http://blog.go2.me/2009/04/amazon-has-integrated-url-shorten... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14162832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14162832 [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=:%2F%2Fa.co%2F&type=comment&sort=byDate https://hn.algolia.com/?query=:%2F%2Fa.co%2F&type=comment&so...
  - Nomentatus 9y ago
    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.

AJRF 9y ago

It’s hard to take anything Ben says seriously anymore. He uses his platform to shill Apple and trash Tesla all the time. This time it only took one sentence before he got cracking on it. Seriously look at his Twitter and its the same monotonous praise for Apple and trashing Tesla Ad nauseam

mamby 9y ago
True; he trash everything not apple: tesla, MS, etc. without verifiable evidence ...
mingyeow 9y ago
You can judge the post on its own merit - I do think a number of fairly legit and decent points were brought up.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
melling 9y ago
“but Tesla has yet to build a machine that can manufacture Model 3s efficiently, reliable, quickly and at quality at the scale of the incumbent car industry. ” People love to call out the Model 3, but Tesla makes almost 2,000 cars a week. They obviously are having a problem with the battery for it. As a general problem, they are past making a few hundred cars a quarter.
- carlmr 9y ago
  >People love to call out the Model 3, but Tesla makes almost 2,000 cars a week. They obviously are having a problem with the battery for it. As a general problem, they are past making a few hundred cars a quarter. They always overpromised by a few months. It's been a pattern since the start. Apart from the delay they have delivered on their promises after a while. I mean you can think of their estimations what you want. It could be a bit too much optimism (although can there be too much optimism for a startup?), it could be a marketing tactic. But they've consistently beaten the skeptics until now.

amelius 9y ago

Isn't it obvious that once you have a big selling platform, you can make it grow until you hit a competitor that is bigger than you? Which in the case of Amazon is not happening. Can we please turn "selling" into a utility function, so that the "digital economy" can perhaps turn into something useful instead of a detriment?

TulliusCicero 9y ago
> Isn't it obvious that once you have a big selling platform, you can make it grow until you hit a competitor that is bigger than you? How'd that work out for eBay? What is it with so many human beings where -- even in a clearly competitive environment -- we assume difficult things are dead simple and easy? History is rife with incumbents that failed on their own or were defeated by upstarts, you have to really go out of your way to pretend those don't exist or convince yourself that they were all full of the unusually stupid, and yet some people make it work.
- amelius 9y ago
  > History is rife with incumbents that failed on their own or were defeated by upstarts (...) Yes, this may happen if the upstarts manage to grab the sales channel (portal). But this is not likely to happen with Amazon.
  - TulliusCicero 9y ago
    > But this is not likely to happen with Amazon. Agreed. But "unlikely to happen to [specific company]" is a wildly different assertion than "Isn't it obvious that once you have a big selling platform, you can make it grow until you hit a competitor that is bigger than you?" The implication of the latter statement is that once you're ahead, you're destined to stay ahead unless you hit upon a competitor that's already bigger. Obviously, that hasn't been true in the real world.
    - amelius 9y ago
      You could read it in a probabilistic sense. The bigger you are, the less likely that some other company will swoop you away. But it can happen, yes.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

srge 9y ago

As a CEO of a startup (10 employees, bootstraped) this post was very inspiring. I am spending my time improving my machine and growing it. But I spend no time at all building the blueprint from which the machine could build itself. Sometime words, or expressions in this case (« the machine that builds the machine ») can reveal or even create a new reality. That’s what I feel right now.

throwawayamzn88 9y ago

From the inside, it feels as though the machine is breaking down. Some easy to point out problems today: hiring freeze for a large swath of the company; the loss of the very-controversial feedback system[0]; changing leadership principles to remove 'vocally self-critical'; anti-customer behavior like removing Chromecasts. The biggest change that I see is the bureaucracy taking over. A metrics driven company has become a game of who can lie the best with statistics. The leadership principles aren't nearly as important as making your numbers look good. When problems happen, mechanisms like Cause-Of-Error reports, previously used to solve the root problem, become weapons to use against rivals. Blame is the name of the game, not solving problems. And of course you can't make any change without spending a day writing a request to make the change and getting 5 levels of managers to approve it. I think it will get worse. I think it's what will cause Amazon to eventually fail. A body growing fat and old, losing it's ability to fight off real cancers. [0] It was sometimes misused, but the anytime feedback system and end of year feedback helped me grow as a human. I miss it.

beastcoast 9y ago
Amazon is so decentralized that the anti-patterns you list are probably only under your VP. If anything I think the company is taking action to trim bloated orgs. For example there are internal efforts to prune middle management issues. (For those that don’t know, Amazon has only one middle manager level (L7); L6 is a frontline manager and L8 is a director. The anti-pattern is when you have L6 reporting to L6, L7 reporting to L7, L8 reporting to L8, L10 reporting to L10...)
- throwawayamzn52 9y ago
  Having been within three separate orgs within AMZN within the last three years, it's hard to believe this is a problem specific to individual orgs. Too much growth too fast.
  - perseusprime11 9y ago
    Don't you read Bezos's letters? It is still Day 1...

nerdsaresingle 9y ago

Good read. Same goes with google. Google has self replicating talent machine built up which builds the talent machine recursively.

grapeshot 9y ago

This works for AMZN as long as customers don't get fed up with the results of this lack of attention to category detail: - reviews for different items aggregated together making them useless - counterfeits commingled with legitimate items with the same UPC - questionable packaging decisions - delivery drivers without consistent routes so they never learn how to find your address / get into your building

Nomentatus 9y ago

"If the machine is designed to do X, it will struggle at Y no matter how clever the people." Not quite true as stated - unless this means that excellent people doing excellent work on unfavored Y are overwhelmingly likely to be transferred to a team working on X. Many successful pivots were possible because the team assigned to do Y were unexpected stars and before they could be shifted to more central work, it became clear they had created a different and more viable business than the machine they were supposed to be a minor part of.