4 ms·

I am just confused. Why can he write? It is not clear. How does the author know that this letter is not edited/approved by PR and legal? The culture of worsh

by timavr 8y ago

I am just confused. Why can he write? It is not clear. How does the author know that this letter is not edited/approved by PR and legal? The culture of worshipping CEO sets very low bar on human ambition.

notahacker 8y ago
Yeah, drafting and redrafting a few hundred words is easily delegated entirely to PR staff, and it says nothing about a CEO's ability if they take that route (nor will anyone outside certain circles ever know). The samples of writing are entirely unremarkable too. Thousands of CEOs or CEOs' PR teams writing shareholder letters or microbusiness blogs achieve a similar fairly informal style using formal language, deploy anecdotes and vanity metrics and make aspirational statements about the future. Some of those businesses succeed at different scales, some fail, few even attempt what Bezos did. "Divinely discontent" is a nice phrase, and props for giving the illusion of specificity by saying "trained random forests of decision trees" rather than the more buzzwordy "processing Big Data using Machine Learning". But that isn't even necessarily Bezos' personal stamp, never mind one of the qualities that actually made him one of the most successful business leaders of the internet era.
- shanghaiaway 8y ago
  PR cannot write this type of stuff. They can edit it a but but they can never create it.
  - wastedhours 8y ago
    "Never" is a long time.
    - shanghaiaway 8y ago
      It's not a reference to time and not even to capability but license.
      - wastedhours 8y ago
        Why not? PRs ghostwrite things for CEOs all of the time, speechwriters have written some of the greatest talks by the most famous people of all time. I don't understand the notion that these kinds of work can never be the product of a PR.
  - CharlesW 8y ago
    > PR cannot write this type of stuff. They can and do, typically working closely with the credited author. It's common.
- Earloop 8y ago
  Eh, I think you're being a bit dismissive. There is a consistent "voice" to the memos that gives them authenticity, and a sharp business insight that no one working in PR would be able to articulate. Yes, I'm sure the letters are parsed by PR and legal, but I very much doubt that they contribute much beyond basic editing and fact checking. But of course, this is all speculation.
  - notahacker 8y ago
    I think you're being a bit dismissive of the PR departments of major companies who are paid big bucks specifically to be able to effectively communicate concepts around where the business is heading in an appropriate voice. Maybe Bezos has no intention of letting them anywhere near his shareholder messages, but they're certainly capable of emulating his style and communicating his bullet points for next year if they were asked to. Probably nobody has enjoyed more success as a result of distinctive writing about business than the media-friendly "business guru" turned POTUS, and he outsourced most of his published musings on business (which obviously don't particularly resemble Bezos' FWIW) to a journalist who didn't even like him. Sure, I very much doubt Bezos outsourced writing in the late nineties, and he might write every single word now. My point was more that writing is probably the most replaceable part of his skillset, and he probably didn't even need to write well (or without assistance) at all to succeed. And many business bloggers who are not even trying to emulate what Bezos does or not succeeding can communicate about markets and business principles

by timavr 8y ago

notahacker 8y ago

Yeah, drafting and redrafting a few hundred words is easily delegated entirely to PR staff, and it says nothing about a CEO's ability if they take that route (nor will anyone outside certain circles ever know). The samples of writing are entirely unremarkable too. Thousands of CEOs or CEOs' PR teams writing shareholder letters or microbusiness blogs achieve a similar fairly informal style using formal language, deploy anecdotes and vanity metrics and make aspirational statements about the future. Some of those businesses succeed at different scales, some fail, few even attempt what Bezos did. "Divinely discontent" is a nice phrase, and props for giving the illusion of specificity by saying "trained random forests of decision trees" rather than the more buzzwordy "processing Big Data using Machine Learning". But that isn't even necessarily Bezos' personal stamp, never mind one of the qualities that actually made him one of the most successful business leaders of the internet era.

shanghaiaway 8y ago
PR cannot write this type of stuff. They can edit it a but but they can never create it.
- wastedhours 8y ago
  "Never" is a long time.
  - shanghaiaway 8y ago
    It's not a reference to time and not even to capability but license.
    - wastedhours 8y ago
      Why not? PRs ghostwrite things for CEOs all of the time, speechwriters have written some of the greatest talks by the most famous people of all time. I don't understand the notion that these kinds of work can never be the product of a PR.
- CharlesW 8y ago
  > PR cannot write this type of stuff. They can and do, typically working closely with the credited author. It's common.
Earloop 8y ago
Eh, I think you're being a bit dismissive. There is a consistent "voice" to the memos that gives them authenticity, and a sharp business insight that no one working in PR would be able to articulate. Yes, I'm sure the letters are parsed by PR and legal, but I very much doubt that they contribute much beyond basic editing and fact checking. But of course, this is all speculation.
- notahacker 8y ago
  I think you're being a bit dismissive of the PR departments of major companies who are paid big bucks specifically to be able to effectively communicate concepts around where the business is heading in an appropriate voice. Maybe Bezos has no intention of letting them anywhere near his shareholder messages, but they're certainly capable of emulating his style and communicating his bullet points for next year if they were asked to. Probably nobody has enjoyed more success as a result of distinctive writing about business than the media-friendly "business guru" turned POTUS, and he outsourced most of his published musings on business (which obviously don't particularly resemble Bezos' FWIW) to a journalist who didn't even like him. Sure, I very much doubt Bezos outsourced writing in the late nineties, and he might write every single word now. My point was more that writing is probably the most replaceable part of his skillset, and he probably didn't even need to write well (or without assistance) at all to succeed. And many business bloggers who are not even trying to emulate what Bezos does or not succeeding can communicate about markets and business principles