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> AMAZON’S SIX-PAGE memos are famous. Executives must write one every year, laying out their business plan. Less well known is that these missives must always a

> AMAZON’S SIX-PAGE memos are famous. Executives must write one every year, laying out their business plan. Less well known is that these missives must always answer one question in particular: how are you planning to use machine learning? Responses like “not much” are, according to Amazon managers, discouraged. I think company culture & talent make a big difference here. At most companies this would run the risk of poorly shoe-horning ML into a bunch of applications and making everything needlessly complex & expensive without seeing improved results (same goes for blockchain).

b_tterc_p 8y ago
Can anyone at amazon comment on whether this actually works? Edit: the ai part specifically.
- dodobirdlord 8y ago
  From what I have seen 6-pager process and more importantly the clear writing and efficient meetings that it fosters are pretty helpful. It's important to note that a 6-pager contains 6 pages of expected reading and can have as much additional appendix material as you want. I've seen "6-pager" documents that were dozens of pages long, and have heard possibly apocryphal stories of 6-pagers hundreds of pages long for major projects. If the question was specifically about AI being a required component, idk. But a VP at Amazon presides over a part of the business so large that it is implausible that there aren't useful applications for AI in their domain.
  - varelse 8y ago
    The ideal of the 6-pager is magnificent. The reality of the 6-pager in 2019 is that it has become boilerplate where style overwhelms substance. Similar things can be said of their OP1 and OP3 planning processes that are becoming increasingly cargo cult IMO. And that arises naturally from a static game whose most experienced players have become better at funding projects than they are at funding better projects. Though very late to the party (modulo Alexa), Amazon has eagerly embraced AI and machine learning since 2015, but it lacks the leadership for formulating clear targets (see AutoML and AlphaGo Zero as examples of clear targets IMO). A recent article in _The Information_ made the claim that their entire AI organization is making <$20M annually. That is consistent with what I saw there: an effectively infinite number of codemonkeys throwing unprocessed data at randomly chosen AI algorithms downloaded off of github and hoping for the best. It's an interesting experiment, but it seems to be about as efficient as a monkey throwing darts to pick stocks (which is surprisingly better than many biased investment advisors admittedly). Time will tell, no? https://www.theinformation.com/articles/demand-soaring-for-amazon-ai-services-not-so-fast https://www.theinformation.com/articles/demand-soaring-for-a...?
    - erikpukinskis 8y ago
      They need a 6-pager czar who has the power to send back to editing any paper that's not readable enough.
      - varelse 8y ago
        That just pushes the problem one level down on the stack, no? Or who sends back the work of the 6-pager Czar? IMO they need to refresh the process, and refresh it frequently. I don't see them doing that though. Similar things have happened with the well-intentioned "bar-raiser" process as well IMO. I had bar-raisers in interview loops for my team who seemed more intent in blocking potential competitors to their niche than in hiring the best people, which was the whole point of said "bar-raising."
        erikpukinskis 8y ago
        No, distributed responsibility is qualitatively different from a single responsible party.
      - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
        They just need an AI to review for sub-optimal 6-page reports. First cut can be built off of mechanical turk.
    - gregdunn 8y ago
      > The reality of the 6-pager in 2019 is that it has become boilerplate where style overwhelms substance. I can't say I agree. I'm in the middle of a 6-pager, and the overwhelming majority of feedback/comments from people I've asked to review it have been very specific to making sure there IS substance. Tons of 'This is unclear. Need extra details and specifics', 'Why is this the case?', and so on. Plenty of grammar/style feedback as well, but the whole point is attention to detail.
    - otterley 8y ago
      > The reality of the 6-pager in 2019 is that it has become boilerplate where style overwhelms substance. I think this varies by team. In my experience thus far, I've been receiving lots of feedback -- often actionable -- to improve my own narratives. If your reviewers aren't pushing back on you when your paper lacks the required substance, that definitely needs to be addressed. > OP1 and OP3 planning processes that are becoming increasingly cargo cult IMO Businesses need operating plans to determine prioritization and funding. What's the problem with them, exactly?
- THE_PUN_STOPS 8y ago
  As an Amazonian far flung from AWS, (I am in ground level fulfillment) I have seen some incredible internal AZ programs that utilize ML in unexpected areas to save the company lots of money. So I'm going with yes.
- beastcoast 8y ago
  The article overstates the use of ML at least in fulfillment we use a lot of math models (eg xpress solver) and optimization algorithms (traveling salesmen type problems) but not so much in the ML space.
  - mabbo 8y ago
    My team does ML in Fulfillment. Search my username on phone tool to figure out my team.
  - east2west 8y ago
    Usually optimization takes forecasts as part of inputs. It is actually a lot like reinforcement learning, where the sales forecasts are part of the environment. This is standard process for supply-chain management, not just retail industry or at Amazon.
- Nelson69 8y ago
  I have never worked for Amazon so I'm just speculating but if you have a culture of being data driven, specifically in the ways you optimize things then I'm guessing you'll probably be pretty successful and it's not a giant leap to plugging that data in to some ML models or something. To plug that stuff in the some ML models requires an entire culture of data collection and some thought as to how you'd improve or benefit from it; it's sort of like the "no brown M&Ms" rider that Van Hallen used to have.
maxxxxx 8y ago
There is also the story of Amazon mandating that all internal systems communicate with each other through APIs. I think leadership at Amazon has good technical knowledge so they can develop these strategies and see them through. In my company nobody with a "C*O" title (including CIO and CTO) has any clue about tech so they are very susceptible to snake oil salesmen telling them things like "we must do ML". So they tell some random person to "implement AI" but nobody has any clear objectives or can make a judgement whether things go in the right direction. In most cases these things end up as expensive disasters. I am waiting for the "Blockchain Excellence Initiative" with a lot of presentations and shiny newsletters.
- omarchowdhury 8y ago
  How can someone become a CTO without having any clue about tech?
  - rogerkirkness 8y ago
    In a big enough company where software isn't the product that just means they know the tech that applies to that company. The CIO is probably a fearful late career IT politician and the CTO could have spent 40 years progressively learning more about washing machines or planes.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      That's pretty much it. There is also a widespread belief that software development is "IT" which means that an initiative to implement cloud systems gets led by people who have experience with desktop deployments or firewall setup. There is a lot of politics around budgets so the IT department won't let go of that power.
      - pdelgallego 8y ago
        I read in Werners Vogels blog (amazon CTO), that there are four types of CTOs [1] based on Berray and Sampath paper. [2] * Infrastructure Manager * Technology Visionary and Operations Manager * External Facing Technologist * Big Thinker [1] https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/07/the_different_cto_roles.html https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/07/the_different_c... [2] http://www.brixtonspa.com/Career/The_Role_of_the_CTO_4Models.pdf http://www.brixtonspa.com/Career/The_Role_of_the_CTO_4Models...
joe_the_user 8y ago
At most companies this would run the risk of poorly shoe-horning ML into a bunch of applications and making everything needlessly complex & expensive without seeing improved results (same goes for blockchain). Sure, and in Amazon, you get a few tweaks that get the company a few bucks. It suspect the article wildly overstates the value of ML to Amazon. Amazon's success seems to rest on: A. Attracting enough capital to get huge and stay huge with generally low margins. B. Being willing to slide into related businesses for extra-profits. C. Not jumping into one or another dumb trendy investments that would burn up all the capital they get from A & B. Well, the memos might help B & C, for all I know. Ten years ago, Amazon and Ebay split the ecommerce/storefront world. Ebay never managed to make themselves fully consumer friendly with hard guarantees and Amazon did. The auction-based, at-your-own-risk world is inherently limited and Ebay never escaped that - I wish they had 'cause then Amazon would have had real competition.
- natalyarostova 8y ago
  Wal-mart is real competition.
  - frontloadpro 8y ago
    Walmart Online is cheaper than Amazon. Ive started making the switch.
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    Amazon now is something like a fusion of Ebay and Walmart. Either of those enterprises (or Target or etc) could move into the full space that Amazon operates in, it seems like. Edit: I suspect that what keeps an enterprise like Walmart or Costco from jumping into full competition with Amazon is that each of these enterprises wants to fish some high profit zone of the eComerce ocean while Amazon wants to be the ocean.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  I was curious how the Amazon/eBay split looks revenue-wise.... Not exactly apples-to-apples but in 2018 Amazon was $180B in net sales vs eBay $95B GMV. So Amazon is more than double but maybe not 10x? Amazon GMV is supposedly in the $250B range but they don't report it. And it's obviously hard to compare such different business models.

b_tterc_p 8y ago

Can anyone at amazon comment on whether this actually works? Edit: the ai part specifically.

dodobirdlord 8y ago
From what I have seen 6-pager process and more importantly the clear writing and efficient meetings that it fosters are pretty helpful. It's important to note that a 6-pager contains 6 pages of expected reading and can have as much additional appendix material as you want. I've seen "6-pager" documents that were dozens of pages long, and have heard possibly apocryphal stories of 6-pagers hundreds of pages long for major projects. If the question was specifically about AI being a required component, idk. But a VP at Amazon presides over a part of the business so large that it is implausible that there aren't useful applications for AI in their domain.
- varelse 8y ago
  The ideal of the 6-pager is magnificent. The reality of the 6-pager in 2019 is that it has become boilerplate where style overwhelms substance. Similar things can be said of their OP1 and OP3 planning processes that are becoming increasingly cargo cult IMO. And that arises naturally from a static game whose most experienced players have become better at funding projects than they are at funding better projects. Though very late to the party (modulo Alexa), Amazon has eagerly embraced AI and machine learning since 2015, but it lacks the leadership for formulating clear targets (see AutoML and AlphaGo Zero as examples of clear targets IMO). A recent article in _The Information_ made the claim that their entire AI organization is making <$20M annually. That is consistent with what I saw there: an effectively infinite number of codemonkeys throwing unprocessed data at randomly chosen AI algorithms downloaded off of github and hoping for the best. It's an interesting experiment, but it seems to be about as efficient as a monkey throwing darts to pick stocks (which is surprisingly better than many biased investment advisors admittedly). Time will tell, no? https://www.theinformation.com/articles/demand-soaring-for-amazon-ai-services-not-so-fast https://www.theinformation.com/articles/demand-soaring-for-a...?
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    They need a 6-pager czar who has the power to send back to editing any paper that's not readable enough.
    - varelse 8y ago
      That just pushes the problem one level down on the stack, no? Or who sends back the work of the 6-pager Czar? IMO they need to refresh the process, and refresh it frequently. I don't see them doing that though. Similar things have happened with the well-intentioned "bar-raiser" process as well IMO. I had bar-raisers in interview loops for my team who seemed more intent in blocking potential competitors to their niche than in hiring the best people, which was the whole point of said "bar-raising."
      - erikpukinskis 8y ago
        No, distributed responsibility is qualitatively different from a single responsible party.
    - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
      They just need an AI to review for sub-optimal 6-page reports. First cut can be built off of mechanical turk.
  - gregdunn 8y ago
    > The reality of the 6-pager in 2019 is that it has become boilerplate where style overwhelms substance. I can't say I agree. I'm in the middle of a 6-pager, and the overwhelming majority of feedback/comments from people I've asked to review it have been very specific to making sure there IS substance. Tons of 'This is unclear. Need extra details and specifics', 'Why is this the case?', and so on. Plenty of grammar/style feedback as well, but the whole point is attention to detail.
  - otterley 8y ago
    > The reality of the 6-pager in 2019 is that it has become boilerplate where style overwhelms substance. I think this varies by team. In my experience thus far, I've been receiving lots of feedback -- often actionable -- to improve my own narratives. If your reviewers aren't pushing back on you when your paper lacks the required substance, that definitely needs to be addressed. > OP1 and OP3 planning processes that are becoming increasingly cargo cult IMO Businesses need operating plans to determine prioritization and funding. What's the problem with them, exactly?
THE_PUN_STOPS 8y ago
As an Amazonian far flung from AWS, (I am in ground level fulfillment) I have seen some incredible internal AZ programs that utilize ML in unexpected areas to save the company lots of money. So I'm going with yes.
beastcoast 8y ago
The article overstates the use of ML at least in fulfillment we use a lot of math models (eg xpress solver) and optimization algorithms (traveling salesmen type problems) but not so much in the ML space.
- mabbo 8y ago
  My team does ML in Fulfillment. Search my username on phone tool to figure out my team.
- east2west 8y ago
  Usually optimization takes forecasts as part of inputs. It is actually a lot like reinforcement learning, where the sales forecasts are part of the environment. This is standard process for supply-chain management, not just retail industry or at Amazon.
Nelson69 8y ago
I have never worked for Amazon so I'm just speculating but if you have a culture of being data driven, specifically in the ways you optimize things then I'm guessing you'll probably be pretty successful and it's not a giant leap to plugging that data in to some ML models or something. To plug that stuff in the some ML models requires an entire culture of data collection and some thought as to how you'd improve or benefit from it; it's sort of like the "no brown M&Ms" rider that Van Hallen used to have.

maxxxxx 8y ago

There is also the story of Amazon mandating that all internal systems communicate with each other through APIs. I think leadership at Amazon has good technical knowledge so they can develop these strategies and see them through. In my company nobody with a "C*O" title (including CIO and CTO) has any clue about tech so they are very susceptible to snake oil salesmen telling them things like "we must do ML". So they tell some random person to "implement AI" but nobody has any clear objectives or can make a judgement whether things go in the right direction. In most cases these things end up as expensive disasters. I am waiting for the "Blockchain Excellence Initiative" with a lot of presentations and shiny newsletters.

omarchowdhury 8y ago
How can someone become a CTO without having any clue about tech?
- rogerkirkness 8y ago
  In a big enough company where software isn't the product that just means they know the tech that applies to that company. The CIO is probably a fearful late career IT politician and the CTO could have spent 40 years progressively learning more about washing machines or planes.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    That's pretty much it. There is also a widespread belief that software development is "IT" which means that an initiative to implement cloud systems gets led by people who have experience with desktop deployments or firewall setup. There is a lot of politics around budgets so the IT department won't let go of that power.
    - pdelgallego 8y ago
      I read in Werners Vogels blog (amazon CTO), that there are four types of CTOs [1] based on Berray and Sampath paper. [2] * Infrastructure Manager * Technology Visionary and Operations Manager * External Facing Technologist * Big Thinker [1] https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/07/the_different_cto_roles.html https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/07/the_different_c... [2] http://www.brixtonspa.com/Career/The_Role_of_the_CTO_4Models.pdf http://www.brixtonspa.com/Career/The_Role_of_the_CTO_4Models...

joe_the_user 8y ago

At most companies this would run the risk of poorly shoe-horning ML into a bunch of applications and making everything needlessly complex & expensive without seeing improved results (same goes for blockchain). Sure, and in Amazon, you get a few tweaks that get the company a few bucks. It suspect the article wildly overstates the value of ML to Amazon. Amazon's success seems to rest on: A. Attracting enough capital to get huge and stay huge with generally low margins. B. Being willing to slide into related businesses for extra-profits. C. Not jumping into one or another dumb trendy investments that would burn up all the capital they get from A & B. Well, the memos might help B & C, for all I know. Ten years ago, Amazon and Ebay split the ecommerce/storefront world. Ebay never managed to make themselves fully consumer friendly with hard guarantees and Amazon did. The auction-based, at-your-own-risk world is inherently limited and Ebay never escaped that - I wish they had 'cause then Amazon would have had real competition.

natalyarostova 8y ago
Wal-mart is real competition.
- frontloadpro 8y ago
  Walmart Online is cheaper than Amazon. Ive started making the switch.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  Amazon now is something like a fusion of Ebay and Walmart. Either of those enterprises (or Target or etc) could move into the full space that Amazon operates in, it seems like. Edit: I suspect that what keeps an enterprise like Walmart or Costco from jumping into full competition with Amazon is that each of these enterprises wants to fish some high profit zone of the eComerce ocean while Amazon wants to be the ocean.
erikpukinskis 8y ago
I was curious how the Amazon/eBay split looks revenue-wise.... Not exactly apples-to-apples but in 2018 Amazon was $180B in net sales vs eBay $95B GMV. So Amazon is more than double but maybe not 10x? Amazon GMV is supposedly in the $250B range but they don't report it. And it's obviously hard to compare such different business models.