8 ms·

What I hear from Amazonians in Seattle is that the culture is markedly different today than it was 5-10 years ago. That shouldn’t be surprising. Things are slo

What I hear from Amazonians in Seattle is that the culture is markedly different today than it was 5-10 years ago. That shouldn’t be surprising. Things are slower now and layered. VPs report to VPs who report to VPs. More politics. More focus on competitors. Less belief in the upside. Using Jeff’s words: We are well into Day 2. As a result, great people are leaving in droves. Satya managed an incredible cultural and business turnaround of Microsoft after it stagnated. Who will do this at Amazon?

remarkEon 7y ago
Are we sure that Amazon is stagnating right now like Microsoft was though? A more appropriate question might be along the lines of who could prevent sliding into the Ballmer-Microsoft-like Stagnation.
- jariel 7y ago
  There was never any stagnation at Microsoft other than in the stock price. Have a look: [1] [2] - what changed really was simply the price/earnings multiplier, not really the underlying fundamentals. Though this is very important, I don't think it's the most important part of the Ballmer culture era. Revenues and product line expansion grew phenomenally, Ballmer brought huge new business lines and the cloud into the fore. The culture may have been perceived as toxic by some, but it's debatable if that's just hearsay or if it had a real effect on productivity etc.. That Ballmer failed on a few points (slow to embrace Linux) is fine - no big companies win everywhere and neither will Satya. MS failed at search? Well Google failed as social as well. Neither of them are hard done by it, there are other unassailable market leaders who do it better somewhere else anyhow, Satya is obviously a welcome shift, and culture change was probably timely along with embrace of open source etc. (right man for the right time) - but Ballmer was good for MSFT. He was the right man for the right time as well, and probably good that he left when he did. My experience is that it's really, really hard to judge culture from the outside - and literally different buildings/groups have completely different culture. Amazon will be a case study in that stage of growth however - it may have a lot to do with how much Bezos cares to deal with it, or play with rockets all day like Larry and Sergei. I wonder how very few companies have done that really well - i.e. gone from 15K -> 100K and maintained dynamism. Probably few if any. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global-revenue-since-2002/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/stock-price-history https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/sto...
  - pmart123 7y ago
    From my recollection, Ballmer continually overpaid for random acquisitions that screamed “in the moment hot thing” versus well-thought, strategic. From an outsiders view, the whole we must take over the world syndrome manifested into trying to buy a way into everything that could be big versus fit well with Microsoft.
    - jariel 7y ago
      You mean like Google's $3.2 B acquisition of Nest, which has nothing to do with their core offer and is losing money? Or FitBit, another money losing entity for $2B? Or Alphalbet's other substantial moonshot investments none of which have panned out? They're all 'strategic' but that's what all bad investments are pinned as. I think your statement might be driven by narrative (which is my point about Ballmer's public perception) because if you have a look at the acquisitions, I don't think MS comes out looking bad at all next to G. Have a look at G's acquisitions [1] , and MS [2] MSFT looks actually a little more tame by the numbers. Satya will have to do much more than amp up all the products and services that Gates and Ballmer launched in order to keep the reputation he has right now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
      - pmart123 7y ago
        I completely agree on Alphabet as of late. Maybe they can justify having a hardware division for phones as a necessary cost center in order to facilitate R&D developments for Android. I’d even give Veerily the benefit of the doubt as it seems to relate to cloud offerings for healthcare. Ballmer’s Microsoft era was similar to Google from 2014 onward.
  - omikun 7y ago
    Selective memory? Google made this thing called Android. What was Microsoft doing?
bestnameever 7y ago
> Satya managed an incredible cultural and business turnaround of Microsoft after it stagnated. Is Amazon really stagnating? They still seem to be making a ton of moves from my casual observation.
paxys 7y ago
Amazon is VERY far from the stagnation that happened at Microsoft in the Ballmer era. In fact I'd say they are moving faster than ever. Why would you say they need a "turnaround"?
- neffy 7y ago
  The website hasn´t changed and notably hasn´t improved in over a decade. The customer feedback has gone from being the reference for buying products to only being able to trust the 1 star reviews. It´s flooded with stuff relayed from China, and consequently its cheaper to just buy direct from China. Here in the UK we have creepy corporate amazon stakhanovite "we just love pushing these parcels" ads to endure all christmas. Apparently one of the workers brings in cakes for her colleagues every Tuesday - oh, Amazon, the company that can´t even put food for its underpaid and overworked employees in the company break rooms. What a wonderful world.
  - paxys 7y ago
    Google's website hasn't changed either, and neither has HN. And that's a good thing. Nothing drives customers away faster than change for change's sake and constant pointless redesigns.
    - iudqnolq 7y ago
      Except the search page has changed, just well. Within the last few years they moved the footer to stick to the bottom of the page and made the buttons flatter. https://web.archive.org/web/*/google.com https://web.archive.org/web/*/google.com
    - dgemm 7y ago
      Google does this constantly with Gmail, calendar, Android, and so on.
    - blululu 7y ago
      Google’s homepage has changed but very slightly. For instance voice input options, removing ‘I’m feeling lucky’ and the addition of profiles/account info. But it’s a pretty minimalist page, and big redesign is usually a bad idea since they are liable to piss off your most loyal and dedicated customers/users/subscribers.
joegahona 7y ago
> Using Jeff’s words: We are well into Day 2. Where did Jeff Bezos say this?
- ignoramous 7y ago
  Jeff didn't say Amazon is at Day 2, but he did outline what that would look like: https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/2016-letter-to-shareholders https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/2016-letter-to-sha... Employees frequently use that framework to discuss how they think Amazon (or the org they work in) is truly done for.
tracer4201 7y ago
Prime, Prime Now, Prime video with exclusive content, Audible, Amazon Go, Kindle, Amazon Lockers, 1 day shipping, Whole Foods, their own delivery services, supposedly drone delivery, market leading Cloud services, etc. My husband and I invested north of $200K in Amazon back in 2014. Their stock alone has performed tremendously for me. I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I haven’t cashed out. I’m betting on Papa Bezos for the long term. One thing I respect about Amazon is how they figure out stuff that isn’t working and kill it. Amazon Restaurants is now gone. I work at another big tech company - I’m in Kirkland ;) My employer pays me better than Amazon pays for a similar role, so I get best of both worlds... I do have friends at Amazon as well.
manigandham 7y ago
Amazon doesn't need a turnaround. Entire industries are afraid of its relentless march to perfect execution at the lowest possible price. It's only accelerating in new developments and innovation and is far from its peak.
- ng12 7y ago
  > to perfect execution Their retail business is pretty far from perfect. Just a few days ago I got my first obviously fake product that was "sold by Amazon".
  - shantly 7y ago
    They're simply ignoring massive rates of fraud in their store so they can profit from it, and have been for... what, over half of their existence, at this point? ("oh but we're trying, no really we are, but it's just soooooo hard" uh how about you shut off the features that enable massive amounts of fraud until you can fix it, then, and if you can't fix it I guess you'll have to leave them off? Oh, right, you're making mountains of money from it, I forgot) I frankly can't believe the way the operate is anywhere near legal.
  - manigandham 7y ago
    I'm talking about operating as a business. Nobody executes better than Amazon right now. As for as the store experience, their selection, price, speed and convenience has led to their wild success. The fakes from 3rd-party sellers are not as big of a problem as HN makes it seem, and they could drop them overnight if they really wanted to in case any liability arises.
    - ng12 7y ago
      > Even with occasional 3rd-party product issues The problem with Amazon is anything can be "3rd-party" and you'll never know until you have a problem with it. Maybe the fraudulent product was the result of a sketchy 3rd-party dealer but also I don't really care -- I bought it from "Amazon" and they sent me tainted inventory. Target and Walmart are catching up with their online operations and at least with them I don't have to worry about being shipped fake products.

remarkEon 7y ago

Are we sure that Amazon is stagnating right now like Microsoft was though? A more appropriate question might be along the lines of who could prevent sliding into the Ballmer-Microsoft-like Stagnation.

jariel 7y ago
There was never any stagnation at Microsoft other than in the stock price. Have a look: [1] [2] - what changed really was simply the price/earnings multiplier, not really the underlying fundamentals. Though this is very important, I don't think it's the most important part of the Ballmer culture era. Revenues and product line expansion grew phenomenally, Ballmer brought huge new business lines and the cloud into the fore. The culture may have been perceived as toxic by some, but it's debatable if that's just hearsay or if it had a real effect on productivity etc.. That Ballmer failed on a few points (slow to embrace Linux) is fine - no big companies win everywhere and neither will Satya. MS failed at search? Well Google failed as social as well. Neither of them are hard done by it, there are other unassailable market leaders who do it better somewhere else anyhow, Satya is obviously a welcome shift, and culture change was probably timely along with embrace of open source etc. (right man for the right time) - but Ballmer was good for MSFT. He was the right man for the right time as well, and probably good that he left when he did. My experience is that it's really, really hard to judge culture from the outside - and literally different buildings/groups have completely different culture. Amazon will be a case study in that stage of growth however - it may have a lot to do with how much Bezos cares to deal with it, or play with rockets all day like Larry and Sergei. I wonder how very few companies have done that really well - i.e. gone from 15K -> 100K and maintained dynamism. Probably few if any. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global-revenue-since-2002/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/stock-price-history https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/sto...
- pmart123 7y ago
  From my recollection, Ballmer continually overpaid for random acquisitions that screamed “in the moment hot thing” versus well-thought, strategic. From an outsiders view, the whole we must take over the world syndrome manifested into trying to buy a way into everything that could be big versus fit well with Microsoft.
  - jariel 7y ago
    You mean like Google's $3.2 B acquisition of Nest, which has nothing to do with their core offer and is losing money? Or FitBit, another money losing entity for $2B? Or Alphalbet's other substantial moonshot investments none of which have panned out? They're all 'strategic' but that's what all bad investments are pinned as. I think your statement might be driven by narrative (which is my point about Ballmer's public perception) because if you have a look at the acquisitions, I don't think MS comes out looking bad at all next to G. Have a look at G's acquisitions [1] , and MS [2] MSFT looks actually a little more tame by the numbers. Satya will have to do much more than amp up all the products and services that Gates and Ballmer launched in order to keep the reputation he has right now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
    - pmart123 7y ago
      I completely agree on Alphabet as of late. Maybe they can justify having a hardware division for phones as a necessary cost center in order to facilitate R&D developments for Android. I’d even give Veerily the benefit of the doubt as it seems to relate to cloud offerings for healthcare. Ballmer’s Microsoft era was similar to Google from 2014 onward.
- omikun 7y ago
  Selective memory? Google made this thing called Android. What was Microsoft doing?

bestnameever 7y ago

> Satya managed an incredible cultural and business turnaround of Microsoft after it stagnated. Is Amazon really stagnating? They still seem to be making a ton of moves from my casual observation.

paxys 7y ago

Amazon is VERY far from the stagnation that happened at Microsoft in the Ballmer era. In fact I'd say they are moving faster than ever. Why would you say they need a "turnaround"?

neffy 7y ago
The website hasn´t changed and notably hasn´t improved in over a decade. The customer feedback has gone from being the reference for buying products to only being able to trust the 1 star reviews. It´s flooded with stuff relayed from China, and consequently its cheaper to just buy direct from China. Here in the UK we have creepy corporate amazon stakhanovite "we just love pushing these parcels" ads to endure all christmas. Apparently one of the workers brings in cakes for her colleagues every Tuesday - oh, Amazon, the company that can´t even put food for its underpaid and overworked employees in the company break rooms. What a wonderful world.
- paxys 7y ago
  Google's website hasn't changed either, and neither has HN. And that's a good thing. Nothing drives customers away faster than change for change's sake and constant pointless redesigns.
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    Except the search page has changed, just well. Within the last few years they moved the footer to stick to the bottom of the page and made the buttons flatter. https://web.archive.org/web/*/google.com https://web.archive.org/web/*/google.com
  - dgemm 7y ago
    Google does this constantly with Gmail, calendar, Android, and so on.
  - blululu 7y ago
    Google’s homepage has changed but very slightly. For instance voice input options, removing ‘I’m feeling lucky’ and the addition of profiles/account info. But it’s a pretty minimalist page, and big redesign is usually a bad idea since they are liable to piss off your most loyal and dedicated customers/users/subscribers.

joegahona 7y ago

> Using Jeff’s words: We are well into Day 2. Where did Jeff Bezos say this?

ignoramous 7y ago
Jeff didn't say Amazon is at Day 2, but he did outline what that would look like: https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/2016-letter-to-shareholders https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/2016-letter-to-sha... Employees frequently use that framework to discuss how they think Amazon (or the org they work in) is truly done for.

tracer4201 7y ago

Prime, Prime Now, Prime video with exclusive content, Audible, Amazon Go, Kindle, Amazon Lockers, 1 day shipping, Whole Foods, their own delivery services, supposedly drone delivery, market leading Cloud services, etc. My husband and I invested north of $200K in Amazon back in 2014. Their stock alone has performed tremendously for me. I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I haven’t cashed out. I’m betting on Papa Bezos for the long term. One thing I respect about Amazon is how they figure out stuff that isn’t working and kill it. Amazon Restaurants is now gone. I work at another big tech company - I’m in Kirkland ;) My employer pays me better than Amazon pays for a similar role, so I get best of both worlds... I do have friends at Amazon as well.

manigandham 7y ago

Amazon doesn't need a turnaround. Entire industries are afraid of its relentless march to perfect execution at the lowest possible price. It's only accelerating in new developments and innovation and is far from its peak.

ng12 7y ago
> to perfect execution Their retail business is pretty far from perfect. Just a few days ago I got my first obviously fake product that was "sold by Amazon".
- shantly 7y ago
  They're simply ignoring massive rates of fraud in their store so they can profit from it, and have been for... what, over half of their existence, at this point? ("oh but we're trying, no really we are, but it's just soooooo hard" uh how about you shut off the features that enable massive amounts of fraud until you can fix it, then, and if you can't fix it I guess you'll have to leave them off? Oh, right, you're making mountains of money from it, I forgot) I frankly can't believe the way the operate is anywhere near legal.
- manigandham 7y ago
  I'm talking about operating as a business. Nobody executes better than Amazon right now. As for as the store experience, their selection, price, speed and convenience has led to their wild success. The fakes from 3rd-party sellers are not as big of a problem as HN makes it seem, and they could drop them overnight if they really wanted to in case any liability arises.
  - ng12 7y ago
    > Even with occasional 3rd-party product issues The problem with Amazon is anything can be "3rd-party" and you'll never know until you have a problem with it. Maybe the fraudulent product was the result of a sketchy 3rd-party dealer but also I don't really care -- I bought it from "Amazon" and they sent me tainted inventory. Target and Walmart are catching up with their online operations and at least with them I don't have to worry about being shipped fake products.