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Please share stories of what early Amazon was like. Did you realize you were building a massive company at the time?

sumanthvepa 6y ago
Amazon was already a public company and pretty big that time. But I don't think people like me realised what big could mean 20 years into the future.
chihuahua 6y ago
I worked there for a few years in the early 2000s and it seemed like such an unremarkable company that wasn't going to go anywhere. The stock was always around $20 and whenever it went up, Bezos usually said something that investors didn't like and drove down the stock price (free shipping, search inside the book, etc). Then there was the Segway deal where I amused myself by checking the orders database to see how many they sold (because the numbers were so small) If you told me back then that the stock was going to $3000 some day, I would have stuck around for longer.
- jsolson 6y ago
  This was my feeling in 2010 when I accepted an offer. It was a much bigger company by then, but upon joining it still felt stodgy and like any other big corp. I wonder if it still feels that way if you're there (I left in 2013).
  - pram 6y ago
    It definitely is, it actually made me look back fondly at my time at Oracle if that says anything lol. The fact that it remains an aspirational job (gotta grind leetcode for FANG!) makes me smirk
    - akhilcacharya 6y ago
      I’m not sure what you mean by this. Can you elaborate?
      - icedchai 6y ago
        If you knew people who worked at Oracle, it might make more sense...
- dash2 6y ago
  ... this makes me suspect that investors are idiots.
  - motoboi 6y ago
    This proves that predicting the past is much easier than predicting the future.
  - dsr_ 6y ago
    It is so much easier to spot things in hindsight. We can all see the evidence that supports the conclusion. Let's take Uber. Their core product is a social media app with mapping, tracking and billing features. It has burnt through an incredible amount of money trying to kill competitors, employing 20,000 or so people directly and claiming that a self-driving electric fleet will someday make them insanely profitable. Market cap is up almost 80% in the last year. Who's the idiot? The investor who believes that Uber will be insanely profitable in N years, or the investor who doesn't want any more exposure to Uber than as part of a whole-market index?
  - icedchai 6y ago
    It's all easy looking backwards. If you went through the dot-com boom, bust, and the chaos in between, not so much. If it was easy, everyone would've bought Apple and Microsoft stock in the 80's and just let it ride.
projektfu 6y ago
I remember meeting some Amazon developers at OOPSLA around 2000 and being pretty unimpressed. Like they told me they didn't really know what they were doing there and were just getting out of the office. Then, 2 years later, they started hiring the best, and the rest is history. I think hiring top-quality, motivated engineers doesn't just give you good software, it also provides all the idea generation that you're going to need to enter businesses you never thought about before.

Amazon was already a public company and pretty big that time. But I don't think people like me realised what big could mean 20 years into the future.

chihuahua 6y ago

I worked there for a few years in the early 2000s and it seemed like such an unremarkable company that wasn't going to go anywhere. The stock was always around $20 and whenever it went up, Bezos usually said something that investors didn't like and drove down the stock price (free shipping, search inside the book, etc). Then there was the Segway deal where I amused myself by checking the orders database to see how many they sold (because the numbers were so small) If you told me back then that the stock was going to $3000 some day, I would have stuck around for longer.

jsolson 6y ago
This was my feeling in 2010 when I accepted an offer. It was a much bigger company by then, but upon joining it still felt stodgy and like any other big corp. I wonder if it still feels that way if you're there (I left in 2013).
- pram 6y ago
  It definitely is, it actually made me look back fondly at my time at Oracle if that says anything lol. The fact that it remains an aspirational job (gotta grind leetcode for FANG!) makes me smirk
  - akhilcacharya 6y ago
    I’m not sure what you mean by this. Can you elaborate?
    - icedchai 6y ago
      If you knew people who worked at Oracle, it might make more sense...
dash2 6y ago
... this makes me suspect that investors are idiots.
- motoboi 6y ago
  This proves that predicting the past is much easier than predicting the future.
- dsr_ 6y ago
  It is so much easier to spot things in hindsight. We can all see the evidence that supports the conclusion. Let's take Uber. Their core product is a social media app with mapping, tracking and billing features. It has burnt through an incredible amount of money trying to kill competitors, employing 20,000 or so people directly and claiming that a self-driving electric fleet will someday make them insanely profitable. Market cap is up almost 80% in the last year. Who's the idiot? The investor who believes that Uber will be insanely profitable in N years, or the investor who doesn't want any more exposure to Uber than as part of a whole-market index?
- icedchai 6y ago
  It's all easy looking backwards. If you went through the dot-com boom, bust, and the chaos in between, not so much. If it was easy, everyone would've bought Apple and Microsoft stock in the 80's and just let it ride.

projektfu 6y ago

I remember meeting some Amazon developers at OOPSLA around 2000 and being pretty unimpressed. Like they told me they didn't really know what they were doing there and were just getting out of the office. Then, 2 years later, they started hiring the best, and the rest is history. I think hiring top-quality, motivated engineers doesn't just give you good software, it also provides all the idea generation that you're going to need to enter businesses you never thought about before.