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Although Dave Clark comes across as an unrequited villain in most Amazon reporting, he’s just a loyal shadow of Bezos’ dictum that Amazon employees at all level

Although Dave Clark comes across as an unrequited villain in most Amazon reporting, he’s just a loyal shadow of Bezos’ dictum that Amazon employees at all levels are to unquestioningly serve his machine without thought of compensation. The image of a man who owns mansions in Seattle, DC, New York, and LA (amongst others) pontificating to his S-Team that paying employees more makes them /less/ motivated is one that sticks with me.

spaetzleesser 5y ago
"The image of a man who owns mansions in Seattle, DC, New York, and LA (amongst others) pontificating to his S-Team that paying employees more makes them /less/ motivated is one that sticks with me." That seems to be widely spread modern management thinking. Executives always have a reason why they should be paid a lot no matter if the stock goes up or down, the company does illegal things, profits go up or down. They always need to be incentivized financially. And the same pople will tell you that giving more money to the lower ranks will make them lazy. I remember a discussion with my director where he explained to me that he doesn't want to hire people who work for the money while at the same time in a lot of meetings he talks about cost and profit.
- astrange 5y ago
  That's why you hire execs from the right social classes; their expenses, or their non-monetary needs like staying away from their wife, need to be so high that they won't retire just because you gave them $4 million.
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    That’s actually true. I would retire after half a year if I got my CEOs salary. And I would feel super rich. Even a month would propably be sufficient.
pfortuny 5y ago
People as commodity. Of course, I am NOT people.
astrange 5y ago
> The image of a man who owns mansions in Seattle, DC, New York, and LA (amongst others) pontificating to his S-Team that paying employees more makes them /less/ motivated is one that sticks with me. Well, this is true. Google tried the opposite strategy with self-driving cars; they paid everyone so much that none of them had any reason to work for the rest of their lives. This has not accomplished cars becoming self-driving.
- josefx 5y ago
  I am not sure I would trust Google on that. At least one guy got an even better offer from Uber and Googles involvement in fixing salaries with several competitors has been out of the bag for years now.
- HillRat 5y ago
  It seems to me — not that this is my space — that Waymo’s gotten further than anyone else, running a taxi service and recently testing long-haul trucking. Zoox might also get there quickly, but note that Amazon is already losing key personnel to Waymo and is having to buttress their purchase with additional stock options to employees in order to keep them around — Bezos’ dictum breaks down rapidly as your labor pool becomes constrained.
- RankingMember 5y ago
  Paying people yearly salaries so huge that they don't have to work for the rest of their lives is much different from simply paying them more.
- d3nj4l 5y ago
  > This has not accomplished cars becoming self-driving. There's so many more factors here than just pay, and as others have said, Google's team has done pretty damn well overall.
- deegles 5y ago
  I think it's still an open question whether any amount of money would be enough to build a true SDC. The engineers made the rational decision to take the money and work on some cool problems for a while.
onion2k 5y ago
People very high up the corporate ladder often aren't motivated by money. They just get paid a lot. It's not the reason why they work. They work to get power, fame, respect etc. They believe that good workers are like them even if those people don't earn very much in comparison. They also believe that if someone is a bad worker, eg not like them, and you pay them a lot then they'll slack off and spend their money on things like holidays rather than working as hard as possible.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

"The image of a man who owns mansions in Seattle, DC, New York, and LA (amongst others) pontificating to his S-Team that paying employees more makes them /less/ motivated is one that sticks with me." That seems to be widely spread modern management thinking. Executives always have a reason why they should be paid a lot no matter if the stock goes up or down, the company does illegal things, profits go up or down. They always need to be incentivized financially. And the same pople will tell you that giving more money to the lower ranks will make them lazy. I remember a discussion with my director where he explained to me that he doesn't want to hire people who work for the money while at the same time in a lot of meetings he talks about cost and profit.

astrange 5y ago
That's why you hire execs from the right social classes; their expenses, or their non-monetary needs like staying away from their wife, need to be so high that they won't retire just because you gave them $4 million.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  That’s actually true. I would retire after half a year if I got my CEOs salary. And I would feel super rich. Even a month would propably be sufficient.

pfortuny 5y ago

People as commodity. Of course, I am NOT people.

astrange 5y ago

> The image of a man who owns mansions in Seattle, DC, New York, and LA (amongst others) pontificating to his S-Team that paying employees more makes them /less/ motivated is one that sticks with me. Well, this is true. Google tried the opposite strategy with self-driving cars; they paid everyone so much that none of them had any reason to work for the rest of their lives. This has not accomplished cars becoming self-driving.

josefx 5y ago
I am not sure I would trust Google on that. At least one guy got an even better offer from Uber and Googles involvement in fixing salaries with several competitors has been out of the bag for years now.
HillRat 5y ago
It seems to me — not that this is my space — that Waymo’s gotten further than anyone else, running a taxi service and recently testing long-haul trucking. Zoox might also get there quickly, but note that Amazon is already losing key personnel to Waymo and is having to buttress their purchase with additional stock options to employees in order to keep them around — Bezos’ dictum breaks down rapidly as your labor pool becomes constrained.
RankingMember 5y ago
Paying people yearly salaries so huge that they don't have to work for the rest of their lives is much different from simply paying them more.
d3nj4l 5y ago
> This has not accomplished cars becoming self-driving. There's so many more factors here than just pay, and as others have said, Google's team has done pretty damn well overall.
deegles 5y ago
I think it's still an open question whether any amount of money would be enough to build a true SDC. The engineers made the rational decision to take the money and work on some cool problems for a while.

onion2k 5y ago

People very high up the corporate ladder often aren't motivated by money. They just get paid a lot. It's not the reason why they work. They work to get power, fame, respect etc. They believe that good workers are like them even if those people don't earn very much in comparison. They also believe that if someone is a bad worker, eg not like them, and you pay them a lot then they'll slack off and spend their money on things like holidays rather than working as hard as possible.