6 ms·
A long time ago, I was a dev in Amazon's fulfillment org, and one day a lot of very smart people disappeared. The guy who had done some incredible pioneering wo
by mabbo 5y ago
A long time ago, I was a dev in Amazon's fulfillment org, and one day a lot of very smart people disappeared. The guy who had done some incredible pioneering work in computer vision for the warehouses; the only principal engineer the org had at the time; and a bunch of other people I know that we're just really clever people. And they joined an org called "JIHM". What's JIHM? They'll only tell you if you join. But it's going to be really cool. (I was in Toronto so I couldn't join- Seattle only).
What I knew: these particular people had left for this project. The head of it was the guy who had lead the Kindle project- he had rejoined Amazon allegedly because Jeff asked him to lead this project. And for whatever reason, this JIHM org had all these new physical book store managers reporting up to them.
Over lunch one day, I proposed a theory to my coworker: "they're going to make that IBM commercial from the 90s, where the sketchy dude grabs a bunch of stuff and puts it in his pockets, then just walks out the door and gets a receipt". It was a fun idea, and given the CV people they had pulled it may have even made sense. "What about the book stores?" My friend asked "It's a smoke screen. That same guy leading JIHM is legendary for leaking false reports that Amazon was going to build a PC to cover him hiring hardware engineer for the Kindle."
6 months later, Amazon Go with it's 'Just Walk Out' technology was publicly announced. The CV guy I knew was even in the commercial ("Holy shit, is that Danny?!").
Maybe this is the final conclusion that those stores were just a cover.
(Caveat: this is all wild speculation, rumours, and probably bad memory on my part, but it's a great story and I swear it's all true!)
- angarg12 5y agoI was under NDA for that stupid robot that was announced recently. Had to bite my tongue for 3 years until I could tell people about that silly secret project.
- morganslaw 5y agoIs Amazon Go stores sticking around? It is confusing when they say "all physical stores" are closing, but even the Amazon Go ones?
- meowkit 5y agoAmazon Go is being absorbed/rebranded under Amazon Fresh, which is supposedly like Whole Foods lite/their delivery service. Might be wrong, this is just my observation in SEA/what I recall.
- Breza 5y agoThe local Whole Foods closed years ago due to a rat infestation and a lease dispute. They just reopened as the first "just walk out" Whole Foods. I imagine a lot of the Amazon Go energy will be going into more of the existing Whole Foods stores. If I worked at Whole foods right now, I'd be updating my resume for the day the robots come.
- mikepurvis 5y agoI was an intern at Amazon in Seattle in 2008 and was ordering groceries and beer from Fresh. It looks like it's a pretty big deal now in most major US cities, but I remember being surprised that year after year after year it seemed to just.... continue existing. Not going huge, but also not getting canned. On the other hand, maybe that's the real lesson of Grocery Gateway and "dot coms" who tried to do a hard burn on this back in the day— it's a really hard thing to get right, and getting it right requires an extremely long horizon of slow and steady growth.
- mabbo 5y agoFor a long time, Fresh did not directly make a profit. That wasn't it's purpose. The goal of Amazon fresh was to say "hey UPS! Looks like we can do deliveries all by ourselves without you! Give us a better deal or we'll become your competitor". Because all those deliveries were on Amazon trucks. Then one day Amazon's delivery needs scaled beyond what UPS was willing to take on. And so Amazon Logistics became a major thing.
- xdeepak81 5y agoAmazon logistics actually started first in India because India was an unorganized section and there was no other company that can support Amazon. Almost every startup in India had to make their own logistic network.
- silisili 5y agoThanks for sharing. Any inclination on what JIHM actually stood/stands for?
- elephantgambit 5y agoA combination of the closing stores' code names (neither relate to the actual projects very much).
- wizzwizz4 5y agoJIHM is JIHM's interesting hidden meaning. (not true)
- zerocrates 5y agoThe "IHM" is reported as "inventory health management," but I'm not sure about the "J." Bloomberg reported it as being an intentionally boring acronym/expansion. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-07-18/amazon-s-most-ambitious-research-project-is-a-convenience-store https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-07-18/amazon-s-...
- dylan604 5y agoJeff's Inventory Health Management?
- iamsomewalrus 5y agoNot sure what the J was for. Internally it’s been IHM since I joined. “Inventory Health Management” is a backronym. I won’t spill the - albeit boring - beans on where IHM actually comes from.
- zerocrates 5y agoYeah it does have the backronym flavor to it so that tracks.
- mabbo 5y agoI still have no idea.
- uejfiweun 5y agoThat's an interesting story, thanks for sharing. It strikes me that when Amazon decides to commit to a product, they rarely fail. They've had success in innovating with Alexa, AWS, Kindle, etc. So hopefully they will have similar success with this tech, and hopefully it will be sold to third parties. I think the post-checkout future sounds awesome and convenient, and I look forward to it.
- colinmhayes 5y agoWhy would they buy whole foods if they're just going to sell their competitive advantage to their competitors?
- MathCodeLove 5y agoWhy would they invest in such great infrastructure for amazon.com if they're just going to sell that infrastructure to competitors?
- colinmhayes 5y agoBecause they make more money selling ads than they do selling their own products? Can't sell the ads unless merchants are using the marketplace though. Whole foods isn't necessary to sell the camera tech to competitors.
- Uehreka 5y agoIs that even true though? I thought they frequently copied merchants’ products as Amazon Basics if they were selling well? Because if that’s true, it means they’d rather have the business themselves than advertise for someone else (at least in some categories).
- jacobr1 5y agoOr they incentivize/empower teams to find revenue without an overarching strategy, and then periodically rationalize what they have.
- qwerpy 5y agoI had a very similar experience there. A mysterious 4 letter acronym that made no sense even if you knew what it stood for. "Multi-billion dollar market!". Wouldn't tell me what it was until I joined. Above average team from internal transfers ("our hiring standards are way above Amazon's regular bar!") and external hires. I even got smugly booted from a team meeting where I had presented some code I had written, after some SDE 2 realized I hadn't yet signed the NDA or whatever. It ended up being Kindle ads for Amazon Local, the now defunct Groupon clone. So anti-climactic after all the cloak and daggers theatrics. At least Amazon Go is a much bigger deal with interesting tech behind it.
- bobsil1 5y agoThis is like when young Google bragged their receptionists had PhDs.