33 ms·

Well written! Is Jeff Bezos really like he paints him to be?

cookiecaper 15y ago
I have no relevant experience with anything, but my impression is that usually people who gush on about the superhuman abilities of an individual just have a skewed perspective. I've been on the receiving end of that kind of gush a time or two and I don't really feel that it's accurate in my case, and I don't believe that it's accurate in any other case. The people that talk just can't see the inadequacies and the common weaknesses that are visible from a better-informed context. Jeff Bezos may indeed be smart, and he may indeed come up with things that "domain experts" haven't yet thought of, but the explanations are usually much more timid and general than "Jeff is practically a giant-brained alien".
- danmaz74 15y ago
  On a much smaller scale, my company's founder and CEO is viewed as one such super-intelligent alien. And for sure he is very smart and has an incredible memory. But I can guarantee you that he doesn't know "everything" at all, but this is how he is perceived by many.
- msellout 15y ago
  I've had that same experience -- that people exclaim how certain CEOs are so incredibly brilliant ("cerebral" was one comment that stuck in my memory), but when you meet them they just seem like any other smart person who has studied a domain for a long time.
potatolicious 15y ago
I've presented to Bezos once. It went about the same as Yegge's experience, except I didn't have his balls to laugh in my CEO's face ;) The whole thing felt like I was meeting the President - layer after layer of aides and executive assistants, tons of security, and briefings on where to sit, where to not sit, where to stand, where to not stand, look him in the eye when you shake his hand, etc etc. It was kind of surreal. I haven't presented to any other big-corp CEO other than him, so I can't really draw any comparisons. One thing Yegge brought up that I also felt the same about walking out of that room: Jeff is really smart, like really, really smart. I was warned about this beforehand and spent two weeks poring over every single detail, potential feature, everything about the idea I was presenting. He still managed to come out of left field with relevant questions that none of us had even thought of. So I can corroborate that side of the story. The comparison to Liszt also seems apt - before we were even done presenting, he'd already grokked it to a surprising degree, and was already expanding upon the idea in out loud. You could hear my manager scribbling like a madman trying to get all of this down. This might not seem especially amazing, but the Director and VP level people I presented the very same idea to had not the same depth of insight. I remember being very impressed on the spot. I'm no longer with Amazon, and I don't particularly want to go back - but that's not due to bad top management, IMO Bezos is one of the keenest tech CEOs around. He might be the closest thing we have left to Jobs. To balance it out a bit and not make this seems like a complete Amazon love-fest: Jeff loved our idea, he gave us the green light right away. We left that room ecstatic thinking we were about to change the online retail experience forever. Then middle management showed up. There was political infighting about who owns the project - it straddled multiple disciplines (hence why it was so groundbreaking), and there was a mixture of both hot-potato-oh-god-you-take-it and this-is-amazing-we-need-the-credit-on-this. The teams that were interested were unwilling to yield to other teams that (rightfully, given their expertise and domain) wanted in, and some teams we needed support from kept punting it since it wasn't in their yearly plan (put together, well, a year or more ago). The project would have provided very powerfully tangible, very high-profile benefits to the customer, but said benefits weren't part of the metrics on which our department was getting judged, so at the VP level the willingness to devote resources was almost non-existent. There was lots of lip service given - especially about how a few people were able to hack together this thing and make it all the way to a Jeff Presentation. But ultimately the project froze. It was, actually, probably the main reason I decided to leave Amazon for a smaller, more agile startup, where if the CEO wants something done, by golly, it's gettin' done.
- plinkplonk 15y ago
  "Then middle management showed up." This should be in a collection of Famous Last Words.
- jonah 15y ago
  That's a good illustration of no matter how brilliant the leader is, a bad team under them and/or poor execution can lead to failure. Even with this infighting and whatnot going on Amazon is still doing amazing things. I'd be interesting to see what it'd look like if they were able to execute everything well. It seems that's also a crucial role of the exec - if they see something that needs to be happening and it's not, they need to get in there make the necessary changes.
  - gaius 15y ago
    How does a good leader end up with a bad team? That's worth understanding.
    - mkeshav 15y ago
      Is a team of donkeys lead by a lion better than a team of lions lead by a donkey?
      - gyardley 15y ago
        On a team of lions, the donkey is lunch.
    - nicferrier 15y ago
      bad leadership?
    - stonemetal 15y ago
      There are probably a million different ways for it to go bad. There is a theory that gets posted here from time to time that As hire As and a few Bs that get through the filter, Bs hire Bs and a few Cs get through the filter, and so on down the line until you have hired people you really shouldn't have. The other theory is promote until incompetent. My guess is much more mundane, when you hire middle management they act like middle management. Which works as long as Their sphere of responsibility and control is well defined. When you need to cross cut concerns middle management actively fights against it. All most like using inheritance for code reuse and having deep inheritance hierarchies.

I have no relevant experience with anything, but my impression is that usually people who gush on about the superhuman abilities of an individual just have a skewed perspective. I've been on the receiving end of that kind of gush a time or two and I don't really feel that it's accurate in my case, and I don't believe that it's accurate in any other case. The people that talk just can't see the inadequacies and the common weaknesses that are visible from a better-informed context. Jeff Bezos may indeed be smart, and he may indeed come up with things that "domain experts" haven't yet thought of, but the explanations are usually much more timid and general than "Jeff is practically a giant-brained alien".

danmaz74 15y ago
On a much smaller scale, my company's founder and CEO is viewed as one such super-intelligent alien. And for sure he is very smart and has an incredible memory. But I can guarantee you that he doesn't know "everything" at all, but this is how he is perceived by many.
msellout 15y ago
I've had that same experience -- that people exclaim how certain CEOs are so incredibly brilliant ("cerebral" was one comment that stuck in my memory), but when you meet them they just seem like any other smart person who has studied a domain for a long time.

potatolicious 15y ago

I've presented to Bezos once. It went about the same as Yegge's experience, except I didn't have his balls to laugh in my CEO's face ;) The whole thing felt like I was meeting the President - layer after layer of aides and executive assistants, tons of security, and briefings on where to sit, where to not sit, where to stand, where to not stand, look him in the eye when you shake his hand, etc etc. It was kind of surreal. I haven't presented to any other big-corp CEO other than him, so I can't really draw any comparisons. One thing Yegge brought up that I also felt the same about walking out of that room: Jeff is really smart, like really, really smart. I was warned about this beforehand and spent two weeks poring over every single detail, potential feature, everything about the idea I was presenting. He still managed to come out of left field with relevant questions that none of us had even thought of. So I can corroborate that side of the story. The comparison to Liszt also seems apt - before we were even done presenting, he'd already grokked it to a surprising degree, and was already expanding upon the idea in out loud. You could hear my manager scribbling like a madman trying to get all of this down. This might not seem especially amazing, but the Director and VP level people I presented the very same idea to had not the same depth of insight. I remember being very impressed on the spot. I'm no longer with Amazon, and I don't particularly want to go back - but that's not due to bad top management, IMO Bezos is one of the keenest tech CEOs around. He might be the closest thing we have left to Jobs. To balance it out a bit and not make this seems like a complete Amazon love-fest: Jeff loved our idea, he gave us the green light right away. We left that room ecstatic thinking we were about to change the online retail experience forever. Then middle management showed up. There was political infighting about who owns the project - it straddled multiple disciplines (hence why it was so groundbreaking), and there was a mixture of both hot-potato-oh-god-you-take-it and this-is-amazing-we-need-the-credit-on-this. The teams that were interested were unwilling to yield to other teams that (rightfully, given their expertise and domain) wanted in, and some teams we needed support from kept punting it since it wasn't in their yearly plan (put together, well, a year or more ago). The project would have provided very powerfully tangible, very high-profile benefits to the customer, but said benefits weren't part of the metrics on which our department was getting judged, so at the VP level the willingness to devote resources was almost non-existent. There was lots of lip service given - especially about how a few people were able to hack together this thing and make it all the way to a Jeff Presentation. But ultimately the project froze. It was, actually, probably the main reason I decided to leave Amazon for a smaller, more agile startup, where if the CEO wants something done, by golly, it's gettin' done.

plinkplonk 15y ago
"Then middle management showed up." This should be in a collection of Famous Last Words.
jonah 15y ago
That's a good illustration of no matter how brilliant the leader is, a bad team under them and/or poor execution can lead to failure. Even with this infighting and whatnot going on Amazon is still doing amazing things. I'd be interesting to see what it'd look like if they were able to execute everything well. It seems that's also a crucial role of the exec - if they see something that needs to be happening and it's not, they need to get in there make the necessary changes.
- gaius 15y ago
  How does a good leader end up with a bad team? That's worth understanding.
  - mkeshav 15y ago
    Is a team of donkeys lead by a lion better than a team of lions lead by a donkey?
    - gyardley 15y ago
      On a team of lions, the donkey is lunch.
  - nicferrier 15y ago
    bad leadership?
  - stonemetal 15y ago
    There are probably a million different ways for it to go bad. There is a theory that gets posted here from time to time that As hire As and a few Bs that get through the filter, Bs hire Bs and a few Cs get through the filter, and so on down the line until you have hired people you really shouldn't have. The other theory is promote until incompetent. My guess is much more mundane, when you hire middle management they act like middle management. Which works as long as Their sphere of responsibility and control is well defined. When you need to cross cut concerns middle management actively fights against it. All most like using inheritance for code reuse and having deep inheritance hierarchies.