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While it sounds simple in the article, I think in reality the difference between "Distorting the system" and "Improving the system" is often not very clear. Eve

by tqi 4y ago

While it sounds simple in the article, I think in reality the difference between "Distorting the system" and "Improving the system" is often not very clear. Even looking at the example of a WBR metric that evolved over time[1], the final version incentivizes product behavior that may run counter to the idea of Amazon as an "everything store", such as down-ranking items that are a better match for what the customer is looking for because they aren't immediately available or removing a long tail of products altogether. Is that a distortion or an improvement? [1]: - number of detail pages, which we refined to - number of detail page views (you don’t get credit for a new detail page if customers don’t view it), which then became - the percentage of detail page views where the products were in stock (you don’t get credit if you add items but can’t keep them in stock), which was ultimately finalized as - the percentage of detail page views where the products were in stock and immediately ready for two-day shipping, which ended up being called Fast Track In Stock.

anonymouskimmer 4y ago
> such as down-ranking items that are a better match for what the customer is looking for because they aren't immediately available What struck me about the WBR is this assumption they're making about the customer's desire. > The backlog indicated the amount of work we’d need to do to make sure our customers received their gifts before the holidays. How many of these people don't care if their product arrives before December 24th? You never, ever bothered to ask them. If it's even 5% of the orders during this period that customers don't care about arriving before December 25th then you could have made logistics easier by just asking this question. And as Amazon grew to become the "everything store", a greater proportion of mid-December orders are ones that the customer doesn't need by December 24th. If you ever bothered to ask the question you'd make the holiday rush so much easier. Instead you make Amazon inconvenient for the customers who don't want to be a bother, by forcing the customer to put off submitting orders until after the holiday.

by tqi 4y ago

anonymouskimmer 4y ago

> such as down-ranking items that are a better match for what the customer is looking for because they aren't immediately available What struck me about the WBR is this assumption they're making about the customer's desire. > The backlog indicated the amount of work we’d need to do to make sure our customers received their gifts before the holidays. How many of these people don't care if their product arrives before December 24th? You never, ever bothered to ask them. If it's even 5% of the orders during this period that customers don't care about arriving before December 25th then you could have made logistics easier by just asking this question. And as Amazon grew to become the "everything store", a greater proportion of mid-December orders are ones that the customer doesn't need by December 24th. If you ever bothered to ask the question you'd make the holiday rush so much easier. Instead you make Amazon inconvenient for the customers who don't want to be a bother, by forcing the customer to put off submitting orders until after the holiday.