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Amazon's First Job Listing
- elaus 3y agoAlmost 30 years ago, that's insane to think about. > Your compensation will include meaningful equity ownership. I wonder to what that turned out today...
- gyzmau 3y agoI wonder who got hired.
- ayewo 3y agoYou are in luck! Amazon employee #2 hangs out on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26006656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26006656 EDIT: There’s also an interview of Amazon employee #1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12437322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12437322
- gyzmau 3y agoWow, thanks. It's why I love HN.
- ourmandave 3y agoThis solves the "fast, cheap, or good; pick two" question.
- kartanaangel 3y ago[flagged]
- DeathArrow 3y ago>You must have experience designing and building large and complex (yet maintainable) systems, and you should be able to do so in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible. I wonder if working nights and weekends was a bonus? What's wrong with being competent and putting out a reasonable amount of work and not being overworked and under pressure?
- ChuckNorris89 3y agoIf you listen to the war stories, a large number of other successful tech companies or products like Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, the original iPhone, the original Blackberry, the post-iPhone Android, etc. would nove have been successes if everyone had strictly done their 9-5, Mo-Fr. Success often means racing to get to market with significant lead over your competitors who are also working on solving the same problems you are and are most likely not sticking to the 9-5, mo-fr schedule either. Which is why probably not many market successes came out of Europe where everyone works 40h tops, unless it's their own company/passion project. I was blown away by how many people in the original iPhone team claimed lost their marriages due to spending so much time grinding to iron out all the last minute issues and get the phone out the door on time. Jensen Huang said in the beginning their team was iterating to ship a new GPU design every 6 months with a tiny team. I bet everything I own they were not doing only 40h weeks back then. I'm not endorsing this practice, which is why I don't work in start-ups, but succes in this racket for early stage start-ups was often correlated with burning the midnight oil and it seems like a lot of people were willing to make the sacrifice for enough equity in their mission to "change the world" and "make it".
- thumbuddy 3y agoYea but it's also the reason a ton of start ups fail. I've run the gambit of startups. The biggest reason I've seen them struggle or fail is, 1. Over engineering too early. 2. Making bad decisions because everyone is exhausted and pissed off. 3. Everyone racing to "seize power" rather then focussing on the product or actual customer wins. IE, a bunch of antisocial engineers end up in people leader roles because they are good engineers rather then tech. Leadership. Number 2 is a serious problem. The things I've had bosses pulling 80 hour weeks say to me and others has been astounding. Like if you wrote them down and showed them to a fifth grader they'd think you were insane.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoMaybe then. Right now you can work 30 hours, party and then get bought by another VC operated company. This is what was missing when Apple and Amazon started and for the last decade this dirty VC business has stifled innovation and made people look only for an exit. That is why the biggest companies in the VC era has been companies like Uber and AirBnb instead of Apple and Amazon.
- mrgill 3y agoFascinating that he wanted an expert C developer with a PHD who'd build stuff in one third of the time it takes others.
- ant6n 3y ago…probably for _one third_ the pay!
- thumbuddy 3y agoHiring C developers back in the day was smart. It meant someone knew computers as much as they knew software.
- intelVISA 3y agoHiring C/C++/Rust devs and retraining (stupefying) them where necessary is prob a lifehack to get top talent without having to sift through 1000s of Js resumes.
- juujian 3y agoI feel like I'm missing something. Why would you ever respond to that listing? No meaningful description of the company, no outstanding benefits, just the promise of being overworked?
- xyzelement 3y agoIt's interesting to observe that the person who this language did resonate with is likely a billionaire now.
- Dwolb 3y agoYup you’re missing something. In addition to attracting qualified candidates, good job listings repel those who don’t agree with them. No one wants to sift through hundreds of applications. Here’s the main mission filter: “to help pioneer commerce on the Internet.” technical filter: “you should be able to do so in about one-third the time” and culture filter: “Expect talented, motivated, intense, and interesting co-workers.” If you didn’t get these things or why they were important, early Amazon wasn’t for you. On the other hand, if you saw these lines and said “holy cow this is the future and I want to be a part of this”, then you’d roll the dice and apply. This style of recruiting isn’t a numbers game and doesn’t appeal to the average person.
- hardware2win 3y agoEhh, I think you are making this up and your theory is sound just because Amaz turned out big I see stuff like this weekly "blablabla need skilled engineers for my unique brilliant idea company blabla" Nothing is exciting about this
- kartanaangel 3y ago[flagged]
- kartanaangel 3y ago[flagged]
- kartanaangel 3y ago[flagged]
- jmartrican 3y agoI wonder who they ended up hiring for this opening. If they see this, maybe they can respond how the job went.
- jansan 3y agoAnd I hope the person went with the equity ownership and did not settle for a 10% higher salary instead.
- jmartrican 3y agoI would have gone for a 10% salary increase. :/
- baxtr 3y agoAnyone know who eventually got the job?