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This could help balance Amazon’s leadership principles.

• aprdm 3y ago
  Yet Jeff Bezos in his podcast appearance yesterday which was a 2h talk said that when data and anecdote disagree to trust the anecdote and gut feeling
  • bear141 3y ago
    It’s easy to focus on philanthropy and feelings after your monolithic megacorp has ground your competition into dust.
    • aprdm 3y ago
      Isn’t that a definition of success in our current society ?
    • carlosjobim 3y ago
      As a thought experiment, is there anything Bezos could do or say that wouldn't merit a hostile and snide comment in response? Is he unforgivable?
      • bear141 3y ago
        Him acting altruistically now with his vast resources is the best we can hope for I suppose.
      • oddevan 3y ago
        If he actually changed Amazon's behavior so that it wasn't a horrible place to work for? If he donated an actual, significant portion of his wealth that required real sacrifice on his part? Basically, if he did something that had a positive effect on the world that also had real consequences for him. Something that actually shows he _means_ it, actually _wants_ the world to be better even if it hurts himself. If Bezos or Musk or Zuckerberg or Gates(1) did any of that, I'd be thinking differently. (1) The Gates foundation has done a LOT. Bill Gates is still worth ~$135,000,000,000. A quick search says ending homelessness in the USA would take less than a quarter of that.
        • inemesitaffia 3y ago
          You do realize there's people who want to be homeless?
          • bear141 3y ago
            I don’t know why you got downvoted. “Smoke your rent, live in a tent” is their motto in Portland.
    • Geisterde 3y ago
      Hi, hello, I work here, google is down the street, as is microsoft. I can assure you they are not dust. All amazon has done is build more data centers, they havent taken some kind of hostile action towards the competition. The money was on the table, those companies didnt want to spend the time or take the risk, so amazon will gladly hoover it up.
      • oddevan 3y ago
        Glad you have a job and stable employment! When I think of who Amazon has "ground into dust," it's not Microsoft and Google. It's Barnes & Noble, Borders, Waldenbooks, hundreds of thousands of small independent bookstores, small businesses that once worried about Walmart moving into the neighborhood now contending with the omnipresence of Amazon. Some of them adapt, yes. Some were going to close anyway, of course. But you can't deny that retail looks a lot different now than it did ten years ago, and most of that is because of Amazon.
        • senderista 3y ago
          The nostalgia for Borders, B&N etc. is amusing considering they were blamed for the demise of independent bookstores before Amazon showed up.
        • Geisterde 3y ago
          Books are an interesting topic. The cost of publishing through amazon is far more accessible for authors, and the cost of the books themselves has decreased. I dont have enough time in my day to keep up with how many credits I receive from my audible subscription. Digital distribution has made both writing and reading more accessible, its the middle man that got cut out. That is in the nature of innovation, it frees the average person up from more menial tasks and allows them to create higher orders of value using a greater bredth of their creative inputs. That process can also be seen in the wide variety of goods offered on the amazon store, many of which are from those small businesses, the creative and productive factors remain without needing to take up physical real estate.
          • 3y ago
  • sanderjd 3y ago
    Then why ever gather the data? The truth table of this is: data | gut | out 0 | 0 | 0 0 | 1 | 1 1 | 0 | 0 1 | 1 | 1 The data variable is irrelevant here, so you might as well not waste all the resources it takes to collect and analyze it, right?
    • funcDropShadow 3y ago
      Gathering the data might change the gut feeling.
      • sanderjd 3y ago
        Yeah, interesting, good answer! I think that is the answer, and it actually does make sense to me. Often while gathering data I develop a better intuition for what I'm unable to gather data on, which definitely impacts my gut feel for things. The available data might point in one direction, intuition about the unavailable data might point the other way.