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Bezos is a contender for the best manager of my generation. That being said, don't take these statements as absolute truths. They reflect the very successful st

Bezos is a contender for the best manager of my generation. That being said, don't take these statements as absolute truths. They reflect the very successful strategy at Amazon, but they are by no means absolute. Examples: - "(...) keeping our prices very, very low, we earn trust with customers over time, and that that actually does maximize free cash flow over the long term." This is violated by luxury goods. Louis Vuitton purses must be expensive, it's part of their "contract" with their customers. - "There are two kinds of companies: Those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second." The alternative is to deliver ever increasing value, at constant prices, which is the very successful strategy at Volkswagen. Don't take this as it being my opinion that Bezos is wrong. He's my ideal CEO: long term oriented, customer focused, innovation driven. There are faults at Amazon, but in the grand scheme of things, Amazon is a great feat in itself.

smu 13y ago
Out of curiosity: who else would be in contention for "best manager of the generation"?
- sergiosgc 13y ago
  The one I admire the most is from a previous generation: Amancio Ortega, from Inditex. The innovations in logistics by Inditex are amazing. As for current(ish), and with a heavy skew towards IT, my list would be, in no particular order: - Bill Gates, for MS strategy during the 90s. Evil and Borg-esque but ultra effective. - Steve Jobs, for Pixar and the early 00s turnaround at Apple. - Elon Musk, not so much for co-founding PayPal, but rather because of Tesla Now that I'm at it, let me nominate the worst CEO: Eric Schmidt. Title earned for destroying engineer culture at three great companies: Novell, Sun and Google. Novell and Sun tanked, Google will be the first to survive Schmidt's effects, albeit scarred. There are financially worse CEOs, but Schmidt attacked companies that I particularly liked with the same repeat effects.
  - ww520 13y ago
    I thought Google flourished and grew explosively under Schmidt, and engineering in Google was doing great, no?
    - sergiosgc 13y ago
      Nevertheless, all three companies he led had engineer-driven management, with the kind of ad-hoc innovation culture typical of engineering companies, before Schmidt, all three became business-focused and narrow-minded after Schmidt. This results in excellent financial returns in the short term, followed by cliff diving. Is he responsible? One is bad luck, two is coincidence, three is a trend. P.S. No, I don't think Google will financially collapse. Not while there is no strong competition on the AdWords space. The change in culture is pretty obvious, though.
      - the_watcher 13y ago
        Google also had the advantage of original founders who remained extremely engaged, and have re-emerged as leadership - founders who are ultra-talented and ambitious engineers. The X Lab gives Google a place to continue bringing in top engineers regardless of what the Mountain View office is like.
        jholman 13y ago
        > advantage of original founders who remained extremely engaged I'm skeptical about whether this is true in a straightforward way. For one thing, most of the complaining about the (relative) decline in engineer-centric culture at Google has happened since, oh, about six months after Larry returned to the CEO position. More wood behind fewer arrows, big push on G+, more shutdowns, more constraints on 20% time, etc. (... although I have no personal experience of Google under Schmidt) For another thing, if Sergey is engaged in anything other than his (awesome!) blue-sky projects in X, he puts a lot of work into hiding it. Seriously. Don't get me wrong, I'm willing to give him a thumbs-up, if he's going to keep putting his capital (financial, social, and political) into socially transformative projects. But I would not describe him as engaged with basically anything web-related (search, ads, social, android, etc). Also, you seem a little confused about X. X is a tiny fraction of engineers, and as such it's not clear what it has to do with "bringing in top engineers". I mean, unless you mean "bringing in top engineers and preventing them from working on money-making projects". And also, btw, it's mostly within the Mountain View office complex. This post probably gives the wrong impression. I'm long GOOG, and I think X is awesome, and I think Google is still doing more good than harm. But I believe these in spite of the other stuff I mentioned here, not because of "original founders who remain extremely engaged", especially in the context of sergiosgc's comments.
arethuza 13y ago
"ever increasing value, at constant prices, which is the very successful strategy at Volkswagen" That might be strategy for the VW brand, but VW Group very cleverly uses its huge array of brands to segment the market very nicely (SEAT, Skoda, VW, Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley, Bugatti).
mcv 13y ago
> This is violated by luxury goods. Louis Vuitton purses must be expensive, it's part of their "contract" with their customers. That's because the actual product you pay for isn't the bag itself, but a symbol of exclusivity.

smu 13y ago

Out of curiosity: who else would be in contention for "best manager of the generation"?

sergiosgc 13y ago
The one I admire the most is from a previous generation: Amancio Ortega, from Inditex. The innovations in logistics by Inditex are amazing. As for current(ish), and with a heavy skew towards IT, my list would be, in no particular order: - Bill Gates, for MS strategy during the 90s. Evil and Borg-esque but ultra effective. - Steve Jobs, for Pixar and the early 00s turnaround at Apple. - Elon Musk, not so much for co-founding PayPal, but rather because of Tesla Now that I'm at it, let me nominate the worst CEO: Eric Schmidt. Title earned for destroying engineer culture at three great companies: Novell, Sun and Google. Novell and Sun tanked, Google will be the first to survive Schmidt's effects, albeit scarred. There are financially worse CEOs, but Schmidt attacked companies that I particularly liked with the same repeat effects.
- ww520 13y ago
  I thought Google flourished and grew explosively under Schmidt, and engineering in Google was doing great, no?
  - sergiosgc 13y ago
    Nevertheless, all three companies he led had engineer-driven management, with the kind of ad-hoc innovation culture typical of engineering companies, before Schmidt, all three became business-focused and narrow-minded after Schmidt. This results in excellent financial returns in the short term, followed by cliff diving. Is he responsible? One is bad luck, two is coincidence, three is a trend. P.S. No, I don't think Google will financially collapse. Not while there is no strong competition on the AdWords space. The change in culture is pretty obvious, though.
    - the_watcher 13y ago
      Google also had the advantage of original founders who remained extremely engaged, and have re-emerged as leadership - founders who are ultra-talented and ambitious engineers. The X Lab gives Google a place to continue bringing in top engineers regardless of what the Mountain View office is like.
      - jholman 13y ago
        > advantage of original founders who remained extremely engaged I'm skeptical about whether this is true in a straightforward way. For one thing, most of the complaining about the (relative) decline in engineer-centric culture at Google has happened since, oh, about six months after Larry returned to the CEO position. More wood behind fewer arrows, big push on G+, more shutdowns, more constraints on 20% time, etc. (... although I have no personal experience of Google under Schmidt) For another thing, if Sergey is engaged in anything other than his (awesome!) blue-sky projects in X, he puts a lot of work into hiding it. Seriously. Don't get me wrong, I'm willing to give him a thumbs-up, if he's going to keep putting his capital (financial, social, and political) into socially transformative projects. But I would not describe him as engaged with basically anything web-related (search, ads, social, android, etc). Also, you seem a little confused about X. X is a tiny fraction of engineers, and as such it's not clear what it has to do with "bringing in top engineers". I mean, unless you mean "bringing in top engineers and preventing them from working on money-making projects". And also, btw, it's mostly within the Mountain View office complex. This post probably gives the wrong impression. I'm long GOOG, and I think X is awesome, and I think Google is still doing more good than harm. But I believe these in spite of the other stuff I mentioned here, not because of "original founders who remain extremely engaged", especially in the context of sergiosgc's comments.

arethuza 13y ago

"ever increasing value, at constant prices, which is the very successful strategy at Volkswagen" That might be strategy for the VW brand, but VW Group very cleverly uses its huge array of brands to segment the market very nicely (SEAT, Skoda, VW, Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley, Bugatti).

mcv 13y ago

> This is violated by luxury goods. Louis Vuitton purses must be expensive, it's part of their "contract" with their customers. That's because the actual product you pay for isn't the bag itself, but a symbol of exclusivity.