11 ms·
The Day I Met Jeff Bezos
- bluedevil2k 13y agoWould have been nice to know the product in question, so he could relate concrete examples of how Bezos is meticulous in his eye for detail and customer experience. I mean, it'd be neat reading an article talking about the first prototyped version of MayDay, and how Bezos laughed about it in the first meeting, transforming it to what it's become today.
- RyJones 13y agoI worked on one of a flotilla of related projects at Lab 126 - none of which has seen the light of day in toto, but parts of which have escaped into shipping projects. There's a reason he's reticent - amazon (in the personage of lab 126), more than any other company I worked with, is insane about internal security and rumor control.
- nilkn 13y agoIt's an interesting story to relate, but it seems to be missing details that could really flesh it out, and it ended abruptly.
- natdempk 13y agoYeah, would have liked to see specific examples of features he picked apart, revisions that were made, etc. That would make this article much more valuable.
- deleted_account 13y agoYou can't expect actual content in these blog posts. It's vaguely self deprecating promotional post with a high-value name drop in the title crafted to get the link to the front page.
- peterwwillis 13y agoWith one important takeaway: focus on the customer, not on personal engineering goals.
- deleted_account 13y agoTherein lies the beauty of these types of posts. They allow the reader to fill in the gaps with their own conclusions without the author risking actual opinion.
- notastartup 13y agoSo my question is how do you view the software you created from a customer's point of view? As someone who creates the software there must be a certain creative blindness we experience. I mean I'd love to create a software, revert my brain back to the idea state and look at the software again. What is the process of Jeff Bezo's? How does he "rip apart feature by feature"?
- alttab 13y agoThe way I do it is try to envision the dumbest, most impatient, penny-pinching DICK HEAD out there possible, and make him happy. Any of the following statements destroy customer experience: - "The customer should understand that at this point..." - "The customer already did X, so its clear that Y..." - "Waiting 20 seconds isn't that unreasonable." - "Its in the terms and conditions so we are covered." - "What do they expect? We can't message that perfectly every time." Don't. Fucking. Compromise. Make the ass holes happy. You will have surpassed everyone else's expectations by miles.
- CyberpunkDad 13y agoAlso, if making "the dumbest, most impatient, penny-pinching DICK HEAD out there" fills you with disgust, disdain, rage, sadness, etc. it might be time to reconsider your career choice. As much as we may wish it, the users never go away.
- notastartup 13y agothis is what I've been doing for a long time. However, it sometimes forces me to create more features than I can chew because in my mind, it's a guy paying $20 a month and wanting A-Z features.
- meric 13y agoKeep in mind its often the quality of the features that matter more than the number of them. No one is going to use a feature that is sometimes very fast and sometimes take 20 seconds and doesn't work 20% of the time.
- hatred 13y ago"In fact, to this day I’m not sure what the product will be used for—but we dropped everything else we were working on and scrambled to get the demo done in time" I wanted to know how other developers deal with this phenomenon when you effectively don't know what your end product is or what it will be used for ?
- bitb 13y agoWho's the narrator here? Mike, Adam, someone else? http://imgur.com/gdR785r,iaaBddd#1 http://imgur.com/gdR785r,iaaBddd#1 http://imgur.com/gdR785r,iaaBddd#0 http://imgur.com/gdR785r,iaaBddd#0
- dmit 13y agoReminds me of this Yegge story: https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzVeRq https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzV....
- bigs204 13y agothanks. the OP is such a tease with all the missing details. long form ftw.
- fuzzythinker 13y agoDoes that mean Bezos doesn't care about AWS? Not likely.. Probably because he is not the target user.
- JTon 13y agoCare you explain how you arrived to that conclusion?
- DigitalBison 13y agoI don't follow, what are you getting at?
- alttab 13y agoIt means Bezos can't entirely relate to the AWS customer (which isn't retail, but a developer or technical organization), or fixing it isn't nearly as easy? That's a loaded accusation, but its the best I can come up with as a response.
- Uhhrrr 13y agoPer Yegge's post about Amazon's use of interfaces everywhere internally (https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX), he/Amazon is probably the prime user.
- marincounty 13y agoIs this the way we kiss our bosses "ego" now? Hay Jeff--since you are so concerned with the customer experience; vet your resellers more carefully--especially the ones that have dozens of complains about wrong orders, or counterfit goods? Put away the flying toys, get the ego in check, and go back to what made you a billionaire--selling the right product, at the right price. I know it's not glamorous, or stimulating anymore, but it's what the customers want.
- incision 13y agoA couple of things irk me about this article, but that could simply be due to the incredible vagueness. >"He paused another moment and then said, “I know that’s not your plan because it can’t be done. What is your real plan?” He told us he wanted to see a new version the very next day. The request didn’t seem to make much sense. In fact, to this day I’m not sure what the product will be used for—but we dropped everything else we were working on and scrambled to get the demo done in time." So the author worked (presumably quite hard) on something, received dismissive feedback that didn't make any sense, didn't question any of it, scrambled to re-implement on an uninformed guess for the next day then (surprise) got slapped around again. That honestly sounds more like a loyalty/submissiveness test of some sort than anything else. Ideally, that meeting was a great opportunity to challenge the man and earn some respect from him or possibly lose some for him depending on how it plays out. >"He wasn’t thinking about the feature; he was thinking about the customer experience." What is wrong in the culture / education of engineering that people have to be taught this after they start working?
- protomyth 13y ago"What is wrong in the culture / education of engineering that people have to be taught this after they start working?" I wonder how many universities make their engineers or developers actually build something for an outside or even internal customer. Strangely, vocational folks deal with customers quite a bit in learning and learn to think in those terms. Nothing like having to redo the doors on a cabinet or rerun some plumping to make you think first.
- vlahmot 13y agoI took an experimental class last semester where we teamed up with a design student to build a website for a local non-profit/small company. The technical aspects of the class were less than satisfying but taking a product through the entire life cycle (even though it was a small project) was a great learning experience. I'm pretty sure they made it a full on elective class next semester.
- grecy 13y ago> I wonder how many universities make their engineers or developers actually build something for an outside or even internal customer. For my final year full-year Software Engineering project with 16 team members we built and delivered a software product for an external customer - a big name Software company you've heard of. It was an awesome project, working so closely and directly with the external end customer.
- javert 13y agoBezos must feel like he is surrounded by morons.
- general_failure 13y agoindeed. same goes for all the Jobs stories. nobody under these people seem to get anything right. they have to be torn to shreds and spoonfed by the great lords to "see".
- port98 13y agoOccasionally, some shine and go on to make their mark in the industry. Yegge has been mentioned in this thread, but Spolsky as well: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html
- w1ntermute 13y agoCompared to Bezos, they probably are morons. That doesn't mean they aren't probably still well above the average person in terms of skills/intelligence.
- freyr 13y agoOr, he's a smart man with a lot more experience than a typical kid fresh out of college.
- garg 13y ago>The request didn’t seem to make much sense. In fact, to this day I’m not sure what the product will be used for—but we dropped everything else we were working on and scrambled to get the demo done in time. >The next day we returned and presented the feature to Bezos. I knew instantly that he wasn’t satisfied. For two minutes we stood in silence as Bezos picked our feature apart. He spoke as if he had already built the product himself. How could this engineer even hope to solve a problem if he didn't understand it? Jeff Bezos spoke as if he had already built it because he was probably the only person who understood what he wanted. The entire story sounds like an utter waste of time.
- bluishgreen 13y agoFeels like the article was an afterthought written around a nice title.
- CmonDev 13y agoHow do you get to present to Bezos "a few month" after joining as a graduate?