Inside Amazon

That goes on at every bog company. We should assume that managers are smart enough to know this, and investigate any complaints, and not just take them at face value.

Sure there are. This about speed and efficiency. They're collecting data, and because it's so easy, they probably collect more than other companies.

They're not concerned with everyone "getting along". Everyone is aware of the system.

Slackers are identified early, and pushed out. Strong performers don't want slackers on their team.

 

Do you know how many millions of dollars some companies blow on new initiatives because no one is willing to call bullshit on a dumb idea?

And, how many multi-million dollar ideas are never developed because they came from a low level employee, who didn't get a proper hearing?

Amazon wants to avoid the latter, and encourage the former, and it looks like they've developed a system to help make this happen.

 

My take on this, which is slightly informed.

The culture at Amazon is slowly changing, in part because the mindset of the work force is changing from a more confrontational, outwardly expressive employee emblematic of the late Baby Boomer/Gen-X days to the more emotionally contained, let-me-be-a-part-of-something approach of the Gen Y/millennials.

In other words, Amazon is getting and will get to a point where the culture has self-selected to such a degree that Corporate Brother rather pleases them, and they want to please Corporate Brother.

 

Even the best newsrooms these days are riddled with contentment and complacency. Even so, there are a lot of good people with good ideas. The problem, of course, is that if you're not in the idea pipeline, it's next to impossible to get the aforementioned proper hearing. The idea that newspapers have run off all the good people is wrong. The issue is that the powers that be in most newsrooms don't have any idea who many of the good people are. And as long as communication remains insulated and circular, they never will.

 

I thought this article from the weekend was interesting.

Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

They could have dominated digital photography, but didn't want to disrupt their own business model, so instead, they mostly ignored it -- even though it was invented in house!

But, it was probably a nice place to work:

Imagine a world where photography is a slow process that is impossible to master without years of study or apprenticeship. A world without iPhones or Instagram, where one company reigned supreme. Such a world existed in 1973, when Steven Sasson, a young engineer, went to work for Eastman Kodak.

Two years later he invented digital photography and made the first digital camera.

Mr. Sasson, all of 24 years old, invented the process that allows us to make photos with our phones, send images around the world in seconds and share them with millions of people. The same process completely disrupted the industry that was dominated by his Rochester employer and set off a decade of complaints by professional photographers fretting over the ruination of their profession.
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Mr. Sasson made a series of demonstrations to groups of executives from the marketing, technical and business departments and then to their bosses and to their bosses.
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Their response was tepid, at best.

“They were convinced that no one would ever want to look at their pictures on a television set,” he said. “Print had been with us for over 100 years, no one was complaining about prints, they were very inexpensive, and so why would anyone want to look at their picture on a television set?”

The main objections came from the marketing and business sides. Kodak had a virtual monopoly on the United States photography market, and made money on every step of the photographic process.
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When Kodak executives asked when digital photography could compete, Mr. Sassoon used Moore’s Law, which predicts how fast digital technology advances. He would need two million pixels to compete against 110 negative color film, so he estimated 15 to 20 years. Kodak offered its first consumer cameras 18 years later.
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The first digital camera was patented in 1978.
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In 1989, Mr. Sasson and a colleague, Robert Hills, created the first modern digital single-lens reflex (S.L.R.) camera that looks and functions like today’s professional models.
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But Kodak’s marketing department was not interested in it. Mr. Sasson was told they could sell the camera, but wouldn’t — because it would eat away at the company’s film sales.
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Still, until it expired in the United States in 2007, the digital camera patent helped earn billions for Kodak, since it — not Mr. Sasson — owned it, making most digital camera manufacturers pay Kodak for the use of the technology. Though Kodak did eventually market both professional and consumer cameras, it did not fully embrace digital photography until it was too late.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/12/kodaks-first-digital-moment/

 

Amazon Prime is a great product and I'd have a membership if not for the company's treatment of warehouse workers. This story just made me dislike the company a little bit more.

 

It's just getting harder to be a good, environmentally concerned liberal.

You can't use Amazon.
You can't use Uber.
You can't buy a diamond angagement ring.
You can't buy flowers.
You can't smoke pot.
You can't use air conditioning.
You can't shop at Walmart.

What else is on the list?

 

So the error in not embracing digital photography early enough is rooted in an ideological laziness brought on by excessive kindness?

Or are we just spitballing random corporate stories and seeing what sticks?

 

Well, it ran in the same paper just days before the Amazon article.

Big companies have to be nimble, or else even the biggest can be surpassed by another company with better technology.

Who ever thought Myspace would be displaced?

Amazon can't afford to miss out on the next big thing, or to go down the wrong path.

So they've designed a system that keeps them nimble -- or as nimble as a company their size can be. At Amazon, they're determined to not let innovation, like what was possible at Kodak, go without being developed.

 

Weird, the article wanted me to work at Amazon.

But then again I'm a man and I don't have to worry about my baby making disrupting my work.

I also thought of Dave Eggers The Circle. I guess this confirms that Bezos is the guy who loves sharks.

 

It's The Jungle out there.

 

Would Amazon still make an amazing fucking profit if they stopped treating people like shit? Yes

Would the people who own Amazon stock still make a profit if Amazon stopped treating people like shit? No