
What I Learned from Reading Every Amazon Shareholders Letter - vinnyglennon
https://medium.com/@gsvpioneer/what-i-learned-from-reading-every-amazon-shareholders-letter-cdc35f309e8b
======
jondubois
>> If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get
on.

I believe this is from Eric Schmidt. It's probably the single most important
principle that you have to follow if you want to have a successful career.
Especially if you're an engineer.

Most fast growing tech companies are founded by random dumb kids in their
garages. Don't try to build the rocket yourself (that's a gamble that
practically never ends well); let someone else do it and try to hitch a ride.
That is the safest way by far.

It's much easier to identify a good rocket ship than to build it yourself.

~~~
adventured
> Most fast growing tech companies are founded by random dumb kids in their
> garages.

Most fast growing tech companies were in fact founded by people between the
ages of ~28 and ~50 (and not in a garage), not by kids in garages. The kid in
the garage founding a major tech company is a very rare exception. I can add a
lot more names to this list:

Paul Graham (31, Viaweb), Jan Koum (33, WhatsApp), Brian Acton (37, WhatsApp),
Ev Williams (34, Twitter), Jack Dorsey (33, Square), Elon Musk (32, Tesla),
Garrett Camp (30, Uber), Travis Kalanick (32, Uber), Brian Chesky (27,
Airbnb), Adam Neumann (31, WeWork), Reed Hastings (37, Netflix), Reid Hoffman
(36, LinkedIn), Jack Ma (35, Alibaba), Jeff Bezos (30, Amazon), Jerry Sanders
(33, AMD), Marc Benioff (35, Salesforce), Ross Perot (32, EDS), Peter Norton
(39, Norton), Larry Ellison (33, Oracle), Mitch Kapor (32, Lotus), Leonard
Bosack (32, Cisco), Sandy Lerner (29, Cisco), Gordon Moore (39, Intel), Mark
Cuban (37, Broadcast.com), Scott Cook (31, Intuit), Nolan Bushnell (29,
Atari), Paul Galvin (33, Motorola), Irwin Jacobs (52, Qualcomm), David
Duffield (46, PeopleSoft; 64 Workday), Aneel Bhusri (39, Workday), Thomas
Siebel (41, Siebel Systems), John McAfee (42, McAfee), Gary Hendrix (32,
Symantec), Scott McNealy (28, Sun), Pierre Omidyar (28, eBay), Rich Barton (29
for Expedia, 38 for Zillow), Jim Clark (38 for SGI, and 49 for Netscape),
Charles Wang (32, CA), David Packard (27, HP), John Warnock (42, Adobe),
Robert Noyce (30 at Fairchild, 41 for Intel), Rod Canion (37, Compaq), Jen-
Hsun Huang (30, nVidia), Eli Harari (41, SanDisk), Sanjay Mehrotra (28,
SanDisk), Al Shugart (48, Seagate), Finis Conner (34, Seagate), Henry Samueli
(37, Broadcom), Henry Nicholas (32, Broadcom), Charles Brewer (36,
Mindspring), William Shockley (45, Shockley), Ron Rivest (35, RSA), Adi Shamir
(30, RSA), John Walker (32, Autodesk), Halsey Minor (30, CNet), David Filo
(28, Yahoo), Jeremy Stoppelman (27, Yelp), Eric Lefkofsky (39, Groupon),
Andrew Mason (29, Groupon), David Hitz (28, NetApp), Brian Lee (28,
Legalzoom), Demis Hassabis (34, DeepMind), Tim Westergren (35, Pandora),
Martin Lorentzon (37, Spotify), Ashar Aziz (44, FireEye), Kevin O'Connor (36,
DoubleClick), Ben Silbermann (28, Pinterest), Evan Sharp (28, Pinterest),
Steve Kirsch (38, Infoseek), Stephen Kaufer (36, TripAdvisor), Michael
McNeilly (28, Applied Materials), Eugene McDermott (52, Texas Instruments),
Richard Egan (43, EMC), Gary Kildall (32, Digital Research), Hasso Plattner
(28, SAP), Robert Glaser (32, Real Networks), Patrick Byrne (37,
Overstock.com), Marc Lore (33, Diapers.com), Ed Iacobucci (36, Citrix
Systems), Ray Noorda (55, Novell), Tom Leighton (42, Akamai), Daniel Lewin
(28, Akamai), Michael Mauldin (35, Lycos), Tom Anderson (33, MySpace), Chris
DeWolfe (37, MySpace), Mark Pincus (41, Zynga), Nir Zuk (30, Palo Alto
Networks), Caterina Fake (34, Flickr), Stewart Butterfield (31, Flickr), Kevin
Systrom (27, Instagram), Adi Tatarko (37, Houzz), Brian Armstrong (29,
Coinbase), Pradeep Sindhu (43, Juniper), Peter Thiel (31, PayPal; 37,
Palantir), Jay Walker (42, priceline.com), Pony Ma (27, Tencent), Robin Li
(32, Baidu), Liu Qiangdong (29, JD.com), Lei Jun (40, Xiaomi), Ren Zhengfei
(38, Huawei), Arkady Volozh (36, Yandex), Hiroshi Mikitani (34, Rakuten),
Morris Chang (56, Taiwan Semi), Cheng Wei (29, Didi Chuxing), James Liang (29,
Ctrip)

~~~
Lon7
Garage doesn't literally mean garage in this context. Another way to put it
is: Most fast growing tech companies are started by young people barely into
adulthood on a laptop.

I see a lot of late 20's in your list, and a lot of companies that started
with one person writing some code on a computer.

~~~
watwut
Late 20ties is miles different than early 20ties, especially for those who
went to college. Very very different. Anything over 22 does not count as
"barely into adulthood". 23 years old are adults in all meanings of the word.

~~~
raarts
In my experience men only reach adulthood at 30, (women at 25). And I'd like
to hear the opinion of others (who are passed this age).

~~~
pgwhalen
Please elaborate on how you define adulthood, and why it’s so different
between men and women.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Women have to worry about settling down earlier.

~~~
watwut
Still, what does adulthood means for you?

26 year old dudes are adults, full stop. And in my experience, they don't
think nor act like teenagers whether they settled down or not, whether they
married or not, whether they kept old hobbies or not.

------
falcolas
It’s funny. I’ve heard the “Disagree but commit” from a lot of managers
lately; usually used to shut peons up. Ironic that it’s original usage (at
least where these managers heard it from) speaks to the opposite direction:
leadership should trust their teams.

~~~
mabbo
Even internally to Amazon, it's misunderstood.

The point is to gather all the facts, make a decision as a team or group, then
have everyone commit to the decision and not whine about how they should have
done what _I_ said we should do. You disagree, but you commit to the decision
of the group for cohesion and productivity.

It's also a means to prevent groupthink. No one should be thought poorly of
_for_ disagreeing, so everyone should be giving all their thoughts, even ones
that contradict what the group is thinking. Just so long as they get those
points out before the decision is made, of course.

~~~
kevan
Exactly. No matter how good an idea is, if people in the team are sabotaging
it because they don't like it you'll have a bad time. A variation on Patton's
quote: A mediocre plan executed well is better than a great plan executed
poorly.

------
FussyZeus
Is it safe in this thread to bring up the human cost of Amazon's (and likely
by extension Bezo's) almost sociopathic pursuit of success? I wouldn't deny
Amazon is a successful company, but how many horror stories from employees
being ground to dust under their management have crossed HN's front page? How
many companies are now refusing to do business with Amazon because of the
iron-fisted requirements enforcement on their suppliers? How many sales on
Amazon are of shit quality, ripoff products no better than you'd find on the
streets of Hong Kong?

I mean eschewing any and all corporate, social, and ethical responsibility
will definitely make you a truck load of money, but I wouldn't call it exactly
a net gain for all involved.

~~~
dizzystar
I had a roommate who worked in the Amazon warehouse. He said it was very chill
and easy work. Mind that he was someone who was a day-laborer, worked in
filthy factories, and so on, so it's possible contrast principals are at play
here.

As for the quality of the products, there are many 3rd party sellers on Amazon
who are selling garbage. This is unfortunate, but that's a tough battle for
Amazon or the competing sellers to lock down.

I'm not sure why you'd defend the suppliers who refuse to sell due to iron
fisted policies, yet complain about the quality of the products sold. Amazon
had / has to do something to clean up the mess. Hopefully it will be
beneficial to the buying experience on Amazon.

~~~
krapp
In my experience working in an Amazon warehouse (albeit only one,) it depends.
I could barely walk for two months after I started, just because I wasn't
physically prepared to stand or do repetitive movements for ten hours a day -
and I work in one of the biggest FC's in the network so it was a six or seven
minute struggle across the building and down two flights of stairs to get to
the car sometimes. I don't blame Amazon for that, though. I do blame them for
complaining about the cost of providing us with aspirin, then simply deciding
not to provide it anymore.

The work is tedious and exploitative, and it's very apparent working there
that Amazon considers you little more than a meat machine there to run an
algorithm, despite the lip service otherwise, and often your job depends on
metrics you're not even allowed to see, and the pay is terrible. But, some
people don't mind it. Some people actually like it. Others have to be carted
off in an ambulance because they worked themselves into heat exhaustion.

------
ggambetta
It's a very interesting read, and I can't help the feeling that lately Jeff
Bezos is taking the place of Steve Jobs as the superhuman CEO (deservedly, it
seems!).

~~~
OtterCoder
Then you haven't been an Amazon supplier dangling at the end of a rope as
Bezos tries to wring blood from a stone.

~~~
mrich
That sounds a bit familiar to how Apple dealt with their suppliers.

~~~
Aloha
Any big company, apple, wallmart, ford.. and on and on.

~~~
eru
To give a contrast, Aldi has an excellent reputation with suppliers. That
German hard discounter pays like clockwork.

~~~
protomyth
I gotta admit that I can forgive a multiple of sins when I'm paid on time.

------
Lon7
Amazon shareholder letters seem to be becoming the new Berkshire shareholder
letters [0]. They are friendly, engaging, and most importantly, written by an
author who steadfastly holds by principles that haven't changed in decades.

If you haven't read any of the berkshire letters you really should.

[http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html](http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html)

------
tootie
It's still amazing to me that an online book store is now the #1 seller of
server infrastructure.

~~~
leereeves
Many people were selling things online when Amazon was just a book store.
Amazon was the best of them all.

To me, it doesn't sound so strange that the #1 online store grew to be a
strong competitor in other online businesses as well.

------
baybal2
Too abstract. Amazon businesses outside of North America get steamrolled by
Alibaba one after another, yet people laud their "innovative business model,"
when it isn't (sell web hosting, and stuff over internet, something a
gazillion other companies do)

~~~
yuvalmer
That's nonsense. It's only true for China (for obvious reasons). Amazon is
more successful in India, UK, Germany, France, Japan, and the list goes on.

~~~
baybal2
See, they are in the business of selling fancy trinkets from China as it is
what 9 out of 10 consumer goods are. No mater what they do, a Chinese company
will be having an edge over them no matter what they will do.

