Jumping ship

Since I started at Amazon, lots of new people have come in since the company is growing dramatically, but also a lot of old timers have taken off. Most notably, software engineers. Unlike other local technology companies such as Microsoft and Real Network, which are software companies to start, Amazon is trying to transform from a retailer to a software company. It's not a easy transition to say the least. Amazon typically acts like a company that has a really REALLY big IT department, not a engineering organization.

A lot of my friends who are SDEs (software development engineer) are leaving or thinking about leaving. It's usually due to better offer, but most of them are simply burnt out. Amazon uses Scrum as its default agile development model, and that could be tiring all by itself, but since Amazon doesn't have a separate operation team from a development team for most of its core system, the SDEs end up having to maintain and upkeep an 24/7 mission critical system while trying to develop the new version. Many of the SDEs take turns wearing pagers to respond to high severity errors 24/7. It's quite draining.

We are still too much of a hacker organization. We rarely buy third-party software, because we think we could literally build everything we need. It's excited for the geek in me, but thinking as a business owner, it's a scary way of doing things.

To Prime or not to Prime

The Wall Street crowd has really been beating up Amazon about the Amazon Prime program, which is basically free second-day shipping if you pay a flat annual fee, as explained by Jeff Bazos on the Seattle PI article today.

It's yet another example of the "what looks bad is actually good" investor relationship philosophy that Jeff seems to deploy often. My favorite is the "you will thank me that I used the profit to invest back into the company" attitude the senior management team (STEAM) see to have.

It's kind of a toss up for me whether to believe Amazon. Ultimately, it comes down to, do you have faith in Jeff's star power and his ability to come up with something brilliant and counter-intuitive. Rock on, Jeff.

Amazon vs. Toys-R-Us

The Toys R Us and Amazon spat continues with TRU announcing that they are partnering up with GSI Commerce as their eCommerce service provider. Amazon is still pending its appeal, and if it gets the appeal, then TRU could make all the partnership agreement it wants, and it still would not make any difference. It will have to stay with Amazon during the appeal process.

It kind of reminds me of a married couple, with the "exclusive" agreement between Amazon and TRU. The marriage contract promises exclusivity between the two parties, but a few years into it, the husband, in this case Amazon.com because I am making a sweeping gender generalization, declared that

"When the judge said 'exclusive', what I am interpreting it is that whatever wifely duties and advantages you perform/receive, that's great. Keep up the great work. But, anything you don't currently do that I want done, I am getting another woman to do it. It's only fair."

The wife, horrified, said
"You can't do that!!! I want a divorce!!!"

The husband then counter-acts with

"No. I like the stuff you currently do for me, and I think I am being more than fair with you. So, I don't want divorce."

So, the divorce proceeding heads to court. After years of back and forth, arguments and counter-arguments, the judge finally declares that the divorce is final. The husband then files an appeal in this fashion

"No, you can't divorce me. I can change. We could work it out. So, I am suing you again to make sure that you can't divorce me. If I force you to stay with me, I am sure we could work out a mutually beneficial arrangement where you get what you want from me, and I still get to see other women."

See, is this just like a divorce drama?

Amazonians blog launching

I am proud to launch this new blog about what it is like on the inside of the the top online retailers in the world. It's a work environment full of chaos, but it's innovative. It's not very efficient, but it hums along with great energy.

So much attention in the Seattle area is devoted to Microsoft, but not nearly enough attention has been paid to Amazon, which is not just a retailer, but is in the process of transforming into a innovative software/service/ecommerce platform.

I know that I sound like I have been drinking too much of the Amazon cool-aid, but I really do enjoy my time at Amazon so far, and I hope to start some great conversation about Amazon.com with this blog. I will be careful not to reveal any proprietary information and only discuss public information about the company.

Wish me luck. If you are current working for Amazon or an Amazon subsidiary, ex-Amazonian, or Amazonian wanna-be, I would love to hear from you.