Some of my favorite nuggets from this letter:
"[H]igh standards are teachable...High standards are contagious"
"You can consider yourself a person of high standards in general and still have debilitating blind spots."
"To achieve high standards...you need to form and proactively communicate realistic beliefs about how hard something is going to be..."
"[A] culture of high standards is protective of all the 'invisible' but crucial work that goes on in every company...doing that work well is its own reward – it’s part of what it means to be a professional."
"We established long-term relationships with many important strategic partners, including America Online, Yahoo!, Excite, Netscape, GeoCities, AltaVista, @Home, and Prodigy."<p>From the year one letter. It's incredible what Amazon has done when you realize who their peers were when they started.
"Alexa – Customer embrace of Alexa continues, with Alexa-enabled devices among the best-selling items across all of Amazon. We’re seeing extremely strong adoption by other companies and developers that want to create their own experiences with Alexa.<p>There are now more than 30,000 skills for Alexa from outside developers, and customers can control more than 4,000 smart home devices from 1,200 unique brands with Alexa."<p>Meanwhile, Siri recently was able to tell me cricket scores :/
"One thing I love about customers is that they are <i>divinely discontent</i>" (my emphasis)<p>OK Mr Bezos, I have to give you points for that one. It's a retailer's philosophy in two words. I could imagine that coming from Jack Cohen or Terence Conran.
I thought this letter provided many a great lessons, up until "we write narratively structured six-page memos."<p>Wow, can any Amazonians speak to this? Sounds like a huge time sink to be writing a 6 page memo instead of preparing a few slides (or writing a 1 page technical design doc)
It is 1000% true that /High Standards/ are "teachable, and contagious".<p>But what a company, or indeed, society as a whole set those /Standards/ on matters so much much more than anything else.
Really well written and engaging as usual. If he ever writes a book I will buy it. His extreme ambition to build the world's most dominant company may get in the way of that, though.
Somewhat OT, but I can totally relate to the handstand anecdote. I've recently been learning to do handstands, and while I knew it was something I'd have to practice, I <i>completely</i> underestimated how hard they are. I mean, kids do them all the time, right? I'd say 6 months of daily practice is probably about right.<p>I've always been impressed by handbalancers, but now that I have some inkling of how hard it actually is, I'm totally blown away by it. Next time you see someone balancing their whole freaking body <i>on one hand</i> (something like 4-10x harder than a two-handed one according to estimates I've seen), stop and marvel for a while, for it is truly incredible.
100M prime customers making 5B purchases a year is $2 per purchase for 2 day shipping that costs amazon 5-8 dollars to ship.
Considering amazon takes 25% cut from FBA products you can say any product sold for less than $15 is a cash negative sale for amazon.
Credit where it's due. Customers love Amazon and that is what really matters at the end of the day. The people they serve enjoy the service and products Amazon provides. Bezos has very successful worked his way up to become one of the top dogs of capitalism. 20 years is a considerable amount of time work towards a goal, but Bezos was patient and hardworking.
<i>"Amazon was also just named the #1 business on LinkedIn’s 2018 Top Companies list, which ranks the most sought after places to work for professionals in the United States."</i><p>This statement/award strikes me as very far removed from reality.
"Already today, a portion of our European delivery fleet is comprised of low-pollution electric and natural gas vans and cars, and we have over 40 electric scooters and e-cargo bikes that complete local urban deliveries."<p>Sad to see even the mighty Bezos misuse the word "comprise." The whole comprises the parts!
<i>Congratulations and thank you to the now over 560,000 Amazonians who come to work every day</i><p>Wow, that's incredible. How much pay could each one make and the company still be profitable?
I don't think high standards are the same as expectations, and it seems obvious to me how that misunderstanding can lead to poor management practice.<p>Some people, given a certain task, max out lower or higher than others. Which is, people have different aptitudes for each task. If the bar to be 'ok' is high enough to where not every person may meet it, and they're truly doing their best, then there's a management problem.<p>You can push people psychologically, and gently, and be within the confines of what I think is considered good management practice. But pushing people physically, and pushing them in a way that's mechanical, like a global quota, that's harmful to a person.<p>Just simply falling short of something and hearing "well, you fucked that up, don't let that happen again." instead of "hey, you're fucking up, do you need help? Is there anything wrong?" is enough to almost ensure that the person will fall short again.<p>It's cliche to say that honey catches more flies than gall, but damn if it isn't true. However, starving the flies until gall is all that's left is diabolical.<p>Sorry for rant, but I've lived like those DC workers are living, and its not pleasant.