Job Posting for Amazon.com Before it Launched (1994) | Hacker News Reader

Job Posting for Amazon.com Before it Launched (1994)

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89 pointsjaybol38 comments

Since we are digging through the archives...an oldie but goodie from Shackleton (1907).

  Wanted. Men for hazardous journey.
  Low wages. Bitter cold.
  Long hours of complete darkness.
  Safe return doubtful.
  Honor and recognition in the event of success.

http://bytepawn.com/2009/01/08/shackletons-job-advertisement...

"Low wages. Bitter cold. Long hours of complete darkness."

At least he was honest. That description applies equally well to startup life in Seattle, but I didn't see any mention of it in Bezos' email. ;-)

Seattle isn't that bad! :)

The wages are pretty good. Our locally produced Voyager gin is making me feel pretty toasty right now. iPhone+Rails contracting work around here is prevalent enough that it just paid for my Xmas trip to Maui... And, most importantly, we're past the Winter Solstice. Next stop: 17 hours of sunlight in late June!

I see the "men wanted for hazardous journey" bit reused in startup job ads pretty often.

It's funny you should post that link to my blog. Back when I posted that, 1 year ago, we were 1 year into the startup, that meant we were in the "Wanted. Men for hazardous journey... Honor and recognition in the event of success" phase. Since then, I'm learning about the middle "Low wages. Bitter cold. Long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful" part.

Anyways, it's my one week off, so I should get back to not reading HN.

It is probably not real http://www.antarctic-circle.org/advert.htm

Funny, I was rewatching old Irish "Guinness" ads this morning, especially the "Tom Crean" one : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXf93CEI4t0 Sounds like the man who got the job!

Sorry, meta point: what is up with all of the spam on this thread? Has this been happening a lot lately and I haven't noticed because people are just really diligent with flagging, or are spammers just now finding HN?

(Since the spam will hopefully soon disappear, there are three separate comments in here from one "dsgherhrt", advising us: "Priority my friend! Christmas is coming, quick to our website shopping ::snipped:: Nike, Jordan, prada ::snipped:: ::link spam::"; "sdgerhrtj"; and, "dfgerher".)

They do crop up from time to time (you can see it if you have showdead on) but there's a lot more on this topic than usually...

I wonder if it's bots posting spam because of detecting Amazon in the title of this page?

If this was a modern job posting, I'd find it overly pompous. The phd is one thing, but "you should be able to do so in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible" would put me right off (and obviously, in this case, it'd be my loss - not that I'd have the skills...)

I too tend to be turned off by displays of coolness or bragging in a job ad. E.g. I am not a rockstar, a ninja or a junkie.

I start with these guys Monday. I have a real feeling they're going somewhere.

Amusingly, the job posting I applied through gave only slightly more information (New Products Division).

Welcome! Feel free to look me up and say hello.

Thank you. I'll look you up once I've settled in a bit. Right now I'm still in Atlanta getting my life loaded onto a truck :)

I start on January 10. Maybe a HN Amazonian meetup sometime?

This sounds good to me. I wonder how spread out people are, though (I don't even know how many offices Amazon has in Seattle :). I'll be in South Lake Union office.

Same here, SLU. I'm currently in Seattle now looking for a place to live. Not much luck. Places are more expensive, smaller, and older compared to Dallas.

Good luck on your first day. Contact me so we can meet up sometime.

At least you've gotten an early start on the apartment hunt. I've heard similar things about the rents (I'm coming from a $1/square foot loft in Atlanta, so I'm quite certain I'm in for a shock). I guess I'll find out when I get there. Right now I'm still in Atlanta tying up loose ends; I get to Seattle on Sunday afternoon.

Good luck to you as well. I'll definitely get in touch once I'm in town.

Amazon is trying to consolidate into just SLU. Right now most people are either there, the Pac Med Building (which used to be the headquarters), or in Union Station.

Welcome :)

It looks exactly like a job posting for any of the 99.99999% of startups out there that will not be the next Amazon. If you saw an ad like this today it would just fade in to the background noise.

Best point -

"you should be able to do so in about the third-time that most competent people think possible"

In a short description is gives exactly the amount of information that a job post needs to give - Work, environment, challenges, co-worker info, compensation.

so...who ended up taking that job? Werner Vogels?

Vogels joined Amazon in 2004.

Possibly Paul Davis, now lead author of http://ardour.org. I believe he claims to have been one of Amazon's very first employees.

Edit: Yes it was, apparently.

So the challenge is to absorb that email, and perhaps other historical artifacts like it from now-wildly-successful companies, and figure out if there's a common pattern to them. If there's a common pattern, you can look for it in job postings today. Try to recognize the Next Big Thing opportunity, the diamond in the rough.

I remember my own experience of taking a job back in '99 with ebay in the UK and no-one back then had any idea of how big the web was going to be...it really was a journey into the unknown. We had no idea the company would make it, this little upstart in the UK market with a three person office.

"Your compensation will include meaningful equity ownership"

That should be added to Joel Spolsky's list.

What list?

He may be referring to The Joel Test: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html

Yes, sorry, I was.

I should have added the link, plus this link: http://vaig.be/2010/12/joel-test-for-software-companies.html and this: http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/10/12/26/1424243.s...

My experience at amazon would fail the Joel Spolsky test:

Do you use source control? yes Can you make a build in one step? almost Do you make daily builds? I think so Do you have a bug database? yes Do you fix bugs before writing new code? not usually Do you have an up-to-date schedule? Hard to tell Do you have a spec? a vague one Do programmers have quiet working conditions? no Do you use the best tools money can buy? not even close Do you have testers? users Do new candidates write code during their interview? yes Do you do hallway usability testing? no

The computers that Amazon provided were so old that they weren't even in current production (I checked the serial number for the laptop I had there, and it was according to Dell 3 years old -- and low-end even when it was new)

That Alan Kay signature quote is telling. Well done, Amazon.

Eh, not so well done--Bezos got the quote wrong.

The correct/canonical version of Alan Kay's quote is: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it".

This version has 50+ million hits vs. 5100-ish for the version Bezos has (plus 40 more if you search for it with "it is" instead of "it's") ).

Well, this was all before Google and even Altavista. Back then all the worlds quotes wasn't at your fingertips.

He got the gist though, sort of, don't you agree?

    “Misquotation is ... the pride and privilege of the learned.
    A widely-read man never quotes accurately for the rather obvious reason
    that he has read too widely.”
    
    Hesketh Pearson (1887 – 1964)

There is a more amusing one than this but I cannot find it for the life of me. Obviously this applies more to the spoken than the written word but the point stands.

I am wondering .. What's meaningful equity ownership?

Shares in the company. One hopes, near an integer percentage.

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