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Comment by shanemhansen | Hacker News Reader

So I used to work with someone from Amazon retail. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that Amazon mined their seller data to undercut them. We sold on Amazon and he constantly told us that we were fools to do so. He even mentioned that prior to accepting a position he had looked up our seller performance to make sure he was going to a good company.

Maybe policies have since changed. At the time I was also told the most popular "test" SKU used by Amazon engineers was a 50 gallon barrel of lube.

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I can't comment on any of the meaty stuff, but I can comment on the silly.

> At the time I was also told the most popular "test" SKU used by Amazon engineers was a 50 gallon barrel of lube.

Not knowing when this was, but I can say around 2013-2015 that this wasn't a general thing[0]. Could there have been an engineer who used it a lot? Sure, but there's a lot of them.

Even if you disregard the crudity of it, it also just doesn't make for a good test ASIN outside of a small number of verticals. You'd much rather test with real ASINs where possible (which is almost 100% of the time), or with something idiomatic to the experience you're developing.

EDIT: though maybe people have become inspired by https://observer.com/2015/07/at-1k-55-gallon-bottle-of-lube-... ? Still, it stands to reason that you want to test with real products whenever you can.

50 gallon barrel of lube was a real SKU, I remember a friend sending me the link because he found it amusing.

Was a couple thousand dollars IIRC

It is, but it's a single particular ASIN. And given the majority of the time issues/changes arise due the particular characteristics of a particular item (is it pantry? is it prime? is it a garment? is it a toiletry? etc. etc.) using any one particular ASIN isn't going to be viable for most developers.

I can't really confirm/deny whether what he was saying was true, but I heard this from him around 2009.

Be wary of stories you hear. People like to embellish to make themselves sound interesting or as if they have some embargoed knowledge.

I worked at Amazon and heard stories from other people(who worked there, but didn't know I worked there since I just describe myself as a programmer if people ask and not an amazonian) about things I knew to be untrue

Are there indicators we can use to differentiate people who actually have embargoed knowledge from people engaging in puffery?

Really hard to say. There was a project veritas(which is a sad joke of an outfit) video with a Google employee where they got her to say all sorts of untrue things about the company because....she wanted to impress anew acquaintance? Puff herself up?

It happens all the time. Honestly I'd be inclined to disbelieve secret knowledge shared with me unless it was by a close associate who I knew well and trusted to be honest.

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