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Comment by ApicalDendrite | Hacker News Reader

This person is very clearly mixing things that he knows directly, things that he's read about in books (e.g. Amazon's strategy in the early days), and rumors that he's heard (e.g. Jeff Bezos' personal life). There's no way that a cybersecurity engineer at a company as sprawling as Amazon has reliable firsthand knowledge on so many different unrelated topics.

The writer is a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law, which is an organization I have tremendous respect for, so it's really a shame that they were naive enough to publish this.

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It is verging on irresponsible journalism to give this person anonymity without providing any details on their knowledge or credentials and seemingly spending no effort challenging or fact checking any of these answers. That isn't how these pieces are supposed to be written.

There's a massive off vibe for me in things like

> So if you have cancer and you might die from your cancer, we won't help you get treatment

It just feels.. off. I wouldn't go as far to say the person doesn't work at Amazon at all and instead wants to jab at them but I'm definitely thinking it loudly

To me it feels like someone was kind of bullshitting with their friends and maybe making themselves seem more knowledgeable and important than they really are. It's totally irresponsible to put it in print.

Very much this. They don’t speak in a way that makes me think they have any internal knowledge of the areas they are speaking about.

This is the more likely answer, good shout

The point was regarding fulfillment center workers who don't work enough hours to get company healthcare. That is how it's handled.

If you get cancer or any other major medical catastrophe, Amazon won't do anything to you if you're a part time worker without health insurance. But even if you don't have the health insurance, Amazon will provide support if you catch COVID. Because it's good business to not have one uninsured person to expose an entire shift to a highly communicable disease.

Aye but it's more that it was mentioned at all rather than whether it's true or not

With the exception of it being a whistleblowing thing you don't often see jabs like that -- especially jabs at departments the person has no involvement with. Also if it is whistleblowing it's more a "they" than a "we" thing

It is verging on irresponsible journalism

No names. No contact information. No accountability.

This isn't journalism. It's a random blog that claims to put out a print edition three times a year.

I didn't even notice the total lack of bylines or masthead. I shouldn't have thrown in the "verging on" qualifier. It is just flat irresponsible to publish this in this manner.

> Jeff Bezos studies other “great men” in history and imagines himself to be a kind of Alexander the Great. There's even a building on the Amazon campus called Alexandria, which was the name of one of the company’s early projects to get every single book that had ever been published to be listed on Amazon.

I'd guess the building is named after the Library of Alexandria – one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world – and not because of a god complex as the story implies.

Giving the benefit of the doubt, he sounds like an experienced senior guy so he's surely plugged in to internal communications, discussions, and rumors. And a lot of times in security there are opportunities to work with a large cross-section of teams.

I've worked with engineers at Amazon up to the senior principal level. Even if you grant that people in cybersecurity see a broader swath of the company, there's just no way that he can talk authoritatively about everything from AWS sales tactics, to hiring practices for former DoD procurement people, to real estate strategy to Amazon's own supply chain, to Jeff B.'s personal life. It would be like a mid-level employee at State Department talking about how the Trump administration views farm policy, and what the National Park Service is planning, and what types of cool things the US Mint is cooking up. That State Department guy might have heard about a lot of those things either from reading the news or from talking to buddies, but he wouldn't come within a mile of it as part of his job.

Which is fair. I don't think the interview is meant to be read as an authoritative source of truth on Amazon culture and sales and so forth, but rather just relaying what they've heard. They're more plugged into the Amazon rumor mill than I am and I think rumors often contain kernels of truth.

I don't think he said anything particularly insightful irt all those topics. A lot of the statements were superficial things that you'll pick up while working on adjacent areas (and as we know, it's pretty easy to jump around different teams/fields in Amazon) or from Amazonian friends.

Interesting things he didn't really talk much about: Alexa (there was 1 like 1 very superficial reference to it), Kuiper, and others.

I don't think this is a PR piece, and most likely it is not approved by the company (the reference about Jeff's Sex Life would've been removed). This does feel like a real view from an insider, it's very opinionated, and not all of it is right.

They're clearly putting on an air of authoritativeness, but yeah exactly. I read this more like a very extended Glassdoor review. You're getting one person's perspective. Interesting interview, big grain of salt.

I'll add: even if he is speaking for AWS with some authority, he certainly doesn't speak for the rest of Amazon. I've seen some teams with _really_ bad practices (security and otherwise.)

As for your comment about the writer, the entire website feels very "off" to me - no author listed, no "About" page with names/links, nothing to give this credibility. I did see the link to the cofounder's Twitter page, so at least there is someone behind it, but it is pretty well hidden.

Maybe it's an interview of Bezos himself? It's written a lot like from someone's point of view who a) knows the early history b) is familiar with current daily business (like covid) c) is familiar with how different factions inside the company were years ago. If you look at the company from a global perspective but still from the inside, there are only few people around who can write such an interview.

Caesar wrote his books in the third person as well. Bezos seems to me like the kind of guy who'd do that.

Also I'm not too familiar with how Bezos writes, but from the few interviews of him that I've heard, it sounds a lot like him to me. See also this letter... guess the author :). https://twitter.com/LettersOfNote/status/923473337115914240

> The writer is a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law, which is an organization I have tremendous respect for, so it's really a shame that they were naive enough to publish this.

I don't see a writer listed. What am I missing?

(Disclosure -- I'm a BKC fellow this year)

I initially saw the link on her twitter feed: https://twitter.com/moiragweigel/status/1341414901143777280

Based on this I'm still not sure if she actually wrote the piece or just published it (as her bio lists her as a co-founder of the site.)

Based on this tweet, I believe she was the interviewer: https://twitter.com/moiragweigel/status/1341423429958979593

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