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Comment by somethoughts | Hacker News Reader

It will be interesting to watch how Andy Jassy as head of AWS (dealing with building out data centers, SW partnerships, API uptime, negotiating with Intel, designing Graviton CPUs, etc.) will be able to transition to such things as Prime Video content licensing discussions and goal setting for Whole Foods and the nuances of warehouse distribution labor disputes.

As a founder of Amazon - having built Amazon from nothing, Bezos probably had certain in-built persona and gravitas which probably helped with leadership talent acquisition and vision setting in all domains of the business universe. The opportunity to report to Jeff Bezos was probably a huge selling point - no matter what industry you were coming from.

Its interesting Amazon never attempted to give Andy Jassy a trial run as a public facing COO running both sides of the house.

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Anecdotally I have heard that Amazon as a company does delegation very effectively. Individual departments have complete autonomy over their own business decisions, and this applies on the engineering side as well.

I do agree that the shitstorm over warehouse workers, automation, unionization etc. is only going to get a lot worse over the next few years, and Jassy may even find handling that becoming his primary job.

Jeff is a man of contradictions. I’ve heard him micromanage to the level that individual AWS launch pages were reviewed and approved by him; so were the choice of databases (oracle vs MySQL) and SOA. At the same time, he gives extreme leeway and time for product teams to prove their mettle. The general assumption is you have 7 years from start to profitability. It’s a long time by tech industry standards. (Just look at Google).

Yes - that's part of magic - as the founder you have the latitude to go to any level of the corporate stack and critique things. Jeff could probably go to any Amazon distribution center on any random day and start critiquing at how things were being packed inefficiently in boxes and people would fix things in the next hour. It'll be interesting to see if Andy Jassy can metaphorically do similar things.

If I remember right from The Everything Store Amazon hasn't had a COO title since a rough experience with Galli in 99-00.

That's an interesting bit of history I forgot about.

I think it'll be more like Jassy saying: Dave (Clark), make sure retail top-line grows x%, profitability grows y% and keep an eye on Walmart.

I think the challenge is when it comes down to resource allocation between different business units in radically different industries. Like how does someone who is not Jeff Bezos go about deciding whether Amazon should use its free cashflow to make big bold bets such as acquiring LionsGate for Prime Video content, expanding Amazon fulfillment centers globally, acquiring Humana for a push into Amazon health insurance or buying a chip fab to make Graviton chips. Perhaps the fact that Andy Jassy actually comes more from a business background means he'll do well.

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