Jeff Bezos will step down as Amazon CEO on July 5 | Hacker News Reader

Jeff Bezos will step down as Amazon CEO on July 5

cnn.com

183 pointsbrutus121357 comments

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Discussion from the initial announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26006656

If he could use his free time to kick a few bucks toward completing The Expanse series, that would be great.

$1.73 May 16 1997

$3,293 May 26 2021

He had a good run.

+1 Under Bezos, AMZN maintained an average 34% inflation-adjusted annual growth rate for 24 years!

Source: $1.73 in May 1997 would be worth the same as $2.89 in April 2021 (https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm), and $2.89 x^(2021 – 1997) = $3,293 implies x = 1.34 (https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2.89*+x%5E%282021-1997...).

I was wondering if we have some early investors here that have held the whole time and if they would like to share some stories.

Going from $1.73 to $100 and back down to $5 after the 2000 bubble must have been quite the wild ride.

It's even better than that, the stock split three times.

Normally stock splits (or, more broadly, "corporate actions") are incorporated into things like Google Finance to avoid skews from stock splits, rights issues, stock reissues and so forth skewing the historical results.

So I think the OP is right.

Correct. 2-1, 3-1, then 2-1 early on. So there's a 12 to 1 ratio at play there. Initial day's closing was 18$.

Yea, I don't believe the actual opening price was $1.73

Yup, appears it was $18[0]

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/082715/if-yo....

It’s not. But the equivalent opening price if you factor in the stock splits - which would have multiplied the shares you bought at opening - is $1.73 per share.

Or in market cap:

865,000,000 - 1997

1,640,000,000,000 - 2021

Viva Internet. For giving so many business opportunities.

Don't forget the pre-IPO valuation.

https://www.quora.com/Who-were-the-original-investors-in-Ama...

Makes it even more impressive.

Just a caj 1896x return

amzing.wish i was an early invstor. would been awesome

Amazon is worth more than twice the total market cap of BTC.

Which I hope makes it terribly clear thats BTC is a huge bubble

Selling everything from dildo's to long term storage while having delivery drivers urinate in bottles is so cool, eh?

It’s possible to be impressed at how Bezos grew the company while still being upset at how their fulfillment employees are treated.

as if this is unique to amazon. the only difference is amazon gets much more media scrutiny compared to other companies.

Probably(!) because they are the worst of the large as f*k companies in America. (Hypothesising)

I meant in terms of return.

now compare that to Bitcoin

So he can focus his full-time efforts on greasing wheels in Washington to ensure that Amazon can continue 2-digit billion dollar acquisitions on the way to becoming the first internationally-recognized corporate state.

My feeling is that he was largely motivated by BlueOrigin's weak position. He's 57 and Amazon is a scarily large behemoth firing on all cylinders, what else is there to do there? Meanwhile, the company developing his lifelong passion and obsession is struggling badly. I mean, they seem to be doing well compared to old companies (ULA) and governments, but Starship is going to be a step change in access to space if they pull it off. It'd be great if he can focus on and fix BlueOrigin.

Blue Origin is not doing well compared to ULA. In fact, ULA is none too pleased with Blue Origin, which has failed to deliver the BE-4 rocket engine required for ULA's next generation Vulcan rocket. https://spacenews.com/with-ulas-new-rocket-vulcan-behind-sch...

Has Blue Origin put anything in space yet? Rocketlabs and spacex have regular commercial clients, and even virgin orbital have reached orbit.

(and of course ULA keep launching just like they always did)

They've crossed the Kármán line, but only for a few minutes at a time (going up, then falling back down). They've not reached orbit (going sideways fast enough to "miss the ground").

Their New Glenn rocket hasn't flown yet (and probably hasn't been built yet; they're very secretive, compared to e.g. SpaceX). Their engines will be used on ULA's upcoming Vulcan rocket, which should be a low-risk source of income for them, but also low-reward compared to rockets and spacecraft.

I've thought the same thing. Though, I also suspect Bezos is behind the reasons why they're limping along so slowly.

My prediction is he'll work on BO full-time and mess things up even more over there. Not make them better.

I still remember the talk he gave where he wants to build self-sustaining (to the extent possible) habitats in space where people can work, live, etc.

Probably just for the Prime subscription revenue though.

The best spots could be rented under the “Prime Space” banner ;)

I think its only fair his final statement on leaving should be "I'll be back". ;-)

(Terminator = Orion Pictures = MGM)

    "If I make, like, three good decisions a day, that's enough. And they should be as high quality as I can make them" - Jeff Bezos

Well, it's a good time to be looking for a new dev role. The market is pretty strong. Makes sense.

Had to get that last PTO day in.

Now Amazon truly becomes a faceless corporation.

No, Andy Jassy is pretty vocal, well-spoke and popular. Did a really good job with AWS too. Even Google and Microsoft aren't faceless, and Andy is just as memorable as Sundar and Satya.

Aw. And I was hoping to escalate my complaint to him before that.

I ordered something in December '20 and it's still listed as "on the way, but it's running late". I went to cancel it a few weeks ago and then but the support folks insist it's been delivered. I haven't received anything and the tracking link on the order page is dead. The Amazon folks say that's because too long has passed and they can see "internally" that it's marked as deliverd. What ever does that mean? And why is the order page still not updated, then?

I'm escalating that all the way to the top, I tells ya!

My hope is that he's off to do something more important: Blue Origin. Good luck!

Yes, unless SpaceX has a competitor, space companies are not really privatized...

Now he can move onto the next phase of his plan for world domination.

Competing with Elon Musk on space domination.

I hope he'll find some time to ramp up his review game.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9558417/Jeff-Bezos-...

I think they made the right decision to replace Bezos with Jassy.

Curious as to why you say that.

Personally from what I've seen of him I'm not a huge fan.

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