Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's 2024 Letter to Shareholders | Hacker News Reader

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's 2024 Letter to Shareholders

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15 pointsthm10 comments

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'WhyQ'

• why respect the customer's actual search query when we could auction keywords instead?

• why allow the user to sort by price when they might find a product we get lower commission on?

• why not spam 'Prime' on every page, and use dark patterns to trick users into a subscription?

• why bother with expensive safety and quality audits of third party seller products?

• why ignore our private metrics on popular third party products when we could use them to create a knockoff and drive them out of business?

I take your point, however, "why allow the user to sort by price when they might find a product we get lower commission on?”

Are you not able to sort by price in the US? On Amazon France it is easy to sort by price (either increasing or decreasing).

Amazon's 'sort by price' intersperses products at different price-points randomly throughout the list. This makes the list hard for a human to parse, since it's never quite obvious how far down one is.

ahhh... 5 whys... having horrible flashbacks of that place.

As someone who's been in Amazon for 7 years and has seen the constant decline since Jassy took over, I have to say he once again delivers disappointment.

This is by far the longest letter to shareholders ever written, and yet it's the least inspiring. All he does is try to justify the choices he has made since he has become CEO.

He is just so lame.

It’s interesting because I just watched an interview with him on cnbc and left it with much the same thoughts. Not that I took issue with anything in particular but he really didn’t say anything particularly insightful it was just bland, zero risk platitudes which to me is shocking for the CEO of what is supposed to be one of the most forward thinking companies in history. Like give us some bold predictions, opinions, etc. Not a great sign for Amazon imo

In hockey (now on Prime - Monday nights!) you hear the saying about goalies "good to be lucky; lucky to be good". That could be a summary of Jassy's career. It's no coincidence he highlights the growth of AWS over the past 10 years right up front; this coincides with his tenure and when he accelerated his climb. I don't know the man at all, but this letter is exactly like every public speech and post I've ever seen or heard from him: a bowl of plain oatmeal that's completely on-brand.

Quite fitting, as Jassy loves hockey.

Revenues of AWS are a significant but smaller part of total Amazon, but the margin there is both huge and not squeezed by competition with all other retailers or the economics of physical goods. The AWS growth has got to be responsible for a huge part of the operating income growth.

"Apart from the financial results, we made our customers’ lives meaningfully better and easier...."

I really dislike how he obviously restricts his vision here to consumers. Amazon weilds such influence and impact that the entire economy should be viewed as the "customer", and I don't believe the story from that context is as rosy and universally positive.

> Amazon’s operating income in 2024 improved 86% YoY, from $36.9B (an operating margin of 6.4%) to $68.6B (an operating margin of 10.8%). Free Cash Flow, adjusted for equipment finance leases improved from $35.5B in 2023 to $36.2B.

Can someone help me understand these numbers. Their operating income improved (increased?) by 86% but margin only ~4%?

Does that mean most of the improved (increased?) operating income was put towards capital outflow?

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