Bezos Faces Season of Worsts as Losses Mount | Hacker News Reader

Bezos Faces Season of Worsts as Losses Mount

bloomberg.com

77 pointsdataminer91 comments

I've always thought of Amazon as a company whose primary product was their own stock. They had a great model-- their terms with vendors were such that they often had the customers cash for weeks before they had to pay the vendor.

When I worked there the emphasis was always on new press releases. So they created many silly things that never stuck-- like Amazon catalog shopping: They took paper catalogs from other retailers, sent them to the phillipenes to be scanned and then hosted them. Amazon movie times. Amazon local restaurant menus. All of these are now gone.

I worked on the product search engine, and for laughs I like to go back and check the regressions that we worked on during my time there. About 9 months after I left, a key one came back... and it's still there many years later.

I think this is because they simply disbanded the search team. I'm sure it's been since reformulated and disbanded several times. But the regressions in question, by the way, we had automated tests for. We tested for them before we pushed code.... I think those tests have been lost in the chaos.

Amazon was constantly reorganizing.. and products (software products) would get abandoned because the team would be dissipated.

They were also very poorly managed for a "Tech" company. My boss had trained to be a prison guard-- I kid you not-- his degree was in criminal justice. By the time I left, %80 of the team had left for other positions. His boss was one of those old school middle managers who you would expect to be running the DMV. Neither of them were technical- their skills extended to managing email and spreadsheets.

And yet the stock has continued to rise, even on little or no profits.

They're great at selling stock-- look at the P/E ratio.

It's alarming how consistent HN comments are regarding working at Amazon: management is dysfunctional.

Might Amazon secretly be one of the worst famous large tech companies to work for?

I've heard from several ex-Amazon employees that average employee tenure is less than a year and a half.

That is not a good sign.

According to the book "The Everything Store", Amazon employees pay for the parking ($20-30 per day). Coffee machines are ancient varieties but it's better than past when employees also had to pay for coffee. You get the desk that is downright cheapest possible thing you can get. And so on...

If you are wondering how Amazon can attract any talent at all, the answer is that 70% staff is college hires that were promised significant stock. The caveat is that it doesn't even start getting vested until after 3rd year. Most of the hires leaves in about 2 year (attrition rate is being rumored as much as 70%). So their secret is feeding the growth engine on huge swaths of college hires that can be lured for stock options in distant futures with expectation that they will just leave before vesting starts.

Well, I do love Amazon. One thing they have got absolutely right is obsessing about customers. Everything starts with customers, period.

Your parking is off by at least a factor of two, even more if you buy a pass.

At least for Obidos $20/day, $13 with pass, $8 with pass + reimbursement.

The pass wait list is, what 9 months now? You'll probably be in a new building by the time you get it.

Why should parking be free? I have always ridden a bike or taken transit to work; I don't see why I should be subsidizing other people's parking. My previous two jobs both paid you not to use parking (which is effectively charging for parking, in a way), and I was grateful for it. Now I work in a city center and it's taken for granted you won't be driving.

Because that parking cost is after tax. It makes no sense to pay payroll tax on the money that just flows back to the company, unless you're trying to slip in a hidden lower pay rate.

I think you're overanalyzing it -- it's a cost to the employee, and any mental gymnastics about taxes is just guffawing.

Right. Because 1) tax loopholes don't exist, and 2) corporations don't find ways to make employees cover costs whenever possible.

Company is not a social being or country. Its not you, who is subsidizing parking. Its company. If they would stop doing it in 99% cases nothing would change for you money wise.

The way you think now is "I dont use it, so it should be paid."

Maybe you should pay for bicycle parking as well?

I would happily pay for decent bicycle parking. Maybe if they were making money off it they would have more than 4 bike spaces in the 100-space car park.

Companies normally try to cut costs where possible. If they can rent fewer spaces in a garage that certainly ought to save them money, in addition to giving them greater flexibility when considering alternate locations.

I don't really understand what you're actually saying. Is it an accusation? A counterargument? Merely an observation? I do think people should have the option to receive cash in lieu of benefits where practical.

So true. I like the fact they put the customers contact number on their shipping label.. in case of rain, snow, sleet etc can get a non rainy place to put large parcels.

I don't think it's that hard to lure in a college hire.

I say that as a college hire to Amazon. I would have accepted damn near anything, and their offer was more than generous enough.

Also, my stocks started vesting after a single year. My total compensation at hire time: a $10k signing bonus with my first paycheck, another $10k after 1 year, and $45k in stock that vests over 4 years, with 5% at 1 year, 15% at 2, and then another 20% every 6 months. I could have literally received none of that and still jumped at the opportunity. Most college students don't have any idea what they can reasonably get in their field.

As for poor management, this is heavily dependent on where you are in the company. I know people in some areas that love it, and people in others that echo the terrible management claims. My manager is great, and I've never felt like management above him was a problem. I've also worked alongside other teams who were very obviously grossly mismanaged all the way up. Amazon seems to really lack a unified culture, so making blanket claims like that are about as useful and valid as making claims about all companies in Milwaukee.

Amazon is a service oriented organization. In the technical teams at least, there is a strong pressure to evolve to fit your niche, and grow independently behind the safety of a well defined interface.

So a lot depends on the niche. Big awesome service, performance, security, frontend, startup, tools... Cost center or profit center. Secret consumer project or retail.

Parking is subsidized for monthly parkers or is expensed for those who random park and pay $20-30 a day (at off site lots, it is in the middle of the city after all). You are right, they do not invest in coffee machines or desks, who cares? Latest numbers are that about 40% of engineers are 0-2 years in the industry, for a large tech company I don't think this is crazy far off from the norm if you want to stay agile. Attrition is high because people are actively managed out, compared to other companies I worked for before where you have longer tenures because people who are terrible at their jobs get to chill out and work on the least harmful things for the rest of their lives because management is too chicken shit to fire people who are just not that good comparatively.

You see? Nothing is wrong. And things that might be perceived as "wrong" are unimportant anyway. Move along, everyone.

I'm genuinely curious about this, and I don't know anyone who works at Amazon, but if they really do have such a bad work environment and low tenure then how are they managing to consistently produce such good products (I'm thinking primarily of AWS here)?

AWS is bit different story/department.

But hey - Amazon has probably one of the ugliest and most unreadable website from all cloud providers imo...

I love pointing out Amazon to histrionic designers. If the content is good - and Amazon's is - then design is very much secondary.

I suspect all companies are poorly managed. If you can tell me about (big) companies that are managed well, I'd like to hear about them.

My experience with big companies has always been surprise that they get anything done at all. But maybe that is the secret of big companies, they get stuff done because they are so big that all the waste is swamped by all the manpower.

I've worked for Microsoft and with Apple. Both of those companies have areas where things are "poor" or very frustrating.

But comparing Microsoft to Amazon, is like night and day. Microsoft was much better managed-- still it might well qualify as "poorly managed" by your yardstick. So I guess I'm saying there are degrees of poor.

Doesn't Microsoft have a culture of NIH inside each product group? Resulting in things like ClearType (I think it was) taking years to get actually implemented since it didn't come from the "right" person/product group?

I have no idea where you worked in Amazon, I am guessing you did not. Having worked there for years in software, there were exactly ZERO technical managers I met that were not either previous software engineers or technical project managers (e.g. CS degree). That is of hundreds at all levels, including VPs and most SVPs.

Reorganization tends to happen at the VP level and is less overall than Google or MSFT in cycle length and size of disruption.

All of the "silly things" are Amazon giving people freedom to innovate. Not all of them stick. The alternative is to never do anything.

My boss had trained to be a prison guard-- I kid you not

Hmm. Wonder if I know him. When I was getting my master's in Software Engineering, one of my classmates was an ex-prison guard.

I've been trying to understand Amazon product search. I wonder if you might be open to having a conversation about this off list.

Yikes. I use them both for their AWS service and as a consumer of their ecommerce side. I don't do much with their Prime programming, but I have a membership. There are a couple of areas where Amazon got worse since 2012 on the ecommerce side. First, Add-on items are annoying. Stuff I used to order and get for free now has to be bundled. I get why they are doing this, but it's just jarring.

Second, their prices actually seem to be getting higher. I can often now find equivalent products cheaper locally. Tools are especially bad that way: Home Depot regularly beats them. Clothing is a crapshoot, but I generally find better sales at local stores as well. Amazon will typically have the best of breed item, while not having a basic version for a reasonable price. For example, last winter I bought winter gloves. Amazon had great ones, with good reviews, etc. but I bought a pair for 80% less that while not as good was very adequate. I checked later and Amazon did not carry this brand or much decent stuff at this price point.

Search is getting worse. More products are miscategorized and you have to be very careful about what you buy. Here's a quick example, search for "GoPro". You'll get many duplicate options, often with confusing descriptions, in different departments, etc.

They are still a powerhouse when it comes to online shopping, but I really wish someone gave them a kick in the ass in terms of pricing and usability.

I was under the impression that the majority of products offered on Amazon is through third party sellers (who set the price) and Amazon is merely the fullfilment channel. However, I don't know the real split between the number of sold by Amazon vs. Fulfilled by Amazon products available.

Third-party sales is about 39% of Amazon's units sold[0]. The actual value of third-party sales is probably a more useful and informative measure, but I can't seem to find that information anywhere. All I can find is this outdated (2008) report that vaguely says it's "around 40%"[1].

[0]http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2013/01/30/ama...

[1]http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee204/Publications/Amazon-EE35...

Median selling fee is 15% from the end price so if you run your own marketing/ads/sales, you can offer prices without this "tax". This pushes 3rd party sellers to either very low margins (especially in electronics) or higher prices on Amazon in exchange for discoverability and no need to run your own SEO/eshop/marketing etc.

Amazon has something of a monopoly on trust in 3rd party sales. Lots of experience gives me great confidence in sellers with a 96% or greater rating, and willingness to pay more. Whereas my father and I have found in an iPhone purchase (an old, but still well over $100 model) that eBay can be trivially played to completely screw over the buyer.

For that matter, Amazon has a 5 refunds per lifetime policy last time I checked; that limits it to really big ticket items, but without that there are a number I wouldn't buy through them.

This is the first I've heard of a limit on refunds. Can you point me to more information?

I think it's their "A-to-z Guarantee Protection", and I now note no lifetime limit ... and claims can be denied for other than clear cut legit reasons (a catch-all "Amazon regarded the claim as inappropriate." see https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...). Also a $2,500 limit.

Note this is the last ditch, the seller isn't playing ball resort.

I used to trust Amazon for the low price but these days I'm finding they have let loose all the 3rd party vendors. You will see several products who are falsely claimed to be sold by well known brands like Sony but underneath there would be someone in China putting that up. Many times they are fake and many times merchants play the tricks of putting it on Prime but charging 20-50% more. I feel Amazon has left customers in water because there is no way to know if merchant selling products is genuine and has priced it reasonably

Also subscriptions (i.e., repeat purchases) randomly fail to fulfill for me. Very not good if you're relying on that sub.

More and more companies are not relying on Amazon as a key initial channel - e.g. LG's new bluetooth headset (LBS 900) is not authorized yet to be sold on Amazon. If you search for it, you see some knockoff item that has a 1-star review telling you not to buy what is clearly not an LG product.

I'm finding that Google Shopping Express is quite a good contender for some very useful things... the selection is limited, though the pricing can be good. More importantly, they deliver same-day... if they'd only do perishables, I'd be set :)

I've started to hate shopping on Amazon. The other day I was looking for a tablet, typed in the search, gota huge list of results (mostly not relevant).

Prices are $xxx used and new. Okay, so is it $xxx used or new? Inquiring minds want to know!

Clicked through to the listing.

No price. There's a bunch of other gibberish, it's not being sold by Amazon, and no price. Have to add it to my cart to see the price.

Really? All I want is to see

a) do you have the tablet I want?

b) what does it cost?

c) when can it be delivered?

I don't care about the 173 other vendors that sell it, the used or new price (no category for refurbished btw), or any of that. I don't want to have to add a dozen copies of the same item to my cart just to see what it'll cost, or if I have to pay shipping, or what the shipping will cost.

It's becoming absurd.

I think sometime in the last year, Amazon jumped the shark and has moved to a model of actively hiding things from the users...this is usually the beginning of a death spiral for many companies and it explains reduced business volume. It's something pathological that companies seem to want to do, make it hard to buy their stuff, that always seems to indicate the beginning of the end.

edit dammit now Newegg is pulling the same "see price in cart" shenanigans....I'm about done with on-line shopping...time to just go to Best Buy or Costco

I've been redirecting my purchases to Newegg whenever possible, partly for this reason. Newegg's Marketplace (the term just refers to items sold by third parties using newegg's site) is seamlessly integrated with their core retail business; marketplace items appear alongside items sold directly by newegg, and the pricing remains transparent.

Some stuff is quite a bit more eggspensive than on amazon, but I love newegg's troll-fighting work so much that I consider the extra expense a charitable donation.

Yeah, I was just looking at Newegg for those reasons. I buy my computer stuff from them because I think they're worth supporting.*

But dammit if they also aren't starting to pull the old "see price in cart" scam. No! I will not see the price in the cart. You've lost a sale.

* Last time I built a computer I was so informed by NewEgg's interviews with the reps from the various parts companies that I really didn't have to do much other reading. I knew based on the interview with each company's rep basically what I wanted to buy, which tier of product and what I'd get for it. It was such a better experience for me than reading a bunch of hardware sites.

The computer I built based on that is the best computer I've ever had.

Never understood why it isn't just 'Click to show' the price. A click to reveal is still not great, but gives them every bit as much information for less overall UI pain.

I do the reverse of the thing that brick and mortars were so afraid of: I browse at Amazon, look at prices, alternatives and reviews, and then go buy it locally. I bought a $450 watch exactly that way a month ago.

My experience is the opposite. Amazon has been getting better and better about having twenty different listings for the same item. It's usually easy to pick out the "correct" one too. Just filter for Prime Eligible, or most reviews.

If you feel like you're picking through a garbage heap, and the "correct" one is not quickly obvious, you either need to adjust your search or they don't carry it.

What exactly did you search for? I searched for just "tablet," and the results aren't terrible. Near the very top it's mostly extremely cheap Chinese Android tablets, and there's a few anomalous prices in there, like $99,999.99, but the Samsung Galaxy Tabs are in the first two rows as well. I don't keep up on the Android tablet market, so I don't know what I should expect to see.

But there are also useful filters at the top and left, which made it easy for me to find the few name brand tablets I'm aware of.

The cleverly named "Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition"

of course results are different than last night when I was searching.

AFAIK, Hiding the price is not Amazon decision or new eggs decision. It is apparently the manufacturer's decision. Please see the links for more information.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=174014

[2] http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/35822/add-to-cart-to-v...

That's a bad policy on Amazon's part. Amazon should simply not sell those products then. Amazon is/was all about the consumer, and not showing the prices is bad for the consumer. It's only good for the retailer.

Wow, you guys all seem to have extremely different experiences with amazon than I do.

I buy everything I can on amazon, I love having prime (it would be one of the last things to go if I was cutting costs heavily).

I also have no problems with the search. Anecdotally, I see more and more people I know signing up for prime and doing most of their shopping on Amazon. From my perspective, Target/Wal Mart should be really scared of this.

When will Amazon get out of the hardware business already? The Kindle Fire? Awful. Fire Phone? Awful. Whatever their TV box is? Well, jury is still out, but...

Amazon excels at many things, but they've demonstrated that hardware (well, actually, primarily the software that runs on the hardware, but still both) is a huge weakness.

I'm not interested in any of these products but here's my impression:

- Kindle Fire initially fulfilled an unmet market - Android(y) tablets for less than $200 that weren't total garbage. When the Kindle Fire launched, there were none. Tablets cost $300+ unless you were satisfied with some terrible off-brand tablet.

- The Fire phone. Total flop. Total miss. They offered nothing to the average Android phone user that wasn't already available, often for cheaper. Amazon has been giving the milk away for free and are now reigning in their services (which is why there's no Amazon Prime for Chromecast, for example).

- The TV. I think it's sleek looking and competitively priced (with everything but the Chromecast, cough, cough). You're basically throwing a dart at Apple TV, Roku, Google Player and the Amazon TV product, though.

I welcome anyone to the hardware market, primarily because the competition will drive this and frankly we have some dismal options outside of phones. Anything that can drive innovation (and prices downward) sounds good to me. Flops will happen along the way. Companies will try things and fail magnificently and that's ultimately good for (almost) everyone.

For a while the kindle fire was the android tablet - as a game developer you'd often sell more tablet games on amazon's app store than on google's.

I disagree about the Kindle Fire, it is still the go-to cheap tablet device for non-techies (which is most of the consumer market). The high end tablet market is dominated by Apple. Everything else is a rounding error.

You are ignoring the base Kindle, which is bloody amazing at what it does. To the point that I am lusting after the new one, only because it does seem a little better.

The Kindle Fire itself, also, is not that terrible. I can think of ways it may be better. But as a media consumption device, it is pretty good. I like it.

The phone? Too expensive. Couldn't compete with the moto g.

The television? Beats me. Kids like it.

They should have never diluted the "Kindle" brand by mixing e-ink products and iPad-knockoff products.

I still think e-ink is the best way to read long texts, and it's a shame that you can no longer colloquially refer to a 'Kindle' and have people know what you're talking about.

Not every tablet is an iPad-knockoff.

The original Kindle Fire blew the market for Android tablets wide open.

Kindle Fire is a tablet you can buy for $100. Their phone is almost free. Sure, it's no iPhone or Nexus but if you flipped burgers at McDonnalds or moved carts at Walmart making $10K a year, these would be life saving. Remember half of the population in make under $50K. Also they make special kids version of tablet that is pretty awesome if you were working with little kids.

Free+subscription = not really free. It's retail price unlocked is still north of $400. I could get a Nexus 5 for less than that, and its probably a better phone.

Kids version of tablet requires playtime kids subscription of $3/mo - which is something I could afford but turns me off.

Exactly my thoughts. Having seen Amazon Appstore from inside I find it miracle that they got the eco-system working much less hoping that it becomes popular. The Appstore teams are split geographically but are expected to work on a shared code base/system. Let me not even get started on testing. app developers are treated like trash. Also you have army of highly paid, high quality engineers working on a plethora of software products (like Coins, Maps API etc.,) most of which rarely see the day light; and even if they do they get used just by a few customers!

That apart, the Appstore UI is a joke compared to the pace at which Playstore is evolving. They keep parroting their leader's line that it's the content that matters more than the device but Kindle Fire is a failure in many ways in my opinion.

Amazon wanted a gateway to their media content which is a right strategy but they got the execution horribly wrong by forking Android. They showcased their silk browser during Kindle Fire was launched and I was dumbstruck that they couldn't foresee bandwidth is only going to get cheaper.

They could have launched a device BUT it should have been an Android device, not a fork. They could have developed a high quality media streaming app on multiple platforms, similar to kindle reader, Android, chrome browser, iOS and so on. But no! They had to fork the Android!! Now app developers would have to build their apps and submit to iTunes, Play Store AND the mediocre Amazon Appstore; no wonder the app selection sucks!

I sincerely hope they give up on this hardware madness and get back to focusing on pure e-reading experience (Kindle reader), AWS and e-commerce. I've been waiting for colored Kindle reader for half a decade now; and what about educational/technical e-books? That market remains completely untapped just because they haven't sorted out rendering technical books.

The kindle reader content team is getting stretched very thin because they now have to support App store and a myriad of devices! So no wonder the innovation on Kindle reader (both hardware/software) has slowed down significantly.

Saving grace in all this is that AWS's pace of innovation/product-rollout hasn't been affected yet, but soon it would also be impacted unless they stop money flowing into the sink.

PS: Please excuse broken flow of thoughts :-)

The Kindle e-reader is conspicuously absent from your list. When most people think of Amazon hardware they think of the Kindle, which most people consider a success

This is barely on-topic, but hoping that someone has a workaround, I'll share my biggest gripe with Amazon:

When you find a product with multiple options (say, color[1]), often the variations will have different prices. It tells you the minimum and maximum price, but forces you to click through every single variant to see their prices. To make matters worse, it takes multiple seconds to load each price.

Is there any way to view product variants in a table format?

[1]http://www.amazon.com/Nalgene-Tritan-BPA-Free-Bottle-1-Quart...

Now that states are forcing Amazon to collect sales tax, it has no in-built price advantage over brick-and-mortar stores.

Additionally, the brick-and-mortar stores are using their retail space to handle deliveries and returns that Amazon has to deal with in terms of postage.

Basically, the brick-and-mortar stores have finally pulled their heads out of their asses, and Amazon has nothing to fight them with.

That's why Amazon is getting pummeled.

In some cases, they've dramatically increased their prices on some products. A concrete example:

Honey Bunches of Oats 3 pack cost $14.33 with free Prime shipping in November, 2012. Today, that same pack costs $29.99 and is no longer eligible for Prime.

I've seen the same pricing trends across a number of their products, but other online retailers offer the same items for considerably less. I think they thought consumers might just stick with them because of habits and the expediency of "Prime" but when prices jump by over 100%, you can bet I'll seek alternatives.

Pack of 4 Honey Bunches of Oats, $22.20 and free shipping on orders of $35. The price is higher per unit, but nowhere near the doubling you're referring to - that's a supplier price squeeze most likely (either the product is being phased out, there are only a few left, or not very many suppliers).

http://www.amazon.com/Honey-Bunches-Oats-Roasted-14-5-Ounce/...

Alternatively you can use Prime Pantry perhaps:

You could buy 8 boxes for about $32 with the delivery fee included ($4 per box); and this is the 18oz size, larger than the 14.5oz size in the previous link.

http://www.amazon.com/Honey-Bunches-Oats-Crunchy-Roasted/dp/...

honestly, people are buying Honey Bunches of Oats on Amazon? My mind reels.

Why?

If you don't want to drive or worse, don't own a car, or you're a shut-in, or elderly, or just simply don't have the time - purchasing some or all of your groceries online is a life saver.

Cities exploit their captive audiences of shoppers. Many cereals costs as much as $8/box in NYC for the normal-size (smaller?) boxes. You can get oversized boxes from Amazon or Walmart delivered to your door for way less.

It's not getting pummeled at all. The sole change is that investors are annoyed at the losses Amazon is incurring by making large investments into the business, and are going to adjust the valuation down.

They grew sales 20% this quarter.

Target has seen effectively zero sales growth for three years. Amazon is now larger than Target.

Walmart is now seeing almost zero sales growth.

Costco is lucky if it grows at 5% annually now.

BestBuy is contracting as a business.

Radioshack is disappearing.

Sears is disappearing.

eBay is growing its platform sales at less than half the rate that Amazon is growing its retail sales.

Benedict Evans (Andreessen Horowitz) wrote an excellent post on Amazon's "profits". The comments are good value too.

http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/9/4/why-amazon-has-n...

As for the Fire Phone and it's product discovery functionality, I get Bezos' vision (I think ...) which would be a world with only one retailer.

> As for the Fire Phone and it's product discovery functionality, I get Bezos' vision (I think ...) which would be a world with only one retailer.

One retailer, one IT supplier. All staffed by minimum-wage, high churn drones. Not sure who will be buying the product.

I don't understand the Amazon loving crowd. The CEO flat out says he wants to undercut all competition until he has none, and then raise prices.. And people still buy through Amazon, still use aws, etc.

Really? Do you have a source?

The biggest thing that pisses me off at the moment is their shipping. I refuse to pay for prime due to the way it seems to be enforced on the user and their near dark pattern techniques to get you to sign up at every checkout.

Whenever I order something now and pick the cheapest or free shipping method, it seems to always sit in their warehouse for nearly a week before they even consider shipping it. It seems like another shady attempt to force me over to prime.

Most of the time I can buy the same product for similar or cheaper (after shipping) from another retailer and not have to wonder how many days it will take them to ship it, or be upsold into a delivery club at every turn.

That's the deal, though. 7-14 day shipping (or whatever it is exactly). If it sits around in the warehouse for a week, that's their prerogative. Maybe the warehouse is operating at capacity, so they put off your order. Maybe they are trying to goad you. I don't see why it matters, you are getting what's promised.

True but the real point is that he's sufficiently annoyed at that situation to try other retailers instead...

> I refuse to pay for prime due to the way it seems to be enforced on the user and their near dark pattern techniques to get you to sign up at every checkout.

I've had Prime since shortly after it was first released (it's a no-brainer for me), so I've never encountered these "dark pattern techniques." Can you explain in more detail what you mean?

I've also never experienced shipping delays, but again I've had Prime for a long time.

They offer Prime every time you buy something at Amazon. It is annoying if you really don't want to sign for it.

You think that's annoying? Trying signing up for Prime and still being bombarded by ads/links to signup. Seems to have been alleviated in the recent redesign, but I was frequently bemused at how Amazon's shopping-history-feature could know so much about me...and apparently, wasn't tied to the system that spit out Join-amazon-prime links on a given page.

When I click through to the checkout, I get a big yellow button with an arrow that is "proceed to checkout with 1 month free trial of Prime" on the right, and the on left a small dullish un-assuming button that is "Proceed to checkout without free trial of Amazon Prime". The styling of the button is made to almost feel like a standard "Proceed to Checkout" and the other button is made to look/feel like a "Cancel order". If you were in a hurry, it would be easy to accidentally click, thinking you were just clicking next.

I've even had after that screen, it auto select - 1 day free delivery with Amazon prime trial and I have to manually select "free delivery without Amazon Prime". It just feels sleazy.

The fire phone was a completely unnecessary waste of resources - I wonder how much that contributed to this dreary news.

According to their CFO, it amounts to a $170m loss, with "$83 million worth of Fire Phone inventory on hand at the end of the last quarter".

http://www.geekwire.com/2014/amazon-takes-170m-loss-fire-pho...

It'd easily be significantly higher if they managed to quantify the opportunity cost in areas that are doing well (e.g., Kindle reader, AWS, warehouse automation etc.,).

This topic gets ping-ponged depending on the prevailing weather conditions.

Amazon has been clear about what they're doing: sometimes this is genius, and sometimes this is diabolically stupid for shareholders. When a CEO has a 20+ year plan and doesn't vacillate from it, it's bizarre for those who've bought in to complain every quarter.

I do think, however, that Amazon's recent high profile product failures have fueled the Amazon growth dissidents. This is Bezos' big mistake... he's gift-wrapping the big wins to the opposition. And IMHO, it's absolutely legitimate to wonder how the Fire phone ever made it to market. It was absolutely, positively obvious that it wasn't a good product. All big companies put out products that fail, and that's an acceptable churn on the road to success, but this example shows that there's a huge disconnect inside the company with respect to the viability of early product iterations.

They blew it, big time. If Bezos had anything to do with approving it, his round table isn't, or can't, giving good guidance.

I personally used to "love" Amazon. Now they're Just Another Etailer. They've missed on the emotional customer adherence front, somehow.

So many people are comfortable with Amazon as the store front that if they just turned the knob up a bit where transactions were marginally more expensive, but not inordinately so, they bring in more money and likely don't lose much traffic. I expect this knob to be turned a bit in the coming months.

Pertinent question by BBC from 2001: "When will Amazon make a profit?" [1]

> But its overall performance has remained loss making as it invests in new areas and products as part of its 'land grab' strategy.

> The strategy is to secure a large slab of the global etail market as it evolves.

> The idea is that this large share of the market can then be converted into profits in years to come.

It's amazing how 13 years on Amazon is still pretty much where it was in 2001 in terms of philosophy and losses. And I suppose the answer still remains, its "large share of the market can then be converted into profits in years to come."

[Edit - added URL]

[1] - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1195954.stm

It seems only just 5 days ago that Amazon was an unstoppable juggernaut taking over the world!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8481011

...and since then it's only grown bigger. Plus ca change...

I (and many investors) just think that Amazon is badly managed from the financial standpoint. I don't see any problem in reinvesting your profits, but you also don't need to incur a loss every quarter for this purpose. Just adjust your metrics so that you spend a bit less than you make. The fact that they cannot manage to do this tells the world that: (1) they don't care about investors money (2) they don't have the ability to control costs even though they're making billions of dollars in revenue. These things together can be a recipe for disaster if there is any problem in the economy (think of 2001 or 2008).

> These things together can be a recipe for disaster if there is any problem in the economy (think of 2001 or 2008).

Amazon was founded in 94 and lived through both bubbles.

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