[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Starting a company and growing it to the size of Amazon is extremely difficult.

That is almost certainly true. But what you don't get is that there are dozens (maybe many more) constantly striving to do just that. When some of them of succeed, why would you be surprised? Why would it be surprising or special when a system designed to cause people to strive for this kind of success actually results in it happening to some of them, and not to most of them? There's nothing remarkable about the fact of a particular corporation's success: there was always going to be a corporate success, just as there were always going to be way more corporate failures. That's how the system is designed. That's what it is there to do. It's not a reason to idolize or even respect those who happened to be on the winning team.

Before you say much more, you should probably be aware that I was the #2 employee at Amazon.

[notahacker]

> Before you say much more, you should probably be aware that I was the #2 employee at Amazon.

You popping up to disagree about how remarkable Amazon's success was is the most HN exchange I've seen since "did you win the Putnam"![1]

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

[seibelj]

And I’m the CTO of a unicorn I helped build from nothing! We have different opinions yet lived similar experiences.

I do respect and idolize the winners. Saying “someone would have done it if we didn’t” is defeatist. No one does anything unless someone does it. So we respect the people who actually do it rather than critique from the sidelines. It’s depressing to me that you were part of something amazing yet you view yourself as a replaceable cog and the success a meaningless byproduct of a system outside of your control.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Nobody within a particular human organization is a replaceable cog (well, at least that's an ideal that I think it is reasonable to aspire to, even if it's not technically true in a great many instances).

But just as you shouldn't be surprised when you visit a forest that there are some really big trees, some not so big, and some dead trees because that's how forests work, you shouldn't be surprised that when you survey the American corporate landscape, there are some huge successes, some moderate ones and lots of failures.

Sure, there was something about that much larger tree that made it nearly twice the size of its neighbors. But it was just as likely to be luck of where it germinated, luck of when it germinated, and yes, perhaps some good genes. Still, the idea that it was all the genes and that we've just discovered the uber-tree is mostly absurd.

And so it is with companies. The successful ones are most the product of an intersection of different kinds of luck with some necessary-but-insufficient features of their people. We've built a mythology in the USA that mostly all that matters is the nature of a few early founders (or perhaps the occasional turn-it-around later hire). I think this is demonstrably false. That doesn't make success a "meaningless byproduct of a system outside [your] control". It means that idolizing particular instances of success as being based on people distorts our understanding of how success actually happens (and how it doesn't).

I believe in intrinsic motivation - especially having worked with Bezos for a little while - and I do not think that we should, as a society, be providing motivation to people through the promise of fame and fortune. This is typically something that distorts and misdirects human effort and imagination. I also don't believe that we need to offer that motivation, at least certainly not to the extent that we currently do.

To whatever extent Amazon is amazing, it is also a mixture of good and bad, and I strongly regret that as individuals our society tends to focus so much more on the good and ignores the bad (the media over the last few years have begun to rebalance this, but it needs to go much further).

[seibelj]

It is interesting to me to read your thought process. I still cannot disagree more.

No one discovers a scientific breakthrough until they do. That breakthrough may have been an inevitable result of multiple independent teams working on it, the prior research hitting a certain point, technology advancing to provide the tools, and so on. Yet we praise the team that actually discovered it.

Similarly I don’t care if “an” Amazon was inevitable. It was Bezos that founded it and Amazon that did it. I am an individualist and I appreciate that we have superstars in all manner of art, academia, and business as well. These are what move society forwards. The moment I’m forced to start giving my stuff away to the collective is the moment I leave. I’m happy Bezos is rich as I’m happy sports stars and musicians are rich - it’s great they made our lives better.

[ncmncm]

A scientific breakthrough is intrinsically more meaningful and valuable, in every important way, than a business monopoly. The monopoly necessarily exploited a momentary, conditional weakness in the business and regulatory environment and then defended itself against what should have been competition.

We are all much poorer for as long as any monopoly holds onto its market power.

[seibelj]

A successful business is not prima facie a monopoly. Leftists like to cast all rich business people as monopolists who don’t deserve their money, yet glide over musicians, athletes, artists, writers, and all others in the creative professions who are rich yet are somehow more “deserving” of their wealth as they talk on their iPhones and type on their laptops.

I see starting and operating businesses as not only extremely difficult but arguably more valuable to society than another play or book. Yes, I love books. But in terms of usefulness to society a cheaper taco or a faster diaper delivery is on the whole a huge gain for society.

Soviet Russia made some good literature. But I don’t want humanity to live under the boot of communism so that a few books are written.

[ncmncm]

The businesses you like to lionize do operate mainly in the mode of monopolies.

[oblio]

> I do respect and idolize the winners.

Don't do that, it's toxic. Everything becomes about winning and losing and that's how you end up with an opioid epidemic.

[seibelj]

Is there no one on earth you respect, historical or current? Those are the “winners” in the context of my comment.

Either you respect people who accomplished great things, or you don’t. I choose to respect and appreciate the fine things created by hyper talented people.

[oblio]

I respect many things many people did but I've found that from many aspects the same people were sometimes horrible.

Like that saying: never meet your idols.

It's just better to appreciate achievements on their own.

Plus, frequently achievements are just the result of long, incremental work done by many hundreds of people in the background.