jrauser (u/jrauser) - Readit News

jrauser commented on Amazon says it didn't cut people because of money. But because of 'culture' cnn.com/2025/10/30/tech/a... · Posted by u/jhncls

eitally · 2 months ago

I think it's reasonable to s/amazon/google in this post -- it's equally true there.

jrauser · 2 months ago

I never worked for google (interviewed but was rejected) but I have suspected this is true -- that there was a sweet spot where google was a magical place, but that time has long passed.

jrauser commented on Amazon says it didn't cut people because of money. But because of 'culture' cnn.com/2025/10/30/tech/a... · Posted by u/jhncls

GiorgioG · 2 months ago

Best decision I ever made was repeatedly ignoring emails from Amazon recruiters while they were allowing remote work around the pandemic. Fuck that place.

jrauser · 2 months ago

One of the better decisions I ever made was not ignoring emails from folks recruiting for Amazon in 2003. It was a different place back then, and truly like "the world's largest startup." The other thing that was different back then was that the people I worked with were all so blindingly smart. I'm pretty smart, but in 2003 I often felt like the dumbest person in the room[1]. In 2025 that feeling was rare, and not simply because I had 20 years more wisdom.

I left Amazon for the third and last time a couple months ago and have no regrets.

If you're still there and reading this, Amazon still has a lot going for it as a place to work. But it's not the electric place I recall from 20 years ago. I'm not sure if there is any company that can match both the startup-like freedom of action with massive scale of early 2000s Amazon.

[1] In case it isn't obvious: this is a desirable condition because it means you get to learn something.

jrauser commented on Friends don't let friends make bad graphs github.com/cxli233/Friend... · Posted by u/ZunarJ5

jrauser · 2 years ago

I wrote a talk entitled How Humans See Data that puts several of these ideas, among others, into a coherent framework based on research by Bill Cleveland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSgEeI2Xpdc

jrauser commented on Amazon.com Homepage (1999) web.archive.org/web/19991... · Posted by u/marinesebastian

PaulDavisThe1st · 4 years ago

Calling it an "internally developed macro language" is stretching it a little bit. It was an extremely simple blob of C++ code that scanned text looking for one of a very small number of known placeholders, and filled them in with the relevant value (session ID, user name, user email etc.) I suppose that over the years between 1996, the capabilities of catsubst may have been expanded somewhat, but certainly when it started there was no formal concept of it being a macro language. In fact, at the very beginning, we experimented with just using m4 (which is a formal macro language) but it wasn't quite right for the job.

jrauser · 4 years ago

Fair enough. I maybe should have put language in scare quotes. :)

jrauser commented on Amazon.com Homepage (1999) web.archive.org/web/19991... · Posted by u/marinesebastian

VWWHFSfQ · 4 years ago

I heard it was written in perl

jrauser · 4 years ago

In 1999, front end templates were written in an internally developed macro language named catsubst and served by a C (maybe C++?) application named Obidos. Later (starting in 2003-ish), front end code was written in Perl (Mason) and served by another application named Gurupa. The transition to Gurupa was very long and arduous. I've no idea how the site works now.

jrauser commented on Which cyclist hill descent position is superior? (2017) linkedin.com/pulse/which-... · Posted by u/discreteevent

jerome-jh · 6 years ago

Why tri bars should be unsafe? You have control of the steering, control of the brakes and your back is flat which increases comfort. Aerodynamically speaking your cross section is quite smaller.

jrauser · 6 years ago

Your control is greatly reduced in aerobars, but more importantly, your ability to defend your space is hugely reduced, which makes riding in a pack extremely dangerous. This video explains why having the ability to protect your bars prevents crashes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRIsWzrMmBs

Cycling has some dumb rules (e.g. sock length), but banning aerobars in mass start races is not among them.

jrauser commented on The Tenets of Amazon's Principal Engineers amazon.jobs/en/landing_pa... · Posted by u/jrauser

jrauser · 6 years ago

I participated in the drafting of these tenets along with several others. Many years later, I'm pleased by how much I still like them.

jrauser commented on Not everyone has an internal monologue ryanandrewlangdon.wordpre... · Posted by u/altacc

gshdg · 6 years ago

There are also people who code-switch. I sometimes monologue and sometimes think abstractly.

jrauser · 6 years ago

I'm like this, but when I have too much caffeine I notice that it's harder to turn the monologue off. It becomes a little shouty in fact. Brains are weird.

jrauser commented on The Amazon Builders' Library aws.amazon.com/builders-l... · Posted by u/mooreds

dint · 6 years ago

Can you talk at all about what they do to develop writing skill?

> I'm convinced it's a major reason they've been so successful.

I'd be interested to hear why you think this.

One guess I've got is that a high standard for writing is a filter for bad ideas - if you can't justify your idea in a tight, well-written document, then it's probably not worth trying out.

jrauser · 6 years ago

You've got it more or less. The way I say it is that bad ideas can't hide in writing. You can fool yourself and others with a powerpoint or a spoken argument. But clear writing demands clear thinking. Poorly constructed arguments are (usually) obvious as such when put into writing.