A good day with Jeff Bezos

https://steve-yegge.medium.com/a-good-day-with-jeff-d28e05ed2524

by ingve • 3 years ago

91 72 3 years ago

steve-yegge.medium.com

ggm• 3 years ago

Another instance of "no, you cannot comprehend how the superrich live, it's just different"

WilTimSon2• 3 years ago

I'm positively baffled by the stereo bit. He had this really impressive thing built, was really happy someone noticed it and yet didn't play a thing on it? Not even some presentation audio, just to show off? Such a bizarre mix of showing off yet trying not to show off. I feel like most people, when they come into possession of something they consider cool, would jump out of their socks at the chance to show it to their guests.

prepend• 3 years ago

It was during the lunch time during a short conversation. There likely wasn’t time to play anything without soaking up a lot of time.

Also, I’ve met lots of audio people who seem to like the design of the system more than actually listening to music.

If this was a dinner party, I’d expect a demo and playing music to show it off. But for a lunch break at a work meeting to basically a stranger, it seems to make sense that he didn’t play anything.

karaterobot2• 3 years ago

I mean, it's a company meeting unrelated to music, why would he show off his stereo?

And if he'd done that, there would be a story about how "Jeff Bezos' stereo costs more than I make in five years, and he made a bunch of employees listen to it in his boat house". Not saying the author of this article would have written it, but somebody would.

omoikane2• 3 years ago

There might not have been anything worth playing because Jeff Bezos might not have been a music person. According to "The Everything Store" by Brad Stone:

    Bezos's colleagues and friends often attribute Amazon's tardiness in digital music to Bezos's lack of interest in music of any kind [...] Colleagues remember that on the solemn road trip from Target's offices in Minneapolis after 9/11, Bezos indiscriminately grabbed stacks of CDs from the bargain rack of a convenience store, as if they were all interchangeable.

nicbou• 3 years ago

I always wonder how infinite money would upend my system of values.

fuzzfactor2• 3 years ago

"The Rich are Different"

The lesser-known little book of quotations by Jon Winokur.

Appropriately enough on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Are-Different-Priceless-Quotatio...

the elite members of San Francisco's Union Pacific Club needn't worry about handling dirty money, since every coin the enters the institution is scoured by the kitchen staff.
When the late Time Warner boss Steve Ross flew his wife and two other couples to Mexico one Christmas, the trip required two corporate planes: One for people and one for gifts.
Christina Onassis used to have Diet Coke flown to her by private jet.
Asked why she was carried everywhere by a burly attendant, Barbara Hutton replied, "Why should I walk when I can hire someone to do it for me?"

ghoshbishakh• 3 years ago

"The winding road to his home was lined with black-suited, white-shirted, matching security guards, all equipped with matching sunglasses and earpieces." -- Do all super rich people live with this level of security?

super2562• 3 years ago

I know that the Albrecht brothers (Aldi) were running around without security for decades, Meckerle (Ratiopharm) did so too until his suicide due to the Volkswagen short squeeze and financial crisis, and Dieter Schwarz (Lidl) still does today.

lancebeet• 3 years ago

I remember seeing a DW documentary a couple of years ago about how differently billionaires behave in Germany compared to the US ("The discreet lives of the super rich" was its name apparently). If one accepts the basic premise of the documentary (that the German billionaires avoid flaunting their wealth and strive to maintain privacy), it might explain why billionaires in Germany could live their lives without security while it would be unthinkable for their American counterparts.

WilTimSon2• 3 years ago

Albrechts aren't a great example, considering one of them was bloody kidnapped. Although I don't know if the lack of security was before the incident or did they carry on guard-less even after that?

suddenclarity• 3 years ago

I know I would. Famous soccer players get burgled and robbed all the time with them and their family being threatened. Now imagine if you're a billionaire and the newspapers tell people every day how evil you are. It's not far fetched to assume criminals or a lunatic would act on it.

lordnacho• 3 years ago

Super rich who are famous, probably. It's also a matter of convenience: you don't want thousands of people with "great investment ideas" to approach you constantly, and the security will not only stop you being assaulted but also stop randoms from coming up to you.

But I do know someone who is merely an heir, who doesn't need to live with a bunch of security all the time, because he's not famous.

So probably fame has more to do with it than wealth. Not sure what you do if you're famous but not wealthy, I imagine that could be problematic.

knallfrosch• 3 years ago

The German YouTuber Drachenlord is famous and poor, and he has been harassed for years.

People vandalize his father's grave, break into his home, the police don't come any more. It's cruel and the bullies want him to overreact so that they can also sue him in court.

TMWNN• 3 years ago

But I do know someone who is merely an heir, who doesn't need to live with a bunch of security all the time, because he's not famous.

This is why many junior/cadet members of foreign royal families like living in the US; they are anonymous here. Princess Victoria, the heir to the Swedish throne, was a student at Yale. Even the Windsors; not Harry and Meghan, of course, but Gabriella Windsor graduated from Brown without much public attention.

SilverBirch3• 3 years ago

This story is from 2004 though, this is a long time before Bezos was "The man who could be the worlds richest man if he could keep it in his pants". This was back when he was just a moderately successful CEO.

dangwhy3• 3 years ago

Didn't bunch of his nudes and personal messages get leaked. Why wouldn't he apply same level of scrutiny to his personal data. baffling to me.

gonehome• 3 years ago

I think famous not wealthy people (especially those that are victims of internet mobs) end up in hiding and it’s a pretty bad situation for them. There’s also the middle case too - I’m not sure what level of wealth Sam Harris has, but I don’t know if he’s able to afford this kind of security (and I know he gets a lot of death threats).

At some threshold of fame it seems like you just attract crazy people and the risk of them attacking you goes up substantially.

wefarrell• 3 years ago

I encountered security like that when I went to a party at a private Rockefeller estate. When I arrived I was confused as to why there was so much security but when we were inside there was priceless art everywhere, for example they had a head of a classical Greek statue placed next to a urinal in the bathroom.

markus_zhang• 3 years ago

Some things should never be in the hands of private parties.

skybrian• 3 years ago

Maybe they can get more security when people are visiting for an event? Or maybe someone is always visiting?

kjs3• 3 years ago

We have volunteer election workers facing credible death threats in the US. If I had Bezos level money, I'd definitely have a couple of folks around to manage the potential crazies, just in case.

throwawaymeta01• 3 years ago

weird.

but I guess that's what the story was supposed to signal.

my experiences during product demos showed jeff had a great knack for asking the right questions and being able to dive into meaningful details.

stagger87• 3 years ago

"Yea yea yea he's an asshole, but I got to go to his boathouse!"

dang• 3 years ago

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ajkjk• 3 years ago

I could listen to weird stories about people who've brushed shoulders with the super-rich all day.

I'd especially love to hear stories of winning their respect. Surely somebody wins Bezos' respect -- unless (and it doesn't seem unlikely) his defining property is being too arrogant for that?

june_twenty• 3 years ago

My favorite part of this story is that someone like Steve Yegge didn't contribute much to the conversation.

jmuguy• 3 years ago

I used to do a lot of IT work for the CEO of a client company and would visit his house often. He moved into a new house and in the garage had several lifts installed for his cars. And I was talking to the guy who installed the lifts and explaining that I didn’t know CEO worked on his cars and he explained that CEO probably doesn’t - there was some fad at the time and all the rich guys around town were getting these lifts installed. He said he had so much business he had to hire on a bunch of new people.

kamaal• 3 years ago

Spending your money is a way of spending your time(expended to acquire the money), so you want to spend as much as you can leaving 0 or at least keep towards 0 as you age. Anything else and it would feel like you are dying early.

Im guessing, once you are in the downswing of life(>40 years) you want to enjoy your money(especially when you have lots of it), because by that definition its also a way of life extension in a biological context where death is inevitable. So you want as many trophy things as possible.

You don't even have to be a billionaire for this. Non trivial millions will pretty much leave you in the same state.

uptownfunk2• 3 years ago

My favorite clip of Bezos is him totally ignoring Shatner feeling overwhelmed with emotion and wonder after the rocket launch. Have you ever seen someone more exposed

https://youtu.be/xrX1a0oqa9g

neilv4• 3 years ago

IIRC, there was more that happened before that bit, in which Bezos came off as more empathetic and sharing the moment with Shatner, and then only later also engaged more with the people there who wanted to pop champagne.

People who saw only the footage from a videographer who missed much of it, or which was edited cynically, got an inaccurate impression.

(Shatner was understandably moved by the space flight experience, maybe by something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect )

rhtgrg• 3 years ago

there was more that happened before that bit

It was after this bit. Probably when Bezos realized the optics.

or which was edited cynically, got an inaccurate impression

Ironic to be posting an inaccurate comment, while lamenting inaccuracy...

Here, you can see just how early this happens:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSNXBvpLb9o

abledon2• 3 years ago

Yes! My all time favourite, its almost seems too scripted to believe its real. Opening up the champagne infront of the recovered alcoholic and spraying it over Lauren haha

uptownfunk2• 3 years ago

Yes it looks like something out of that Silicon Valley TV show

golemotron• 3 years ago

I was hoping the story would be interesting in some way.

vsareto• 3 years ago

The purpose of the offsite was to bring Amazon’s technical thought leaders together to figure out if we could use machine learning to help us with systems operations.

How often do technical leaders get rounded up and asked to pitch ideas with little research beforehand?

lupire3• 3 years ago

Amazon has brainstorming parties, before the research starts.

I did one where a bunch of random ICs were locked in a room for an hour and told to make up ideas to patent.

My group patented an auto parts picker.

WalterBright• 3 years ago

A briefly famous person lived nearby me once. The paparazzi would sometimes camp out in their cars in the street. I'd stop by and tell them they have the wrong street, the person actually lived a couple streets over.

danielvf2• 3 years ago

The blog post is full of very specific clues - enough to narrow it down to one house. I went on Google Street View to see if the mentioned "white rock" was still there.

It looks like now there are two white rocks!

https://goo.gl/maps/TdcRicMBjCMY6sw47

omoikane2• 3 years ago

I tried the same thing but didn't notice any rocks, so I just did a regular search and found:

https://www.businessinsider.com/where-billionaires-bill-gate...

danielvf2• 3 years ago

Confirms I found the correct place on street view then.

giarc• 3 years ago

Funny that the admin would give vague instructions that anyone could figure out in a heartbeat. Why not just give the address?

dangerwill• 3 years ago

So I like to take absurdly long walks in Seattle and one time I walked the length of the 520 bridge over to Bellevue, and walked through Medina while doing so because I thought it was odd to have a part of Seattle named after a holy site in Saudi Arabia and I wanted to see what kind of community was there. Lo and behold I pretty quickly see it is a place of unbelievable wealth and I feel like a weird, poor interloper walking though in shorts and a t shirt and very sweaty from walking in the sun all day. And yep, I passed by that exact house.

I half-seriously wonder if I'm in some private security company's database from that day.

abledon2• 3 years ago

We never did get to listen to it, though. Lunch ended and we went back to the meeting

perfect ending sentence. sums up the trope of the time-starved billionaire businessmen

nagonago• 3 years ago

Interesting story, but if this story was supposed to portray Bezos as a "perfectly ordinary everyday dude", it certainly didn't give me that impression.

A good day with Jeff Bezos

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