The NFX Podcast The Founders' List: Steve Yegge's Famous Rant on 'Google vs Amazon' (Famous Memos)
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Nov 20, 2020 
Discussing Steve Yegge's insightful rant on Google's platform failures and his experiences at Amazon working for Jeff Bezos. Exploring the differences in company cultures, operations, and leadership styles between Google and Amazon. Delving into the significance of platforms and accessibility in tech, highlighting the challenges and transformations faced by Amazon in transitioning to a service-driven company under Bezos' leadership.
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Bezos' Service-First Mandate
- Steve Yegge recounts Amazon's transformation under Jeff Bezos into a service-oriented company driven by a strict mandate.
- He describes the mandate's rules and the cultural rollout that made teams expose functionality as services and design interfaces to be externalizable.
Bezos' Pixel Obsession
- Yegge describes Jeff Bezos as a micromanager who obsessively controls the retail site's pixels.
- He recounts hiring Larry Tesler, who left after his usability advice was ignored.
SOA Creates New Infrastructure Needs
- Moving to a large SOA surfaces many non-obvious operational problems like monitoring, service discovery, and debugging.
- Yegge argues these infrastructure needs become services themselves and require broad organizational learning.