Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Early Amazon: The end

I spent several more years at Amazon. Amazon grew and grew.

Amazon expanded from a tiny online bookstore into an online superstore, selling books, music, videos, software, video games, electronics, toys, hardware, clothing, jewelry, and much, much more.

In later years, I went on to lead the software team in the Personalization group. We did great things. I am proud of everything we accomplished.

But, those first years will always hold a special place in my memories. It is something I likely will see only once in my lifetime.

Below are links to all the posts in my Early Amazon series. I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

The Early Amazon series:
  1. The series
  2. The first week
  3. Group discounts
  4. Door desks
  5. BookMatcher
  6. boy-am-i-hard-to-please
  7. Inventory cache
  8. Dogs
  9. Xmas at the warehouse
  10. Splitting the website
  11. Pagers, pagers
  12. Interviews
  13. Similarities
  14. 1996 holiday party
  15. Oracle down
  16. Recommendations
  17. Shopping cart recommendations
  18. Just do it
  19. Auctions
  20. The end
I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to have worked at Amazon.com along side such talented, dedicated, and passionate people. It was a remarkable experience.

Update: See also my post about Amazon.cult.

12 comments:

Shane said...

I only found your blog recently, but these stories are really interesting. I for one will be checking out the others in the amazon series. Great blog!

Anonymous said...

Great series - really enjoyed it.

William Slawski said...

Thanks, Greg

I really enjoyed your stories of the early days at Amazon. Think my favorite was the one with the door desks, which brought some memories of my own back.

Cheers.

Anonymous said...

I agree: great posts! Thanks for sharing them with us.

jeff.dalton said...

Thanks Greg. Great series, I was an avid reader.

Any chance of hearing some of your later stories?

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the great series, Greg. Really am cherishing it.

Anonymous said...

I also enjoyed your stories. Hope to read more in the near future.


www.youronestopstore.com/12359

Anonymous said...

What happened? Amazon really sux these days. Totally dysfunctional delivery system. My balance on Amazon was listed at -$700, and it was upgraded as a 'complex software issue'! Must be the same problem Yahoo is having these days...

Trout said...

Heh.

Randomly found your blog while randomly looking for other people who randomly worked at the 'Zon.

I was there from late '97 to early '03. I don't write about it much anymore, but it sure is fun to see what others have to say.

appleshampooID said...

Great posts dude, I just started at Amazon in July, and it is (obviously) no longer the same company...however "it is still day one" according to Jeff :-)

Particularly, I enjoyed reading about how the entire website used to run on one huge box...that is ridiculous. These days, as I'm sure you know, the US livesite is served up by hundreds of Linux boxes. Also, Obidos is dead, it was turned off completely on Aug 31 and the website is now running 100% Gurupa.

Great series!

Anonymous said...

Awesome, man! Thanks for sharing!!!

Bha said...

Good one, Many thanks for sharing:)