亚马逊：从一无是处到无与伦比

    请闭上双眼。如果你愿意，请想象一下，有这么一家新创立的企业，它符合如下条件：

    • 招聘流程漏洞百出

    • 运营一团糟

    • 工程师差不多什么都得干，结果几乎没什么时间编程

    • 对慈善毫无兴趣，不愿扶危济困，至于反哺社区或类似的事情，更是无从谈起

    • 办公区域就是一片脏兮兮的格子间，一个子儿也没花在装修和公共会议区上

    • 薪酬福利叫人失望

    • 什么津贴或补助，连影子都没有

    • 代码库一团乱麻，除了个别团队自建的标准外，什么技术标准都没有

    • 首席执行官鼠目寸光，一点都不关心团队的福利。至于团队采用什么技术，如何开展业务等细节，除非他们把事情搞糟了，否则，他从不会正眼瞧瞧。

    听着就像一场灾难，是吧？没什么午休瑜伽时光。没有茶歇时间。工程人员老是加班加点，没人赏识。格局太小的首席执行官，压根不关心技术基础？嘘，如果你侧耳倾听，或许还能听到郁闷的海岸边，波澜不惊的死水正在轻轻拍岸。

    现在，请睁开眼睛。

    以上描述摘自硅谷工程师斯蒂夫•叶戈的一封信，他无意中将它发布到了Google+上。

    他描述的这家公司是……亚马逊公司（Amazon）。

    那位管理低能的首席执行官是……杰夫•贝索斯。

    一家公司在每件事上都错得这么离谱，却又在那么多事上成就非凡，这才让人诧异。而这正是关键所在。

    每个人都做得一无是处。贝索斯，佩奇，扎克伯格都是如此，而最有可能的，是我们自己。我们很可能也一无是处。适用于贝索斯的脚本未必适合佩奇。适合佩奇的脚本对扎克伯格未必管用。而他们任何一个人能演的脚本对我们来说都不合适。我们自己也一无是处。

    要开创自己的事业，没有放之四海而皆准的正确做法。如果真有这种妙招，我们完全可以把工商管理硕士课程压缩了发在一个博客里，然后大家都回去各干各的。不过，对每个人来说，确实有正确的做法。我们要做的，就是在努力开发产品，组建团队，开办公司的时候勇敢地找出这些做法，并付诸行动，这才是核心所在。

    贝索斯正因为错得如此离谱，他才找到了正道。佩奇也是如此。扎克伯格也不例外。

    最后得说的是，错得特立独行又让人难以接受是成事的唯一途径。

    布莱斯•罗伯茨是O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures风投公司的联合创始合伙人。本篇文章最初发表于他的博客。

    译者：清远

    Close your eyes. Imagine, if you will, a startup that meets the following criteria:

    • Their recruiting process is fundamentally flawed

    • Their operations are a mess

    • They make engineers pretty much do everything, which leaves almost no time for coding

    • They don't (care) about charity or helping the needy or community contributions or anything like it

    • Their facilities are dirt-smeared cube farms without a dime spent on decor or common meeting areas

    • Their pay and benefits suck

    • They don't have any perks or extras

    • Their code base is a disaster, with no engineering standards whatsoever except what individual teams choose to put in place

    • The CEO is an infamous micro-manager and doesn't care, even a tiny bit, about the well-being of the teams, nor about what technologies they use, nor in fact any detail whatsoever about how they go about their business unless they happen to be screwing up.

    Sounds like a disaster, right? No lunchtime yoga. No tea times. Over worked, and under appreciated engineers. Micro managing CEO, out of touch with underlying technologies? Shhh, if you listen quietly enough you might even hear the gentle waves of the dead pool lapping up along the shores of sorrow.

    Now, open your eyes.

    The above description was pulled from a letter inadvertently posted to G+ by veteran Valley engineer Steve Yegge.

    The company he is describing? Amazon (AMZN).

    The micromanaging CEO? Jeff Bezos.

    Amazing that a company doing everything so completely wrong can get so much right. And that's the point.

    Everyone is doing it all wrong. Bezos, Page, Zuckerberg and most likely us. We're probably doing it all wrong too. The playbook that works for Bezos won't work for Page. The playbook that works for Page won't work for Zuckerberg. And none of their playbooks will work for us either. We'll do it wrong too.

    There are no universal right answers when it comes to building our businesses. If there were, we could condense an MBA into a single blog post and all get back to work. But, there are right answers for us individually. Fearlessly discovering and acting on them should be at the heart of the products, teams and companies we're trying to build.

    Bezos was so wrong he was right. So was Page. So was Zuck.

    In the end, being so uniquely and painfully wrong is the only way to get it right.

    Bryce Roberts is a co-founding partner of O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. This post originally appeared at his blog.