Interview with an anonymous AWS cybersecurity engineer
📰 Hacker News · who-knows
Learn about Amazon's mission to own the infrastructure of our lives and how it feels to work inside the company from an anonymous AWS cybersecurity engineer's perspective
Action Steps
- Read the interview with the anonymous AWS cybersecurity engineer to gain insight into Amazon's business strategy
- Analyze Amazon's expansion into various markets, including retail, cloud computing, and entertainment
- Evaluate the implications of Amazon's mission to own the infrastructure of our lives on cybersecurity and data privacy
- Research Amazon's competitors in the cloud computing market and their market share
- Consider the ethical implications of working for a large corporation like Amazon and its impact on society
Who Needs to Know This
Cybersecurity engineers, cloud computing professionals, and those interested in Amazon's business model can benefit from understanding the company's goals and inner workings
Key Insight
💡 Amazon's focus on technology and competitive advantage drives its expansion into various markets, posing challenges for cybersecurity and data privacy
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🚨 Amazon's mission to own the infrastructure of our lives: an anonymous AWS cybersecurity engineer shares insights 🚨
Key Takeaways
Learn about Amazon's mission to own the infrastructure of our lives and how it feels to work inside the company from an anonymous AWS cybersecurity engineer's perspective
Full Article
Title: Inside the Whale: An Interview with an Anonymous Amazonian
URL Source: https://logicmag.io/commons/inside-the-whale-an-interview-with-an-anonymous-amazonian/
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### [Issue 12 / Commons](https://logicmag.io/commons)
December 20, 2020
Image by Celine Nguyen.
# Inside the Whale: An Interview with an Anonymous Amazonian
Amazon is on a mission to own the infrastructure of our lives. The second-largest private employer in the United States after Walmart, the company captures $4 out of every $10 spent online. They have a vast network of fulfillment centers, and they are rapidly buying more real estate; in September 2020, they announced plans to open 1,500 more distribution hubs in suburbs across the country. Retail is only one of their many businesses, however: for many Americans, it would be impossible to commute from home to school or the office without passing into view of a Ring, Amazon’s “smart” home surveillance camera. Moreover, Amazon Web Services (AWS) controls nearly half of the public cloud market, and the company is pouring money into a number of other ventures, from entertainment to advertising. We talked with an AWS cybersecurity engineer about how to think about the behemoth and how it feels to work inside it.
**Amazon is a huge and complex organization. How should we think about it as a whole?**
Amazon is an opportunistic corporation. It invests in businesses where we think we have a competitive advantage. In general, Amazon thinks of itself as a technology company. So we put the technology first, whatever the product is that we’re selling. And we believe that because we have so much talent and so much capital, we should be able to use our technology advantage to dominate any market that we decide to enter.
**What were its origins? Why did Amazon start off as a company that sold books on the internet?**
In the mid-1990s, the internet was widely seen as a replacement for the library—the library 2.0—so figuring out how to buy books on the internet felt like a natural next step. A little later on, you could see some of that same spirit living at Google through the Google Books project, which was an enormous undertaking. They put a hugely disproportionate amount of resources into it. Amazon’s ultimate goal was similar to that of Google Books: to digitize all of the information in the world’s books and make it available universally, because that was the promise of the internet.
Jeff Bezos studies other “great men” in history and imagines himself to be a kind of Alexander the Great. There's even a building on the Amazon campus called Alexandria, which was the name of one of the company’s early projects to get every single book that had ever been published to be listed on Amazon.
But there was also a more practical reason. Books are ideal because you can stuff them in a box. They’re relatively cheap to ship. Also, they’re easy to protect when shipping. It’
URL Source: https://logicmag.io/commons/inside-the-whale-an-interview-with-an-anonymous-amazonian/
Markdown Content:
[](https://logicmag.io/)
* [Issues](https://logicmag.io/#issues)
* [Store](http://store.logicmag.io/)
* [Subscribe](https://logicmag.io/subscribe)
* [About](https://logicmag.io/about)
* [About](https://logicmag.io/about)
* [People](https://logicmag.io/people)
* [Fellowships](https://logicmag.io/fellowships)
* [Issues](https://logicmag.io/#issues)
* [Store](http://store.logicmag.io/)
* [Subscribe](https://logicmag.io/subscribe)
* [About](https://logicmag.io/about)
* [About](https://logicmag.io/about)
* [People](https://logicmag.io/people)
* [Fellowships](https://logicmag.io/fellowships)
[Support Logic(s) by subscribing to our forthcoming 2025 collector's issue: Terror](https://logicmag.io/subscribe/)
### [Issue 12 / Commons](https://logicmag.io/commons)
December 20, 2020
Image by Celine Nguyen.
# Inside the Whale: An Interview with an Anonymous Amazonian
Amazon is on a mission to own the infrastructure of our lives. The second-largest private employer in the United States after Walmart, the company captures $4 out of every $10 spent online. They have a vast network of fulfillment centers, and they are rapidly buying more real estate; in September 2020, they announced plans to open 1,500 more distribution hubs in suburbs across the country. Retail is only one of their many businesses, however: for many Americans, it would be impossible to commute from home to school or the office without passing into view of a Ring, Amazon’s “smart” home surveillance camera. Moreover, Amazon Web Services (AWS) controls nearly half of the public cloud market, and the company is pouring money into a number of other ventures, from entertainment to advertising. We talked with an AWS cybersecurity engineer about how to think about the behemoth and how it feels to work inside it.
**Amazon is a huge and complex organization. How should we think about it as a whole?**
Amazon is an opportunistic corporation. It invests in businesses where we think we have a competitive advantage. In general, Amazon thinks of itself as a technology company. So we put the technology first, whatever the product is that we’re selling. And we believe that because we have so much talent and so much capital, we should be able to use our technology advantage to dominate any market that we decide to enter.
**What were its origins? Why did Amazon start off as a company that sold books on the internet?**
In the mid-1990s, the internet was widely seen as a replacement for the library—the library 2.0—so figuring out how to buy books on the internet felt like a natural next step. A little later on, you could see some of that same spirit living at Google through the Google Books project, which was an enormous undertaking. They put a hugely disproportionate amount of resources into it. Amazon’s ultimate goal was similar to that of Google Books: to digitize all of the information in the world’s books and make it available universally, because that was the promise of the internet.
Jeff Bezos studies other “great men” in history and imagines himself to be a kind of Alexander the Great. There's even a building on the Amazon campus called Alexandria, which was the name of one of the company’s early projects to get every single book that had ever been published to be listed on Amazon.
But there was also a more practical reason. Books are ideal because you can stuff them in a box. They’re relatively cheap to ship. Also, they’re easy to protect when shipping. It’
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