phone: +420 776 223 443
e-mail: support@londoncreative.co.uk

Monday, July 23, 2012

Amazon.com History


Amazon.com is a Fortune 500 e-commerce company based in Seattle, WA. Amazon was one of the first big companies to sell goods over the Internet . The company was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, and launched in 1995. They started out as an online bookstore and then quickly diversified by adding other items, such as VHS tapes and DVDs, music CDs, software , video games, electronics, MP3s, clothing, furniture, toys and even food items.
In 1999 Time Magazine named Bezos its 1999 Person of the Year. This was largely in recognition of the company's success in popularizing online shopping.

Amazon.com Company Culture

Amazon.com considers itself a completely customer centric company, which is reflected in their company values statement:
  • Customer Obsession: We start with the customer and work backwards.
  • Innovation: If you don't listen to your customers you will fail. But if you only listen to your customers you will also fail.
  • Bias for Action: We live in a time of unheralded revolution and insurmountable opportunity--provided we make every minute count.
  • Ownership: Ownership matters when you're building a great company. Owners think long-term, plead passionately for their projects and ideas, and are empowered to respectfully challenge decisions.
  • High Hiring Bar: When making a hiring decision we ask ourselves: "Will I admire this person? Will I learn from this person? Is this person a superstar?"
  • Frugality: We spend money on things that really matter and believe that frugality breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention!

Jobs at Amazon.com

There are currently over 14,000 Amazon.com employees worldwide. Since Amazon.com is known for its technical innovations, here is some information from their careers website that mentions the scope of their engineers:
”Our engineers tackle some of the most complex challenges in large-scale computing. Software development engineers, technical program managers, test engineers, and user-interface experts work in small teams company-wide to contribute to the e-commerce platform that's used by:
  • Tens of millions of Amazon.com customers
  • Hundreds of thousands of sellers and merchants
  • Tens of thousands of external developers”
The IT Department at Amazon.com also has a massive responsibility, as they oversee an enormous system that is extremely reliable. Amazon.com describes their IT group as “system, database, and networking experts (that) build and operate highly reliable, scalable distributed systems with terabyte-sized databases and infrastructure that can handle a massive number of transactions.”

Amazon.com Compensation and Benefits

The compensation at Amzaon.com is known as being competitive. Their benefits include the following components:
  • Medical, dental and vision insurance with domestic partner coverage
  • Company-paid basic life and accident coverage with optional additional coverage
  • Company-paid short- and long-term disability plan
  • Employee assistance program including dependent-care referral services and financial/legal services
  • Health-care and dependent-care flexible spending accounts
  • Time Off benefits for salaried employees are equal to two weeks of vacation time in the first year, three weeks of vacation in the second and six personal days every year (in addition to six company holidays)
  • Savings and retirement benefits include Amazon.com Restricted Stock Units, 401(k) savings plan with a company match and various employee discount programs
  • Many positions are eligible for relocation assistance through a relocation services provider. Some of the relocation benefits listed are very extensive but are very dependent on the position being considered.

0 comments: