Most of his book is a straightforward tale of how Amazon went from 55 employees to 8,000 in a little more than a year; how they crested the boom, and fell with the crash. He captures the feeling of a company that grew so fast, and then has to watch wave after wave of layoffs hit. He left Amazon in 2001, so he doesn't cover Amazon's recovery, although he acknowledges it in an Epilogue.
There are some organizational oddities to the book. He takes most of the coverage of his, and his co-workers, stock options and segregates it into one chapter. Although he wasn't vested, and thus couldn't exercize them all, at one time he had options worth some $9 million. While he doesn't give the final amount, his take appears to be far, far less than that. He spends a little more time throughout the book talking about the fact that, while you had the paper profits from your options, you had to live on a comparatively meager salary in pricey Seattle. I think he also spent more time talking about Ralph Waldo Emerson than he does about his marriage breaking up, which he treats almost as an aside.
Many of us writers on the web have hitched ourselves to Amazon in some way, in the hopes of making some money. Blogcritics is one example, and many of us have websites that belong to the Amazon Associates program. Reading this book won't help you make more money from it, but it does give you some appreciation for how Amazon got to the position it is in today.
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1 - Bryce Eddings
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