Word: amazon
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...daunting task. For three years, defining Amazon was easy: it sold books. Then it sold books, music and videos. Now it sells toys, home-improvement products, consumer electronics and software as well. Then there are the equity stakes in start-ups like drugstore.com pets.com and Gear.com and struggling eBay-wannabe divisions: zShops and Auctions. Who are these guys now? What does Amazon represent? And will the company's more than 13 million customers stick around for power drills and wide-screen TVs? "No one's sure where all this is going," says Carrie Johnson, an analyst with Forrester Research...
...since mid-1998, the company has grown from one online store to more than a dozen, and from 1,100 to more than 5,000 love-it-or-leave-it, multitasking nomads. Ask the average Amazon employee for his or her business card. He will stammer and pat his pockets, explaining that, well, his number changed; she has a new job title; their group just moved; the new cards aren...
Marcus, who joined Amazon in '96, recalls learning Web coding on the fly in order to get his reviews online. Kerry Fried sardonically references "my assistant" to refer to her endless clerical duties. Almost every Amazonian spends half his time each December wrapping packages and manning customer-service lines. "It doesn't matter what you've done before and what you're going to do later," says Moe. "You figure it out as you go along...
That even goes for where you sit. Amazon offices are scattered across Seattle: the flagship Art Deco Pacific Medical Center, the Pike Street skyscraper, the original Columbia building and so on. Stunning mountain-flanked views of Lake Washington and Puget Sound are the only luxury the spartan corporate aesthetic allows. Employees are crammed two to a bare-walled office and work at Bezos-designed desks made of old doors with legs stuck on them (design director Helen Owen bets me lunch that she will still have a door-desk in five years, even if Amazon flourishes...
...moved nine times in three years. Resettling in the suburbs might make sense, but the troops keep voting it down, clearly dreading Seattle's horrendous traffic. Instead they huddle outside PacMed in a chilly dusk drizzle, awaiting one of the vans that crisscross the city from one Amazon outpost to another. "Imagine how much they're paying us," a shivering woman complains, "to stand here waiting for a ride...