Word: timed
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...item goes into a large green crate that contains many customers' orders. When full, the crates ride a series of conveyor belts that winds more than 1 miles through the plant at a constant speed of 2.9 ft. per sec. The bar code on each item is scanned 15 times, by machines and by many of the 600 full-time workers, all of whom get Amazon stock options...
...blue-collar work of the Internet. Neon hair, body piercings and non-Caucasian skin tones are generously represented. And so is the Amazon work ethic. "You have to prove yourself," says Edwards, 30, who came here from a print shop. "But once they notice that you're on time, hardworking and consistent, good things happen. Some people are really motivated," he says, as a headphoned airhead ambles by. "Others aren't motivated at all. And they usually don't last long...
...Online auctions "wring out the inefficiencies in the supply-chain process," says FairMarket CEO Scott Randall. They also benefit from Metcalfe's Law (named after Robert Metcalfe, the founder of 3Com Corp.): the value of a network increases by the square of the number of people on it. Every time a conventional online retailer adds a new user, it's just one more person who can buy its products. But every time eBay adds a new user, he can buy from or sell to any of the 7.7 million people already on the network. A retailer, in other words...
...Meanwhile, the site's revenues kept doubling: they were $2,500 the second month, then $5,000, then $10,000. Omidyar eventually had another insight. "I said O.K., I've got a hobby that's making me more money than my day job," he recalls. "So it might be time to quit...
...eBay's only full-time employee, Omidyar soon found himself thrust into a new and unwanted role: grievance officer. Buyers and sellers with complaints about each other were e-mailing him personally and asking him to step in. Omidyar urged them to work things out amicably between themselves. But if eBayers really had to gripe, he decided, they should do it publicly on the site. "I wanted to reinforce the notion that if you're going to bring a complaint about someone, do it out in the open," says Omidyar. "You can't come running to Daddy...