Amazon and Uber with Brad Stone

Big technology companies have so much going on at any given time that a journalist can tell any type of story they want to about it. Depending on what angle you observe the company from, you can write a story depicting that company as good, evil, growing, or about to crash. The truth only becomes apparent to outsiders with time.

Amazon’s culture and business strategy were detailed in The Everything Store, a 2013 book by Brad Stone. I read The Everything Store before working at Amazon, then I read it a second time after working at Amazon. The book is an accurate and balanced depiction of Amazon’s ethos.

Brad’s new book The Upstarts documents the rise of Uber and Airbnb, two companies with a similar controversial valence to Amazon.

It was a pleasure to speak to Brad because I admire his engrossing storytelling as an author and his strategic analysis as a business journalist. After discussing business and technology with him, we explored journalism–Brad is senior executive editor at Bloomberg.

Transcript

Transcript provided by We Edit Podcasts. Software Engineering Daily listeners can go to weeditpodcasts.com/sed to get 20% off the first two months of audio editing and transcription services. Thanks to We Edit Podcasts for partnering with SE Daily. Please click here to view or download the transcript for this show.


Software Daily

Software Daily

 
Subscribe to Software Daily, a curated newsletter featuring the best and newest from the software engineering community.