I worked for Amazon for four years. For nearly the entire time I worked there, I, as an engineer, had access to every customer's purchase history, contact information, email addresses, etc. The reason? On occasion, I'd need to get a user's email address to reach out to them if they reported bugs. The one service that offers employees this access is all or nothing. Either you get to see a customer's email, credit card number, and purchase history - or you get to see nothing at all.
Everyone knew that I had this access, and everyone knew that it was against Amazon's own policy to give me access. But to them, that was easier than fixing the service so that it was more useful.
Perhaps I'm just clueless, but something tells me that any relevant competitor to Amazon - say, I don't know, Google - would choose to fix the service instead.
>Perhaps I'm just clueless, but something tells me that any relevant competitor to Amazon - say, I don't know, Google - would choose to fix the service instead.
Why? The attitude you describe (do what's easy, not what's right) is endemic to any organization over a certain size in my experience.
Everyone knew that I had this access, and everyone knew that it was against Amazon's own policy to give me access. But to them, that was easier than fixing the service so that it was more useful.
Perhaps I'm just clueless, but something tells me that any relevant competitor to Amazon - say, I don't know, Google - would choose to fix the service instead.