Inside the Giant Machine : An Amazon.com Story

Behind Amazon’s quirky smile logo lurks a cold and calculating giant machine. Author Kalpanik S. reveals his own smile as he tells the somewhat quirky story of his complex, and often hilarious, relationship with Amazon. From the sophisticated wit in his portrayal of the courtship period in “How To Get Hired By Amazon In Ten Days”, to the dark humor of the disillusionment period in “The Cold, Calculating Machine”, Kalpanik’s story is more than just an insider’s view of the giant machine known as Amazon.com. It’s a modern, universal story of the uneasy relationship between an individual and today’s gargantuan corporations. In the end, it is also a story of redemption for creative and freethinking individuals that define America.

Acclaim for the book

I love his leaps of imagination, and the words which hook us in, make us think this is our story.

Confessions of a foreign born author

I must confess that English is my third language, and even though this book has been edited by several professional native English editors, it is obvious—even to me— that this book is written by a Foreign-born author.

Foreign-born or not, I believe I have a talent for storytelling, and I have converted a dull topic—the transformation of Amazon from a retail website to a marketplace—into an interesting and lively story.

If you are looking for a 1,000-page treatise on Amazon that can be used as an example of perfect grammar in the High school English grammar class, then this book may not be the right book for you. There are several other books on Amazon which are written in perfect English but are perfectly boring.

A book about Amazon can be pretty dry, so I have tried to add some humor. In my attempt to make this book funny, a few facts may have been stretched. I quote this passage from 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com, written by Mike Daisey, a fellow Amazon alumnus–turned author:
“Some facts were injured in the telling of this story. The truth, however, remains unharmed.”
That applies to this book as well.

This book developed from a series of blogs I wrote immediately before, during and after working at Amazon, so I didn't know how the story was going to end. Hence portion of the book do appear to be a bit floating and purposely purposeless. Or purposelessly purposeful, it all depends upon your point of view.

To respect the privacy of the people involved in this story, their names have been changed — with one exception. Trust me, there really is a guy named Jeff Bezos who works at Amazon.

All in all, I am proud of my work, Enjoy!

[Signed] Kalpanik S.

Note: Portions of this book have been previously published under titles "Seattle Adventures", "Artificial Imagination" and "Welcome to the USA".

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Kalpanik S. is an immigrant technologist. He came to the USA on a fellowship from the University of California in late eighties to study and do research in Computer Science.

After completing his Graduate studies, Kalpanik worked at both large technology companies and small start-ups in West Coast's High Tech corridor - Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Southern California.

He had been writing a journal about his "journey'" through the US pretty much from the time he landed at the San Francisco Airport more than twenty years ago, and he finally decided to get it published.

Kalpanik (pronounced as Kaalp-Nik) means "imaginary" in Hindi. Author decided to use a pen name to allow him to separate his literary identity from his professional identity.