David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)

You cannot have people who love what you do without also having people who hate what you do.

The only escape from that is mediocrity.

If you are so boring and so uninteresting that no one gives a damn whether you exist or not, yeah, you don't get the haters, but you also don't get the impact of people who really enjoy your work.

And I think Amazon is that just at the massive scale, right?

They've brought so much value and change to...

technology to commerce, that they must simply have a black hole size of haters.

Otherwise, the universe is simply going to tip over.

First, I'll say we have tried to murder each other several times over the years, but far less, I think, in the last decade.

In the early days, our product

discussions were so fierce that when we were having them in the office and there were other employees around,

Some of them were legitimately worried that the company was about to fall apart because the volume coming out of the room would be so high and sound so acrimonious that they were legitimately worried the whole thing was going to fall apart.

But you know what's funny is that it never felt like that in the moment.

It always felt like just a peak vigorous search for something better.

And that we were able to stomach that level of adversity on the merits of an idea because it was about the idea.

It wasn't about the person.

And it never really got personal.

Not even never really.

It didn't get personal.

It wasn't like, Jason, you're an asshole.

It was like, Jason, you're an idiot.