BIOGRAPHY
Work hard. Have fun. Make history
Background and education
Jeff Bezos was born on 12^th January 1964 in New Mexico to a teenage mother, Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen, and his biological father, Ted Jorgensen. The Jorgensens were married less than a year when they get divorzed and his mother remarried Mike Bezos, a Cuban immigrant.
As he loved computers, he studied computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University. Bezos showed an early interest in how things work, turning his parents' garage into a laboratory and rigging electrical contraptions around his house as a child.
After graduating summa cum laude in 1986, he worked at several firms on Wall Street. His career in finance was lucrative but it was not what he actually wanted so he quit his job after some years.
Business idea and evolution
Confident in the nascent world of e-commerce, he moved to Seattle, in order to open his online-market, a simple bookstore, on the 16th 1995.
The initial success of the company was impressive. With no promotion, Amazon sold books, to the value of 20.000$, across the United States and in 45 foreign countries within 30 days.
By 1997, Amazon was growing so fast that it was putting many local bookstores out of business.
For this reason, Bezos started offering different types of products, such as CD, toys, clothes, etc.
Current situation
Besides being the founder and the CEO of Amazon, he is also the owner of The Washington Post, the major American daily newspaper.
Some say that he bought the Washington Post so that he could have powerful influence in the Nation's capital

Amazon makes billions, pays no federal taxes
Amazon's profits in 2017 were about $3 billion and it paid almost no federal taxes, even if the income tax is 21%.
The economist Dean Baker has estimated that Amazon's tax-free status amounted to a $20 million tax savings to Bezos' business.
Amazon avoids paying federal taxes using a variety of tax credits and tax exemptions that are legal and built into the U.S. federal tax code.
For example, he chose Seattle as the first headquarter reasoning that the state was sparsely populated, so the majority of his costumers would
come from outside the state and therefore would not pay sales tax.

Amazon has also been criticised for his workers’ conditions.
The former employees accused the incredibly long hours and physical illness which they were subjected. This inevitably has negative consequences, for instance the risk of mental and physical illness. Bezos has always defended the position of his company, denying everything.
All employees have a personal GPS monitor that tells them which route to walk in the warehouse to get to the next item they need to pack and exactly how many seconds they have to get there. If they do not complete the trip in the time Amazon specifies, they will get a notice and a demerit - repeited failers to meet the time targets will lead to dismissal.