貝佐斯離婚案和「創始人神話」的破滅 | 雙語閱讀

By Louise Matsakis

亞馬遜創始人傑夫·貝佐斯(Jeff Bezos)與前妻麥肯齊(MacKenzie)

MacKenzie and Jeff Bezos announced they were getting divorced this week after 25 years of marriage.

貝佐斯夫婦宣布離婚，結束長達25年的婚姻。

When award-winning novelist MacKenzie Bezos and her husband Jeff Bezos, the chief executive and founder of Amazon, announced on Twitter Wednesday they were getting divorced, public discussion over the uncoupling quickly centered on the impact it might have on Jeff’s company, and on each sides’ net worth. Were he and his wife to split their estimated $136 billion fortune equally, news articles speculated that MacKenzie could become the 「richest woman in the world,」 far wealthier than even people like Elon Musk.

1月9日，亞馬遜首席執行官和創始人傑夫·貝佐斯，和他多次獲獎的小說家妻子麥肯齊·貝佐斯在推特上宣布離婚。公眾對於他們離婚的討論很快集中在對亞馬遜公司經營可能產生的影響，以及雙方的淨資產上。新聞媒體推測，如果貝佐斯和他的妻子平均分配1360億美元的財產，那麼麥肯齊可能成為「世界上最富有的女人」，甚至比像埃隆·馬斯克這樣的人都富有得多。

TMZ reports that the couple did not have a prenup. Washington, where they live, is a community property state, meaning that all property and debts acquired during the 25-year marriage could be equally split if the Bezoses can’t negotiate an agreement. Amazon, for the record, is 24 years old. But thinking about the divorce as an opportunity for MacKenzie to become the richest woman in the world is a strange way of describing her situation, as Bloomberg points out. She is already the richest woman in the world, because she’s half of the richest couple on Earth.

TMZ的報導說這對夫婦沒有簽署過婚前協議。他們居住的華盛頓州實行共同財產制度，這意味著除非貝佐斯夫婦另有協議，否則他們在25年婚姻期間獲得的所有財產和債務需要均分。亞馬遜記錄在案的歷史只有24年。但是，正如彭博社指出的那樣，把離婚看作是麥肯齊成為全球身價最高女性的機會，這樣描述她的處境是有失偏頗的。她已經是全世界最富有的女人了，因為她是全球最富有夫婦的其中一半。

This week has been full of stories with headlines like 「How much could MacKenzie Bezos get in a divorce?」 speculating on what will happen to 「his wealth.」 (Punctuated by the occasional outcry that any human being could stand to receive more than $60 billion at all.) What was often missing, or glossed over, is the fact that MacKenzie helped her husband start his historic company, starting by agreeing to leave their life and move across the country from New York City to Seattle, where Amazon was founded. It’s also part of a wider pattern of how the stories of tech companies get told, which erases the many individuals who help to build them in favor of highlighting the 「lone genius」 at the helm. Many of the people who fade to the background have been women.

頭條新聞到處都是著這樣的故事：「麥肯齊·貝佐斯能從離婚當中賺多少？」，猜測「他的財富」會有什麼變故。（偶爾會有人抗議說，任何人都不會放過拿到600億美元的機會。）人們經常輕描淡寫或者乾脆忽略一個事實，那就是這傢俱有歷史性的公司是麥肯錫幫丈夫一起創辦的。正是她同意改變生活軌跡，跨越整個美國，從紐約搬到西雅圖，才有了後來在那里創建的亞馬遜。這也是媒體在講述科技公司時所慣用的招數，那就是抹殺很多人在創業階段的貢獻，以突出那個「孤膽英雄」的偉大，而這些淪為「背景」的人很多都是女性。

「Both historically and today, it takes a lot more ‘proof’ for a woman to claim competence, importance, and intelligence—something we see powerfully played out on the national political stage every day, from Hillary Clinton to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez,」 says Marie Hicks, a technology historian and the author of Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge In Computing. 「It seeps into how we talk about women associated with tech on an everyday basis, whether it’s at work, at school, online, or in the media.」

「無論是歷史上還是今天，一個女人想展現自己的能力、價值和智慧，都需要更多的‘證據’——在國家的政治舞台上，希拉蕊·克林頓或亞歷山大·奧西奧·科爾特斯這樣的女性每天都在有力地展現這些品質。」 科技史學家、《程序化不平等：英國如何拋棄女性技術人員並在計算機行業中失去優勢》的作者馬里·希克斯說。「我們在日常生活中談論從事科技行業的女性時，往往也有這種傾向，無論是在工作、學校、網路或媒體上。」

Empires like Amazon and Apple are not created by a single man in a vacuum; they are the product of a mix of luck and contributions from an entire team—including from a founder’s spouse.

像亞馬遜和蘋果這樣的商業帝國不是一個人憑空造出來的，它們是運氣的幫助和整個團隊貢獻的產物，其中也包括創始人配偶的貢獻。

MacKenzie met Jeff after she graduated from Princeton in 1992 and took a job at the relatively new hedge fund D. E. Shaw, where Bezos already worked. In 1993 they married, and by 1994 they were driving to Washington, with MacKenzie reportedly at the wheel of the car. The couple was leaving behind a wealthy existence on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, according to Brad Stone, the author of the 2013 book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. 「They gave up a really comfortable lifestyle and successful careers to move across the country and start something on the internet,」 says Stone. 「The only reason [Jeff] was able to do that is because he had an extremely supportive spouse. It was an incredible risk and one that they both took on jointly.」

麥肯齊在1992年從普林斯頓大學畢業後認識了傑夫，並在相對較年輕的對沖基金D.E.Shaw找到了一份工作，Bezos當時已經在此任職。他們於1993年結婚， 1994年就搬家到了西雅圖。有報導說，當時還是麥肯齊開的車，而她的先生貝佐斯則坐在副駕駛座上。據2013年出版《一網打盡：傑夫·貝佐斯和亞馬遜時代》一書的作者布拉德·斯通說，這對夫婦搬家前已經在曼哈頓上西區過上了富裕的生活。「他們放棄了非常舒適的生活方式和成功的事業，跨越整個國家開始互聯網創業。」斯通說，「傑夫能這麼做的唯一原因是他有一個非常支持他的配偶。他們當時的做法有著極高的風險，而且這風險是他們兩人共同承擔的。」

In a 2010 commencement speech he gave at Princeton, Jeff himself acknowledged the gamble his wife had taken. 「I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work since most startups don’t, and I wasn’t sure what would happen after that,」 he said. 「MacKenzie … told me I should go for it.」 (Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

在2010年於普林斯頓大學畢業典禮上發表的演講中，貝佐斯自己也承認他妻子參與的是一場賭博。「我告訴我妻子麥肯齊，我想辭職去做一件瘋狂並且很有可能失敗的事情，因為大多數創業公司都會失敗。而且，我也不知道失敗後會怎樣。」他說，「麥肯齊……讓我放手去做。」（本文作者請求亞馬遜對此發表評論，但沒有立即得到回復。）

In Bellevue, the Seattle suburb where Jeff rented a garage to be the site of Amazon’s first headquarters, MacKenzie helped get the company off the ground. While researching his book, Stone interviewed early employees who he says recalled how MacKenzie wrote checks and assisted in keeping track of the books. A WIRED profile of Jeff from 1999 noted that she helped negotiate the retail giant’s first freight contracts. As the company grew bigger and hired more staff, MacKenzie played less of a role in Amazon’s day-to-day operations, though she continued to support Jeff at company events. She wrote two novels, The Testing of Luther Albright, which won the American Book Award in 2006, and Traps, which was published in 2013.

在西雅圖郊區的貝爾維尤，傑夫租了一個車庫作為亞馬遜第一個總部，麥肯齊在這家公司的起步階段提供了幫助。斯通在寫書時採訪了早期的員工，這些人回憶了麥肯齊是如何寫支票並幫助他們做財務記錄的。《連線》雜誌曾在1999年發表過一篇貝佐斯的人物特寫，其中寫到麥肯齊幫助這家零售巨頭拿到了第一份貨運合同。隨著公司規模的擴大和員工的增加，麥肯齊在亞馬遜的日常經營中扮演的角色越來越少，但她仍繼續在公司的各項活動中支持貝佐斯。她寫了兩部小說，分別是2006年獲得美國圖書獎的《盧瑟·奧布萊特的測試》和2013年出版的《陷阱》。

Aside from a profile in Vogue published almost five years ago, MacKenzie, as well the four Bezos children, have maintained a low public profile. One noteworthy exception took place in 2013, after Stone’s book came out. MacKenzie personally left a one-star review on its Amazon page, disputing the book’s accuracy. She also emphasized her own role at the company: 「I worked for Jeff at D. E. Shaw, I was there when he wrote the business plan, and I worked with him and many others represented in the converted garage, the basement warehouse closet, the barbecue-scented offices, the Christmas-rush distribution centers, and the door-desk filled conference rooms in the early years of Amazon’s history. Jeff and I have been married for 20 years.」

《時尚》雜誌五年前發表過一篇麥肯齊的人物特寫，除此以外，她和四個孩子的公眾曝光度一直很低。2013年出現了一個值得注意的例外，那是在斯通的書出版之後。麥肯齊本人在亞馬遜的網頁上留下了一篇一星的評論，質疑這本書的準確性。她還強調了自己在公司中的作用：「在對沖基金D.E.Shaw的時候我就為傑夫工作，他寫商業計劃時我就在那里。在亞馬遜創業時，我和他還有許多其他人一起經歷了亞馬遜的早期歲月，包括在改裝車庫、地下室的倉庫、充滿燒烤味的辦公室、聖誕期間繁忙的配送中心以及狹窄局促的會議室中一同奮鬥的經歷。傑夫和我結婚已經20年了。」

MacKenzie and other early Amazon employees, of course, aren’t the only contributors to the company’s—and Jeff’s—success. Amazon has benefited from other factors, like years of successfully avoiding collecting state sales taxes, undercutting competitors’ prices. The company also relied on external innovations like the internet, developed in part by government researchers. This of course is hardly unique to Amazon. Elon Musk and his company Tesla might not be much without the billions of dollars they have received in government grants. Steve Jobs’ iPhone was made possible by researchers who spent decades developing touchscreen technology, beginning in the 1940s.

當然，麥肯齊和其他早期亞馬遜員工的貢獻並不是公司——和貝佐斯——成功的唯一原因。亞馬遜還從其他因素中受益，比如多年來成功避免繳納州銷售稅，和競爭對手大打價格戰等等。該公司的成功還有賴於互聯網等科技創新，而這些創新有一部分是由政府的研究人員所帶來的。當然，這種情況並不只存在於亞馬遜身上。沒有政府撥款的數十億美元，埃隆·馬斯克和他的公司特斯拉可能也成不了氣候。成就了史蒂夫·喬布斯iPhone的觸摸屏技術，技術人員從1940年代就開始研究了，研發過程持續了幾十年。

Admittedly, MacKenzie’s role in the history of Amazon may not be as crucial as the existence of the World Wide Web. Then again, it’s hard to say for sure. Would e-commerce look any different today if she had refused to move out to Seattle and be part of an internet startup? Countless decisions contribute to the success or failure of a company, some big, some small—and almost never those of just one person. It’s not always obvious which choices tip the scale one way or the other. The lone genius myth has been largely debunked, but it can be all too easy to fall back into the familiar rhythms of Silicon Valley’s favorite narrative devices. Even, or maybe especially, when gossiping about the juicy details of a high-profile divorce. Plenty of people facilitate the creation of corporations like Amazon and the immense wealth that they generate, from inventors to employees to policymakers to taxpayers to spouses. Maybe it’s time to talk more about what all those contributions are actually worth.

誠然，麥肯齊在亞馬遜歷史上的作用可能不如互聯網的存在那麼重要，但這也是很難說的事情。如果她拒絕搬到西雅圖，並成為一家互聯網創業公司的一員，那麼電子商務今天會有什麼不同嗎？一家公司的成敗是由無數個決定所影響的，這些決定有些作用大，有些作用小——而且幾乎從來不只是一個人的決定。哪些選擇會使天平傾斜不總是很明顯。這類孤膽英雄的神話已經在很大程度上被揭穿了，但媒體很容易就會回到他們所熟悉的、矽谷最喜愛的敘事手法中去，甚至尤其是在八卦一場引人註目的離婚的精彩細節時。像亞馬遜這樣的公司是在很多人的努力下創建並積聚大量財富的的，這些人包括創始人、員工，決策者、納稅人和配偶。也許是時候多談談他們做出的這些貢獻的實際價值了。

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