So, how about that NYT article on Amazon's work environment?

Yikes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html

A current employee responded:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazonians-response-inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-nick-ciubotariu

And Bezos sent this damage control note to employees over the weekend:

http://recode.net/2015/08/17/jeff-bezos-responds-to-new-york-times-story-i-dont-recognize-this-amazon/

I interviewed with them in Seattle last year and was really crushed at the time to not get it. Things ended up working out for the best and now it really seems like I might have dodged a major bullet.

My step-daughter works for Amazon and she loves it! Loves the environment and her bosses. Another anecdotal story, I know, but she is the happiest I've seen her

If the article if portrays work conditions accurately, I assume skilled professionals will vote with their feet and Amazon will address work place conditions. I have no confidence that the article is an accurate versus anecdotal assessment of conditions.

I've worked in conditions similar, if a bit less extreme, than those, and when you are succeeding, the environment can make you feel like a superhero. It can be very reinforcing, and motivating, to excel. This is not a defense of that sort of work environment, just a comment on why people would put up with, and even support, what from the outside appears to be an unpleasant situation.

BTW, there are no points in this conversation for being the first person to invoke Stockholm Syndrome.

As with any company, there are happy and unhappy employees. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

The more interesting story, IMHO, is how investors give Amazon a total pass on making a profit.

There are a lot of (disturbing) anecdotes in that story, but as noted, the fact that they're anecdotes makes it hard to evaluate how representative they are. I think a few anecdotal data points it would be helpful to know would include:

- What's Amazon's parental leave policy?

- How much paid time off do employees get (and maybe harder to get, how much time off do employees on average actually take)?

- Turnover rate, average length of tenure, etc

- Whether employees are more likely to move from Amazon to one of their peers (Google, Facebook, etc) or the other way around (again, maybe hard info to get).

I think these would help illuminate how representative those anecdotes are. A place with little in the way of paid leave, or where paid leave is largely unused, and where tenures are short, would suggest that the NYT story is likely getting something pretty representative. It's hard to evaluate the story absent that kind of data.

Also, the whole anonymous feedback direct to bosses is easily the creepiest part of the whole story to me, and I've yet to see that refuted. I have a hard time imagining a workplace with that policy that's also a healthy environment. At my workplace we get peer feedback, but it's not anonymous, which is a very different (and healthy!) dynamic .

Another tiny sample: A former cow-orker of mine worked at Amazon in Virginia and liked it there. He left and went back to NJ because he's from NJ, not because of the company.

Amazon just won a case in the U.S. Supreme Court against warehouse workers who maintained that they ought to be paid for the time they spend waiting in line (often as long as 25 minutes) after their shifts for security checks to make sure they're not stealing merchandise. That really motivated me to find alternatives to Amazon.

I have worked for some of the most demanding--and unfair--commercial landlords in New York City. One was so difficult that when Donald Trump came into the lobby one day (he had a meeting upstairs--he was flanked by two huge bodyguards), he called me over and said, "Son, are you the property manager here?" "Yes sir," I said. "I feel sorry for you working for this crazy son-of-a-bitch" he said, patting me on the shoulder. This from a famously crazy son-of-a-bitch himself. Chuck Shumer had a similar comment when I escorted him in a private elevator once. The owner of this building was truly legendary.

Many mornings I walked into work praying that I would not be savaged that day. I mean really praying, not just hoping. I seriously considered carrying garlic in my pockets. There was always a palpable sense of relief in the entire organization when we saw that someone else was in the doghouse that day (and it usually lasted a few weeks). Every few months the tension would build and build until suddenly someone or someones would get fired, after which in a Druidic fashion it seemed like the gods were sated and things would calm down a bit--until they started ramping up again. They went through four CFOs in less than a year; the President was put on indefinite leave and banned from the property; once the whole accounting department was axed the same day.

And, yet, for all this, it was one of the most powerful professional learning crucibles of my life. The attention to detail, the insistence on drilling down on every single item, the drive to lower costs while simultaneously increasing quality--all these have resonated throughout my career ever since. I am a far better property manager because of it. He literally changed my vision in how I look at a property, and he showed me a model of performance I had never considered before.

Which then raises the question--is this necessary to push us to be our best, as Bezos and Amazon claim? Having worked for yet another similarly obsessed and punitive owner at another property, where I similarly learned a ton about excellence, I can truly say that while it such an environment can push you to excel, it is not a necessary condition for excellence. You can get to exceptionally high standards in ways that do not require fear, intimidation, and abuse.

For example, I also was a contractor for the Ritz Carlton and went through their rigorous customer service training. The RC is also an environment driven to excel at the highest level and down to the smallest detail, but they do it in a collegial, supportive, and enriching manner that inspires you to be even better than you were, and does so in a team atmosphere. I am certain that there are folks who find the RC way to be overbearing or perhaps manipulative, but from what I saw they are few and far-between (they also screen and hire very well).

While an environment of fear obviously works for Amazon and many others, it is not the only way to get to the best place. I would have liked to see this article do a cross-company comparison with other successful enterprises that use a more humane approach, rather than simply making asides about Google and Microsoft. Maybe that will be the author's next Times Magazine piece?

mfpark, by any chance did the last name of the property owner begin with the letter "C"?

Nope, it did not! I almost worked for one of the members of that family, but thankfully that did not pan out. It was a desperate time for me, and I badly needed a job, any job. When someone in the industry heard what I was doing, he intervened and found me the position that I have now.

I owe him a debt of gratitude!

Did anyone catch the story on WNYC today? They did a brief interview with someone who has been following Amazon practices for years. One of the bad things was that managers encouraged people not to take their time for vacations, etc.

This is the company who hired paramedics to take care of their warehouse workers if they were suffering from heat exhaustion rather than air condition the warehouses. They were finally shamed into doing the right thing.

I suspect that company heads who are very driven to big, big success, are not necessarily gifted when it comes to terms like what is good for the individual worker, and how that could benefit the company. Or, perhaps strike a balance. Hopefully Bezos can learn.

Alls I can say is that I'm glad I'm and old fart and I don't gotta work anymore.

I love Bezos' response. He essentially said that if anyone thought their bosses were treating them poorly they should send him a PM ratting out their bosses--which is exactly one of the bad practices called out in the article, encouraging secret emails savaging others to advance your own career.

He is clearly culturally clueless.

Fun anecdote: Four colleagues went to HR to complain about a VP. Two were contractors. They were immediately fired. Two were employees. They were transferred to the 21st century white collar equivalent of the salt mines.

The VP in question was mean and incompetent from day one, and a year later, she was fired for it. Then the next company she went to fired her after a year. Makes you wonder how certain people keep getting jobs in upper management.

And that brilliant management philosophy manages to even turn a profit once in a while

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/hey-look-amazon-actually-turned-profit/

I agree with mfpark. The benefits of such a place are big, but you can get those benefits in other, more humane ways. I'm almost tempted to say, hey, others do it, so what's the problem? But no.

Whenever I marvel at the speed with which Amazon is able to deliver just about anything, I'd wonder about the bowels of the shipping warehouses. Not as rudimentary, I know, but I could not help but think of "Modern Times."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxEud-DqJ64

If you're following the story about Amazon, also check out this article from the Morning Call in Allentown - this is a reprint from 2011 but still relevant - it goes into the working conditions at their warehouses in the Lehigh Valley. I'd copy here but it's rather long.

TLDR: Conditions were reaching above 115 heat index in the summers, but not to worry, Amazon paid ambulances to be on standby outside the warehouses.

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/amazon/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917-story.html#page=1

The article was about white collar workers at Amazon. Warehouse workers everywhere are treated poorly. My friend's husband moonlights at UPS and says it's brutal... People get hurt all the time.

@marylago Right, but I think there's a certain underlying philosophy that drives the expectations of employees in Amazon's offices down through the warehouses. The NYT article linked to this Morning Call article and I found it interesting since it's somewhat local.

mfpark said:
I love Bezos' response. He essentially said that if anyone thought their bosses were treating them poorly they should send him a PM ratting out their bosses--which is exactly one of the bad practices called out in the article, encouraging secret emails savaging others to advance your own career.
He is clearly culturally clueless.

I was really impressed by how they're such a data-driven company. Data is *everything* there. So I find it strange to think that nobody has looked at the turnover rate, performance reviews, sick/vacation time, etc. to try and understand the workforce. He absolutely knows what goes on, which is why his wishy-washy "if you don't like it, leave" response tells me that I lucked out.

As did this response piece - I would have been quite sad to have left Maplewood for this:

http://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-for-my-feedback-sooner/

project37 said:

mfpark said:
I love Bezos' response. He essentially said that if anyone thought their bosses were treating them poorly they should send him a PM ratting out their bosses--which is exactly one of the bad practices called out in the article, encouraging secret emails savaging others to advance your own career.
He is clearly culturally clueless.

I was really impressed by how they're such a data-driven company. Data is *everything* there. So I find it strange to think that nobody has looked at the turnover rate, performance reviews, sick/vacation time, etc. to try and understand the workforce. He absolutely knows what goes on, which is why his wishy-washy "if you don't like it, leave" response tells me that I lucked out.
As did this response piece - I would have been quite sad to have left Maplewood for this:
http://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-for-my-feedback-sooner/

Sometimes companies outgrow their leaders.

The place sounds like the church of Scientology to me. A cult.

It seems like a lot of very successful companies start out with some cult-like attributes. If these companies become mature (versus going out of business), they inevitably relax a bit.

tjohn said:
It seems like a lot of very successful companies start out with some cult-like attributes. If these companies become mature (versus going out of business), they inevitably relax a bit.

Except Amazon. They're about 20 years old, so it's past time to lose the start-up mentality.

People deal with the "start-up mentality" because they're hoping for a payday. If you were at Amazon in the beginning, your options are up about 30,000%. You'll put up with a lot of midnight emails if you think holding onto that job yields a reasonable chance of retiring at 40. That's simply not the case for someone starting at Amazon now.

It's a deeply-rooted cultural thing there and they hire people with that mindset: Every day is "Day 1" at Amazon.

Every annual shareholders' report closes with a copy of the original 1997 letter to shareholders, with Bezos saying, "Our approach remains the same, and it’s still Day 1."

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312513151836/d511111dex991.htm

Even the main campus buildings are called Day One North and Day One South.

I think it was Terry Eagleton who made the point that we now work harder than Neolithic man in order to sustain ourselves. That's tragic and doesn't bode well for future generations.