Debate Over Amazon Working Conditions Goes Back Years

Nerval's Lobster writes: This weekend, The New York Times published a lengthy report about working conditions for white-collar workers at Amazon. Describing the e-commerce giant as a "bruising workplace," the report paints a picture of a Darwinian environment. But criticism of Amazon's working conditions actually goes back years. In The Everything Store, a book-length account of Amazon by Bloomberg BusinessWeek reporter Brad Stone, the Amazon of yesteryear is indeed described as an aggressive place in which Bezos pushed employees relentlessly. So is Amazon a terrible place to work? On Quora and Glassdoor, current employees suggest that the company presents its workers with interesting challenges, and that the culture is fast-paced. While there are complaints about the hours and workload, many don't seem Amazon-specific: The world is filled with tech pros struggling to achieve work-life balance in the face of incredible goals on tight deadlines. Many cite issues with the company's frugality—its lack of perks vis-à-vis Google or Microsoft. After the report was published Jeff Bezos wrote a memo to employees that reads in part: “The article doesn’t describe the Amazon I know or the caring Amazonians I work with every day. But if you know of any stories like those reported, I want you to escalate to HR. You can also email me directly at jeff@amazon.com. Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.”

Comments

Get Self-Employed

[pubwvj]

If you don't like the working conditions then form your own business and work for yourself. It's that simple.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[hawguy]

If you don't like the working conditions then form your own business and work for yourself. It's that simple.

It's nice how complex problems have such simple answers. "If you don't like how much you pay in rent, then buy a house". "If you don't like your low pay, then get a job making more money". "If you can't hold down a job because your car keeps breaking down, then buy a new car".

The answer is easy, implementation, not so much.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't like the working conditions then form your own business and work for yourself. It's that simple.

Then you get to deal with shit clients! And as a double bonus you either have to hire a shit sales person or go into sales yourself.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[painandgreed]

If you don't like the working conditions then form your own business and work for yourself. It's that simple.

Most people do. That is what people I have known who have worked at Amazon and the article have said. The average time of employment there is 18 months. By that time, people have either taken their experience and put it on a resume to get a better job, or been chewed up and spit out by the review process. Anybody treating Amazon like a career, that isn't in some very lucky position, will be in for a rude surprise when they either burn out of are let go. Treat is like a stepping stone from the beginning, and it might work out for you.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Qzukk]

Don't forget hiring a lawyer, an accountant, an accounts manager to make sure you get paid, an HR department to make sure everyone does their job, and finally developers to do all that work you were going to do on your own but now you're just too busy being the boss of all these people to do it yourself.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[tylersoze]

I can't tell if the OP is being sarcastic or not. Just like poor people just need to stop being so poor.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[circletimessquare]

well said

people who paint complex issues as simple choices are merely revealing their ignorance of the topic, their propagandized state, and/ or their low iq

Re:Get Self-Employed

[thinkwaitfast]

Why is it complex? Just don't work for them There are literally tens of thousands of other companies that you can work for.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Qzukk]

Oh, and of course, I forget what every other person who tries to start a company forgets: Marketing. Your salesperson probably can't build a webpage or do SEO or design a slick brochure to hand out to prospects. Better hire someone to do those too.

Better move fast, your seed money is burning.... wait, what do you mean you don't have half a million dollars in savings from your last job to throw at this one?

Re:Get Self-Employed

[painandgreed]

The answer is easy, implementation, not so much.

True, but the problem given by the OP isn't the real issue that people should be taking away from the article. The issue is not a mass of people suffering for long periods of time in a horrible business environment. Amazon is not the sort of working conditions that one can put up with for years on end. Unless you can consistently out preform everybody else in your group without stress while they work at burn out levels, you will eventually burn out or be let go. Friends that have worked there say that the average time of employment there is about 18 months. Amazon is just burning through people as fast as they can because there are plenty of people to burn through. Not bad if you are looking for some contacts and something to put on a resume to get a better job, but not a career possibility no matter how much you can put up with a bad work place.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[circletimessquare]

where do you live? is it easy for you to move? do you have children and school concerns? is your spouse or significant other ready to move on a whim? are you yourself ready to pack all your shit sever your ties and try to find a new place you like as much as your current one?

what job do you work in? is it "tens of thousands" of other companies who would employ you? i guess you must be a short order cook or truck driver, careers like programming for example are niche: if you program web front ends you don't jump to OS programmer for example

do you have enough money to cushion the transition period form one job to the next? can you afford ancillary costs associated with the move?

how is the new job? the boss's personality? your work team, your work environment? job perks? business outlook of the new business sector?

if you aren't moving, how far away is the new job if you aren't moving? is the commute different (train/ car)? traffic jams? length of time commuting?

this is off of the top of my head. there are dozens more top level categories and thousands of specific concerns to each person

it is is EXTREMELY complex

you are either trolling and faking ignorance of something this obvious, or you are a genuine moron

Re:Get Self-Employed

[acoustix]

I can't tell if the OP is being sarcastic or not. Just like poor people just need to stop being so poor.

There's nothing wrong with being poor. Stop treating the poor like there's something wrong with them.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be a flaming liberal. Only a liberal asks retarded questions like that.

You are responsible for yourself. Grow the fuck up already.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's soulless corporations ran by rich assholes who give themselves huge bonuses, or self employment?

I sincerely hope you get to discover what it's like to be unemployed, poor, sick, or otherwise less well off than you are now.

Because it couldn't happen to a more deserving smug asshole than you.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[circletimessquare]

maybe you're in a band with your best buds and you can't move and break up the band

maybe you love surfing and you have to be near a warm beach with waves

etc., etc.

or maybe you're a useless, low intelligence internet troll who has to work for a company that allows tor or proxies

does the last problem sound familiar?

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

But there is, they are poor.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

Then YOU are the one who has decided to prioritize certain things above quitting. FFS, you are acting like whatever your first job is, it should cater to your every need and change for you as you see fit.

Guess what. In the real world people have to make tough decisions. Maybe you have to sacrifice one thing to gain another. The world doesn't exist to make sure you get everything you want, exactly how you want it. If no one is offering something better then see it as a blessing - you have the best you can get.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

IQ is a myth.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[tnk1]

Absolutely true. Although there are practical issues with being too poor. Like being homeless or unable to eat.

Having said that, being somewhat poor is not necessarily an unhappy situation. Once you get beyond survival and have some creature comforts, it only really starts becoming a happiness problem when you are forced to deal with a large disparity.

In other words, people become unhappy with less if they are constantly shown things that other people have that they don't. This is also why many relatively richer (but still not actually "rich") people look down on poor people. There is a disparity that they have come up on top of, and they feel superior for it.

However, anyone who has things can tell you that First World problems can make you just as unhappy as being poor which seems ridiculous on the surface, but has everything to do with a feeling of *relative* inadequacy or poverty. You might have a nice home, decent education, and a relatively promising future, but if you're bullied or isolated socially, or just depressed, you could end up suicidal or even homicidal.

There are rich people who would have lived longer and happier lives if they'd been born poor.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[tomhath]

I think what OP meant is that life isn't a bowl of cherries. You can work at a job you don't like if it pays well, or you can look for an alternative

What qualifies as an alternative depends on your political philosophy:

1) Quit the job you have and find another (or start your own company)
2) Try to change your work conditions by negotiating with your employer
3) Force change by forming a union and giving the employer an ultimatum
4) Force change by overthrowing the government and taking control of all means of production
5) Something else...

Re:Get Self-Employed

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Everything is wrong with being poor. That's why I prefer to live in the 21st century, and not, say, in the 15th century. But for a very large part, it's not the poor's fault.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The g factor isn't, though.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Falconnan]

This concept that one should be forced into all-or-nothing between work and a life is truly something out of a fictional dystopia. One should not be expected to sacrifice hearth and home for basic financial security. The belief this is reasonable is evidence of something very wrong with this world. The concept that employees should be functional serfs is another piece of said evidence.

And yes, real world decisions can be tough. But here's something to consider: Something is very wrong when you have to give up a major positive in another aspect of your life just to have a minor one financially. Or that in a capitalist society that we except that employers are entitled to uncompensated time and effort. It's capitalism for all private commerce, or it isn't capitalism at all.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

The world is full of examples of people with overblown sense of their own importance, aptitude, and hard work - such as yourself.

You clearly feel that you've done well because you've worked hard, but if someone else hasn't done well it's because they didn't work hard enough.

Let's examine this point-of-view a little more closely, you think that f you work hard, you will be recognised and rewarded for it. I'm not even going to bother talking about employers who refuse to pay for overtime, or take credit for others work.

You think that if someone's not making good money, they've not worked hard enough and so aren't getting what they deserve. You think that complaints about such are a sense of entitlement. Now I'm going to look at your sense of entitlement: you think you've worked hard, and so you deserve what you get because you get it for working hard so you should get it.

That right there is the problem with the Just World: you are entitled to what you get, nobody else is because they didn't work hard enough. If hard work got you rewards, then BCom and higher would be worth the same as BArts.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[ArmoredDragon]

Buying a house is cheaper than renting where I live. If you have no credit or bad credit, just get one credit card that you pay the balance in full every month and you easily hit 750+ credit rating. That's what I did anyways, and my credit score was 822 when I applied for a mortgage, and I'm not rich or anything.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't like the working conditions then form your own business and work for yourself. It's that simple.

Most people do. That is what people I have known who have worked at Amazon and the article have said. The average time of employment there is 18 months. By that time, people have either taken their experience and put it on a resume to get a better job, or been chewed up and spit out by the review process. Anybody treating Amazon like a career, that isn't in some very lucky position, will be in for a rude surprise when they either burn out of are let go. Treat is like a stepping stone from the beginning, and it might work out for you.

Well said, and that's what any job can be viewed as - a stepping stone to something better. Take as much experience as you can, and if you can show a potential employer what you've learned, that just might be the edge that gets you hired instead of the other person. Each of us control our own lives, and the only responsible party is ourselves. Blaming external reasons is just weak and shows others you can't adapt. As Clint Eastwood's character Gunny Sgt. Tom Highway said "Heartbreak Ridge" - Improvise, adapt, overcome. It really works.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone is able to. It's just that simple: Not everyone is able to. In fact, I'd say something like 30% of the population at a minimum are completely unable to. It's a right wing fiction that you work hard for yourself and get rich.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

The poor are on the verge of being removed from the population through natural selection.
Supporting them in a free Country, where they are not slaves, only leads to bigger problems later on.
As someone said long ago, America is for people who work. The unsaid second part is the rest best leave, possibly to one of the Socialist Countries where they seem to be valued for some reason or another.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

>One should not be expected to sacrifice hearth and home for basic financial security

The laws of physics are the only laws that can't be broken. The law of the jungle is just a simple statement of this fact. We make agreements to be more civilized, but ultimately all agreements are enforced at the "tip of the spear" so to speak. Expected has nothing to do with any of it. Expected by whom exactly? Society? Just by living in a first world country you are already accepting the wealth of exploitation that your forefathers heaped upon you. I doubt that you would give all your worldly possessions in service of the poor of the world. The simple fact that you are typing on a computer shows that you are not dedicating your time to make up for the "first world privilege" that you take advantage of.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[phantomfive]

how is the new job? the boss's personality? your work team, your work environment? job perks? business outlook of the new business sector?

This is a big one that keeps people from leaving abusive relationships. How can you be sure the next place will be better? Of course, you can't be sure.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes yes, the "but it's haaaard!" argument. We get it. It's the same argument millenials and liberals make all the time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it is hard but it's not like you have to do it overnight. You have a few options, first and foremost don't work for Amazon if you don't want to be in that environment. It's not like it's a secret, and when you interview somewhere it's your job to make sure they are a good fit for you anyway.

As a 40 year old dude with no interest in 60 hour weeks, no way I'd ever work for Amazon unless they paid me about 4X my current salary.

Second, leave. You don't have to up and quit tomorrow, but just look for another job somewhere else and leave when you can.

The "but it will have a nontrivial impact on my life!" argument doesn't really apply in this instance, no matter how many times we'll see entitled millenials and liberals repeat it over and over with a snide attitude.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[circletimessquare]

so you don't mind if i come over and kill you and take your stuff

social darwinism is the failure of applying the rule of the jungle to human society

the simple fact is, we make the rules in human society, and we can enforce anything we want. we can use the spear as you say, to enforce basic fairness. and we do, and we shall. ever hear of a revolution?

human morality, basic right and wrong, has nothing to do with survival of the fittest in a darwinian sense. darwinian is: strongest guy kills second strongest guy and fucks all the women. we don't actually agree with that model, and we use the spears to go *against* your derivative ignorant wanna-be tough guy crap

to follow your "thinking", there wouldn't be any morality or right and wrong

you're the problem, your derivative, ignorant, amoral thinking. you are, genuinely, objectively, based on the words you have written here, a low intelligence loser

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Beeftopia]

I'm reminded of this video (53 seconds, NSFW): "Simple Explanations" (or, 'How to get bitches on a boat')

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like the Federal Treasurer of Australia - "stop being poor".
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/the-joe-hockey-guidebook-to-choosing-not-to-be-poor/story-fnpug1jf-1227391928391

Re:Get Self-Employed

[bobstreo]

Don't forget hiring a lawyer, an accountant, an accounts manager to make sure you get paid, an HR department to make sure everyone does their job, and finally developers to do all that work you were going to do on your own but now you're just too busy being the boss of all these people to do it yourself.

Do you want MBAs? Because this is how you get MBAs.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[lgw]

"If you can't hold down a job because your car keeps breaking down, then buy a new car".

The answer is easy, implementation, not so much.

Alice Cooper said it best:

I can't get a girl 'cause I don't have a car.
I can't get a car 'cause I don't have a job.
I can't get a job 'cause I don't have a car.
So I'm looking for a girl with a job and a car,
And a house, with cable!

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that simple.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[circletimessquare]

europe, land of free healthcare and cheap college and four weeks vacation, has much higher happiness and are richer societies

america, land of "get cancer and lose your house" and "become a slave under a crushing loan if you want an education" and "work 70 hours to barely tread water, vacation? lol" is less happy and poorer

because a true meritocracy, which conservatives apparently love, requires a level playing field, which means removing most of the problems of where you start in life: rich or poor (healthcare and education), as the determination of your fate

what conservatives policies really get us (whether they know it and not admit to it, the plutocrats, or simply don't know it, the propagandized morons) is classism: rich, you do fine. poor, die early and work your ass off and do *not* get ahead, as the fable promises

oh sure, you *should* work hard and get ahead. a proper society is a meritocracy. but since reagan the middle class is on a long term decline due to the plutocrat loving policies we get. the policies conservatives support means: if your daddy is rich, you'll get a cushy job due to connections and coast through life. impossible to fail no matter how hard you fuck up. and if your poor, work your ass off and lose everything due to one problem in life, the kind we all encounter

Re: Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap!... that's ignorant. I could replace every instance where you said "liberal / millennial" with "conservative middle age white people" and make the same argument.... Laziest demographic I've ever worked with. They refuse to learn anything (technical skills, cultural literacy, how not to suck at life, etc), complain non stop about things they don't understand and expect the world to bend over backwards for them and their selfish beliefs. I just can't F-ing believe the hypocrisy..

Re: Get Self-Employed

[circletimessquare]

the most entitled people on this planet are conservatives: they are entitled to a society that be preserved according a mythological superior conservative past that never actually existed, and they are entitled to dictate to you how to run your private social life. "small government!" ... unless it has to do with who you marry or how you plan your births

meanwhile they get angry at entitlements like: healthcare, education, housing, clothing, food. because someone is poor. of course, if you are poor, it is 100% because of your own life failures, never what the society structures your possible life choices as: "put food on the table but be buried in a payday loan"... your poor life choices! pfffft

it's a pathological hateful creed, and it's quite pathetic so many losers can have their buttons pushed on these issues and vote for plutocrat agendas. they're just ignorant tools. just look at the hoopla over abortion and planned parenthood right now: "ignore the economy, war drums, police misconduct, social inequality, healthcare problems... some lady is going to remove a blob in her body that is just as alive as 20 year old!"

i am pro-life! they say. except if there is a war to fight or a convict to execute or they ran from a cop or they want housing, food, clothing, an education, then fuck them... but i'm pro-life, really!

perennial conservative wedge issue, used to deliver the morons to vote for the plutocrat agenda which keeps us all mired. dependable useful fools for a cause which keeps us all poor

Re:Get Self-Employed

[WinstonWolfIT]

People don't resent the rich nearly so much as the guy next door, especially if he comes from a different cultural background. If a bricklayer lives next door to a bricklayer, and the neighbor has two new cars parked out front, bricklayer #1 is going to be miffed, and this has been proved repeatedly. Nothing drives spending like keeping up with the Kapinskies.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite, if you're sick, you need to be more healthy.

Like sick people want to be sick. Sure, there's probably an outlier or two that does, but the majority of sick people are taking medicine and undergoing treatments to not be sick, so telling them to forego all of that by being healthy is just a double dose of being an asshole, making assholic statements.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Falos]

If you don't like poverty, stop being poor.

Oh man, we had no idea. We should all do that, then everyone will be rich.

The ultimate laugh is that OP has probably complained about shitty ISP service, or other "simple"-to-beat monopolies.

Go die. And get a third world country on your next ovarian lotto draw.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[bev_tech_rob]

Damn! Where is my mod points when I need them? Great post! :)

Re:Get Self-Employed

[thinkwaitfast]

I've lived in six states in fifteen years. No I don't have children, but maybe I'm just a responsible person.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[thinkwaitfast]

Something is very wrong when you have to give up a major positive in another aspect of your life just to have a minor one financially

At what point in history did this even become an option?

Re:Get Self-Employed

[thinkwaitfast]

So amazon is hiring that bottom 30% of the population?

Re:Get Self-Employed

[circletimessquare]

happy to relocate == responsible? explain that connection

your rootlessness just tells me you have no life

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

"europe, land of free healthcare "

This is the second time in two days I've read that nonsense on here. The healthcare is only free at the point of delivery and paid for through taxation.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as the number of deaths caused by the abortion industry over the past 40 years exceeds 50 million, conservatives would have needed to have launched the nukes or at least started a world war for your accusation of hypocrisy to be plausible. We are also talking about 50 million children's lives which healthy people usually value more highly than enemy soldiers' or gangbangers'.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent troll. 9/10. I am sure you will get a few hits. -1 point for using gangbanger It's a little too obvious. The patriot/war angle is high quality though.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Big Hairy Ian]

I ordered Transformers the other week and all I got was Amazon Prime

Re:Get Self-Employed

[ZecretZquirrel]

The vast majority of the poor are not homeless and are not starving. They are more thankful for what they have than are the rich, and don't resent them as much as they fear the prospect of being homeless or starving. The stress of common poverty is being one minor illness away from the lost income and expense that could get them evicted, or worse.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

And your mommy told you that life was supposed to be easy....

Everything bad said about Amazon pretty much sums up working for a group of radio stations. But at radio, rarely are there stock options, especially at the local level. I just love people who complain about their jobs and expect someone else to make things to their liking. Those are the employees I wish would get fired or first to be laid-off. They gum up the works making it harder for the other employees to do a decent job. In turn, management doesn't take that groups suggestions seriously, because they don't seem to make progress by themselves.

Have a bad dept. head? Get cozy with his boss, show how you make things better. Bad DH is gonna get told to get on board, or get out

One quarter of bad sales/net income, and they could all be out of a job, Bezos included.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Coren22]

Why is it complex? Just don't work for them There are literally tens of thousands of other companies that you can work for.

Where in there did he say you needed to sell the house and move to another state? Is Amazon the only employer in town? Do you live in a company town?

Re:Get Self-Employed

[oh_my_080980980]

Really, then why is the American tax payer responsible for giving billions in tax subsidies to corporations that make billions in profits? Take your head out of your ass Potsy...

Re: Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

Pro-birth != pro-life. Something conservatives seem to never understand.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[pnutjam]

Yes, paid from a common pool that is larger and more inclusive then any insurance pool can ever be. It's the best way to pay for healthcare.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[pnutjam]

Imagine you struggled to pay for collage and ended up with some cc or cell phone dings on your credit. Maybe you even got an eviction. Maybe you were really unlucky and a relative "stole" your identity when you were a kid and you don't want to file a police report to send your Uncle to jail.

It's 10 time easier to start with nothing vs. starting in the hole

Re:Get Self-Employed

[budgenator]

Everything is a risk to benefit ratio, the less risk adverse will be able to take advantage of new opportunities more easily, the less risk adverse will be less likely to rush into situations with obscure pitfalls. Some people live to head into new, challenging situations in far off towns and new jobs, others never make it out of their mother's basements.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[Shortguy881]

While I agree with the general sentiment of your post, you paint a very one sided picture. The liberal elite are just a entitled and are also plutocrats. They also use hot button issues to manipulate your vote and are pervasively invading your private life.

The problem isn't just conservatives or liberals, its the current state of partisan politics. From your gung-ho hate of one party, I'd bet you vote liberal every time, regardless of who is on the ticket.

Case and point, the Obama presidency. He is a totalitarian president if there ever was one. He furthered the republican and democrat agenda while keeping the focus on less important divisive issues.

I would say the answer to the situation is voting for a third party, but that is a joke. That leads me to the conclusion that the U.S. political system is broken beyond repair. As a result, I've been looking for jobs overseas.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[prgrmr]

Based on your first sentence alone, it is just as likely that you are unable to hold a job for more than a year or two as it is that you are a responsible person.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

Opposing something to be done by the government != opposing that thing be done. Something that Progressives seem to never understand.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[prgrmr]

That is a false comparison. Most people I know who work in radio do so because they are drawn to something about it, whether it's the music or the other people or simply working in a studio with all of the equipment. So making whatever sacrifices about working conditions or pay tends to be an informed and willing choice. I suspect few, if any, people working in Amazons warehouses are doing so because they love working in a warehouse.

Employment, being a contractual situation (because SCOTUS has repeatedly said so), is about a mutual, reciprocal exchange of value. If the value Amazon is attempting to extract from their employees is not reasonably commensurate with they are paying, then Amazon is deficient in holding up their side of the agreement. If the conditions under which the employees are working are unreasonably onerous or unrealistically sustainable by an average person, then Amazon is not only deficient, they are willfully so, which under contract law, puts them even more in the wrong.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Forgefather]

Exactly. Also in a system like the one in the United States the ones at higher monetary risk for the insurance companies are the poor. They can't afford to go to doctor as frequently, they work in more physically oriented jobs exposing them to greater risk for injury, and they have less collateral in case of default. All this means that if you are poor you will be called upon to pay higher premiums to insurance companies than a rich person, and these are the people who can least afford it.

In essence, healthcare in the United States is a system of the poor subsidizing the rich through higher premiums. The logical solution to this is to shift the costs to taxation. It has the benefit of ensuring that more poor people get the medical attention they need instead of waiting to get a checkup on that heart pain they've been having.

This kind of preventative care reduces the cost of health care to everyone, while at the same time freeing up much needed capital for poorer families to invest and better their situation. For instance they can make sure that their car doesn't break down thus costing them their job.

Does this mean that rich people will have to drop more into the pot? Sure, but these are services that required for a healthy population, and I would much rather have the rich subsidizing the poor than the other way around.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[budgenator]

meanwhile they get angry at entitlements like: healthcare, education, housing, clothing, food.

Nobody is angry at entitlements but many are getting angry at people who recieve publicaly paid benefits who come to feel they are entitled to those benefits without earning them. If you want healthcare, education, housing, clothing, food, the military will give you 3 hots and a cot, tuition assistance, GI bill, health, dental and a strong work ethic.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're suggesting that there are "conservatives" that would accept legalized - but not state-supported - abortions?

You mean exactly like how planned parenthood currently operates?

Re: Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

sad news for you: healthy, single, 18-year old men (your stereotypical ideal recruits) are NOT eligible for most forms of welfare in NY.

But of course, I agree: all those retirees with utterly inadequate pensions would make excellent paratroopers.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

This kinda underscores the ultimate point, but, technically, most Amazon "fulfillment center" employees are legally contractors, hence, not "employees" at all. The NYTimes article seemed to be specifically about the different class of abuses suffered by their white-collar, full-time exempt (salaried) employees.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[circletimessquare]

a blob is not a human life

it could be, someday

but it isn't when it is removed

it's just a fucking blob

but it's the only way conservatives understand life: in the abstract

actual human life, like the life of the mother who can't take care of a baby now and won't be able to love it, or a starving actual child, or a young man sent off to a moronic war: there's no empathy there from conservatives. "poor life choices!" "entitlements!" conservatism is just a form of degradation of basic human empathy. there's no care or love. pro-life my ass

you mean pro-birth, not pro-life

once the baby is in the world: fuck him. starve to death, freeze, don't get an education, die from an easily treatable condition, die in a moronic war, shoot first ask questions later, go to death row, get shot running from police brutality: fuck you, just die already. that's "pro-life" conservatism

Re: Get Self-Employed

[circletimessquare]

"i'm against abortions because it's done by government men in black helicopters"

Re: Get Self-Employed

[circletimessquare]

north korea is a totalitarian state. by calling obama a totalitarian, you merely announce yourself as a fucking moron who doesn't even understand the words he uses

not a baseless insult: if you think the obama presidency is anything remotely near the concept of totalitarianism, you are simply, objectively, a dumb person who doesn't understand what the fuck he is talking about

Re: Get Self-Employed

[circletimessquare]

yeah, like old people

what a moron

the bogeyman of the "welfare queen" is an old lie that conservatives use to justify a point of view where you are actually denying desperate assistance to people who genuinely need it

but you don't care about actual facts, you decide based on your stereotypical weak minded hate

Re: Get Self-Employed

[Shortguy881]

In what regards isn't Obama totalitarian? Universal healthcare, increased unemployment benefits, secret courts, countless military engagements, prosecution of whistle blowers, spying on citizens, signing unprecedented numbers of executive orders; everything this president has done is a step towards a larger more oppressive government. There is one exception. He reserved the right of the states to control marijuana distribution and regulation.

The US government itself is becoming a totalitarian oligarchy. The fault here rests on all three branches of government and not solely on the executive branch. This article equates us to an oligarchy: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-.... The totalitarian part is still a work in progress but we are making huge strides. Take a look at Camden New Jersey, or what happened after the Boston Marathon bombing.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe you're a douche. It's no wonder you don't have children. Who would want a long-term relationship with someone like you?

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. What a bunch of arrogant left wing snobs. You want to paint everyone as being a victim. People are a lot more capable than you give them credit for. Employment and jobs are modern things. Most people didn't used to tend to work for someone else. They created their own work unless they were slaves either outright or feudal which is the same but worse.

Out in rural areas a very large percentage of the population works for themselves. It is only in the urban areas that you've lost sight of this reality and think you have to work for the Man.

Shame on you and I'm so sorry for your mental / social illness.

The answer is quite easy to implement. Get real. Stop burying your head in the sand and pay attention.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[mrbester]

"Just let us train you to kill people and we'll feed you. We will even pay you to do so and educate you in ways to kill people with stuff you didn't know existed."

You don't see anything wrong with that "work ethic"? No wonder there's millions of people who fucking hate America.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

so what I hear you saying is you are a drone head who can not think your way out of your cubicle.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[circletimessquare]

like i said, you have no fucking clue what you are talking about

if you play so fast and loose with these definitions, and do not understand the massive difference between an actual totalitarian state like north korea, and germany or japan, for example, only because you can criticize them in the same fashion as you do the usa, it simply means you are a simpleton who is talking about subject matter you just don't fucking understand. really

there is no proportionality or reason on your thinking. you equate fuck ups with entire ideologies. you point to affairs, twist the meaning and the import, then paint things in a retarded propaganda fashion. like fucking universal healthcare, which the majority of modern democracies use, you call that totalitarian! fucking moronic

i pity you, i really do. to live in such a dimwitted low wattage skull. you're a hysterical propagandized retard, that's all you are on this subject matter. you're just embarrassing yourself. it's pretty sad that people can be such pathetic clueless pieces of shit

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Falconnan]

The point at which failing to feed and shelter all became a choice. It all ties together. No aspect of this economy is capable of being independent of any other any more.

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

You're full of shit. Europe survives because the massive US military is there to tell them to shut the fuck up when they start bickering again. We pay for their defense, we rebuilt the motherfuckers from the ground up! Europe has never ever been at peace for as long as it is now. And you can thank the Good Old USA for that, not their pansy-ass socialism, you jackass!

-- I'm Donald Trump, and I approve this message!

Re:Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

Buying a house is cheaper than renting where I live.

I have lived all over the US and in parts of Asia and I have never seen anywhere where that is not the case.

However there are two issues with that. The first is that buying a house usually requires a down payment which is quite a bit larger than the security deposit for renting. Since you have to rent a place and pay the bills in the meantime (since you have to live somewhere until you save up that down payment) it becomes impossible to save up this down payment.

The second is that if something happens and you miss a rent payment (say you get fired, or get hit by a car and can't work for awhile, or etc. etc. etc.), usually you're not totally screwed. The landlord may let you make a late payment, or they kick you out and you rent a different place. But if something happens and you miss a mortgage payment, that's it. You're not getting another mortgage.

Personally what I did was live homeless for awhile until I saved up enough to just buy a house fully (no mortgage). This also allowed me to move around until I decided on a place that was nice and that I could afford to live in comfortably. But obviously most people aren't willing to do that.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[Shortguy881]

Again you resort to name calling instead of covering any of my logical fallacies. Foremost, why don't you explain your definition of totalitarianism to me. Last I checked it was the government's intrusion into every aspect of its populations life. Government run healthcare would fall into that category.

To be considered a totalitarian government two things need to be considered, economic and social control by the governing body. Economically, there isn't a business sector in the US that isn't taxed directly, subsidized or has a direct regulatory agency. As for social freedoms, on this side we are not as bad but are working fervently to give are freedoms to the government. We already have things like free speech zones. We let ourselves be assaulted at airports by government thugs. All of our phone conversations, text messages and emails are available to the government. Some states are tracking all vehicle and individuals movement through the stingray program and traffic cameras. Yet the biggest aggression against our freedoms are the secret courts and the witch hunt for terrorism.

I will reiterate one of my examples, the Boston Marathon bombing. The show of police force after the bombing was unprecedented anywhere in the country. Citizens where not allowed outside, ATV's rolled through the streets and cops went door to door looking for the bombers. I do not agree with what the bombers did in the slightest, but Boston became a police state in the flash of an eye.

Looking at what you've written, all I can conclude about you is that you are a very angry person who doesn't want to have an open discussion about the state of politics in the US. You are so engrossed in partisan politics you can't see the forest from the trees. If you could grow up, calm down and write an intelligent rebuttal that doesn't include name calling, I'd be hugely impressed. Until then, stew in your hateful, angry little world.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, Jeff Bezos is not a conservative, he's a flaming Seattle liberal.

So you've just described liberals as well as conservatives.

As far as I'm concerned the big failure in America is the Demopublican party - because they are exactly as you describe.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[circletimessquare]

so germany is a totalitarian state? uk? canada? france? japan?

just because of universal healthcare?

you know, all of the modern democracies with robust rights for their citizens?

are we a totalitarian state because we have government run police? government run fire houses? the police are literally the essential ingredient to run a police state. so why aren't you hysterically pissing in your pants over the fact we have government run police genius?

how about we go to a "capitalist" system with those? don't pay your police bill, no 911 answer. don't pay for fire, we let your house burn. that sound better than what we have?

healthcare is the same

all of our social and economic peers have figured this out. by trying to be "capitalist" about a system which is a natural monopoly, like police and fire, we pay 10x-1,000x what other modern countries pay for healthcare, for lower quality care. all we do is funnel money to financial parasites. it's not capitalist. it never will be capitalist. like fire service. like police. look up "natural monopoly" and educate your ignorant ass

do you think? or do you regurgitate the word "totalitarianism" like a trained monkey herp derping to alex jones? without even fucking understanding what the fucking word means

as for the insults, your "understanding" of what totalitarianism is renders you a complete moron on the topic. again, not an insult: an accurate objective appraisal of the quality of your words, to be so fucking ignorant about what totalitarianism really is and describing the usa as such, just because we don't want to pay fucking insane sums for our fucking healthcare

you are a propagandized retard. really. you do not fucking understand anything you are fucking herp derping about. i have no respect for you. you've earned my disrespect by your words being so fucking DUMB

Re: Get Self-Employed

[Shortguy881]

The UK is most certainly on its way to a police state. France, Japan and Canada, while socialist, respect individuals rights more than the UK and US. Saying anyone with government run healthcare is totalitarian is such a far stretch of what I said, you show you didn't even read it or didn't understand it.

Not everything the US does makes it totalitarian, but the political spectrum is just that, a spectrum. While we are not a true totalitarian government, we most certainly are in that area of the spectrum.

As for your idiotic remarks, you must be a troll. I gave you a clear definition of totalitarianism and how the US fits into that category. You picked one example and harped on it over and over. Even more so you picked a bad example. I never said government run healthcare is bad or that state run police and fire is bad. Totalitarian means everything under government control including healthcare, fire and police, so I added that to my long list of examples because it is important to note the US government has their hands in everything, ie definition of totalitarianism.

I would say you are an idiot suffering from "smartest man in the room" syndrome, but judging by the continuous, superfluous, idiotic crap that continues to spew out of you, I'm leaning more towards troll, and as such, this conversation is over. Grow up and take your head out of your ass.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[circletimessquare]

i'm not a troll. i am bothered by propagandized morons ruining public discourse in this country

you. have. no. fucking. clue. what. totalitarianism. is

really. objectively accurate statement. for you to use that word in the context of american politics renders you an ignorant joke. that is objectively true, not a baseless insult

analogy: your definition of totalitarian is like me calling you a pedophile because you hugged a kid once

if you want to sound intelligent and matter to reality, use words that actually mean things. or continue to bark "totalitarian" like a low intelligence propagandized moron herp derping to alex jones. your choice

Re: Get Self-Employed

[Shortguy881]

You have not provided one example to the contrary, nor, in all the back and forth, added any intellectual input into the conversation. You continue to digress the discussion into the simple argument of "I don't agree with you so you are clearly wrong." You seem to have no knowledge of the subject, or the definition of the word in question, and I'm even beginning to doubt your mental capacity to control your own bowels. You are a waist of space and in all likelihood are just a meat popsicle. Please walk into oncoming traffic to free us of your pestilence.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[circletimessquare]

this isn't a conversation. i don't respect you. you are a moron. my "contribution" is to tell you to shut the fuck up until you actually know what a fucking word is before you use it, you dumb useless fuck. i don't owe you anything, i'm not your father. i'm not here to hold your hand and dance with you until your dim watted brain registers what the fuck you obviously don't understand. it is your fucking job to understand a fucking concept before you open your ignorant pie hole and spout mental diarrhea. so do that, you fucking retard

Re: Get Self-Employed

[Shortguy881]

So many big words. It must be hard having your intellect. To always be the smartest man in the room, how do you deal with the pressure? Seriously, how does a man of your intelligence function from day to day? I figured you would've accidentally strangled yourself on a shoe lase long ago.

Re: Get Self-Employed

[circletimessquare]

i'm not that smart. there is plenty i don't know

i'm just smarter than you

Sorry Jeff

[Mr D from 63]

Hit pieces on big companies are typically very unbiased and notoriously accurate. The full story has been told. Just accept that you are evil.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

They are in full damage control mode... top executives are writing pieces stating that they have never been asked to work on weekends... on Saturday?

Re:Sorry Jeff

[avandesande]

Notice the keyword 'asked', implied doesn't count.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

It is likely not a question of "asked", but "expected". I used to work in the US, and even though I busted my butt, people would make me feel bad for not working a given night or weekend, even when I already was working many nights or weekends. I now work in Europe. People think it's strange that I don't take all of my vacation time. I sent an email at midnight once and the next day my boss came to ask if I was okay. I work maybe the same amount as before, maybe less. Life is much more relaxing now, even though I get paid considerably less.

Back in the US, could people before force me to work hours beyond my job description? Not technically. Did I get the feeling that I should? Yes. Did the stress come from myself? I suppose. Still, if you work X hours, colleagues asking "where are you going on vacation next?" is much less stressful than "oh, man, I worked on that report until 2am last Friday..."

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

Hit pieces on big companies are typically very unbiased and notoriously accurate. The full story has been told. Just accept that you are evil.

Yep. Especially when they come from what's basically a competitor to one of the newspapers you own...

/sarcasm

Re:Sorry Jeff

[rahvin112]

The article was pretty balanced as far as content, the only hit piece nature was that all the good stuff was said upfront so you forgot it by the time you get past the stories about employee that just lost children, spouses or parents and were fired.

But honestly, those stories about people being fired after loosing someone or having health problems are a pretty good reason do the order they did. It was bad enough that Bezos made the public claim in the summary above about not being the amazon he knows. But the authors make a pretty good point early on that it's exactly the type of cutthroat performance at all cost Amazon that he's built. This is what happens when you build monsters where you are encouraged to attack your coworkers, they become monsters and attack them when they are down at the worst moments in their life. Because by attacking their coworkers they can advance.

This is the Amazon Bezos has built, one without empathy where the ends justifies the means. It's the reason every other fortune 500 is abandoning the very hiring and performance metrics Bezo's champions. Bezos shouldn't be disturbed by this (if he actually is) but I do understand his need to inject PR speak about how he wants everyone to email him or HR if this occurs. Which would probably just get you fired quicker.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Chris Johnson]

NO! DAMMIT! NO! (says Bezos)

Okay, new rules, guys! Now you will follow all the previous suggestions that are making us the greatest company in the world.

And you'll be HAPPY about it!

And you'll RELAX!

Everyone who doesn't keep up all their previous expectations plus be relaxed is clearly not good enough and is to be fired

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot your sarcasm tag.

This is just a bunch of whining from millenial crybabies who are discovering that the real world doesn't care about validating their feelings or giving everyone a trophy just for showing up.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Mr D from 63]

But honestly, those stories about people being fired after loosing someone or having health problems are a pretty good reason do the order they did.

Did we ever get the other side of those stories in particular? They sound horrible, inhuman, hard to believe. Just because a company promotes competition among workers does not mean they promote behaviors such as these. One behavior does not cause the other. Workers that feel slighted often exaggerate reality. Companies are not in a legal position to tell their side of the story regarding individual employees for a number of reasons, they can only generically respond (answering my rhetorical question above). And I am sure there are some bad bosses at Amazon, just like other huge companies. I am also sure that just like any company there are people that were let go for not doing a good job but would never admit their own performance was subpar. In these particular cases. We really don't know for sure the whole story.

Should Bezos be expected to NOT continue the style of management that helped make Amazon so successful to start with? Should employees expect the company culture to change or leave if they don't like it? There are no right or wrong answers, IMHO.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[warm_warmer]

I don't even work at Amazon anymore and feel compelled to stick up for my former employer after this hit piece. It really got under my skin (kudos, NY Times trolls!), so I'd imagine quite a few current and former Amazonians feel compelled to say something.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

I had exactly same experiences in US, so I moved to Canada and work 8 to 4. Now when I occasionally have work past 6, my boss usually makes a point to thank me. When I had to pull all-weekend to address a true unforeseen emergency, my boss insisted I take extra-long weekend. I make slightly less than I did in US, only now I have more vacation and work a lot less overtime.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

No more vacations until morale improves.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

It's times like this I wish that my slashdot account actually allowed me to post with my username instead of showing me as not logged in regardless of how many times I click on log in or log out.
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/amazon-chief-says-employees-lacking-empathy-will-be-instantly-purged

Re:Sorry Jeff

[rahvin112]

Exactly what side would the company have?

Upper management probably never heard about this because it's the culture they've built. Employees have tools to basically feed comments on co-workers where there is a practical guarantee of anonymity without the ability to confront the accusation. Because they fire a certain percent every year regardless of quality there is this competition to see other people fail so you can succeed.

In such an environment is it surprising that the person who had a devastating personal event suddenly starts seeing negative performance reviews because other employees that may not even know them are sending in negative comments to try to secure their own position? And that managers under pressure to fire a certain percent every few months wouldn't take advantage of this because their own employees performance metric effects their performance metric?

It's not really that hard to believe IMO. It's a cultural thing. As long as everyone is 20 or in upper management it's probably a great place to work.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

No, being expected to answer emails on weekends and at night isn't "the real world."

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Mr D from 63]

Exactly what side would the company have?

It could be a wide range of things, we'll never know. Was they employee a notoriously poor performer already on notice? Was the employee offered help in an assistance program but he/she refused. Was the employee exhibiting behavior that could be perceived as a threat to other employees.

I'm not suggesting any of those is the case, but I've seen some crazy stuff in my many years of managing people.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

Did we ever get the other side of those stories in particular? They sound horrible, inhuman, hard to believe

I've seen something similar happen (person also was recovering from cancer treatment) at a massive software company not too far from Amazon. The stack ranking system really starts breeding sociopaths after a while.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

but, er you didn't say anything supportive

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong - George Soros and Debbie WasAMan Schultz tell both the NYT and WP what to think and print.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

All Jeff needs to accept that his failure to pay the media its due protection money has consequences. How many ads for Amazon have you seen in the New York Times? Despite all the money they're making. At this point he and Amazon are simply being made an example of pour encourager les autres.

Re: Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol Nick would be glad to hear that he was promoted to top executive.
Disclaimer: I currently work at Amazon as an SDE, been working here almost 3 years, don't plan on quitting and Nick used to be my manager.

Re: Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

Nick will be glad to hear he got promoted to the top executive.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[CohibaVancouver]

I'd imagine quite a few current and former Amazonians feel compelled to say something.

[pulls up a chair]

Proceed.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Forever Wondering]

I emailed a friend currently working at Amazon, with links to the NYT story and the CNN/Money story. I asked him/her if that sort of thing ever happened in their group.

The reply: "It seems all true, even!"

The friend is a former boss of mine, whom I know to be honest, fair, and a really good manager, who knows my skill set well, and would have been able to match me to some opportunities. But, now, I think I'll pass on Amazon as I'm getting confirmation of the environment from someone I know.

If Bezos truly doesn't condone the bad behavior, but also believes that it isn't happening underneath him, then, he's asleep at the switch.

Berating people in meetings is actually "creating a hostile work environment", which is actionable under U.S. labor law. But, anybody mentioning this to HR would probably mark the person as "not an Amazonian" and the person would find themselves being shoved out.

This is "stack rank" management [at MS], where the lower 20% must get bad reviews even if they're top performers. In a dept of five where all the team members are stellar performers, one must be singled out as a "low performer". This was started, IIRC, at HP, and is also at Cisco. So, the group gets together and mutually selects "the goat" for the quarter. After five quarters, each employee has been "the goat".

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol... as nothing is said

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Falos]

It's childishly easy to dangle "expected" over someone's neck. Then let them go when their "priorities are clearly not in line with the company's mission".

Threats are perfectly good substitutes for policy, when execution is arbitrary.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Cyberax]

I've been working at Amazon for 6 months (after an acquisition) and I haven't yet heard of anyone asked to work on weekends.

The only major exception I've seen is on-call people - they are expected to take care of any issues that might happen at any time when they're on-call.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

> who doesn't keep up all their previous expectations plus be relaxed is clearly not good enough and is to be fired

a.k.a. "The beatings will continue until morale improves!"

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody can make you feel bad, that's entirely up to you. Go ahead, call me a retarded fuckwit. See if I care. Remember, you're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. .

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

They are in full damage control mode... top executives are writing pieces stating that they have never been asked to work on weekends... on Saturday?

I'm pretty sure those top executives have never been asked to work weekends. Their underlings on the other hand.....

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright. Worked year and a half there. The report is pretty accurate. Quit a year back. Finding the new place very dull, in retrospective Amazon wasn't all that bad. Right now in talks with the recruiters to go back to Amazon.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is, Stack Ranking does work for a very specific purpose: identifying the deadwood in lean times or after a merger when there are really too many staff for the work to be done. You do it for a year, then STOP. It will have served its purpose.

To make it part of a business as usual approach is moronic, and something "data-driven" idiots like Bezos and Ballmer seem to latch on to because they think data doesn't lie.

Re: Sorry Jeff

[DrLang21]

I've been working at Amazon for 6 months (after an acquisition) and I haven't yet heard of anyone asked to work on weekends.

OK. But could you please tell us how often you have worked on weekends or more than 9 hours in a day?

Re:Sorry Jeff

[warm_warmer]

I replied to another comment later in this discussion sticking up for my former employer against this hit piece. :-)

Further, I said that (I'd imagine quite a few current and former Amazonians feel compelled to say something.) in response to the implication that current employees are being compelled by the company to speak up, and to the implication that them speaking immediately after the article was written is equivalent to "working on the weekend."

Re:Sorry Jeff

[pnutjam]

http://blogs.scientificamerica...

Re: Sorry Jeff

[Cyberax]

Just one weekend (my choice). I also sometimes work from home at night (again, my choice).

Re: Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you fell for it.

Re: Sorry Jeff

[DrLang21]

Really? How often was the baby boomer generation expected to respond to interoffice memos at 11:00 PM on the weekend?

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

In point of fact, the Amazon culture drives its best people out the most quickly. The ones that stay the longest are never the best people... usually the worst. That's the real reason that their turnover is so high, and why all of their developers are required to carry pagers.

I wasn't popular there, because I was honest about the "quality" of their engineering, and because I never worked weekends or late. I was the only one on my team, but I was also one of the best engineers there, which wasn't a high bar to clear.

I have known a lot of people who worked for amazon over the years, which isn't surprising since I live in their neighborhood, and so far I've encountered only ONE in eight years who didn't hate it. IMO any manager who complains about a worker not being available while on vacation should be immediately fired, with stock options confiscated, black listed, and sent home via Elbonian Air. Amazon however prefers those managers. It's how their culture works.

And if you're hiring engineers, ones "trained' at amazon are NOT what you want... unless you like Rube-Goldberg "solutions" to simple problems.

Re:Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't heard of anyone being required to work on weekends... except for all of the people you know that must work on weekends. Okay...

yeah go ahead, contact me -- I dare you.

[r-diddly]

Prediction: Everyone currently working there will be too scared to give feedback, and Bezos will conclude or at least claim, there's no problem.

Re:yeah go ahead, contact me -- I dare you.

[gtall]

Yep, it is the Monkey Butt Syndrome. In a tree full of monkeys, the monkey at the top sees only smiling faces looking up at him. To the monkeys down where the dog pisses, all the monkeys see are assholes. I'm guessing the truth is not in the middle, but closer to the dog pee.

No thanks

[AmiMoJo]

I work on cutting edge, genuinely innovative stuff that solves important real world problems (water network monitoring and leak location). I'd never want to work in an environment like this though. It's unnecessary, the company benefits at my expense.

I'm disabled so probably couldn't do it anyway, and wouldn't want to work in an environment that excludes people who work the way I do (at a sensible pace, good work life balance).

Re:No thanks

[Ambassador Kosh]

Anything where safety or lives matter does not operate this way.

Right now I am back in school again working towards a PhD but I have worked with a biotech company and I have NEVER seen behavior even approaching this. If engineers where treated this way they would make mistakes and for many drugs you would not know about it until people started dieing. Then the FDA would investigate and find out why mistakes where made and the company would be SCREWED.

I can't imagine people doing this kind of working environment for drug development, building design, airplanes, materials etc.

Basically Amazon can only do this because what they do truly doesn't matter on a life critical kind of scale and they can afford to burn people out because there are so many to replace them. In many engineering fields unemployment is 1%. You can't burn through people because there is nobody to replace them with.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

You should read about Epic.

Re:No thanks

[AaronW]

Engineers are leaving Amazon in droves due to how poorly they're being treated here in Silicon Valley. If they shut down a department they lay off everybody in that department even if they're quite talented and would be useful in another department. The politics are also growing quite bad. I say this knowing someone who was one of the first employees at Lab 126. They're making stupid decisions from high up (i.e. Jeff Bezos) like the doomed from the start fire phone. Despite flying back and forth to China frequently they made this person fly coach, despite being one of the most senior members there. He can't wait to say goodbye as soon as his stock finishes vesting. I have another friend who ran their software build system who was constantly called at odd hours of the night who had to deal with constant shit from the data centers refusing to do what needed to be done besides running his life ragged. He quit once his stock vested to join a startup, which is far more relaxing for him. A lot of senior people are fed up and quitting due to the working conditions and poor management.

Jeff Bezos thinks he's Steve Jobs but he lacks Jobs sense of style.

I'm disgusted with how Amazon treats their employees, and I say this as a stockholder who has done quite well off of their stock.

As far as I'm concerned, all employees should be treated with dignity and respect, from the janitor on up. Their treatment of warehouse workers is sickening.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I would never consider working at amazon. And yes, I have the skills they want and need and am approached regularly by their recruiters (who I can't resist asking uncomfortable questions of and then making fun of the responses). I don't fit their age categories, which they would deny immediately.

My gut response to Jeff Bezos' letter was "Bullshit".

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

>Anything where safety or lives matter does not operate this way.

Especially at PG&E, which doesn't seem to operate at all.

Re:No thanks

[Cyberax]

BS on multiple fronts.

1. Amazon actually doesn't have a large direct presence in the Silicon Valley. They have only recently started to actively grow there. And yes, they're hiring.
2. But more importantly, when a department is downsized or moved - its employees are NOT fired. They are given freedom to shop around for a team to join.
3. The bit about flying coach is true, though. It's a company-wide policy that everyone flies coach, even VPs. Though you can use frequent flier miles from Amazon flights for your own personal travel.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

As a stockholder you're promoting their current practices.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

So all these companies are "screwed" as you put it?

Re:No thanks

[bluefoxlucid]

In many engineering fields unemployment is 1%

99% of engineers are employed. 50% of engineers work in non-engineering jobs. They're all trash men and burger flippers.

Re:No thanks

[pnutjam]

If only stockholders could really effect any change.

"we would almost find it appropriate to call our present economic system "managementism" rather than "capitalism."
-Fredrerick Lewis Allen, The Big Change

Re:No thanks

[anyGould]

2. But more importantly, when a department is downsized or moved - its employees are NOT fired. They are given freedom to shop around for a team to join.

How does this work in practical terms? Do they add headcount in those new teams to accommodate, or is this just a pretty way of saying "sure, you can apply for any future openings we may have"?

Re:No thanks

[Cyberax]

Most of teams are actively hiring most of the time. Senior engineers spend quite a lot of time interviewing candidates as a result. So pretty much every team jumps at an opportunity to get a few developers internally as no interview process or HR involvement is required.

Also, Amazon has a really good (even compared to other tech companies) global mobility program and they'll help you to relocate even between countries if you want to join a team abroad. Our business developer, for example, relocated from Australia to Seattle.

Of course, Amazon pays for flights and hotel expenses. But yeah, economic class only :(

it is hideous

[Presto Vivace]

it turns everyone in the company into an informer. Enron used this approach, it worked so well.

Re:it is hideous

[budgenator]

Worked well for the Statzi for quite a while.

It doesn't have to be this way

[avandesande]

Lots of people start profitable companies that have great working environments but that takes talent- I guess if your vision was to create BorgMart from the beginning there isn't much hope.

A Caveat

[DoktorMidnight]

Listen I do not know Bezos as a person, and there's got to be several (dozen) layers of buffer between him and HR. But usually (not always mind you, but usually) when Management makes one of these general announcements to escalate your concerns to HR after publicity like this, that's just a quiet way of trying to find out which muhfuhs snitched to the Press. And anyone who actually falls for the trap is made an example of to the rest of the division/company. Again, I don't know Bezos; he may have actually been honestly trying to solve the problem when he made that statement. But that doesn't mean the rest of the management/command staff is as honest and forgiving as he is.

Bezos is pretty shrewd

[Anonymous Coward]

The danger to Amazon from all this is that a culture of assholishness is going to chase away their talented employees. It sounds to me that they've done a good job at extracting the most out of the people they have. Now they need to take steps to keep their best people, and keep them happy enough to at least remain productive. If the culture worked as Amazon says, the employees in this article would be making their complaints to the superiors of their heartless bosses, not to the New York Times. Bosses like those described in the article do far more harm to a company than the loafers playing solitaire. Their heads should be the first to roll, which is what Bezos is basically saying, which is exactly the right response.

This article really changed my opinion

[warm_warmer]

As a former employee, this article really changed my view of the NY Times. I guess I expected more from such a well-known, established news source. But, this lengthy "expose" was clearly written by two authors with an agenda, and to what end? Readership?

I loved my time at Amazon.com. Yes, it was challenging. My time there forced me to grow as an engineer when I knew I was at risk of stagnation. But, I worked very reasonable hours (~7am-4pm, by choice to avoid traffic) and only very rarely (once very few months on average, typically leading up to Black Friday before all our deployments were locked down) worked nights of weekends. I traveled twice for Amazon - and had no trouble expensing the flight, hotel, meals, and transportation to/from the airport. I never saw anyone cry at their desk. Everyone who worked there was very civil.

I left for opportunity more than anything - an opportunity to both advance my career and be closer to my family on the east coast.

But yeah, I really have to wonder why the NY Times is busting Amazon's balls. I feel like a dope for not being more suspicious of them before now.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you need to be suspicious yet. I worked one of the large telco carriers for more than a decade. When I had a reasonable manager, the job was delightful, lots of toys, big budgets, new problems every quarter. When I worked for a Twonk it was long hours, 3 large PowerPoints a week and more meetings than work.... Which is why I don't work there. My job didn't change for the last 9 years, only my managers and directors did. Their trust, style, and abject ignorance were the decisive factors in the rewards of my worklife.

Both you and the NYT may have very accurate views of pieces of this company. The idea that one of your points of view is the norm, and the other is the outlier could only really be proven with a statistically valid sample set.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

As a current employee, here are some things in a nice numbered list:
1) Amazon pays for your travel. You can even get a corporate card. The whole "they make you pay for your own travel" thing is downright dumb. Also, provide our own cell phones? Yeah, most companies do. But we can expense the plan if we're on call. Like most companies do. And desks? LOL. Please. I've never worked anywhere where you have to provide your own desk.
2) I work ~8 hours a day. If I work a night or weekend it's because I'm working on something that excites me and I'm bored or have nothing else to do (e.g. wife is out of town, I don't feel like going out, there are no good movies out, etc). Sometimes I get presented with very interesting problems to solve and I get really excited about. There will be mis-managed teams in a company this size. It's inevitable. It's unfair to classify the whole company because some people shouldn't be managers.
3) The yearly culling thing is a joke. Read Nick C's article on LinkedIn. I worked with him in Marketplace. Smart guy, he's telling the truth.
4) I joined Amazon mid-career. I worked in a lot of other companies. I stagnated in some, and got out. This is the first place in a long time that's challenged me in really awesome ways. I tell new-hires, especially fresh (or nearly fresh) out of college to take it easy and not burn out. I want people to stay. I plan to stay as long as I can - I love it here. Almost everyone I know loves it here.
5) If you don't like your team or work, you are absolutely encouraged to rotate to another group. It happens all the time. The cross-pollination of ideas (ha ha yes, make a 'worker bee' joke, go ahead) and disciplines is awesome, and makes us all a lot more well-rounded as engineers.
6) No one cries. Come on..if they do, it was probably a decade or more ago. *shakes head*
7) The entire article is architected as a slam piece. Open your eyes, people.

The article really bugs me. It's written with an insane amount of bias. If you interview 100 people who were unhappy at Amazon (of the hundreds of thousands we've employed over the years), then you will have a very unhappy-sounding article. How about interview 100 people who love their job and are still there?

Now excuse me while I munch on my free snacks and beers that were provided by leadership. kthx

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[nukem996]

Things must of changed drastically since you were there. I just left a few months ago and the article describes very well what I and many others go through. My main complaint about the article is how it doesn't describe how employees are gaming the principals and metrics to look better and punishing those who call them on it.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

Another former employee chiming in. Never experienced or heard second hand anything remotely like what was described in the NYT article. I left recently, too, and was there for 8 years the last couple as a mid-level manager. One of the reasons I stayed was because of the great work-life balance it offered me when our first kid turned out to be triplets! I only left because I felt well accomplished in my years there and wanted to try something new.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[rahvin112]

The article makes is pretty clear that these stories aren't applicable to every department in Amazon.

They also make clear that you will either love or hate working there. Did you even read the whole thing? Does it surprise you that this stuff goes on? Or are you in denial about the stories presented?

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[warm_warmer]

Yes, rahvin112, I read every word of the article. :-) It was very well-written if not for the fact that it was extremely misleading. The article DOES make it pretty clear that they want to imply that what they describe is the norm rather than the exception.

I don't doubt that there are places within Amazon where management sucks. I socialized quite a bit while I was there, and, like any large company, there are places with poor management practices (demanding long work hours and burning people out, etc).

But yes, if what the article claims is true did or does actually happen there, it would greatly surprise me. I do know that some of the claims are outright lies, though (paying for our desks? unreimbursed travel pay??), so I'm skeptical of the rest.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Chris Johnson]

If you don't have free snacks and beers, AC, they're sure to give you some now :)

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Ryanrule]

you check is in the mail.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Falconnan]

Do not presume that your experience either was or was not representative of the experiences of others. Anecdotal evidence (and this goes toward the article just as much) is an oxymoron.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

6) No one cries. Come on..if they do, it was probably a decade or more ago. *shakes head*

Most places I've worked there have been a number of employees who cried. Without trying to sound sexist, they're always women at "that time of the month" or early in pregnancy or menopause. They get over it.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

And the paid shills are checking in...
Seriously, this article is very accurate and Jeff's memo was little more than a "THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES".

We all know the first person brave enough to email him with an honest account will be fired and given a shit review. A not-so-recent corporate HR strategy is to get dirt on every employee, no matter how good they are. Then if they have to fire you, they will bust out the "documented evidence" and threaten to tell reference calls about it. Perfectly legal to expose your company file to references.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

an opportunity to both advance my career and be closer to my family

That response is so canned, I can buy a 12 pack of them next to the Pepsi at the grocery.

The company crashed and burned on my watch but I'm totally not being fired for my fuckup, I'm leaving voluntarily to move on to better opportunities and be closer to my family

- said every disgraced CxO getting forced out of their job, ever.

That said, you might be telling the truth for the sphere of people you interacted with at Amazon, it might be that there's a single asshole manager who's poisoning the well in some division you weren't involved in, in which case Bezos might be sincere about wanting that asshole out before he brings any more negative publicity.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a minute, a mid-level manager? Not a grunt? Not one of the people well down the chain? So you're telling me that the shit stops well below you, you don't see it, then it doesn't happen?

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Locando]

Why is it that because the article contradicts your experience, you assume integrity problems with the publication that published it? There are a number of possible reasons for the discrepancy. And honestly, your emotional reaction makes me suspect your motives, not those of the New York Times. I've had some awesome workplaces, some mediocre and drudgery-filled, but never would I have an emotional reaction of any kind to people challenging my experiential knowledge of workplaces in either of those categories. Nor would I assume that anyone giving reports contrary to what I had experienced was corrupt or had an agenda — misguided, at worst.

Journalists make money off of exposing that which the public hasn't yet perceived as being fully reported on. Ideological biases are far more common than a desire to take one particular company down — your immediate suspicion that the latter is likely a factor here makes your objectivity suspect. Don't get me wrong: I appreciate your reasoned tone in your post, and I have no reason to doubt your personal experience, which I find valuable to learn about. But beneath that, it's clear that you aren't reacting to reading about Amazon in the same way as if you were reading about a company to which you never felt loyal, grateful, or whatever the applicable emotion is in your case. And when it comes to judging where the truth lies in this particular case, that fact is crucial.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Cyberax]

Uhm, can you tell me which floor has free snacks today?

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[tompaulco]

And the paid shills are checking in...

Well, I guess technically they are paid, being employees and all.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

Also an ex-amazonian, left after many years (& good performer in each one also not disgruntled). Can relate to the nyt article, tho have not seen anyone cry but rest is pretty accurate in silicon valley. too much politics, very toxic culture. plus they didn't even touch on seattle & sv struggle for control. there is a reason you build crap like firephone and not have voices of dissent reach upstairs even though nobody really believed in it.

To rebut your 100 people comment, I do not know of a single ex-amzn who was happy working at amazon. I think a recent tweet by marc andreesen also says something on similar lines.

btw I would not trust anything coming out of a current manager there (like the linkedin rebuttal).

one more thing, I have rarely worked an 8hr day at amazon in all these years!

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

I loved my time at Amazon.com. Yes, it was challenging. My time there forced me to grow as an engineer when I knew I was at risk of stagnation. But, I worked very reasonable hours (~7am-4pm, by choice to avoid traffic) and only very rarely (once very few months on average, typically leading up to Black Friday before all our deployments were locked down) worked nights of weekends.

Care to explain why Amazon has such a wide reputation as a sweatshop among developers in Seattle area then? I don't know of any that don't know someone who's had a bad experience at Amazon.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[DerekLyons]

As a former employee, this article really changed my view of the NY Times.

Well, to offset your anecdata - here's mine. I know three people who worked for Amazon (as programmers, analysts, and managers, not line warehouse workers), all three shared the article on their Facebook pages and praised it.
 

I feel like a dope

And you should, you've made the classic error of generalizing from your experience.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[lgw]

Well put. Didn't the term "astroturfing" originate on Slashdot years ago? It certainly doesn't qualify if someone says up front they work for the company and then go on to praise something about it. Shilling, maybe, but not underhanded astroturfing.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Shados]

Amazon is a LITTLE rougher than the other big tech companies. The main thing is that, compared to Google (which also sucks, though not quite as much), their employees don't drink the koolaid nearly as much.

However, lately, with the second tech bubble, engineers in particular are used to the red carpet where its almost impossible to get fired, that shitty devs who can barely code still get titles like Principal Engineer, and never have to try very hard. Compared to that, Amazon isn't "a little rougher", its hell on earth.

If you compare with other well paying professions, evil and not (doctors, lawyers, bankers, etc), a job at Amazon isn't that bad. Engineers are just spoiled that they've been able to collect 100-200k without doing (too much) overtime, and one company asks for a little bit more.

Now, it sounds like they also expect that from non-engineers, which may not work as well, mind you.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[AaronW]

I know one recent ex-amizonian who had a very senior position who couldn't wait to jump ship as soon as he got his last stock grant. He was getting called at all hours of the night and weekends despite having what should have been a day job. He had to put up with a lot of shit where the people running the data centers wouldn't configure the firewall so he could get stuff done. He was in charge of software builds. I also have a close relative who was one of the first employees at Lab 126 who can't wait to quit as soon as his stock finishes vesting. Both of these people say the same thing about the politics being insane and stupid decisions being made (Fire phone, anyone?). When they shut down a group now they fire everybody in the group, even if they'd be a great fit elsewhere. This seems to be happening fairly regularly now. A lot of senior people have left due to the poor treatment they're getting.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[AaronW]

It's getting that in Silicon Valley as well. I know a recent ex-Amazon employee who couldn't take it any more, called up at all hours of the night and weekends to fix stuff and dealing with a lot of nasty politics. I have a close relative who currently works at Lab126 and is one of the first employees there. He can't wait to quit as soon as his stock vests in a couple months. He says the same thing, that the politics are quite bad and that when they shut down a group there they immediately fire everybody, even if they'd be a good fit elsewhere. They're driving out the best engineers and turf wars are commonplace. It's become a rather hostile environment in many groups there.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait...

Two radical leftist organizations bash a successful hard-working company and an even further leftist news aggregating website regurgitates the fecal matter and it's upsetting?

You are only human you know. Gotta learn to ignore this stuff dude.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

Ex Amazon (AWS) here, and I can relate to the NYT Article - It's not far of the mark and if you step back and take a good look at AWS (Developer Support, EC2 Ops and Engineering) you'll see a lot of what the NYT article is saying has truth to it.

Hell, forget about the article itself, go through the comments and pay particular attention to those from former employees, they're remarkably consistent.
Personally, After 2 years of nearly daily round the clock SEV-1-SEV2 SMSes, being woken up multiple times between 3 am and 6am and still having to go into work and standup in a jerk-circle reporting vocally on the night's events, I got an ultimatum from my wife which knocked some sense into me: Took the next offer that came in with 25% salary raise, huge perks, relocation to an exotic foreign country with no taxes and I was outta there.

Hit piece it may be, but there's definitely a fire behind all this smoke ...

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former employee of Amazon.com, reading the article made me realize that what happened to me has happened to many many others at Amazon. I realize that there may be groups that are not as bad, but I sure experienced many of the things described in the article. I'd say NYTimes did a fine job in it's reporting.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

But, this lengthy "expose" was clearly written by two authors with an agenda, and to what end? Readership?

Not exactly. This piece is part of a larger effort by the NY Times and their fellow travelers among the left to establish and maintain a progressive platform from which they can launch character attacks, slant the news and frame public policy debates on issues to advance their long term project which is to remake the United States as a European style social democratic nanny state. The Barack Obama presidency, which was endorsed and has been consistently supported by the NY times, was merely the first phase of their insidious plan. Notice how carefully they sideline any opposition to Hillary, who is well connected with the liberal NY financial elites, even though Bernie Sanders arguably represents their socialist values more faithfully. They even planted Trump to sabotage the Republican side of the race. This secret cabal at the NY Times must be unmasked and exposed for the good of the country, before it's too late. It's a conspiracy I tell you and they're all in on it.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Catmeat]

I've never even met an Amazon employee or ever been to Seattle, so have no way of knowing of Amazon really is a good or bad place to work.

But I know or suspect the following:

1) This story has become big,
2) Amazon will take a hit if the idea becomes commonplace that it's a slave driving hell-hole. Top talent will be deterred from applying to work there.
3) Amazon's PR spin team are certain to be now working on damage limitation round the clock,
4) Slashdot is a significant tech news site, and so the spin team will closely monitor all Slashdot stories about them.
5) AC comments saying "Amazon is a wonderful place to work" should consequently be regarded in the same light as Jeff Bezos's statement telling us "Amazon is a wonderful place to work".

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[91degrees]

Why would paid shills waste their time posting on slashdot? Perhaps in the late 90's/early 2000's, but its importance as a tech site is nowhere near what it was back then.

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

You're smart enough to land a job at Amazon but not enough to understand that your anecdote is meaningless against many negative employee reviews?

Re:This article really changed my opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

Both you and the NYT may have very accurate views of pieces of this company. The idea that one of your points of view is the norm, and the other is the outlier could only really be proven with a statistically valid sample set.

The NYT is claiming that Amazon has a deliberate policy to insist that people regularly work weekends under excruciating conditions. If their view of Amazon were correct, then there would be no way that a single manager could make an employee think that Amazon encouraged a good work/life balance. Everyone else would be making the unreasonable demands endemic to the system.

On the other hand, a single project manager can insist that an employee work on a weekend. Unless the employee calls the manager on it, then it stands. That could explain the anecdotes in the NYT story. So the anecdotes can be true even if the story isn't.

Now it is possible that Amazon could be unintentionally causing a swing towards the work side of the balance. But that wouldn't fit the NYT narrative. Because they made their narrative so strong, it has to either be all true or not true. There's no room for compromise.

Church of Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like the IT version of the Church of Scientology, except for spitting people out instead of signing them up for a billion years.

Reporting

[godel_56]

Bezos says

But if you know of any stories like those reported, I want you to escalate to HR. You can also email me directly at jeff@amazon.com. Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.”

. . . but probably best to do so anonymously, or with someone else's email account. We all know how large companies love whistle blowers.

Re:Reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

Bezos says

But if you know of any stories like those reported, I want you to escalate to HR. You can also email me directly at jeff@amazon.com. Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.”

. . . but probably best to do so anonymously, or with someone else's email account. We all know how large companies love whistle blowers.

It's been my experience that "Whistle blowers" are usually disgruntled employees who more often than not don't have much evidence for there actually being some fire behind all the smoke. I obviously feel for these people, they may have been really wronged by their management, but usually it was *their* attitude that was really the problem. In every case that I've seen up close, there has been little real wrong doing and more simple oversights which where blown out of proportion to the actual intent.

Amazon has lots of haters. It is, after all, the LARGEST retailer in the USA, bigger than WalMart. People are gunning for them. I suspect that there might be some problems someplace in Amazon's vast organization, but I seriously doubt it is systemic any more than it was in past places I've worked. For this reason, And because the source of the article is largely untrusted by me, I'm inclined to take a wait and see approach.

Amazon abuses their employees? Yea, sure... Let them leave and let Amazon struggle to replace the talent. If that happens, things will change, if it doesn't happen, nothing is really wrong in the first place.

Re:Reporting

[Cinnamon Beige]

Bezos says

But if you know of any stories like those reported, I want you to escalate to HR. You can also email me directly at jeff@amazon.com. Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.”

. . . but probably best to do so anonymously, or with someone else's email account. We all know how large companies love whistle blowers.

Sometimes the problem is one of technique: If you blow the whistle by tipping off the right people higher up that Pointy the Middle Manager is doing Illegal Things They Are Liable For, they're likely to be pretty happy with it, especially if you did that with enough time for them to get rid of Pointy instead of as just a token warning before they get the legal papers. (Remember, Pointy probably doesn't do it when they're looking, and the people whose rears Pointy orally services are definitely not the right people to tip off.) This especially applies for when dear old Pointy was close to being fired anyway--they were just waiting for some reason or another.

Management is about as able to know what's going on when and where they can't see as all other humans.

In fact, if management is showing signs of knowing that sort of thing when properly they oughtn't, no matter how benevolent it currently is...leaving might be a Good Idea. Current benevolence is not a guarantee of future benevolence.

Re:Reporting

[Locando]

Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.

Anyone else notice how aggressive this call for empathy is? Even if the whole of the article is complete bullshit, this tone-deaf response is so telling in itself. I sure as hell wouldn't feel comfortable talking about work environment concerns with a manager who talked to me in that tone!

Re:Reporting

[stephanruby]

Bezos says

But if you know of any stories like those reported, I want you to escalate to HR. You can also email me directly at jeff@amazon.com. Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.

Bezos doesn't get it.

The New York Times article criticized the informing culture and the negatively-focused work culture of Amazon (even if it did exaggerate some aspects of it through their own agenda, or through sampling bias). I must have missed the part where the authors of the article were calling for more ways to inform on others and for more zero tolerance thinking (like they didn't haven enough of these already). And even if they had, I don't think that most people would agree that empathy could be rekindled that way.

You know the saying: "If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem you will have will look like a nail." Well, Bezos has no idea that a different management tool could even exist. His response is the perfect illustration of that fact.

Re:Reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

Bezos says

But if you know of any stories like those reported, I want you to escalate to HR. You can also email me directly at jeff@amazon.com. Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.”

. . . but probably best to do so anonymously, or with someone else's email account. We all know how large companies love whistle blowers.

Yep. By providing a first-class one-way ticket out the door.

cancelling my membership

[Anonymous Coward]

I am cancelling my membership to amazon and will never buy from them again. A forty year old new hire would never stand a chance in that environment.

Bwahahah!

[Bodhammer]

http://www.newyorker.com/humor...

SEATTLE (The Borowitz Report)—Saying that he was “horrified” by a New York Times article recounting callous behavior on the part of Amazon executives, company founder Jeff Bezos warned today that any employees found lacking in empathy would be instantly purged.

In an e-mail to all Amazon employees issued late Sunday evening, Bezos said that the company would begin grading its workers on empathy, and that the ten per cent found to be least empathic would be “immediately culled from the herd.”

To achieve this goal, Amazon said that it would introduce a new internal reporting system called EmpathyTrack, which will enable employees to secretly report on their colleagues’ lack of humanity.

The system will allow Amazon employees to grade their co-workers on a scale from a hundred (nicest) to zero (pure evil), resulting in empathy-based data that will be transmitted directly to Bezos.

Then, through a new program called Next Day Purging, any employee found lacking in empathy will be removed from the company within twenty-four hours of Bezos’s termination order. “We can’t be the greatest retailer in the world unless we are also the kindest,” Bezos wrote in his e-mail. “So my message to all Amazonians is loud and clear: be kind or taste my wrath. Love, Jeff.”

Yes, it's not new

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. I am anonymizing some details too, to make people not quite identifiable.

This has been going on for a while, and it hits developers too. A friend of mine programmed there for years, on the retail side. Things weren't quite that bad for him originally, but as time went by, pressure keep adding, teams were pitted against each other, and things like family and health were seeing as secondary. Team X did all this stuff, so we have to work even longer hours to compete with them! Taking sick days was seen as letting the team down, so people worked through everything. One time a cold was worse than a cold. Going untreated, it turned to bronchitis, then pneumonia. By the time he did go to a doctor, permanent damage was done.

I wish he had quit before that, but having worked there for a while, he had an unwarranted sense of loyalty for the company. Now he can't even go on a trip without bringing medical equipment, because his lungs are shot. No amount of pay and stock options is worth that, but he didn't know the price he was paying until it was done.

I've only seen one place that created more stress, and it's a huge hedge fund that happens to be run a bit like a personality cult for his founder.

Putting the health of employees and their family first is a big thing for me now. A lax work from home policy, no fear of review trouble for too many sick days in a crunch. Coming to work sick should not be something to be proud of, but ashamed of, as the most you can accomplish is to get your team mates sick! Same thing for working long hours. A coworker of mine used to do weekend marathons, where he'd make major changes. Guess where all the bugs came from? Marathons where a lot was produced, but most of it was shit.

It's the wrong culture, and Amazon has managers working there, right now, that keep that culture running. Jeff should just fire the hell out of them, because they are doing him no favors. Stories get around, and that's why, when Amazon calls trying to hire very senior people. Many of us say no.

Re:Yes, it's not new

[gtall]

The fish rots from the head.

Re:Yes, it's not new

[k6mfw]

I guess if you don't show up for work because you died then you'll be in big trouble from management?

Re: Yes, it's not new

[Anonymous Coward]

The culture won't change. Look up his wikipedia page.

Re:Yes, it's not new

[stephanruby]

People who come in with a cold already well underway, with many sick days to spare, have a false sense of loyalty. Their image of a good loyal worker may be safeguarded, but it's at the cost of infecting everyone else.

I am not a manager, but I refuse to work with such people. They need to go home and get some rest. And managers need to send those people home, that's their job as managers, to see the entire picture.

The company should pay for their cab fare back home if it has to. And when this happens, HR should be working on getting someone in to vaccinate workers (who are willing to get vaccinated). By that time, it may be too late for some, but not for everyone yet.

Re:Yes, it's not new

[SpeedBump0619]

I'm a software engineer who focuses on automating manufacturing equipment. I've been hearing bad stories about Amazon for at least ten years now. About a year ago I got a call from a head-hunter about a job opening dealing with autonomous warehousing and order fulfillment that sounded like a dream job. Five minutes on the phone got me the name of the company (Kiva Systems) and two minutes of google told me they were being purchased by Amazon.

Nope. Hard stop. I don't even need to know how much they are offering. I love what I do, and I won't willing work for someone who risks making me hate it. Go ruin someone else's psyche. I'd be *really* interested to know how many people there are just like me.

Re:Yes, it's not new

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess if you don't show up for work because you died then you'll be in big trouble from management?

Yes. They will even go to lengths such as exhuming the corpse to issue an in-person reprimand.

Re:Yes, it's not new

[Anonymous Coward]

Something about bereavement leave is only granted if you're the family member that died, and you have to give 2 weeks notice before you kick the bucket.

I first heard about it during Steve Yegge rant

[Spy Handler]

about 4 years ago now I guess. I thought Steve was exaggerating about Amazon, or trying to be humorous (or both), but now in hindsight I think he was probably being accurate.

The rant

"Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager. He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon's retail site. He hired Larry Tesler, Apple's Chief Scientist and probably the very most famous and respected human-computer interaction expert in the entire world, and then ignored every goddamn thing Larry said for three years until Larry finally -- wisely -- left the company. Larry would do these big usability studies and demonstrate beyond any shred of doubt that nobody can understand that frigging website, but Bezos just couldn't let go of those pixels, all those millions of semantics-packed pixels on the landing page. They were like millions of his own precious children. So they're all still there, and Larry is not.

Micro-managing isn't that third thing that Amazon does better than us, by the way. I mean, yeah, they micro-manage really well, but I wouldn't list it as a strength or anything. I'm just trying to set the context here, to help you understand what happened. We're talking about a guy who in all seriousness has said on many public occasions that people should be paying him to work at Amazon. He hands out little yellow stickies with his name on them, reminding people "who runs the company" when they disagree with him. The guy is a regular... well, Steve Jobs, I guess. Except without the fashion or design sense. Bezos is super smart; don't get me wrong. He just makes ordinary control freaks look like stoned hippies.

So one day Jeff Bezos issued a mandate. He's doing that all the time, of course, and people scramble like ants being pounded with a rubber mallet whenever it happens. But on one occasion -- back around 2002 I think, plus or minus a year -- he issued a mandate that was so out there, so huge and eye-bulgingly ponderous, that it made all of his other mandates look like unsolicited peer bonuses."

Low end, dead end jobs don't pay

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we have all had enough of people wanting high pay for low end, low skilled, dead end jobs. If you want more pay, get an education, obtain a skill, stop having kids, stop the welfare wagon road to nowhere. If your a high school kid, no wife no kids those low end jobs are perfect, or if your going to college and need spending money. But do not expect a WalMart or McDonald's to pay you $15 a hour or higher and treat you like your a highly valued employee. Your just a person filling a void that can be filled by plenty of others if you quit or get fired. I get that adults think minimum wage is too low, yea it is too low. But its supposed to be a stepping stone to better jobs. Not a solid career path to retirement.

Re:Low end, dead end jobs don't pay

[Anonymous Coward]

I get that adults think minimum wage is too low, yea it is too low. But its supposed to be a stepping stone to better jobs.

This is just bullshit. This is a complete self-deception.

I have a BSc. I presently work for a multimillionaire who pays minimum wage (but demands free overtime) because what else am I going to do? Quit and work at a supermarket? I used to work in IT. I left that field because I was sick of working 55 hours a week for $600 gross. What's the fucking point in that? It's less than minimum wage is here, and therefore illegal.

Most jobs in my city pay minimum wage, 60-65% of them according to the government statistician. From their statistics, the bulk of jobs in town are also part-time (approximately 60%). If you want more than minimum wage, well, there's no chance of that because the top 20% of pay rates in town are $50+k, and nobody's giving up one of those jobs.

Employers here feel that you owe them, once you've been hired. Occupational Safety and Health laws? Those are for weaklings, and if you dob a company in then you'll have a tough time getting another job because your name will be on the Chamber of Commerce book of bad employees.

You might think I'm bitching because I can't get a job that isn't McDonalds or shelf stacking, except that - as I've stated - I've had jobs that aren't that dead-end shit, and they paid less than that. Hell, right now I'm working as a sound engineer and I get less than minimum wage:

The problem isn't that people expect more than minimum wage for shit jobs. The problem is that people expect to be paid for their work, but rich people expect to not pay for work to be done.

Re:Low end, dead end jobs don't pay

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, you haven't followed your own advice: if you are incapable of telling the difference between "your" and "you're" your education probably does not amount to much.

Re:Low end, dead end jobs don't pay

[Anonymous Coward]

What does that have to do with the subject at hand?

Re:Low end, dead end jobs don't pay

[Anonymous Coward]

While it is true that low wage jobs should be the stepping stone to higher paying jobs, for many in our workforce this is not true. Instead, these people end up in these low wage jobs supporting families. I'm talking about single mothers, and sometimes, fathers. People who have made poor life choices and had the heavy hand of life slap them around (ex-cons, etc.). And sadly, the so-called "minimum" wage has not kept up with the pace of even inflation.

So instead, our government leaders (i.e., politicians) in all their wisdom, have made it possible for these low-wage employers to hire all these low-wage workers without having to feel any remorse about not paying a living wage, because these workers qualify for food stamps, assistance for needy families and other public programs designed to assist people while they get on the ladder to success. Instead, these programs become nothing more than a form of corporate welfare in disguise as public assistance.

Personally, I feel that these companies should have to reimburse the American taxpayer whenever one of their employees qualifies for public assistance, whether they apply for benefits or not. As soon as that happens, see just how many employers move their pay up to just barely exceed the minimum wage levels needed to disqualify a person from receiving public assistance in order to avoid paying the reimbursement tax. And since that level is continually adjusted for inflation, this becomes the new de facto minimum wage.

And, it's spreading to more companies in Seattle

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad thing is that when I moved here twenty years ago, you could be a developer and work normal hours. That was also about the time that Microsoft was settling down and stopped firing developers that didn't work sixty+ hours a week. Every development job I've had the past decade has just taken eighty hours for granted. They just assume when you're hired that you'll do. Where I work now, our CEO is a former SVP of Amazon. He requires "hundreds," as he calls it. That's sixteen a day weekdays and ten each day on weekends. Only a few people quit when it was announced 13 months ago since we were promised we would only have to do it until 1.0 was released. We still haven't released, and the scope for 1.0 keeps increasing. Now it looks like we're not going to be finished until the end of November. I hope we finish then, because I want to go home for Christmas. We haven't allowed vacation time in nearly a year so I didn't get to do that last Christmas.

Sorry Jeff

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want me to work the hours and with the zeal of a founder, then you'll have to pay me like a founder. I'm not going to toil all my waking hours away on someone else's dream to make just a "competitive" salary. I'm thinking it would take 7 figures to get me to work there.

Links you can send to friends

[Futurepower(R)]

Dear Amazon interns, some advice from an old man who has been at Amazon way too long. Quote: "Amazon's work-life balance is awful."

Working for Amazon Sounds Utterly Soul Crushing.

Life in an Amazon Warehouse: Fear and Efficiency at 35 Orders Per Second

Inside Amazon's Kafkaesque performance-improvement plan

Inside Amazon's Bizarre Corporate Culture

Amazon Is a Time Thief, by an Amazon Employee.

Is Amazon an unpleasant place to work? Quote: "Based on my experience, I agree with what everyone has said about the company being a horrible place to work."

Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace

Glassdoor Reviews of Amazon

Re:Links you can send to friends

[erapert]

Oh, look, every single one of the articles you linked to are written by insanely left wing "news" organizations.

They definitely wouldn't have any kind of agenda, they must be totally unbiased and perfectly willing to portray a corporation in a fair light. They surely wouldn't just form a bandwagon for page clicks.

Right?

Re:Links you can send to friends

[Anonymous Coward]

The warehouse reporting actually seems to be based on this original report:

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

This was the first thing I thought of when I saw the report on white collar issues at Amazon. I worked a lot of lousy jobs before I got my career in IT started, significantly more than most of my peers. So I got to see that when people decide they can treat others as isolated resources to be used up and discarded rather than as human beings, the primary check on how poorly they treat you is their own convenience. And in our society the more money you have the easier it is to do so. I really don't understand why anyone would concentrate on this as a white collar issue.

Amazon became my store of last resort years ago. In the interim I've found an awful lot of alternatives. I barely ever go there anymore.

Re:Links you can send to friends

[Anonymous Coward]

I see by the fact you have a google plus account that you are in fact a crazy person.

Re:Links you can send to friends

[Anonymous Coward]

Nearly every link is from some piece of shit gawker media website. That whole organization is complete trash and if they posted an exclusive on a recipe for an immortality potion I'd be content to perish or wait for it to show up elsewhere. Pieces of subhuman shit.

Re:Links you can send to friends

[Cyberax]

Here's my take: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

And please note, I'm not anonymous and I'm ready to stand for all my words.

Re:Links you can send to friends

[Anonymous Coward]

The fastest way to discredit a source is to call them a name.

I am heavily tempted to call you a name at this point, but you wouldn't get the irony. Note that the above list posted six different sources. You'd have to be a conspiracy theory nut to think that you can get alignment between six different sources, with multiple postings to some, just to push "one" agenda.

Or, the simpler explanation is that Amazon has been very, very hard on some (perhaps even while being good for others).

Re:Links you can send to friends

[Anonymous Coward]

Full disclosure: I worked for Integrity Staffing as a temp in the CHA1 facility over the past Christmas season. I was floored when they hired me, since I had been out of work for a long time. It seemed like they were hiring everyone in the whole damn city to work at their warehouse. I managed to score a wage of $13.75/hr by working in a pack assignment (the other assignment paying well was pick) on the late shift. We weren't told up front that the extra pay would fade away in January, dropping my wage to $11.75/hr. I only learned that much later.

The description of warehouse conditions is mostly accurate, though I can not speak to the problem of overheating since the warehouse does not get all that hot in December. However, it IS a warehouse, and so only some parts of the facility seem to be climate-controlled. Keeping that much space climate-controlled would be very expensive. There are a lot of warehouses that do not have heat/AC. The difference, if anything, is the amount of work Amazon expects you to do per shift. I don't remember seeing any ambulances outside, waiting for workers.

The shifts were 10-hour shifts on average. You might get lucky and do an 8-hour shift, but mandatory overtime was pretty common, especially in the holiday season when I worked there. Peak work time was leading up to the Dec. 10th-16th crunch. My max work output in terms of raw hours was one week where we did 6 12-hour days. 72 hours, yowza. Several people walked off the floor and went home late in the week from fatigue. I remember thinking at the time that the people leaving were somehow less-than-committed to doing a good job. Personally, I was so happy to have a job that I was willing to endure the long hours, even if it meant swilling two Rockstar Fruit Punched drinks per shift just to stay on my feet. Good thing Raceway had a 2-for-$3 special on them during most of that season . . .

As a packer, you were expected to meet "Amazon rate" by your fourth week of working out-of-training. Training was a 3-day period in which a full-time "blue badge" employee (Integrity temps had white badges) taught you the ins and outs of the pack function. You got most of the training you needed to do the job, though not all of it. The quality of training varied from one trainer to the next. The one thing that nobody got in training was any kind of information about what the rate actually was or how exactly we should go about organizing our workflow to get to that rate. The pack function has four different modes (not counting Gift Wrap . . . you don't want to get stuck in that): Single Small, Single Large, Multi Small, and Multi Large. Each mode describes the type of order you're packing. Multi/Single designates whether there are multiple items in each order, and Small/Large designates the size limits of the items in the order. Large can have practically anything, but Small orders can't have any items over a particular size/weight limit. Each mode has a different rate you have to hit. The highest rate requirement is Single Small, since all the orders go either into bubblewrap envelopes or the infamous Amazon book mailers. You have to do 180 orders per hour in that mode, which is surprisingly easy to meet once you figure it out. I could do maybe 200/hr peak there. Sadly, that mode is top-choice for people with physical restrictions (back/knee problems, etc) so it's kind of hard to get in there if you are reasonably fit.

My worst was Multi Large for most of my time there, though a good long-term packer gave me a "retraining" session at the behest of Integrity management, and I got my rate up there before the end.

The funny thing is, when they complete training, they warn you "get to rate by the end of four weeks or they'll fire you". Well, I came in mid-November and was at maybe 75% of rate by the end of four weeks, and . . . they did nothing to me. It was the middle of peak, and they needed as many warm bodies willing to stay through all the mandatory overtime as they could get, so they overlo

Re:Links you can send to friends

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that the above list posted six different sources.

Four sources. A useful reddit post. A useful Quora post. The New York Times article we're talking about. And a fuckton of shitty clickbait from Gawker/Gizmodo, which are both operated by the execrable Nick Denton. (On the rare occasions in which a Gawker site does its own work, it isn't all bad, but much like Buzzfeed, original research it's about 1-2% of of their content. The rest of their "content" is just link aggregation and I can't be bothered to click on any of it.)

That doesn't mean you're wrong. Amazon is a shithole where only the insane would wish to work. But don't give the poster more credit than he's due. He linked to Gawker, and that does diminish his credibility.

Re: And, it's spreading to more companies in Seatt

[Anonymous Coward]

Was that Kal Raman? He was a Amazon SVP and when I worked for him he used that term a lot. For a while we had to do more than hundreds since he would have meetings near midnight on weekends. On weekdays we usually had 2 am meetings to make sure people stayed late. At least he paid well. My current job requires 80 hours a week and the pay isn't great. Of course, they never mentioned that in the interviews.

-- I dare you. Double Dare

[MerlynEmrys67]

So worked at a large company, diversity plan in place... New employee comes in working for the biggest jerk of a manager. Couldn't get the problem solved through HR - decided to quit. Sent a So long and thanks for the fish e-mail to the CEO saying his diversity words were crap - and gave an example why. At just after 5PM, friend got a call from Uncle Paul to ask for 48 hours before they quit. Two morning later (36 hours) goes into work and there was a reorg - everyone was on the org chart but the one manager...

Word to the wise... Yes, CEOs can listen, and do listen.

Re: -- I dare you. Double Dare

[Anonymous Coward]

So in other words, if you're not white, complain the CEO, and watch as everything gets fixed to avoid a lawsuit.

Re: -- I dare you. Double Dare

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, CEOs can listen, and do listen.

but only when there's a real threat of a discrimination lawsuit and massively bad PR:

e-mail to the CEO saying his diversity words were crap - and gave an example why

Re: -- I dare you. Double Dare

[deadweight]

DO NOT try this if you are a white male! Also do not try this if the manager is NOT a white male.

Re: -- I dare you. Double Dare

[Anonymous Coward]

What does an asshole manager have to do with the company's policies on diversity? Also, for every anecdote of a CEO listening there are 100 where they ignored similar information.

Re: -- I dare you. Double Dare

[Anonymous Coward]

More like, word to the wise: be a minority, and complain loudly if you get slighted. This would never work for a white worker, and especially for a white male worker.

Not a tech company...

[Anonymous Coward]

... but a retailer. If regarded as a retailer, nobody would think that poorly of the work conditions at Amazon. It just happens to rely on IT heavily to conduct its business.

worked there

[luther349]

i worked one of there warehouses its ok if you need some quick cash. the pay is decent the issue is of course they work you long hrs where talking 12+ 6 day weeks so you will quickly tire of not having a life. as for treatment the only issue i had was them unable to tell me from another employee with the same initials and getting yelled at for his mistakes. otherwise the experience was not a bad one.

I'm Sure It's All Daisies and Unicorns

[Greyfox]

At Jeff's level I'm sure it's all daisies and unicorns. I imagine they just hang around all day dipping their balls in gold and getting hand jobs from their hand job robots. They'd probably be stunned to learn that down in the trenches there's not a hand job robot to be seen, and exposed balls are going to get kicked, not dipped in gold.

Re:I'm Sure It's All Daisies and Unicorns

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about you, but my scrotum is not made of asbestos. Dipping my balls in gold is the last thing I'd do.

Not unusual - Uline is very similar

[Anonymous Coward]

Working for Uline is very similar as what Amazon is described as. Salaried employees have to punch a timeclock, IT workers have an unwritten rule that you must work at a minimum 47.5 hours a week. Your cubical must be very sterile - basically no personal items, no food is to be eaten at your desk.There is lots of "watch your back jack". It is a VERY different work environment....

Re:Not unusual - Uline is very similar

[johncandale]

what is wrong with any of what you said? Personal items are distracting, eat on lunch, don't do that thing where you talk and gab for an hour then come back to your desk hungry, etc

Grounded.

[westlake]

You can tell a lot about a man by the way he treats those at the very bottom of the pile.

Those with few --- if any --- choices left to them.

Workers said they were forced to endure brutal heat inside the sprawling warehouse and were pushed to work at a pace many could not sustain. Employees were frequently reprimanded regarding their productivity and threatened with termination, workers said. The consequences of not meeting work expectations were regularly on display, as employees lost their jobs and got escorted out of the warehouse. Such sights encouraged some workers to conceal pain and push through injury lest they get fired as well, workers said.

During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. Those who couldn't quickly cool off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals. And new applicants were ready to begin work at any time.

An emergency room doctor in June called federal regulators to report an "unsafe environment" after he treated several Amazon warehouse workers for heat-related problems. The doctor's report was echoed by warehouse workers who also complained to regulators, including a security guard who reported seeing pregnant employees suffering in the heat.

In a better economy, not as many people would line up for jobs that pay $11 or $12 an hour moving inventory through a hot warehouse. But with job openings scarce, Amazon and Integrity Staffing Solutions, the temporary employment firm that is hiring workers for Amazon, have found eager applicants in the swollen ranks of the unemployed.

Inside Amazon's Warehouse: Lehigh Valley workers tell of brutal heat, dizzying pace at online retailer [2011]

This time last year, online retailer Amazon.com had ambulances parked outside its Breinigsville warehouse complex on hot days, with emergency medical personnel ready to take workers suffering from heat injuries to nearby hospitals.

Today, Amazon warehouse workers say the facility is refreshingly cool when it's hot and muggy outside. The company recently installed 40 roof-top air conditioners in its 615,000-square-foot warehouse, part of a $52 million investment in cooling its warehouses around the country.

The dramatic change comes nine months after an investigation by The Morning Call revealed difficult working conditions in the Lehigh Valley facility. Workers interviewed said they were pushed to work at dizzying rates in brutal heat. The heat index, a real-feel measure that considers heat and humidity, surpassed 100 degrees in the warehouse multiple times last year and sometimes exceeded 110, according to reports filed with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The company installed temporary air conditioning units last year after federal workplace safety regulators began inspecting the facility. But workers said parts of the warehouse, particularly its upper levels, remained unbearably hot even after the temporary air conditioning was installed.

Amazon gave water, fruit and popsicles to workers on hot days and relaxed its attendance rules on some days to let workers leave early, though they would lose pay.

The Morning Call obtained warehouse building permits using Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know Law. Those reveal that Amazon first sought permits to install temporary air conditioning last July, several weeks after warehouse workers and an emergency room doctor who treated some of them for heat stress complained to federal regulators about conditions...and a contractor sought permits to install permanent air conditioning in early March.

21/2 months before Bezos announced at an annual shareholders meeting May 24 that the company [was]

Re:Grounded.

[superwiz]

Most houses in Seattle don't have air conditioning. Seattle simply isn't used to temperatures that high. It's pretty far north, you know. About 2 hours from the Canadian border.

Re:Grounded.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most houses in Seattle don't have air conditioning. Seattle simply isn't used to temperatures that high. It's pretty far north, you know. About 2 hours from the Canadian border.

Lehigh Valley is nowhere near Seattle, you moron.

Re: And, it's spreading to more companies in Seatt

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds awful. There are dev jobs with good hours, though probably fewer in the tech industry.

Glassdoor

[John Bokma]

Wouldn't surprise me if new employees are "asked" to post positive reviews...

Re:Glassdoor

[Anonymous Coward]

Glassdoor is known to be packed by HR reps pretending to be rank-and-file employees. Here's one anecdote (employee / boss conversation in the middle) : http://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-coming-storm

Warehouse Employees

[Kneo24]

It's the warehouse employees who get shit on the most. While I'm sure there are issues in the office, the warehouse employees are expected to meet ever rising quotas at the cost of safety - the only way to meet some of the quotas is to ignore safety rules. Employee death or injury is not unheard of. While the top tier might not be driving for these metrics, they don't have the right people keeping a hold of the reigns at the lower level.

hmm

[superwiz]

I guess that's why Amazon invented the cloud as a successful business model (as opposed to esoteric gedanken experiment which was IBM or even Rackspace) and NYTimes invented they myth that there are "real" journalists as opposed to bloggers. NYTimes will ruthlessly smear anyone if there is red meat in it and then when they are done chewing, they'll go out and do leveraged buyout of smaller papers... all the under the guise of fighting for social justice while supporting dictators abroad and the most corrupt of the politicians at home.

Re:hmm

[oh_my_080980980]

Successful...really? That's why Amazon has razor thin profit margins and barely makes a profit....

Re:hmm

[superwiz]

They make a profit. The fact that their stock is overvalued doesn't mean they aren't successful. I don't know where you got the idea that their profit margins on the cloud business are thin. Just because they reinvest their profits into R&D, doesn't mean they are not successful, either, btw.

Sounds like that Scientology movie

[Rinikusu]

No one believes they're trapped in a cult until they get out.

Re:And, it's spreading to more companies in Seattl

[Anonymous Coward]

We haven't allowed vacation time in nearly a year

And, that is now the new normal at Seattle tech companies. When I first moved here seven years ago, I asked how to notify the company of planned vacation time. I couldn't find it in the HR system. I got screamed at for using the word "notify" rather than "request." Our HR director called me "an arrogant little sh--" for that. Because she also bitched at my boss, he told me no vacation time for one year. The jerk was serious. I thought at first he was kidding. Since then, I haven't been allowed to take more than one day in a row or more than two total days in a quarter off. It sucks to see all of the developers not be allowed vacation while nontechnical employees almost always take their entire four weeks off each year. From what I've seen and heard from friends, there are definitely two classes of employees in most Seattle companies.

It just got worse

[John Jorsett]

" Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.”

Sounds like all that's happened is that Amazon has found a new firing offense.

Re:It just got worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. If people are really outraged, it is time to boycott. Vote with your money. You don't have to buy local but you certainly don't have to buy from Amazon.

Re:And, it's spreading to more companies in Seattl

[Whatsisname]

Since then, I haven't been allowed to take more than one day in a row or more than two total days in a quarter off.

Even though I might be accused of being a communist, I think this kind of practice should be against the law.

Re:And, it's spreading to more companies in Seattl

[lgw]

requires "hundreds," as he calls it. That's sixteen a day weekdays and ten each day on weekends.

I once worked at a company that learned the hard way that if you make it official policy that exempt employees work long hours, the judge can find that they were not exempt after all, and are owed overtime retroactively for a great many years. Fun times.

The line between "cultural pressure to work long hours to deliver" and "official policy mandating long hours" is an important line.

ow it looks like we're not going to be finished until the end of November. I hope we finish then, because I want to go home for Christmas. We haven't allowed vacation time in nearly a year so I didn't get to do that last Christmas.

You know you're all going to be fired once you ship, right? Call me cynical, but I've seen the pattern many times before. Change jobs now, the cake is a lie.

Re:And, it's spreading to more companies in Seattl

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit...

That is completely unrealistic. I've never worked at any company in seattle with that type of attitude and I wouldn't stay either.

It's either a case of you are unemployable or you love being beaten.

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Hit piece by the hacks at the NYT against a competitor.
Progressives hate companies that actually hold employees responsible for their performance and require that they work for a living.
They'd much rather everyone sucked at the government teat. That approach is so much more effective for producing Democratic party voters.

Re:Bullshit

[oh_my_080980980]

Yeah because sweat shop warehouses are a sign of a strong business model...

Abuse or incompetence? Other examples.

[Futurepower(R)]

It's not necessary to read all the articles above to know that Amazon is an abusive or incompetent company. There is abuse on many Amazon web pages. For example, see the web page for this book: Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto.

That page shows a little information and then pushes visitors to buy other books. My opinion: Either Amazon is extremely abusive, or extremely incompetent.

There are plenty of other examples. Amazon allows sellers to abuse customers. Some items list low prices that attract visitors, but the shipping charge is extremely high.

There are more than 5,000 comments on the New York Times article: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace

What would you expect from an investment banker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeff Buttsauce is an investment banker, not a techie. Amazon culture reflects that. Make money at any cost, and fire people at will. Loser company. Indian e-commerce companies could easily destroy Amazon, and they eventually will.

China ships to you too

[AHuxley]

Long term the question will be about having products, stock sitting in the US under a US brand with all the taxes, local costs or just going China direct.
From the factory in China, book printer, CD, Blu ray (region code allowed shipping?), on demand from what was the 'back catalogue", toys. Digital while you wait if an option.
Delivery can be done by private or government postage contractors locally around the world. Robots to pack the products in China. No staff issues as all skilled staff just repair or expand robot use.
Long term its just a slow count down to worlds best packing robots, regional tax shelters and who has the better engineering staff on site to accept products in, hold, sort, ship to international delivery hubs.
The US brands had all the advantages in terms of language, trust, branding, banking, shipping locations, local gov support.
The staff costs, storage, sorting, shipping and handling price via the US is getting interesting.

How can the US win? Bilateral trade deals that lock out China long term?
It will be interesting to see where Western publishers, designers and artists go if China/Germany can offer a better deal. Is a brand between the Western publishers and the consumer really needed or can they go for their own great regional logistics from the factory?

It varies by organization

[Anonymous Coward]

Worked there for less than 2 years. The known bad orgs (that I knew about) are Kindle and AWS. Kindle is worse. Luckily, I only had brief contact with them.
There were times when the pager went off at 2AM and you have to respond (or else your manager would get paged). Gotta deal with it one week out of ~6, but 8 hour days otherwise. Other than that, the managers were pretty annoying about cross-examining people for no good reason on a regular basis.

Left after I found a job that matched salary. The org I was in did not work on anything particularly new or interesting so I didn't feel like sticking around (or putting in extra hours to make myself look good).

regarding perks

[johncandale]

Regarding perks. I've always been suspicious of the IT companies that offer man-child tier tastes such as nurf toys or endless candy bars and lounge chairs. The best workers are 40 years old, show up at 8am, take an hour lunch, and leave at 6 pm. And anyways we all know a lot office workers are lazy in general, though some of that is from Dilbert-ish stagnation of corporate stuff.

Lookie here Jeff ..

[nickweller]

Panorama: Amazon's Truth Behind the Click BBC Documentary

Looks like a job for Voight-Kamph

[itsdapead]

To achieve this goal, Amazon said that it would introduce a new internal reporting system called EmpathyTrack, which will enable employees to secretly report on their colleagues’ lack of humanity.

Brilliant. I suggest hooking employees up to a steampunk polygraph machine and asking them what they'd do if they found a turtle lying on its back. Just don't ask them about their mother...

This Premise of this article is Troll Bait

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitch, moan, whine, complain.

The idea that Amazon, or Microsoft, or Google is abusing their employees is ridiculous. If the law is being broken, hire an attorney, and file a lawsuit. But that's not going to happen here, because someone crying in thier cubicle does not mean the law is being broken.

I've worked in "tech" for 20 years. There are people who perform and people who don't. There are people who whine, people who work 80-100 weeks because they are driven, people who take every hour of sick time given to them, people who get promoted, and people who take up space on the floor until such time as they can be managed out. These are the extremes. The vast majority of employees are good people, who show up every day, do their job, and go home. It's a fact of life, employees, like just about everything, are on a bell curve.

There was a post up above bitching about Investment Management banks and the hours they require being "unfair". Bullshit. Those banks are built on the backs of the top 1% of all employees who make up their work force. They are the best of the best. And the people who work there willingly make the choice in exchange for the compensation they are receiving, or that they think they may receive in the future. A lot of people wash out. That's ok. That's life at the top.

If you don't like the way you are being treated, quit. If you think you are overworked, under paid, under appreciated, then move on and find a new job. If your manager is an imbecile, prove it to their boss, and take their job. Oh, you don't want to be a manager? Not good enough to be a manager? Then shut up already. Can't find a good gig in your area? Start your own company. Do it your way. Do it a better way. Provide better value to your clients and reap the rewards. Just stop whining.

At the end of the day, working for a company (or even yourself) is a value proposition. Can you provide value in service equal to the compensation you are receiving?

Re:This Premise of this article is Troll Bait

[oh_my_080980980]

Carry greater weight of you weren't an Anonymous Coward, as such just a fucking troll with too much time your hands...

Compare it to Auschwitz

[Anonymous Coward]

There was another place where they competed against each other, where there was a lottery to see who stayed and who went, where one could point out that others weren't working so well any more: Auschwitz.

Stop being poor

[Dareth]

One can't stop being poor by singular choice. One can make a series of choices that might lead to a better quality of life, but there are no guarantees.

Psst I have a secret to tell you

[Anonymous Coward]

DON'T FUCKING WORK THERE!

Re:Psst I have a secret to tell you

[oh_my_080980980]

Move to Somalia hippie.

Re:And, it's spreading to more companies in Seattl

[Anonymous Coward]

"Allowed"? If you signed your contract and it stipulated vacation time, then you don't need permission. If they give you grief, take it up with your state's labor relations board.

Re:And, it's spreading to more companies in Seattl

[Alioth]

That kind of treatment is actually illegal where I live. It would open the employer up to a whole world of legal hurt.

Strisand Force Field Activated

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeff is asking for a shit load of turds hurled at jeff@amazon.com.

Bezos is known as a Machiavellian micro manager from Hell: that is how he makes money.

And we all know that Jeff is a big pile of shit and his bitch is a glass of piss.

Ha ha

Negative publicity is the only way to stop this

[ErichTheRed]

I see a lot of posts blaming the "left-leaning liberal progressive New York Times" for this whole thing, but the reality is that there are really awful companies to work for out there. I would love to work on something like AWS -- it's super-interesting to a systems management nerd like myself. Here's the problem; I'm 40 and have a wife and 2 little kids that I'd like to see every now and then. Most older techies I know who either have no children or a very understanding spouse would have no problem in an environment like this. The younger folks are a little more enthusiastic about working 80+ hour weeks, simply because they have fewer commitments outside of work and haven't seen that every place doesn't operate like this.

The problem with both SV startups, and apparently, huge companies that haven't shaken the startup culture, is that they can't run on burned-out employees and starry-eyed newbies fueling their operations forever. I'll bet that's one of the reasons Google re-orged -- potential acquisitions of other companies that don't want to buy into the free food, free services, nerf toy techie preschool culture. I work in an environment that has almost no expectation of crazy hours, and we get things done. I and most of my colleagues are on the older side, have a lot of experience in our field, and don't usually have to work nights and weekends to fix problems. In the 8 years I've been here, I've had to work one very extended day, one weekend day, and was dispatched twice with less than a week notice to fix a mess halfway around the world. Given my salary and the insane flexibility the job offers me, I can live with that level of extra work. When it starts becoming constant because managers refuse to say no to their higher-ups, then that's another story.

Another problem is that techies promoted into management can fail spectacularly at this job. I'm a lead on a small team, and I -know- it's not my primary skill. People I've seen that get promoted into management because they're good workers either adapt, or their subordinates suffer greatly. My goal is to not be the a**hole or ineffective boss, plain and simple, because I've worked for a bunch. That said, even if you don't have a people problem, corporate policies like stack ranking are stupid. One complaint I do have about our company is that they're a big "trailing trend follower" when it comes to HR. We did stack ranking for a few years after Jack Welch promoted it as the greatest thing, and lost a lot of good people before it stopped -- try telling top performers in a 4 or 5 person team that one of them has to get a bad review. We're finally starting the first inklings of waking up to realize that offshoring development isn't producing results -- I expect that to take another couple of years. And of course, we're jumping on board the Google open office trend, years after implementation elsewhere, despite everyone's pleas to the contrary.

There's good and bad in every workplace, and a good workplace for a 23 year old new grad is not necessarily the right fit for a 45 year old mom or dad.

Good point.

[Futurepower(R)]

I'm the OP, and I agree with your point. You knew more about Gawker than I.

Re:And, it's spreading to more companies in Seattl

[dgatwood]

And, that is now the new normal at Seattle tech companies. When I first moved here seven years ago, I asked how to notify the company of planned vacation time. I couldn't find it in the HR system. I got screamed at for using the word "notify" rather than "request." Our HR director called me "an arrogant little sh--" for that. Because she also bitched at my boss, he told me no vacation time for one year. The jerk was serious.

I'm pretty sure I would have handed in my resignation the next day. Life's too short to put up with an abusive sociopath as a boss and coworkers who create a hostile work environment. That's simply inexcusable behavior, period.

And as much as I hate to say it, have you ever thought about forming a union? Because it sounds like your company is precisely the sort of abusive company whose workers are most in need of that sort of protection.