
What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon - samhoggnz
https://medium.com/@jaycarney/what-the-new-york-times-didn-t-tell-you-a1128aa78931
======
hnamazon123
I recently quit Amazon.

I don't doubt that New York Times purposely misrepresented or omitted facts to
make this story. Their stories tend to be very agenda driven and the facts
tend to be subservient to the narrative, a policy which is deemed acceptable
because it "starts a conversation" or the story is "probably true for
someone". This is typical of the left wing.

However, I did in fact have an absolutely awful experience at Amazon, in AWS
specifically. It really is an awful place to work where management is entirely
ego driven and in cover your ass mode 24/7 to the supreme detriment of
everyone involved. Subordinates are seen as drones who should work without
appreciation or thought for self. And the idea that subordinates are not
drones is considered un-Amazonian.

I did in fact witness someone cry at their desk. Well, they didn't cry, it was
more like they were in an emotionally precarious daze after being berated for
30 minutes straight by a manager who only did it to make himself feel better
about his own worries about the project.

~~~
forgotpasswd3x
> Their stories tend to be very agenda driven and the facts tend to be
> subservient to the narrative, a policy which is deemed acceptable because it
> "starts a conversation" or the story is "probably true for someone". This is
> typical of the left wing.

This is hardly an issue isolated to "left wing" media.

~~~
afsina
To be fair, when it comes to attacking corporations (biased or not) , this is
mostly a left wing media thing.

~~~
cruise02
And when it comes to supporting corporations (biased or not), this is mostly a
right wing media thing. Just because they do it from opposing sides doesn't
make it ok.

------
dekhn
There are several shockingly inappropriate things in this article. In
particular, the PR person at Amazon is saying that they would have shared
employee's personal records (including evaluations) as well as other
employee's termination conditions (which I consider unrelated to their
quotes).

Amazon: what Carney just posted was very inappropriate. I am completely amazed
you did this (assuming it was done with approval at the company level). You
should be aware that you will start having serious problems hiring and
retaining quality employees if you post things like this about your employees.

~~~
baldfat
Devil's Advocate here:

The people named in the article and refuted by Amazon put their personal story
a public story.

If someone "slanders" a business it can't reply with evidence? Must the
company say it is a personal matter that we can't disclose, which reads they
are guilty and don't want the truth to come out?

End of Devil's Advocate

Seems like they were making a statement of if you talk will will fully
disclose our information to refute what you said. I think this was hurting
Amazon so much that they are willing to payout the "out of court settlement"
and "set the record straight."

~~~
roymurdock
The details provided in the response are probably being disclosed legally
(doubt Amazon PR would screw up that badly), but it shows really poor taste
that they would even respond to the NYT piece which was pretty clearly
hyperbolic, emotional, and somewhat cherrypicked; even more so that they would
adopt the same tactics of naming and shaming ex-employees.

The fact that it was also published on medium by the head of PR baffles me -
why are they aiming this refutation at the tech crowd that would probably see
through this cover-piece pretty easily, instead of getting it into a high-
readership, Amazon consumer oriented publication? Poorly planned and executed
all around, regardless of legality.

~~~
eclipxe
The tech crowd (at least on HN) didn't see through the cover-piece...the
comments here were overwhelmingly along the lines of "I knew it! Horrible
environment". A lot of confirmation of existing anti-Amazon bias.

~~~
roymurdock
I'm assuming they published it on medium as a blog post targeting the tech
community because they were trying to persuade potential future employees that
Amazon is a good place to work.

Yet Carney smeared the NYT and ex employees rather than highlighting the
positives (I'm sure there are many, but I don't know what they are because he
didn't mention them) of working at Amazon.

Better yet, Amazon could have just carried on being a good place to work. If
your company is doing good, important things its going to take a lot more than
a biased NYT piece to really deflate employee sentiment and drive down the
quality of your applicants. "Show not tell" is usually a good principle to
operate on.

~~~
serge2k
Even before the times article amazon had a rep as a place that ground through
people in a year or two.

~~~
retbull
That was my impression and after talking to several friends over there it
hasn't exactly gone away. Even people who still work there 5-6 years later
give it at best mixed reviews. I don't know how to interpret the mudslinging
but I don't think that Amazon is all fun and games.

------
russelluresti
I love how the start of this article reads like something out of Character
Assassination 101.

Step 1: start by bringing up something negative about a person that has
absolutely NOTHING to do with the issue at hand.

Okay, so the guy resigned because he did something bad. How does that make
what he experienced while there not true? Oh, that's right, it doesn't. And
the admission of fraud isn't a "crucial piece of context." You and I both know
that. Unfortunately, you think the reader is dumb enough not to know it.

Step 2: Assert statements in the form of a question so that you can deny every
making the assertion.

"Did Ms. Kantor’s editors at the Times ask her whether Mr. Olson might have an
axe to grind?" Here, we don't actually assert that Mr. Olson has an axe to
grind. We don't assert he's purposely lying to get revenge. We just highly
insinuate it and make the reader believe it by putting it in question form.

This is an obvious attempt at character assassination and to cast doubt in the
minds of the reader without actually saying he was lying.

If Mr. Olson is lying - sue him. You're within your rights to do that. But
you're not suing him. Or the Times.

So, what's the point of this? Propaganda. And sleazy propaganda at that.

~~~
kazinator
> _How does that make what he experienced while there not true?_

It doesn't make it true or false, of course. What it does (if true) is make
his report that such a thing happened less credible.

This is because fraud is a form of dishonesty, closely related to the telling
of lies.

Also, being fired for wrongdoing (again, if that is true) creates the basis
for an obvious bias. A person who was fired for wrongdoing can't be expected
to be objective in reporting something about the former employer, even if they
aren't trying to deceive. If that person's report is relayed, but the firing
is concealed, the journalist is effectively concealing that bias.

Of course, Jay Carney (Senior Vice President for Global Corporate Affairs at
Amazon) has an obvious bias as well.

It's not clear whom to believe in this particular case---but biases and track
records of fraud _are_ generally relevant context.

~~~
kazinator
I'd like to to address a somewhat unfairly flagged sibling comment by
russelluresti, on the topic of the _ad hominem_ fallacy.

Disbelieving someone because of a bias or a past dishonesty isn't the _ad
hominem_ fallacy at all.

 _Ad hominem_ refers to a declaration that an argument is right or wrong based
on the identity or attributes of the person making the argument, rather than
its content, and relevant references.

The _disbelief_ in a report based on the nature of its source isn't a
_declaration_ that it is false. It is rationally justified prudence.

------
ucaetano
It's actually weird to see a company firing back this publicly, releasing
performance data (no matter if positive or negative) on previous employees,
and it all being posted not by the CEO or a HR VP, but by the head of PR.

[Edit: Not only it smells of whitewashing, but it also looks deceptive.

And PR? Seriously? Not only it's a sleazy piece, but Amazon chose the worst
possible position to convey the message. Get some engineer, accountant,
designer, heck, get the HR intern who just joined 2 weeks ago to talk about
this.

It would have more credibility than a PR person who's been in the company for
less than one year.]

~~~
danso
Why shouldn't it be the PR person? Someone at the level of Jay Carney is
ostensibly more than just a mouthpiece, but someone who gathers the
information and weighs in on what's useful and relevant to disseminate to the
press. This isn't always a nefarious thing; sometimes employees have
incomplete information but aren't in a position to confirm it with the
executives.

At this phase, where the story has run and the damage has been done -- the
response _should_ be done by Carney. Take the rebuttal to Mr. Olson, for
example. That revelation is absolutely not something that should be revealed
by Mr. Olson's boss or a coworker. First of all, just because you're an
engineer doesn't mean you have all of the facts. The PR person is in a
position to collect the facts, including whether or not it's legal to reveal
Mr. Olson's reason for termination, and confirming that reason for termination
with HR. Even Mr. Olson's boss wouldn't have that same level of confirmation.

The other advantage of having Carney make this response is that you can be
sure that this is, for better or worse, the official company response. If
instead, this was a blog post by Mr. Olson's co-worker calling him out for
being a fraud...and the reaction to it was negative...then Amazon could pedal
back and say, "Oh well that co-worker blogged something he shouldn't have and
now he is being punished".

But since the condemnation of Mr. Olson has come straight from Mr. Carney, any
backlash will be rightly the reaping of what Bezos, Carney, and all their
lawyers have sowed.

edit: FWIW, a non-anonymous redditor is saying that he knows Bo Olson,
personally, and says "I can assure you that Bo was not the one defrauding
vendors that was another employee in the same department"...it strikes me as
improbable that Carney (again, not just Carney, but Amazon's lawyers and HR)
would get this wrong. But if they did...it's going to be a great backlash, and
a much more lasting one than had this allegation come from someone other than
Carney or Bezos himself.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/3pcnlh/what_the_n...](https://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/3pcnlh/what_the_new_york_times_didnt_tell_you/cw585to)

~~~
amyjess
I think a lot of people's problem with this is that it's not very transparent.

You don't find out who Carney is until the very bottom of the article, and
it's presented as just another journalistic article published by Medium and
not an official rebuttal by the company.

If the whole thing was prefixed with "Following is Amazon's official rebuttal
to the _New York Times_ article", I don't think many people would have a
problem with it.

~~~
srtjstjsj
What's a "journalist article"? Medium is a blog host, not a newspaper. Medium
is just paste.org with a better UI.

------
danso
The NYT editor in chief has responded via Medium:

[https://medium.com/@NYTimesComm/dean-baquet-responds-to-
jay-...](https://medium.com/@NYTimesComm/dean-baquet-responds-to-jay-carney-s-
medium-post-6af794c7a7c6)

> _In response to your posting on Medium this morning, I want to reiterate my
> support for our story about Amazon’s culture. In your posting — as well as
> in a series of recent email exchanges with me — you contested the article’s
> assertion that many employees found Amazon a tough place to work._

Specifically, he says had they known Olson had a conflict, they would have
disclosed it. But the NYT asserts that Mr. Olson never disclosed such
allegations, nor does he admit to them now.

> _Olson described conflict and turmoil in his group and a revolving series of
> bosses, and acknowledged that he didn’t last there. He disputes Amazon’s
> account of his departure, though. He told us today that his division was
> overwhelmed and had difficulty meeting its marketing commitments to
> publishers; he said he and others in the division could not keep up. But he
> said he was never confronted with allegations of personally fraudulent
> conduct or falsifying records, nor did he admit to that. If there were
> criminal charges against him, or some formal accusation of wrongdoing, we
> would certainly consider that. If we had known his status was contested, we
> would have said so._

edit: re-reading Carney's statement, it seems pretty unequivocal: _" An
investigation revealed [Olson] had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it
by falsifying business records. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted
it and resigned immediately"_ The NYT is likewise unequivocal: _" [Olson] said
he was never confronted with allegations of personally fraudulent conduct or
falsifying records"_

Well, only Amazon has the time-stamped records that could prove who is lying
here. It was a questionable tactic for Carney to start his response with such
a bold and salacious allegation against someone who constituted a single quote
in the NYT's story...assuming that Carney is right (because it's a complete
unmitigated disaster if he isn't) now it seems he's going to have to go even
more salacious, perhaps even post the actual pertinent records online.

How was this mudfest good for Amazon's image, again? And so late after the
original story and Bezos's (pretty decent) response?

~~~
exodust
_Grabs popcorn_.

Olson is clinging to a lie, trying to defend his reputation.

Notice how he tries to blame Amazon for his departure, the "revolving series
of bosses" and "overwhelmed" with work. "He and others couldn't keep up".
Deflection.

He's doing his best to construct a version of events where he is one of the
innocents, caught up in the nasty Amazon shit-storm.

I bet he got a shock to see Amazon reveal his fraudulent activity in a medium
post! You think Amazon would make such a claim if it weren't true?

Nobody wants to see personal information released like this, but Amazon were
slapped in the face with that NYT piece. Let 'em have their medium return
fire.

Fraudsters and liars stick to their guns till the bitter end and beyond. It's
best to weed them out, and have karma deliver what is deserved.

~~~
lightbritefight
>I bet he got a shock to see Amazon reveal his fraudulent activity in a medium
post! You think Amazon would make such a claim if it weren't true?

So your stance is "it must be true, because it would be really stupid of them
if it wasen't?"

I think its equally valid to say they are acting stupidly, and counting on
dollars and cents to keep any trouble off their door.

The truth is, they have just claimed the above. They pressed no charges, and
have provided no documentation to sustain it. Right now, they have no more
proof then him, and have a strong reason (redeeming their reputation though
mudslinging) to say that he was a bad man, so his opinion doesn't matter. Of
course,as the NYT responds, they interviewed way more people than just the
ones Amazon cherry picked to respond too, and those people all disagree with
the new Amazon spin.

~~~
exodust
I'm pretty sure a lot of companies would choose to deal with these sorts of
internal matters without involving the law.

When the NYT times story came out I remember thinking it sounded a bit spinny.
"Let's find an angle" is symptomatic of a desperate click-baity news media
industry. NYT isn't as guilty of this as other outlets by a large margin, but
the story had what I perceived as fabricated bite.

At the time, I wondered if any Amazon employees would come out defending their
employer. Took me 5 seconds to find something...
[https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2015/08/16/Working-a...](https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2015/08/16/Working-
at-Amazon)

Are there others? Who knows, I don't care enough to search!

I'm not interested to take sides, but in big companies it's more likely
there's pockets of problems, rather than company-wide problems.

------
cjbprime
> Here’s what the story didn’t tell you about Mr. Olson: his brief tenure at
> Amazon ended after an investigation revealed he had attempted to defraud
> vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with
> the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately.

Together with the inappropriate disclosure of performance reviews, this
statement just makes me think that Amazon probably has a culture of defrauding
vendors, and usually gets away with it, but sometimes has to blame a junior
hire to save face when caught.

~~~
jessriedel
Let's assume both Amazon and Carney are evil. Do you think it was acceptable
for the Times to not disclose the context of Olson's dismissal?

~~~
dandare
NYT disputes it, see one of the comments above: > Olson described conflict and
turmoil in his group and a revolving series of bosses, and acknowledged that
he didn’t last there. He disputes Amazon’s account of his departure, though.
He told us today that his division was overwhelmed and had difficulty meeting
its marketing commitments to publishers; he said he and others in the division
could not keep up. But he said he was never confronted with allegations of
personally fraudulent conduct or falsifying records, nor did he admit to that.
If there were criminal charges against him, or some formal accusation of
wrongdoing, we would certainly consider that. If we had known his status was
contested, we would have said so.

~~~
jessriedel
Thanks for the pointer. Here's the comment you refer to:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10414033](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10414033)

As danso notes, the NY Times editor and Amazon's Carney have now made pretty
unequivocal contradictory statements, with little room for them both to be
right without one of them outright lying. (And I don't think either one would
go on the record here with an outright lie.) _Except_ that the NY Times says
"But he [Olson] said he was never confronted with allegations of personally
fraudulent conduct or falsifying records, nor did he admit to that... If we
had known his status was contested, we would have said so". That is, they can
both be telling the truth if _Olson_ was lying to the Times about his
departure.

That's my prediction for how this shakes out. And in that case, the Times will
have egg on their face for having not properly vetted their sources.

------
GCA10
Anyone else remember that sly piece by BusinessInsider in September, saying
that Medium could make a lot of money by becoming the modern-day version of PR
Newswire -- where companies pay to get their stories out to the public? It
sounded like a nutty comparison at the time.

But after looking at Jay Carney's post, I'm thinking that that BI's Biz Carson
might have nailed it. Even if the premium pay channel doesn't exist yet ...
the temptation to create it is clearly there

[http://www.businessinsider.com/medium-pr-newswire-
revisited-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/medium-pr-newswire-
revisited-2015-9)

~~~
dswalter
You bring up a really good point. Medium's default layout scheme highlights
content over authorship, so you don't get smacked in the face by the fact that
this is written by Jay Carney.

------
jobu
Even in job interviews, Amazon touts itself is an intense, high-energy place
to work, and that was exactly what I saw in the NYT article. Some people can't
handle that, and they were fired or left disgruntled. The fact that many of
the quotes were from disgruntled workers was completely obvious, and going
into the dirty details of their firings is pretty low.

The most damning claim of the NYT article that isn't addressed here is the
lack of caring and support for people on parental leave, FMLA, and people
going through major health issues (cancer, stillborn child). If the authors
embellished on those claims then that would actually hurt the original
article.

------
bambax
This seems to be the story that never ends... But everytime Amazon tries to
respond it seems to dig itself deeper in its own bullshit (I'm a very loyal
Amazon customer, and while I wouldn't work at Amazon in a million years, I'm
very sorry to see all this).

Some comments:

> _Chris Brucia, who recalls how he was berated in his performance review
> before being promoted, also was given a written review. Had the Times asked
> about this, we would have shared what it said._

Amazon is willing to "share" with the press the contents of performance
reviews of its employees? That's bad (worse than what was in the article).

> _Dina Vaccari, the former employee who is quoted saying she didn’t sleep for
> four days straight to illustrate just how hard Amazon forces people to work,
> posted her own response to the article. Here’s what she said:_ "Allow me to
> be clear: The hours I put in at Amazon were my choice."

That's ridiculous and meaningless; if you choose to not sleep for 4 days in
order to carry out your job, isn't it obvious the expectations were set too
high, and work/life balance is regarded as irrelevant, as a company policy (or
lack thereof)?

> _When there are two sides of a story, a reader deserves to know them both._

Well, ok (in general; sometimes there's no "other side"; creationism is not
"another side" to the story of evolution, for example). But in this case, the
"other side" should be Amazon employees doing normal hours and performing
spectacularly, not the voice of management -- as rendered by someone who used
to be the Mother of All Spin Doctors!

> _The next time you see a sensationalistic quote in the Times (...) you might
> wonder whether there’s a crucial piece of context or backstory missing —
> like admission of fraud_

That's a cheap, defensive shot; what it really says is you're hurt; and that
you'd probably be less hurt if there was not a lot of truth to the original
article.

------
wittekm
Interesting note: the hiring of Jay Carney (Feb 26, 2015) coincides exactly
with this article ("We were in regular communication with Ms. Kantor from
February through the publication date in mid-August"). I wonder if such a
high-visibility PR hire came about /because/ of this article?

~~~
whatok
I'm sure it would have been a multi-month process to hire for a position like
Carney's so it likely would have started well before that February date.

~~~
sageabilly
Interesting speculation by the original commenter, however, as we can imagine
that the NYT likely shopped the idea for the article to Amazon long before Ms.
Kantor was originally in contact with Amazon. So perhaps the timeline went NYT
shops idea for article with Amazon -> Amazon realizes they need a head of PR
and starts looking -> Ms. Kantor reaches out to begin discussions with Amazon
right around the same time Carney is hired

------
lpsz
One can like or hate Amazon, and it may or may not be a crappy place to work.

That said, it sounds like NYT (a newspaper of record, btw) did more than
reasonable selective reporting, to evoke certain feelings in the readers, to
get clicks, to start a conversation, or what the reason may be. And it's lousy
to see this in modern news reporting. Even the respectable publications err on
the side of sensationalism, and it's notoriously hard to get unbiased
information as a reader.

Where can someone go to read unbiased, well-researched, both-sides-of-the-
story news?

~~~
radiorental
"Where can someone go to read unbiased, well-researched, both-sides-of-the
story news?"

I personally think we're spoilt for choice. Just bear in mind everyone,
everywhere has an inherent bias. Some more so that others.

I read these to get what I feel is a well rounded opinion
[http://america.aljazeera.com/](http://america.aljazeera.com/)
[http://www.bbc.com/news](http://www.bbc.com/news)

------
jbapple
If you worked for Amazon and you saw that Jay Carney was willing to reveal
your personnel records if you talk to the media about unethical or illegal
labor management practices, would it change your decision about speaking to
reporters?

I think we should consider the possibility that this post will be more
effective at intimidating current and former Amazon employees into silence,
rather than persuading NYT readers.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
After having read down half the page of responses, your comment was enough to
convince me to finally cancel my Prime membership.

------
ablation
What a bizarre, at times completely inappropriate article to have posted. All
it does is leave me amazed at - and a little embarrassed for - Amazon's PR
department.

~~~
puredemo
I'm basically an Amazon fanboy, but with the failure of the Fire phone, the
continually over-wrought nature of AWS UI, and now this hamfisted response to
the NYT, they are really losing their appeal.

Amazon: Your current employees had already written much better responses than
this within 48 hours of the NYT article coming out. What is this drivel
supposed to accomplish? Why is PR rant hosted on Medium? Why are you exposing
old employee personnel records? Why are you putting political operatives like
Carney in charge of your PR?

Get it together guys. The NYT article is ancient history now and didn't merit
further response. It was an obvious hit piece but your reaction has been quite
poor.

------
suprgeek
If anything, such a cynical and mean-spirited "reply" makes it absolutely and
positively certain that working at Amazon should be the last thing any half-
way competent Tech person should consider.

This piece reads exactly like an oppo-research piece that you would use as a
hatchet-job on a political opponent. I had to check twice to ensure that this
was not some kind of satire (it is getting harder for me to tell these days).
It goes into great detail making personal attacks against the "complainers"
while doing nothing to address the substantive allegations made by the
articles.

So 1) yes there is a "snitch" tool that amazon encourages employees to use 2)
the people identified have all quit after complaining of excessive work one
way or another 3) when the initial story came out Almighty Leader Jeff even
wrote a memo "please be more considerate" 4) PR flunky now makes sleazy
attacks on ex-employees to blunt the negative perceptions.

Updated to add- You want an unsubstantiated ad-hominem here you go: "Jay
Carney was encouraged to quit his white-house posting because of his
incompetence. Also how seriously can you take a PR guy with the last name of
'Carney'? He had to go!"

------
whatok
Did I miss out on some additional fallout after the article was initially
published? I don't see why they're addressing this two months later.

~~~
TravelTechGuy
My $.02: maybe they are starting to feel the fallout in their recruiting
efforts about now. I get about one recruiting email from Amazon a month on
average, and I assume others do as well. It's enough that 10% of candidates
reply with "I wouldn't feel comfortable working there", or " I don't think
it's a culture fit - I don't like crying at my desk, as is apparently
encouraged over there" for them to realize they have to do something drastic.
Sadly, for them drastic means going double-douche: outing ex-employees and
attacking the media, rather than own up to even a small part of what was
published, and say they are striving to improve their culture.

~~~
cwilkes
I read somewhere else that they are afraid of another upcoming expose, like
from 60 minutes, and want to get out in front of it.

Even if that is true it was a really ham handed way of doing it. The only
people this appeals to are ones that already like Amazon. The ones on the
fence look at it and see "hey they drug out why this was a bad person" and
think that they don't want to be on the receiving end of that and thus turn
into ones that aren't inclined to work for them.

------
GabrielF00
I was pretty shocked by how over-the-top and lacking in context the Times
piece was. Lots of industries have pretty intense work cultures (management
consulting, medicine, wall street). The focus on Amazon and the exaggerated
language made the piece seem very agenda-driven (EVERYONE cries at their desk?
really?)

------
ams6110
Goes back at least as far as the 1980's, remember the Pulitzer Prize the
Washington Post had to give up after one of their reporters literally made up
a story about an 8 year old heroin addict.

Just because it's in a major newspaper, don't believe reporting is evenly
balanced or without an agenda.

~~~
a_c_s
The piece was also in line with numerous previous reports on Amazon's working
conditions for both blue collar and white collar employees.

~~~
srtjstjsj
That's a classic fallacy: You already had evidence, fine, but you don't get to
re-use it to increase your confidence again later. If you want to build up a
case, you need more evidence, need more narrative exaggeration backed by the
old evidence.

------
numair
If you're hiring in tech right now, you have to REALLY love Amazon for doing
this. Basically, what they are saying is, if you speak out about the emotional
hell of working for them, they will attempt to publicly humiliate you to make
themselves look better.

You're going to go through hell working for them, and you're going to go
through hell if you speak out after you leave. Now, they might think this is a
winning strategy for them, but in fact the logical conclusion for potential
hires is -- stay away from Amazon, because you'll hate it, and then they will
ruin your reputation if you speak out. Which is really helpful for everyone
else who's hiring right now, because intelligent people paranoid about their
reputation will steer clear of any potential Amazon interviews.

Their PR guy doesn't understand that he just cost his employer an entire
generation of talented engineers. Oh well, this is great for everyone else.

------
j_s
Did I miss anything below (for anyone who wants to review)? The negative
articles draw many more comments, but the general sentiment is not directed
only against Amazon.

 _Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065243](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065243)
(424 comments)

 _Inside Amazon_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10070115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10070115)
(98 comments)

 _Amazon boss Jeff Bezos defends company 's workplace culture_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10072389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10072389)
(73 comments)

 _My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10083475](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10083475)
(331 comments)

------
bluishgreen
Someone walks to me and says things like this(the original NYTimes article)
about say...Facebook, I will double check. If someone says what they said
about Amazon, I won't double check (I know, I should). But you know what, I
have heard so many anecdotes from people who have no reason to lie, that for
me personally at this point, I have much better things to do than double check
the obvious. Someone with a fancy university grant will do that, I have other
stuff to do, like ignore all those amazon high-volume-recruiter incessant
emails.

------
rdancer
It is sad that the NYT editorial standards are so weak, and they have cried
wolf so many times (e.g. Apple suppliers' working conditions). They used to be
a broadsheet with an opinion; now I don't know what they are :-(

------
mangeletti
This reminds me so much of the Foxconn "scandal" that was "broken" on This
American Life a few years ago. The source infiltrated Foxconn to expose human
rights atrocities and abuse, but it turned out the source was lying about
almost everything he told TAL.

------
cryoshon
"Senior Vice President for Global Corporate Affairs at Amazon. Previously, he
served as White House Press Secretary and spent 20 years as a reporter for
TIME."

A spin doctor doing his best to protect the people that pay him. Pay this
article no mind; unrelated assaults on a source's character have no bearing on
already established facts.

~~~
tgb
Do you know the meaning of the word "hypocrisy"? Your comment almost had me
laugh out loud.

~~~
cryoshon
Consider that the source I was mentioning had no positive gain associated with
going to bat against Amazon in the original NYT story, and Jay Carney, as PR-
guy, has a huge incentive (keeping his job) to go to bat for Amazon.

~~~
notjaycarney
You don't think it's possible the former employee had an agenda or axe to
grind after his dismissal?

People often act out when they are emotionally upset, which the former Amazon
employee clearly was.

This whole HN thread is kind of amazing -- it's filled with ad hominem attacks
against Carney because of his history in politics _.

Very few of the articles actually addressed Carney's main idea: the primary
source from the NYT had a possible agenda/bias. The NYT reporters knew that,
but did not report it. They also misled the Amazon people about their
objective, pitching it differently and hiding facts that would have undercut
their point.

It seems like Carney presented a lot of facts. If you dispute the facts in the
article, or think Carney flat-out made up the email he quotes at length (or
the reason for dismissal), then you are at least addressing the content of
what he says.

_ granted, i have no idea what his political history is, as I'd never heard
his name before.

~~~
cryoshon
Carney's history in politics is that of a mouthpiece whose purpose was to
propagandize the media and thus the public. Should we even bother to read
anything he says?

I say no, we should not pollute our minds with propaganda in general, nor Mr.
Carney's latest medley of trying to shift the conversation away from Amazon's
shitty culture.

The verdict is supported in this very thread: Amazon employees and former
Amazon employees are coming out of the woodwork to refute Mr. Carney's
whitewashing and support the original NYT article alleging that Amazon is an
awful place to work. The dispute is settled.

We already know beyond a shadow of a doubt Carney will say whatever he's paid
to, and that Amazon is a bad place to work... I'm not sure what's left to
argue over.

------
FussyZeus
Just weighing in on the Olson thing: Why is it considered unprofessional or
inappropriate for a company rep to speak openly about the illegal/unethical
practices of now former employees? Isn't that a good thing to hear about that
a company you do business with is culling the ranks of those stealing from it,
or whatever they happen to be doing?

If he admitted it and resigned over it, sounds like a pretty cut and dried
case that he did it. Screw his reputation, and screw him. Maybe if this stuff
was made public more often so that misbehaving executives got more punishment
than a tiny ass fine and a huge sum of money, we'd have less of a crony-
capitalist system going on these days.

~~~
TravelTechGuy
Please look at the bigger picture: this is Amazon telling it's current (and
future?) employees: if you ever say anything bad about us, all your records
will go public, and our head of PR will use any inconsideration in them to
argue that your opinion is invalid.

Fraud may have been the outlier case here: he's also outing reviews of other
people whose opinions he/his employers don't like. That's one way to deal with
whistle blowers, and scare the rest of the herd: don't mess with us - we've
got your files, and we ain't afraid to put them on Medium.

~~~
FussyZeus
Two things:

\- I have zero problem with a company releasing info pertaining the character
of an employee.

\- If you're an employee doing your job honestly, you shouldn't either.

~~~
iterati
Who needs privacy when you have nothing to hide?

~~~
rhino369
Should privacy really cover what someone else (in this case Amazon) thinks
about you? These aren't medical records or other protected information.

~~~
TravelTechGuy
Several points on this privacy angle:

1\. Many of the facts in your HR files are based on heresay - what your
colleagues/managers/HR personnel think about you. These are highly subjective
facts, very domain and company specific. Airing those out without context is a
breach of privacy and can cause great damage to the employee down the line.

2\. These files belong to the employer - he can alter them to show whatever he
wants them to; either in real time, or after the fact, to justify wrongful
termination etc. I've actually seen that happen, when a pregnant colleague of
mine was let go, and the management later invented a non-existent reason
(right before they settled out of court).

3\. Privacy here goes one way: if you, the ex-employee, decide to protect your
good name, or retaliate - maybe by discussing what you think really happened,
you may be violating the NDA you signed. At worst, you could be sued for
libel. Most of the time you have no facts on your side, and you can refer to
#2 to see what happens to the facts aligned against you.

Finally, imho, if your employee was caught in the process of criminal
activity, report him to the appropriate authorities and fire him. Letting him
go quietly, only to use this fact against him later, smells of shoddy behavior
to your current and past employees, and to your customers.

~~~
FussyZeus
1\. I agree, kind of. The documents if released publicly should be made
available in whole so context can be seen.

2\. This pushes into the conspiracy area though, you'd have to have an entire
chain of staff (at least in a company the size of Amazon) that couldn't _not_
know this had occurred, and somehow convince them all to be silent. Not
impossible, just unlikely.

3\. If the company is releasing info about whatever occurred, an NDA would no
longer apply. Why would it? The information is now public knowledge.

This I definitely agree with, when employees are found to be stealing it
should be handled like any other matter; call the cops and let the process
handle itself. Again I think we'd have a much less corrupt corporate culture
in our society if we started treating these criminals like criminals.

~~~
TravelTechGuy
1\. Not really possible: context potentially includes specific projects,
specific privileged technology, customer information, not to mention private
data of other people. Take for example the following: I use the reporting
system to say that an employee is doing a horrible job on project X, using
technology Y, therefore causing us to give customer Z a discount. Would you
now reveal X, Y, Z, my name, my review, the entire project's status at the
time of the review, and few other things that might cause the company many
issues down the line? Or will you just say: "his colleagues reported he was
lazy and disruptive, not a team player, not a good developer etc."?

2\. Not far fetched at all, as I said, I saw it happen more than once. Usually
we're discussing just the direct manager and one HR "specialist". I can put
whatever I want in your file, whenever I want it. If it ever reaches a court,
lawyers may discuss the what, why and when. But as someone else here mentions,
people rarely sue their employers, so 99% of the time I can feel completely
secure in retconning reality to fit my narrative.

3\. Nope. Read through NDAs signed in big companies - they are very one-sided.
Unless a court specifically negates an NDA, you may still be charged for
violating it. Take again the case in point 1. Suppose said employee responds
back to the leak about him being lazy by saying: "our project for customer Z
was already behind schedule, due to us switching mid project from Java to
Scala" \- you just revealed privileged information: name of customer, status
of project, technologies used. You may be sued for those. If customer Z
decides to cancel their contract as a result of the leak, I'm sure the legal
department of the former employer would be glad to talk to the employee about
incurred damages.

Finally, remember that this is an uneven fight to begin with: ex-employees are
usually in a vulnerable position (sometimes even financially), seeking their
next job, and with no readily-available legal resources. Employers have legal
departments, lawyers on retainer, and significant funds and time to tie you in
court. That's why 99.9% of people keep below the radar even when they feel
slighted.

------
forgottenpass
This is written by Jay Carney. Yes, that Jay Carney. Apparently he's working
for Amazon now.

Two months after Bezos' internal memo is "leaked" to the press saying that the
Amazon in the NYT peice isn't the Amazon he knows, and that employees should
email him directly if something like that happens. Now it's time for the
offensive. Apparently two months is the amount of time you no longer have to
pretend to care about work conditions, and go back to reputation.

This medium piece attacks the character of the NYT's source, which is comedy
gold coming from someone who was paid to be a lying weaselly bastard,
performing active disservice to the citizenry.

~~~
whatok
Former Minister of Propaganda aside, if his account of one of the key sources
of the story is true, it kinda affects how it should be perceived, right?

~~~
chishaku
Right. How do we properly discern between professional bullshitters?

~~~
whatok
I would probably have to side with Amazon's account since it would be pretty
easy for the person who resigned to sue for libel if it were not true. Don't
think Amazon would want to expose themselves like that.

~~~
saosebastiao
I would likely be millions of dollars richer if I happened to record a two
minute conversation with my former boss's boss, who was an ecclesiastical
leader at a church that I eventually left. He told me point blank that the
reason I was fired was because I wasn't faithful enough and was no longer
worthy of my (completely unrelated) employment. On the books, however, they
made it out to be a performance issue. I had plenty of witnesses available to
me that could have proven that it wasn't a performance issue, but in an at-
will company, that doesn't get me anything at all.

I don't go around recording random conversations, and corporations have a lot
of ways to cover their tracks. When that is your reality and the burden of
proof is on you, you don't do anything. You get fucked and you learn from it.

~~~
whatok
You're approaching it from the employee perspective rather than the
employer's. Given that Amazon put this out to repair their image, do you think
they would risk a headline (even if eventually proven to be false) that says
"Amazon lied about employee's resignation"? This guy could absolutely get
someone to take a case pro bono with all the press it's getting.

~~~
saosebastiao
I'll give you two hypothetical situations:

1) Vendor manager Jim tries to defraud a vendor. He gets caught, and
confronted about it. He realizes he messed up, accepts responsibility, and
resigns on the spot.

2) Vendor manager Joe gets pressured by boss to defraud a vendor because the
boss is under pressure from his boss to cut costs or be fired. Joe pushes
back, gets reprimanded for not following Amazon's "disagree and commit"
principle, and gets a poor performance review. Joe learns his lesson, defrauds
his vendors, and everything is fine. The boss's boss and boss leave eventually
because they never could get costs down, and the newly re-orged boss notices
some discrepancies. Joe gets blamed for defrauding customers, and is told that
he is now violating Amazon's "Insist on the Highest Standards" leadership
principle. Joe immediately quits out of frustration with Amazon's leadership
and culture.

Here is the problem: Both scenarios have the same paper trail of a fraud
allegation and immediate resignation. And that paper trail is enough security
to defend a position in court...especially if it is the employee's burden of
proof to show what really happened.

~~~
whatok
RE: #2, agree that this absolutely happens just seems implausible in this
situation. For argument's sake, let's assume this happens but it's not
widespread at Amazon. I have not read any former employee accounts of it and
the NYT would have ABSOLUTELY published something even if they had a whiff of
it. Under that assumption, this guy happens to be one of the few people quoted
by name in the article that happened to have undergone something shady at
work? I don't know why he put his name out there if what Amazon claims is true
and I definitely don't know why he would have put his name out there if your
second hypothetical is remotely true. Just doesn't make sense.

------
cognivore
"Here’s what the story didn’t tell you about Mr. Olson: his brief tenure at
Amazon ended after an investigation revealed he had attempted to defraud
vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with
the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately."

It doesn't matter. If the devil tells the truth, it's still the truth.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
But if it's the devil talking, you have fair grounds for increasing your
suspicion that what's said isn't the truth.

And in this case, if Mr. Olsen did in fact get caught by such an
investigation, he may be significantly biased against Amazon. That does not
automatically make what he says untrue, but it does increase suspicion that it
may not be the straight story.

------
alexggordon
While Mediums (Jay Carney's) article has a fair point, in that once you look
at article under a microscope its conclusions start to fall apart, I think Jay
may have missed _what_ the article is. The authors knew from the get-go that
they were going to publish a scathing "insider", "never-before seen" review of
Amazon. The NYT article is First-Class clickbait. It's Buzzfeed in a suit with
a degree.

Jay Carney did an excellent job debunking it; however, it's much like
debunking a Buzzfeed article. You might come out ahead logically, but that
isn't what people are going to be talking about. The NYT isn't going for
truth, they need people to read their newspaper, and then talk about it so
they decided to write a bad article about Amazon, and then they found the
"sources" for it.

------
hashberry
The similarities and inaccuracies remind me of the Rolling Stone "A Rape on
Campus" story. What is wrong with today's journalism? These are established,
mainstream publishers. There is so much focus on the message instead of the
facts that entire stories can be fabricated.

I canceled my NYTimes subscription last year because it has become
increasingly frustrating to read, especially their "women in tech" articles.
For example, their recent "What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech"[0] op-ed
blames nerd male culture for making women uncomfortable, and argues for a more
neutral environment with no Star Wars posters or tech magazines or nerdy
t-shirts...

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/what-
really...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/what-really-keeps-
women-out-of-tech.html?_r=0)

------
dvere
Acting like Scientology.

------
pm24601
Here are some more people for Jay to slander:

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

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10123456](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10123456)
( [https://medium.com/@jcheiffetz/i-had-a-baby-and-cancer-
when-...](https://medium.com/@jcheiffetz/i-had-a-baby-and-cancer-when-i-
worked-at-amazon-this-is-my-story-9eba5eef2976) )

------
FmrAMZN_TA
Disclaimer: I am a former Amazon employee. I worked there for exactly a year.
I assume I was doing well, I was offered increase bonus and base after my
initial year.

This response from Amazon continues to amaze me - first a post from Bezos that
quoted an employee's anecdotal experiences and makes the (totally absurd)
claim that Bezos doesn't know what life is like working there.

Then they have a post ([http://recode.net/2015/09/25/why-i-work-for-amazon-a-
respons...](http://recode.net/2015/09/25/why-i-work-for-amazon-a-response/))
from a Senior VP who doesn't have the same experience as someone who isn't a
Senior VP.

Now they are digging up dirt on employees to paint them with a bad brush.
First, the person with the killer quote should have been removed, no question.
Huge bias.

But the second and third people? Nothing in the piece is wrong - they could
have been strafed with aggressive language and/or they could have been berated
in their reviews. Look at the wording:

    
    
      All three included positive feedback on strengths as well as thoughts on areas of improvement.
      Far from a “strafing,” even the areas for improvement written by her colleagues contained
      language like: “It has been a pleasure working with Elizabeth.” 
    

This is the best you can do? "Contained language like"? This is truly terrible
spin. At Amazon, they teach managers to give the classic "shit sandwich" \-
good/bad/good. I saw many examples (I was a manager and reviewed many pieces
of feedback in OLRs - Organizational Leadership Review) written EXACTLY as
ham-handedly as this: "Overall, it has been a pleasure working with Elizabeth.
However, the fact that she did not know the margins for a specific warehouse
group when presenting to our VP shows a complete lack of diving deep, and
makes me question whether or not she really wants to work at this level."

The third example is similarly vague/wrong: "Chris Brucia, who recalls how he
was berated in his performance review before being promoted, also was given a
written review... Mr. Brucia was given exceptionally high ratings and then
promoted to a senior position." That doesn't mean he wasn't berated - it could
have been overly aggressive/wrong (and you cannot dispute ANY claims written
in the feedback, all you can do is complain to your manager), just because it
ended on a good note doesn't make it less hurtful.

But what this really shows is that Amazon is as ruthless as ever. They WILL go
after you, they will dig up dirt on you, and they will terrify you into never
speaking out. If you are a former employee (as I am), you know the stories are
very very true, and NEVER speak out publicly.

    
    
      When the story came out, we knew it misrepresented Amazon.
    

I'm sorry, Mr. Carney, the story was as accurate a representation of Amazon as
I've ever seen in press.

~~~
serge2k
I left a few months ago and I have mixed feelings about the company. I went
through a period where I felt pretty depressed and hated it there, but it
wasn't really anything in particular that amazon did. I actually had it pretty
good. Things did start to go downhill really bad this year (on my team). The
team culture became pretty toxic because of some organizational/ operational
changes and management didn't seem to care. There was also pressure from above
that I don't think my immediate manager handled well, and things were bad.

i don't think the article was entirely fair, but amazon has some deep flaws.
There was a pastebin on reddit by a few that was much more accurate.

I do think in the right situation I would consider working there again. It
really is a minefield though.

------
hans
Just love that Bezos quote: "that's not the amazon that i know" ... hmm gee
uthink? billionaire founder has a different experience, wow who'd a thought?

glassdoor has spelled this out for a long time but its amusing that amazon
doesn't admit they'll change.

my thinking is: a company that relishes in frugality = your machine your
monitors and your coffee will suck, you will never get promoted, stack rank
Plus all this bs about suing via nda and indebtedness around relo assistance
etc sounds like the suck .. amazon is downright hostile

------
mgalka
Saw a great post relating to this a few months ago.

[http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/using-
data-...](http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/using-data-to-
benchmark-amazon-engineering-employee-satisfaction)

At the very least the reporters could have checked Glassdoor and seen that
employees actually rate Amazon fairly well.

------
bitwize
American journalism is like the American judiciary: the truth is irrelevant
and whoever can produce the more convincing _story_ wins.

------
aaronbrethorst
It seems bizarre to me that this rebuttal took two months to publish. Are they
seeing a problem with recruiting all of a sudden?

------
anon203942309
Taking a high level approach here, there are a lot of details on both sides
that could be disputed. But what remains true, is there is a reason this
article was written about Amazon and not any of the many other tech companies
out there. There is obviously an element of truth to the story, even if
specific details can be disputed.

------
aschearer
"Give me six words of an innocent man, and I will find something in them with
which to hang him"

How should companies interact with the press today in order to avoid an
outcome like the original NYT article?

~~~
mangeletti
It's "six lines", not "six words". I think Cardinal Richelieu would be hard
pressed to find six words to be as incriminating, unless they were, "I have
just committed high treason".

------
bernardom
For someone who had to stand at the White House podium for years, it's got to
be gratifying to get a shot back at the media for once.

------
serge2k
> Also, [the anytime feedback tool is] not anonymous

I assume by this they mean managers can see who left feedback.

------
logfromblammo
The headline seems very click-baitish and uninformative. Can we be more
specific? The New York Times doesn't tell me a lot of things.

 _Jay Carney Rebuts New York Times Article About Amazon 's Work Culture_,
perhaps?

------
suneilp
How about some proof that Olson committed fraud. With everything I've been
hearing about Amazon, I have to wonder if Olson was innocent or scapegoated by
a group of people involved in the fraud.

------
pluckytree
I’m pretty sure I know what the headline of this article didn’t tell me. What
it was about.

------
neoCrimeLabs
> What The New York Times Didn’t Tell You

Am I the only one tired of click-bait titles that don't tell you anything
about the article? Had to read the comments here to understand what the
article was about and decide if it was worth reading.

All it takes is 4 extra words to give the title context:

> What The New York Times Didn’t Tell You [about working at Amazon]

~~~
dang
We changed the title to add "about Amazon" and remove the linkbait "you".

~~~
neoCrimeLabs
Thanks!

------
atomi
Ambigous title.

------
unethical_ban
Does this kind of behavior indicate we should stop using Amazon? Despite
loving my Kindle, is it time to boycott a company that behaves this way?

~~~
eclipxe
No.

~~~
unethical_ban
Excellent feedback.

------
izacus
O wow, this makes Amazon look really bad - it's like when politicians
opponents try to discredit opponents with criminal charges or whatnot without
actually refuting them.

Note how they don't really deny or refute the text of original article but
just go full on to personally attack a person to discredit him.

------
rm_-rf_slash
While selective storytelling has been a staple of traditional news media for
ages, this article does tempt me to ask: why Amazon? Of all the workaholic
culture tech companies of the last 20 years, why did the New York Times choose
to center the exposé on Amazon.com?

My entirely baseless suspicion is that unlike many other tech companies,
Amazon is a direct competitor in its ability to drive information to their
customers through their proprietary devices and channels, and can also slowly
chip away at the newspaper's clout with Amazon ratings for books displacing
the Times' bestseller list, for example. Instead of reading Times' reviews of
books, films, products, and so on, a customer might consider Amazon's 5-star
review system to be enough for them.

Amazon's work culture is hardly unique in corporate America, especially among
the tech industry. The New York Times knew that they would make an adversary
with that piece. They chose their target carefully.

~~~
forgottenpass
The motivation you speculate on seems, uh, awfully complicated compared to
"Newspaper airs dirty laundry of Fortune 29 company."

~~~
aet
Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post (edited: Not Amazon, but Bezos owns WP)

