
Amazon guy who wrote a rebuttal to NYT worked 100-hour week at another company - sidcool
http://www.businessinsider.in/The-Amazon-employee-who-wrote-a-rebuttal-to-the-New-York-Times-once-worked-100-hour-weeks-at-a-different-tech-company/articleshow/48535271.cms
======
InclinedPlane
Relevant: [http://pastebin.com/BjD84BQ3](http://pastebin.com/BjD84BQ3)

Also, I'll link my critique of amazon's work environment/culture here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/3hc9gs/jeff_bezos_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/3hc9gs/jeff_bezos_is_simply_shocked_to_hear_amazon_is_a/cu6ac7r)

Amazon isn't the worst place to work, certainly, and some parts of it are
alright, but it has some enormous, deep seated institutional problems with the
way it treats its workers (blue collar and white collar). Fundamentally the
problem is that Amazon treats workers like machinery, and even when they
aren't being "overworked" in a nominal sense of hours per week they are still
often being overburdened in terms of stress and workload. I've had many
friends and friendly-acquaintances who have worked for amazon in one capacity
or another and nearly universally (with one exception) the story is that it's
a decidedly sub-par experience, and many of them leave of their own volition
after only 1 or 2 years. For myself I left a significant amount of bonuses and
stock grants, let alone salary, on the table to only work 1 year there. There
are some things amazon does well, even exceptionally well, but maintaining a
healthy work environment is not one of them.

------
vacri
> _Most of us hadn 't slept more than an average of 2 hours a night in
> months._

This doesn't pass the sniff test. Not to say that the work in this mysterious
company wasn't gruelling, but it makes the numbers suspect.

~~~
kzhahou
Sniff test, nothing. This is absolutely ludicrous. 20 hour work-days
(9am->5am) for months straight??? Gimme a break. You'd be hallucinating on the
second week.

For the life of me I don't understand how this humble-brag is repeated year
after year by people.

~~~
skuhn
An occasional 100 hour work week is tough but do-able. Claiming an entire team
got an average of 2 hours of sleep a night for months (meaning that some on
the team got even less than that) is outright preposterous. It also reeks of
"powering through" machismo and I don't believe it happened quite like that.

If it did happen though, that is a total failure of leadership. Not only were
these people being tormented, they were a danger to themselves and others just
driving in to the office every day.

Unless the fate of the entire human race relied on the success of their
project, everyone involved should have given this ultimatum on the second week
of this ordeal: reschedule the project to realistic goals or cancel it
entirely, or I quit.

------
richardwigley
>> Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his
personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.

Meh.

------
pinewurst
Direct pointer to referenced article to avoid parsing it from BI clickbait:
[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141208045206-6976444--
the-w...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141208045206-6976444--the-work-
death-march-a-survivor-s-tale?trk=prof-post)

This is definitely about Microsoft - the "HiPo" reference gives it away and I
think worth reading. I knew someone in that same period who was killing
himself there, sleeping in his office for one dubious effort after another.

------
Evolved
Even if he actually did put in a 100-hour work week (highly suspect as I and
probably others question if actual quality work was getting done during all
100 hours or if he counts other activities as part of "working"), he likely
was and even admits that he was a walking zombie which definitely calls into
question the quality of the work[0].

[0] [http://lifehacker.com/working-over-40-hours-a-week-makes-
you...](http://lifehacker.com/working-over-40-hours-a-week-makes-you-less-
productive-1725646811)

------
kordless
Here's the article referenced: [http://www.businessinsider.com/an-amazonians-
response-to-ins...](http://www.businessinsider.com/an-amazonians-response-to-
inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-
workplace-2015-8?_ga=1.59315822.299718283.1439354017)

That is a seriously dense piece that took major effort to write.

