
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos defends company's workplace culture - johlo
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33957484
======
gdulli
> Amazon's boss Jeff Bezos wrote in a memo to staff that the "article doesn't
> describe the Amazon I know".

I'm not surprised he feels this way, being solely unaccountable in the way
that his employees are and primarily responsible for both denying and
preserving the culture.

> Mr Ciubotariu invoked the company's culture of fun in his LinkedIn post. "We
> have Nerf wars, almost daily, that often get a bit out of hand," he wrote.

Did this make anyone else cringe? You couldn't pick an example that better
demonstrated an awkward, forced element of corporate "fun."

I have to wonder, though, what he means by them getting "a bit out of hand":

\- "fun" exhaustion?

\- loss of place in stack ranking system?

\- injuries? deaths?

\- productivity lost to spontaneous bouts of letter-writing from employees to
their friends about how much fun it is to work at Amazon?

~~~
Disruptive_Dave
Yep. After spending 10 years in a medium-sized marketing agency, I wrote a
recap post called "A beer fridge does not make a culture," which included this
bit that the "nerf war" comment made me think of:

"About that beer fridge...It’s pretty cool. So is the pop-a-shot table, the
happy hours, the lax dress code, the summer outings (i.e. Drunk Hook-Up Fest),
and the staff lunches. But those aren’t culture. Those are nice-to-haves,
things that make the good days great and the great days awesome. But they
don’t make the bad days good. Please, please, please don’t rely on those kinds
of things."

~~~
jdmichal
I had pretty similar thoughts to the "free food" bullet point at the bottom.
That's so far into "nice to have" territory that I can only see such comments
as whinging about how green the neighbor's yard is. (Except, there's actually
a chance for you to go live in the neighbor's house, if you really wanted to.)

------
jaawn
Mr. Bezos' response strikes me as the all-too-familiar case of upper
management not keeping tabs on middle and lower management. If he is truly
sincere that he does not recognize the version of Amazon depicted in the
article, and does not agree with that type of management, then he (like many
high-level managers) needs to take an active approach in weeding out abusive
managers at all levels (especially lower level managers).

I work at a large enterprise (5,000+ employees) and this is a huge problem for
us. Upper management has a vision for the organization, but it gets lost on
its way down the chain. A simple phrase is the main culprit: "...<any given
policy> is up to manager discretion."

For example, upper management: "We are creating a flexible part-time
teleworking agreement whereby employees can work from home up to 2 days per
week. Usage of this arrangement _is up to manager discretion_." Lower
management: "I know about the new teleworking option, but our department is
not participating because how can anyone get work done at home?"

If upper management does not actively monitor and intervene with stifling
lower-level managers, they can definitely create an organization that, in
practice, differs greatly from the one they imagine, the one they _wanted_ to
create.

------
lotsofpulp
If Bezos really wanted to put his money where his mouth is, he would implement
a minimum mandatory vacation period and significant maternity/paternity leave
at the least, if not a max # of hours per week.

Of course, that would not maximize profits at amazon or most other companies
so that's not really what will happen.

~~~
virmundi
A client had an interesting system along this line. Every employee was
required to leave for one week to make sure that day to day operations
continued without interruption in their absence. As result, everyone took at
least one week of vacation. Often they would take two at this time.

~~~
swillis16
Was the client in the finance field? I've heard of something similar be used
to ensure that employees weren't doing anything 'fishy'.

~~~
virmundi
No, government contracting.I think they were burned in the past when someone
was hit by a bus, so to speak

------
shruubi
I think the clear and interesting thing I have taken from this debacle is that
all the horror stories come from non management with a large portion of the
criticism targeted at people who work around the level of the people who are
coming out to talk about how wonderful it is.

It's easy for management to say how peachy things are when they are the people
who very well might be (unknowingly) creating this culture.

The most amazing part about all of this is that not a single person who has
come out saying this is false has said they will either look into it
themselves or put their money where their mouths are and do something about
it. It's easy to be the general when the guns aren't pointed at you.

------
coldcode
Not surprising. Likely he knows exactly what is going on in his company (known
as a micromanager) but can't stand criticism. But like the titans of old
(Rockefeller, Carnagie etc) employee happiness doesn't register as important
to him.

~~~
mhuffman
Sadly, employee happiness does not always equate to revenue either.

------
mangeletti
Is it just me, or is there something extra creepy about Bezos having AMZN
employees read the NYT article and then email him personally if they
recognized any of the practices?

That's sort of like being the National Security Adviser and telling all NSA
agents, "if you notice anything illicit, please email me personally
[whereafter you will receive a personal drone visit]".

------
jasode
This BBC article isn't really about Jeff Bezos. The bulk of the text is about
Nick Ciubotariu's blog post. Just read the source directly:

[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazonians-response-inside-
am...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazonians-response-inside-amazon-
wrestling-big-ideas-nick-ciubotariu)

Understandably, a story that could have been titled " _Nick Ciubotariu from
Amazon responds to criticism_ " is not as eye-catching as " _Jeff Bezos
defends company 's workplace_"

~~~
Mithaldu
Additionally while there IS a response from Jeff, its full text is actually
available here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10071600](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10071600)

------
bluedino
>> Mr Ciubotariu invoked the company's culture of fun in his LinkedIn post.
"We have Nerf wars, almost daily, that often get a bit out of hand," he wrote.

This reminds me of Rackspace. Rackspace claims to have this great fun
environment and they love their employees and they're always doing this fun
stuff at work. I know a handful of people that work there and I'm always being
told about the elaborate pranks games going on.

Then I wonder why it takes them 2 days for a sales specialist to call me back,
6 hours to respond to a support ticket or it takes them 45 minutes to locate
my server in one of their datacenters.

~~~
nemo44x
I don't work there but 1 note about support plans at companies: You will get
what you pay for. If you have an SLA of 1 hour you will get your reply in an
hour. If you don't have that (lets say you have a 12 hour SLA) the team, even
if they can answer your question right away, is likely going to hold off on it
for awhile because you haven't paid for that level of service.

It's also protection as their response could lead to another reply from you
and possibly a call would have to be scheduled and then meanwhile a few
important tickets from clients that pay for the extra service come in and now
they are backed up.

Sales guys should be calling you constantly though!

------
alistairSH
_" No one tells me to work nights. No one makes me answer emails at night. No
one texts me to ask me why emails aren't answered."_

Well, if you're willingly working nights and weekends (which we know you do,
as you penned the response on a Saturday), then of course nobody is going to
tell you to do so. This statement does nothing to disprove that those who wish
to have lives outside the workplace aren't harassed by their coworkers and/or
managers.

~~~
notacoward
I was struck by the same careful wording. These kinds of policies and
pressures never bother the True Believers who have already decided to make the
company #1 in their lives. You know, the kind who will enlist an already-
annoyed spouse's help to proof-read a work-related article on a Saturday
morning. The problem is with those who still believe in a work/life balance
that's something other than 90/10.

------
sz4kerto
"In Mr Bezos' memo, he encouraged Amazon employees to read the article, and
email him directly if they recognised any of the "shockingly callous
management practices" it described."

Oh well, this seems to be a bit hypocritical. ("Hey Mr. Bezos, my boss, John
Doe (cc'd!) wants me to do this task until tomorrow, but it's 8 pm. What do
you think about this?")

~~~
tmuir
That was the statement that caught my attention too. If the environment really
is how the NYT article, and many HN posters say it is, then Bezos' offer
sounds a lot like US whistle blower protections. Sounds good on paper, not so
much in practice.

------
j_s
None of this most recent discussion has included any mention of conditions at
fulfillment centers (something that has been criticized in the past):

[http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-
mcclelland-f...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-
free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7902887](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7902887)

It is helpful to be aware of how all different types of workers are treated
when evaluating whether or not to work for a company.

------
Cshelton
If you haven't read this book, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of
Amazon, and you want to know how Amazon has worked from day 1, it's a good
place to go. It straight up tells you the culture at Amazon, starting from day
1.

I'll even include the Amazon link =p [http://www.amazon.com/The-Everything-
Store-Bezos-Amazon/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Everything-Store-Bezos-
Amazon/dp/0316219266)

------
parasubvert
Amazon's success at being a grinding place but reaping major business results
align with what I've seen of my previous employer (a transportation icon) that
tightened the screws, re-engineered processes, encouraged thousands to leave.
Revenue, profit, stock price, and bonuses soared.

All of what we've been told about the war for talent, desire for caring work
places, etc. seems to be exaggerated. Companies can literally have a policy of
"be happy you have a job, punk" for professionals for YEARS, and people will
suck it up. Morale does have an impact but not as much as you'd think once
your company is large enough AND it is successful. One commonality in both
companies is that they are very data driven. Eliminating a costly perk? Do it
and see what the data says. Make a change to a major process that people are
resisting? Do it, fire any insubordinates, and see what the data says.
Basically don't take management policy or process for granted unless you have
data to back it up.

There's a line between tough and abusive, however, and this seems to be where
Amazon's (and other tough cultures) walk the line.

~~~
jaawn
The data-driven management you're describing is based on the significant
assumption that you are able to gather accurate data, and interpret that data
accurately.

For example, if you are making a management decision based on how much time
employees are spending on X, you are assuming that you actually know how much
time is being spent on X and what the value of that time is.

Simply measuring data is not sufficient. You have to measure the _right_ data
in the _right_ way for your stated purpose. Companies operating like Amazon
does (apparently), are wildly over-confident in their data collection and
interpretation abilities, in my opinion.

~~~
parasubvert
Most companies I have consulted or work for make decisions based on politics
and conjecture, with data being invented at a bare minimum to back the
argument up, but no one doing serious analysis of it.

The culture of having data collection and an ability to challenge it (whether
it is flawed or not) indicates a desire for a fact-driven culture vs. a power-
driven culture.

They might be over-confident, but one would think that reality in the market
will eventually catch up to that.

~~~
jaawn
This is entirely possible. However, when the data being measured is about
complex human behavior (i.e. time allocation, productivity, work habits,
etc...), I don't think we are even a little bit close to accurately
representing reality. If we were "pretty close," then sure you could justify
making decisions based on that data, but I don't think we are close enough for
that.

Even just the "time worked on X" example is too complex to track. It is
deceptively "simple." It seems like (especially to managers) employees should
be able to work on a task for awhile, and afterward record how much time they
spent working on it. However, it isn't that simple.

In reality, "working on X" might actually mean working on X _along with_
several other things such as email or web browsing or talking to a co-worker
or answering the phone. With reliance on self-reporting, and without some sort
of monitoring system, it is unreasonable to expect this metric to be accurate,
yet this is how many (most?) time reporting systems work.

Managers are making large-scale decisions based on this data. It _looks_ like
accurate data, it has fancy graphs and charts and reporting...but it isn't
actually very accurate. An employee might report an hour spent on a project,
when really only 40 minutes of that hour were spent on the project work, while
the remaining 20 minutes were spent on various interruptions and extra tasks.
This inaccuracy isn't much of an issue for informal uses, such as sticking to
a personal schedule, but for driving decisions as part of a greater pool of
data, it is misleading.

At my organization, upper management is trying to use time reporting data to
come up with a total cost for various initiatives. This is the kind of
scenario I am talking about. Managers don't typically sit and watch everyone
work, nor do they discuss time reporting entries individually, so all they end
up seeing is the data. This separates them from how that data is generated and
leads to inappropriate reliance on that data. From their perspective, it
_feels_ like reliable data that can be used to assign a cost to various
projects, but the data probably doesn't adequately support that use case.

~~~
parasubvert
I feel you. Time tracking analytics is God awfully complicated and mostly
impossible to get right unless you have a very disciplined culture. I've
railed against such poor systems in my younger years.

But sometimes there are ways to make it work. At Pivotal Labs for example, you
are allocated to a pair daily and then to a project or product over a few
weeks. There are no interruptions or meetings beyond townhalls and daily stand
ups... Unless you and your pair occasionally want a ping pong break.
Productivity and resourcing becomes a bit more reasonable in this culture as
its related to stories/requirements in Pivotal Tracker being completed
relative to the number of pairs rather than tying it to individual worth. It's
like an incredibly kind and collaborative culture that also gets good data.

Stepping back to a general management perspective, To me the most effective
data is if you keep it relatively simple and do controlled experiments that
are systemically tied to an external market result. A lot of companies in the
logistics (and now software services) space get good at this.

~~~
jaawn
That is a _much_ better approach. It incorporates the humility you need to
have with this type of data. That system works because it does not assume and
expect accuracy, it works around the problem in a different way.

So, I guess my original sentiment is more like: "data-driven" is not a good
thing on its own, because you need more than just a bunch of data, you need
analytics.

It may seem more semantic than anything else, but I think there are some real
differences in how people (especially managers) perceive "data-driven" vs.
some other term like "analytics-driven". "Data is not magic" should be a catch
phrase spread far and wide among the non-technical business world.

------
fasouto
"we have Nerf wars, almost daily, that often get a bit out of hand"

:facepalm: I hate this part of the popular culture where developers are seen
as kids or weirdos with no social skills.

We have to make clear that we didn't like nerf wars neither overworking, if we
didn't respect us nobody is gonna do it.

~~~
pmelendez
> We have to make clear that we didn't like nerf wars neither overworking

I do find those wars very entertaining and stress relieving. What is clear to
me is that, even in the tech world, there are different cultures and not
everybody are equal.

------
sudhirj
There's a bit of a divide that no one seems to be touching on - most of the
issues talked about in the NYT article seem to be from non technical folks,
while engineering tends to be a little happier for precisely the reasons Bezos
mentions.

Amazon and most other companies have separate staff, culture and levels of
morale for engineering and non engineering divisions. Can't really compare
them directly.

~~~
srj
Another anecdote: when I lived in Seattle I knew several amazon engineers and
most seemed overworked and miserable. The reputation is that they hire college
grads and work them until they burn out. My understanding is that the
attrition rate is high within engineering so that may provide some data to
back up this narrative.

------
puppetmaster3
I wonder if this is related to H1 demand and lack of women in tech. Think
about it for a minute.

H1 would have to leave (the country) if they lose their job, so they are stuck
working for a bad boss. Women can sense that, hey, this makes no sense faster
than man who is somewhat expected to 'solider on'.

If there was less H1 (but more legal immigration other ways), than that would
force a turn around and encourage more welcoming places. And less bad bosses.

I even look at product manager job postings and cringe: 'hold engineering team
accountable for commitments'. The issue maybe that there is H1, that there are
people willing to do it.

~~~
CSMastermind
My experience with women at Amazon is this: my ex-girlfriend had an internship
with Amazon in the summer of 2013. While there her manager friended her on
Facebook then sent her some messages suggesting that if she slept with him he
would make sure she got a full time offer and explicitly describing his
fantasies about her.

She ended sleeping with him and true to his word he got her the full time
position. About a month later I found out about the whole thing and broke up
with her.

I emailed the transcripts of their conversations to HR. They conducted an
investigation and he admitted to everything. The guy got to keep his job. They
did some sort of formal counseling with him and then transferred him to
another group. They made the girl to sign a statement saying that nothing
improper happened. They strongly suggested that her full time offer might be
rescinded is she didn't sign the statement.

She signed and has been working there the past more than a year now.

~~~
arcameron
Rough, I'm sorry that happened to you

------
t0mbstone
“Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy
needs to be zero,” Mr. Bezos said in an email circulated to all the retailer’s
employees.

My note: Zero tolerance policies without recourse for correction are a perfect
example of the Amazon inhumanity. Straight from the mouth of the leader.
There's your culture problem right there.

------
austenallred
"BREAKING: Hugely successful big co has ex employees not fully satisfied,
willing to criticize it. It also has current employees who appreciate it. Will
keep you posted."

~~~
eternalban
To top it off, written by a company that has clear conflict of interest in
context of eCommerce (NYTimes is an eCommerce player) and publishing
(Washington Post) with Mr. Bezos.

I am not in any way associated with the wunderkind of Seattle and/or his
company. Just noting an interesting fact.

~~~
littletimmy
Doesn't Bezos own Washington Post?

~~~
austenallred
Yes

------
Epicism
This "I didn't know this was happening" excuse doesn't cut it. You don't know
because you don't look. As long as you are getting the results you want it
doesn't matter if you're demanding people to come back the day after a
miscarriage. Listen to any interview with Jack Welch and he'll tell you how
accountability of work culture comes straight from the top, and how HR reviews
are designed not to ask the right questions. As a random example, there's a
huge difference between asking "have you been illegally treated in any way"
and "have you been immorally treated". Little changes like that make survey
results wildly different, and if management wants they can make employee's say
a labor shop is a great place to work.

------
matwood
Read _The Everything Store_. It is clear the only relationship you want with
Amazon is as a customer. Everything they do is to drive lower prices to the
customer in order to take as much marketshare as possible.

------
chinathrow
The fact that he has to defend their culture says a lot to me.

~~~
toyg
You never see posts about people at Google or Facebook saying they're abused
and overworked. Even with Microsoft, you read about political infighting and
stack-ranking being stupid, but not downright emotional abuse or on-call
madness. With Amazon, it's quite a regular occurrence.

Where there is smoke...

~~~
austenallred
Google:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/reasons-working-at-google-
suc...](http://www.businessinsider.com/reasons-working-at-google-sucks-2012-6)

[http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/18/why-google-employees-
quit/](http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/18/why-google-employees-quit/)

[http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
tech/fea...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
tech/features/anonymous-employees-reveal-the-worst-thing-about-working-for-
google-8921216.html)

Facebook:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/the-22-worst-things-about-
wor...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-22-worst-things-about-working-at-
facebook-according-to-employees-2015-7)

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2410298/Forget-
free-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2410298/Forget-free-food-
drinks--workplace-awful-Facebook-employees-reveal-best-place-work-tech-grind-
like-other.html)

Microsoft:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/why-microsoft-is-so-messed-
up...](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-microsoft-is-so-messed-up-toxic-
environment-and-bad-managers-2011-5)

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/08/micr...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/08/microsoft_ceo_steve_ballmer_retires_a_firsthand_account_of_the_company_s.html)

If your company has >1,000 employees, there will be disgruntled and
dissatisfied employees. Full stop.

~~~
toyg
Did you actually read those complaints? Some are about compensation (you don't
even have to reach 1000 employees to get those...), some about work/life
balance, some about _not being as good as the company would allow you to be_
(!), but i can't see any about emotional abuse, people crying at their desk or
having to pay for a parking lot. It's a different scale.

Even on glassdoor, Amazon averages 3.4 vs Google 4.4 vs Facebook 4.4. That 0.6
difference is what you mention: some people will inevitably be unhappy. But
that other 1.0, that's not normal for a tech company.

