
Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way - wyclif
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/22/opinion/joe-nocera-jeff-bezos-and-the-amazon-way.html
======
astrowilliam
I've worked at a big internet company where the culture was very toxic and not
a good place to work, let alone be a normal human being. Pushy, rude and
underhanded people were plentiful and were willing to throw you so far under
the bus at any given moment that you would never find your way back out.

This became evident to me when I went on my lunch break after working there
for about 4 months. Each employee was given 1 hour for lunch. I spent ~15
minutes walking to the local burrito place, grabbed a burrito which took about
10 minutes and then walked back. I was gone roughly 45 minutes.

The next day I was called into my managers office because someone didn't like
the amount of time that I spent on my lunch break. Lucky for me I had my
receipt and logged my work time so I showed him how much precious company time
I spent galavanting to the burrito place.

I said something that I definitely should have. "Maybe the person that
reported me should have been doing work instead of worrying about my lunch
break. If this company can't treat its employees like humans, I don't plan on
working here much longer"

I got written up for insubordination.

I was pissed.

I went back to my desk and typed up my 2 week notice.

Good riddance.

~~~
greggman
I probably shouldn't post this but what the heck.

I quit on the spot twice when a company was dickish.

Once I had a friend, previous co-worker, that would visit. He'd come into my
office and we'd play games (this was a game company). This had happened about
once every month or 2 for a year or so. One time I had to go to the restroom.
I came back and he was gone. The new boss had escorted him out of the office.
I quit on the spot. Saw that boss at a trade show years later. He apologized.

Another time a boss at a company that was flex and who and never missed a
deadline decided it doesn't going to be flex anymore for the next project. I
was late one day 45 minutes and he got in my face. I brought up that I'd been
an hour and a half early the previous day. He didn't care. Claimed if I worked
at "The Gap" I'd have been fired. It was like "this isn't the Gap, I'm not an
hourly employee". Arguments escalated, I quit.

Apparently he then laid now the law for the remaining employees with strict
hours and strict lunch hours and that you were not to leave the building
outside those hours and threatening to doc people's pay if they were late. Of
course he probably didn't realized that's probably illegal, at least in the
USA. If you dock salaries employees by hours worked they become non-exempt
meaning by not letting them choose their hours they are effectively hourly
employees that have to be paid by the hour and paid overtime. At least in the
USA. Of course IANAL but that's my reading of the law.

I'm not really happy with the way I handled things and it's a life long work
in progress to not get heated but I am proud that I didn't take shit and moved
on from those situations when I did.

~~~
scarmig
First boss doesn't seem that bad, actually. Made a mistake, obviously, but he
was new and maybe just getting his footing, and having an unaccompanied
outsider inside the office is frowned upon by virtually all companies.

The second manager sounds like a particularly unique combination of dickish
and clueless.

~~~
Pyxl101
> First boss doesn't seem that bad, actually. Made a mistake, obviously, but
> he was new and maybe just getting his footing, and having an unaccompanied
> outsider inside the office is frowned upon by virtually all companies.

He could have stayed with the outsider ("escorted" them) until the employee
came back from the restroom. That's what I would do if I found a random person
in my work building who had a visitor's badge and claimed to be there escorted
by an employee.

------
onaplane
Okay, these articles are getting really ridiculous. I just finished a Summer
internship at Amazon. While it's true that there's more pressure on employees
than other places I've worked, it's really not that bad. It definitely doesn't
feel cutthroat, and an 80-85 hour work week is _definitely_ not normal! The
vast majority (I'd say >70%, and I think that's conservative) of people work
35-45, depending on what needs to get done that particular week - which is
completely normal!

There are some teams where it's normal to work longer hours - mostly in AWS.
Usually it's the case that a few people on the team have very high
expectations for themselves, and that sort of forces everyone else to meet
those same standards. I think that's actually not a bad thing - some people
just love to work, and they end up producing a lot of really high quality
software. But if you don't feel the same way, you can just transfer to a
different team! I haven't heard of a manager asking someone to put in extra
hours except when there are extenuating circumstances.

Now, don't get me wrong, as an employee you definitely get the impression that
Amazon doesn't care that much about you. It's not really a fun place to work
or anything like that. But some of these articles make it sound like everyone
who works for Amazon is begin taken advantage of, and that simply isn't true.

~~~
MCRed
Sorry, your internship is not representative. They are trying got trick you
into working there. You were treated special in a number of ways. Further, AWS
is isolated to some extend from the abusive nature of the company by being a
separate division.

A lot of what you say is right out of the amazon weltanshaung-- its cult has
seeped in to some extent.

You're giving us rationalizations for the abusive nature of the work
environment. "high expectations of themselves" == code for piling drudgery on
people because you won't allow them to create a more efficient process.

He downvoters: I know HN teaches you that silencing people you disagree with
is good, but try making a counter argument.

For the record, I had some contact with the internship program and it was
treated VERY differently than regular recruiting. It literally is designed to
trick the interns into coming aboard... because Amazon knows kids irhgt out of
college are going to be easier to manipulate than people who have been treated
right elsewhere.

But then, scientologists try to silence critics too... no surprise that the
amazon cult would as well.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
It'd be more appropriate to respond to this comment's assertions than
downvoting it.

~~~
MichaelGG
Without backing up his claims, it isn't a very useful comment. Insisting that
this person's being tricked into a cult, without any details - that's the kind
of stuff we don't need on HN.

In another comment, he says he had worked for Amazon. Adding such a line and
explaining why the intern was being tricked into a cult would be useful and
wouldn't have been downvoted.

Also, complaining about downvotes is silly. I downvote and flag a fair amount.
No one is owed an explanation. I know that we might _want_ one (I feel like
that when I get -x points on a comment), but it only increases noise.

Comparing HN to Scientology is stupid. I sorta feel that HN maintains whatever
quality it has by being ruthless on downvoting. From personal experience, I
should definitely be downvoted more, as it makes me rethink commetns and not
write as much shit. Not that I have much to say, but I have found that being
downvoted makes me more cautious, and I'll edit or delete or simply not post
on HN, whereas on other sites, I don't care. It's better for borderline
comments to get shot down and have false positives than allowing more junk on
the site.

------
wyclif
This is just an observation, but a recurring theme in casual conversations
with friends in tech is that the quality of work/life balance _as an employee_
(as opposed to a founder) is eroding fast.

One factor that I think accelerates this is that companies that are
established and clearly not startups anymore (companies with lots of
employees, huge market cap, and revenue, whether they've IPO'd or not)
increasingly consider themselves "startups", which often leads to them
justifying these toxic work cultures, insane hours, and massive churn.

By refusing to grow up and mature as a company, and admit that this is
happening, the owners of the company can have it both ways: you work for a
startup when they're talking about passion, commitment, and hours, but you
work for an established business when they want to turn the corporatist screws
on their employees.

------
rm_-rf_slash
I see a lot of comments on the Times regarding unions. We take a lot of things
like weekends for granted, and many of these tech companies seem to treat them
as a flexible inconvenience.

I wonder if a hundred years from now we will look on the taxes to our mental
health today as similarly as we imagine the truly backbreaking labor of the
19th century.

~~~
nickff
The level of stress, and the toll it takes on mental health that we experience
today is very low compared to a time when productivity and income were 20x
lower.

Our lives have changed, and we are immensely richer than we were 100 or even
50 years ago. People have more mobility, options, and opportunity than ever
before in human history. One can argue that certain policies or priorities
have affected our lives for the better or worse, but we should not try to
compare the relatively minor difficulties we face with those of our
forebearers, who left us in a life of luxury.

~~~
xacaxulu
This 'feels' accurate, but I don't know how worthwhile it is to say 'well it
was shittier back then so...'. People commit suicide, relationships are ruined
and diseases appear due to the kind of stressors described in the Amazon
exposés. They're worthy of being considered today, in context, not compared to
British coal workers in the past or whatever.

------
veidr
This story has got to be really hurting Amazon by now. (I don't mean this
specific piece, but the exposure of Amazon's terrible cult-like culture and
workplace environment as a whole.)

Most engineerish people I know, myself included, had already heard through the
grapevine that working at Amazon sucks (friends, friends of friends, posts on
forums like this).

But now everybody _knows_ it sucks -- _Amazon is a shitty place to work, and
any decent software engineer has many better options_ is now as close to an
objective fact as it gets.

This must be hurting their recruiting already, and you have to think it will
hurt them for years to come. (And if that is true, then it may eventually
change the judgement of whether this style of management "worked".)

~~~
x5n1
Amazon needs to unionize, it's obvious that Bezos and his management don't
respect his workers. This sort of company deserves a union. And I think both
white collar and blue collar workers there would support such a union.

------
libber
I found this interesting, feels like the most realistic account so far -
[http://pastebin.com/BjD84BQ3](http://pastebin.com/BjD84BQ3)

I just feel bad for amazon people I meet, the 2 year cliff and high pressure
oncall simply isn't a thing at the other tech companies. At least for me and
ive worked at a few of them (plural of anicdote isn't data but still) Life
seems strictly worse at amazon.

~~~
MCRed
His account seems much better than what I experienced. I still think he has
swallowed too much koolaide-- and this is why Amazon focuses on the young kids
they can make an impression on.

~~~
goldenkey
I've worked at Amazon and you are absolutely right. The implied "get it done"
pressure, basically just socially awkward managers who have no self-value
themselves, pushing the new people to work ridiculous hours. Not mentioning
hours though, but basically getting unexperienced youth to waste away their
lives at their jobs. It's sad.. it's definitely a mental and manipulative
tactic. It's really cancerous because these exact kind of mentally defective
people who spurry to get things done, usually last-licks from Microsoft,
become managers. Then they apply that silly pressure to everyone under them,
and elegance fades away. Literally horrible code, with little polymorphism,
less elegant frameworks, etc. Just a side affect of "get it done." Anyhow,
Amazon isn't rosy. It's a dumping ground, and yeah, the FLP process where
people get culled is just a side affect of the value of work-life balance,
human empathy there. I would never work at Amazon again.

------
jmgtan
Been reading a lot of Amazon articles the past few weeks. I'll be joining AWS
next month as an SA. I met the hiring manager during the interview loop, and
he seems like a cool guy. Funny thing is when I told my family and friends
that I'll be joining AWS they all emailed me the NYT expose.

Well I do hope it's not as bad as it's portrayed. I do want to see my son grow
up (he is turning 2 years old).

~~~
morgante
May I ask why you are planning to join Amazon? It's reputation for being a bad
employer is well-established and known in the tech community.

If you're skilled enough to get through an Amazon interview loop, you could
also get a job at a company which actually respects its employees (Facebook,
Google, even Microsoft).

~~~
jmgtan
I love the AWS platform, I find the entire thing very elegant. I wanted to
move away from software development and get into more high level stuff (hence
the SA role), and I'd rather join a company where am passionate about their
products.

I have friends working in AWS, and so far none of them have been complaining
about work life balance, so am assuming that it's different from the retail
side.

------
musesum
When it was my own company, I loved the excitement of the hunt. I slept under
my desk. We kicked ass. Even though some of us had lives outside of work.

More recently, I worked at at a startup where it was possible to have a family
_and_ get stuff done. It was pretty cool!

It seems like, for work-life balance, the US is somewhere between Japan and
Switzerland. What would it take to be more like the Swiss?

------
MCRed
My experience at Amazon was straight up abusive. It is a hostile work
environment and it should not be tolerated.

If you have any self respect, do not go to work there. The only way abusive
companies can learn is when their abuse is discovered and they have trouble
hiring good employees.

The apologists and the rationalizers and the Amazon PR machine are out in full
force.

this is not surprising, because the core methodology of Amazon's abuse is its
cult nature.

Amazon is very much like a cult. The stories I read about scientology remind
me much of my time at Amazon.

They lionize Bezos because they want to pretend he's like steve jobs (these
same propagandists are why most of you think steve jobs was an asshole, by the
way)

Reality is, he's a master manipulator, a poor business man, and terrible at
technology and leadership.

But he did create a cult. He's more like charles manson.

So expect the cultists to continue to be out in force.

~~~
chambo622
> Reality is, he's a master manipulator, a poor business man, and terrible at
> technology and leadership.

Your argument really breaks down here. Reality contradicts these assertions.

~~~
johneth
> terrible at technology and leadership

While I'm not suggesting that he's not successful in many ways, he's also been
(and still is) quite bad at these two things.

On the technology front, the terribleness that immediately comes to mind are
the Fire Phone, Prime Instant Video's UI, Amazon's UI in general, their
godawful search, and so on.

On the leadership front... well... there are all these accusations of an awful
workplace culture stemming from the top man.

~~~
sokoloff
It appears self-evident that he's at least an adequate technology leader. He's
leading a company that is the undisputed (current) leader in cloud computing
and running an extremely fast growing and profitable technology business
there. IMO, that put his well into the top 0.1% of technology leaders, but
even if you don't agree with that, if results mean anything, I think you can
agree that he's not terrible at it.

The Amazon UI might not be to your taste or beautiful, but there's no question
that it's efficient at enabling customers to find and buy their retail items
at a rapid clip. IMO, Prime Pantry's search is pretty decent; the selection
over which they're searching is poor, but the search itself seems decent.

------
known
Amazon is of the sociopath, by the sociopath, for the sociopath.

