
Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace - IBM
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html
======
nemtaro
I'm so glad that this is getting more visibility. I spent 5 long years at
Amazon Web Services from 2008 - 2013 as a Software Development Engineer, and
was at some point promoted to SDE II ;)

It's a shark eat shark environment. I never cried, but I saw others (specially
female colleagues) do. After 2 years of waking up in the middle of the night
for bullshit on-call pages (wack-a-mole with production issues) and
increasingly heavier deadlines, I developed stress related medical issues.
That was a wake up call for me, and as soon as I realized the shit place that
I was in, I started showing up at the office detached, practicing interview
questions and doing phone screen interviews from work. I eventually got offers
from Facebook/Google, and moved on. It was only then that I realize I was
actually paid at the 50th percentile for my position's level and experience
all along.

Since I left, I've helped multiple other friends/colleagues detach emotionally
from the need for approval, practice for interviews and get job offers from
Apple/FB/Google for substantial (> %75) raises.

I get Amazon recruiters contacting me all the time, and I'm always nice to
them because I know the shit environment they're stuck in. Though in the back
of my mind I'm thinking "there's no way in hell I'd ever go back"

Fuck Jeff, fuck Amazon, fuck AWS, and fuck their leadership principles.

~~~
cesarbs
My wife works there as an SDET and her experience so far is vastly different
from yours and from what the article says. Most days it's a 9-5 job. The only
times she has stayed late were because she really wanted to finish something
that day i.e. she was never told to do that. Maybe there's less pressure on
SDETs? But she says the devs seem to work about as much, at least from her
perspective.

~~~
untog
It's interesting - all (I think?) the people interviewed in the article
sounded like they worked in non-dev roles. Might not be the case, but it might
explain why your wife hasn't had the same experience.

~~~
cesarbs
I think the article is really exaggerating on negative points. Get a handful
of people who had really bad managers and extrapolate their stories to the
rest of the company - I'm pretty sure one can do that for any large company.

A co-worker's wife also works there as an SDET and her experience is the same
as my wife's. A guy I went to college with works there as an SDE and he also
says it's pretty much a 9-5 job. He doesn't work on a service though, so his
team doesn't have pager duty and that contributes a lot to it not being a
stressful job.

~~~
MCRed
It's a 9-5 job if you check out or are on the way out. Many people are on the
way out and don't even realize it.

~~~
cesarbs
Then everyone in my wife's team must be on their way out. We're talking about
10+ people here.

------
amznawsthrow
I've worked at Amazon for the last 3 years as a Software Developer both on AWS
and on the Retail side and I can answer any questions people have.

Most of the things I see in this article are bullshit, at least as a software
developer is concerned. Maybe the business side is way worse, but I doubt it.

I've never seen anyone refer to "Climbing over the wall" when hitting it.
People talk about "working hard and making history", but what major leading
software company (Google, Facebook, anything in Silicon Valley) doesn't talk
about changing the world?

The internal "anytime feedback" tool is geared towards giving people
unprompted POSITIVE feedback when they do something you think is worthy of
recognition. It is not meant to undermine each other's bosses, that's
laughable.

Yes, once you reach a high enough level (Senior Manager (ie manager of
managers), Director, VP), you hear stories all the time of your bosses
emailing you things on Sundays and expecting a response the same day, but
again, at the level of responsibility that we are talking about, where you are
paid six figures multiple times over with additional six figures worth of
stock, that's common expectations from most leading software companies that
are in a cuthroat business.

I've never seen developers or senior developers be expected to respond to
emails on Sunday or after midnight. In fact, right now, because of
StageFright, most developers don't even have access to work email on their
Android devices.

> "workers are encouraged to tear apart one another’s ideas in meetings"?

Don't make me laugh. If anything, the emphasis on "Leadership principles"
emphasizes that as leaders we are more than our ideas, we are meant to build
relationships, and not act as assholes where the idea is king.

> "Secrecy is required; even low-level employees sign a lengthy
> confidentiality agreement".

NOPE. Just a standard boilerplate NDA and non-compete clause the same as at
every software company I've worked at before - small and local, or large and
multinational. OF COURSE there are teams that are under stricter security
(e.g. the Kindle Fire team before it was announced), but again, that's not
unorthodox.

I've never seen anyone cry at the office, not even close.

> "Within Amazon, ideal employees are often described as “athletes” with
> endurance, speed (No. 8: “bias for action”), performance that can be
> measured and an ability to defy limits (No. 7: “think big”)."

NOT EVEN CLOSE. "Bias for action" simply means that when faced with a choice
to either try something and fail, and ultimately risk wasting that time,
versus sitting around and trying to analyze the tradeoffs, we want to err on
the side of trying. It's kind of like Facebook's "Move fast and break things",
only without the breaking. It just says that we want our people to experiment,
attempt moonshots, and figure out quickly if something will work or not.

"Think big" means that every decision we make needs to be considered at Amazon
scale. If you build a caching library, think about what happens if every team
at amazon started using it. If you build a feature to solve some problem for
Amazon.fr, consider if every single marketplace needed it, and then 10 more
regional marketplaces showed upworldwide. Would the same solution work?

>"Workers are expected to embrace “frugality” (No. 9), from the bare-bones
desks to the cellphones and travel expenses that they often pay themselves. "

Typical standard per-diem when travelling like I have at other companies.
Frugality isn't supposed to be "be cheap". It's "consider before spending".
There is a whole Amazon legends about how you get a door for a desk, and it's
not supposed to be literal. The point isn't that Amazon makes you use a door
for a desk. It's that at some point in the company history, they realized they
could get doors from Home Depot for cheaper than a simple office desk and
thought "hey that's a good idea". These days desks are not doors. If you
request you can get an adjustable ergonomic sit/stand desk. And no, if you're
a developer, you don't have to buy your own second monitor. The company
provides 2 monitors just like anywhere else, and reasonable developer-friendly
specs for the machines.

>"Instead, Amazonians are instructed to “disagree and commit” (No. 13) — to
rip into colleagues’ ideas, with feedback that can be blunt to the point of
painful, before lining up behind a decision."

The bullshit just won't end. Disagree and commit isn't "Disagree and be
aggressive". It's "If you disagree but are overruled, make your point AND MOVE
ON." Don't sabotage the chosen approach if you were overruled. Don't make
passive aggressive comments. Don't celebrate if it turned out you were right
after all. Make the best argument you can, but if it's overruled, you go with
the decision, and be a team player.

~~~
brown9-2
It's not "bullshit" if other people's experiences are not your own, unless you
can claim to have worked in every job role and every team at Amazon.

You should really consider that as a SDE in AWS, you probably have one of the
most prized roles in the company and therefore are perhaps treated the best.

Not every team is in the cloud services business. Retail orgs have to
necessarily run with as little expense as possible.

~~~
amazonthrowaway
I don't think the description of people's experiences is bullshit. I can only
speak for what I've witnessed in the company, which is a fair amount. However,
there are cases where the writers clearly misconstrue things or take things
out of context. See, for instance, their treatment of Bezos' Princeton
commencement speech, highlighted above. So I don't see the article as an even-
handed description of Amazon's corporate culture. When I look at the totality
of David Streitfeld's reporting, I think he has an agenda when it comes to
Amazon.

------
noahm
I worked at Amazon for 3+ years, leaving just under a year ago. "It’s the
greatest place I hate to work" pretty much sums up how I felt about the place.
The crazy thing is, I kinda want to go back! The scope and scale of the
engineering problems is simply unmatched, especially if you're like me and you
don't want to work for a primarily advertising funded company.

I worked in AWS, which I'd always understood to be culturally a bit different
from the retail site. It sounds like most of the people interviewed for the
article were on the retail side. In AWS, I never felt any sort of competition
with my peers, nor did I feel like people were trying to sabotage me with the
anytime feedback tool. In fact, it really felt like there was a refreshing
lack of office politics there. Everybody worked very hard and there was mutual
respect among all my peers. The workloads are heavy, for sure, but never
really unmanageable, and the work is almost always interesting.

Ultimately what finally ended it for me was the complete lack of paternity
leave. Amazon offers, to the letter, the bare minimum family leave that they
can legally get away with. If the company isn't interested in my health or
that of my family, should I really be putting effort into helping them
succeed? I think policies like that really run counter to their "hire and
develop the best" principle. How exactly do they plan on doing that if they
don't treat them with respect?

~~~
retailengineer
> I worked in AWS, which I'd always understood to be culturally a bit
> different from the retail site.

I'm an SDE on the retail side, and the funny thing is, there seems to be a
consensus among the engineers on the retail side that it's much harder to work
at AWS, because of poor management. Glad to know that's not the case.

My engineering team at least is pretty chill. The business teams have the
harder job, but not nearly as hard as the article suggests ("cancer? screw
that!" \-- _sure_ , that's how it is). Totally agree about the lack of
paternity leave, though. One of the guys on the team who has a two-month-old
hardly gets any sleep at all. Perhaps all this bad PR (and all the customers
saying "I won't buy Amazon anymore!") will make Amazon address this issue.

~~~
msoad
So many new accounts defending Amazon here! Nice try Amazon!

------
coldcode
You could't pay me enough to work in such a sweatshop. It's like Bezos read
Karl Marx and figured people are stupid enough to exploit. And yes no matter
the pay working people voluntarily as if they were slaves on plantation is
still exploitation.

Of course the article might be hyperbole and people venting but I don't doubt
there is truth in it.

100 years ago titans such a Carnegie and Rockefeller worked people to death
and didn't care as long as they made money. The only difference today might be
more money. Sometimes.

Amazon would never hire me anyway no matter my long skill set as I would never
put up with such crap.

~~~
potatolicious
I worked at Amazon right out of college - I wouldn't do it again, but there's
a reason why Amazon continues to hire a lot of people despite their growing
(and already rather notorious) reputation as a workplace.

Amazon is considered one of the big AAA-tier companies, at the same venerated
level as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, et al. Having Amazon on my resume opened
_so many doors like you won 't believe_.

I think a lot of people join Amazon knowing the toxic workplace culture out of
necessity - our industry doesn't have a fucking clue how to hire people and
leans heavily on "signals" like working for specific famous companies.

As long as we continue to not be able to interview people effectively, and
instead rely on things like "having worked at Amazon" as a positive hiring
signal, the Amazon hiring machine will continue to function.

~~~
gozo
When a friend relocated to London for a well-paying job to "move data around"
at Google, I couldn't help to think how similar it seemed to banking. When I
read you post about "paying your dues to be in the club" I think the same
thing.

~~~
leoedin
Hey! Just a heads up - you seem to have been shadow banned. I'm not sure why -
possibly posting a link to an article about the HN rules?

------
unauthorizedsde
I have worked all over Amazon as an SDE and Manager, and still do (11 years
and counting.) I have certainly seen parts of the company that resemble parts
of this article, especially OLR backstabbing, which I especially despise. As
someone in a technical job family, it has always been easy for me to transfer
internally to better-run corners of the company.

I stick around because I find that I like the low-fat culture, and working
with extremely high achievers. Most of those top-tier people that I know in
the tech families that have left end up coming back within a few years because
they get bored on the outside. The exceptions overwhelmingly are those who
left for Google, they never look back.

I cannot imagine literally crying about criticism in a meeting, and have never
seen it myself. Working in a place with high standards and honest criticism is
preferable to the alternatives. The real danger is inadequate mechanisms to
deal with toxic org politics, and especially jackasses who think 80 hour weeks
are not a sign of a problem. This definitely needs to change.

~~~
nemtaro
If you've been at Amazon for 11 years, your stock has grown from $40 to $500.
I can see why you stick around in addition to the other positives that you
mentioned...

I've been at Google for a few years now in Seattle, and know of exactly 1
person who left Google to go back to Amazon for a title boost. In contrast, I
know dozens of SDEs who have been coming from Amazon to Google.

~~~
crucifiction
Google is the new Microsoft, its where talented engineers go to retire.

~~~
adgjl92
I think that would still be Microsoft.

------
rdtsc
Ok since we are talking Amazon, let me share my interviewing experience with
them. I was talking to an AWS team.

Had a phone interview scheduled. They forgot about me. Ok, it happens in a big
company. Had another one, went pretty well. They invited me over.

I show up and my contact person (my future manager) wasn't there that day.
They had me wait for 30min, I guess until they scrambled to find a
replacement. Except 2 people I talked to that day, everyone else seemed like
they didn't expect to be interviewing anyone and were pulled in last minute.
Needless to say that made for a pretty bad experience.

Oh and they promised lunch, ok, I wasn't hungry but they actually forgot about
me during lunch. I was just sitting there in the conference room by myself.

I thought, ok, this is pretty bad. But no, that's not all, they promised
"we'll get back to you with an answer in 2 days". Took almost 3 weeks. At that
point I was just curious how long they would take and just waited.

So anyway, I hear people like working there. But judging by me experience,
there are some red flags. I think it points to how things are run internally.

~~~
skynetv2
My experience was polar opposite. I interviewed with AWS. The entire process
was very well organized and very professional. The recruiters were very
professional, everyone showed up as promised, manager took me to lunch -
overall a very pleasant experience. The HR rep took me thru the benefits,
comp. package etc before the interview.

The only thing I hated was the "bar raiser". He was a guy who came in made up
his mind for sure. I could see it in his face. He was not pleasant, did not
smile. And he started with "I have a lot of questions to ask, and I want to
get through all of them in our time. So give me short straight answers and
dont take too much time". At that moment I knew I was a goner. Just to
compare, I have 12 years of experience in areas of open source, big company,
big university research on large systems. A few patents and a ton of
publications. Either he walked in feeling insecure and wanted to crush me with
his power or feeling that I am full of shit and he is going to let me know
about it. The bar raiser has veto on the candidate and I think it was abused
severely. He did not like any answer I gave, and keep in mind that the
questions he asked are not the kind that have black and white answers but the
answers vary on your background and experience. Since I signed an NDA saying I
wont reveal any questions, let me give a simple example:

What have you ever done for a customer that was not planned?

Now if you come from a hardware product development background, there is
nothing you can do without it being POR. Engineers cannot randomly decide to
change specs or features without the entire supporting organizations knowing
about it. If an engineer decides to add some feature to help some customer,
who is going to test it, document it, train the support organization, tell the
factory about the changes in the process etc? You can't do stuff without
anyone approving it. yes, you can affect change and try to get buy in from the
rest of the organization but thats all you can do.

If you come from a web dev company, maybe there is more leeway in what an
anyone can do individually.

So there is no black and white answer here and he just said "thats not
satisfactory". Shortly after that the hiring manager came in and said the
process wasnt going well and basically told me to go home.

One would think someone who is given that much veto power is more professional
and objective and unbiased.

~~~
boomzilla
Someone seriously said: "that's not satisfactory" in an interview? That's so
unnecessary. The strongest language I've ever said when interviewing is "I
think there might be some perspectives that you've not considered".
Interviewing is a two-way street. You'd want to hire good candidates and
usually good candidates have multiple options, so you'd also want to make the
candidate want to work for you too.

~~~
mikestew
> you'd also want to make the candidate want to work for you too.

My interview experience with Amazon tells me they don't give two shits about
whether you want to work there or not. I can only assume they have a line of
candidates that goes around the block. To make a long story short, they made
it feel like I was inconveniencing them by even being there. It worked out
well, confirming that I did indeed not wish to work there.

~~~
jschwartzi
They do have such a line. There are a couple of big recruiters I got contacts
from which advertised nothing but Amazon positions. Those same recruiters were
still calling me over a year after I took a job somewhere else. They were also
totally useless so I can only assume they had piles and piles of candidates.

------
oneshot908
Something to keep in mind here is that while history is written by the
victors, hit pieces like this are primarily sourced from the sad tales of the
losers. While there is truth in this article, it exhibits the same sort of
inaccuracies as _The Everything Store_. It's nowhere near as bad it sounds
from this article, but there _are_ real problems - just like anywhere else.
One's ability to prosper at Amazon is a function of one's personality - just
like anywhere else. People who need strong guidance will do poorly. People who
can survive criticism and thrive in chaos will prosper.

As for me, I worked at Amazon for several years as an engineer. The frugality
is what eventually made me leave because too often it gets implemented as dirt
cheapness. But in their defense, I had opportunities to do things there none
of the other big 4 would have granted. And I got the chance to do them by
being confrontational and confident. The downside is that if one interviews at
other companies with one's Amazon personality, one will frequently come off as
a total a$$hole.

Amazon will change you. Some of those changes are great, but you really have
to keep your Amazon ego in check outside of the place.

~~~
throwaway654123
Yes. The frugality here is ridiculous. I work on device hardware/software. We
need a lot of devices for testing. We have to buy them from the retail
website.

And yesterday they sent out an email asking for help testing FireTV device on
TV with certain specs, with a snarky comment about how you cannot expense a
TV. It's completely ridiculous. If they need to test with particular hardware
they need to buy the hardware and not rely on using their employees personal
TV.

That reminds me, they are always asking to use employees cars for bluetooth
testing with device as well.

~~~
lordleft
Is that...legal? I mean I feel like requiring employees to source hardware you
need to do your job would violate some statute, somewhere.

~~~
abalashov
No, it's not illegal, as long as nothing in one's employment agreement
prohibits it. What's more, many category of umreimbursed work expenses are
tax-deductible for W-2 employees, for precisely the reason that they commonly
arise.

------
ex-Amazonian
Worked in AWS DevOps in Dublin, Ireland for 8 months. Totally agree with the
article.

\- 12 - 16 hour days. Conf calls with the States in the middle of the night.
Was expected to respond to emails/txt/calls even when not on-call.

\- Low pay, cr*p health insurance, minimal pension contribution. Cheap PC,
dirty, overcrowded office, expected to pay for parking outside of office.

\- Colleagues never saw their young children. My friend's wife filed for
divorce as he was always working.

\- When my 2nd son was diagnosed with a lethal condition before birth, my boss
showed zero tolerance to what i was going through and expected the same level
of commitment as before. This was when i decided to leave.

Three years on if i have to summarize what AWS felt like i'd say "It's a mad
scientist's experiment to find the limits of human beings until a more
efficient replacement (drones, robots,etc.) is found."

~~~
xcs
Shit, I have just being offered to start there on SDE position and I'm
considering to reject the proposal after reading the article and many other
related opinions on the net.

------
noir_lord
Jeff Bezos has always been a bit of a dick.

This just codifies his dickishness, this kind of crap a century from now will
be written about like Dickens wrote about 19th century London.

Appalling in every way, I think I'm going to shop elsewhere in future.

~~~
tootie
So were Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Like Henry Ford or Andrew Carnegie before
them. It's part and parcel of being aggressive, creative and demanding. You
can't build an industry that goes against the grain of established practice
and drag 10,000 followers with you unless you're a big of an egomaniac.
There's probably 1000 people out there smart enough to envision an Amazon-like
business, but they are content to enjoy what they have and not stress
themselves out by building a giant corporation.

~~~
skj
Larry Page (my boss's boss's boss's boss's boss's boss's boss) seems like a
pretty decent human being, to me.

~~~
heimatau
I wonder if you counted out how many levels are above you.

~~~
skj
I did.

------
amazonthrowaway
David Streitfeld has written a number of strident, highly-critical articles on
Amazon. What he's writing here doesn't reflect my experience as an SDE in a
couple of different divisions in the company. I can't speak to what people in
marketing or vendor management experience.

Take the first paragraph for instance:

> They are told to forget the “poor habits” they learned at previous jobs

I don't recall anyone telling me this

> When they “hit the wall” from the unrelenting pace, there is only one
> solution: “Climb the wall,” others reported

I don't recall hearing either of these phrases used.

> To be the best Amazonians they can be, they should be guided by the
> leadership principles, 14 rules inscribed on handy laminated cards. When
> quizzed days later, those with perfect scores earn a virtual award
> proclaiming, “I’m Peculiar” — the company’s proud phrase for overturning
> workplace conventions.

The leadership principles are repeated pretty frequently, although I think
most people take them with a grain of salt. The quiz is called 100% Peculiar,
not "I'm Peculiar". I don't recall it being about leadership principles at
all. I recall it being about things like how Amazon doesn't delete negative
customer reviews because the company sees it as being in its long-term
interest for reviews to be trustworthy. The other thing on the quiz I remember
is that Amazon likes to use informal language with customers, like "Where's my
stuff". [Edit: I should also point out that it's not a mandatory thing and
nobody cares if you don't do it or don't do well enough on it to get the
little badge on your page in the company directory.]

~~~
gary__
Did you see people crying while in work?

~~~
enraged_camel
I don't work at Amazon, but I have a friend who is on the vendor management
side and whenever she talks about how stressful her job is and how terribly
they treat people (not just their employees but also their vendors), she's on
the verge of tears. I'm not exaggerating.

------
minimaxir
Remember the "Dear Amazon interns, some advice from an old man who has been at
Amazon way too long." post that was made a month ago:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/3ce0s8/dear_amazon...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/3ce0s8/dear_amazon_interns_some_advice_from_an_old_man/)

------
burlymonster
I worked at Amazon as an intern for 3 months. Super intense work environment
that seriously skewed my view of the normal workplace, as it was my first time
working at a large company. Heard shouting during meetings behind closed
doors. F-Bombs used regularly. Saw lots of 50+ year old engineers with kids
working there until 3 am for a week at a time. Even as an intern I was working
nights and weekends. A lot of the middle managers went home early at 4pm
though. Lots of Indian contractors working their ass of so they don't lose
their visas and get kicked out of the US. My mentor was getting so many text
messages (thousands) being sent to his phone in the middle of the night while
he was on call that he was fighting with Amazon to get them reimbursed.

~~~
amzn_thrwy_158
I am skeptical about this post. I work at Amazon and we don't have any 50+
year old engineers.

(I don't know what happened to them. I assume they either quit for greener
pastures, or Jeff Bezos invited them to Day 1 North where he tore out their
beating hearts while the S-Team danced wildly to the beat of hellish drums)

~~~
kome
> I work at Amazon and we don't have any 50+ year old engineers.

> I don't know what happened to them.

That's creepy.

------
yaman12
Back in 2005 I interviewed for a director of engineering role at Amazon. But
after I learned about the culture and methods Amazon uses to "manage" it's
people I lost interest. It's just not how I want to be remembered. I don't see
the value of a harsh dehumanizing environment ironically used to create a
feeling in customers that people come first. And I just don't think these
tactics work over the long term. Google will be around long after Amazon fails
because it retains and inspires it's best engineers.

------
mkozlows
On the one hand, I zero percent want to work in that environment. On the other
hand, I can see why it would appeal to some people.

If you've ever worked at a place with stifling bureaucracy, where building
consensus laboriously over months is necessary to move forward with even
relatively minor decisions, then you know how liberating and empowering it
feels to work in a place where people are focused on getting things done,
where you can make decisions and drive forward quickly, and where ideas get
debated openly and decisively.

But yeah, I suspect most people would prefer that taken down a few notches.

~~~
wilsynet
Only thing I would add is: and leave people with their dignity intact whenever
possible because 1) it's the decent thing to do and 2) it's cheaper to keep
someone than it is to hire someone new after the person has quit.

Clearly that's not something that Amazon prizes.

They seem to know that their culture drives people to quit. Which is why stock
doesn't meaningfully vest until years 2, 3 and 4.

~~~
rjayatilleka
* Years 3 and 4. It starts vesting at the end of year 2.

~~~
delecti
Yes and no. It's 5% at the end of 1 year, another 15% at the end of 2, and
then 20% every 6 months.

I would argue that the 15% is the first meaningful vest, making the parent
comment correct.

------
kindleguy
Since this is getting a lot of visibility, I would like to ask - How many of
you like the e-book reading experience in the Kindle or with the Kindle reader
apps on other devices?

To me, I hated the high quantity of low quality of work I was doing at Amazon.
I worked for Kindle e-books division. Most of the times the product managers
were giving random suggestions, and the managers mostly spent time impressing
higher level management rather than delivering the best experience for the
customer. I felt like being in the midst of a bunch of folks who weren't
excited about the e-books space and that they were mostly there because they
had a good pay and were able to dance the dance. Internal politics was a big
thing and the more I licked my managers boots by answering his midnight
calls/mails the more he liked me. Adding even a small feature to enhance the
reading experience needed sign-offs from a gazillion teams who would sometimes
not agree to just Quality Validate because there wasn't enough time for them.
The environment was toxic and no team wanted the other teams to perform well.

~~~
parasubvert
I find the Kindle ebook layouts are "meh" and miss, so will tend to lean
towards iBooks or Kobo when I can lately. PDF is best but tends to be slower
to render. Though the vast majority of my e-library is on Kindle.

Device wise, I have an old 2nd generation Kindle for beach use but mostly use
my iPad and Laptop. The Voyage and latest Paperwhite look interesting but I'd
rather have a device that supported EPUB without me jumping through hoops.

So I guess I'd say "it's adequate". Early Kindle days I was a brand loyalist,
but not these days... probably a mix of quality issues and Amazon's overall
monopoly position.

~~~
kindleguy
Actually nobody cared to ask a majority of users their opinions in what was
wrong with Kindle.. Any survey would only be towards a subset of users who
_like_ the Kindle because they most likely got it for free from Amazon. This
feeds into an ecosystem which gives them the impression that everything is
right while in reality, they can do much much better.

I hope your comments on layout get enough visibility.

------
tobbyb
What a depressing read. Jeff Bezos needs to tell us why he is treating our
fellow human beings so badly. I am willing to wait another day for my gadgets
from amazon, or not even have gadgets. I didn't ask for this, no customer
asked for this. I don't want people to be treated like this,

Some of the reports about the sick and unlucky being penalized is grotesque
and Bezos needs to stand up and defend himself or be dismissed as a
psychopath.

Efficiency, performance and wealth should not be a ruse for businesses to drag
us a sterile world stripped of humanity in pursuit of profits. No one signed
that social contract.

Ultimately the only reasons sociopaths thrive and succeed is there are too
many people willing to do their bidding, every single time, to dehumanize
themselves and others.

~~~
blueside
Agreed, unfortunately the two terms you mentioned "psychopath" and "sociopath"
are character traits that get rewarded in our current system. Very sad.

------
amznthrowaway21
Amazonian here. My experience has been nothing like what was described in the
article. A few quick hits:

-In three years, I have never once seen anyone cry at Amazon. I've never even _heard_ of anyone crying at work.

-In re: secret feedback tool -- Note that it isn't anonymous. I know the article doesn't say it is, but "secret feedback" seems to imply it is, at least IMO. It's little more than a form for submitting an email to someone's boss. I've only ever heard of a sabotage attempt happening once, and it backfired as predictably as one would expect.

-I remember hearing the phrase "climb the wall" once during my first week at orientation. Reading it in this article was the first time I've heard it in the three years since then.

 _The company’s winners dream up innovations that they roll out to a quarter-
billion customers and accrue small fortunes in soaring stock. Losers leave or
are fired in annual cullings of the staff_

Correct. Good employees do well. Bad employees are eventually weeded out. This
was not invented at Amazon.

 _Some workers who suffered from cancer, miscarriages and other personal
crises said they had been evaluated unfairly or edged out rather than given
time to recover._

I legitimately laughed out loud when I read this. Cancer! Miscarriages!
Literally the two worst things to ever happen to most people in their lives
when they strike! And, of course, not a single shred of evidence to support
the claim.

Well, unless you count "some workers" as a reliable source.

~~~
rdtsc
> And, of course, not a single shred of evidence to support the claim.

What is your evidence for working as an Amazonian?

It is a bit hypocritical to critisize others for lack of "evidence" while
posting from a throwaway account, donchathink?

~~~
amznthrowaway21
Nope. Burden of proof falls on the party making the assertion. The NYT says X,
based on no cited sources. When X is challenged, the burden falls to the NYT
to prove X, not the person challenging the assertion.

The fact that I'm an Amazonian has no bearing on any of that, and is actually
little more than a red herring. The fact that I'm posting from a throwaway
matters even less.

~~~
rdtsc
[from original article]

> A woman who had thyroid cancer was given a low performance rating after she
> returned from treatment. She says her manager explained that while she was
> out, her peers were accomplishing a great deal.

> Another employee who miscarried twins left for a business trip the day after
> she had surgery. “I’m sorry, the work is still going to need to get done,”
> she said her boss told her. “From where you are in life, trying to start a
> family, I don’t know if this is the right place for you.”

To reiterate, your criticism was "well they have no proof"?

Presumably you wanted to name these women, who one had cancer, and another had
a miscarriage, and show a doctor's notice that those conditions happened. Then
have a recording of their bosses telling them those things.

I imagine there are probably quite a few reasons why these women wouldn't want
their full names published in NYT.

> The fact that I'm posting from a throwaway matters even less.

Well actually that was the main point of my argument you assume those people
should post their names, but they didn't so no proof, so well they made that
up. Fine then, post your full name and where you work at Amazon then. It is
not NYT after all. Just a friendly fireside chat on HN.

...Oh, you might have a few reasons I imagine you don't want that posted... So
that was my point.

~~~
crucifiction
Its ridiculous claims because both of them are easy, enormous lawsuits if
true. The fact that these people never sued for these claims makes it more
likely this is exaggerated like a lot of the rest of the article.

~~~
rdtsc
Employement in the US is usually on "at-will" basis. That is usually sold to
employees as "hey you can quit anytime, isn't that great". In reality the
employer usually just means "hey, I can let you go anytime".

Of course they can't fire for discriminatory stuff. They can't say "well this
person is too old or not white enough or a woman". But they can say stuff like
"for performance reasons", "restructuring", etc. even if they really mean the
former reasons (race, color, gender, age...) as long as there is an official
cover the law is on the employer's side.

So I still don't see enormous lawsuit potential here. One was fired for
"performance" reasons (wink-wink) and another for "culture fit" (wink-wink
again). There is some potential but only with a recording/email/some kind of
evidence.

~~~
crucifiction
Both examples in the article would be discriminatory and are against the EEOC
and as such would be lawsuit worthy. If they are unable to bring a suit then
it likely means the facts are not really in their favor. One person claims to
have emails about it, but never brought a case? Seems more likely employees
who were on their way out anyways.

~~~
rdtsc
Most people do not have the means, time, money, connections, ability to go and
sue even if they have been wronged or think they might have a clear case.

I certainly have not heard about the EEOC, I don't even know what that is.

Talking about their experience to a reporter is a lot easier. And I think
saying "if they haven't sued, it means their story is false" is a bit extreme.

------
outside1234
This sounds like a boom/bust company. This all works while the stock is going
up consistently. Eventually it won't, and this place will implode.

~~~
mtbcoder
This sounds like a big enterprise company taking the next evolutionary step.
Soon the tactics will be labelled as "best practices", talks and conferences
will be given, the mentality accepted and the rest of the herd will continue
to froth at the mouth to be more enterprise-y than the next. As the article
states:

> "Amazon may be singular but perhaps not quite as peculiar as it claims. It
> has just been quicker in responding to changes that the rest of the work
> world is now experiencing: data that allows individual performance to be
> measured continuously, come-and-go relationships between employers and
> employees, and global competition in which empires rise and fall overnight.
> Amazon is in the vanguard of where technology wants to take the modern
> office: more nimble and more productive, but harsher and less forgiving.

“Organizations are turning up the dial, pushing their teams to do more for
less money, either to keep up with the competition or just stay ahead of the
executioner’s blade,” said Clay Parker Jones, a consultant who helps old-line
businesses become more responsive to change."

~~~
plonh
That's nonsense and unsupported. Steve Jobs had asshole management patented
before the New Economy, and Google and Facebook are doing fine without Amazon
culture.

Come-and-go employment is Uber/AirBnB 1099s, and MSFT's old practice of hiring
contractors , not Amazon full-time SDEs

------
blueside
This makes me recall Bezos posting to usenet in 1994 looking for potential new
hires...

"You must have experience designing and building large and complex (yet
maintainable) systems, and you should be able to do so in about one-third the
time that most competent people think possible. "

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mi.jobs/poXLCW8udK4/_G...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mi.jobs/poXLCW8udK4/_GHzqB9sG9gJ)

~~~
technofiend
That attitude still prevails. Last time I talked to someone at Amazon he said
something "we get more done in one quarter than you finance guys get done in a
year."

------
chrisra
In contrast, Walmart (where I worked as an intern this summer) is full of
genuine kindness, bottom to top, as far as I could tell. I don't remember
anyone saying a thing that was rude or harsh to me. Even higher ups seemed
like cool people that you could talk to whenever you needed to.

If you're at Amazon and are looking for a kinder environment, Walmart was
great to my family.

~~~
amazonthrowaway
Doesn't Walmart drug test everyone?

~~~
chrisra
They required me to for my internship at least.

~~~
amazonthrowaway
I think there's a bit of a disconnect between genuinely caring about people
and treating them like criminals. I can understand drug testing a truck
driver, but drug testing developers makes no sense to me.

~~~
protomyth
It happens in a lot of companies. From what I understand its an insurance
thing. The place where I currently work does random tests every so often, but
that's a government grant issue.

------
johneth
Personally, I think Amazon's successful _despite_ their workplace culture, not
because of it.

~~~
serge2k
Hard to say. For me it really comes down to they do not give a shit about
their employees. Not at all. You can say that about other companies, but
Amazon sets the bar very very low.

------
falcolas
I'm glad I got out (well, was pushed out, largely due to my own ignorance)
when I did. This sounds like a real grindhouse now. Perhaps some folks enjoy
this kind of working environment, but personally I'm thankful for a 40 hour
work week where I can innovate for my company and still have a life outside
work.

------
djhworld
I remember a few months ago a senior manager from their security team came to
our workplace to give a presentation (we use AWS a lot)

He was talking about how he and his team are constantly evaluated on metrics,
down to the minutest detail that are recorded and reviewed regularly.

------
iradik
I started at Amazon in 2005 and I can definitely say it's an intense place-- I
spent most of my 20s at Amazon. Amazon makes you battle-hardened, jaded
engineer the longer you are there. There's just no avoiding it. That being
said I worked there as long as I did because there were aspects that I did
like. For example I think the opportunities there in terms of work / scale are
a lot bigger than many other big companies. They are more willing to take
risks on people. For example I had no college degree when they hired me. Also
there are quite a lot of very smart people working there. So it's not all bad.
But intense? Yes.

------
outside1234
The most depressing thing about this is that this abusive mode of working
started by apple and Amazon seems to be winning. I don't see how this is
sustainable - while it leads to probably good business results - how many
relationships is it destroying and how many children are going unparented?
Amazon in general seems like a net loss for society.

~~~
wilsynet
Apple employees are not abused like this. They're siloed, secretive, and they
work hard -- but it's not like this.

~~~
Apocryphon
It really depends on which team you're working on. There's plenty of toxicity
to go around

------
S_A_P
I can see the perspective of wanting Amazon on your resume. But otherwise it
sounds like an awful place to work. I've known three people who have worked
there. 1 made it 6 months, another 2 years, and the last is going on 3 years
if his LinkedIn profile is correct. I suspect he will stay due to H1B reasons.

------
manish_gill
I love how all the Amazon apologists came out to defend their company and
criticise any argument against it. They want hard evidence yet completely
ignore everything the article says. To counter it, they cite their own
anecdotal experience as proof that Amazon's not a bad place to work at all!

------
ck2
I don't get how they keep anyone more than 6 months?

What the hell are they dangling over people that makes them stay?

~~~
potatolicious
Amazon's stock packages vest non-linearly (exponentially) over 4 years, so if
you leave after only one year you get only ~5% of the total package.

As opposed to the industry standard which is linear vesting.

They also have onerous clawback clauses on signing bonuses and relocation, and
I know of one instance where the clawback stipulated that the signing bonuses
would be paid back _pre-tax_ (e.g., $10k signing bonus, of which you got $6k
after tax, but if you quit you have to cough up $10k) - meaning you are
_actually in the hole_ if you leave.

They also have a habit of putting 2-year clawbacks on their bonuses rather
than the more common 1-year, so leaving even in your second year at Amazon
would result in substantial financial loss.

 _Even in this environment_ I know multiple people who left before their
1-year anniversary, that's how bad it is in many parts of the company. I
personally know multiple people who suffered substantial financial loss in
order to leave.

~~~
ljk
> _They also have onerous clawback clauses on signing bonuses and relocation,
> and I know of one instance where the clawback stipulated that the signing
> bonuses would be paid back pre-tax (e.g., $10k signing bonus, of which you
> got $6k after tax, but if you quit you have to cough up $10k) - meaning you
> are actually in the hole if you leave._

so if you get fired then you don't have to pay it back?

~~~
potatolicious
Honestly I can't remember that part - my impression was that you were off the
hook if you were fired, but I can't be sure. My original contract has been
lost in the mists of time :P

Strategically getting oneself fired might be a way to avoid the clawback,
though it would probably have other consequences.

------
mud_dauber
I got through 3/4 of the article and had to quit. Simply FUCKING APPALLING
organizational behavior. I can say with reasonable confidence that if I had
discovered those tricks being done to my reputation behind my back, there
would be fisticuffs. Fuck Bezos.

~~~
tr4
Fisticuffs...or worse. I've heard developer colleagues joking at times of
excessive pressure and management nastiness at my (non-Amazon) workplace about
"going postal".

At a large enough scale, you will get people who lack the coping skills deal
with that kind of nasty environment. I suppose an employee going beserk and
harming others would be the ultimate expression of "organizational Darwinism".

------
npalli
So from the article we read

>> Jeff Bezos turned to data-driven management very early. He wanted his
grandmother to stop smoking, he recalled in a 2010 graduation speech at
Princeton. He didn’t beg or appeal to sentiment. He just did the math,
calculating that every puff cost her a few minutes. “You’ve taken nine years
off your life!” he told her. She burst into tears.

The weird thing is that I actually watched the Princeton video and Bezos
learnt a very different lesson (by his grandfather). Makes you wonder if yet
again the need for simple narratives makes this article kind of useless.

[http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S27/52/51O99/inde...](http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S27/52/51O99/index.xml?section=&path=/main/news/archive/S27/52/51O99/index.xml&next=1)

>> At that age, I'd take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic.
I'd calculate our gas mileage -- figure out useless statistics on things like
grocery spending. I'd been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can't
remember the details, but basically the ad said, every puff of a cigarette
takes some number of minutes off of your life: I think it might have been two
minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I
estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per
cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I'd come up with a reasonable
number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on
the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, "At two minutes per puff, you've taken
nine years off your life!"

I have a vivid memory of what happened, and it was not what I expected. I
expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. "Jeff,
you're so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the
number of minutes in a year and do some division." That's not what happened.
Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not
know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been
driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out
of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was
I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never
said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he
would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no
experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the
consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at
me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, "Jeff, one day
you'll understand that it's harder to be kind than clever."

What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and
choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy -- they're
given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts
if you're not careful, and if you do, it'll probably be to the detriment of
your choices.

~~~
shard
So is he saying that he made the deliberate choice to be unkind when he
decided to run his company in the brutal fashion that we've been reading
about?

------
dpflan
Here are Amazon's Leadership Principles, complete with phrases and stock
photos: [http://www.amazon.jobs/principles](http://www.amazon.jobs/principles)

~~~
seiji
Wow, it _actually_ says this:

"Leaders are right a lot. They have strong business judgment and good
instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their
beliefs."

Don't question. Obey. Leaders are leaders because they are better than you.

~~~
retailengineer
The entire point of the leadership principles at Amazon is that they apply to
_everybody_ at the company. The handouts with leadership principles they give
out to _everyone_ all start with "Please be a leader". No one's obeying
anyone.

------
thecombjelly
Seeing as this isn't close to the first report on Amazon treating its workers
horribly, why do people continue to use AWS? There are alternative companies
that provide AWS like services and don't put workers in a sweatshop. So if you
continue to use AWS aren't you just encouraging Amazon to do more of the same?

~~~
jacalata
Same reason they continue to buy clothes made in actual sweatshops, because
most people don't care as much about the workers making their products as they
do about the cost (and sometimes quality) of those products.

~~~
thecombjelly
This isn't the same. In this case we know Amazon does it whereas with many
products we don't know exactly how the item is produced. As well, AWS is not
the best value whereas with commodity products the item may be the best value,
from a monetary to quality standpoint. Not to mention, in most cases,
technology companies can afford to pay more for a more ethical product even if
AWS was the best value whereas for many people the price of a commodity is
very important.

Using AWS is either laziness, the "we use Java because everyone uses Java"
syndrome, or internal inertia. The only partially excusable reason is internal
inertia.

------
ranman
One datapoint: I worked at AWS and truly enjoyed my job and my manager. I
would definitely go back. I think there are some teams that are building very
cool stuff with thoughtful managers. Other teams that are mis-managed and
poorly co-ordinated (with a lot of redundant people).

------
tootie
It's like a tl;dr or Steve Yegge's blog.

------
cesarbs
My feeling is that these things vary greatly from group to group within
Amazon. My wife works there as an SDET and nothing in that article applies to
her. Most days she is home by 6:30-7pm, and would be even sooner if it weren't
for the long commute (we live on Eastside).

A co-worker's wife also works there as an SDET and it's the same - very 9-5,
very rarely she has to work a bit later. Our wives are in completely different
groups by the way.

Maybe there's less pressure on SDETs, but my wife says that the devs in her
group don't seem to be under a lot of pressure/stress either.

------
Zigurd
I wonder if Amazon runs 126 Labs this way. If they do, I think they are
reducing the chances that they will turn Fire OS into a serious competitor in
phones and tablets, even for media consumption.

~~~
serge2k
I don't think it matters.

------
scurvy
From the comments posted so far, it sounds like the author put a very bright
spotlight on a few bad cases and blew certain things out of proportion. That
said, it does sound like Amazon is very different, bottom-to-top, from other
tech companies -- especially those that got their start in the Valley. Right
or wrong, Amazon is trying something different. Every company in the Valley
just mimics each other and clones their "corporate values" from each other as
well as practices, benefits, etc.

That said, there are some refreshing things I read in the article. It's nice
to hear there are tech companies where you're not required to be everyone's
friend and sing kumbaya. I currently work at one where one of the company's
ideals is "extreme respect" \-- meaning you must respect every employee even
if they have never earned such respect and have done several things to make
them lose respect in your eyes. Criticizing bad ideas is extremely difficult
to do because someone's feelings might get hurt and then they'll tattle on you
to a manager than you're not respecting them. Never mind the fact that their
idea was a bad one that would have cost the company money, caused setbacks, or
lost customers. In the founder's mind, everyone is going to get a gold star
and the company will succeed with this idea of respect, not the best
decisions.

I think I'm stuck at the other end of the spectrum from Amazon, and I'll leave
shortly after working out financing to sell my options via warrants to a third
party. Extreme respect and gold stars for everyone, but how dare you try and
sell your precious shares to the unwashed?

~~~
eclipxe
Mind sharing what company it is?

~~~
scurvy
I will after I sell my shares. They might preach respect, but they don't take
criticism too well.

------
thewarrior
Employees ratting on each other is straight out of 1984.

------
ledriveby
I wonder if ex-Amazon employees will seed Seattle's startup scenes with "the
Amazon way". Maybe they'll do the exact opposite, since they've seen how
unhappy life can be when they're treated as grist for the mill.

I try to take my dollars elsewhere because I think Amazon is detrimental to
local economies or their employees in warehouses and HQ. Kind of like how I
feel about Wal*Mart.

~~~
seattle_spring
I recently left a mid-sized tech company in Seattle largely because of a few
bad apples toxifying the culture. Interestingly enough, all 3 of them were ex-
Amazon employees.

------
lamontcg
I left in 2006.

It seems to have actually gotten substantially worse there.

Wow...

------
analog31
Sometimes I wonder what saves the rest of us from working under such
conditions. Given the continual adoration of "leaders" from Jack Welch onward,
managers everywhere should aspire to replicate those conditions within their
own empires.

Why not utopia everywhere?

I think there are a couple of reasons. First, within the exponential (or
whatever) distribution of company sizes, most companies aren't big enough to
operate such programs efficiently. Just as some processes can't be scaled up,
others are hard to scale down. At my own employer, despite 30k+ employees, we
are quite diverse and scattered. The kind of orientation and monitoring that
the AAA companies can give their employees, we just can't afford.

Second, there may be a very small number of top managers with the self
discipline and emotional stamina to actually carry it out.

~~~
brown9-2
Amazon is a retail business. They can only earn money from razor-thin margins
by pushing to keep costs down so hard.

This is why it is fundamentally unfair to compare Amazon to Apple, Microsoft,
Facebook or Google. They are in different businesses. Other companies are
fortunate to not have to treat humans so poorly to be able to exist.

~~~
serge2k
I disagree completely with the idea that they have to treat people this way.

They choose to because it's easier and more profitable. It's scummy as hell.

~~~
brown9-2
I'm not making excuses for them (see my other comments in this thread). But I
think that one thing saving other companies from being like this is that they
don't feel monetary pressure to do so.

------
twoquestions
Given such brutal firing practices, it seems like there's a lot of ways this
could go very, very badly. If you know you're competing against someone for a
raise or to keep from getting fired, what's to stop you from paying some thugs
to beat the hell out of your competition, slash their tires, or poison their
food?

I'm morbidly curious when Amazon is going to start threatening promising
candidates to work for them rather than paying well (or at all). Imagine the
money Jeff could save if he could motivate people with their family's
continued safety instead of money!

------
sidcool
So basically it's true. Bezos is a tyrant hellbent on fame. But we won't stop
buying from them. There was another story where an honest employee was
trampled by the bosses..

------
staticelf
This is one of the several reasons I would probably never be able to work in
the US or for an american company.

It is simply too much top-down management, too much stress and bad culture.
This description is of course extreme but by my standards (I'm a swede) even
what is considered normal i the US is unacceptable for me.

I don't know if I simply enjoy the prospects of a nation with a greater view
on the work life but I seriously question all americans how you can tolare
such an environment as many of you seem to have?

------
east2west
Amazon does just have stack ranking, the company basks in it.

------
race2thebottom
Stock goes up they can play this game, stock goes down everyone bails and the
aftermath is hard to recover from since the culture is shit.

------
tzs
Many more anecdotes from former or current Amazon employees in the biggest
Reddit discussion of this:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3h391m/amazon_e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3h391m/amazon_employee_on_relentless_working_conditions/)

~~~
esturk
Interesting to see Amazon's lack of damage control on reddit vs the damage
control on here.

------
z2a
check the update [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazonians-response-inside-
am...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazonians-response-inside-amazon-
wrestling-big-ideas-nick-ciubotariu). Quoted from Gizmodo: Gizmodo received
the following email from an Amazon representative today:

    
    
        Hi Maddie, I saw that you covered the recent NYT story about Amazon. While we generally do not comment on individual news stories, we quickly saw current Amazon employees react. Here’s an example: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazonians-response-inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-nick-ciubotariu
    
        Could you please include that employee’s rebuttal in your coverage, either in full or in excerpts with a link to the full piece?
    
        Thanks,
    
        Ty

------
dkural
People seem to fundamentally misunderstand what a company is. It exists for
the benefit of its shareholders, and secondarily, customers. It will take
whatever actions necessary towards achieving this. It'll accrue benefits to
the employee to the extent it helps towards these goals.

Now what happens in a lot of publicly-traded large companies is, the inmates
start running the asylum. The workplace primarily starts to exist for the
benefit of the employee. Since internally most companies are structured as an
oligarchy or dictatorship, most of these benefits accrue to "management" \-
another type of employee. Harmonious behavior and not creating too much
trouble become the premium value. Everything seems to be going great, until
you implode and fire thousands of people, or get acquired and the same things
happen. The lucky ones retire before that. All of this, of course, happens to
the detriment of shareholders.

Look at Microsoft. Great employee satisfaction. They missed out on the
internet, on search, on social, on mobile, all the while bringing in HUNDREDS
of BILLIONS in revenue over the last 20 years. Ballmer gets a lot of the
blame, but everybody else also kind of just went with it. Asleep at the
switch.

A company doesn't exist for the employee to have good work-balance, to get
self-worth, nurture your creativity or whatever. It exploits your very human
needs and desires to create wealth for its shareholders. Google would like you
to think it's just like college, and to give you great social opportunities
and make as many friends as possible, so it replaces your original parent-in-
standing, The College Campus. The more of your psyche and social world is tied
to the corporation, the more meaning you'll ascribe to your work, the more
likely you'll stay.

~~~
Aleman360
I'm sorry but that's a parasitic perspective. What's the meaning of life? To
work 80 hours a week to ensure someone gets their Elsa doll delivered in half
an hour?

We're all caught up in consumerism and no one seems to care. You're
perpetuating dystopia.

~~~
dkural
Of course it sucks for the employees! You're right that it's a meaningless
life that way.

But the fallacy is that it's somehow up to the "world" to fix that - Many
people have this feeling that it "should" be better, but well, it's their
company eh? You are always free to figure out how to do better on your own,
instead of work for somebody else. You could always save up / borrow some
money and then buy some land / start a shop / figure out how to do make it on
your own. Why should you not work 80 hours? Why would anyone else owe you
that?

~~~
Aleman360
I think bad working conditions are a symptom rather than the real problem.
Nothing's really going to change until everyone starts realizing that stuff
doesn't make you happy.

~~~
dkural
I agree with you.

------
chwahoo
Can people suggest companies that better balance the factors that I've seen
mentioned in this thread:

\- Provide good pay/benefits

\- Provide a positive culture for employees

\- Employees are encouraged to have a life outside work

\- Are run in such a way that good decisions are made and the company seems
headed for continued success

\- Look good on your resume

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mwg66
I'm interested what the data shows for workplace productivity and quality (not
just quantity) in such an environment. Specifically in engineering, is there
not evidence to suggest that longer hours and more pressure does not get more
done? (e.g. Peopleware et al)

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tribetally
What is Amazon's culture? Find out and add your insight as well:
[http://www.tribetally.com/tribes/amazon/](http://www.tribetally.com/tribes/amazon/)

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satyajeet23
Some of us (like me) really look up to it, the Industry, the Culture and
People. Things like this really depress me.

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mycodebreaks
How do Google, Facebook or Apple compare to Amazon work-culture and balance
wise?

~~~
Apocryphon
This article, and its comments, are worth checking out:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342994](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342994)

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Disruptive_Dave
At least they seem to be upfront about it (inside their own walls, perhaps).
There are plenty of companies who preach work/life balance and give lip
service to employees being rewarded based on their output, and everyone knows
it's complete BS.

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Aleman360
Work will set you free.

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z2a
No one refer the thread? [http://redd.it/3ce0s8](http://redd.it/3ce0s8)

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bricss
Hell yes! React is silly

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nicegeek
startup is new big fuss ... People making shit load of money from investors .
without even making a viable product example:
[http://siftery.com](http://siftery.com)

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tonetheman
That is a shitty place to work period.

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curiousjorge
A business engine always breaks with the very people that make up the engine.
If people aren't happy, the product sucks, managers go into panic and begins
pushing people more and the downward spiral continues.

My speculation here but I think Amazon has reached peak. It got what it
wanted, the largest retailer in America. Jeff Bezo got his feature on magazine
and tv shows. Stock leaps one more fold. Amazon has consistently led on
investors that future profits is everything while undercutting everyone else
in a razor thin margin operations. Now that it's reached the title it wanted
it finds the very people that got them there miserable and jumping ship.
That's very hard to fix especially when you piss off the work force and give
the impression that it's a hell hole.

Reminds me of a startup that grew super quick while maintaing crazy turnovers
until they couldn't hire anymore directly because their reputation has gotten
so bad. They never recovered. I think we are seeing something like that to a
certain degree but in much larger magnitude.

I think Walmart would be very much poised to begin eating at Amazon's margins.
These days I find myself comparing prices with walmart.com before ordering on
Amazon.

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paulhauggis
It sounds like they run their business like their seller marketplace...

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anti-shill
as the news about amazon and other similar IT/tech workplaces spreads among
the populace, fewer americans will want to work there. So we need more H1b
imports to help these wonderful companies continue the growth of their stock
prices. This is the true american dream in action. And more immigration will
help america grow.

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andyl
It's so difficult to create a successful software product. Amazon has done it
dozens of times. An exceptional record. Many great companies have been driven
by intensity and competition. The old days of Microsoft and Intel come to
mind. An intense workplace will not appeal to everyone. No surprise.

In the civil war, Grant was the first union general to consistently win
battles. Politicians complained that Grant drank too much whiskey. Lincoln
replied: “Tell me what brand of whiskey Grant drinks. I would like to send a
barrel of it to my other generals.”

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ilurkedhere
Sounds like hell is filled with suckers.

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caiob
Is Seattle the modern-day Detroit?

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swehner
Funny - the NYT talking about "big ideas" in the title of the article.

It's just an online shopping site ....

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nickc181
For those that want to know what Amazon is really like, please read my
rebuttal: [http://bit.ly/1DWkhgV](http://bit.ly/1DWkhgV). It's a long article,
but it actually gives you facts and data

~~~
senderista
Yes, "facts" like denying that OLR actually targets a fixed proportion of
employees to be managed out. Who do you think you're fooling? Not anyone who's
worked at Amazon.

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chad_strategic
I'm sure this is going to piss a lot of people off...

This is #firstworldproblems.

If you don't want to work there, then don't. I just quit a crappy/work
intensive/crazy/insane/no structure cannabis startup and I feel a heck of lot
better.

I would have been thrilled to be making the Amazon money out of college,
instead I went to Boot Camp (USMC), that was low pay and stress environment.

Let's put this all in perspective...

(Let's not forget Bezos owns the Washington Post, and well this was written by
the NYT?)

