11 ms·

What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

343 points by samhoggnz 11y ago

GabrielF00 11y ago
I was pretty shocked by how over-the-top and lacking in context the Times piece was. Lots of industries have pretty intense work cultures (management consulting, medicine, wall street). The focus on Amazon and the exaggerated language made the piece seem very agenda-driven (EVERYONE cries at their desk? really?)
wittekm 11y ago
Interesting note: the hiring of Jay Carney (Feb 26, 2015) coincides exactly with this article ("We were in regular communication with Ms. Kantor from February through the publication date in mid-August"). I wonder if such a high-visibility PR hire came about /because/ of this article?
- whatok 11y ago
  I'm sure it would have been a multi-month process to hire for a position like Carney's so it likely would have started well before that February date.
  - sageabilly 11y ago
    Interesting speculation by the original commenter, however, as we can imagine that the NYT likely shopped the idea for the article to Amazon long before Ms. Kantor was originally in contact with Amazon. So perhaps the timeline went NYT shops idea for article with Amazon -> Amazon realizes they need a head of PR and starts looking -> Ms. Kantor reaches out to begin discussions with Amazon right around the same time Carney is hired
dekhn 11y ago
There are several shockingly inappropriate things in this article. In particular, the PR person at Amazon is saying that they would have shared employee's personal records (including evaluations) as well as other employee's termination conditions (which I consider unrelated to their quotes). Amazon: what Carney just posted was very inappropriate. I am completely amazed you did this (assuming it was done with approval at the company level). You should be aware that you will start having serious problems hiring and retaining quality employees if you post things like this about your employees.
- hahainternet 11y ago
  > In particular, the PR person at Amazon is saying that they would have shared employee's personal records (including evaluations) as well as other employee's termination conditions (which I consider unrelated to their quotes). I assume from the article this meant including the consent of the employee in question, given that they were part of the article. It does seem a little odd though.
- baldfat 11y ago
  Devil's Advocate here: The people named in the article and refuted by Amazon put their personal story a public story. If someone "slanders" a business it can't reply with evidence? Must the company say it is a personal matter that we can't disclose, which reads they are guilty and don't want the truth to come out? End of Devil's Advocate Seems like they were making a statement of if you talk will will fully disclose our information to refute what you said. I think this was hurting Amazon so much that they are willing to payout the "out of court settlement" and "set the record straight."
  - roymurdock 11y ago
    The details provided in the response are probably being disclosed legally (doubt Amazon PR would screw up that badly), but it shows really poor taste that they would even respond to the NYT piece which was pretty clearly hyperbolic, emotional, and somewhat cherrypicked; even more so that they would adopt the same tactics of naming and shaming ex-employees. The fact that it was also published on medium by the head of PR baffles me - why are they aiming this refutation at the tech crowd that would probably see through this cover-piece pretty easily, instead of getting it into a high-readership, Amazon consumer oriented publication? Poorly planned and executed all around, regardless of legality.
    - eclipxe 11y ago
      The tech crowd (at least on HN) didn't see through the cover-piece...the comments here were overwhelmingly along the lines of "I knew it! Horrible environment". A lot of confirmation of existing anti-Amazon bias.
ams6110 11y ago
Goes back at least as far as the 1980's, remember the Pulitzer Prize the Washington Post had to give up after one of their reporters literally made up a story about an 8 year old heroin addict. Just because it's in a major newspaper, don't believe reporting is evenly balanced or without an agenda.
- CaptainZapp 11y ago
  Well, let's put it this way: When I compare the credibility between the NYT and Amazon's chief PR flack, who does not hesitate to share internals from personnel records in order to smear former employees then I know who gets my vote. Most certainly not Mister Carney, who I think can be rightfully described as a paid liar. And I don't mean to imply that even the paper of record is free from problems (remember Jayson Blair?) [edited for clarity]
- a_c_s 11y ago
  The piece was also in line with numerous previous reports on Amazon's working conditions for both blue collar and white collar employees.
  - srtjstjsj 11y ago
    That's a classic fallacy: You already had evidence, fine, but you don't get to re-use it to increase your confidence again later. If you want to build up a case, you need more evidence, need more narrative exaggeration backed by the old evidence.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
ucaetano 11y ago
It's actually weird to see a company firing back this publicly, releasing performance data (no matter if positive or negative) on previous employees, and it all being posted not by the CEO or a HR VP, but by the head of PR. [Edit: Not only it smells of whitewashing, but it also looks deceptive. And PR? Seriously? Not only it's a sleazy piece, but Amazon chose the worst possible position to convey the message. Get some engineer, accountant, designer, heck, get the HR intern who just joined 2 weeks ago to talk about this. It would have more credibility than a PR person who's been in the company for less than one year.]
- dekhn 11y ago
  I predict they will take down this article and issue an apology.
  - enraged_camel 11y ago
    It would be deliciously ironic if the apology also came from the PR department.
- jessriedel 11y ago
  As I remarked when it first came out, NYTimes article was almost completely anecdotal. That's not damning, but it does require you to trust the reporters to distill a large complicated mess to representative pieces. What part of Carney's piece do you think similarly depends on us trusting him? Do you think he fabricated the email from Kantor? Do you think he's outright lying about the context of Olson's dismissal to the extent that it wasn't incumbent on the Times to disclose this in the original article? I'm totally willing to accept for the sake of argument that Carney is dishonest, but I think that is largely beside the point here. If you accept the truth of the bare facts presented by Carney, putting aside his spin, then the badness of Carney and/or Amazon is irrelevant for assessing the badness of the NYTimes.
  - east2west 11y ago
    I agree with you that NYTimes piece is largely anecdotal but I will give my reasons for not believing a SVP of Amazon PR. 1. Personal attach on a former employee as the head of public relation for a multi-billion corporation from a personal blog seems cowardly. Did he give Olson a chance to respond? Is there extenuating circumstances? How did Amazon carry out the investigation? Who knew what when? He accused NYTimes lapses in journalistic standard; he isn't even pretending there is any standard. 2. His attack on reporters is unconvincing. His rhetorical questions sound conniving. The reporters might not have asked those exact questions but they must have examined the named sources' credibility and employment history. Amazon might have refused to give details about Olson's termination, ironically on employee's privacy concern, and then itself divulges specifics, though I am sure after being cleared by their legal department. Noticed that Carney went into hyperboles here rather than stating any facts. A few sentences describing Amazon's interaction with reporters would go a long way here. But no, nothing. 3. His refutation of other three named sources amounts to verbal parsing. Some parts of the review are good so no parts can be called bad. Written review is good so no verbal review can be abusive. No direct requirement so everything is employee's fault and they deserve everything they get. It is almost offensive to read this part. If this is the best Amazon can come up with, it must be bad. 4. Cheery picking Amazon's interaction with NYTimes' reporter. Select publication of correspondence and one-sided characterization of interaction is sly. Make public all correspondence, with proper permission, so we can get a full picture. Fundementall Carney is a former reporter and whitehouse spokesman who is now attacking former employees in behalf of a giant corporation with enormous resources on personal blog. He is committing every bad act he accuses NYTimes of and a lot more. It is debatable whether NYTimes followed the ideal journalistic standards but it is clear Carney follows none here.
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
While selective storytelling has been a staple of traditional news media for ages, this article does tempt me to ask: why Amazon? Of all the workaholic culture tech companies of the last 20 years, why did the New York Times choose to center the exposé on Amazon.com? My entirely baseless suspicion is that unlike many other tech companies, Amazon is a direct competitor in its ability to drive information to their customers through their proprietary devices and channels, and can also slowly chip away at the newspaper's clout with Amazon ratings for books displacing the Times' bestseller list, for example. Instead of reading Times' reviews of books, films, products, and so on, a customer might consider Amazon's 5-star review system to be enough for them. Amazon's work culture is hardly unique in corporate America, especially among the tech industry. The New York Times knew that they would make an adversary with that piece. They chose their target carefully.
- forgottenpass 11y ago
  The motivation you speculate on seems, uh, awfully complicated compared to "Newspaper airs dirty laundry of Fortune 29 company."
  - detaro 11y ago
    That in addition already has been heavily criticized for it's treatment of (warehouse) workers before, giving an excellent trend to build upon.
  - aet 11y ago
    Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post (edited: Not Amazon, but Bezos owns WP)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
forgottenpass 11y ago
This is written by Jay Carney. Yes, that Jay Carney. Apparently he's working for Amazon now. Two months after Bezos' internal memo is "leaked" to the press saying that the Amazon in the NYT peice isn't the Amazon he knows, and that employees should email him directly if something like that happens. Now it's time for the offensive. Apparently two months is the amount of time you no longer have to pretend to care about work conditions, and go back to reputation. This medium piece attacks the character of the NYT's source, which is comedy gold coming from someone who was paid to be a lying weaselly bastard, performing active disservice to the citizenry.
- at-fates-hands 11y ago
  >> This medium piece attacks the character of the NYT's source, which is comedy gold coming from someone who was paid to be a lying weaselly bastard, performing active disservice to the citizenry. I started reading and got halfway through and went back to see who the author was and stopped at that point. The one guy who doesn't have a shred of credibility attacking sources as less than credible? Unreal.
- whatok 11y ago
  Former Minister of Propaganda aside, if his account of one of the key sources of the story is true, it kinda affects how it should be perceived, right?
  - chishaku 11y ago
    Right. How do we properly discern between professional bullshitters?
    - whatok 11y ago
      I would probably have to side with Amazon's account since it would be pretty easy for the person who resigned to sue for libel if it were not true. Don't think Amazon would want to expose themselves like that.
whatok 11y ago
Did I miss out on some additional fallout after the article was initially published? I don't see why they're addressing this two months later.
- tremon 11y ago
  Apparently, that's the amount of time you need to polish a turd before it stops smelling.
- TravelTechGuy 11y ago
  My $.02: maybe they are starting to feel the fallout in their recruiting efforts about now. I get about one recruiting email from Amazon a month on average, and I assume others do as well. It's enough that 10% of candidates reply with "I wouldn't feel comfortable working there", or " I don't think it's a culture fit - I don't like crying at my desk, as is apparently encouraged over there" for them to realize they have to do something drastic. Sadly, for them drastic means going double-douche: outing ex-employees and attacking the media, rather than own up to even a small part of what was published, and say they are striving to improve their culture.
  - whatok 11y ago
    Yeah that makes sense and also offers an explanation of their choice to publish on Medium.
  - cwilkes 11y ago
    I read somewhere else that they are afraid of another upcoming expose, like from 60 minutes, and want to get out in front of it. Even if that is true it was a really ham handed way of doing it. The only people this appeals to are ones that already like Amazon. The ones on the fence look at it and see "hey they drug out why this was a bad person" and think that they don't want to be on the receiving end of that and thus turn into ones that aren't inclined to work for them.
jobu 11y ago
Even in job interviews, Amazon touts itself is an intense, high-energy place to work, and that was exactly what I saw in the NYT article. Some people can't handle that, and they were fired or left disgruntled. The fact that many of the quotes were from disgruntled workers was completely obvious, and going into the dirty details of their firings is pretty low. The most damning claim of the NYT article that isn't addressed here is the lack of caring and support for people on parental leave, FMLA, and people going through major health issues (cancer, stillborn child). If the authors embellished on those claims then that would actually hurt the original article.
cryoshon 11y ago
"Senior Vice President for Global Corporate Affairs at Amazon. Previously, he served as White House Press Secretary and spent 20 years as a reporter for TIME." A spin doctor doing his best to protect the people that pay him. Pay this article no mind; unrelated assaults on a source's character have no bearing on already established facts.
- tgb 11y ago
  Do you know the meaning of the word "hypocrisy"? Your comment almost had me laugh out loud.
  - cryoshon 11y ago
    Consider that the source I was mentioning had no positive gain associated with going to bat against Amazon in the original NYT story, and Jay Carney, as PR-guy, has a huge incentive (keeping his job) to go to bat for Amazon.
    - tgb 11y ago
      I'm not arguing that! I'm just laughing while the kettle calls the pot black. And not just this post, half this thread is this stuff.
    - notjaycarney 11y ago
      You don't think it's possible the former employee had an agenda or axe to grind after his dismissal? People often act out when they are emotionally upset, which the former Amazon employee clearly was. This whole HN thread is kind of amazing -- it's filled with ad hominem attacks against Carney because of his history in politics. Very few of the articles actually addressed Carney's main idea: the primary source from the NYT had a possible agenda/bias. The NYT reporters knew that, but did not report it. They also misled the Amazon people about their objective, pitching it differently and hiding facts that would have undercut their point. It seems like Carney presented a lot of facts. If you dispute the facts in the article, or think Carney flat-out made up the email he quotes at length (or the reason for dismissal), then you are at least addressing the content of what he says. granted, i have no idea what his political history is, as I'd never heard his name before.
cjbprime 11y ago
> Here’s what the story didn’t tell you about Mr. Olson: his brief tenure at Amazon ended after an investigation revealed he had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately. Together with the inappropriate disclosure of performance reviews, this statement just makes me think that Amazon probably has a culture of defrauding vendors, and usually gets away with it, but sometimes has to blame a junior hire to save face when caught.
- jessriedel 11y ago
  Let's assume both Amazon and Carney are evil. Do you think it was acceptable for the Times to not disclose the context of Olson's dismissal?
  - petegrif 11y ago
    I don't know it if would have been appropriate for the Times to disclose the context of Olson's dismissal at all, it wasn't after all the point of the article - that was work conditions at Amazon rather than the transgressions of Olsen. But I think it was completely unacceptable for them to take his disclosures at face value given such a context.
    - jhall1468 11y ago
      Wait, so you are pleading ignorance to the Times failing to properly inform and are fast to judge Amazon for disclosure of the truth? If the roles were reversed, you would undoubtedly be supporting an Amazon PR piece in the Times, because the truth "wasn't the point of the article", correct?
      - jessriedel 11y ago
        The parent and grand parent commentors are different.
  - cjbprime 11y ago
dvere 11y ago
Acting like Scientology.
unethical_ban 11y ago
Does this kind of behavior indicate we should stop using Amazon? Despite loving my Kindle, is it time to boycott a company that behaves this way?
- jazzyk 11y ago
  I can't completely quit them, but I have reduced the number of purchases from Amazon - based on many previous stories. Will probably give up Prime when it comes up for renewal.
- eclipxe 11y ago
  No.
  - unethical_ban 11y ago
    Excellent feedback.
ablation 11y ago
What a bizarre, at times completely inappropriate article to have posted. All it does is leave me amazed at - and a little embarrassed for - Amazon's PR department.
- puredemo 11y ago
  I'm basically an Amazon fanboy, but with the failure of the Fire phone, the continually over-wrought nature of AWS UI, and now this hamfisted response to the NYT, they are really losing their appeal. Amazon: Your current employees had already written much better responses than this within 48 hours of the NYT article coming out. What is this drivel supposed to accomplish? Why is PR rant hosted on Medium? Why are you exposing old employee personnel records? Why are you putting political operatives like Carney in charge of your PR? Get it together guys. The NYT article is ancient history now and didn't merit further response. It was an obvious hit piece but your reaction has been quite poor.
hnamazon123 11y ago
I recently quit Amazon. I don't doubt that New York Times purposely misrepresented or omitted facts to make this story. Their stories tend to be very agenda driven and the facts tend to be subservient to the narrative, a policy which is deemed acceptable because it "starts a conversation" or the story is "probably true for someone". This is typical of the left wing. However, I did in fact have an absolutely awful experience at Amazon, in AWS specifically. It really is an awful place to work where management is entirely ego driven and in cover your ass mode 24/7 to the supreme detriment of everyone involved. Subordinates are seen as drones who should work without appreciation or thought for self. And the idea that subordinates are not drones is considered un-Amazonian. I did in fact witness someone cry at their desk. Well, they didn't cry, it was more like they were in an emotionally precarious daze after being berated for 30 minutes straight by a manager who only did it to make himself feel better about his own worries about the project.
- boxy310 11y ago
  In a lot of ways Amazon reminds me of Wal-mart, both from the market space they occupy and how terribly they treat employees. I think this is really a byproduct of chasing after low costs without other substantial service improvements. At least with Uber you get a legitimately better hailing and payment experience, not just being cheaper.
  - et2o 11y ago
    Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Amazon offers pretty substantial service improvement from just about any other online retailer. $50/year for unlimited 1-day shipping?
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      From Amazon. So, $50 fixed shipping cost from Amazon, whether you use that much or not.
    - jazzyk 11y ago
      Prime is $99/year for two day free shipping.
bernardom 11y ago
For someone who had to stand at the White House podium for years, it's got to be gratifying to get a shot back at the media for once.
FussyZeus 11y ago
Just weighing in on the Olson thing: Why is it considered unprofessional or inappropriate for a company rep to speak openly about the illegal/unethical practices of now former employees? Isn't that a good thing to hear about that a company you do business with is culling the ranks of those stealing from it, or whatever they happen to be doing? If he admitted it and resigned over it, sounds like a pretty cut and dried case that he did it. Screw his reputation, and screw him. Maybe if this stuff was made public more often so that misbehaving executives got more punishment than a tiny ass fine and a huge sum of money, we'd have less of a crony-capitalist system going on these days.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  Why would you believe anything Amazon or Jay Carney says? Do you really think they are giving you an unbiased view of their company? That they have no ulterior motive in saying these things to you?
  - FussyZeus 11y ago
    Well in the first place I didn't mean strictly Amazon, I'm speaking in general. I'm talking more about the general attitude that "this guy stole from us/our customers/our vendors, but we can't say anything publicly". That was more what I was talking about. Back to the Amazon thing you're discussing, while I'm sure it's a high pressure workplace that isn't suited for everyone, the Times piece was as sensationalized if not moreso than the rebuff here. The rebuff I'm sure is biased to the company. As with most things, the truth isn't on either side, it's somewhere in the middle, though frankly the matter of fact stating and the clear context of the Amazon rebuff does ring true-r to me, but that's only IMHO.
    - jsprogrammer 11y ago
      Amazon will state any "fact" that they think will turn your opinion.
      - FussyZeus 11y ago
neoCrimeLabs 11y ago
> What The New York Times Didn’t Tell You Am I the only one tired of click-bait titles that don't tell you anything about the article? Had to read the comments here to understand what the article was about and decide if it was worth reading. All it takes is 4 extra words to give the title context: > What The New York Times Didn’t Tell You [about working at Amazon]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- mlrtime 11y ago
  It works, you clicked.
  - neoCrimeLabs 11y ago
    I didn't click into the article, but into these comments.
    - srtjstjsj 11y ago
      HN posted the clickbait title (using its lame rule of cloning the web page title out of context), and you clicked into HN. Ergo, it worked.
      - neoCrimeLabs 11y ago
        Bah, you're right. :-)
      - dang 11y ago
        HN's rules explicitly call for changing clickbait titles. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 11y ago
  We changed the title to add "about Amazon" and remove the linkbait "you".
logfromblammo 11y ago
The headline seems very click-baitish and uninformative. Can we be more specific? The New York Times doesn't tell me a lot of things. Jay Carney Rebuts New York Times Article About Amazon's Work Culture, perhaps?
izacus 11y ago
O wow, this makes Amazon look really bad - it's like when politicians opponents try to discredit opponents with criminal charges or whatnot without actually refuting them. Note how they don't really deny or refute the text of original article but just go full on to personally attack a person to discredit him.
mangeletti 11y ago
This reminds me so much of the Foxconn "scandal" that was "broken" on This American Life a few years ago. The source infiltrated Foxconn to expose human rights atrocities and abuse, but it turned out the source was lying about almost everything he told TAL.
lpsz 11y ago
One can like or hate Amazon, and it may or may not be a crappy place to work. That said, it sounds like NYT (a newspaper of record, btw) did more than reasonable selective reporting, to evoke certain feelings in the readers, to get clicks, to start a conversation, or what the reason may be. And it's lousy to see this in modern news reporting. Even the respectable publications err on the side of sensationalism, and it's notoriously hard to get unbiased information as a reader. Where can someone go to read unbiased, well-researched, both-sides-of-the-story news?
- radiorental 11y ago
  "Where can someone go to read unbiased, well-researched, both-sides-of-the story news?" I personally think we're spoilt for choice. Just bear in mind everyone, everywhere has an inherent bias. Some more so that others. I read these to get what I feel is a well rounded opinion http://america.aljazeera.com/ http://america.aljazeera.com/ http://www.bbc.com/news http://www.bbc.com/news
- caskance 11y ago
  Why would such a place exist? The more unbiased a news outlet is trusted to be, the higher the incentive to subvert them to show bias towards you.
- roymurdock 11y ago
  Reuters. They're also the most boring/uninformative. Al Jazeera, The Economist, Bloomberg, and Quartz have well-researched and relevant stories but they usually come with a bias.
rdancer 11y ago
It is sad that the NYT editorial standards are so weak, and they have cried wolf so many times (e.g. Apple suppliers' working conditions). They used to be a broadsheet with an opinion; now I don't know what they are :-(
alexggordon 11y ago
While Mediums (Jay Carney's) article has a fair point, in that once you look at article under a microscope its conclusions start to fall apart, I think Jay may have missed what the article is. The authors knew from the get-go that they were going to publish a scathing "insider", "never-before seen" review of Amazon. The NYT article is First-Class clickbait. It's Buzzfeed in a suit with a degree. Jay Carney did an excellent job debunking it; however, it's much like debunking a Buzzfeed article. You might come out ahead logically, but that isn't what people are going to be talking about. The NYT isn't going for truth, they need people to read their newspaper, and then talk about it so they decided to write a bad article about Amazon, and then they found the "sources" for it.
GCA10 11y ago
Anyone else remember that sly piece by BusinessInsider in September, saying that Medium could make a lot of money by becoming the modern-day version of PR Newswire -- where companies pay to get their stories out to the public? It sounded like a nutty comparison at the time. But after looking at Jay Carney's post, I'm thinking that that BI's Biz Carson might have nailed it. Even if the premium pay channel doesn't exist yet ... the temptation to create it is clearly there http://www.businessinsider.com/medium-pr-newswire-revisited-2015-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/medium-pr-newswire-revisited-...
- dswalter 11y ago
  You bring up a really good point. Medium's default layout scheme highlights content over authorship, so you don't get smacked in the face by the fact that this is written by Jay Carney.
bitwize 11y ago
American journalism is like the American judiciary: the truth is irrelevant and whoever can produce the more convincing story wins.
serge2k 11y ago
> Also, [the anytime feedback tool is] not anonymous I assume by this they mean managers can see who left feedback.
atomi 11y ago
Ambigous title.
bambax 11y ago
This seems to be the story that never ends... But everytime Amazon tries to respond it seems to dig itself deeper in its own bullshit (I'm a very loyal Amazon customer, and while I wouldn't work at Amazon in a million years, I'm very sorry to see all this). Some comments: > Chris Brucia, who recalls how he was berated in his performance review before being promoted, also was given a written review. Had the Times asked about this, we would have shared what it said. Amazon is willing to "share" with the press the contents of performance reviews of its employees? That's bad (worse than what was in the article). > Dina Vaccari, the former employee who is quoted saying she didn’t sleep for four days straight to illustrate just how hard Amazon forces people to work, posted her own response to the article. Here’s what she said: "Allow me to be clear: The hours I put in at Amazon were my choice." That's ridiculous and meaningless; if you choose to not sleep for 4 days in order to carry out your job, isn't it obvious the expectations were set too high, and work/life balance is regarded as irrelevant, as a company policy (or lack thereof)? > When there are two sides of a story, a reader deserves to know them both. Well, ok (in general; sometimes there's no "other side"; creationism is not "another side" to the story of evolution, for example). But in this case, the "other side" should be Amazon employees doing normal hours and performing spectacularly, not the voice of management -- as rendered by someone who used to be the Mother of All Spin Doctors! > The next time you see a sensationalistic quote in the Times (...) you might wonder whether there’s a crucial piece of context or backstory missing — like admission of fraud That's a cheap, defensive shot; what it really says is you're hurt; and that you'd probably be less hurt if there was not a lot of truth to the original article.
j_s 11y ago
Did I miss anything below (for anyone who wants to review)? The negative articles draw many more comments, but the general sentiment is not directed only against Amazon. Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065243 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065243 (424 comments) Inside Amazon https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10070115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10070115 (98 comments) Amazon boss Jeff Bezos defends company's workplace culture https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10072389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10072389 (73 comments) My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10083475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10083475 (331 comments)
FmrAMZN_TA 11y ago
Disclaimer: I am a former Amazon employee. I worked there for exactly a year. I assume I was doing well, I was offered increase bonus and base after my initial year. This response from Amazon continues to amaze me - first a post from Bezos that quoted an employee's anecdotal experiences and makes the (totally absurd) claim that Bezos doesn't know what life is like working there. Then they have a post (http://recode.net/2015/09/25/why-i-work-for-amazon-a-response/ http://recode.net/2015/09/25/why-i-work-for-amazon-a-respons...) from a Senior VP who doesn't have the same experience as someone who isn't a Senior VP. Now they are digging up dirt on employees to paint them with a bad brush. First, the person with the killer quote should have been removed, no question. Huge bias. But the second and third people? Nothing in the piece is wrong - they could have been strafed with aggressive language and/or they could have been berated in their reviews. Look at the wording: All three included positive feedback on strengths as well as thoughts on areas of improvement. Far from a “strafing,” even the areas for improvement written by her colleagues contained language like: “It has been a pleasure working with Elizabeth.” This is the best you can do? "Contained language like"? This is truly terrible spin. At Amazon, they teach managers to give the classic "shit sandwich" - good/bad/good. I saw many examples (I was a manager and reviewed many pieces of feedback in OLRs - Organizational Leadership Review) written EXACTLY as ham-handedly as this: "Overall, it has been a pleasure working with Elizabeth. However, the fact that she did not know the margins for a specific warehouse group when presenting to our VP shows a complete lack of diving deep, and makes me question whether or not she really wants to work at this level." The third example is similarly vague/wrong: "Chris Brucia, who recalls how he was berated in his performance review before being promoted, also was given a written review... Mr. Brucia was given exceptionally high ratings and then promoted to a senior position." That doesn't mean he wasn't berated - it could have been overly aggressive/wrong (and you cannot dispute ANY claims written in the feedback, all you can do is complain to your manager), just because it ended on a good note doesn't make it less hurtful. But what this really shows is that Amazon is as ruthless as ever. They WILL go after you, they will dig up dirt on you, and they will terrify you into never speaking out. If you are a former employee (as I am), you know the stories are very very true, and NEVER speak out publicly. When the story came out, we knew it misrepresented Amazon. I'm sorry, Mr. Carney, the story was as accurate a representation of Amazon as I've ever seen in press.
pluckytree 11y ago
I’m pretty sure I know what the headline of this article didn’t tell me. What it was about.
aaronbrethorst 11y ago
It seems bizarre to me that this rebuttal took two months to publish. Are they seeing a problem with recruiting all of a sudden?
jbapple 11y ago
If you worked for Amazon and you saw that Jay Carney was willing to reveal your personnel records if you talk to the media about unethical or illegal labor management practices, would it change your decision about speaking to reporters? I think we should consider the possibility that this post will be more effective at intimidating current and former Amazon employees into silence, rather than persuading NYT readers.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  After having read down half the page of responses, your comment was enough to convince me to finally cancel my Prime membership.
danso 11y ago
The NYT editor in chief has responded via Medium: https://medium.com/@NYTimesComm/dean-baquet-responds-to-jay-carney-s-medium-post-6af794c7a7c6 https://medium.com/@NYTimesComm/dean-baquet-responds-to-jay-... > In response to your posting on Medium this morning, I want to reiterate my support for our story about Amazon’s culture. In your posting — as well as in a series of recent email exchanges with me — you contested the article’s assertion that many employees found Amazon a tough place to work. Specifically, he says had they known Olson had a conflict, they would have disclosed it. But the NYT asserts that Mr. Olson never disclosed such allegations, nor does he admit to them now. > Olson described conflict and turmoil in his group and a revolving series of bosses, and acknowledged that he didn’t last there. He disputes Amazon’s account of his departure, though. He told us today that his division was overwhelmed and had difficulty meeting its marketing commitments to publishers; he said he and others in the division could not keep up. But he said he was never confronted with allegations of personally fraudulent conduct or falsifying records, nor did he admit to that. If there were criminal charges against him, or some formal accusation of wrongdoing, we would certainly consider that. If we had known his status was contested, we would have said so. edit: re-reading Carney's statement, it seems pretty unequivocal: "An investigation revealed [Olson] had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately" The NYT is likewise unequivocal: "[Olson] said he was never confronted with allegations of personally fraudulent conduct or falsifying records" Well, only Amazon has the time-stamped records that could prove who is lying here. It was a questionable tactic for Carney to start his response with such a bold and salacious allegation against someone who constituted a single quote in the NYT's story...assuming that Carney is right (because it's a complete unmitigated disaster if he isn't) now it seems he's going to have to go even more salacious, perhaps even post the actual pertinent records online. How was this mudfest good for Amazon's image, again? And so late after the original story and Bezos's (pretty decent) response?
- puredemo 11y ago
  Baquet's response makes Carney's complaints seem infantile. Carney should have known better than to post this in this first place.
- mbca 11y ago
hashberry 11y ago
The similarities and inaccuracies remind me of the Rolling Stone "A Rape on Campus" story. What is wrong with today's journalism? These are established, mainstream publishers. There is so much focus on the message instead of the facts that entire stories can be fabricated. I canceled my NYTimes subscription last year because it has become increasingly frustrating to read, especially their "women in tech" articles. For example, their recent "What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech"[0] op-ed blames nerd male culture for making women uncomfortable, and argues for a more neutral environment with no Star Wars posters or tech magazines or nerdy t-shirts... [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/what-really-keeps-women-out-of-tech.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/what-really...
suneilp 11y ago
How about some proof that Olson committed fraud. With everything I've been hearing about Amazon, I have to wonder if Olson was innocent or scapegoated by a group of people involved in the fraud.
russelluresti 11y ago
I love how the start of this article reads like something out of Character Assassination 101. Step 1: start by bringing up something negative about a person that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the issue at hand. Okay, so the guy resigned because he did something bad. How does that make what he experienced while there not true? Oh, that's right, it doesn't. And the admission of fraud isn't a "crucial piece of context." You and I both know that. Unfortunately, you think the reader is dumb enough not to know it. Step 2: Assert statements in the form of a question so that you can deny every making the assertion. "Did Ms. Kantor’s editors at the Times ask her whether Mr. Olson might have an axe to grind?" Here, we don't actually assert that Mr. Olson has an axe to grind. We don't assert he's purposely lying to get revenge. We just highly insinuate it and make the reader believe it by putting it in question form. This is an obvious attempt at character assassination and to cast doubt in the minds of the reader without actually saying he was lying. If Mr. Olson is lying - sue him. You're within your rights to do that. But you're not suing him. Or the Times. So, what's the point of this? Propaganda. And sleazy propaganda at that.
- whiteboarder 11y ago
  And the fraud thing doesn't even look to be true. The NYT writer responded and said that was false.
  - ninv 11y ago
    I think Mr. Olson should sue Amazon now.
  - oh_sigh 11y ago
    Do you have a link to the response? That seems like a pretty serious allegation to drop. Also, how would the reporter know? Are they just trusting the Olsen guy?
    - zaphos 11y ago
      The NYT response said that Olson said it was not true: "But [Olson] said he was never confronted with allegations of personally fraudulent conduct or falsifying records, nor did he admit to that." "If there were criminal charges against him, or some formal accusation of wrongdoing, we would certainly consider that. If we had known his status was contested, we would have said so." - https://medium.com/@NYTimesComm/dean-baquet-responds-to-jay-carney-s-medium-post-6af794c7a7c6 https://medium.com/@NYTimesComm/dean-baquet-responds-to-jay-...
cognivore 11y ago
"Here’s what the story didn’t tell you about Mr. Olson: his brief tenure at Amazon ended after an investigation revealed he had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately." It doesn't matter. If the devil tells the truth, it's still the truth.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  But if it's the devil talking, you have fair grounds for increasing your suspicion that what's said isn't the truth. And in this case, if Mr. Olsen did in fact get caught by such an investigation, he may be significantly biased against Amazon. That does not automatically make what he says untrue, but it does increase suspicion that it may not be the straight story.
bluishgreen 11y ago
Someone walks to me and says things like this(the original NYTimes article) about say...Facebook, I will double check. If someone says what they said about Amazon, I won't double check (I know, I should). But you know what, I have heard so many anecdotes from people who have no reason to lie, that for me personally at this point, I have much better things to do than double check the obvious. Someone with a fancy university grant will do that, I have other stuff to do, like ignore all those amazon high-volume-recruiter incessant emails.
suprgeek 11y ago
If anything, such a cynical and mean-spirited "reply" makes it absolutely and positively certain that working at Amazon should be the last thing any half-way competent Tech person should consider. This piece reads exactly like an oppo-research piece that you would use as a hatchet-job on a political opponent. I had to check twice to ensure that this was not some kind of satire (it is getting harder for me to tell these days). It goes into great detail making personal attacks against the "complainers" while doing nothing to address the substantive allegations made by the articles. So 1) yes there is a "snitch" tool that amazon encourages employees to use 2) the people identified have all quit after complaining of excessive work one way or another 3) when the initial story came out Almighty Leader Jeff even wrote a memo "please be more considerate" 4) PR flunky now makes sleazy attacks on ex-employees to blunt the negative perceptions. Updated to add- You want an unsubstantiated ad-hominem here you go: "Jay Carney was encouraged to quit his white-house posting because of his incompetence. Also how seriously can you take a PR guy with the last name of 'Carney'? He had to go!"
aschearer 11y ago
"Give me six words of an innocent man, and I will find something in them with which to hang him" How should companies interact with the press today in order to avoid an outcome like the original NYT article?
- mangeletti 11y ago
  It's "six lines", not "six words". I think Cardinal Richelieu would be hard pressed to find six words to be as incriminating, unless they were, "I have just committed high treason".
pm24601 11y ago
Here are some more people for Jay to slander: http://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-for-my-feedback-sooner/ http://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-fo... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10123456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10123456 ( https://medium.com/@jcheiffetz/i-had-a-baby-and-cancer-when-i-worked-at-amazon-this-is-my-story-9eba5eef2976 https://medium.com/@jcheiffetz/i-had-a-baby-and-cancer-when-... )
mgalka 11y ago
Saw a great post relating to this a few months ago. http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/using-data-to-benchmark-amazon-engineering-employee-satisfaction http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/using-data-... At the very least the reporters could have checked Glassdoor and seen that employees actually rate Amazon fairly well.
numair 11y ago
If you're hiring in tech right now, you have to REALLY love Amazon for doing this. Basically, what they are saying is, if you speak out about the emotional hell of working for them, they will attempt to publicly humiliate you to make themselves look better. You're going to go through hell working for them, and you're going to go through hell if you speak out after you leave. Now, they might think this is a winning strategy for them, but in fact the logical conclusion for potential hires is -- stay away from Amazon, because you'll hate it, and then they will ruin your reputation if you speak out. Which is really helpful for everyone else who's hiring right now, because intelligent people paranoid about their reputation will steer clear of any potential Amazon interviews. Their PR guy doesn't understand that he just cost his employer an entire generation of talented engineers. Oh well, this is great for everyone else.
anon203942309 11y ago
Taking a high level approach here, there are a lot of details on both sides that could be disputed. But what remains true, is there is a reason this article was written about Amazon and not any of the many other tech companies out there. There is obviously an element of truth to the story, even if specific details can be disputed.
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hans 11y ago
Just love that Bezos quote: "that's not the amazon that i know" ... hmm gee uthink? billionaire founder has a different experience, wow who'd a thought? glassdoor has spelled this out for a long time but its amusing that amazon doesn't admit they'll change. my thinking is: a company that relishes in frugality = your machine your monitors and your coffee will suck, you will never get promoted, stack rank Plus all this bs about suing via nda and indebtedness around relo assistance etc sounds like the suck .. amazon is downright hostile

343 points by samhoggnz 11y ago

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

wittekm 11y ago

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

whatok 11y ago
I'm sure it would have been a multi-month process to hire for a position like Carney's so it likely would have started well before that February date.
- sageabilly 11y ago
  Interesting speculation by the original commenter, however, as we can imagine that the NYT likely shopped the idea for the article to Amazon long before Ms. Kantor was originally in contact with Amazon. So perhaps the timeline went NYT shops idea for article with Amazon -> Amazon realizes they need a head of PR and starts looking -> Ms. Kantor reaches out to begin discussions with Amazon right around the same time Carney is hired

dekhn 11y ago

There are several shockingly inappropriate things in this article. In particular, the PR person at Amazon is saying that they would have shared employee's personal records (including evaluations) as well as other employee's termination conditions (which I consider unrelated to their quotes). Amazon: what Carney just posted was very inappropriate. I am completely amazed you did this (assuming it was done with approval at the company level). You should be aware that you will start having serious problems hiring and retaining quality employees if you post things like this about your employees.

hahainternet 11y ago
> In particular, the PR person at Amazon is saying that they would have shared employee's personal records (including evaluations) as well as other employee's termination conditions (which I consider unrelated to their quotes). I assume from the article this meant including the consent of the employee in question, given that they were part of the article. It does seem a little odd though.
baldfat 11y ago
Devil's Advocate here: The people named in the article and refuted by Amazon put their personal story a public story. If someone "slanders" a business it can't reply with evidence? Must the company say it is a personal matter that we can't disclose, which reads they are guilty and don't want the truth to come out? End of Devil's Advocate Seems like they were making a statement of if you talk will will fully disclose our information to refute what you said. I think this was hurting Amazon so much that they are willing to payout the "out of court settlement" and "set the record straight."
- roymurdock 11y ago
  The details provided in the response are probably being disclosed legally (doubt Amazon PR would screw up that badly), but it shows really poor taste that they would even respond to the NYT piece which was pretty clearly hyperbolic, emotional, and somewhat cherrypicked; even more so that they would adopt the same tactics of naming and shaming ex-employees. The fact that it was also published on medium by the head of PR baffles me - why are they aiming this refutation at the tech crowd that would probably see through this cover-piece pretty easily, instead of getting it into a high-readership, Amazon consumer oriented publication? Poorly planned and executed all around, regardless of legality.
  - eclipxe 11y ago
    The tech crowd (at least on HN) didn't see through the cover-piece...the comments here were overwhelmingly along the lines of "I knew it! Horrible environment". A lot of confirmation of existing anti-Amazon bias.

ams6110 11y ago

Goes back at least as far as the 1980's, remember the Pulitzer Prize the Washington Post had to give up after one of their reporters literally made up a story about an 8 year old heroin addict. Just because it's in a major newspaper, don't believe reporting is evenly balanced or without an agenda.

CaptainZapp 11y ago
Well, let's put it this way: When I compare the credibility between the NYT and Amazon's chief PR flack, who does not hesitate to share internals from personnel records in order to smear former employees then I know who gets my vote. Most certainly not Mister Carney, who I think can be rightfully described as a paid liar. And I don't mean to imply that even the paper of record is free from problems (remember Jayson Blair?) [edited for clarity]
a_c_s 11y ago
The piece was also in line with numerous previous reports on Amazon's working conditions for both blue collar and white collar employees.
- srtjstjsj 11y ago
  That's a classic fallacy: You already had evidence, fine, but you don't get to re-use it to increase your confidence again later. If you want to build up a case, you need more evidence, need more narrative exaggeration backed by the old evidence.
deleted 11y ago
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ucaetano 11y ago

It's actually weird to see a company firing back this publicly, releasing performance data (no matter if positive or negative) on previous employees, and it all being posted not by the CEO or a HR VP, but by the head of PR. [Edit: Not only it smells of whitewashing, but it also looks deceptive. And PR? Seriously? Not only it's a sleazy piece, but Amazon chose the worst possible position to convey the message. Get some engineer, accountant, designer, heck, get the HR intern who just joined 2 weeks ago to talk about this. It would have more credibility than a PR person who's been in the company for less than one year.]

dekhn 11y ago
I predict they will take down this article and issue an apology.
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  It would be deliciously ironic if the apology also came from the PR department.
jessriedel 11y ago
As I remarked when it first came out, NYTimes article was almost completely anecdotal. That's not damning, but it does require you to trust the reporters to distill a large complicated mess to representative pieces. What part of Carney's piece do you think similarly depends on us trusting him? Do you think he fabricated the email from Kantor? Do you think he's outright lying about the context of Olson's dismissal to the extent that it wasn't incumbent on the Times to disclose this in the original article? I'm totally willing to accept for the sake of argument that Carney is dishonest, but I think that is largely beside the point here. If you accept the truth of the bare facts presented by Carney, putting aside his spin, then the badness of Carney and/or Amazon is irrelevant for assessing the badness of the NYTimes.
- east2west 11y ago
  I agree with you that NYTimes piece is largely anecdotal but I will give my reasons for not believing a SVP of Amazon PR. 1. Personal attach on a former employee as the head of public relation for a multi-billion corporation from a personal blog seems cowardly. Did he give Olson a chance to respond? Is there extenuating circumstances? How did Amazon carry out the investigation? Who knew what when? He accused NYTimes lapses in journalistic standard; he isn't even pretending there is any standard. 2. His attack on reporters is unconvincing. His rhetorical questions sound conniving. The reporters might not have asked those exact questions but they must have examined the named sources' credibility and employment history. Amazon might have refused to give details about Olson's termination, ironically on employee's privacy concern, and then itself divulges specifics, though I am sure after being cleared by their legal department. Noticed that Carney went into hyperboles here rather than stating any facts. A few sentences describing Amazon's interaction with reporters would go a long way here. But no, nothing. 3. His refutation of other three named sources amounts to verbal parsing. Some parts of the review are good so no parts can be called bad. Written review is good so no verbal review can be abusive. No direct requirement so everything is employee's fault and they deserve everything they get. It is almost offensive to read this part. If this is the best Amazon can come up with, it must be bad. 4. Cheery picking Amazon's interaction with NYTimes' reporter. Select publication of correspondence and one-sided characterization of interaction is sly. Make public all correspondence, with proper permission, so we can get a full picture. Fundementall Carney is a former reporter and whitehouse spokesman who is now attacking former employees in behalf of a giant corporation with enormous resources on personal blog. He is committing every bad act he accuses NYTimes of and a lot more. It is debatable whether NYTimes followed the ideal journalistic standards but it is clear Carney follows none here.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago

While selective storytelling has been a staple of traditional news media for ages, this article does tempt me to ask: why Amazon? Of all the workaholic culture tech companies of the last 20 years, why did the New York Times choose to center the exposé on Amazon.com? My entirely baseless suspicion is that unlike many other tech companies, Amazon is a direct competitor in its ability to drive information to their customers through their proprietary devices and channels, and can also slowly chip away at the newspaper's clout with Amazon ratings for books displacing the Times' bestseller list, for example. Instead of reading Times' reviews of books, films, products, and so on, a customer might consider Amazon's 5-star review system to be enough for them. Amazon's work culture is hardly unique in corporate America, especially among the tech industry. The New York Times knew that they would make an adversary with that piece. They chose their target carefully.

forgottenpass 11y ago
The motivation you speculate on seems, uh, awfully complicated compared to "Newspaper airs dirty laundry of Fortune 29 company."
- detaro 11y ago
  That in addition already has been heavily criticized for it's treatment of (warehouse) workers before, giving an excellent trend to build upon.
- aet 11y ago
  Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post (edited: Not Amazon, but Bezos owns WP)
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

forgottenpass 11y ago

This is written by Jay Carney. Yes, that Jay Carney. Apparently he's working for Amazon now. Two months after Bezos' internal memo is "leaked" to the press saying that the Amazon in the NYT peice isn't the Amazon he knows, and that employees should email him directly if something like that happens. Now it's time for the offensive. Apparently two months is the amount of time you no longer have to pretend to care about work conditions, and go back to reputation. This medium piece attacks the character of the NYT's source, which is comedy gold coming from someone who was paid to be a lying weaselly bastard, performing active disservice to the citizenry.

at-fates-hands 11y ago
>> This medium piece attacks the character of the NYT's source, which is comedy gold coming from someone who was paid to be a lying weaselly bastard, performing active disservice to the citizenry. I started reading and got halfway through and went back to see who the author was and stopped at that point. The one guy who doesn't have a shred of credibility attacking sources as less than credible? Unreal.
whatok 11y ago
Former Minister of Propaganda aside, if his account of one of the key sources of the story is true, it kinda affects how it should be perceived, right?
- chishaku 11y ago
  Right. How do we properly discern between professional bullshitters?
  - whatok 11y ago
    I would probably have to side with Amazon's account since it would be pretty easy for the person who resigned to sue for libel if it were not true. Don't think Amazon would want to expose themselves like that.

whatok 11y ago

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

tremon 11y ago
Apparently, that's the amount of time you need to polish a turd before it stops smelling.
TravelTechGuy 11y ago
My $.02: maybe they are starting to feel the fallout in their recruiting efforts about now. I get about one recruiting email from Amazon a month on average, and I assume others do as well. It's enough that 10% of candidates reply with "I wouldn't feel comfortable working there", or " I don't think it's a culture fit - I don't like crying at my desk, as is apparently encouraged over there" for them to realize they have to do something drastic. Sadly, for them drastic means going double-douche: outing ex-employees and attacking the media, rather than own up to even a small part of what was published, and say they are striving to improve their culture.
- whatok 11y ago
  Yeah that makes sense and also offers an explanation of their choice to publish on Medium.
- cwilkes 11y ago
  I read somewhere else that they are afraid of another upcoming expose, like from 60 minutes, and want to get out in front of it. Even if that is true it was a really ham handed way of doing it. The only people this appeals to are ones that already like Amazon. The ones on the fence look at it and see "hey they drug out why this was a bad person" and think that they don't want to be on the receiving end of that and thus turn into ones that aren't inclined to work for them.

jobu 11y ago

Even in job interviews, Amazon touts itself is an intense, high-energy place to work, and that was exactly what I saw in the NYT article. Some people can't handle that, and they were fired or left disgruntled. The fact that many of the quotes were from disgruntled workers was completely obvious, and going into the dirty details of their firings is pretty low. The most damning claim of the NYT article that isn't addressed here is the lack of caring and support for people on parental leave, FMLA, and people going through major health issues (cancer, stillborn child). If the authors embellished on those claims then that would actually hurt the original article.

cryoshon 11y ago

"Senior Vice President for Global Corporate Affairs at Amazon. Previously, he served as White House Press Secretary and spent 20 years as a reporter for TIME." A spin doctor doing his best to protect the people that pay him. Pay this article no mind; unrelated assaults on a source's character have no bearing on already established facts.

tgb 11y ago
Do you know the meaning of the word "hypocrisy"? Your comment almost had me laugh out loud.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Consider that the source I was mentioning had no positive gain associated with going to bat against Amazon in the original NYT story, and Jay Carney, as PR-guy, has a huge incentive (keeping his job) to go to bat for Amazon.
  - tgb 11y ago
    I'm not arguing that! I'm just laughing while the kettle calls the pot black. And not just this post, half this thread is this stuff.
  - notjaycarney 11y ago
    You don't think it's possible the former employee had an agenda or axe to grind after his dismissal? People often act out when they are emotionally upset, which the former Amazon employee clearly was. This whole HN thread is kind of amazing -- it's filled with ad hominem attacks against Carney because of his history in politics. Very few of the articles actually addressed Carney's main idea: the primary source from the NYT had a possible agenda/bias. The NYT reporters knew that, but did not report it. They also misled the Amazon people about their objective, pitching it differently and hiding facts that would have undercut their point. It seems like Carney presented a lot of facts. If you dispute the facts in the article, or think Carney flat-out made up the email he quotes at length (or the reason for dismissal), then you are at least addressing the content of what he says. granted, i have no idea what his political history is, as I'd never heard his name before.

cjbprime 11y ago

> Here’s what the story didn’t tell you about Mr. Olson: his brief tenure at Amazon ended after an investigation revealed he had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately. Together with the inappropriate disclosure of performance reviews, this statement just makes me think that Amazon probably has a culture of defrauding vendors, and usually gets away with it, but sometimes has to blame a junior hire to save face when caught.

jessriedel 11y ago
Let's assume both Amazon and Carney are evil. Do you think it was acceptable for the Times to not disclose the context of Olson's dismissal?
- petegrif 11y ago
  I don't know it if would have been appropriate for the Times to disclose the context of Olson's dismissal at all, it wasn't after all the point of the article - that was work conditions at Amazon rather than the transgressions of Olsen. But I think it was completely unacceptable for them to take his disclosures at face value given such a context.
  - jhall1468 11y ago
    Wait, so you are pleading ignorance to the Times failing to properly inform and are fast to judge Amazon for disclosure of the truth? If the roles were reversed, you would undoubtedly be supporting an Amazon PR piece in the Times, because the truth "wasn't the point of the article", correct?
    - jessriedel 11y ago
      The parent and grand parent commentors are different.
- cjbprime 11y ago

dvere 11y ago

Acting like Scientology.

unethical_ban 11y ago

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

jazzyk 11y ago
I can't completely quit them, but I have reduced the number of purchases from Amazon - based on many previous stories. Will probably give up Prime when it comes up for renewal.
eclipxe 11y ago
No.
- unethical_ban 11y ago
  Excellent feedback.

ablation 11y ago

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

puredemo 11y ago
I'm basically an Amazon fanboy, but with the failure of the Fire phone, the continually over-wrought nature of AWS UI, and now this hamfisted response to the NYT, they are really losing their appeal. Amazon: Your current employees had already written much better responses than this within 48 hours of the NYT article coming out. What is this drivel supposed to accomplish? Why is PR rant hosted on Medium? Why are you exposing old employee personnel records? Why are you putting political operatives like Carney in charge of your PR? Get it together guys. The NYT article is ancient history now and didn't merit further response. It was an obvious hit piece but your reaction has been quite poor.

hnamazon123 11y ago

I recently quit Amazon. I don't doubt that New York Times purposely misrepresented or omitted facts to make this story. Their stories tend to be very agenda driven and the facts tend to be subservient to the narrative, a policy which is deemed acceptable because it "starts a conversation" or the story is "probably true for someone". This is typical of the left wing. However, I did in fact have an absolutely awful experience at Amazon, in AWS specifically. It really is an awful place to work where management is entirely ego driven and in cover your ass mode 24/7 to the supreme detriment of everyone involved. Subordinates are seen as drones who should work without appreciation or thought for self. And the idea that subordinates are not drones is considered un-Amazonian. I did in fact witness someone cry at their desk. Well, they didn't cry, it was more like they were in an emotionally precarious daze after being berated for 30 minutes straight by a manager who only did it to make himself feel better about his own worries about the project.

boxy310 11y ago
In a lot of ways Amazon reminds me of Wal-mart, both from the market space they occupy and how terribly they treat employees. I think this is really a byproduct of chasing after low costs without other substantial service improvements. At least with Uber you get a legitimately better hailing and payment experience, not just being cheaper.
- et2o 11y ago
  Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Amazon offers pretty substantial service improvement from just about any other online retailer. $50/year for unlimited 1-day shipping?
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    From Amazon. So, $50 fixed shipping cost from Amazon, whether you use that much or not.
  - jazzyk 11y ago
    Prime is $99/year for two day free shipping.

bernardom 11y ago

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

FussyZeus 11y ago

Just weighing in on the Olson thing: Why is it considered unprofessional or inappropriate for a company rep to speak openly about the illegal/unethical practices of now former employees? Isn't that a good thing to hear about that a company you do business with is culling the ranks of those stealing from it, or whatever they happen to be doing? If he admitted it and resigned over it, sounds like a pretty cut and dried case that he did it. Screw his reputation, and screw him. Maybe if this stuff was made public more often so that misbehaving executives got more punishment than a tiny ass fine and a huge sum of money, we'd have less of a crony-capitalist system going on these days.

jsprogrammer 11y ago
Why would you believe anything Amazon or Jay Carney says? Do you really think they are giving you an unbiased view of their company? That they have no ulterior motive in saying these things to you?
- FussyZeus 11y ago
  Well in the first place I didn't mean strictly Amazon, I'm speaking in general. I'm talking more about the general attitude that "this guy stole from us/our customers/our vendors, but we can't say anything publicly". That was more what I was talking about. Back to the Amazon thing you're discussing, while I'm sure it's a high pressure workplace that isn't suited for everyone, the Times piece was as sensationalized if not moreso than the rebuff here. The rebuff I'm sure is biased to the company. As with most things, the truth isn't on either side, it's somewhere in the middle, though frankly the matter of fact stating and the clear context of the Amazon rebuff does ring true-r to me, but that's only IMHO.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    Amazon will state any "fact" that they think will turn your opinion.
    - FussyZeus 11y ago

neoCrimeLabs 11y ago

> What The New York Times Didn’t Tell You Am I the only one tired of click-bait titles that don't tell you anything about the article? Had to read the comments here to understand what the article was about and decide if it was worth reading. All it takes is 4 extra words to give the title context: > What The New York Times Didn’t Tell You [about working at Amazon]

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mlrtime 11y ago
It works, you clicked.
- neoCrimeLabs 11y ago
  I didn't click into the article, but into these comments.
  - srtjstjsj 11y ago
    HN posted the clickbait title (using its lame rule of cloning the web page title out of context), and you clicked into HN. Ergo, it worked.
    - neoCrimeLabs 11y ago
      Bah, you're right. :-)
    - dang 11y ago
      HN's rules explicitly call for changing clickbait titles. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dang 11y ago
We changed the title to add "about Amazon" and remove the linkbait "you".

logfromblammo 11y ago

The headline seems very click-baitish and uninformative. Can we be more specific? The New York Times doesn't tell me a lot of things. Jay Carney Rebuts New York Times Article About Amazon's Work Culture, perhaps?

izacus 11y ago

O wow, this makes Amazon look really bad - it's like when politicians opponents try to discredit opponents with criminal charges or whatnot without actually refuting them. Note how they don't really deny or refute the text of original article but just go full on to personally attack a person to discredit him.

mangeletti 11y ago

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

lpsz 11y ago

One can like or hate Amazon, and it may or may not be a crappy place to work. That said, it sounds like NYT (a newspaper of record, btw) did more than reasonable selective reporting, to evoke certain feelings in the readers, to get clicks, to start a conversation, or what the reason may be. And it's lousy to see this in modern news reporting. Even the respectable publications err on the side of sensationalism, and it's notoriously hard to get unbiased information as a reader. Where can someone go to read unbiased, well-researched, both-sides-of-the-story news?

radiorental 11y ago
"Where can someone go to read unbiased, well-researched, both-sides-of-the story news?" I personally think we're spoilt for choice. Just bear in mind everyone, everywhere has an inherent bias. Some more so that others. I read these to get what I feel is a well rounded opinion http://america.aljazeera.com/ http://america.aljazeera.com/ http://www.bbc.com/news http://www.bbc.com/news
caskance 11y ago
Why would such a place exist? The more unbiased a news outlet is trusted to be, the higher the incentive to subvert them to show bias towards you.
roymurdock 11y ago
Reuters. They're also the most boring/uninformative. Al Jazeera, The Economist, Bloomberg, and Quartz have well-researched and relevant stories but they usually come with a bias.

rdancer 11y ago

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

alexggordon 11y ago

While Mediums (Jay Carney's) article has a fair point, in that once you look at article under a microscope its conclusions start to fall apart, I think Jay may have missed what the article is. The authors knew from the get-go that they were going to publish a scathing "insider", "never-before seen" review of Amazon. The NYT article is First-Class clickbait. It's Buzzfeed in a suit with a degree. Jay Carney did an excellent job debunking it; however, it's much like debunking a Buzzfeed article. You might come out ahead logically, but that isn't what people are going to be talking about. The NYT isn't going for truth, they need people to read their newspaper, and then talk about it so they decided to write a bad article about Amazon, and then they found the "sources" for it.

GCA10 11y ago

Anyone else remember that sly piece by BusinessInsider in September, saying that Medium could make a lot of money by becoming the modern-day version of PR Newswire -- where companies pay to get their stories out to the public? It sounded like a nutty comparison at the time. But after looking at Jay Carney's post, I'm thinking that that BI's Biz Carson might have nailed it. Even if the premium pay channel doesn't exist yet ... the temptation to create it is clearly there http://www.businessinsider.com/medium-pr-newswire-revisited-2015-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/medium-pr-newswire-revisited-...

dswalter 11y ago
You bring up a really good point. Medium's default layout scheme highlights content over authorship, so you don't get smacked in the face by the fact that this is written by Jay Carney.

bitwize 11y ago

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

serge2k 11y ago

> Also, [the anytime feedback tool is] not anonymous I assume by this they mean managers can see who left feedback.

atomi 11y ago

Ambigous title.

bambax 11y ago

This seems to be the story that never ends... But everytime Amazon tries to respond it seems to dig itself deeper in its own bullshit (I'm a very loyal Amazon customer, and while I wouldn't work at Amazon in a million years, I'm very sorry to see all this). Some comments: > Chris Brucia, who recalls how he was berated in his performance review before being promoted, also was given a written review. Had the Times asked about this, we would have shared what it said. Amazon is willing to "share" with the press the contents of performance reviews of its employees? That's bad (worse than what was in the article). > Dina Vaccari, the former employee who is quoted saying she didn’t sleep for four days straight to illustrate just how hard Amazon forces people to work, posted her own response to the article. Here’s what she said: "Allow me to be clear: The hours I put in at Amazon were my choice." That's ridiculous and meaningless; if you choose to not sleep for 4 days in order to carry out your job, isn't it obvious the expectations were set too high, and work/life balance is regarded as irrelevant, as a company policy (or lack thereof)? > When there are two sides of a story, a reader deserves to know them both. Well, ok (in general; sometimes there's no "other side"; creationism is not "another side" to the story of evolution, for example). But in this case, the "other side" should be Amazon employees doing normal hours and performing spectacularly, not the voice of management -- as rendered by someone who used to be the Mother of All Spin Doctors! > The next time you see a sensationalistic quote in the Times (...) you might wonder whether there’s a crucial piece of context or backstory missing — like admission of fraud That's a cheap, defensive shot; what it really says is you're hurt; and that you'd probably be less hurt if there was not a lot of truth to the original article.

j_s 11y ago

Did I miss anything below (for anyone who wants to review)? The negative articles draw many more comments, but the general sentiment is not directed only against Amazon. Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065243 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065243 (424 comments) Inside Amazon https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10070115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10070115 (98 comments) Amazon boss Jeff Bezos defends company's workplace culture https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10072389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10072389 (73 comments) My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10083475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10083475 (331 comments)

FmrAMZN_TA 11y ago

Disclaimer: I am a former Amazon employee. I worked there for exactly a year. I assume I was doing well, I was offered increase bonus and base after my initial year. This response from Amazon continues to amaze me - first a post from Bezos that quoted an employee's anecdotal experiences and makes the (totally absurd) claim that Bezos doesn't know what life is like working there. Then they have a post (http://recode.net/2015/09/25/why-i-work-for-amazon-a-response/ http://recode.net/2015/09/25/why-i-work-for-amazon-a-respons...) from a Senior VP who doesn't have the same experience as someone who isn't a Senior VP. Now they are digging up dirt on employees to paint them with a bad brush. First, the person with the killer quote should have been removed, no question. Huge bias. But the second and third people? Nothing in the piece is wrong - they could have been strafed with aggressive language and/or they could have been berated in their reviews. Look at the wording: All three included positive feedback on strengths as well as thoughts on areas of improvement. Far from a “strafing,” even the areas for improvement written by her colleagues contained language like: “It has been a pleasure working with Elizabeth.” This is the best you can do? "Contained language like"? This is truly terrible spin. At Amazon, they teach managers to give the classic "shit sandwich" - good/bad/good. I saw many examples (I was a manager and reviewed many pieces of feedback in OLRs - Organizational Leadership Review) written EXACTLY as ham-handedly as this: "Overall, it has been a pleasure working with Elizabeth. However, the fact that she did not know the margins for a specific warehouse group when presenting to our VP shows a complete lack of diving deep, and makes me question whether or not she really wants to work at this level." The third example is similarly vague/wrong: "Chris Brucia, who recalls how he was berated in his performance review before being promoted, also was given a written review... Mr. Brucia was given exceptionally high ratings and then promoted to a senior position." That doesn't mean he wasn't berated - it could have been overly aggressive/wrong (and you cannot dispute ANY claims written in the feedback, all you can do is complain to your manager), just because it ended on a good note doesn't make it less hurtful. But what this really shows is that Amazon is as ruthless as ever. They WILL go after you, they will dig up dirt on you, and they will terrify you into never speaking out. If you are a former employee (as I am), you know the stories are very very true, and NEVER speak out publicly. When the story came out, we knew it misrepresented Amazon. I'm sorry, Mr. Carney, the story was as accurate a representation of Amazon as I've ever seen in press.

pluckytree 11y ago

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

aaronbrethorst 11y ago

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

jbapple 11y ago

If you worked for Amazon and you saw that Jay Carney was willing to reveal your personnel records if you talk to the media about unethical or illegal labor management practices, would it change your decision about speaking to reporters? I think we should consider the possibility that this post will be more effective at intimidating current and former Amazon employees into silence, rather than persuading NYT readers.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
After having read down half the page of responses, your comment was enough to convince me to finally cancel my Prime membership.

danso 11y ago

The NYT editor in chief has responded via Medium: https://medium.com/@NYTimesComm/dean-baquet-responds-to-jay-carney-s-medium-post-6af794c7a7c6 https://medium.com/@NYTimesComm/dean-baquet-responds-to-jay-... > In response to your posting on Medium this morning, I want to reiterate my support for our story about Amazon’s culture. In your posting — as well as in a series of recent email exchanges with me — you contested the article’s assertion that many employees found Amazon a tough place to work. Specifically, he says had they known Olson had a conflict, they would have disclosed it. But the NYT asserts that Mr. Olson never disclosed such allegations, nor does he admit to them now. > Olson described conflict and turmoil in his group and a revolving series of bosses, and acknowledged that he didn’t last there. He disputes Amazon’s account of his departure, though. He told us today that his division was overwhelmed and had difficulty meeting its marketing commitments to publishers; he said he and others in the division could not keep up. But he said he was never confronted with allegations of personally fraudulent conduct or falsifying records, nor did he admit to that. If there were criminal charges against him, or some formal accusation of wrongdoing, we would certainly consider that. If we had known his status was contested, we would have said so. edit: re-reading Carney's statement, it seems pretty unequivocal: "An investigation revealed [Olson] had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately" The NYT is likewise unequivocal: "[Olson] said he was never confronted with allegations of personally fraudulent conduct or falsifying records" Well, only Amazon has the time-stamped records that could prove who is lying here. It was a questionable tactic for Carney to start his response with such a bold and salacious allegation against someone who constituted a single quote in the NYT's story...assuming that Carney is right (because it's a complete unmitigated disaster if he isn't) now it seems he's going to have to go even more salacious, perhaps even post the actual pertinent records online. How was this mudfest good for Amazon's image, again? And so late after the original story and Bezos's (pretty decent) response?

puredemo 11y ago
Baquet's response makes Carney's complaints seem infantile. Carney should have known better than to post this in this first place.
mbca 11y ago

hashberry 11y ago

The similarities and inaccuracies remind me of the Rolling Stone "A Rape on Campus" story. What is wrong with today's journalism? These are established, mainstream publishers. There is so much focus on the message instead of the facts that entire stories can be fabricated. I canceled my NYTimes subscription last year because it has become increasingly frustrating to read, especially their "women in tech" articles. For example, their recent "What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech"[0] op-ed blames nerd male culture for making women uncomfortable, and argues for a more neutral environment with no Star Wars posters or tech magazines or nerdy t-shirts... [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/what-really-keeps-women-out-of-tech.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/what-really...

suneilp 11y ago

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

russelluresti 11y ago

I love how the start of this article reads like something out of Character Assassination 101. Step 1: start by bringing up something negative about a person that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the issue at hand. Okay, so the guy resigned because he did something bad. How does that make what he experienced while there not true? Oh, that's right, it doesn't. And the admission of fraud isn't a "crucial piece of context." You and I both know that. Unfortunately, you think the reader is dumb enough not to know it. Step 2: Assert statements in the form of a question so that you can deny every making the assertion. "Did Ms. Kantor’s editors at the Times ask her whether Mr. Olson might have an axe to grind?" Here, we don't actually assert that Mr. Olson has an axe to grind. We don't assert he's purposely lying to get revenge. We just highly insinuate it and make the reader believe it by putting it in question form. This is an obvious attempt at character assassination and to cast doubt in the minds of the reader without actually saying he was lying. If Mr. Olson is lying - sue him. You're within your rights to do that. But you're not suing him. Or the Times. So, what's the point of this? Propaganda. And sleazy propaganda at that.

whiteboarder 11y ago
And the fraud thing doesn't even look to be true. The NYT writer responded and said that was false.
- ninv 11y ago
  I think Mr. Olson should sue Amazon now.
- oh_sigh 11y ago
  Do you have a link to the response? That seems like a pretty serious allegation to drop. Also, how would the reporter know? Are they just trusting the Olsen guy?
  - zaphos 11y ago
    The NYT response said that Olson said it was not true: "But [Olson] said he was never confronted with allegations of personally fraudulent conduct or falsifying records, nor did he admit to that." "If there were criminal charges against him, or some formal accusation of wrongdoing, we would certainly consider that. If we had known his status was contested, we would have said so." - https://medium.com/@NYTimesComm/dean-baquet-responds-to-jay-carney-s-medium-post-6af794c7a7c6 https://medium.com/@NYTimesComm/dean-baquet-responds-to-jay-...

cognivore 11y ago

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

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
But if it's the devil talking, you have fair grounds for increasing your suspicion that what's said isn't the truth. And in this case, if Mr. Olsen did in fact get caught by such an investigation, he may be significantly biased against Amazon. That does not automatically make what he says untrue, but it does increase suspicion that it may not be the straight story.

bluishgreen 11y ago

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

suprgeek 11y ago

If anything, such a cynical and mean-spirited "reply" makes it absolutely and positively certain that working at Amazon should be the last thing any half-way competent Tech person should consider. This piece reads exactly like an oppo-research piece that you would use as a hatchet-job on a political opponent. I had to check twice to ensure that this was not some kind of satire (it is getting harder for me to tell these days). It goes into great detail making personal attacks against the "complainers" while doing nothing to address the substantive allegations made by the articles. So 1) yes there is a "snitch" tool that amazon encourages employees to use 2) the people identified have all quit after complaining of excessive work one way or another 3) when the initial story came out Almighty Leader Jeff even wrote a memo "please be more considerate" 4) PR flunky now makes sleazy attacks on ex-employees to blunt the negative perceptions. Updated to add- You want an unsubstantiated ad-hominem here you go: "Jay Carney was encouraged to quit his white-house posting because of his incompetence. Also how seriously can you take a PR guy with the last name of 'Carney'? He had to go!"

aschearer 11y ago

"Give me six words of an innocent man, and I will find something in them with which to hang him" How should companies interact with the press today in order to avoid an outcome like the original NYT article?

mangeletti 11y ago
It's "six lines", not "six words". I think Cardinal Richelieu would be hard pressed to find six words to be as incriminating, unless they were, "I have just committed high treason".

pm24601 11y ago

Here are some more people for Jay to slander: http://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-for-my-feedback-sooner/ http://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-fo... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10123456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10123456 ( https://medium.com/@jcheiffetz/i-had-a-baby-and-cancer-when-i-worked-at-amazon-this-is-my-story-9eba5eef2976 https://medium.com/@jcheiffetz/i-had-a-baby-and-cancer-when-... )

mgalka 11y ago

Saw a great post relating to this a few months ago. http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/using-data-to-benchmark-amazon-engineering-employee-satisfaction http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/using-data-... At the very least the reporters could have checked Glassdoor and seen that employees actually rate Amazon fairly well.

numair 11y ago

If you're hiring in tech right now, you have to REALLY love Amazon for doing this. Basically, what they are saying is, if you speak out about the emotional hell of working for them, they will attempt to publicly humiliate you to make themselves look better. You're going to go through hell working for them, and you're going to go through hell if you speak out after you leave. Now, they might think this is a winning strategy for them, but in fact the logical conclusion for potential hires is -- stay away from Amazon, because you'll hate it, and then they will ruin your reputation if you speak out. Which is really helpful for everyone else who's hiring right now, because intelligent people paranoid about their reputation will steer clear of any potential Amazon interviews. Their PR guy doesn't understand that he just cost his employer an entire generation of talented engineers. Oh well, this is great for everyone else.

anon203942309 11y ago

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

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hans 11y ago

Just love that Bezos quote: "that's not the amazon that i know" ... hmm gee uthink? billionaire founder has a different experience, wow who'd a thought? glassdoor has spelled this out for a long time but its amusing that amazon doesn't admit they'll change. my thinking is: a company that relishes in frugality = your machine your monitors and your coffee will suck, you will never get promoted, stack rank Plus all this bs about suing via nda and indebtedness around relo assistance etc sounds like the suck .. amazon is downright hostile