Jeff Bezos Says Amazon Won’t Tolerate ‘Callous’ Management Practices
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I say don't escalate to HR but leave to work at another place. HR is not your advocate, it is not there to help you. You are just a "resource" just like it says in the name.
There have been many cases I've heard (personally and from HN comments) where someone would go to HR, complain about harassment by their manager, get assurance of confidentiality, and the next thing you know the manager is told right away. Or the person who complained gets punished instead.
Now you can try to go public and force its hand to basically realign HR's interest (protect the company) with yours (you get heard and the problem is fixed). But that won't be forgotten in the long term.
[Edit: Made me think about how ghastly it must be to work in HR for a large company]
... when there is a mandatory "all hands" meeting called with two hour's notice ...
... and when you show up, there is HR present, plus people from the management stratosphere (who you've really only ever seen in TV) ...
Well, you know things are not going to go very well.
Whole book is highly depressing, but very useful if you want to try to climb up the ladder.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Confidential-Secrets-Company...
Not because the people there are assholes. They are really nice and want to employ everybody forever. But they just can't.
Often the leadership of HR is the problem.
In civil service, the HR bosses were all about getting their friends and family a job. In the free marked, they wanted to minimize costs and legal obligations to the employees. The rest of the HR-workforce just has to suck it up and they often don't like it...
Some. Maybe. But there is also something to be said for being really cut out for a particular line of work. Those types definitely exist as well.
By establishing that they have policies against sexual harassment, discrimination, etc. etc. the company can say that there's no "systemic problem", and any particular incidents therefore must be the fault of the individual employees concerned and not the company itself.
They need HR to exist in so far as it allows them to tell this story to a judge if it ever does turn into a lawsuit.
It's simply not worth approaching HR. Talk to a lawyer before you talk to HR. You would only want to talk to HR if you were willing to sue your employer, which itself is only worthwhile doing if the amount of money you could win is sufficient that you won't need to work again (because in any public case, other employers are also going to avoid employing someone who has a history of suing their employer... as much as they legally can).
For anything more trivial than that, the best defense against an abusive employer is to be employable elsewhere. If you are willing and able to walk away and into another job, you'll be treated much better, regardless of any specific HR policies.
P.S. it made me laugh to see that the book hyper link is to amazon.com - how's that for irony!
That's about the only dealings I have with them. I guess that's a benefit of working at a small company :)
On a serious note though, you're right, HR is not your friend, it's there for the companies sack, not yours. I personally have more faith in my immediate manager that HR, at least you have contact with them, vs the nameless/faceless myth that is HR
I personally would hate to setup interview loops, having to manage calendars and book rooms, and the amount of paperwork required to hire a candidate that is not a US Resident, boy that would suck too.
Not sure most people really understand what HR does, just as HR arguably doesn't understand what a developer does.
"Going to HR" === "End of job"
Sure, but that doesn't mean that they can't be on your side. If you report that your boss is doing something which is against company policy and hurts the company, it's quite possible for HR to be simultaneously on your side and on the company's side.
Or actually the actions that stem from their interests also end up benefiting you as a side-effect. Say going public with the story. Well now they are forced to protect the PR image so they will actually do something to fix the problem (move the manager to a different location), give you more money to keep quiet, etc. But they are not doing this for your they are doing it for the company's sake.
(Your value + cost of incident - squeaky wheel cost) vs (manager's value)
The incident has to be fairly egregious to tip the scales in your favor, and the squeaky wheel cost can follow you.
But you are right, it is the nuclear option. After that even if problem is solved immediately, a stab in the back in the future is expected.
As for future employability, you are right as well. However, I can see a small start-up actually seeking out self-reliant people who have a sense of justice doing what is right. So the quality could also be appealing.
The book, like the one you mention, is a little depressing but if you're stuck in a corporate environment and want to avoid being depressed it pays off to pay attention to what the book says.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Winning-Office-Politics-Influe...
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/corporate-confidential-cynth...
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/secrets-to-winning-at-office...
Back on topic, I too well understand these things, having had a few painful incidents with HR myself. I ended up coming out on top, more or less, in the end, but you have to know that if you have a complaint about someone, you probably will have to confront that person and prove it. I managed to do that, but I would probably have had to leave the company if I hadn't, honestly.
HR was mostly worried about lawsuit potential. My immediate boss was, at least, humane. He even made a point of sitting on 'my side' during the meeting so that I wasn't alone there.
Honestly, I haven't met one decent guy in HR in a loooong time. Quite the contrary, I have plenty of bad experiences with HR that made me believe those things. I'll give you my favorite examples:
I once got fired because I told some bitch (she was really a bitch, and that's not just my opinion, the whole workplace thought of that) to mind her own business. I was on a break and reading a magazine when she came in and started lecturing me on to "why I'm not doing other stuff? why do I read those kinds of magazines? (It was a gossip magazine, but who cares it was what it was nearby) I'm a little old for that." Politely but firmly told her something like "This is my break. Fuck off, you can't tell me what to do on my break and I read whatever I want to". She left. Three months later got called to get fired, turns out she was secretly raising reports about me that were small stuff (and completely fake) like "... was asked to do X and refused", "... yelled at a client", "... reads magazines while at work (of course)". When I had like 10 or so of them she fired me because of a "bad overall attitude" and those were her (fake) proofs. That's the kind of shit HR LOVES to do man.
Another one. I once knew (but not as in "a friend told me", I saw it) of a place where all the candidates that got hired were because they were laying down with the girl that ran the interviews. Later when they got the job, they started to get fired when that girl found them not sexually appealing anymore. Yup.
I think there has to be something psychological behind that, because other while other teammates may be assholes your job does not depend direclty on them or you are pretty much at the same level. Since HR is above you and can fire you at will there is a lot of power bestowed to only one side of the parts involved. I think it may be some kind of Stanford Prison stuff right there. Sorry to call it mate but your field is a rotten one.
I also wonder if part of the problem is that HR leaders have (broadly speaking) traditionally been 'town planners' when you really need a mix of 'pioneers' and 'settlers' in there too. E.g. don't put a town planner in charge of culture & retention, and don't put a settler in charge of healthcare & benefits compliance.
(Ref: http://blog.gardeviance.org/2012/06/pioneers-settlers-and-to...)
In that one line I think there's two issues you might want to think about.
First of all, you're passing judgement apparently without empathising with where she's coming from. If you try to empathise with people rather than letting your amygdala control your response then you'll find life gets much easier.
Secondly, that language crosses the line of acceptability, both in the workplace and on HN. It's fine in a bar or wherever, but in the workplace it makes your audience percieve immaturity and poorly-controlled anger (whether it's there or not), and will make people in your workplace uncomfortable.
Both of those issues raise flags in my mind as things an HR person should pay serious attention to. Ideally they'd be looking to solve the problem first, but getting people to change is hard and company cultures can be fragile.
Just my two cents.
I see you standing here as a person who is always polite and correct, with a perfect vocabulary and behavior for even the most adverse situations in life. I really, really hope your life crosses path with a woman like that one and you end up in a situation like mine. I would like to see you handle the same situation with the morals you claim to have. Until that moment you will know, for yourself, if you really are the person you claim to be on real life or if the intention behind your comment was just to impress a bunch of people in an anonymous forum.
Best luck.
Your story makes you sound abrasive and unpleasant. If the story played out the way you tell it, she obviously was a bad actor and did something terrible. (And yes, there are definitely some people who will play control games with any little bit of power they gain.) It's difficult to sympathize with you, though, when even your telling of the story makes you sound difficult to work with.
If you're presenting yourself this way in a work environment (or anywhere, really), you will create negative interactions.
I also don't believe a politely delivered message can result in a 3-month plot filled with false reports, culminating in job termination. How does that play out? "Wow, he's so polite all the time! I'll fuck him over anyway because I'm pure evil! And I've got nothing better to do, so I'll keep at it for months!"
Not one impolite word was ever spoken (I know for sure, I was there in most meetings).
Sometimes it is just "bad chemistry".
I feel like anotherangrydev is more likely than not "contributing to the bad relationship" in his (or her) work environments. When someone has multiple bad interactions with HR, at multiple companies, it starts to look like they're the problem and not HR. Why are they having so many interactions with HR at all? Or was there just one bad experience that they're extrapolating to "99%" of HR employees?
But there is quite a bit of politics/plain stupidity in (bigger) corporations. Should reasonable people just keep quiet and suffer abuse? [my friend WAS reasonable wrt work- he tried his best to get the job done]
I have no idea why would you accuse GP of lying. You don't know him. Do you routinely judge if a person tells the truth based on some words he used?
Also, you confuse the GP's feelings about the situation right now with his attitude back then. Back when it happened, he didn't know of a 3 months long plot against him. Now he does know. He was shown the (obscenity censored because it would apparently alter the meaning of my post) documents, he read it black on white. Just before getting fired, too. It's nothing strange that his wording now is emotional and blunt, it says nothing about how he was back then.
Lastly, of course, there are polite ways of telling people to censored, you know why off politely. It's what assertiveness is all about. There are people, however, who don't really care about the form: they just can't stand others disagreeing with them. I don't think it's that rare a trait. How about that line of thinking:
"He's too polite, he's trying to hide something. And he dared to disagree with me, his superior. More than once! I don't have the time to deal with a time-bomb like him, which can blow up behind my back at any time. I need an army of easily controlled people to help me further my career. Yeah, it would be safer to spend a few minutes more and slip a couple of lies when working on his evaluations."
Preparing reports which are not true, yet are not outright lies, and which make some person look really bad doesn't really take much time. Especially if one does it for a living.
He claims that he "politely" told someone to "fuck off". It's not really a question of lying, but a question of possibility. You can't politely tell someone to fuck off. Either you didn't tell them to fuck off or you didn't do it politely. "Fuck off" is not polite. It's not supposed to be polite. If you politely ask someone to leave you alone, you're not telling them to fuck off.
> Do you routinely judge if a person tells the truth based on some words he used?
Not that it's really relevant, but yes. How else would you judge a person's truthfulness except through the words they use? Your words matching the facts is basically the definition of truth.
Do you routinely assume that everything anyone claims is accurate?
> Also, you confuse the GP's feelings about the situation right now with his attitude back then.
No, I'm reading his description of what happened. He gives two versions, one of which (fuck off) is intrinsically unpolite. The other (mind your own business) is pretty rude, too. Given his descriptions in general, it's hard to imagine that this was actually a polite exchange.
It's also difficult to believe that his politeness was rewarded by months of revenge plotting and spite. It would be easier to believe this if he presented this as an isolated story. Instead he presents this as an example of how terrible "99%" of HR employees are. So either 99% of HR employees are actually pointlessly spiteful and terrible, or he's intentionally lying, or he has had so many bad interactions that he believes it to be true. If it's the last case, I've got to wonder if the problem is really all of HR or if it's the one guy who keeps having problems with HR.
1. You've had numerous bad experiences with HR across multiple companies, leading you to label "99%" of HR as rotten.
2. You've had one or two bad experiences with HR, and you're extrapolating from that and just assuming that 99% of HR is rotten.
3. Some other option I don't see.
I can tell you something, I probably talked about this subject at least 100 times during my "professional life" with many different people, I have yet to hear a good experience from someone regarding their HR department.
Mind sharing yourself which bucket do you fall into?
I fall into the bucket that hasn't had bad experiences with HR. They've been helpful when I've needed stuff, which has been minimal. They've been irrelevant the rest of the time. This has been the case at every company I've worked for.
That's it's better to leave, if you can, than go to HR.
Coming from multiple sources, I'd say that's pretty damning to HR.
About Amazon.. I've never worked there. But I know people who have. I believe the NYT article.
I'd say that a thread full of people griping about HR is not very damning at all. People like to gripe. People who have normal interactions with HR generally don't have much to say in this kind of thread. People who have had a bad experience with HR are happy to vent. If multiple sources complaining is damning, then just about every mid to large-size company must be terrible, because just about every company of size has at least a handful of people (consumers or employees, really) who are delighted to tell you about how horrible their experience with the company was.
I agree that HR is not your friend, and their job is to protect the company. That's logically pretty reasonable since they are employed by the company. Likewise, the sales team is there for the company. And so is the customer service team. And so is the executive team. And so is everyone else, because that's who pays them. That doesn't make them evil or rotten, though. Nor are they evil or rotten just because a few bad people are employed there. Some devs are petty assholes, too.
Nope. I've had more than my fair share of disagreements, personal failures, and shameful moments. I've lost friends. I massively fumbled my first management position.
When something happens and your professionalism slips, either you can brush yourself off, accept your mistakes, and try to learn from them, or you can blame others, make excuses, and learn nothing.
So far, your analysis of the situation has loudly blamed the "bitch" and the entire profession of HR, and not once has your critical gaze fallen onto yourself. Apparently they're all wrong, and you are right.
You can try to goad me about my motives for replying and wish me misfortune, but it doesn't change anything.
why?
Having met at least 50+ people in HR who aren't what like you say, i'm going to call complete bullshit on this. I don't think you have anywhere near the kind of data to generalize an entire profession across all industries :)
The vast majority of people i've met who feel like you do are people who were, IMHO fired pretty fairly, but are ashamed to admit that maybe they weren't performing as well as they think, so they blame the system.
>I don't think you have anywhere near the kind of data to generalize an entire profession across all industries :)
>The vast majority of people i've met who feel like you do are people who were, IMHO fired pretty fairly, but are ashamed to admit that maybe they weren't performing as well as they think, so they blame the system.
We're gonna need a source for that too! Or wait, were you discrediting one opinion with another one?
>"Stay clear of HR, that is true for 99% of jobs."
>Having met at least 50+ people in HR who aren't what like you say, i'm going to call complete bullshit on this.
Ever knew of what the '%' sign means? I can get you 50+ people that are in jail and that were later proved to be innocent. Does that mean we should set all of them free?
Waiting for your downvote or a reasonable argument :^)
I said "i've met". I never claimed it was anything else? Unlike you, who flat out stated 99% of HR ....
You know what, it's not worth having this discussion with you. Given your responses here and elsewhere, you come off as very abrasive and not a person i'd want to work with.
But please, keep going on through life believing it's everyone else.
So, yeah I wouldn't trust HR with these matters and it seems to me that Bezos is only interested in cover-ups when he recommended this course of action out of fear that employees may seek friends in the press to expose those practices from now on undermining his plans of non stop exploitation at his sweatshop.
Or a standard workplace with shit legal protection of employees (which applies to pretty much every non-union US shop). The purpose of HR is to minimise company liability, when the best and simplest way to minimise company liability is to fire employees making waves stat, that's what they do, because that what they're employed to do.
He would need to make public clear, explicit instructions stating HR would take a zero tolerance for a lack of empathy and that confidentiality would be guaranteed as well as providing a copy of a memo to the entire HR department to that effect.
A single line in a PR puff piece isn't a shield you can rely on.
in Europe, you go to the Council, never to HR. the Council is job protected, guaranteed pay - hence no way to apply pressure from the company.
HR is not a bad department, they are very important, but they serve the CEO, their role is to keep the whole thing going, avoid waves of any kind and keep a good hiring pipeline.
surprised no union is trying this to break into amazon.
http://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Relat...
And even those countries with councils have (as the link also mentions) very varying rules on exactly what the councils do. Please don't say "Europe" when you mean "some European country".
oder aber du checker überlegst mal, für wen die simplifizierung 'Europa' gedacht war.
Some people in this thread make it sound like every department is actively thwarting senior management and working counter to the company's business—except HR, who are in on the game or something. So, fuck HR, right? They couldn't possibly be one cog, along with every other cog, in a larger machine designed to extract value from workers for owners/shareholders.
Seriously though, I wonder why humans tolerate the hierarchical structures so much. I am proponent of direct democracy and worker cooperatives but curiously enough, to many people the idea seems wrong.
I agree, but why? It doesn't make much sense to me. Although I should have said "authoritarian" rather than "hierarchical".
> it's questioned whether all that's happened is that the hierarchy is implicit rather than explicit
In democracy, you can have hierarchy but it's not a big deal, because you have a formal rule that everybody has the same power (one vote). It is certainly different (although for some reason many people do not feel that way) than when there is no such rule.
That said, a bigger organization could still be structured like a federation of relatively independent businesses/departments, with clearly defined interactions (interfaces) between them, rather than a monolith.
Modular design benefits business as much as it does software architecture.
And it can scale quite well. Switzerland and Mondragon are good examples.
OK.
Never piss off a co-worker who happens to be the girlfriend of someone in the management chain above you. That . . . did not go well.
They can advise you on the most appropriate next step for your particular workplace.
They can take it to HR, anonymously (depending on context), for you.
They can ask their members if anyone else has similar issues, in order to add weight to your complaint and ensure that HR take corrective action to fix the source of the problem, rather than sweeping individual complaints under the carpet.
They can advise you on presenting appropriate evidence so that HR see your complaint as valid, rather than as a whinge.
> you can't change the system but you can change the system you are in
Just leave.
So Jeff is right. If you are not happy, dust off books and study on your own on skills needed for interviews, shut up and move out.
Even your real friends won't be your friends for very long if their own self-interests are always in contention against your own.
HR is fulfills a specific sets of roles for the company and they exist to look out for the best interest of the company, the same way pretty much any other department operates.
Even executives have to operate in such a manner or be in breach of their fiduciary duties.
If your work environment is toxic, find a better environment---if you have that luxury as some do not. If you think the problem isn't pervasive, try to change it with the help of HR--clearly it's in the companies best interest not to have toxic work environments.
Of course not, except not many disguise themselves as your friend, that was the point.
Nobody thinks the finance department is there to make your life easy as a developer or to somehow take your side vis-a-vis an argument with the higher-ups.
But somehow the image of "HR" working for the employees and advocating for them persists.
Just read Jeff's email as an example. "Take it up with HR". In other words, don't worry, we'll fix it for ya.
One of the most important techniques HR departments have in maximizing the extracted value to extraction cost ratio for the company's "human resources" is to convince those resources that the HR department is their advocate within the company rather than the company's office responsible for the aforementioned cost/benefit optimization.
(OTOH, there are good reasons for a well-run HR department to be an employee advocate within the company on issues in many cases, since often the cost effective way to keep employees productive is to address their needs and desires; but its important to understand why that may sometimes be the case, and why it is not universally the case.)
These white collar workers are highly paid, and not forced to be there. Most of them could easily find another job someplace else (and it sounds like many do). I just can't feel bad for them. If you don't want to work throughout your vacation, go find another job that won't make you work through your vacation. This isn't North Korea, Bezos isn't going to throw you in a reeducation camp.
I will keep ordering from Amazon because they provide the best service. Simple as that.
In addition, not everything has to be decided solely by where one spends their money. It's entirely possible to put pressure on an organisation through other means.
It's a stretch to use the 'abused spouse' argument with highly educated knowledge workers making 6 figure salaries. Find a new job.
Actually, workplaces like this tend to thrive on social pressure and psychological manipulation. The NYT article paints a picture in which people begin undergoing brainwashing on day one. A workplace can most definitely create a very powerful culture of internal shaming.
That said, leaving an abusive relationship is still likely to be harder, for a few reasons. First, there's true love involved -- no employee was ever truly in love with Amazon. Second, there are logistical reasons -- it's probably easier to quit Amazon and find another job than it is for many people to leave an abusive relationship and get back on their own independent feet.
But I think it's still dangerous to underestimate the social pressures that a large corporation can create.
A situation that shares many similarities is: "it is that woman's fault that she does not leave her abusive husband." That is laying blame on the person who was abused (not matter their background) instead of the person dealing out the injustice.
Imagine that Bezos had not disowned this behavior: more and more would follow suit and eventually you'd be hard-pressed to find a place where this isn't the norm. For example: stack ranking had to start somewhere. Now you'll find it at many places and it's no longer as simple as "just go work somewhere else." If you've acquired a lifestyle where you depend on a corporate job with a cushy salary, what are you going to do?
Don't forget that people can (and do) undervalue themselves. Maybe they don't believe that they could find another job: possibly because their manager has completely destroyed their self-worth.
Finally, it's just fucking stupid. It's actually counter-productive. It's been shown over and over again (one example[1]) that the way you get better results out of humans is to treat them humanely and, unbelievably, make them want to work for you instead of work for you out of fear. Practices like this, stack ranking, etc. all originate out of the industrial age when machines were the primary concern - you can't manage humans like machines: they will revolt (consciously or subconsciously).
P.S. I'm not in that situation but have a few colleagues who are, and going back to Ukraine for them is not an option.
Not too long ago we laughed at open offices and tiny cubes with half or quarter height walls as just desserts for low wage workers like call center operators. After all, if they wanted better conditions they should make themselves more marketable. Now coders are having to deal with these punishing layouts due to them being a current executive fad.
Now every executive at every company is buying into this "treat them like shit" philosophy. Between this and H1B visa abuse, where exactly do domestic workers flee to? You can work for company X with a crappy culture or company Y with a crappy culture. Illusion of choice isn't choice.
The point, I suppose, is that our own information funnels often mislead us into trends and "averages", when it's just cycles.
10+ years ago was the last time I saw IT staff in offices outside of management or even a proper full sized, full walled cube.
And regardless of how well-paid any of them may or may not be (keep in mind these are not just the developers), they all might have made real sacrifices in their lives to work for Amazon without realizing what they were getting into. Quitting a beloved former job for what appeared to be a much needed pay raise, moving cross country with your family, etc...
I'm not boycotting anything but everyone has a right to be upset when they're mistreated.
I don't think anyone should be forced to work through their vacation: that's why it is called vacation. If you don't want people to take vacation then don't offer it, but offering vacation "in name only" is the worst of all possible worlds.
I want to live in a world where companies treat their workers well and therefore I don't want to patronize companies that willfully and systemically dehumanize them.
I will keep buying from clothes from Primark because they provide the cheapest. Simple as that.
...
Well it's because the people who are Amazon customers can relate these white collars being "harassed" at Amazon. It's because of a lot of these customers might have lived the same situation and know how horrible this is.
I think the reality of the employee-employer relationship is that employees don't have the sort of power, as one would have as a customer, for example. Part of the reasons are probably explainable economically. It's a fairly illiquid market for employees because the cost of getting to an agreement, negotiating terms (never-mind sampling) is very high. A lot of other reasons are probably best explained psychologically or anthropologically, roles we assume in certain situations. I suspect these are the bigger ones. Either way, barriers are there and bad treatment of employees often results in badly treated employees, not empty just resignations.
In a lot of ways, "if you don't like it, get another job" like "if you don't like it, get another country."
The free exchange economistic-ey forces are there, but they are not the only things there. Other things that make employers behave better is standards set by society. These are laws, but also just norms and practices. These are impacted by things like articles or consumer responses.
It's complicated.
I'm fairly sympathetic to a lot of libertarian positions. But, I don't buy into the strong economic rationalist arguments.
Economic forces dictate how some things play out. other times, other cultural forces take effect. When it comes to employee treatment, I think societal norms are a massive influence. The reaction you are observing is part a mechanism for this. Society's scolding amazon for treating its employees badly, defining and enforcing the nom..
There are big differences between the two unless you live in a state that borders Canada. In most cases, getting a new job does not require you to relocate far away or significantly change your lifestyle.
> It's a fairly illiquid market for employees because the cost of getting to an agreement, negotiating terms (never-mind sampling) is very high.
Is this cost higher than staying miserable? About the only thing I can think of for being forced to stay employed with Amazon is to complete the "two year tour of duty" for your resume.
I'd agree with you more if we were discussing uneducated and unskilled workers. However unless I missed something I feel that we were talking about skilled and educated workers that are in demand by many companies.
That said I'm not condoning any company that has bad practices and I'm still sympathetic to anyone that gets poorly treated at any company, while at the same time I feel that staying with a company that makes you unhappy as an highly in demand worker is a conscious choice you make as an adult. I don't feel that most people have work contracts. Employment is at will for both the employer and employee.
Of course this is not as bad as taking advantage of desperate, low-skill workers, or taking advantage of lax labor standards abroad. But white-collar Amazon workers are still people and the managers at Amazon still owe them at least some duty to not willfully make their lives miserable.
(And, by the way, there are also stories out there about Amazon's treatment of lower-skilled, less "free" warehouse employees, etc. which would, I think, be better cause for boycott if true. But that's really a different subject.)
I will keep buying gasoline from Alberta Tar Sands and fracking because it is the cheapest at powering my motor vehicle.
I will keep getting my marijuana from a mexican drug cartel because it is more potent and cheaper than from other sources.
... way to be the rational economic actor who gives zero shits about externalities and hard-to-measure but obviously occurring consequences. Good job, dude.
You married, got kids, you can't afford to go find another job. At least not quickly. And quietly. Cause if your manager finds out your interviewing (and it's a small world) you're dead.
I don't suppose you live outside the bubble? It's a different world in say, Kansas.
What I see is a company with a big PR department who hasn't succeeded to spin positive stories about their HR in newspapers. We'll see in the next months whether they prop up their game.
Besides, if you face a difficulty with your work environment, don't talk to HR™. They are paid to exclude any PR hazard from the company.
NB: Moderator/dang, please merge with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10072753
That's with 5,800+ reviews. Something doesn't add up.
Furthermore, one doesn't know the age of a review -- is this a current employee, a previous one who left last week or a review of a the job from 10 years ago? It's entirely possible that every problem addressed in a negative review has been since addressed. You just don't know.
You can always find one or two terrible anecdotes.
I reviewed Amazon negatively, and of course it's no longer there.
I don't know if Glassdoor is doing like Yelp is alleged to be doing, but I've seen this with other companies as well, where the negative reviews get spiked.
For someone many folks refer to as "a very smart man" it's obvious this is just damage control. It was probably prepared as soon as they found out NYT was going to run the piece.
180,000 employees. He'll only ever interact with a tiny portion of those people, and even then it's mostly going to be the sycophants and a few alpha-crony confidants. Shocking he has a radically different experience.
His company sued (and won) to prevent warehouse workers from collecting money for the time they stand in-line being frisked.
Not only do we shuffle them through our fascist security machine with little trust, or dignity. We also refuse to give them just a bit more, so that King Bezos can continue to drink their babies tears lest the sheen on his bald head dim just a bit.
I mean they're already near the bottom of the totem pole. Surely one more kick to the stomach shall barely be noticed.
Such empathy.
http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html
It was put together decades ago by a pagan who wanted to help people see the difference between people who were up to something new and actually dangerous cults.
The NYT article made me haul it out again and do some scoring, and then run through and score a number of the tech companies I'm familiar with. It was a very interesting exercise.
Looking on your list a surprising number of factors are much higher for amazon than for other, better jobs I've seen.
It is very much a cult. Microsoft had a bit of cultism in the 1990s (Billg was infallible, etc.) and another company I've worked for since tried to be a cult...
Of course, Google's stock made him a billionaire.
To me this problem seems to root itself in the absurdity of equity percentages. How is it one who comes to the company a year after founding can work the same 10-12 hour days as a founder and yet see maybe 1% in options they have to pay for while founders expect 15% and up for being there at the beginning? Seems all right when the company is young and the risk is high, but what ends up happening is that the fresh blood 10,20 years on has to fight for scraps while the now-wealthy founders can enjoy their work knowing they could quit tomorrow and never have to lift a finger again.
White collar Walmart could pay its employees squarely to compensate for their mental health and social lives, but they act almost allergic to profits as long as they can continue stock offerings to keep prices at a minimum.
If I were you I wouldn't cut off the opportunity immediately, but I would continue looking for another job at the same time. The world has changed in the last few decades in terms of job loyalty so there won't be any kind of stigma against you if you only stay for a short while and you can say "I was offered a better job" as the reason for leaving.
The reason people can work for the competition is that they're not slaves. There are few businesses Amazon doesn't compete with (all of retail, books, publishing, tech).
If they want their workers to stay, make the prospect attractive.
I'm not saying that every department would be bad, so you could opt to continue to join them and see if you can run one of the more humane ones. Be careful though - you might not realize it if/when you slip into the ones described in the article.
True or not, perception is reality and Amazon has attained a rather poor reputation in the circles I travel. I have considered positions with them in the past but because of my perception of what working for them would mean, I've rejected several for not being worth it (pay increase not big enough), and one due to simple logistics (they wanted me in a city I wouldn't move to).
I had a roommate who was a nurse who and worked in a couple of area hospitals. When I asked her why she drove 90 minutes to one hospital rather than working all her hours at closer area hospitals, her response was, "That hospital is in a poorer area of town and gets all sorts of bizarre and desperate medical issues. It would take me 5 years at the other hospital to get the experience I'll get in six months a that hospital."
I think Amazon is like that hospital. It's an amazing place to grow and learn things you basically can't learn otherwise. And employers elsewhere know it. When I get an Amazon candidate who spent more than a year there, I can basically know ahead of time that that candidate will pass the technical part of the interview process. But once you've got that 1-2 years of experience, it's a place to leave, go elsewhere and get treated/paid better.
But again, this is based on anecdotal evidence from past Amazon employees...I've never worked there.
The article picks some of the most egregious stories but look beyond the horror stories and try to see the culture there. I've heard they've been trying to fix it, but I'm pretty sure that wilke or bezos still yell in the weekly business review meetings on a regular basis. Do you want to work in a 5% margin environment that is a retailer and you get yelled at?
Also, this works for every job, everywhere. Very wise advice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
In such hierarchical systems, the issue goes beyond abuse itself, bringing deinvidualization and loss of personal identity.
That partially explains why some workers won't leave the company even for a similar/higher salary.
"Ha, ha! You 150-odd ex-Amazon folks here will of course realize immediately that #7 was a little joke I threw in, because Bezos most definitely does not give a shit about your day."
"We're talking about a guy who in all seriousness has said on many public occasions that people should be paying him to work at Amazon. He hands out little yellow stickies with his name on them, reminding people "who runs the company" when they disagree with him. The guy is a regular... well, Steve Jobs, I guess. Except without the fashion or design sense. Bezos is super smart; don't get me wrong. He just makes ordinary control freaks look like stoned hippies."
"At this point they don't even do it out of fear of being fired. I mean, they're still afraid of that; it's pretty much part of daily life there, working for the Dread Pirate Bezos and all."
but I did not believe that I am entitled to those perks
Keeping it "interesting" is the problem that needs to be solved at Amazon. So far they have been very successful at that.
It has also been my experience that a low salary is indicative of a very boring company and set of problems. A very high salary is also indicative of a very boring company and a set of problems that may stem from culture...i.e. poor testing, etc.
...somewhere in the mid to upper end of salary lies very interesting problems. I just don't make my decision based solely on salary.
"Even many Amazonians who have worked on Wall Street and at start-ups say the workloads at the new South Lake Union campus can be extreme: marathon conference calls on Easter Sunday and Thanksgiving, criticism from bosses for spotty Internet access on vacation, and hours spent working at home most nights or weekends."
Is this something people are proud of? You're working for a shipping company, how do you get that brainwashed that you sign your life away like that? I understand as you move up the ranks in seniority more is expected of you, but I'm always surprised by the lack of self respect and boundaries people have for themselves in professional environments.
He deserves the benefit of the doubt, but its hard to believe he didn't already know.
He couldn't care less about employees. He does care about the reputation of the company, of course, because it's important for his net worth.
Celine's Second Law: Accurate communication is possible only in a non-punishing situation.
Jeff is spinning his typical BS. My boss was abusive, drove off %70 of the team and was dealing drugs to other employees in the PacMed garage. He lied to me many times, and I started documenting it.
I went to HR about it, trying to get support so I could transfer out to a team at AWS, where I knew the manager and he had offered me a job.
The HR person assured me that everything that I told her would be kept confidential. She insisted I tell her what was going on with my boss, and thus why I wanted to leave. I did tell her, and she then turned around and told my boss all of it. (I didn't tell her he was dealing drugs, I actually felt physically vulnerable to him because he had a violent temper-- his training was to be a prison guard and that's what he wanted to be before somehow he was hired at Amazon to manage programmers despite having difficulty even with simple things like spreadsheets and Excel.)
The HR at Amazon is an organization that is a big part of the problem. After she told my boss they started coming up with sudden complaint about my performance and scheduled a meeting with the HR person.. who then talked bout the things I had told her in confidence, in front of my boss (though I knew he already knew) as if there had never been any reason for me to expect confidence.
Also, I worked with Jeff Bezos on enough occasions that he knew who I was, and would say hello by name in the hallway. The idea that i could have gone to him directly with a complaint about my boss is asinine in the extreme. He would have passed it on to HR and it would have been the same thing.
He might have cared about the drug dealing thing ,but only because it put the company at risk.
The lack of empathy, and the rest of the employee hostile corporate culture ORIGINATES with Jeff Bezos. HE is the source and the cause and to him -- and this is a libertarian speaking-- everyone's existence is the sum total of the money they make him.
In fact, I think Jeff Bezos is a pathological liar and a psychopath. He's very charming, heartless and able to fake warmth. Clearly he has had PR training too. But he's the evil at the core of Amazon.
I've had extensive dealings with Microsoft and Apple and other big companies-- none were any where close to as toxic and heartless as Amazon. Jeff really sees people as resources to be exploited and could not care less about employee development, or retention.
In fact, the back stabbing, competitive nature that makes it such a toxic environment is designed in some sort of "survival of the fittest" delusion-- the product is regularly sacrificed (and amazon.com is pretty much a joke how broken it is-- still is, in fact) as a result.
You win at Amazon by playing politics, not by being good at your job.
PS-- why was I stupid enough to go to HR? I've worked mostly for startups, and it was the job previous to this that was my first real experience with an HR "department" which was one person, who was damn good, and exceptional at mediation and conflict resolution, full of integrity and trustworthy. I didn't have experience at large companies to know that HR was mostly filled with drama addicted flunkies.
the PacMed garage.
But, this being HN, we see a disproportionate amount of AWS engineers chiming in going "hmm. everything's cool here."
The cynic in me would interpret this as a tacit invitation by the Bezo-man himself to unhappy employees to beat it and don't let the door hit them on their rears on their way out if they don't like working here but I could be wrong but with the likes of Bezos and Ellison, you shouldn't set the bar really high when it comes to human empathy.
Bezos is a psychopath, a hack who only cares about manipulating the situation in his favor. He has built a shell of a retailer whos only profitable product is its own stock.
Did he have engineering skill? He had vision and a level of genius, but I'm not sure it applies to Engineering skill. Odd that you give that to him but not to Bezos.
Then you find out they were lying to you.
We're talking about highly paid professionals working at a rather cushy job all things considered. It's like listening to rich kids complain about having blue M&M's touching the red M&M's in their bowl of candy.
Nothing in this whole bit of drama is shocking other then I'm not quite sure why Amazon is being singled out. All of the complaints made are systematic problems in any large corporation. The workplace isn't there to hold your hand and to be your own personal playground. In Tech, you have to earn your place every day and Amazon seems to make it clear that is the case (leadership principals, talk of hard challenges, etc). I would expect to be "managed out" if I showed up every day expecting to coast through with the bare minimum - who would want to work at a company where that is acceptable?
Boycotting the company as a customer is also pretty funny to me. The chief competition is Walmart - are the activists going to order from them instead? How is that any better ethically?
1. People look up to their successfull peers. Examples succesfull companies create propagate throughout the management layers in the industry.
2. If Amazon sets a 'lets suck them dry' example then this will lower the barrier for other companies to follow suit, or enforce their existing pathologies
3. Bad work/life balance creates depressed people and is not so good for long term productivity. It might create short term kicks for adrenaline junkies and workaholics. Such practices have no rational defence, except that they appeal to certain macho people. From the POV of the company it might not be a problem since they can always hire more people to suck dry but the broken people who leave have suffered personal tragedies with various side effects.
4. What is this 'Tech' where 'one needs to earn their place every day'? It certainly does not sound like professional software engineering for sane and capable people who can choose where to work.
I work in a remote office in a country with sane labour laws (not the US). My work/life balance is never under threat. In fact it's far better with Amazon then it was with the start-up I used to work for, where 60+ was expected all with a mantra of "we're a startup, therefore we can't pay you but we're CHANGING THE WORLD!". At Amazon, there is zero pressure for employees to work more then 40 hours unless something is truly going wrong with our areas of responsibilities, and then everyone on the team is expected to pitch in to get things back to normal. Show me a functional workplace where this isn't the norm.
The day to day for a lower level engineer is quite relaxed at Amazon. The only pressure I feel comes from my own drive to succeed, not from upper management.
But please, disregard everything I can tell you from first hand experience because it doesn't fit your predetermined bias about the company.
Go away, constructor of straw men. The world is not solely comprised of Wal-Mart and Amazon.
So doing the "bare minimum" leads to being sacked? In that case it isn't the bare minimum. In your world the bare minimum is apparently what employees are assigned to do plus an arbitrary amount on top. Presumably workers have to gamble their livelihood on a blind auction of their free time and health in a race to the bottom in order to put a few more billion in Bezos' coffers.
We're software professionals. We're knowledge experts. We're expected to refine our skills and expand our knowledge base. This is rewarded handsomely at Amazon. Coasting by is not punished, but the people who do end up on backwater teams working on low-priority projects. This isn't being "managed out", but it does cost the company hires simply because even low-ambition people will eventually get tired of the garbage work that exists in these areas. How is this different from other companies?
To the point about sacrificing life for Bezo's wealth... Amazon is the only company to offer me actual stock, not stock options, not sketchy performance bonuses, but stock. I'm not too keen on the vesting period length, but I directly benefit from the company's success. In my market, Amazon is the top paying employer and offers the best options for career growth.