The recent NYT story also reminded me of this older Yegge rant, which touches on amazon:

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legali...

> My stress level began approaching what I might call "Amazon levels", and I don't even work there anymore. Thank God.

> [...] my brother Mike, who was in the Navy on an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf during the 1990s Gulf War, and later worked at Amazon, and declared after four years that Amazon was _way_ more stressful

> [...] astonishingly, we actually managed to launch at least half those crazy ideas, by burning through people like little tea lights.