The NYT must be loving this. So many ad impressions on their site over this. Amazon's PR are doing a god awful job putting this to bed.
Amazon should just release a statement that says:
"Amazon is a large global company employing thousands of
people in a variety of locations and teams. We do not deny
that there may have been situations where employees have worked
long hours under difficult circumstances.
This is part and parcel of working for a company that lives on the
cutting edge of technology, in a highly competitive business.
We are striving to make changes that improve the working hours of
our employees and their conditions, in order to reduce stress and
improve the health and well-being of our most valuable asset."
Good PR isn't about defending yourself when you perceived as being wrong; it is about showing humility, regardless of whether you are actually wrong or not.
People can believe what they want and you can't change that, but (at a minimum), you can distance yourself from a specific action or incident, by demonstrating that you are but human, and whether or not people like or dislike you, at least you are perceived to be making an effort to change for the better.
He worked with the reporters about this story for six months, and a very bad article was produced. He probably feels a little betrayed, and must have endured quite his share of head washing from Bezos.
But now, two months later, he should really try to change the conversation; instead he's throwing former employees under the bus and revealing personal details about them, to make up for failures that are mostly his own.
He's really doing a terrible job.
He worked with the reporters about this story for six months, and a very bad article was produced. He probably feels a little betrayed
That said. You may be totally right. But such a reaction due to a bad case of bruised ego from a reporter is hard to fathom.
[edit : fixed syntax]
Amazon is run by a something of a meglomaniac and everyone knows it. Carney is just collecting a paycheck, imo, and knows this response is a bad idea. I think its obvious Amazon wants to be a tech giant like MS or Google but simply can't pull it off. This NYTimes piece just made hiring a lot harder for them, right or wrong. Bezos must be livid, especially since everyone has cloud services now, many of which make AWS look poor in comparison. What's Amazon's big claim to fame today? Being an online retailer and e-book seller? That's not tech powerhousing, that's just sales.
I thought Bezos's response at the time was the right one - "That's not the Amazon I know". It is still defensive, but not overly antagonistic.
I'm frankly very surprised that their head of PR is going this direction. I would have thought that he would have known better. This direct conflict with the Times is not helping.
Amazon has a problem. By failing to recognize it and act on it and trying to squelch the bad news they make the problem a (potentially much) larger one.
Or, to toss out an allegory, it's one thing to step on a few ants, it's another to stomp on their nest.
Have fun when the press happens to make you the target. Have fun not being allowed to defend yourself while they skirt whatever truths they feel like they can legally get away with to promote their self-serving narrative. Have fun when people come in and tell you that you should not bother to tell the truth in the face of lies, because you'll just cause a snafu. Have fun seeing your associates share the article with each other as if it's credible and honest when you know it is full of half-truths and omissions, and you can't say anything about it because they have ink to spare to bury you with more lies.
It most definitely is one of those cases unless you think Jay Carney's argument can be dismissed out of hand as being entirely factually incorrect.
> But when the press reports actual wrongdoing you should address the problem
By stating it this way, you have already ceded that the press's report is truthful and accurate. Furthermore, you seem to just accept that the press's views on what constitutes "wrongdoing" is reasonable and honest.
The substance of Carney's objections is that the report was not, in fact, truthful and accurate. He states, for example:
Elizabeth Willet, who claims she was “strafed” through the Anytime Feedback tool, received only three pieces of feedback through that tool during her entire time at Amazon. 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.”
He's accusing the Times of failing at simple fact-checking. He's accusing them of failing at responsible journalism. Either Carney is wrong or it is "one of those cases." It can't be both.
Bezos takes the high road-- "Oh, we're not like that" (which to anyone who has worked there rings really hollow as Bezos is someone for whome reality is pretty plastic. He has a reality distortion field of significant power)... meanwhile thru backchannels work to discredit the employee telling the truth.
Given what I experienced there, I can believe that all the dirt they are slinging at this employee is post-hoc ergo propter hoc rationalization.
When I attempted to transfer within Amazon, I was attacked by my boss and HR, and when I resigned I was fired. (Of course, you can't fire someone who has resigned but that's a truth that is not reflected in Amazon's employee records.)
Now I'm a "disgruntled" employee who was "fired" for the "crime" of attempting to transfer departments after getting an offer from AWS, and then resigned when his transfer was blocked by his boss (something explicitly forbidden in Amazon's policy handbook, but of course such rules are there for propaganda more than anything else.)
This allows them to spin anything the former employees says as sour grapes.
BTW, as part of leaving I was made to sign a terrible agreement, under threats that I now understand to have been extortion (because they were illegal under Washington State law) that included, among other things, that I would never publicly speak ill of the company. I am doing so now because I'd be happy if they sued me- I have lots of stories to tell reporters.
Of course, wildly illegal - but also a verbal conversation (deliberately so of course) so no hard proof it ever happened.
I told the HR person that's illegal, refused to sign any exit paperwork whatsoever, and left the building. Of course, my remaining paychecks arrived without trouble, LOL.
I can imagine someone less savvy or newer to the industry to easily be fooled.
But the state, Virginia in this case, takes a very dim view of such stunts (hey, on top of everything else they lose tax money), has an office staffed with no-humor people who've seen it all, and all we had to do was to wait and accept only the full amount.
Maybe offered to forgive relocation expenses he'd otherwise be on the hook for?
After all, Amazon's culture got this way for a reason - and it's not by taking complaints seriously, admitting to cultural failures, and making real substantive change.
So, background, I'm an ex-Amazonian, converted from internship to full-time along with a few dozen others, so we all kept in touch on FB. Nearly all of us are gone now - nearly all of us left within 2 years, a few have stayed on as long-term Amazonians.
When the NYT article first hit it was kind of a weird sight. Among the (legion of) ex-Amazonians the response has been pretty universally "yeah I recognize the Amazon in this article". Among the (few) current Amazonians the response was universally "all lies! slander! hit piece! yellow journalism!". The gap was startling - every single one of these long-term Amazonians knew many ex-employees, some they called friends, who left disgruntled and unhappy, and yet here they are insisting that the whole thing was a pack of lies.
Odd to say the least, but lines up with what I saw myself internally when I was there - criticism of Amazon's culture was always met with overt hostility and vehement denial on the internal mailing lists that discussed such things. It never seemed like an environment where change could take root simply because no one was willing to own the failures to begin with.
Bezos made some conciliatory gestures, but I'm personally skeptical - even if he's serious about change, the rest of his company isn't.
They won't say that because someone might try to hold them to it. Even admitting there is a problem might spark an internal revolt or a hiring problem.
No, probably not. Although humility seems like the sensible approach for decent people, a newspaper that has published a deliberately biased hit piece against you is not decent people. The Times declared war on Amazon, not the other way around. If Amazon apologizes, the Times will merely use that as ammunition in their next hit piece.
Amazon knows NY Times is going to attack them no matter what they do or say. If Amazon makes any admission of guilt, the Times will simply use that as ammunition in the next hit piece.
> Rather than fighting it out in public with a newspaper.
Here's the thing: when you call something a "newspaper," especially in this context, you're giving them a privileged status. This privileged status comes because people expect newspapers to behave with journalistic integrity. We give them status because we trust them to do their research and make reasonable efforts to maintain objectivity and be intellectually honest. If even a portion of Amazon's criticisms are true, it is clear that the NY Times, in publishing this article, violated the journalistic standards that earned them the status we accord to them.
If the NY Times is deliberately trying to promote narratives about Amazon rather than doing research and reporting objectively, honestly, and factually with reasonable attempts to minimize bias and maximize credibility; then it's not only imperative that Amazon stand up to them, but it's imperative that you do, too.