Translation: "We are making so much money that we have entirely sold our ethics and will continue doing whatever makes us more money."
I really don't know how this response surprised any of their employees (as a previous employee, it certainly does not surprise me). Those who can't abide it oughtn't work there; this isn't something that is going to be changed from the inside.
Back in the day, Amazon was very fond of repeating over and over that customer trust and customer loyalty was the very most important thing. Customers absolutely had to know that if they ordered something on Amazon, the right product would arrive on time. A data leak would be seen as an existential crisis. Shipping the wrong product was a customer service emergency.
Then Amazon found out how much money it could make from being a third party marketplace and mostly just giving up on quality control. Now nobody has nearly the confidence that the thing they're buying is a real thing. Is that USB-C cable gonna work with your phone? Who knows? Amazon doesn't. But they'll be happy to sell it to you.
Turns out that whole "customer first" thing was more of a temporary tactic more than it was any sort of moral grounding. It was a great tactic. It got Amazon to #1 from an era where nobody trusted eCommerce. But they dropped it once they didn't need it.
Remember, Amazon's the place that kicked a political organization off of their cloud with no notice because Senator Lieberman placed a quick phone call to Jeff Bezos and suggested it'd help him win GovCloud if he did.
If language creates this negative reaction, isn't that the opposite of the desired result? Or am I just particularly skeptical?
Any deviations and rumblings from within the hierarchy become very easy to identify if they don't use the same language.