Bezos says Amazon needs to do better for employees in last letter as CEO

I have no sympathy for him. If he really wanted to make up for his decisions (or at least for not addressing issues), he would have stayed as CEO and fix it all. It really looks like a childlish attempt to... I dunno what exactly are Bezos' intentions.

Is it a get out of jail free card? 'I wanted to change and improve workers situation, but my successor totally ignored it'.

>Hopefully peoples' memories aren't so short

Who has time for thinking when Marvel Megahero Show #34 has 3000 new episodes to binge? Besides, he's donating to or even directing all the Right Causes now! He's like a real life superhero.

Even calling it a change of heart seems to give him to much credit by implying this letter actually represents his real feelings as of right now.

...without whom access to goods during the pandemic would have been vastly more difficult and costly.

I am completely in agreement that Amazon is more destructive than it is good now, particular when it comes to the way it treats workers, but it doesn’t help to deny that it provides value.

uhh... bill gates?

The problem with this sort of rant is that no amount of equity would ever be enough to satisfy you, and you don't care about the cost to their customers. America and American psuedocapitalism has still made countless lives across the world better in spite of that.

If this opinion hurts your feelings, you should probably spend less time on what is principally a venture capitalism forum.

I think Bezos will have an excellent legacy.

The sad thing is, it isn't even that hard to do; creating value for workers, I mean; at the risk of intensifying your despair.

Keep workloads reasonable. Establish humane feedback loops so that your labor force can actually attempt to actualize themselves. At the end of the day, every human being in a workplace creates value, and the more you can make life simpler and more straightforward for those who work for you without hemming them in or pidgeonholing them, the safer they'll feel taking reasonable risks that may just pay off, and most importantly coming to you first for input, advice, and a courtesy heads up.

One of the biggest challenges I've had to face since getting actual reports, is de-programming the tyranny-of-the-manager in the whole lot of them. I need people questioning things, correcting misunderstandings, making me aware of things. It is my job to do what needs to be done to enable my team to succeed. My team's inexplicable or unanticipated sudden failure is my failure. I am the one ultimately responsible for ensuring the reliability and stability of the processes that effect those I am tasked with managing for.

As a nuts and bolts person, it's totally new to me. However, I had someone volunteer to take a paycut to stay on with me. I'm... Not sure whether that's ultimately a positive, or what. I wonder sometimes if I'm falling down into the abyss of narcisstic management/business tendencies I've fought against my entire career because the descent is more insidious than I ever imagined... Then I look at all the stuff I have to balance, and re-evaluate what I could do different, and well... It is what it is.

Management was never something you should do to others, rather you do it for them to in the end make the entire working unit more productive. It's all work and overhead that has to occur for any task to get done; somebody has to do it. I just try to do for them what I always wished mine would do for me. I have a hunch they may have productivity gains in their personal lives. (At least I hope so.) I figure that's for someone else to judge though.

I just don't understand treating people like machines.

Value has a very specific economic meaning. It means a product or service with a price. Providing employees with more value is a way of stating they plan is to give them more XYZ, but not necessarily pay them more.

There are lots of non-pay increase propositions that employers can do that add a ton of value for employees. On site, at-cost daycare. On site medical/dental visits (e.g. staff Direct Primary Care). At cost cafeteria services. Amazon's scale & logistics prowess enable them to provide these things at much lower cost than an individual can purchase them for. At some point, these things add up and Amazon becomes a company town. But for many Americans, a company town run by Amazon would be welcome if it ads value to their lives. My guess is this is exactly what Amazon will do.

So corporate speech has moved to using "ask" to model an actual request.

At the same time, this is almost comical.Amazing, indeed, that he doesn't get called out by major news reporters.

They're having some issues scaling that while maintaining good conditions (esp. when contractors are involved), but we're talking about a company that has nearly doubled its workforce in the last two years. I doubt very much that any company in that size range could do the same without big problems; clients I've worked with and talked to see similar problems scaling from 50 to 100 employees, but no one cares because the company isn't a household name.

These days it feels like society has shifted more towards an ayn rand paradigm.