Inside Amazon

Only for the weak:

In Amazon warehouses, employees are monitored by sophisticated electronic systems to ensure they are packing enough boxes every hour. (Amazon came under fire in 2011 when workers in an eastern Pennsylvania warehouse toiled in more than 100-degree heat with ambulances waiting outside, taking away laborers as they fell. After an investigation by the local newspaper, the company installed air-conditioning.)

 

"Amazon workers do not in fact get unlimited vacation, hugs and smiles, along with free unicorns and rainbows. A story on Sunday's front page inaccurately described conditions within the company. We regret the error."

 

What do we think of this comment, and really, couldn't all businesses use data/metrics better:

 

Having those ambulances on standby is just the kind of empathy I think Bezos is talking about in his memo.

 

Right about now is when they hire the "life coach" who teaches employees that "embracing the positive aspects of your job" is good for your overall mental health.

In other words, the "STFU or You're Fired" guy.

 

You just know every tech company in the world is reading that article for pointers.

 

The line, "when you hit the wall, you climb it" is going to stick with me for a long time.

 

But...but...I thought we didn't need unions now because companies weren't mean to people anymore?

 

When Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs came out, there as a lot of talk about whether he needed to be so hard on his employees to get so much out of them.

I think the simple answer was "yes".

If Amazon wasn't so tough, would they be as good, as innovative?

 

The only incentive would be is if good people refused to work there under those conditions. Not sure that's likely anytime soon. The tighther the job market, the more leverage the bosses have.

 

If you want to worka at a place where people are encouraged to snitch behind your back and the expectation is that you return an email promptly that you received at midnight. Fine.

What's really bad is how they treat their thoussands and thousands of warehouse workers. Because you know the more crap the white collar guy is getting, the more is going to roll downhill to make him look good and keep the snitches at bay.

 

Do you think these two would have preferred union representation, where their contributions, job assignments, and wages would have been largely tied to their seniority, and not their contributions:

Even relatively junior employees can make major contributions. The new delivery-by-drone project announced in 2013, for example, was coinvented by a low-level engineer named Daniel Buchmueller.

Last August, Stephenie Landry, an operations executive, joined in discussions about how to shorten delivery times and developed an idea for rushing goods to urban customers in an hour or less. One hundred eleven days later, she was in Brooklyn directing the start of the new service, Prime Now.