Inside Amazon

[Ace]

#newsroomstoo

Newsroom people do it to themselves. I did.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

YF -- have you read it? Did you read this?


A woman who had thyroid cancer was given a low performance rating after she returned from treatment. She says her manager explained that while she was out, her peers were accomplishing a great deal. Another employee who miscarried twins left for a business trip the day after she had surgery. “I’m sorry, the work is still going to need to get done,” she said her boss told her. “From where you are in life, trying to start a family, I don’t know if this is the right place for you.”

A woman who had breast cancer was told that she was put on a “performance improvement plan” — Amazon code for “you’re in danger of being fired” — because “difficulties” in her “personal life” had interfered with fulfilling her work goals. Their accounts echoed others from workers who had suffered health crises and felt they had also been judged harshly instead of being given time to recover.

A former human resources executive said she was required to put a woman who had recently returned after undergoing serious surgery, and another who had just had a stillborn child, on performance improvement plans, accounts that were corroborated by a co-worker still at Amazon. “What kind of company do we want to be?” the executive recalled asking her bosses.

Do you find this necessary? Do you think Amazon wouldn't be Amazon without dehumanizing these women?

Wouldn't be successful without doing so.

 

[User 11148]

Anybody out there who thinks the Amazon white-collar work environment is unique is kidding him/herself. You want to work at or near the top of your field? You want to make (potentially) a ****-pile of money? You want to be involved in some ground-breaking stuff? That kind of a work environment is the nature of the beast.

What do y'all think it's like being on the partner track at big law firms? What do you think it's like being on the tenure track at a seriously top-flight university? What do you think it's like being a mid- or upper-level staffer at the White House?

 

[Mr. Sunshine]

Newsroom people do it to themselves. I did.

Oh, sure. Incentive/motivation in a newsroom is all self-generated, and those people are more often exploited than rewarded. I'd love a little competition at work, but my guess is that my desire to be more involved is seen as "pushy" in certain circles.

 

[Mr. Sunshine]

Anybody out there who thinks the Amazon white-collar work environment is unique is kidding him/herself. You want to work at or near the top of your field? You want to make (potentially) a ****-pile of money? You want to be involved in some ground-breaking stuff? That kind of a work environment is the nature of the beast.

What do y'all think it's like being on the partner track at big law firms? What do you think it's like being on the tenure track at a seriously top-flight university? What do you think it's like being a mid- or upper-level staffer at the White House?

#successwithoutsacrifice

 

[Ace]

Anybody out there who thinks the Amazon white-collar work environment is unique is kidding him/herself. You want to work at or near the top of your field? You want to make (potentially) a ****-pile of money? You want to be involved in some ground-breaking stuff? That kind of a work environment is the nature of the beast.

What do y'all think it's like being on the partner track at big law firms? What do you think it's like being on the tenure track at a seriously top-flight university? What do you think it's like being a mid- or upper-level staffer at the White House?

I think at some of your examples, the expectation is you bust your ass for a while and get to become a partner, get tenure, get to the end of your guy's term, etc.

In Amazon, it seems some people work their ass off only to get pushed aside when they slow down a bit, get sick or whatever.

 

[YankeeFan]

YF -- have you read it? Did you read this?


A woman who had thyroid cancer was given a low performance rating after she returned from treatment. She says her manager explained that while she was out, her peers were accomplishing a great deal. Another employee who miscarried twins left for a business trip the day after she had surgery. “I’m sorry, the work is still going to need to get done,” she said her boss told her. “From where you are in life, trying to start a family, I don’t know if this is the right place for you.”

A woman who had breast cancer was told that she was put on a “performance improvement plan” — Amazon code for “you’re in danger of being fired” — because “difficulties” in her “personal life” had interfered with fulfilling her work goals. Their accounts echoed others from workers who had suffered health crises and felt they had also been judged harshly instead of being given time to recover.

A former human resources executive said she was required to put a woman who had recently returned after undergoing serious surgery, and another who had just had a stillborn child, on performance improvement plans, accounts that were corroborated by a co-worker still at Amazon. “What kind of company do we want to be?” the executive recalled asking her bosses.

Do you find this necessary? Do you think Amazon wouldn't be Amazon without dehumanizing these women?

Obviously those stories are upsetting, but I think we should remember that we are only hearing one side of the story.

I also think that if you looked at any company that employed a similar number of people over the period of years that we're talking about, you would find similar horror stories.

 

[MisterCreosote]

I'd be curious to know how many other companies require a confidentiality agreement that governs everything related to employment there, not just proprietary information.

I'd also be curious to know how many other companies tag their employees so they can be monitored every second of every day, and send them texts to get back to work if they even lapse for a few minutes, as Amazon has done in the past.

 

[YankeeFan]

So in your scenario, do you see the opportunity for some ambitious young executive to sabotage people who may not be poor performers at all?

That goes on at every bog company. We should assume that managers are smart enough to know this, and investigate any complaints, and not just take them at face value.

If someone isn't doing their job well, there are all kinds of ways to make that known. Encouraging execs to tattle behind people's backs seems a little much.

Sure there are. This about speed and efficiency. They're collecting data, and because it's so easy, they probably collect more than other companies.

They're not concerned with everyone "getting along". Everyone is aware of the system.

Slackers are identified early, and pushed out. Strong performers don't want slackers on their team.

 

[YankeeFan]

Do you know how many millions of dollars some companies blow on new initiatives because no one is willing to call bull**** on a dumb idea?

And, how many multi-million dollar ideas are never developed because they came from a low level employee, who didn't get a proper hearing?

Amazon wants to avoid the latter, and encourage the former, and it looks like they've developed a system to help make this happen.

 

[Alma]

My take on this, which is slightly informed.

The culture at Amazon is slowly changing, in part because the mindset of the work force is changing from a more confrontational, outwardly expressive employee emblematic of the late Baby Boomer/Gen-X days to the more emotionally contained, let-me-be-a-part-of-something approach of the Gen Y/millennials.

In other words, Amazon is getting and will get to a point where the culture has self-selected to such a degree that Corporate Brother rather pleases them, and they want to please Corporate Brother.

 

[Mr. Sunshine]

Even the best newsrooms these days are riddled with contentment and complacency. Even so, there are a lot of good people with good ideas. The problem, of course, is that if you're not in the idea pipeline, it's next to impossible to get the aforementioned proper hearing. The idea that newspapers have run off all the good people is wrong. The issue is that the powers that be in most newsrooms don't have any idea who many of the good people are. And as long as communication remains insulated and circular, they never will.

 

[YankeeFan]

I thought this article from the weekend was interesting.

Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

They could have dominated digital photography, but didn't want to disrupt their own business model, so instead, they mostly ignored it -- even though it was invented in house!

But, it was probably a nice place to work:

Imagine a world where photography is a slow process that is impossible to master without years of study or apprenticeship. A world without iPhones or Instagram, where one company reigned supreme. Such a world existed in 1973, when Steven Sasson, a young engineer, went to work for Eastman Kodak.

Two years later he invented digital photography and made the first digital camera.

Mr. Sasson, all of 24 years old, invented the process that allows us to make photos with our phones, send images around the world in seconds and share them with millions of people. The same process completely disrupted the industry that was dominated by his Rochester employer and set off a decade of complaints by professional photographers fretting over the ruination of their profession.
...
Mr. Sasson made a series of demonstrations to groups of executives from the marketing, technical and business departments and then to their bosses and to their bosses.
...
Their response was tepid, at best.

“They were convinced that no one would ever want to look at their pictures on a television set,” he said. “Print had been with us for over 100 years, no one was complaining about prints, they were very inexpensive, and so why would anyone want to look at their picture on a television set?”

The main objections came from the marketing and business sides. Kodak had a virtual monopoly on the United States photography market, and made money on every step of the photographic process.
...
When Kodak executives asked when digital photography could compete, Mr. Sassoon used Moore’s Law, which predicts how fast digital technology advances. He would need two million pixels to compete against 110 negative color film, so he estimated 15 to 20 years. Kodak offered its first consumer cameras 18 years later.
...
The first digital camera was patented in 1978.
...
In 1989, Mr. Sasson and a colleague, Robert Hills, created the first modern digital single-lens reflex (S.L.R.) camera that looks and functions like today’s professional models.
...
But Kodak’s marketing department was not interested in it. Mr. Sasson was told they could sell the camera, but wouldn’t — because it would eat away at the company’s film sales.
...
Still, until it expired in the United States in 2007, the digital camera patent helped earn billions for Kodak, since it — not Mr. Sasson — owned it, making most digital camera manufacturers pay Kodak for the use of the technology. Though Kodak did eventually market both professional and consumer cameras, it did not fully embrace digital photography until it was too late.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/12/kodaks-first-digital-moment/

 

[cranberry]

I'm curious; is this story going to make anyone here stop using Amazon?

Amazon Prime is a great product and I'd have a membership if not for the company's treatment of warehouse workers. This story just made me dislike the company a little bit more.

 

[YankeeFan]

It's just getting harder to be a good, environmentally concerned liberal.

You can't use Amazon.
You can't use Uber.
You can't buy a diamond angagement ring.
You can't buy flowers.
You can't smoke pot.
You can't use air conditioning.
You can't shop at Walmart.

What else is on the list?

 

[Alma]

So the error in not embracing digital photography early enough is rooted in an ideological laziness brought on by excessive kindness?

Or are we just spitballing random corporate stories and seeing what sticks?

 

[YankeeFan]

So the error in not embracing digital photography early enough is rooted in an ideological laziness brought on by excessive kindness?

Or are we just spitballing random corporate stories and seeing what sticks?

Well, it ran in the same paper just days before the Amazon article.

Big companies have to be nimble, or else even the biggest can be surpassed by another company with better technology.

Who ever thought Myspace would be displaced?

Amazon can't afford to miss out on the next big thing, or to go down the wrong path.

So they've designed a system that keeps them nimble -- or as nimble as a company their size can be. At Amazon, they're determined to not let innovation, like what was possible at Kodak, go without being developed.

 

[JayFarrar]

Weird, the article wanted me to work at Amazon.

But then again I'm a man and I don't have to worry about my baby making disrupting my work.

I also thought of Dave Eggers The Circle. I guess this confirms that Bezos is the guy who loves sharks.

 

[swingline]

It's The Jungle out there.

 

[93Devil]

Would Amazon still make an amazing ****ing profit if they stopped treating people like ****? Yes

Would the people who own Amazon stock still make a profit if Amazon stopped treating people like ****? No