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What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

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Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#141

Post by zo1 »

zaroth wrote: post #120
dekhn wrote: post #4

There are several shockingly inappropriate things in this article. In particular, the PR person at Amazon is saying that they would have shared employee's personal records (including evaluations) as well as other employee's termination conditions (which I consider unrelated to their quotes). Amazon: what Carney just posted was very inappropriate. I am completely amazed you did this (assuming it was done with approval…

Regarding sharing employee evaluations, two things; if you go on the record with press discussing your evaluation and says it says one thing, but it actually says another, I think the company is entitled to respond. Anyway, it's not clear to me if the employee isn't on Amazon's side here (angry at being misquoted) so how do we know this wouldn't have been after getting permission from the employees in question? Obvio…

It may have been inappropriate to "share" some of the evaluations, even though they were so very vague and non-descript. But, it's also possible that the employee voided any contract between themselves and Amazon by speaking to a third party (NYT) about the inner workings of Amazon.

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#142

Post by rhino369 »

iterati wrote: post #99
FussyZeus wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things: - I have zero problem with a company releasing info pertaining the character of an employee. - If you're an employee doing your job honestly, you shouldn't either.

Who needs privacy when you have nothing to hide?

Should privacy really cover what someone else (in this case Amazon) thinks about you? These aren't medical records or other protected information.

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#143

Post by srtjstjsj »

amyjess wrote: post #86
danso wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't it be the PR person? Someone at the level of Jay Carney is ostensibly more than just a mouthpiece, but someone who gathers the information and weighs in on what's useful and relevant to disseminate to the press. This isn't always a nefarious thing; sometimes employees have incomplete information but aren't in a position to confirm it with the executives. At this phase, where the story has run and the da…

I think a lot of people's problem with this is that it's not very transparent. You don't find out who Carney is until the very bottom of the article, and it's presented as just another journalistic article published by Medium and not an official rebuttal by the company. If the whole thing was prefixed with "Following is Amazon's official rebuttal to the New York Times article", I don't think many people would have a…

What's a "journalist article"? Medium is a blog host, not a newspaper. Medium is just paste.org with a better UI.

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#144

Post by neoCrimeLabs »

mlrtime wrote: post #110
neoCrimeLabs wrote: post #42

> What The New York Times Didn’t Tell You Am I the only one tired of click-bait titles that don't tell you anything about the article? Had to read the comments here to understand what the article was about and decide if it was worth reading. All it takes is 4 extra words to give the title context: > What The New York Times Didn’t Tell You [about working at Amazon]

It works, you clicked.

I didn't click into the article, but into these comments.

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#145

Post by srtjstjsj »

cjbprime wrote: post #22

> Here’s what the story didn’t tell you about Mr. Olson: his brief tenure at Amazon ended after an investigation revealed he had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately. Together with the inappropriate disclosure of performance reviews, this statement just makes me think that Amazon probably has a culture of…

I remember an article a few years ago with a similar dispute -- something about advertisement placement abuse, and overcharging a client (a credit card company / bank?) to the tune of $million for placements on Kindles(?) that customers never saw, and a dispute as to whether it was a lone wolf, or an executive who pushed the lower-level person to do it.

Ah, here's the story: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employee-lawsuit-kivin...

http://www.geekwire.com/2014/former-amazon-employee-ends-hun...

https://www.google.com/search?q=Varghese+amazon

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#146

Post by srtjstjsj »

neoCrimeLabs wrote: post #144
mlrtime wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works, you clicked.

I didn't click into the article, but into these comments.

HN posted the clickbait title (using its lame rule of cloning the web page title out of context), and you clicked into HN. Ergo, it worked.

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#147

Post by hashberry »

The similarities and inaccuracies remind me of the Rolling Stone "A Rape on Campus" story. What is wrong with today's journalism? These are established, mainstream publishers. There is so much focus on the message instead of the facts that entire stories can be fabricated.

I canceled my NYTimes subscription last year because it has become increasingly frustrating to read, especially their "women in tech" articles. For example, their recent "What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech"[0] op-ed blames nerd male culture for making women uncomfortable, and argues for a more neutral environment with no Star Wars posters or tech magazines or nerdy t-shirts...

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/what-really...

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#148

Post by saosebastiao »

whatok wrote: post #132
saosebastiao wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would likely be millions of dollars richer if I happened to record a two minute conversation with my former boss's boss, who was an ecclesiastical leader at a church that I eventually left. He told me point blank that the reason I was fired was because I wasn't faithful enough and was no longer worthy of my (completely unrelated) employment. On the books, however, they made it out to be a performance issue. I had p…

You're approaching it from the employee perspective rather than the employer's. Given that Amazon put this out to repair their image, do you think they would risk a headline (even if eventually proven to be false) that says "Amazon lied about employee's resignation"? This guy could absolutely get someone to take a case pro bono with all the press it's getting.

I'll give you two hypothetical situations:

1) Vendor manager Jim tries to defraud a vendor. He gets caught, and confronted about it. He realizes he messed up, accepts responsibility, and resigns on the spot.

2) Vendor manager Joe gets pressured by boss to defraud a vendor because the boss is under pressure from his boss to cut costs or be fired. Joe pushes back, gets reprimanded for not following Amazon's "disagree and commit" principle, and gets a poor performance review. Joe learns his lesson, defrauds his vendors, and everything is fine. The boss's boss and boss leave eventually because they never could get costs down, and the newly re-orged boss notices some discrepancies. Joe gets blamed for defrauding customers, and is told that he is now violating Amazon's "Insist on the Highest Standards" leadership principle. Joe immediately quits out of frustration with Amazon's leadership and culture.

Here is the problem: Both scenarios have the same paper trail of a fraud allegation and immediate resignation. And that paper trail is enough security to defend a position in court...especially if it is the employee's burden of proof to show what really happened.

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#149

Post by srtjstjsj »

a_c_s wrote: post #24
ams6110 wrote: post #5

Goes back at least as far as the 1980's, remember the Pulitzer Prize the Washington Post had to give up after one of their reporters literally made up a story about an 8 year old heroin addict. Just because it's in a major newspaper, don't believe reporting is evenly balanced or without an agenda.

The piece was also in line with numerous previous reports on Amazon's working conditions for both blue collar and white collar employees.

That's a classic fallacy: You already had evidence, fine, but you don't get to re-use it to increase your confidence again later. If you want to build up a case, you need more evidence, need more narrative exaggeration backed by the old evidence.

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#150

Post by whiteboarder »

smileysteve wrote: post #68
cjbprime wrote: post #22

> Here’s what the story didn’t tell you about Mr. Olson: his brief tenure at Amazon ended after an investigation revealed he had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately. Together with the inappropriate disclosure of performance reviews, this statement just makes me think that Amazon probably has a culture of…

> Together with the inappropriate disclosure of performance reviews, this statement just makes me think that Amazon probably has a culture of defrauding vendors, and usually gets away with it, Especially with the Discover fraud whistle blowing lawsuit

There wasn't any fraud. There was a response to this accusation, by the NYT, and they claim that this is false.
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