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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

#151

Post by ahelwer »

jhall1468 wrote: post #58
cryoshon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's the White House's former press secretary, Jay Carney. His whole existence is to whitewash, downplay, obfuscate, and pass a sanitized story to the media. I suggest we ignore Amazon's commentary and accept the worst vision as reality. That way, if we were to end up working there, we might be pleasantly surprised by a rosier picture, rather than upset by something that is below expectations. After all, the bo…

Holy ad hominem batman. > After all, the bottom line can't accommodate the truth most of the time. And pessimism will almost certainly become self-fulfilling prophecy.

That isn't ad hominem. Ad hominem would be something like "Jay Carney smells, so we shouldn't believe what he says." Carney's history and position are clearly relevant here.

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

#152

Post by neoCrimeLabs »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #146
neoCrimeLabs wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bah, you're right. :-)

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

#153

Post by ucaetano »

danso wrote: post #79
ucaetano wrote: post #6

It's actually weird to see a company firing back this publicly, releasing performance data (no matter if positive or negative) on previous employees, and it all being posted not by the CEO or a HR VP, but by the head of PR. [Edit: Not only it smells of whitewashing, but it also looks deceptive. And PR? Seriously? Not only it's a sleazy piece, but Amazon chose the worst possible position to convey the message. Get som…

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…

"you can be sure that this is, for better or worse, the official company response"

Quite the opposite: there's absolutely nothing official about it. It isn't published on an amazon domain, doesn't carry any signature as amazon, and the only evidence that this is in any way related to amazon is that the guy works at amazon.

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

#154

Post by dang »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #146
neoCrimeLabs wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

HN's rules explicitly call for changing clickbait titles.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#155

Post by dang »

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]

We changed the title to add "about Amazon" and remove the linkbait "you".

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

#156

Post by ipsin »

pbreit wrote: post #50
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…

Also inexcusable that Carney's bio is not the first sentence in the post. Would it not work for Amazon to come out with more of a "Look, it's a difficult business and our folks work incredibly hard. Sometimes it might get a little out of hand. We want to make sure all of our employees are healthy and treated with respect while fulfilling Amazon's mission of delighting customers around the world. We are constantly loo…

Also inexcusable that Carney's bio is not the first sentence in the post.

It's also standard in newspaper opinion pieces to put the bio at the end.

I actually prefer it -- as a game -- to guess who writes the author's paychecks as I'm reading.

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

#157

Post by vkou »

fweespeech wrote: post #115
serge2k wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a data driven company, it shows they either failed to collect related data and/or that data shows the article was accurate despite the poor choice of sources. They do an annual survey of SDEs, and they do release that data internally (aggregated/anonymously). SO they do have data. The problem is if they release data taht says "Oh well X% of our engineers are happy with the company" Then when happens when someon…

> They do an annual survey of SDEs, and they do release that data internally (aggregated/anonymously). SO they do have data. The problem is if they release data taht says "Oh well X% of our engineers are happy with the company" Then when happens when someone says why not (X+Y)? If they can show a clear majority are happy with their jobs, that is the strongest argument they have. It also shows the articles claiming ot…

If they can show that a clear majority are happy with their jobs, all that demonstrates is survivorship bias. Given their churn rate, this is not a good thing.

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

#159

Post by danso »

ucaetano wrote: post #153
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…

"you can be sure that this is, for better or worse, the official company response" Quite the opposite: there's absolutely nothing official about it. It isn't published on an amazon domain, doesn't carry any signature as amazon, and the only evidence that this is in any way related to amazon is that the guy works at amazon.

"there's absolutely nothing official about it"...except that it's coming from Amazon's Jay Carney, who is described as "Senior Vice President for Global Corporate Affairs at Amazon". Could his Medium site use a custom banner to show Amazon's letterhead? Sure (I don't know, I haven't logged into Medium in awhile to know its design/customization options). But this message is signed by him, acting in his role as Amazon PR. Quibbling over whether it should've shown on an Amazon domain vs. an outlet like Medium does nothing to change that.

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

#160

Post by fweespeech »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #139
fweespeech wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They do an annual survey of SDEs, and they do release that data internally (aggregated/anonymously). SO they do have data. The problem is if they release data taht says "Oh well X% of our engineers are happy with the company" Then when happens when someone says why not (X+Y)? If they can show a clear majority are happy with their jobs, that is the strongest argument they have. It also shows the articles claiming ot…

It's not an election. "Clear majority" is an extremely low bar for "job satisfaction", especially when you consider that over the years, the happy portion vote every year, while many of the unhappy people depart.

Then what bar would you set?

I'd be happy with a low bar. My guess is it isn't even hitting that low bar.

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