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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

#161

Post by jessriedel »

east2west wrote: post #109
jessriedel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I remarked when it first came out, NYTimes article was almost completely anecdotal. That's not damning, but it does require you to trust the reporters to distill a large complicated mess to representative pieces. What part of Carney's piece do you think similarly depends on us trusting him? Do you think he fabricated the email from Kantor? Do you think he's outright lying about the context of Olson's dismissal to…

I agree with you that NYTimes piece is largely anecdotal but I will give my reasons for not believing a SVP of Amazon PR. 1. Personal attach on a former employee as the head of public relation for a multi-billion corporation from a personal blog seems cowardly. Did he give Olson a chance to respond? Is there extenuating circumstances? How did Amazon carry out the investigation? Who knew what when? He accused NYTimes…

With regard to #1, I don't much care how cowardly Carney is. The Times based an anecdotal article largely on the impressions of someone who is clearly suspect. Not informing the reader about it is unacceptable.

I guess I agree with #2, except that the alternative scenario -- that the reporters based their piece on an employee who they didn't know had an axe to grind -- just makes them incompetent/negligent rather than malicious.

I agree with #3, and honestly just ignored the relevant section of Carney's post for exactly the reasons you give.

I disagree with #4. I'd love to see the entire correspondence process too, but I can't imagine a reasonable scenario where the reporters aren't dishonest about their intentions. I think being willing to betray one's subject with bald-face lies completely destroys a journalist's credibility, and it doesn't matter how evil their subject is, or if they call it investigative reporting.

I'm sure the reporters felt they were justified, or only bent the truth rather than lying, or whatever. But it's exactly that ability to self deceive that makes them untrustworthy writers.

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

#163

Post by [deleted] »

zo1 wrote: post #141
zaroth wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#164

Post by neoCrimeLabs »

dang wrote: post #155
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".

Thanks!

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

#165

Post by caskance »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #107
empath75 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're going to have a hard time retaining and hiring quality employees if there's an unanswered NY Times article out there about how awful it is to work there. It's sort of a damned if they do, damned if they don't situation. But I think if you're fired for fraud I don't think you have a reasonable expectation that your employment details will remain private if you publicly slag the company that fired you for theft…

And they won't have a hard time retaining and hiring quality employees if all employees know that if you ever speak about your time at Amazon, some SVP for XXX might start selectively leaking portions of your personnel records? >But I think if you're fired for fraud Sure, but this is only a claim that Amazon/Carney have made. They have presented zero evidence for the claim. Also, Amazon/Carney released information ab…

If you're a quality employee that is not interested in disparaging former employers, as most people are not, I don't see why it would affect your decision. It's an appropriate response to what the employee did. If Amazon had an employee arrested for embezzlement, I would not take that as a sign that I shouldn't work there or else I might get arrested.

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

#166

Post by serge2k »

FmrAMZN_TA wrote: post #124

Disclaimer: I am a former Amazon employee. I worked there for exactly a year. I assume I was doing well, I was offered increase bonus and base after my initial year. This response from Amazon continues to amaze me - first a post from Bezos that quoted an employee's anecdotal experiences and makes the (totally absurd) claim that Bezos doesn't know what life is like working there. Then they have a post ( http://recode.…

I left a few months ago and I have mixed feelings about the company. I went through a period where I felt pretty depressed and hated it there, but it wasn't really anything in particular that amazon did. I actually had it pretty good. Things did start to go downhill really bad this year (on my team). The team culture became pretty toxic because of some organizational/ operational changes and management didn't seem to care. There was also pressure from above that I don't think my immediate manager handled well, and things were bad.

i don't think the article was entirely fair, but amazon has some deep flaws. There was a pastebin on reddit by a few that was much more accurate.

I do think in the right situation I would consider working there again. It really is a minefield though.

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

#167

Post by TravelTechGuy »

rhino369 wrote: post #142
iterati wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Several points on this privacy angle:

1. Many of the facts in your HR files are based on heresay - what your colleagues/managers/HR personnel think about you. These are highly subjective facts, very domain and company specific. Airing those out without context is a breach of privacy and can cause great damage to the employee down the line.

2. These files belong to the employer - he can alter them to show whatever he wants them to; either in real time, or after the fact, to justify wrongful termination etc. I've actually seen that happen, when a pregnant colleague of mine was let go, and the management later invented a non-existent reason (right before they settled out of court).

3. Privacy here goes one way: if you, the ex-employee, decide to protect your good name, or retaliate - maybe by discussing what you think really happened, you may be violating the NDA you signed. At worst, you could be sued for libel. Most of the time you have no facts on your side, and you can refer to #2 to see what happens to the facts aligned against you.

Finally, imho, if your employee was caught in the process of criminal activity, report him to the appropriate authorities and fire him. Letting him go quietly, only to use this fact against him later, smells of shoddy behavior to your current and past employees, and to your customers.

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

#168

Post by caskance »

roymurdock wrote: post #102
eclipxe wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tech crowd (at least on HN) didn't see through the cover-piece...the comments here were overwhelmingly along the lines of "I knew it! Horrible environment". A lot of confirmation of existing anti-Amazon bias.

I'm assuming they published it on medium as a blog post targeting the tech community because they were trying to persuade potential future employees that Amazon is a good place to work. Yet Carney smeared the NYT and ex employees rather than highlighting the positives (I'm sure there are many, but I don't know what they are because he didn't mention them) of working at Amazon. Better yet, Amazon could have just carri…

Show not tell doesn't work. Otherwise there would be no such thing as marketing.

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

#169

Post by caskance »

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…

That sounds like an inane corporatese non-statement that everyone would immediately dismiss.

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

#170

Post by retbull »

serge2k wrote: post #123
roymurdock wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming they published it on medium as a blog post targeting the tech community because they were trying to persuade potential future employees that Amazon is a good place to work. Yet Carney smeared the NYT and ex employees rather than highlighting the positives (I'm sure there are many, but I don't know what they are because he didn't mention them) of working at Amazon. Better yet, Amazon could have just carri…

Even before the times article amazon had a rep as a place that ground through people in a year or two.

That was my impression and after talking to several friends over there it hasn't exactly gone away. Even people who still work there 5-6 years later give it at best mixed reviews. I don't know how to interpret the mudslinging but I don't think that Amazon is all fun and games.
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