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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

#21

Post by jessriedel »

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…

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 the extent that it wasn't incumbent on the Times to disclose this in the original article?

I'm totally willing to accept for the sake of argument that Carney is dishonest, but I think that is largely beside the point here. If you accept the truth of the bare facts presented by Carney, putting aside his spin, then the badness of Carney and/or Amazon is irrelevant for assessing the badness of the NYTimes.

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

#22

Post by cjbprime »

> 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 defrauding vendors, and usually gets away with it, but sometimes has to blame a junior hire to save face when caught.

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

#23

Post by cryoshon »

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…

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 bottom line can't accommodate the truth most of the time.

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

#24

Post by a_c_s »

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.

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

#27

Post by tgb »

cryoshon wrote: post #20

"Senior Vice President for Global Corporate Affairs at Amazon. Previously, he served as White House Press Secretary and spent 20 years as a reporter for TIME." A spin doctor doing his best to protect the people that pay him. Pay this article no mind; unrelated assaults on a source's character have no bearing on already established facts.

Do you know the meaning of the word "hypocrisy"? Your comment almost had me laugh out loud.

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

#29

Post by jessriedel »

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…

Let's assume both Amazon and Carney are evil. Do you think it was acceptable for the Times to not disclose the context of Olson's dismissal?

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

#30

Post by hnamazon123 »

I recently quit Amazon.

I don't doubt that New York Times purposely misrepresented or omitted facts to make this story. Their stories tend to be very agenda driven and the facts tend to be subservient to the narrative, a policy which is deemed acceptable because it "starts a conversation" or the story is "probably true for someone". This is typical of the left wing.

However, I did in fact have an absolutely awful experience at Amazon, in AWS specifically. It really is an awful place to work where management is entirely ego driven and in cover your ass mode 24/7 to the supreme detriment of everyone involved. Subordinates are seen as drones who should work without appreciation or thought for self. And the idea that subordinates are not drones is considered un-Amazonian.

I did in fact witness someone cry at their desk. Well, they didn't cry, it was more like they were in an emotionally precarious daze after being berated for 30 minutes straight by a manager who only did it to make himself feel better about his own worries about the project.

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