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Amazon boss Jeff Bezos defends company's workplace culture

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Re: Amazon boss Jeff Bezos defends company's workplace culture

#41

Post by jaawn »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #21

If Bezos really wanted to put his money where his mouth is, he would implement a minimum mandatory vacation period and significant maternity/paternity leave at the least, if not a max # of hours per week. Of course, that would not maximize profits at amazon or most other companies so that's not really what will happen.

I don't think the assumption that long hours and little vacation maximize profits should be taken for granted, especially in a longer-term time frame. I've seen quite a lot of information in the past few years that shows that (especially for developers) long hours have diminishing returns on productivity, and may actually hurt productivity.

Re: Amazon boss Jeff Bezos defends company's workplace culture

#42

Post by blueside »

gdulli wrote: post #10

> Amazon's boss Jeff Bezos wrote in a memo to staff that the "article doesn't describe the Amazon I know". I'm not surprised he feels this way, being solely unaccountable in the way that his employees are and primarily responsible for both denying and preserving the culture. > Mr Ciubotariu invoked the company's culture of fun in his LinkedIn post. "We have Nerf wars, almost daily, that often get a bit out of hand,"…

The nerf war comment was definitely cringe-worthy, if a nerf war is the best example you got, that is telling in itself.

Re: Amazon boss Jeff Bezos defends company's workplace culture

#44

Post by virmundi »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #21

If Bezos really wanted to put his money where his mouth is, he would implement a minimum mandatory vacation period and significant maternity/paternity leave at the least, if not a max # of hours per week. Of course, that would not maximize profits at amazon or most other companies so that's not really what will happen.

A client had an interesting system along this line. Every employee was required to leave for one week to make sure that day to day operations continued without interruption in their absence. As result, everyone took at least one week of vacation. Often they would take two at this time.

Re: Amazon boss Jeff Bezos defends company's workplace culture

#45

Post by pmelendez »

fasouto wrote: post #40

"we have Nerf wars, almost daily, that often get a bit out of hand" :facepalm: I hate this part of the popular culture where developers are seen as kids or weirdos with no social skills. We have to make clear that we didn't like nerf wars neither overworking, if we didn't respect us nobody is gonna do it.

> We have to make clear that we didn't like nerf wars neither overworking

I do find those wars very entertaining and stress relieving. What is clear to me is that, even in the tech world, there are different cultures and not everybody are equal.

Re: Amazon boss Jeff Bezos defends company's workplace culture

#46

Post by mhuffman »

bluedino wrote: post #11

>> Mr Ciubotariu invoked the company's culture of fun in his LinkedIn post. "We have Nerf wars, almost daily, that often get a bit out of hand," he wrote. This reminds me of Rackspace. Rackspace claims to have this great fun environment and they love their employees and they're always doing this fun stuff at work. I know a handful of people that work there and I'm always being told about the elaborate pranks games go…

I don't know anything about Rackspace's internal operations, but I have used them with business support before and it was some of the best customer service I have ever experienced with a company. Also, since this is an Amazon thread, their customer service is the cat's tits as well!

Re: Amazon boss Jeff Bezos defends company's workplace culture

#47

Post by jdmichal »

Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #25
gdulli wrote: post #10

> Amazon's boss Jeff Bezos wrote in a memo to staff that the "article doesn't describe the Amazon I know". I'm not surprised he feels this way, being solely unaccountable in the way that his employees are and primarily responsible for both denying and preserving the culture. > Mr Ciubotariu invoked the company's culture of fun in his LinkedIn post. "We have Nerf wars, almost daily, that often get a bit out of hand,"…

Yep. After spending 10 years in a medium-sized marketing agency, I wrote a recap post called "A beer fridge does not make a culture," which included this bit that the "nerf war" comment made me think of: "About that beer fridge...It’s pretty cool. So is the pop-a-shot table, the happy hours, the lax dress code, the summer outings (i.e. Drunk Hook-Up Fest), and the staff lunches. But those aren’t culture. Those are ni…

I had pretty similar thoughts to the "free food" bullet point at the bottom. That's so far into "nice to have" territory that I can only see such comments as whinging about how green the neighbor's yard is. (Except, there's actually a chance for you to go live in the neighbor's house, if you really wanted to.)

Re: Amazon boss Jeff Bezos defends company's workplace culture

#48

Post by mason240 »

chinathrow wrote: post #19
mason240 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a big world, someone will criticize you no matter what you do.

Treating employees in the fullfilment centers like shit is another side of the story, right? Do you need sources?

I'm addressing your "anyone defending themselves (and thus anyone who has revived criticism) is automatically wrong" argument.

You're defending yourself right now, so by that argument it "says a lot to me."

Re: Amazon boss Jeff Bezos defends company's workplace culture

#49

Post by mhuffman »

coldcode wrote: post #2

Not surprising. Likely he knows exactly what is going on in his company (known as a micromanager) but can't stand criticism. But like the titans of old (Rockefeller, Carnagie etc) employee happiness doesn't register as important to him.

Sadly, employee happiness does not always equate to revenue either.

Re: Amazon boss Jeff Bezos defends company's workplace culture

#50

Post by lotsofpulp »

jaawn wrote: post #41
lotsofpulp wrote: post #21

If Bezos really wanted to put his money where his mouth is, he would implement a minimum mandatory vacation period and significant maternity/paternity leave at the least, if not a max # of hours per week. Of course, that would not maximize profits at amazon or most other companies so that's not really what will happen.

I don't think the assumption that long hours and little vacation maximize profits should be taken for granted, especially in a longer-term time frame. I've seen quite a lot of information in the past few years that shows that (especially for developers) long hours have diminishing returns on productivity, and may actually hurt productivity.

It may hurt productivity, but the employer gets the benefit of keeping the employee on a leash by not giving them time to look for other opportunities , plus in some businesses you can just keep grinding employees to the bone and sift until you have the most workaholic ones, such as in finance.

I won't claim to know what will happen to Amazon or other companies if they keep trying to squeeze every cent out of every employee all the time, but in my professional circles of people who work front office at investment firms or consulting firms (in the northeast), there is a long history of making sure the newbies are in the office 80+ hours a week. These are also the same firms that continue to make the most money year after year, so I would assume there is some possibility to extract extra value from the subset of the population that is workaholic.

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