amazon.com corporate culture is brutal, employees encourage to rat each other out

[Dan Druff]

Short version: http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/15/tech...mes/index.html

Long version: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/te...workplace.html

Cliffs: Amazon pretty much demands your entire life's attention if you work there, and they fire low-performing employees each year. They figure out who is "low performing" through an anonymous telephone reporting system, where employees are encouraged to rat out the ones who aren't performing well.

I will say that Amazon does have the best customer service of any modern company I've dealt with. Their business model revolves around making the customer happy, rather than nickel and diming and/or obsessing over policy.

But they seem like a total bitch to work for.

[4Dragons]

How is this different than every Corporate culture everywhere? Cubicle monkeys chime in.

[Buddy Jonathan Jacob]

I would take anything spouted by disgruntled and ex-employees with a grain of salt. In light of Amazon recently overtaking Wal Mart, people are looking for reasons to hate this company. I know somebody who works for Amazon and I asked him about this. He has never ratted anybody out and basically it's an automated peer driven performance review. This works better than having ONE guy who you meet maybe 10 times a year assessing your worth and reporting to the higher ups in the company. It actually seems like a great company to work for... here is a they show to new recruits at the office my friend works at, he confirms it's accurate. Casual dress, short workweek, ample vacation... I wouldn't be surprised if Wal Mart is behind the recent Amazon witch hunt

[anonamoose]

Cliffs: Amazon pretty much demands your entire life's attention if you work there, and they fire low-performing employees each year.

This is a large majority of companies now. The reason why places like google and apple have these huge campuses with free food, movie theaters, video game areas, etc is because they are trying to provide you with reasons to NOT GO HOME. By giving you everything that you'd want at home they pretty much expect the typical 8-5 work day to be more like 8-12, take a break, work until 5, eat dinner, work until 9 or 10 then go home to sleep and come back.

That's just the mentality in a lot of those types of places now. Other places that aren't as well equipped to manage that type of comfort are starting to require that level of attention too.

[Sanlmar]

This is kind of a nod to the trendy holacracy and teal management. Amazon is watching that nut genius Tony Hsieh over at their Zappos acquisition. He recently instituted holacracy. Amazon is considering adopting this model.

Fast Company article. Unless you are a management type and want to say "Oh, yeah, I've read about that" skip it.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3044417/z...cracy-or-leave

Suffice it to say it is a flat organizational structure with no management - Self management. Lol, a breakthrough paradigm.

It's all just a headcount game. Hseih made a decent offer to supervisors & managers to pack their belongings and head for the exit. So headcount is down and payback won't take long.

If your peers are managing you, the automated phone system is a mechanism to collect notes.

This has nothing to do with customer service. Zero.

I have heard some crazy customer service policies at Zappos.

Ex: If you are on the phone with a customer and during the course of the call the customer mentions she is hungry for pizza you are authorized to order a pizza and have it delivered to their home.

Ex: if you are on the phone with a customer who appears to have no real intention to buy but just wants to talk - you can spend as long as you wish just shooting the shit about the Dodgers.

Despite this management fad the best company to work for in Vegas is Zappos. It ain't even a contest. Great pay, free healthcare, food, flex time, work from home, free alcohol etc, etc.

I have seen management fads come and go. Some guys might remember "In Search of Excellence" by Tom Peters. 1985

Most of the companies cited in this piece of crap bit the big one. We all had to read it at the time. My favorite was minicomputer giant Digital Equipment and matrix management. What a Clusterfuck. Carly Fiorina loved Digital and bought it for HP and ..... well, the stock market stood up and cheered when she resigned.

Fiorina is all yours Sparten.

edit: lol, citing a money magazine article. Did not read. Got a subscription to Newsweek? Any news from Leah McGrath?

Edit: the NYTimes article was great.

[Sanlmar]

” If Amazon becomes like Microsoft, “we would die,” Mr. Bezos added.

What's funny is Amazon's culture sounds like early Bill Gates Microsoft. He was in your face and would bring people to tears.

Steve Jobs had that reputation too.

If you are young, aggressive, smart and love confrontation this looks like a great finishing school. Not for everyone.

Any thoughts on BlackBerry's latest OS Sonatine?

[anonamoose]

This is kind of a nod to the trendy holacracy and teal management. Amazon is watching that nut genius Tony Hsieh over at their Zappos acquisition. He recently instituted holacracy. Amazon is considering adopting this model.

Fast Company article. Unless you are a management type and want to say "Oh, yeah, I've read about that" skip it.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3044417/z...cracy-or-leave

Suffice it to say it is a flat organizational structure with no management - Self management. Lol, a breakthrough paradigm.

It's all just a headcount game. Hseih made a decent offer to supervisors & managers to pack their belongings and head for the exit. So headcount is down and payback won't take long.

If your peers are managing you, the automated phone system is a mechanism to collect notes.

This has nothing to do with customer service. Zero.

I have heard some crazy customer service policies at Zappos.

Ex: If you are on the phone with a customer and during the course of the call the customer mentions she is hungry for pizza you are authorized to order a pizza and have it delivered to their home.

Ex: if you are on the phone with a customer who appears to have no real intention to buy but just wants to talk - you can spend as long as you wish just shooting the shit about the Dodgers.

Despite this management fad the best company to work for in Vegas is Zappos. It ain't even a contest. Great pay, free healthcare, food, flex time, work from home, free alcohol etc, etc.

I have seen management fads come and go. Some guys might remember "In Search of Excellence" by Tom Peters. 1985

Most of the companies cited in this piece of crap bit the big one. We all had to read it at the time. My favorite was minicomputer giant Digital Equipment and matrix management. What a Clusterfuck. Carly Fiorina loved Digital and bought it for HP and ..... well, the stock market stood up and cheered when she resigned.

Fiorina is all yours Sparten.

edit: lol, citing a money magazine article. Did not read. Got a subscription to Newsweek? Any news from Leah McGrath?

Edit: the NYTimes article was great.

Nvm read this wrong

Deleted from net.

[GrenadaRoger]

Short version: http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/15/tech...mes/index.html

Long version: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/te...workplace.html

Cliffs: Amazon pretty much demands your entire life's attention if you work there, and they fire low-performing employees each year. They figure out who is "low performing" through an anonymous telephone reporting system, where employees are encouraged to rat out the ones who aren't performing well.

I will say that Amazon does have the best customer service of any modern company I've dealt with. Their business model revolves around making the customer happy, rather than nickel and diming and/or obsessing over policy.

But they seem like a total bitch to work for.

What ever happened to supervising employees with managers knowing the activities of the subordinates? Now they have to have a tip line for under performing? I though managements had reached bottom for uselessness when it became common practice for employees to have to write their own performance appraisals because managers didn't know what the hell was going on in the workplace...but this tip line shit is a new low...

btw, large companies such as General Electric, Microsoft, Nestle all have a policy of requiring their bottom performing 20% to be let go annually--even if the bottom 20% perform satisfactory...its can be fucking cut throat...but of course, these companies claim they value their employees and they are teammates/family/want trust in the workplace

[herbertstemple]

This new age corporate culture is disgusting. I wouldn't want to work around a bunch of rats. I wouldn't want a bunch of back stabbing snitches working for me for that matter.

They like to talk about team work, yet everybody has to always be looking over their shoulder. I don't see how things get done in this environment. People that excel make enemies as fast as anyone. A little click gets formed and they can get rid of anybody. Is this how this shit works?

I don't like this century at all.

[phantom]

i like to turn off adblock, broswe pfa and click the amazon link. find a product i want to buy then copy and paste the product descriptio into a different browser and complte my purchase

[SrslySirius]

Jeff Bezos responds: http://www.geekwire.com/2015/full-me...ds-to-be-zero/

FWIW, I've heard similar stories about Amazon's toxic work culture for years now. Where there's smoke, there's fire.

[Dan Druff]

Jeff Bezos responds: http://www.geekwire.com/2015/full-me...ds-to-be-zero/

FWIW, I've heard similar stories about Amazon's toxic work culture for years now. Where there's smoke, there's fire.

Agree.

Also heard stories a few years ago about the Amazon warehouse somewhere on the east coast, where it was oppressively hot in the summer, and employees were worked to the bone despite a heat indoors of as high as 120 (!!)

Sadly, when it comes to working conditions, most people simply adapt to the situation. Put them in an overly permissive and/or poorly structured working environment, and they will become terrible, non-productive employees and often abuse the system. Put them in an abusive, stressful, cutthroat environment like Amazon is alleged to be, and they will basically bend over and take it. There are of course outliers who won't behave this way, but it's actually pretty amazing how the same employees who would abuse a permissive system will also take abuse from an overly tough system.

[Dan Druff]

Also, Bezos is responding so quickly, publicly, and definitively because Amazon's success has largely been based upon a positive public perception of them.

Their business model has been "Carry everything, and make the customer feel happy with his experience shopping with us, so he shops with us again."

So this has been the typical Amazon customer experience:

1) Customer thinks, "Hey, I need a new filter for my refrigerator. But I don't feel like going to a hardware superstore and trying to track it down, or buying a heavily marked up filter from the manufacturer. Oh I know! I'll check Amazon!"

2) Customer searches for filter on Amazon. Finds it. Price looks good. Buys it, and the filter arrives in about a week.

3a) If everything goes well, customer feels good about Amazon and will use them again.

3b) If something goes wrong, customer calls Amazon customer service, and the issue is taken care of quickly and generously, in a friendly fashion.

4) Customer feels great about Amazon and his decision to use them.

But if the customer believes he is getting these low prices and convenience at the expense of human beings who are being abused while working for the company, he might feel guilty and instead go a different route.

So basically if you, the average Amazon customer, have any thought besides, "This company is great, I really like them and want to use them again", Bezos is upset.

The recent NYT article threatens to change the public perception of Amazon, so he has to come out with this "I had no idea it was like this, please come to me with any problems" answer, so as to make it look like any issues were with individual bad apples in the company, and not the corporate culture of Amazon.

It's BS. It's almost definitely the corporate culture there. But Bezos once again made the right move.

[pokerjoker]

” If Amazon becomes like Microsoft, “we would die,” Mr. Bezos added.

What's funny is Amazon's culture sounds like early Bill Gates Microsoft. He was in your face and would bring people to tears.

Steve Jobs had that reputation too.

If you are young, aggressive, smart and love confrontation this looks like a great finishing school. Not for everyone.

Any thoughts on BlackBerry's latest OS Sonatine?

actually microsoft hierarchy was pretty flat 20 years ago, but ymmv depending on division. i know your probably referring to early,early bill gates tho. wasn't there some video out there of a scrawny kid in a sweater kicking some asses who looked just gates? lol

[SrslySirius]

It was only a few years ago that Microsoft finally ended its employee ranking system, which had a similar result of morale destruction.

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles...-reviews-right

[Dan Druff]

Also notice that Bezos doesn't outright deny the claims about Amazon, but is taking the "I don't think this is happening, but if it is, please tell me and I'll stop it" approach.

If this stuff wasn't actually true, Bezos would just flat deny it.