Randi Kreiss

Working for Amazon: It's a jungle out there

Posted

Apparently, Jeff Bezos runs Amazon the way Kim Jong-un runs North Korea. My question is, What is that, compared with overnight delivery of my new yoga pants?

If you didn’t catch the expose on the giant company in last week’s New York Times, it detailed a brutal work environment where overwhelmed executives take turns breaking down and crying at their desks.

Dozens of people were interviewed for the story, an inside account of Bezos’s work ethic, philosophy and behavior that surely chilled the hearts of any prospective applicants. People are hired with high expectations for their performance. According to the piece, employees quickly learn what is expected of them: complete, cultish devotion to the company and its success.

This isn’t Google or Facebook, where workers enjoy naptime and gym breaks and elaborate free buffets. At Amazon, the pay is OK, free time isn’t free and there aren’t many perks. Certainly, workers aren’t coddled with company coffee bars or sleeping pods.

Amazonians, as they are called, are expected to be available on vacations and after hours, according to The Times. Work life at Amazon sounds surprisingly similar to life in that playground of the East, Pyongyang. Employees are encouraged to rat out one another in the name of “honest and open dialogue.” Everyone is pushed to his and her limit to facilitate Amazon’s covenant with its customers, to get the products out as quickly as humanly possibly — and when drones are launched, presumably inhumanly.

Several people who were interviewed said they had been chastised for taking time to care for sick relatives or to recover from their own illnesses or surgeries. The article implied that when weighing time off for a cancer patient against a promised two-day delivery of a new Kindle, Amazon execs would go for performance over people.

As soon as the story broke, Bezos said he would not work for a company like the one described in The Times. Well, he doesn’t exactly work for it; he runs it. I’m sure Kim Jong-un wouldn’t want to be citizen 2239748, living in a 22-story walk up. But he, too, runs the place, and that makes all the difference.

Page 1 / 3