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Retail giant Amazon has a reputation for being a fast-paced, cut-throat business; and a new report from the New York Times has seemingly confirmed this.
After interviewing more than 100 current and former employees at the e-commerce firm, an article entitled Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace appeared over the weekend, giving a damning verdict on the atmosphere and tactics within the Amazon office.
According to the accounts included in the report, staff members would regularly be seen crying at their desks after being pushed to constantly work harder and faster, as well as deal with a ruthless feedback system where not only were staff actively encouraged to report on each other anonymously, but also take part in extensive meetings where this would occur with senior staff.
The report also detailed Amazon’s high turnover of staff, and how the firm looks to constantly bring in new staff with the aim of finding potential stars among the hundreds of new starters, with the rest being weeded out. The same policy allegedly applies to existing staff, with a points system based on performance said to be in place whereby the lowest ranked members of each team at the end of the year are fired.
The report goes through various employee accounts at length, with stories ranging from staff being criticised for suffering health problems that affected their work to being discouraged from starting a family if they wanted to succeed at the company.
The report caused quite a stir, and it’s even caught the attention of founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.
The billionaire has been quick to dismiss the report, saying that he doesn’t recognise the “soulless and dystopian” Amazon that appears in the story.
He sent a memo to all Amazon staff saying the article doesn’t describe “the Amazon I know or the caring Amazonians I work with every day”.
Bezos also called on staff to report any “callous” behaviour they knew of to human resources or even him directly. “Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero,” he added.
The Amazon chief signed off the note by saying that if such a company existed, anyone who worked for it would be crazy to stay.
In the wake of the report, another Amazon employee, Nick Ciubotariu posted a lengthy defence of the company to LinkedIn, calling the New York Times report “blatantly incorrect” and suggesting that the article reflected an Amazon that no longer existed.
“No one tells me to work nights. No one makes me answer emails at night. No one texts me to ask me why emails aren’t answered,” he said.
The firm has been criticised in the past for working conditions in some of its warehouses, but this is the most detailed attack on its supposed office culture.
Attention is likely to remain on Amazon for some time to see if any changes are implemented in the wake of the story.
