| Disclaimer: I am a former Amazon employee. I worked there for exactly a year. I assume I was doing well, I was offered increase bonus and base after my initial year. This response from Amazon continues to amaze me - first a post from Bezos that quoted an employee's anecdotal experiences and makes the (totally absurd) claim that Bezos doesn't know what life is like working there. Then they have a post (http://recode.net/2015/09/25/why-i-work-for-amazon-a-respons...) from a Senior VP who doesn't have the same experience as someone who isn't a Senior VP. Now they are digging up dirt on employees to paint them with a bad brush. First, the person with the killer quote should have been removed, no question. Huge bias. But the second and third people? Nothing in the piece is wrong - they could have been strafed with aggressive language and/or they could have been berated in their reviews. Look at the wording: All three included positive feedback on strengths as well as thoughts on areas of improvement.
Far from a “strafing,” even the areas for improvement written by her colleagues contained
language like: “It has been a pleasure working with Elizabeth.”
This is the best you can do? "Contained language like"? This is truly terrible spin. At Amazon, they teach managers to give the classic "shit sandwich" - good/bad/good. I saw many examples (I was a manager and reviewed many pieces of feedback in OLRs - Organizational Leadership Review) written EXACTLY as ham-handedly as this: "Overall, it has been a pleasure working with Elizabeth. However, the fact that she did not know the margins for a specific warehouse group when presenting to our VP shows a complete lack of diving deep, and makes me question whether or not she really wants to work at this level."The third example is similarly vague/wrong: "Chris Brucia, who recalls how he was berated in his performance review before being promoted, also was given a written review... Mr. Brucia was given exceptionally high ratings and then promoted to a senior position." That doesn't mean he wasn't berated - it could have been overly aggressive/wrong (and you cannot dispute ANY claims written in the feedback, all you can do is complain to your manager), just because it ended on a good note doesn't make it less hurtful. But what this really shows is that Amazon is as ruthless as ever. They WILL go after you, they will dig up dirt on you, and they will terrify you into never speaking out. If you are a former employee (as I am), you know the stories are very very true, and NEVER speak out publicly. When the story came out, we knew it misrepresented Amazon.
I'm sorry, Mr. Carney, the story was as accurate a representation of Amazon as I've ever seen in press. |
i don't think the article was entirely fair, but amazon has some deep flaws. There was a pastebin on reddit by a few that was much more accurate.
I do think in the right situation I would consider working there again. It really is a minefield though.