I could probably write a book on him and everything he did at Amazon that was worth talking about, and I gotta admit, I didn't want to start today, but you're right that he deserves an explanation. Here's a few snippets that can be directly attributed to him:
* Amazon's policy of firing people on the spot for talking about unionizing.
* Their (former) policy of not operating anywhere where they would end up having to pay taxes
* Their policy of dropping prices through the floor as a negotiation tactic to get competitors to fold or get bought out
* Their policy of abandoning entire towns once they had already hired and fired everybody once
* Their policy of inventory co-mingling, and the deflection of blame to random merchants when they couldn't prove who had sent fakes.
* Their policy of always documenting anything that could even be remotely construed as a fireable offense, just in case he ever fired someone on the spot, as he commonly did.
Outside of official policies:
* The way he enforced a cult of personality, only hiring people who would constantly praise him, and fire people the moment they said anything that questioned his authority. He would even hold petty grudges against people that disagreed with him, using amazon's ridiculous non-competes to harass them after they left the company.
* The way he went to managers of pregnant women the moment they started to show, telling them to find any bullshit but legal means to fire them. (I actually overheard him say this, talking about one of my co-workers the moment she left the room).
* The way he bought a robotics company without any due diligence or even a product demo, forced adoption of the robots throughout his network, only to find out they had fundamental problems that prevented scaling to amazon's scale. Instead of writing off his shitty investment, he came in and micromanaged out every last person from the original company due to unrealistic and impossible demands.
* The way he unintentionally forced operations managers to completely change their operations every time he visited, so they wouldn't get fired for not listening to him, only to have to change it back the moment he left so they could actually be productive enough to not get fired.
* The way he would kick people out of elevators when he would get in, because he had to talk about "confidential stuff", and it couldn't wait til he got to his office. (First hand experience here, lol).
* BTW, he was never actually good at his job. For the entire time he was in charge of Amazon's retail business, they had progressively worse inventory turns, logistics costs, gross profit margins, returns on advertising, employee retention rates, etc. If you wanna see a hilarious accounting time lapse, you can literally take a zip file full of their public financial statements, skip to the parts about the Amazon retail business, and watch him waste trillions of dollars while constantly shifting blame to anything but himself.
In the words of a former US Army Major General (I went through first week training with him), when he quit after just 6 months on the job as a regional director: "Amazon is the most disfunctional organization I have ever seen, and I did my PhD on the Soviet military [1]. Also, that guy is a fucking psychopath."
[1] (the subtext of this joke was that the Soviet military was even more disfunctional than the US military, which he was always ranting about, but Amazon easily takes the cake)
Wow. When someone is that much of a prick, they become a one-dimensional stereotype.
The problem with asshole-led corporations is they, surprise, reward assholes. Civilized workplaces make a principled effort to kick out the assholes and find competent, productive people with normal-sized egos that can fit through the hangar doors.
> Also, that guy is a fucking psychopath.
Ahaha. Reminds me of the 6 Sigmas from "30 Rock". The 3 main organizational morale killing personality traits are bullying, depression, and low impact. And the problem is most organizations promote the opposite of each in reverse order, often forgiving bullying and harassment when there is $ignificant impact.
Not sure which ones you're referencing, but if its about the Alabama unionization effort, it's extra hilarious. He made such a show to say that Amazon pays its workers $15/hr, but what he didn't say was that he treats his employees so poorly that they couldn't hire anybody to work for anything less than $15/hr, which was already 30% higher than market prices in the warehouse fulfillment industry. He was the reason that they were paying $15/hr, and he was bragging about it like it wasn't one of his biggest failures as a wannabe cutthroat businessman.
Too many people forget the pissing in Coke bottles fiascos.
Also, people forget how bad workplace conditions can get, i.e., when Carnegie's Pinkerton snipers opened fire on Homestead union steel workers in the massacre of 1892.
The US middle-class had it best post-War when unions were strong between 1947 and 1965. Now, there is about an 1930's-level of unionization that is declining without any floor in sight.
Socialism in the US is a distant memory of its former self.
* Amazon's policy of firing people on the spot for talking about unionizing.
* Their (former) policy of not operating anywhere where they would end up having to pay taxes
* Their policy of dropping prices through the floor as a negotiation tactic to get competitors to fold or get bought out
* Their policy of abandoning entire towns once they had already hired and fired everybody once
* Their policy of inventory co-mingling, and the deflection of blame to random merchants when they couldn't prove who had sent fakes.
* Their policy of always documenting anything that could even be remotely construed as a fireable offense, just in case he ever fired someone on the spot, as he commonly did.
Outside of official policies:
* The way he enforced a cult of personality, only hiring people who would constantly praise him, and fire people the moment they said anything that questioned his authority. He would even hold petty grudges against people that disagreed with him, using amazon's ridiculous non-competes to harass them after they left the company.
* The way he went to managers of pregnant women the moment they started to show, telling them to find any bullshit but legal means to fire them. (I actually overheard him say this, talking about one of my co-workers the moment she left the room).
* The way he bought a robotics company without any due diligence or even a product demo, forced adoption of the robots throughout his network, only to find out they had fundamental problems that prevented scaling to amazon's scale. Instead of writing off his shitty investment, he came in and micromanaged out every last person from the original company due to unrealistic and impossible demands.
* The way he unintentionally forced operations managers to completely change their operations every time he visited, so they wouldn't get fired for not listening to him, only to have to change it back the moment he left so they could actually be productive enough to not get fired.
* The way he would kick people out of elevators when he would get in, because he had to talk about "confidential stuff", and it couldn't wait til he got to his office. (First hand experience here, lol).
* BTW, he was never actually good at his job. For the entire time he was in charge of Amazon's retail business, they had progressively worse inventory turns, logistics costs, gross profit margins, returns on advertising, employee retention rates, etc. If you wanna see a hilarious accounting time lapse, you can literally take a zip file full of their public financial statements, skip to the parts about the Amazon retail business, and watch him waste trillions of dollars while constantly shifting blame to anything but himself.
In the words of a former US Army Major General (I went through first week training with him), when he quit after just 6 months on the job as a regional director: "Amazon is the most disfunctional organization I have ever seen, and I did my PhD on the Soviet military [1]. Also, that guy is a fucking psychopath."
[1] (the subtext of this joke was that the Soviet military was even more disfunctional than the US military, which he was always ranting about, but Amazon easily takes the cake)