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by AsymetricCom 4635 days ago
This article is poorly sourced and fails to establish any evidence for it's main point, that it's "difficult to climb Amazon's corporate ladder," which is probably true considering it's a Fortune 100.

Instead, the article paints a picture that Amazon as a place ruled by fiefdoms and popularity contests, but again without any actual evidence, no you have to buy the book for that.

I have a feeling that if I read the book, that I would find that there is nothing here salacious, but that's not how you sell a book.

1 comments

> This article is poorly sourced...

On the contrary, it's first party interviews:

"In dozens of interviews ranging over two years for my book, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, employees often sounded... But in my interviews with rank and file employees... No one I talked to..."

Just because Wikipedia has a "no original research" policy doesn't make first party research "poorly sourced".

Not sure how Wikipedia is relevant here..

Saying "I have sources" and actually quoting those sources are two different things. I'm sure you can appreciate this difference.

Sounds like if one wants the quotes, buy the book. This article seems to be a synopsis of the research, so one wouldn't expect all actual quotes.

// Wikipedia is relevant because their "Verifiability" page is the top result for the phrase "poorly sourced" and Wikipedia tends to be the only context I hear the phrase. Outside of Wikipedia, "poorly sourced" doesn't mean how extensively phrases are in quote marks. it means where the information came from.

In that case, it's not an article, it's an advertisement.

the term "sources" and "poorly sourced" are also often paired with "source confidentiality", "source checking" and other similar terms are often subjects in press and media establishments of notable quality.

I imagine Wikipedia has co-opted this kind of standard operational diligence in an effort to not suck. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this article does not burden itself with such impedimenta.