[Hitch]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

I wasn't aware of the free application process for that particular list, but reading your statement, and after googling, now I am. But there are other surveys like that which I have never seen Amazon listed on, and I doubt companies have to apply to all of them. I don't have time now to verify this and get a reasonable sample of them but may be able to do it in the next couple days.


Often, not always, Apple is on best employer lists.

And that was precisely my point. The much-vaunted, much-loved Apple wasn't on the "Best Employers" list that you linked to, and has essentially the same rate of turnover--which was the entire point of the second link, which purported to show employee dissatisfaction--as Amazon. What's sauce for the goose...

Silicon Valley culture is famous for job hopping, and that's where Google and Apple are headquartered. I do not believe job hopping is the primary way to measure employee satisfaction -- although it can raise questions open to differing answers. I was using job hopping not to bash Amazon, but to measure whether your private sample of Amazon employees was random.

The argument, then, if I understand you correctly, is that showing a list that says that both Amazon and Apple, neither of whom were on the first list, but both of whom were nearly-identically ranked on the second, proves that Apple has high employee turnover due to famous job-hopping, but Amazon is there because it's a bad employer? Come on, Steve. Saying that you used the list to show me that my known employees are somehow outside the norm is fine, but the evidence on the ground--at this point in this conversation--isn't compelling. it is, in fact, contraindicated, if you take the data thus far provided.

The kind of evidence I prefer to apply in these threads is publicly available evidence, and they are that.

I agree they prove nothing. The reason we can discuss this reasonably and at length is that there is good evidence for multiple positions without any one being scientifically proven.

Well, I'm certainly constrained from listing the Amazon folks I work with, obviously, so...no, I can't "prove" that assertion. People will, in this single instance, have to determine whether or not I seem credible. I don't really post pseudonymously; I'm easy to find and see, etc. They are free to judge for themselves. But other than the occasional complaint from what seem to be highly disgruntled former employees--and what company does NOT have that?--and extremely hyped and hyperbolic assertions made by other folks who DO have a dog in the fight (labor organizers, etc.), I think it's quite hard to judge, honestly and objectively.

Just as there was and is a great deal of utterly unwarranted Gates-Hate on the Net, along with the inexplicable worshipping of Jobs--instances which still boggle my mind to this day, if you view the two men individually and in light of their collective works, both personal and professional--there's a boatload of Amazon-hate (and Microsoft-Hate), while at the same time, Apple is worshiped, a line of thought that is perpetuated by former Applers, like Guy Kawasaki, etc. They are all simply corporations. Apple has a magnificent spin machine whilst the others simply don't. Jobs knew how to tap into the Zeitgeist; the others don't. In my experience, both MS and Amazon are heavily focused on giving customers what they think the customers NEED; Apple is entirely focused on delivering what's perceived as what a client WANTS, or thinks he wants, the next great toy. Apple discards customers's devices, OS's, etc., like knickers, because they want you to FORCE you to buy the next thing; Amazon bends over backwards supporting an out-of-date device you bought 6 years ago. But Apple's loved; Amazon's hated. And thus the endless headlines. It really doesn't get any simpler than that.

(One wonders...if all those contract-employees in the Far East could be polled, how great an employer Apple would be? Instead of only those living in the rarified air?)

Hitch