Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
After reading The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, I was convinced that Jeff Bezos was a good husband and father. If I'm right about that, he couldn't possibly be a psychopath or sociopath.
Amazon, for years, has been too big to be explained by a great man theory of business history. Bezos isn't just the CEO of Amazon, but has other businesses, including a space company and newspaper. I doubt he can successfully dictate the tone of most business units (some of which -- read about Zappos -- have a very different workplace reputation from the Amazon core).
Looking at Bezos's response, I take him at his word that he wants to fix some of what The New York Times documented. It seems to me likely that this article will, to some extent, improve the company.
I was a little taken aback by Bezos's repeated references to laughter in the workplace. Depending on what people are laughing about, this could just as easily be a bad sign or a good one. As an employee, I want to be rewarded for meeting mission-critical goals while being respected as a individual who has life responsibilities beyond work. How much laughter there is in my workplace has nothing to do with that. |
It's been my observation that upper management in large corporations are a bit like the coach in the old movie, The Program, that is to say, they don't really want to know, so no one tells them. People have an amazing ability to rationalize and justify just about anything. While I'm sure there are some psychopaths and sociopaths in corporate America, it's hardly necessary for someone to be such to act as described in the article.
I have no doubt that much of what was described in the article (and other articles about Amazon) really did happen. IMPO, the stories are too consistent to be made up by disgruntled ex-employees and it's not like this is the first such story about Amazon. That doesn't necessarily mean that the extremes are sanctioned or promoted by upper management.