Nick Ciubotariu, a current Amazon employee of 18 months,
wrote a rebuttle to the nytimes article. I found this quote buried in the letter:
Quote:
If Amazon used to be this way (and it most likely was, as you’ll see in the quote below), from my 18 month experience working in two of its biggest product groups, that Amazon no longer exists. Last year, during all-hands, a very high ranking Executive said, verbatim:
Amazon used to burn a lot of people into the ground. This isn’t how we do things anymore, and it isn’t how I run my business. I want this to be a place where people solve problems that cannot be solved, anywhere in the world, but they feel good about working for a great company at the same time. And if you’re burning people into the ground with overwork, you’re not doing it right, and you need to course-correct, or you don’t need to be here.
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Both the NYTimes and Nick seem to agree that Amazon has been brutal to it's employees in the past. That the problems no longer exist, in Nick's limited experience in his department, does not mean the problems no longer exist elsewhere in the company.
There is also a current trend, in Amazon and else where, to label criticism from within as
disgruntled employees, thereby dismissing the problem without addressing the facts. Information is also dismissed on the grounds it is
anecdotal.
While the events may actually be true they are dismissed by invoking the memes associated with the words "disgruntled employee" and "anecdotal."
For example (extreme case hypothesised to make a point):
Say my boss forces me to work two twenty-four hour shifts back to back. If I complain I am labeled as a
disgruntled employee giving
anecdotal evidence.
This is a standard response used to dismiss my claims without addressing them. It ignores the facts that:
1. I am justified in being pissed off.
2. Even though I don't have hard evidence of the occurance, it still occurred. I can only relate the experience, not prove it.
Just because someone doesn't want the facts to be true, or hasn't personally experienced them, does not mean the facts are false and can be dismissed without due consideration.
It is worth noting that in Jeff Bezos' letter to his employees he evoked the
anecdotal meme on more than one occasion.