It took Amazon more than two months, but here it is: Amazon's official substantive response to the New York Times' August 15, 2015 investigative article that was highly critical of Amazon's employee culture, not just in the warehouse, but also in the white collar halls and offices of Seattle and elsewhere.
In the response, Amazon's official spokesperson, Jay Carney (previously White House spokesman for President Obama), counters the story by questioning the integrity of both the New York Times and that of many of the ex-Amazon employees cited in the story. For instance, Mr. Carney criticizes former Amazonian Bo Olson, who was quoted in the piece as saying, “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk." In response, Mr. Carney writes, "his brief tenure at Amazon ended after an investigation revealed he had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately." Mr. Carney then, seeking to strike two birds with one stone -- discrediting both messengers, Olson and the New York Times -- asks: "Why weren’t readers given that information?"
Such a maneuver is called in Mr. Carney's business a "non-denial denial," for, even if what Mr. Carney was saying were true (and Mr. Olson disputes Mr. Carney's accusations), it does nothing to counter Mr. Olson's statement on the merits. People may very well be crying out of frustration, and Mr. Olson may very well have witnessed such crying, and attempting to discredit someone for saying that they have witnessed people crying is foolish and a display in intellectual dishonesty.
Mr. Carney then proceeds to challenge Elizabeth Willet, who complained about Amazon's anonymous Anytime Feedback Tool, by taking exception to her use of the word "strafed" to characterize the misuse of the tool against her. Picking his words carefully, Mr. Carney writes, "All three [feedbacks] included positive feedback on strengths as well as thoughts on areas of improvement." Anyone who knows how things work at Amazon will tell you that what makes the tool such a corrosive device has to do with the reality that managers have full discretion in how to use the feedback they obtain in any way that they choose. They can pick and select whatever snippets of feedback they wish so that they can construct the case that they want to construct and appear that they are doing so based on "data." If they want to portray the employee as problematic, then they can assemble all the negative feedback, quote the pieces as they please, and ignore the rest. If they wish to do the opposite, prop up an employee they like, they can easily do that as well. Either way, the tool is worse than useless: it can easily be manipulated by unscrupulous managers to serve their own political agenda -- for instance, keeping in the team those who are obedient and getting rid of those who are more independently minded.
And yes, the Anytime Feedback Tool is indeed anonymous, to the contrary
of Mr. Carney's obfuscation, and anonymous in the most crucial sense:
the subject of the feedback knows neither the identity of the person
providing the feedback nor the content of that feedback, nor even that
feedback was provided. In other words, imagine working with people who
can send, or may have sent, "feedback" about you to your boss, and you
wouldn't even know it, and that such a "feedback" would be there, on the
record, for your manager to see, and for future managers to see.
The case of Chris Brucia, to which Mr. Carney also refers (not clear why), vividly illustrates the point that it is up to managers to do as they please, regardless of the feedback or the performance of employees. The way Mr. Brucia was promoted (after a dress down) is a classic show of authority that Amazonian managers excel at: I, the manager, could have gone either way -- I had grounds to fire you, deny your promotion, or promote you, and let me show you how I could have fired you, so that when I promote you, you will be relieved, thankful, but most importantly, you will absorb the basic fact that I am boss, and I do as I please.
Next, Mr. Carney quotes former employee Dina Vaccari, who had said that she didn’t sleep for four days straight on one occasion while working at Amazon, writing in her own response to the article: "The hours I put in at Amazon were my choice..... I chose it and it sucked at the time but in no way was I asked or forced by management to do this.”
What Mr. Carney fails to point out, however, is that Ms. Vaccari continues in that same piece with the following paragraph: "I’ve now evolved into a woman who doesn’t tie my confidence or sense of self worth to external factors or the current conditions of my work or personal life." Which was the main point of the New York Times article: Amazon has no scruples reducing its workers to one dimensional, and, crucially, obedient working machines, who will do as the bosses demands. Those who don't obediently play along are ushered out through various tools and techniques at the disposal of management, while those who do, will do so without being overtly "asked or forced by management" to do what they need to do to stay in the good graces of those who decide their fate.
As a current Amazonian, I am disappointed to see that Amazon is still in denial about the condition of its workforce. Jeff's letter of August 17, 2015 had all the hallmarks of either a leader not aware of how bad things were with his workers, or one who had chosen to pretend that all was well. Sentences like, "I don't recognize this Amazon and I very much hope you don't, either," and "I strongly believe that anyone working in a company that really is like the one described in the NYT would be crazy to stay," were understood by employees, I assure you, as cues to think like the Leader or leave, if one didn't share the Leader's view of where things stood.
Amazon has a choice: sober up, face reality, dig deep, and get down to the business of fixing what is broken with its employee culture, or keep denying basic reality.
And basic reality is this: Median tenure at Amazon is 12 months -- the worst among tech companies. Given the very high bar that Amazon holds when hiring (Amazon is ranked third after Google and Facebook in interview difficulty), and that the majority of the departures are voluntary (I have seen dozens of colleagues leave just the last few months, and the vast majority have been leaving because they can't take the morally squalid office environment), clearly, the problem is not with worker quality but with culture quality -- and more precisely, with Management quality, starting with Jeff Bezos and down.
Mr. Carney concludes his piece by warning readers: "The next time you see a sensationalistic quote in the Times.... you might wonder whether there’s a crucial piece of context or backstory missing."
What seems to escape Mr. Carney is that readers of the Times are smart and sophisticated and that they will smell a rat, if there is one to smell, in a story that is more than 5,000 words long. And from the 5,858 comments posted on the story (the most that a New York Times piece has received), the overwhelming majority of readers seem to believe that the story is a solid piece of investigative journalism, that it hangs well together, and, most refreshingly, that it is one that goes beyond the usual shabby, timid writing that offends no one and presents matters as if both sides were equally to blame.
We, Amazonians, and authors of the Amazonian Manifesto, still hope that Amazon will take the right next steps of accepting reality, digging into the data, understanding the core of the problem, and then, taking the appropriate actions to set our company on the right path. The smart, hardworking Amazonians, deserve no less, as they toil to serve their customers the best that they can.
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