Jeff Bozos negs employees

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > Jeff Bozos negs employees

The Management: Jan 2, 2010; sup, bitch?

so the NY Times has a piece on how the white collar side of Amazon is run. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html

highlights include:
Amazon gives no (none, zero) paternity leave.
Attacking others in meetings is expected
There is a feedback system where people are encouraged to snitch on their colleagues. if you take sick time, expect to get negative feedback.
woman that had a miscarriage forced to work the next day
woman taking care of dad with cancer put on notice for lack of performance
if you're not on call always you are accused of not caring about your job
taking vacations is discouraged and you are expected to work during
Amazon is cheap as gently caress and spends nothing on employees
those that won't leave admit to hating it but being addicted to it
Jeff bozos has convinced all of these nerds that this is a good thing and what it takes to be successful, and they take this abuse.

quote:

A woman who had breast cancer was told that she was put on a �performance improvement plan� � Amazon code for �you�re in danger of being fired� � because �difficulties� in her �personal life� had interfered with fulfilling her work goals. Their accounts echoed others from workers who had suffered health crises and felt they had also been judged harshly instead of being given time to recover.

A former human resources executive said she was required to put a woman who had recently returned after undergoing serious surgery, and another who had just had a stillborn child, on performance improvement plans, accounts that were corroborated by a co-worker still at Amazon. �What kind of company do we want to be?� the executive recalled asking her bosses.

quote:

Company veterans often say the genius of Amazon is the way it drives them to drive themselves. �If you�re a good Amazonian, you become an Amabot,� said one employee, using a term that means you have become at one with the system.

quote:

In 2013, Elizabeth Willet, a former Army captain who served in Iraq, joined Amazon to manage housewares vendors and was thrilled to find that a large company could feel so energetic and entrepreneurial. After she had a child, she arranged with her boss to be in the office from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each day, pick up her baby and often return to her laptop later. Her boss assured her things were going well, but her colleagues, who did not see how early she arrived, sent him negative feedback accusing her of leaving too soon.

�I can�t stand here and defend you if your peers are saying you�re not doing your work,� she says he told her. She left the company after a little more than a year.

Ms. Willet�s co-workers strafed her through the Anytime Feedback Tool, the widget in the company directory that allows employees to send praise or criticism about colleagues to management. (While bosses know who sends the comments, their identities are not typically shared with the subjects of the remarks.) Because team members are ranked, and those at the bottom eliminated every year, it is in everyone�s interest to outperform everyone else.

Craig Berman, an Amazon spokesman, said the tool was just another way to provide feedback, like sending an email or walking into a manager�s office. Most comments, he said, are positive.

However, many workers called it a river of intrigue and scheming. They described making quiet pacts with colleagues to bury the same person at once, or to praise one another lavishly. Many others, along with Ms. Willet, described feeling sabotaged by negative comments from unidentified colleagues with whom they could not argue. In some cases, the criticism was copied directly into their performance reviews � a move that Amy Michaels, the former Kindle manager, said that colleagues called �the full paste.�

surprisingly, they have a huge retention problem.

bonus, I learned about the term Amholes for former Amazon employees that bring their toxic culture with them.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2015 23:06

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 04:31

The Management: Jan 2, 2010; sup, bitch?

rrrrrrrrrrrt posted:

there are people who get off on having their balls stepped.

Amazon teaches them that getting treated like poo poo is critical to success and nurtures their rear end in a top hat behavior as long as they work. getting paid well means you should give up your entire life. if you show any weakness, like getting sick or pregnant or wanting see your family then your rear end in a top hat colleagues will go out of their way to gently caress you and the company encourages this.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2015 22:51

The Management: Jan 2, 2010; sup, bitch?

Gazpacho posted:

These desks are
- a two-inch solid wood top with sealed laminate on the top and sides
- four dry unpressed 4x4 legs, edges rounded, usually with visible splits
- four joining brackets and four triangular supports, all 1/16 in steel.
- several large wood screws

they're cheap as gently caress, and they're assembled by the managers in team building exercises

you mean authentic startup feel

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 19:56

The Management: Jan 2, 2010; sup, bitch?

meanwhile on twitter, Silicon Valley's finest libtard venture capitalists are falling over themselves to defend amazon

# ¿ Aug 18, 2015 05:17

The Management: Jan 2, 2010; sup, bitch?

if you "need to stay" and are already thinking about how soon you can quit in your first year, congrats, you have a poo poo job.

there are plenty of companies that will pay you as much as Amazon but will also let you take a poo poo on the job (as required by law) and time off to take care of your baby (as required by human decency). but I'm sure bezos only hits you because he cares about you.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2015 14:33

The Management: Jan 2, 2010; sup, bitch?

Valeyard posted:

yeah gently caress trying to weasel the money out of them

how big of a bonuns are we talking here

hundreds of thousands if you're not an idiot. note that you can get a matching offer from competitors that have a vesting schedule instead of giving it to you up front with a return clause

# ¿ Aug 18, 2015 16:41

The Management: Jan 2, 2010; sup, bitch?

triple sulk posted:

probably like 15-25k i'm guessing

lol

# ¿ Aug 18, 2015 16:42

The Management: Jan 2, 2010; sup, bitch?

Valeyard posted:

Jesus

let me qualify that: from 0.5 to 3x your annual salary, depending on a lot of factors and what you're walking away from at your previous job. but don't worry, I'm sure you won't use that to immediately buy a condo and then be indentured to amazon.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2015 16:51

The Management: Jan 2, 2010; sup, bitch?

lol at sticking out a year for $25k

# ¿ Aug 18, 2015 17:27

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 04:31

The Management: Jan 2, 2010; sup, bitch?

Fuzzy Mammal posted:

well, fc systems was the page-you-very-two-hours constant rewrite joke when i was looking to join in '05 and a few years afterwards. now it's been turned around. i hear good things about aws and the kessel project too. kindle is legacy now and digital a little messed up. retail probably sucks too. so, hit or miss

really what the article and all the discussion don't mention is it all comes down to your manager. if they suck you will be miserable because they won't

- fend off incoming poo poo from other teams
- maintain focus for your team to minimize priority and feature churn
- listen to you when you say you need to pay off tech debt or adjust dates or whatever

and most importantly

- rep you well during review time

having a pushover manager means you'll never get good reviews. if they don't put in a good promo doc for you, likewise you will never be promoted. finding a good manager is the number one success differentiator at amazon and it's basically out of your hands lol. afaik there's basically no training for managers to improve either. some dev wants to climb the pole and switches roles and then good luck.

this is true to some extent in all companies. but the worse the culture is, the more it matters.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2015 01:39

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > Jeff Bozos negs employees