Jeff Bezos has responded to a report slamming Amazon's working conditions
Over the weekend, The New York Times published a lengthy feature about what it's like to work for the online retail giant. It describes a "bruising workplace," in which employees (known as "Amazonians") work long hours and are pushed extremely hard. Here's one particularly cutting paragraph from the report:
Bezos has now responded to the report with a company-wide memo, which we saw over on GeeekWire. The CEO says that he doesn't "recognize this Amazon and I very much hope you don't, either. More broadly, I don't think any company adopting the approach portrayed could survive, much less thrive, in today's highly competitive tech hiring market."
He adds: "I strongly believe that anyone working in a company that really is like the one described in the NYT would be crazy to stay. I know I would leave such a company."
Bezos also recommends that employees read a LinkedIn blog post by senior Amazon employee Nick Ciubotariu. He takes issue with a number of The New York Times' points, and also quotes a "very high ranking executive" as saying:
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.
Amazon has previously been criticised over the working conditions in its warehouses. A 2013 report from the BBC claimed that employees could be at increased risk of mental illness due to the stress. According to one employee (not from a warehouse) in the New York Times report, "the pressure to deliver far surpasses any other metric ... I would see people practically combust."