E-commerce giant Amazon.com comes under fire when an article featured the company's workplace as "bruising" in terms of using data to manage employee productivity, according to ca.news.yahoo.com.
The article mentioned was from the New York Times, who were able to interview only a few employees of the company. The story featured a bootcamp-like and Darwinian existence for employees that led to tense outcries in social media. Jeff Bezos, founder and current CEO of Amazon, said in a memo to his staff regarding the inaccuracy of the article as not being the company culture he is aware of.
Still in the same article, John Challenger, CEO of outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. was quoted as saying "Every company is somewhere in process toward using data to get a better handle on who their top performers are and to understand where people stand". Well, that may not well be the case for everyone.
The controversial article from the Nytimes.com reported on the interviews they got on the workplace ethic and culture being integrated into the workplace. Fresh recruits who geared up during the week to attend orientation were "drilled" to eventually become one with the Amazonian way of thinking. Forgetting old habits from former jobs, "climbing the wall" and being guided by the 14 leadership principles were just some of the work-related notions that these new employees were encouraged to have in order to succeed with the company.
In the same article, Amazon's top recruiter Susan Harker was quoted as saying "This is a company that strives to do really big, innovative, groundbreaking things, and those things aren't easy..When you're shooting for the moon, the nature of the work is really challenging. For some people it doesn't work." She does have a point there.
Here's what Jeff Bezos had to say about his company's culture "The article doesn't describe the Amazon I know or the caring Amazonians I work with every day. But if you know of any stories like those reported, I want you to escalate to HR. You can also email me directly at jeff@amazon.com. Even if it's rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero", as mentioned in another article on gizmodo.com.
