What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

https://medium.com/@jaycarney/what-the-new-york-times-didn-t-tell-you-a1128aa78931

by samhoggnz • 11 years ago

343 260 11 years ago

GabrielF002• 11 years ago

I was pretty shocked by how over-the-top and lacking in context the Times piece was. Lots of industries have pretty intense work cultures (management consulting, medicine, wall street). The focus on Amazon and the exaggerated language made the piece seem very agenda-driven (EVERYONE cries at their desk? really?)

wittekm• 11 years ago

Interesting note: the hiring of Jay Carney (Feb 26, 2015) coincides exactly with this article ("We were in regular communication with Ms. Kantor from February through the publication date in mid-August"). I wonder if such a high-visibility PR hire came about /because/ of this article?

whatok8• 11 years ago

I'm sure it would have been a multi-month process to hire for a position like Carney's so it likely would have started well before that February date.

sageabilly• 11 years ago

Interesting speculation by the original commenter, however, as we can imagine that the NYT likely shopped the idea for the article to Amazon long before Ms. Kantor was originally in contact with Amazon. So perhaps the timeline went NYT shops idea for article with Amazon -> Amazon realizes they need a head of PR and starts looking -> Ms. Kantor reaches out to begin discussions with Amazon right around the same time Carney is hired

dekhn4• 11 years ago

There are several shockingly inappropriate things in this article. In particular, the PR person at Amazon is saying that they would have shared employee's personal records (including evaluations) as well as other employee's termination conditions (which I consider unrelated to their quotes).

Amazon: what Carney just posted was very inappropriate. I am completely amazed you did this (assuming it was done with approval at the company level). You should be aware that you will start having serious problems hiring and retaining quality employees if you post things like this about your employees.

hahainternet• 11 years ago

In particular, the PR person at Amazon is saying that they would have shared employee's personal records (including evaluations) as well as other employee's termination conditions (which I consider unrelated to their quotes).

I assume from the article this meant including the consent of the employee in question, given that they were part of the article. It does seem a little odd though.

baldfat• 11 years ago

Devil's Advocate here:

The people named in the article and refuted by Amazon put their personal story a public story.

If someone "slanders" a business it can't reply with evidence? Must the company say it is a personal matter that we can't disclose, which reads they are guilty and don't want the truth to come out?

End of Devil's Advocate

Seems like they were making a statement of if you talk will will fully disclose our information to refute what you said. I think this was hurting Amazon so much that they are willing to payout the "out of court settlement" and "set the record straight."

roymurdock4• 11 years ago

The details provided in the response are probably being disclosed legally (doubt Amazon PR would screw up that badly), but it shows really poor taste that they would even respond to the NYT piece which was pretty clearly hyperbolic, emotional, and somewhat cherrypicked; even more so that they would adopt the same tactics of naming and shaming ex-employees.

The fact that it was also published on medium by the head of PR baffles me - why are they aiming this refutation at the tech crowd that would probably see through this cover-piece pretty easily, instead of getting it into a high-readership, Amazon consumer oriented publication? Poorly planned and executed all around, regardless of legality.

fweespeech5• 11 years ago

If someone "slanders" a business it can't reply with evidence? Must the company say it is a personal matter that we can't disclose, which reads they are guilty and don't want the truth to come out?

I'd say the real problem is, honestly, they didn't reply with evidence. If they claimed someone engaged in fraud, and believed they had a case, they'd take them to court and set an example.

If they have a software feedback tool with largely positive feedback, they'd show data showing it was an anomaly.

Etc.

They aren't showing evidence so much as providing anecdotes of their own and if that is the strongest defense they have by a top-level journalist wrangler...

Well, honestly, it makes it pretty clear Amazon's position is:

A) We can't prove this is bullshit. We know it but we hope you don't.

B) If you fuck with us, we'll fuck you right back.

That isn't likely to be an effective strategy but they chose it nevertheless.

chrissnell2• 11 years ago

The same thing happened with an ex-Reddit employee here on HN a few months back. The CEO (?) who responded came off looking far more evil than the guy that was fired. Best to take the high road in situations like these and show to the world how you really are a great company to work for.

jsprogrammer11• 11 years ago

If someone "slanders" a business it can't reply with evidence?

What evidence did the business present here? All that has been made are claims. I have not seen any internal investigation or performance report.

Seems like they were making a statement of if you talk [we?] will fully disclose our information to refute what you said.

They don't seem to be making that statement.

The information Amazon has was not fully disclosed, but selectively sampled and leaked. If Amazon was serious about full disclosure, they would release all the records they are using as evidence.

pm246013• 11 years ago

What evidence?

Amazon, like most employer, can fire at-will. And Amazon has the money and lawyers to fight long and hard ( unlike most ex-employees ).

This is a pure ad hominem attack that has nothing to do with the question at hand:

how good or bad is amazon as a place to work?

What would the response be if Jay had casually outted someone as transgender or gay?

"Back when Mr. O. was a woman before the sex change operation, ...."

"When Mr. O. came out as gay, ..."

Neither statement has anything to do with the issue of how Amazon is as a work place.

But Jay's decision to reveal unsubstantiated accusations in a public forum designed to sabotage an ex-employee's future earning potential says a lot.

pbreit• 11 years ago

Also inexcusable that Carney's bio is not the first sentence in the post.

Would it not work for Amazon to come out with more of a "Look, it's a difficult business and our folks work incredibly hard. Sometimes it might get a little out of hand. We want to make sure all of our employees are healthy and treated with respect while fulfilling Amazon's mission of delighting customers around the world. We are constantly looking at our practices and the work environment at Amazon and will continue making improvements as we see fit. We don't think the environment portrayed by the Times article is accurate but it has prompted us to work even harder to make Amazon the best place to work."

rdancer4• 11 years ago

It's badly composed, not inexcusable.

roymurdock4• 11 years ago

Had to chuckle when I read this sentence -

Even with breaking news, journalistic standards would encourage working hard to uncover any bias in a key source.

- then scrolled down to see Jay Carney's bio: "Senior Vice President for Global Corporate Affairs at Amazon. Previously, he served as White House Press Secretary and spent 20 years as a reporter for TIME."

fweespeech5• 11 years ago

I wouldn't say its inexcusable. However, it does reflect poorly on Amazon that such an oversight occurred.

I'd say your version would have gone over better and/or providing actual evidence rather than more anecdotes.

ipsin• 11 years ago

Also inexcusable that Carney's bio is not the first sentence in the post.

It's also standard in newspaper opinion pieces to put the bio at the end.

I actually prefer it -- as a game -- to guess who writes the author's paychecks as I'm reading.

caskance5• 11 years ago

That sounds like an inane corporatese non-statement that everyone would immediately dismiss.

rdancer4• 11 years ago

Following your reasoning, if an employee's story is used to prop up a hit piece in the national paper of record (the irony!), providing important context serves the readers, the public, and current & prospective employees.

But I get it, you don't like them. But it blinds you to the obvious, and makes your argument weak.

fweespeech5• 11 years ago

There are several shockingly inappropriate things in this article. In particular, the PR person at Amazon is saying that they would have shared employee's personal records (including evaluations) as well as other employee's termination conditions (which I consider unrelated to their quotes).

Yep. Additionally, its pretty clear Carney was hired as a political PR wrangler for the sole purpose of cleaning up messes like this and this is the best he can do.

If it was someone inexperienced, I'd assume this was just an error in judgement. However, with Carney's experience, is pretty clear this is the best spin that could be put to paper ... and that really says something. Their only option is to attack the character of the people involved in the articles about Amazon. They have no data, no evidence of any kind beyond "These are bad people".

For a data driven company, it shows they either failed to collect related data and/or that data shows the article was accurate despite the poor choice of sources.

(By the way, the tool that the Times suggests is institutional encouragement to anonymously stab people in the back is rarely used and, when it is, most feedback is positive. Also, it’s not anonymous. The reporters knew that and dropped some qualifying language deep in the story after painting a picture that was far more entertaining than accurate.)

Yeah, I'll believe if you if you were able to quantify it. The fact you didn't even try to provide data for this claim causes me call bullshit.

We decided to participate by sharing much of what Ms. Kantor asked for, yet the article she specifically said they were not writing became the article that we all read. And, despite our months-long participation, we were given no opportunity to see, respond to, or help fact-check the “stack of negative anecdotes” that they ultimately used.

Then provide data, rather than anecdotes of your own that show you in an even more negative light among the privacy minded?

serge2k4• 11 years ago

For a data driven company, it shows they either failed to collect related data and/or that data shows the article was accurate despite the poor choice of sources.

They do an annual survey of SDEs, and they do release that data internally (aggregated/anonymously). SO they do have data. The problem is if they release data taht says "Oh well X% of our engineers are happy with the company" Then when happens when someone says why not (X+Y)?

It's data without comparisons to give better context.

empath752• 11 years ago

They're going to have a hard time retaining and hiring quality employees if there's an unanswered NY Times article out there about how awful it is to work there. It's sort of a damned if they do, damned if they don't situation. But I think if you're fired for fraud I don't think you have a reasonable expectation that your employment details will remain private if you publicly slag the company that fired you for theft.

toomuchtodo• 11 years ago

The genie is already out of the bottle. No matter what Amazon says (or what PR person they hire to whitewash the situation), I would still never work from them after what was revealed (not only from the NYT article, but from other anecdotes I've seen online).

chrissnell2• 11 years ago

I disagree. Carney took the low road with this response and by posting confidential employee information, Amazon is stooping to the level of the accusers. I find it very troubling that a public company would willingly wage a smear campaign against ex-employees on a blog. I don't doubt that many of these employees had an axe to grind--and frankly, I could smell that when I read the NYT article--but any damage to Amazon was just compounded with Carney's post.

jsprogrammer11• 11 years ago

And they won't have a hard time retaining and hiring quality employees if all employees know that if you ever speak about your time at Amazon, some SVP for XXX might start selectively leaking portions of your personnel records?

But I think if you're fired for fraud

Sure, but this is only a claim that Amazon/Carney have made. They have presented zero evidence for the claim.

Also, Amazon/Carney released information about other employees that they have not claimed committed fraud (nor have they claimed any wrongdoing by those individuals).

iiiggglll• 11 years ago

It's also weird that this is on Medium and not Amazon's own website. If this is an official company response to the article in question, shouldn't appear more that way?

kordless• 11 years ago

The last inappropriate bit reads like ad hominem inception:

The next time you see a sensationalistic quote in the Times like “nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk”, you might wonder whether there’s a crucial piece of context or backstory missing — like admission of fraud — and whether the Times somehow decided it just wasn’t important to check.

Mr Carney is basically saying when you read an interesting article in the NYT, you should assume that they are withholding information. Ironically, this is exactly what the press accused him of doing not so long ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKcDUi1-lbA

You know what Jay? I'll do my own trust and fear evaluations, thank you very much. I don't need some mega corporation telling me what to think.

zaroth• 11 years ago

Regarding sharing employee evaluations, two things; if you go on the record with press discussing your evaluation and says it says one thing, but it actually says another, I think the company is entitled to respond. Anyway, it's not clear to me if the employee isn't on Amazon's side here (angry at being misquoted) so how do we know this wouldn't have been after getting permission from the employees in question? Obviously there's a long quote from Dina Vaccari contradicting the reporting.

As to sharing the reason an employee resigned from the the company, I don't think an employee's conduct while at a company is confidential, and if they are a strongly biased source, then the NYT needs to know that, and then adjust their reporting accordingly.

zo12• 11 years ago

It may have been inappropriate to "share" some of the evaluations, even though they were so very vague and non-descript. But, it's also possible that the employee voided any contract between themselves and Amazon by speaking to a third party (NYT) about the inner workings of Amazon.

zaphos2• 11 years ago

fwiw, the NYT response points out that the quote from Dina does not contradict the reporting.

* NYT response: https://medium.com/@NYTimesComm/dean-baquet-responds-to-jay-...

thekevan• 11 years ago

So you are saying that if an employee tells the public something about an employer that is false, the employer still can't respond to the public with something about the employee that is true?

Spooky232• 11 years ago

Employee reviews or reasons behind a termination for cause are not legally protected information. They are work product, owned by Amazon, subject to the contract with Amazon.

ceejayoz• 11 years ago

The comment you're replying to called it inappropriate, not illegal.

dekhn4• 11 years ago

I don't think anybody is saying that Amazon didn't check with their lawyers before doing this and determined that it was OK.

ams6110• 11 years ago

Goes back at least as far as the 1980's, remember the Pulitzer Prize the Washington Post had to give up after one of their reporters literally made up a story about an 8 year old heroin addict.

Just because it's in a major newspaper, don't believe reporting is evenly balanced or without an agenda.

CaptainZapp2• 11 years ago

Well, let's put it this way:

When I compare the credibility between the NYT and Amazon's chief PR flack, who does not hesitate to share internals from personnel records in order to smear former employees then I know who gets my vote.

Most certainly not Mister Carney, who I think can be rightfully described as a paid liar.

And I don't mean to imply that even the paper of record is free from problems (remember Jayson Blair?)

[edited for clarity]

a_c_s• 11 years ago

The piece was also in line with numerous previous reports on Amazon's working conditions for both blue collar and white collar employees.

srtjstjsj6• 11 years ago

That's a classic fallacy: You already had evidence, fine, but you don't get to re-use it to increase your confidence again later. If you want to build up a case, you need more evidence, need more narrative exaggeration backed by the old evidence.

ucaetano3• 11 years ago

It's actually weird to see a company firing back this publicly, releasing performance data (no matter if positive or negative) on previous employees, and it all being posted not by the CEO or a HR VP, but by the head of PR.

[Edit: Not only it smells of whitewashing, but it also looks deceptive.

And PR? Seriously? Not only it's a sleazy piece, but Amazon chose the worst possible position to convey the message. Get some engineer, accountant, designer, heck, get the HR intern who just joined 2 weeks ago to talk about this.

It would have more credibility than a PR person who's been in the company for less than one year.]

dekhn4• 11 years ago

I predict they will take down this article and issue an apology.

enraged_camel• 11 years ago

It would be deliciously ironic if the apology also came from the PR department.

jessriedel7• 11 years ago

As I remarked when it first came out, NYTimes article was almost completely anecdotal. That's not damning, but it does require you to trust the reporters to distill a large complicated mess to representative pieces.

What part of Carney's piece do you think similarly depends on us trusting him? Do you think he fabricated the email from Kantor? Do you think he's outright lying about the context of Olson's dismissal to the extent that it wasn't incumbent on the Times to disclose this in the original article?

I'm totally willing to accept for the sake of argument that Carney is dishonest, but I think that is largely beside the point here. If you accept the truth of the bare facts presented by Carney, putting aside his spin, then the badness of Carney and/or Amazon is irrelevant for assessing the badness of the NYTimes.

east2west• 11 years ago

I agree with you that NYTimes piece is largely anecdotal but I will give my reasons for not believing a SVP of Amazon PR.

1. Personal attach on a former employee as the head of public relation for a multi-billion corporation from a personal blog seems cowardly. Did he give Olson a chance to respond? Is there extenuating circumstances? How did Amazon carry out the investigation? Who knew what when? He accused NYTimes lapses in journalistic standard; he isn't even pretending there is any standard.

2. His attack on reporters is unconvincing. His rhetorical questions sound conniving. The reporters might not have asked those exact questions but they must have examined the named sources' credibility and employment history. Amazon might have refused to give details about Olson's termination, ironically on employee's privacy concern, and then itself divulges specifics, though I am sure after being cleared by their legal department. Noticed that Carney went into hyperboles here rather than stating any facts. A few sentences describing Amazon's interaction with reporters would go a long way here. But no, nothing.

3. His refutation of other three named sources amounts to verbal parsing. Some parts of the review are good so no parts can be called bad. Written review is good so no verbal review can be abusive. No direct requirement so everything is employee's fault and they deserve everything they get. It is almost offensive to read this part. If this is the best Amazon can come up with, it must be bad.

4. Cheery picking Amazon's interaction with NYTimes' reporter. Select publication of correspondence and one-sided characterization of interaction is sly. Make public all correspondence, with proper permission, so we can get a full picture.

Fundementall Carney is a former reporter and whitehouse spokesman who is now attacking former employees in behalf of a giant corporation with enormous resources on personal blog. He is committing every bad act he accuses NYTimes of and a lot more. It is debatable whether NYTimes followed the ideal journalistic standards but it is clear Carney follows none here.

marcosdumay2• 11 years ago

You know, the bias against anecdotal evidence is great and everything, but it only applies if somebody somewhere has a credible anecdote opposite to the claims. Otherwise, it's as good as data.

So, look at the ex-employees opinions, and see if there's one. (And no, PR pieces are not credible.)

cryoshon4• 11 years ago

Yeah, it's the White House's former press secretary, Jay Carney. His whole existence is to whitewash, downplay, obfuscate, and pass a sanitized story to the media.

I suggest we ignore Amazon's commentary and accept the worst vision as reality. That way, if we were to end up working there, we might be pleasantly surprised by a rosier picture, rather than upset by something that is below expectations. After all, the bottom line can't accommodate the truth most of the time.

jhall14683• 11 years ago

Holy ad hominem batman.

After all, the bottom line can't accommodate the truth most of the time.

And pessimism will almost certainly become self-fulfilling prophecy.

danso4• 11 years ago

Why shouldn't it be the PR person? Someone at the level of Jay Carney is ostensibly more than just a mouthpiece, but someone who gathers the information and weighs in on what's useful and relevant to disseminate to the press. This isn't always a nefarious thing; sometimes employees have incomplete information but aren't in a position to confirm it with the executives.

At this phase, where the story has run and the damage has been done -- the response should be done by Carney. Take the rebuttal to Mr. Olson, for example. That revelation is absolutely not something that should be revealed by Mr. Olson's boss or a coworker. First of all, just because you're an engineer doesn't mean you have all of the facts. The PR person is in a position to collect the facts, including whether or not it's legal to reveal Mr. Olson's reason for termination, and confirming that reason for termination with HR. Even Mr. Olson's boss wouldn't have that same level of confirmation.

The other advantage of having Carney make this response is that you can be sure that this is, for better or worse, the official company response. If instead, this was a blog post by Mr. Olson's co-worker calling him out for being a fraud...and the reaction to it was negative...then Amazon could pedal back and say, "Oh well that co-worker blogged something he shouldn't have and now he is being punished".

But since the condemnation of Mr. Olson has come straight from Mr. Carney, any backlash will be rightly the reaping of what Bezos, Carney, and all their lawyers have sowed.

edit: FWIW, a non-anonymous redditor is saying that he knows Bo Olson, personally, and says "I can assure you that Bo was not the one defrauding vendors that was another employee in the same department"...it strikes me as improbable that Carney (again, not just Carney, but Amazon's lawyers and HR) would get this wrong. But if they did...it's going to be a great backlash, and a much more lasting one than had this allegation come from someone other than Carney or Bezos himself.

https://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/3pcnlh/what_the_n...

amyjess• 11 years ago

I think a lot of people's problem with this is that it's not very transparent.

You don't find out who Carney is until the very bottom of the article, and it's presented as just another journalistic article published by Medium and not an official rebuttal by the company.

If the whole thing was prefixed with "Following is Amazon's official rebuttal to the New York Times article", I don't think many people would have a problem with it.

jsprogrammer11• 11 years ago

As it stands, Amazon/Carney have made a defamatory statement about an individual while providing no evidence of their claims. Claiming to have the results of an internal investigation is not evidence. Now, the entire investigation will need to be made public and scrutinized.

This will likely allow legal entrance into all of Amazon, as all internal policies will need to be examined.

ucaetano3• 11 years ago

"you can be sure that this is, for better or worse, the official company response"

Quite the opposite: there's absolutely nothing official about it. It isn't published on an amazon domain, doesn't carry any signature as amazon, and the only evidence that this is in any way related to amazon is that the guy works at amazon.

rm_-rf_slash2• 11 years ago

While selective storytelling has been a staple of traditional news media for ages, this article does tempt me to ask: why Amazon? Of all the workaholic culture tech companies of the last 20 years, why did the New York Times choose to center the exposé on Amazon.com?

My entirely baseless suspicion is that unlike many other tech companies, Amazon is a direct competitor in its ability to drive information to their customers through their proprietary devices and channels, and can also slowly chip away at the newspaper's clout with Amazon ratings for books displacing the Times' bestseller list, for example. Instead of reading Times' reviews of books, films, products, and so on, a customer might consider Amazon's 5-star review system to be enough for them.

Amazon's work culture is hardly unique in corporate America, especially among the tech industry. The New York Times knew that they would make an adversary with that piece. They chose their target carefully.

forgottenpass2• 11 years ago

The motivation you speculate on seems, uh, awfully complicated compared to "Newspaper airs dirty laundry of Fortune 29 company."

aet• 11 years ago

Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post (edited: Not Amazon, but Bezos owns WP)

detaro• 11 years ago

That in addition already has been heavily criticized for it's treatment of (warehouse) workers before, giving an excellent trend to build upon.

forgottenpass2• 11 years ago

This is written by Jay Carney. Yes, that Jay Carney. Apparently he's working for Amazon now.

Two months after Bezos' internal memo is "leaked" to the press saying that the Amazon in the NYT peice isn't the Amazon he knows, and that employees should email him directly if something like that happens. Now it's time for the offensive. Apparently two months is the amount of time you no longer have to pretend to care about work conditions, and go back to reputation.

This medium piece attacks the character of the NYT's source, which is comedy gold coming from someone who was paid to be a lying weaselly bastard, performing active disservice to the citizenry.

at-fates-hands• 11 years ago

> This medium piece attacks the character of the NYT's source, which is comedy gold coming from someone who was paid to be a lying weaselly bastard, performing active disservice to the citizenry.

I started reading and got halfway through and went back to see who the author was and stopped at that point.

The one guy who doesn't have a shred of credibility attacking sources as less than credible? Unreal.

whatok8• 11 years ago

Former Minister of Propaganda aside, if his account of one of the key sources of the story is true, it kinda affects how it should be perceived, right?

chishaku• 11 years ago

Right. How do we properly discern between professional bullshitters?

whatok8• 11 years ago

Did I miss out on some additional fallout after the article was initially published? I don't see why they're addressing this two months later.

tremon2• 11 years ago

Apparently, that's the amount of time you need to polish a turd before it stops smelling.

TravelTechGuy4• 11 years ago

My $.02: maybe they are starting to feel the fallout in their recruiting efforts about now. I get about one recruiting email from Amazon a month on average, and I assume others do as well. It's enough that 10% of candidates reply with "I wouldn't feel comfortable working there", or " I don't think it's a culture fit - I don't like crying at my desk, as is apparently encouraged over there" for them to realize they have to do something drastic. Sadly, for them drastic means going double-douche: outing ex-employees and attacking the media, rather than own up to even a small part of what was published, and say they are striving to improve their culture.

whatok8• 11 years ago

Yeah that makes sense and also offers an explanation of their choice to publish on Medium.

cwilkes4• 11 years ago

I read somewhere else that they are afraid of another upcoming expose, like from 60 minutes, and want to get out in front of it.

Even if that is true it was a really ham handed way of doing it. The only people this appeals to are ones that already like Amazon. The ones on the fence look at it and see "hey they drug out why this was a bad person" and think that they don't want to be on the receiving end of that and thus turn into ones that aren't inclined to work for them.

jobu• 11 years ago

Even in job interviews, Amazon touts itself is an intense, high-energy place to work, and that was exactly what I saw in the NYT article. Some people can't handle that, and they were fired or left disgruntled. The fact that many of the quotes were from disgruntled workers was completely obvious, and going into the dirty details of their firings is pretty low.

The most damning claim of the NYT article that isn't addressed here is the lack of caring and support for people on parental leave, FMLA, and people going through major health issues (cancer, stillborn child). If the authors embellished on those claims then that would actually hurt the original article.

cryoshon4• 11 years ago

"Senior Vice President for Global Corporate Affairs at Amazon. Previously, he served as White House Press Secretary and spent 20 years as a reporter for TIME."

A spin doctor doing his best to protect the people that pay him. Pay this article no mind; unrelated assaults on a source's character have no bearing on already established facts.

tgb2• 11 years ago

Do you know the meaning of the word "hypocrisy"? Your comment almost had me laugh out loud.

cryoshon4• 11 years ago

Consider that the source I was mentioning had no positive gain associated with going to bat against Amazon in the original NYT story, and Jay Carney, as PR-guy, has a huge incentive (keeping his job) to go to bat for Amazon.

cjbprime3• 11 years ago

Here’s what the story didn’t tell you about Mr. Olson: 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.

Together with the inappropriate disclosure of performance reviews, this statement just makes me think that Amazon probably has a culture of defrauding vendors, and usually gets away with it, but sometimes has to blame a junior hire to save face when caught.

jessriedel7• 11 years ago

Let's assume both Amazon and Carney are evil. Do you think it was acceptable for the Times to not disclose the context of Olson's dismissal?

petegrif• 11 years ago

I don't know it if would have been appropriate for the Times to disclose the context of Olson's dismissal at all, it wasn't after all the point of the article - that was work conditions at Amazon rather than the transgressions of Olsen. But I think it was completely unacceptable for them to take his disclosures at face value given such a context.

cjbprime3• 11 years ago

That's a good question. Let me see the original article:

Bo Olson was one of them. He lasted less than two years in a book marketing role and said that his enduring image was watching people weep in the office, a sight other workers described as well.

If other workers described the same sight, I don't think his input's important enough to require personal credibility, so I'm not too concerned. But the use of "lasted less than two years" would be more honest written as "spent less than two years" or something, because there's an implication that he chose to leave voluntarily.

dandare• 11 years ago

NYT disputes it, see one of the comments above: > Olson described conflict and turmoil in his group and a revolving series of bosses, and acknowledged that he didn’t last there. He disputes Amazon’s account of his departure, though. He told us today that his division was overwhelmed and had difficulty meeting its marketing commitments to publishers; he said he and others in the division could not keep up. But he said he was never confronted with allegations of personally fraudulent conduct or falsifying records, nor did he admit to that. If there were criminal charges against him, or some formal accusation of wrongdoing, we would certainly consider that. If we had known his status was contested, we would have said so.

smileysteve• 11 years ago

Together with the inappropriate disclosure of performance reviews, this statement just makes me think that Amazon probably has a culture of defrauding vendors, and usually gets away with it,

Especially with the Discover fraud whistle blowing lawsuit

whiteboarder2• 11 years ago

There wasn't any fraud. There was a response to this accusation, by the NYT, and they claim that this is false.

srtjstjsj6• 11 years ago

I remember an article a few years ago with a similar dispute -- something about advertisement placement abuse, and overcharging a client (a credit card company / bank?) to the tune of $million for placements on Kindles(?) that customers never saw, and a dispute as to whether it was a lone wolf, or an executive who pushed the lower-level person to do it.

Ah, here's the story: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employee-lawsuit-kivin...

http://www.geekwire.com/2014/former-amazon-employee-ends-hun...

https://www.google.com/search?q=Varghese+amazon

dvere• 11 years ago

Acting like Scientology.

unethical_ban2• 11 years ago

Does this kind of behavior indicate we should stop using Amazon? Despite loving my Kindle, is it time to boycott a company that behaves this way?

jazzyk2• 11 years ago

I can't completely quit them, but I have reduced the number of purchases from Amazon - based on many previous stories. Will probably give up Prime when it comes up for renewal.

eclipxe2• 11 years ago

No.

unethical_ban2• 11 years ago

Excellent feedback.

ablation• 11 years ago

What a bizarre, at times completely inappropriate article to have posted. All it does is leave me amazed at - and a little embarrassed for - Amazon's PR department.

puredemo2• 11 years ago

I'm basically an Amazon fanboy, but with the failure of the Fire phone, the continually over-wrought nature of AWS UI, and now this hamfisted response to the NYT, they are really losing their appeal.

Amazon: Your current employees had already written much better responses than this within 48 hours of the NYT article coming out. What is this drivel supposed to accomplish? Why is PR rant hosted on Medium? Why are you exposing old employee personnel records? Why are you putting political operatives like Carney in charge of your PR?

Get it together guys. The NYT article is ancient history now and didn't merit further response. It was an obvious hit piece but your reaction has been quite poor.

hnamazon1233• 11 years ago

I recently quit Amazon.

I don't doubt that New York Times purposely misrepresented or omitted facts to make this story. Their stories tend to be very agenda driven and the facts tend to be subservient to the narrative, a policy which is deemed acceptable because it "starts a conversation" or the story is "probably true for someone". This is typical of the left wing.

However, I did in fact have an absolutely awful experience at Amazon, in AWS specifically. It really is an awful place to work where management is entirely ego driven and in cover your ass mode 24/7 to the supreme detriment of everyone involved. Subordinates are seen as drones who should work without appreciation or thought for self. And the idea that subordinates are not drones is considered un-Amazonian.

I did in fact witness someone cry at their desk. Well, they didn't cry, it was more like they were in an emotionally precarious daze after being berated for 30 minutes straight by a manager who only did it to make himself feel better about his own worries about the project.

boxy310• 11 years ago

In a lot of ways Amazon reminds me of Wal-mart, both from the market space they occupy and how terribly they treat employees. I think this is really a byproduct of chasing after low costs without other substantial service improvements. At least with Uber you get a legitimately better hailing and payment experience, not just being cheaper.

et2o• 11 years ago

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Amazon offers pretty substantial service improvement from just about any other online retailer. $50/year for unlimited 1-day shipping?

forgotpasswd3x• 11 years ago

Their stories tend to be very agenda driven and the facts tend to be subservient to the narrative, a policy which is deemed acceptable because it "starts a conversation" or the story is "probably true for someone". This is typical of the left wing.

This is hardly an issue isolated to "left wing" media.

itbeho• 11 years ago

I agree. But what percentage of the media would you consider "left wing"? Or "right wing"?

afsina• 11 years ago

To be fair, when it comes to attacking corporations (biased or not) , this is mostly a left wing media thing.

swehner• 11 years ago

Calling the NYT left-wing is pretty amusing.

benten102• 11 years ago

s/he meant "relatively left-wing (from my perspective)", implying his position is to the right of wherever NYT may be.

Nadya3• 11 years ago

Thinking the NYT isn't left-wing shows more how far left you must stand. Even the NYT calls itself liberal/left. Even after 11 years - and as an independent - I see the NYT as decidedly left.

“Of course it is....These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you’ve been reading the paper with your eyes closed.” — New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent in a July 25, 2004 column which appeared under a headline asking, “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?” [0]
Some conservative critics of the media say liberal bias exists within a wide variety of media channels, especially within the "Main Stream Media", including network news shows of CBS, ABC, and NBC, cable channels CNN, MSNBC and the former Current TV, as well as major newspapers, news-wires, and radio outlets, especially CBS News, Newsweek, and The New York Times. [1]

[0] http://archive.mrc.org/biasbasics/biasbasics2.asp

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias_in_the_United_State...

So I'm being downvoted for pointing out that a liberal newspaper calls itself liberal? Next thing I know I'll be getting downvoted for calling Trump a right-wing presidential candidate.

ska2• 11 years ago

Not sure if you are aware of this, but statements like:

"This is typical of the left wing."

Can at best undermine whatever point you are trying to make.

hnamazon1233• 11 years ago

That was in fact a point I was making.

Journalists lying to support a narrative is an extremely damaging trend that has taken hold on the left and it should be pointed out whenever it happens.

This of course happens on the right but it is not moralized or justified in the same way.

Random_BSD_Geek• 11 years ago

Long before the NYT article came out I had been hearing stories like this from ex-Amazon employees. This is only anecdotal evidence, but it's the same basic anecdote again and again. The NYT article may be many sensationalized and the characters in it may not be ideal people, but the story's core message is one I've heard from a diverse set of people in a diverse set of circumstances. There seems to be a kernel of truth in there.

hnexamazon• 11 years ago

I also recently quit Amazon. I also worked within AWS. However, I absolutely loved it, and had the complete opposite experience to almost everything you are describing. My reasons for leaving had absolutely nothing to do with Amazon, and I would work there again.

My bosses were excellent and cared deeply about my personal and professional development. I never got the impression that I was viewed as a drone. I have nothing but respect for the members of upper management that I met, who came off as smart, driven, and truly passionate about their work.

I had worked at a few other companies before joining Amazon, and what I found most refreshing was that, even when I was an SDEI, my opinion about the direction of the team and the projects we were working on was sought and valued. I had never experienced that before at previous employers, where I was very much a "drone".

However, AWS does promote a blunt culture where direct feedback is encouraged. Having never been encouraged at previous employers to provide thoughts on high level design and strategic roadmap decisions before, the ideas I would present would often times be suboptimal, and a senior dev would be quick to point out the flaws in my approach. Let me be clear, however, that it was always the IDEA that was attacked and never ME, personally. I found this approach incredibly helpful in my journey to become a better software engineer. I got along incredibly well with my colleagues and at no point did I ever not feel like a respected and valued member of the team.

I am willing to concede that I was fortunate to have very good direct managers during my time at AWS, and while members of other teams around me also reported similar contentment when I talked to them, I did notice a team or two whose direct managers did not seem up to the task. I firmly believe your experience with a company is at least 80% your direct manager, and if I was reporting to one of those managers that I did not respect I would probably be telling a different story.

This is all to say, I believe you when you say you had a terrible experience, but I wanted to balance your negative anecdote with my positive one.

hnamazon1233• 11 years ago

That's cool, I'm glad you had a good experience.

Would have been great if things had worked out differently because the project I was working on was extremely cool.

inopinatus• 11 years ago

I am also ex-AWS and frankly your description of the environment is the opposite of my experience. My experience was one of driven, hardworking, high-octane people working with a collegiate respect for one another under thoughtful, nuanced leadership.

Was it hard work? Check. 10-12hr days were my norm. They still are, now I'm a startup.

Is it a polarising workplace? Check. That internal culture is a strong flavour. And like many strong flavours, you'll either love it or hate it.

If I wasn't building something I felt compelled to create, I'd go back there in a heartbeat.

bernardom• 11 years ago

For someone who had to stand at the White House podium for years, it's got to be gratifying to get a shot back at the media for once.

FussyZeus9• 11 years ago

Just weighing in on the Olson thing: Why is it considered unprofessional or inappropriate for a company rep to speak openly about the illegal/unethical practices of now former employees? Isn't that a good thing to hear about that a company you do business with is culling the ranks of those stealing from it, or whatever they happen to be doing?

If he admitted it and resigned over it, sounds like a pretty cut and dried case that he did it. Screw his reputation, and screw him. Maybe if this stuff was made public more often so that misbehaving executives got more punishment than a tiny ass fine and a huge sum of money, we'd have less of a crony-capitalist system going on these days.

jsprogrammer11• 11 years ago

Why would you believe anything Amazon or Jay Carney says? Do you really think they are giving you an unbiased view of their company? That they have no ulterior motive in saying these things to you?

FussyZeus9• 11 years ago

Well in the first place I didn't mean strictly Amazon, I'm speaking in general. I'm talking more about the general attitude that "this guy stole from us/our customers/our vendors, but we can't say anything publicly". That was more what I was talking about.

Back to the Amazon thing you're discussing, while I'm sure it's a high pressure workplace that isn't suited for everyone, the Times piece was as sensationalized if not moreso than the rebuff here. The rebuff I'm sure is biased to the company. As with most things, the truth isn't on either side, it's somewhere in the middle, though frankly the matter of fact stating and the clear context of the Amazon rebuff does ring true-r to me, but that's only IMHO.

TravelTechGuy4• 11 years ago

Please look at the bigger picture: this is Amazon telling it's current (and future?) employees: if you ever say anything bad about us, all your records will go public, and our head of PR will use any inconsideration in them to argue that your opinion is invalid.

Fraud may have been the outlier case here: he's also outing reviews of other people whose opinions he/his employers don't like. That's one way to deal with whistle blowers, and scare the rest of the herd: don't mess with us - we've got your files, and we ain't afraid to put them on Medium.

FussyZeus9• 11 years ago

Two things:

- I have zero problem with a company releasing info pertaining the character of an employee.

- If you're an employee doing your job honestly, you shouldn't either.

neoCrimeLabs4• 11 years ago

What The New York Times Didn’t Tell You

Am I the only one tired of click-bait titles that don't tell you anything about the article? Had to read the comments here to understand what the article was about and decide if it was worth reading.

All it takes is 4 extra words to give the title context:

What The New York Times Didn’t Tell You [about working at Amazon]

mlrtime• 11 years ago

It works, you clicked.

neoCrimeLabs4• 11 years ago

I didn't click into the article, but into these comments.

dang2• 11 years ago

We changed the title to add "about Amazon" and remove the linkbait "you".

neoCrimeLabs4• 11 years ago

Thanks!

logfromblammo• 11 years ago

The headline seems very click-baitish and uninformative. Can we be more specific? The New York Times doesn't tell me a lot of things.

Jay Carney Rebuts New York Times Article About Amazon's Work Culture, perhaps?

izacus• 11 years ago

O wow, this makes Amazon look really bad - it's like when politicians opponents try to discredit opponents with criminal charges or whatnot without actually refuting them.

Note how they don't really deny or refute the text of original article but just go full on to personally attack a person to discredit him.

mangeletti2• 11 years ago

This reminds me so much of the Foxconn "scandal" that was "broken" on This American Life a few years ago. The source infiltrated Foxconn to expose human rights atrocities and abuse, but it turned out the source was lying about almost everything he told TAL.

lpsz• 11 years ago

One can like or hate Amazon, and it may or may not be a crappy place to work.

That said, it sounds like NYT (a newspaper of record, btw) did more than reasonable selective reporting, to evoke certain feelings in the readers, to get clicks, to start a conversation, or what the reason may be. And it's lousy to see this in modern news reporting. Even the respectable publications err on the side of sensationalism, and it's notoriously hard to get unbiased information as a reader.

Where can someone go to read unbiased, well-researched, both-sides-of-the-story news?

radiorental• 11 years ago

"Where can someone go to read unbiased, well-researched, both-sides-of-the story news?"

I personally think we're spoilt for choice. Just bear in mind everyone, everywhere has an inherent bias. Some more so that others.

I read these to get what I feel is a well rounded opinion http://america.aljazeera.com/ http://www.bbc.com/news

caskance5• 11 years ago

Why would such a place exist? The more unbiased a news outlet is trusted to be, the higher the incentive to subvert them to show bias towards you.

roymurdock4• 11 years ago

Reuters. They're also the most boring/uninformative.

Al Jazeera, The Economist, Bloomberg, and Quartz have well-researched and relevant stories but they usually come with a bias.

rdancer4• 11 years ago

It is sad that the NYT editorial standards are so weak, and they have cried wolf so many times (e.g. Apple suppliers' working conditions). They used to be a broadsheet with an opinion; now I don't know what they are :-(

alexggordon• 11 years ago

While Mediums (Jay Carney's) article has a fair point, in that once you look at article under a microscope its conclusions start to fall apart, I think Jay may have missed what the article is. The authors knew from the get-go that they were going to publish a scathing "insider", "never-before seen" review of Amazon. The NYT article is First-Class clickbait. It's Buzzfeed in a suit with a degree.

Jay Carney did an excellent job debunking it; however, it's much like debunking a Buzzfeed article. You might come out ahead logically, but that isn't what people are going to be talking about. The NYT isn't going for truth, they need people to read their newspaper, and then talk about it so they decided to write a bad article about Amazon, and then they found the "sources" for it.

GCA10• 11 years ago

Anyone else remember that sly piece by BusinessInsider in September, saying that Medium could make a lot of money by becoming the modern-day version of PR Newswire -- where companies pay to get their stories out to the public? It sounded like a nutty comparison at the time.

But after looking at Jay Carney's post, I'm thinking that that BI's Biz Carson might have nailed it. Even if the premium pay channel doesn't exist yet ... the temptation to create it is clearly there

http://www.businessinsider.com/medium-pr-newswire-revisited-...

dswalter• 11 years ago

You bring up a really good point. Medium's default layout scheme highlights content over authorship, so you don't get smacked in the face by the fact that this is written by Jay Carney.

bitwize• 11 years ago

American journalism is like the American judiciary: the truth is irrelevant and whoever can produce the more convincing story wins.

serge2k4• 11 years ago

Also, [the anytime feedback tool is] not anonymous

I assume by this they mean managers can see who left feedback.

atomi• 11 years ago

Ambigous title.

bambax• 11 years ago

This seems to be the story that never ends... But everytime Amazon tries to respond it seems to dig itself deeper in its own bullshit (I'm a very loyal Amazon customer, and while I wouldn't work at Amazon in a million years, I'm very sorry to see all this).

Some comments:

Chris Brucia, who recalls how he was berated in his performance review before being promoted, also was given a written review. Had the Times asked about this, we would have shared what it said.

Amazon is willing to "share" with the press the contents of performance reviews of its employees? That's bad (worse than what was in the article).

Dina Vaccari, the former employee who is quoted saying she didn’t sleep for four days straight to illustrate just how hard Amazon forces people to work, posted her own response to the article. Here’s what she said: "Allow me to be clear: The hours I put in at Amazon were my choice."

That's ridiculous and meaningless; if you choose to not sleep for 4 days in order to carry out your job, isn't it obvious the expectations were set too high, and work/life balance is regarded as irrelevant, as a company policy (or lack thereof)?

When there are two sides of a story, a reader deserves to know them both.

Well, ok (in general; sometimes there's no "other side"; creationism is not "another side" to the story of evolution, for example). But in this case, the "other side" should be Amazon employees doing normal hours and performing spectacularly, not the voice of management -- as rendered by someone who used to be the Mother of All Spin Doctors!

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 — like admission of fraud

That's a cheap, defensive shot; what it really says is you're hurt; and that you'd probably be less hurt if there was not a lot of truth to the original article.

j_s• 11 years ago

Did I miss anything below (for anyone who wants to review)? The negative articles draw many more comments, but the general sentiment is not directed only against Amazon.

Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065243 (424 comments)

Inside Amazon

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10070115 (98 comments)

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos defends company's workplace culture

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10072389 (73 comments)

My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10083475 (331 comments)

FmrAMZN_TA• 11 years ago

Disclaimer: I am a former Amazon employee. I worked there for exactly a year. I assume I was doing well, I was offered increase bonus and base after my initial year.

This response from Amazon continues to amaze me - first a post from Bezos that quoted an employee's anecdotal experiences and makes the (totally absurd) claim that Bezos doesn't know what life is like working there.

Then they have a post (http://recode.net/2015/09/25/why-i-work-for-amazon-a-respons...) from a Senior VP who doesn't have the same experience as someone who isn't a Senior VP.

Now they are digging up dirt on employees to paint them with a bad brush. First, the person with the killer quote should have been removed, no question. Huge bias.

But the second and third people? Nothing in the piece is wrong - they could have been strafed with aggressive language and/or they could have been berated in their reviews. Look at the wording:

  All three included positive feedback on strengths as well as thoughts on areas of improvement.
  Far from a “strafing,” even the areas for improvement written by her colleagues contained
  language like: “It has been a pleasure working with Elizabeth.”

This is the best you can do? "Contained language like"? This is truly terrible spin. At Amazon, they teach managers to give the classic "shit sandwich" - good/bad/good. I saw many examples (I was a manager and reviewed many pieces of feedback in OLRs - Organizational Leadership Review) written EXACTLY as ham-handedly as this: "Overall, it has been a pleasure working with Elizabeth. However, the fact that she did not know the margins for a specific warehouse group when presenting to our VP shows a complete lack of diving deep, and makes me question whether or not she really wants to work at this level."

The third example is similarly vague/wrong: "Chris Brucia, who recalls how he was berated in his performance review before being promoted, also was given a written review... Mr. Brucia was given exceptionally high ratings and then promoted to a senior position." That doesn't mean he wasn't berated - it could have been overly aggressive/wrong (and you cannot dispute ANY claims written in the feedback, all you can do is complain to your manager), just because it ended on a good note doesn't make it less hurtful.

But what this really shows is that Amazon is as ruthless as ever. They WILL go after you, they will dig up dirt on you, and they will terrify you into never speaking out. If you are a former employee (as I am), you know the stories are very very true, and NEVER speak out publicly.

  When the story came out, we knew it misrepresented Amazon.

I'm sorry, Mr. Carney, the story was as accurate a representation of Amazon as I've ever seen in press.

serge2k4• 11 years ago

I left a few months ago and I have mixed feelings about the company. I went through a period where I felt pretty depressed and hated it there, but it wasn't really anything in particular that amazon did. I actually had it pretty good. Things did start to go downhill really bad this year (on my team). The team culture became pretty toxic because of some organizational/ operational changes and management didn't seem to care. There was also pressure from above that I don't think my immediate manager handled well, and things were bad.

i don't think the article was entirely fair, but amazon has some deep flaws. There was a pastebin on reddit by a few that was much more accurate.

I do think in the right situation I would consider working there again. It really is a minefield though.

pluckytree• 11 years ago

I’m pretty sure I know what the headline of this article didn’t tell me. What it was about.

jbapple• 11 years ago

If you worked for Amazon and you saw that Jay Carney was willing to reveal your personnel records if you talk to the media about unethical or illegal labor management practices, would it change your decision about speaking to reporters?

I think we should consider the possibility that this post will be more effective at intimidating current and former Amazon employees into silence, rather than persuading NYT readers.

rm_-rf_slash2• 11 years ago

After having read down half the page of responses, your comment was enough to convince me to finally cancel my Prime membership.

danso4• 11 years ago

The NYT editor in chief has responded via Medium:

https://medium.com/@NYTimesComm/dean-baquet-responds-to-jay-...

In response to your posting on Medium this morning, I want to reiterate my support for our story about Amazon’s culture. In your posting — as well as in a series of recent email exchanges with me — you contested the article’s assertion that many employees found Amazon a tough place to work.

Specifically, he says had they known Olson had a conflict, they would have disclosed it. But the NYT asserts that Mr. Olson never disclosed such allegations, nor does he admit to them now.

Olson described conflict and turmoil in his group and a revolving series of bosses, and acknowledged that he didn’t last there. He disputes Amazon’s account of his departure, though. He told us today that his division was overwhelmed and had difficulty meeting its marketing commitments to publishers; he said he and others in the division could not keep up. But he said he was never confronted with allegations of personally fraudulent conduct or falsifying records, nor did he admit to that. If there were criminal charges against him, or some formal accusation of wrongdoing, we would certainly consider that. If we had known his status was contested, we would have said so.

edit: re-reading Carney's statement, it seems pretty unequivocal: "An investigation revealed [Olson] had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately" The NYT is likewise unequivocal: "[Olson] said he was never confronted with allegations of personally fraudulent conduct or falsifying records"

Well, only Amazon has the time-stamped records that could prove who is lying here. It was a questionable tactic for Carney to start his response with such a bold and salacious allegation against someone who constituted a single quote in the NYT's story...assuming that Carney is right (because it's a complete unmitigated disaster if he isn't) now it seems he's going to have to go even more salacious, perhaps even post the actual pertinent records online.

How was this mudfest good for Amazon's image, again? And so late after the original story and Bezos's (pretty decent) response?

mbca• 11 years ago

Public mudslinging between big names ... does that make Medium the new Twitter?

exodust3• 11 years ago

Medium seems to be a reasonable neutral ground for such a show-down. No distractions, just words on a page, fighting it out, gladiator style.

exodust3• 11 years ago

Grabs popcorn.

Olson is clinging to a lie, trying to defend his reputation.

Notice how he tries to blame Amazon for his departure, the "revolving series of bosses" and "overwhelmed" with work. "He and others couldn't keep up". Deflection.

He's doing his best to construct a version of events where he is one of the innocents, caught up in the nasty Amazon shit-storm.

I bet he got a shock to see Amazon reveal his fraudulent activity in a medium post! You think Amazon would make such a claim if it weren't true?

Nobody wants to see personal information released like this, but Amazon were slapped in the face with that NYT piece. Let 'em have their medium return fire.

Fraudsters and liars stick to their guns till the bitter end and beyond. It's best to weed them out, and have karma deliver what is deserved.

lightbritefight2• 11 years ago

I bet he got a shock to see Amazon reveal his fraudulent activity in a medium post! You think Amazon would make such a claim if it weren't true?

So your stance is "it must be true, because it would be really stupid of them if it wasen't?"

I think its equally valid to say they are acting stupidly, and counting on dollars and cents to keep any trouble off their door.

The truth is, they have just claimed the above. They pressed no charges, and have provided no documentation to sustain it. Right now, they have no more proof then him, and have a strong reason (redeeming their reputation though mudslinging) to say that he was a bad man, so his opinion doesn't matter. Of course,as the NYT responds, they interviewed way more people than just the ones Amazon cherry picked to respond too, and those people all disagree with the new Amazon spin.

puredemo2• 11 years ago

Baquet's response makes Carney's complaints seem infantile. Carney should have known better than to post this in this first place.

aaronbrethorst• 11 years ago

It seems bizarre to me that this rebuttal took two months to publish. Are they seeing a problem with recruiting all of a sudden?

hashberry• 11 years ago

The similarities and inaccuracies remind me of the Rolling Stone "A Rape on Campus" story. What is wrong with today's journalism? These are established, mainstream publishers. There is so much focus on the message instead of the facts that entire stories can be fabricated.

I canceled my NYTimes subscription last year because it has become increasingly frustrating to read, especially their "women in tech" articles. For example, their recent "What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech"[0] op-ed blames nerd male culture for making women uncomfortable, and argues for a more neutral environment with no Star Wars posters or tech magazines or nerdy t-shirts...

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/what-really...

suneilp• 11 years ago

How about some proof that Olson committed fraud. With everything I've been hearing about Amazon, I have to wonder if Olson was innocent or scapegoated by a group of people involved in the fraud.

russelluresti• 11 years ago

I love how the start of this article reads like something out of Character Assassination 101.

Step 1: start by bringing up something negative about a person that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the issue at hand.

Okay, so the guy resigned because he did something bad. How does that make what he experienced while there not true? Oh, that's right, it doesn't. And the admission of fraud isn't a "crucial piece of context." You and I both know that. Unfortunately, you think the reader is dumb enough not to know it.

Step 2: Assert statements in the form of a question so that you can deny every making the assertion.

"Did Ms. Kantor’s editors at the Times ask her whether Mr. Olson might have an axe to grind?" Here, we don't actually assert that Mr. Olson has an axe to grind. We don't assert he's purposely lying to get revenge. We just highly insinuate it and make the reader believe it by putting it in question form.

This is an obvious attempt at character assassination and to cast doubt in the minds of the reader without actually saying he was lying.

If Mr. Olson is lying - sue him. You're within your rights to do that. But you're not suing him. Or the Times.

So, what's the point of this? Propaganda. And sleazy propaganda at that.

whiteboarder2• 11 years ago

And the fraud thing doesn't even look to be true. The NYT writer responded and said that was false.

ninv• 11 years ago

I think Mr. Olson should sue Amazon now.

oh_sigh3• 11 years ago

Do you have a link to the response? That seems like a pretty serious allegation to drop. Also, how would the reporter know? Are they just trusting the Olsen guy?

timmytokyo• 11 years ago

Can you guess who wrote this?

"Attackers are simply ... a propaganda agency so far as we are concerned. They have proven they want no facts and will only lie no matter what they discover. So BANISH all ideas that any fair hearing is intended and start our attack with their first breath. Never wait. Never talk about us - only them. Use their blood, sex, crime to get headlines. Don't use us."

That was L. Ron Hubbard. Amazing how Carney's tactics so closely match those of scientology.

oh_sigh3• 11 years ago

How would you be able to sue someone who said that they saw a lot of people crying at their desk? How could you prove that didn't happen?

kazinator3• 11 years ago

Suppose that it's a fabrication. You could hire some independent company (e.g. Gallup or whoever) to conduct a confidential company-wide survey to determine how many employees have seen someone crying at their desk (or did so themselves), and approximately how many times in the past N years for some N. If the survey turned up results close to zero, that would support a case that the former employee is making it up. (Of course, subject to the limitation that the survey would only include current employees.)

There is also the principle that the burden of proof is on the one making a claim, and not on those who disbelieve. Lots of people cried on their desks? A few names, or it didn't happen.

kazinator3• 11 years ago

How does that make what he experienced while there not true?

It doesn't make it true or false, of course. What it does (if true) is make his report that such a thing happened less credible.

This is because fraud is a form of dishonesty, closely related to the telling of lies.

Also, being fired for wrongdoing (again, if that is true) creates the basis for an obvious bias. A person who was fired for wrongdoing can't be expected to be objective in reporting something about the former employer, even if they aren't trying to deceive. If that person's report is relayed, but the firing is concealed, the journalist is effectively concealing that bias.

Of course, Jay Carney (Senior Vice President for Global Corporate Affairs at Amazon) has an obvious bias as well.

It's not clear whom to believe in this particular case---but biases and track records of fraud are generally relevant context.

kazinator3• 11 years ago

I'd like to to address a somewhat unfairly flagged sibling comment by russelluresti, on the topic of the ad hominem fallacy.

Disbelieving someone because of a bias or a past dishonesty isn't the ad hominem fallacy at all.

Ad hominem refers to a declaration that an argument is right or wrong based on the identity or attributes of the person making the argument, rather than its content, and relevant references.

The disbelief in a report based on the nature of its source isn't a declaration that it is false. It is rationally justified prudence.

cognivore• 11 years ago

"Here’s what the story didn’t tell you about Mr. Olson: 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."

It doesn't matter. If the devil tells the truth, it's still the truth.

AnimalMuppet• 11 years ago

But if it's the devil talking, you have fair grounds for increasing your suspicion that what's said isn't the truth.

And in this case, if Mr. Olsen did in fact get caught by such an investigation, he may be significantly biased against Amazon. That does not automatically make what he says untrue, but it does increase suspicion that it may not be the straight story.

bluishgreen• 11 years ago

Someone walks to me and says things like this(the original NYTimes article) about say...Facebook, I will double check. If someone says what they said about Amazon, I won't double check (I know, I should). But you know what, I have heard so many anecdotes from people who have no reason to lie, that for me personally at this point, I have much better things to do than double check the obvious. Someone with a fancy university grant will do that, I have other stuff to do, like ignore all those amazon high-volume-recruiter incessant emails.

suprgeek• 11 years ago

If anything, such a cynical and mean-spirited "reply" makes it absolutely and positively certain that working at Amazon should be the last thing any half-way competent Tech person should consider.

This piece reads exactly like an oppo-research piece that you would use as a hatchet-job on a political opponent. I had to check twice to ensure that this was not some kind of satire (it is getting harder for me to tell these days). It goes into great detail making personal attacks against the "complainers" while doing nothing to address the substantive allegations made by the articles.

So 1) yes there is a "snitch" tool that amazon encourages employees to use 2) the people identified have all quit after complaining of excessive work one way or another 3) when the initial story came out Almighty Leader Jeff even wrote a memo "please be more considerate" 4) PR flunky now makes sleazy attacks on ex-employees to blunt the negative perceptions.

Updated to add- You want an unsubstantiated ad-hominem here you go: "Jay Carney was encouraged to quit his white-house posting because of his incompetence. Also how seriously can you take a PR guy with the last name of 'Carney'? He had to go!"

aschearer• 11 years ago

"Give me six words of an innocent man, and I will find something in them with which to hang him"

How should companies interact with the press today in order to avoid an outcome like the original NYT article?

mangeletti2• 11 years ago

It's "six lines", not "six words". I think Cardinal Richelieu would be hard pressed to find six words to be as incriminating, unless they were, "I have just committed high treason".

pm246013• 11 years ago

Here are some more people for Jay to slander:

http://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-fo...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10123456 ( https://medium.com/@jcheiffetz/i-had-a-baby-and-cancer-when-... )

mgalka• 11 years ago

Saw a great post relating to this a few months ago.

http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/using-data-...

At the very least the reporters could have checked Glassdoor and seen that employees actually rate Amazon fairly well.

numair• 11 years ago

If you're hiring in tech right now, you have to REALLY love Amazon for doing this. Basically, what they are saying is, if you speak out about the emotional hell of working for them, they will attempt to publicly humiliate you to make themselves look better.

You're going to go through hell working for them, and you're going to go through hell if you speak out after you leave. Now, they might think this is a winning strategy for them, but in fact the logical conclusion for potential hires is -- stay away from Amazon, because you'll hate it, and then they will ruin your reputation if you speak out. Which is really helpful for everyone else who's hiring right now, because intelligent people paranoid about their reputation will steer clear of any potential Amazon interviews.

Their PR guy doesn't understand that he just cost his employer an entire generation of talented engineers. Oh well, this is great for everyone else.

anon203942309• 11 years ago

Taking a high level approach here, there are a lot of details on both sides that could be disputed. But what remains true, is there is a reason this article was written about Amazon and not any of the many other tech companies out there. There is obviously an element of truth to the story, even if specific details can be disputed.

hans• 11 years ago

Just love that Bezos quote: "that's not the amazon that i know" ... hmm gee uthink? billionaire founder has a different experience, wow who'd a thought?

glassdoor has spelled this out for a long time but its amusing that amazon doesn't admit they'll change.

my thinking is: a company that relishes in frugality = your machine your monitors and your coffee will suck, you will never get promoted, stack rank Plus all this bs about suing via nda and indebtedness around relo assistance etc sounds like the suck .. amazon is downright hostile

What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

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