Coming up on 4 years at amazon here and I agree far more with the NYT article than this one, even though I agree it is a bit cherry picked. There is a saying th

Coming up on 4 years at amazon here and I agree far more with the NYT article than this one, even though I agree it is a bit cherry picked. There is a saying that goes around quite a bit here: Amazon hires intelligent people, and they retain the sociopaths. You don't acquire colloquialisms like that without some sort of truth behind it. Some people get lucky and find a reasonable team/org right away, and some people get unlucky and get the sociopaths right away. Either way, as people stay longer, they become more alienated and broken down, or they become more sociopathic themselves. I don't find it surprising that there are plenty of amazonians defending the culture...they are probably the ones that thrive in it. Everybody else will slowly find themselves under a manager that gives them stress-induced kidney stones (like I did), and will either move teams (like I did, and I quite enjoy my team) or quit altogether (like the other 90%).