15 ms·

“I Had a Baby and Cancer When I Worked at Amazon”

458 points by tchalla 11y ago

webaholic 11y ago
The NYTimes article just turned the tap on. I am sure that the snippets in the nytimes article were not one off anymore.
- gdulli 11y ago
  I roughly 2006 I planned to leave my job and go to a new city, and Amazon was the first company I considered working for because the Pacific northwest interested me. Some light research online indicated that Amazon would not be a good place to work. It was just anecdotes, but I had a nagging feeling that these negative anecdotes about Amazon were easier to find than for other large companies I was considering. I decided against pursuing Amazon, but wondered if I had put too much weight on this research. It stuck in my mind and all the other negative things I've heard about Amazon between 2006 and now sort of snowballed for me. How they treat their corporate employees, how they treat their warehouse employees. How they treat their business partners. How they treat their sellers. (Hint: the opposite of how they treat their buyers.) And so on. So the recent NYT article told me nothing new. I had already realized that Amazon had this definite pattern. Whereas the occasional anecdote you hear about other companies just remains a few anecdotes, it doesn't become a pattern.
  - MCRed 11y ago
    For most readers of Hacker News, though, I suspect that they see these anecdotes rarely, and for many the NYT article is the first one... yet they have seen press releases from Amazon that are designed to tout it as a tech company and Jeff Bezos as the next Steve Jobs, every month, like clock work for the past decade. (and we'll get even more of them now.) The anecdotes are hard to find. Glassdoor promotes positive reviews over negative ones, effectively burying them, even when the negative ones have more up votes and you're looking at reviews ranked by vote! Most people Amazon is hiring aren't exposed to the negative reviews of the company.
    - redblacktree 11y ago
      Even before getting to anecdotes about the experience of working there, I was put off by the interview process. They have asked me to drive from Indianapolis to Chicago to interview with a large group of people. Thanks, but no thanks.
    - gdulli 11y ago
      > Most people Amazon is hiring aren't exposed to the negative reviews of the company. Yeah, that's why it's so important for people to gain awareness of this while it's so visible. It's not just anecdotes, it's a pattern. Every large company has things about it that suck, every company has its former employees with complaints about it. But Amazon is in a qualitatively different category. Other companies don't get such a bad overall reputation.
    - fludlight 11y ago
      Glassdoor's revenue comes from companies advertising to job seekers. It would not surprise me if this comes with a handshake deal to make the advertiser look good.
      - shostack 11y ago
        Glassdoor's entire revenue stream is dependent on having a user-base visit them to generate the impressions that comprise their inventory of job seekers. That user-base will only continue to visit Glassdoor if they maintain their reputation of having credible reviews around companies. It really does not seem in their best interest to shoot themselves in the foot in that regard. Of course Yelp was accused of similar things (whether true or not) and I'm not sure it really hurt them, so who knows.
    - Apocryphon 11y ago
      After all of the excitement of the keynotes and the dazzling new hardware and software products are released, few forget that Steve Jobs was also a very authoritarian and abusive figure, and that Apple is a company just like any other.
    - morgante 11y ago
kevcampb 11y ago
If you can lose your health insurance for being sick, it's not insurance.
- xlm1717 11y ago
  If you can only use it for routine and preventative care, and not for emergencies, it's not insurance. It's a backwards payment plan that puts all the risk on the patient, instead of the insurance company. It doesn't "insure" anything. It only insures that you lose coverage when it stops being a payment plan. Calling it insurance is a farce.
  - raverbashing 11y ago
    I agree Insurances should not be priced 'bottom to top', the basic coverage should cover the more needed and costly procedures then start adding more 'optional' coverage with increased payments.
  - pbreit 11y ago
    That's the one thing a really don't like about Obamacare: it's doing away with "catastrophic insurance" which is really what insurance actually is. But I suspect when given the choice between cheap insurance or an expensive payment plan, everyone would pick the former.
    - yuliyp 11y ago
      That's because the US has turned into a defacto buyer-coalition system where you have to pay to join a club (health insurance provider) which negotiates rates with health care providers. If you don't join such a club, you get charged rates that can be significantly higher (read 2x or more).
  - FireBeyond 11y ago
    Yeah, in the US (as someone who works in the health insurance industry) - what is described as 'health insurance' in the US meets very few of the definitions of 'insurance'. It's really more accurately "(Group) Healthcare Cost Amortization".
angersock 11y ago
This is pretty horrendous--at the same time, I'm a little puzzled: if you are gone for almost half a year and you're in a leadership position, is it that surprising the company will route around you? EDIT: I guess what I'm asking is: how do we square "hey, workers need to be able to take family leave for potentially long periods of time" with "this team needs a leader"? It's a tricky question, and the shittiest answer is "oh, well, you can work from home! XD".
- RaSoJo 11y ago
  Routing around would happen. But putting her on the Performance Improvement Plan was inhuman.
  - sjg007 11y ago
    She probably would have won the lawsuit had she sued.
    - WaltPurvis 11y ago
      On what grounds could she have sued?
- littletimmy 11y ago
  I guess one solution is that Amazon hires a separate leader, and then puts the other employee up in a separate position. Ultimately, the employer will have to take a bit of a hit if we want employees to have more secure lives.
- potatolicious 11y ago
  You need people who can cover in leadership positions - this happens all the time, how do you handle a leader going on a 3-week vacation to Bali? Obviously, longer term absences are qualitatively different, but again not insurmountable. More importantly though is that not only had someone else taken over her position permanently, but she was put on a PIP. A PIP is usually reserved for extremely poor performers who are on the razor's edge of termination, not an otherwise good performer who just returned from an extended absence. But of course I know multiple people at Amazon who had PIPs used against them politically - a PIP is an employment lawsuit mitigation strategy, even though it's a "Performance Improvement Plan" there is never an actual intention to follow through, it's always the precursor to firing. Her team being taken away from her because she went on maternity leave is extremely shitty. Her being put on a PIP immediately after returning is what takes this from "shitty" to "heinous".
brookside 11y ago
Cold.
Sealy 11y ago
If you aspire to be a startup entrepreneur, take note. Stories are the most powerful form of communication you can use. Whether its your experience in working for Amazon, or a multi billion dollar pitch for your next startup. Great piece.
- untog 11y ago
  This seems like a very strange lesson to take away from a woman being denied healthcare.
grecy 11y ago
It saddens me that in the 21st century in the richest country in the world people having babies and being diagnosed with cancer have to worry about treatment and money, the last thing they should be thinking about. What a sad state of affairs.
- w1ntermute 11y ago
  In those countries where such luxuries are provided, the option of working for a (homegrown) tech giant isn't even available: http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/08/24/why-europe-hates-us-internet-giants-in-six-charts/ http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/08/24/why-europe-hates-us-int...
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    How terrible. Perhaps healthcare for all is tradeoff worth making. Or we can continue on as savages in the US. EDIT: I can see my karma for this comment is swinging around wildly. Consider the following: * You are (based on the typical HN audience) probably young now, most likely healthy. You will eventually get older, and will likely have medical issues eventually. * I argue that healthcare is not something to be earned, but something you are entitled to as a human being. No one should ever die from health reasons due to not having enough money. If its too expensive to do this (which is clearly false, as other countries are able to do so with less money than we spend in the US), we use R&D spending to ruthlessly drive down the cost. * I came to this point of view over time. I am a healthy young male. I've known people who have died because they couldn't afford healthcare. I've known someone who worked as a prostitute to pay for her SOs cancer treatment. My mother would not have been able to afford a surgery to mediate her degenerative disc disease in her spine without the affordable care act. I am not arguing for the elimination of the tech startup scene in order to have universal healthcare. I'm arguing for the transition to single payer and the streamlining of healthcare deliver in the US to lower costs AND ensure coverage for everyone. We're a first world developed country, and its about time like we acted like one.
    - davidw 11y ago
      I don't think it's even a tradeoff: in countries like Italy, health care costs less, as a percentage of GDP, than in the US. In a startup like the one I worked at there, with about 30 people, there were 0 people in the company who had anything to do with health care stuff, because it's not the company that deals with it. That's a net win. Of course, there are other things that are not so good for businesses in various European countries, but I'd chalk up the health care system as a win for small companies and entrepreneurs.
bechampion 11y ago
Good for her that switched jobs and carried on. In terms of Amazon ... who knows .. another company that don't give a shit about their people.
- atopuzov 11y ago
  Exactly, Amazon does not give a shit!
amyjess 11y ago
> I was placed on a dubious performance improvement plan, or PIP, a signal at Amazon that your employment is at risk. Ah, the PIP. Shorthand for "we're going to get rid of you because of office politics, but only after we humiliate you and make you feel like a horrible person".
- atopuzov 11y ago
  Yup, but all the cool kids are/were on PIP ;-)
- cpeterso 11y ago
  The PIP also encourages the employee to resign instead of waiting to be fired, minimizing employer risk of wrongful termination lawsuits or having to pay severance. In the author's case, she resigned; the PIP was a success for Amazon.
- notNow 11y ago
  Amazon's Room 101, very neat Bozos indeed. I must say that I admire this guy's "ingenuity" and psy ops he subjects employees to to make them conform and yield at their job.
curveship 11y ago
Holy cow: "After my surgery [for cancer], while I was still on maternity leave, I received a form letter saying that the health insurance provided by my employer had been terminated. Dozens of panicked emails and phone calls later, the whole thing was, I was told, a glitch in the system. After a week of back and forth, I was offered COBRA coverage, by which point I had already switched to my husband’s insurance, where I remained for the duration of my care." That's a pretty GIGANTIC "glitch," one that turned out hugely in Amazon's favor. Cheiffetz claims she accepts that it was an "administrative error," but you have to wonder. By getting her to switch to her husband's plan, Amazon may have saved themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- xcyu 11y ago
  Sounds like a great application of their Frugality principle. http://www.amazon.jobs/principles http://www.amazon.jobs/principles
  - josephjrobison 11y ago
    On another note, those are some of the cheesiest stock photos they ever could have picked.
    - rdtsc 11y ago
      I had to look at them preparing for my AWS interview, then I had to parrot the principles back at them through my own experience. "What was your biggest failure?" (Alright...let me try to pick one of the leadership principle to parrot back through my biggest failure while also having my self-esteem show down thinking about my failures).
    - mmagin 11y ago
      Surprisingly they have less of the deliberate yes-we-have-diversity than the usual selection of stock photos used on such a document by a big company.
    - magic_beans 11y ago
danharaj 11y ago
No matter how skilled you are, no matter how much you're compensated, to be labor is to be the disposable, exploitable end of these modern relations of production. To management, to the owner (whether an individual or a corporation owned by institutions owned by faceless stakeholders) you are but labor-power. Your body, your self, your individual knitted from human fabric is a liability. If they could chop your labor-power from your flesh, from your family, from your community, and expropriate it as their own, the owners would. The labor market is not a market for human beings, it is a market for working bodies. Bodies that don't work profitably are bad bodies.
- mindcrime 11y ago
  So are we just going to spout Marxist dogma, or do you have some idea for a solution? Preferably something that doesn't require a massive government apparatus and that doesn't infringe on the rights of every individual to make their own choices?
  - praptak 11y ago
    Cry me a river about individual rights to bend over for the employer. I am ok with a huge government to protect me from having to compete with workaholics.
    - mindcrime 11y ago
      I am ok with a huge government to protect me from having to compete with workaholics. Cry me a river about competing with people with a greater work ethic. I'm not OK with government doing anything that involves initiation of force to achieve political ends.
      - danharaj 11y ago
        "greater work ethic" meaning "performs well in this system of labor relations". It is a circular moral judgment. The status quo is maintained by force. The government you have distrust for is the thing that keeps everything from breaking down.
coderdude 11y ago
I'm going to take the road less traveled and be critical. For a piece that is essentially about a (painful and harsh) health insurance screw-up, this article is shoehorning quite an agenda: > I met some of the strongest, most brilliant women of my career there. > I quickly noted, when it came to leadership positions, they were almost all men. > the voices commenting on the New York Times piece so far have been predominantly male leaders of male-dominated teams. > Women power your retail engine. They buy diapers. They buy books. They buy socks for their husbands on Prime. > On behalf of all the people who want to speak up but can’t: Please, make Amazon a more hospitable place for women and parents. > You can’t claim to be a data-driven company and not release more specific numbers on how many women and people of color apply, get hired and promoted, and stay on as employees. Those types of statements can make sense in the right context but they seem out of place here, in this article. I wasn't able to make that connection that she seems to be able to make readily and without effort.
- busterarm 11y ago
  Also, at the same time that she resigned from Amazon, several other editors did as well and returned to more standard publishing jobs. This was right at the peak of the Amazon/Hachette beef. If you're an editor, it's not a big leap to realize that if you need a new job after Amazon, you're going to be less and less welcome the more time you spend there. Some of her other projects fit in with the comments you quoted.
- jordan0day 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure the point of the article was about women and Amazon, not "about a (painful and harsh) health insurance screw-up". The health insurance "screw up" only occurred because she was on maternity leave. As a man, this isn't necessarily my area of expertise, but I'm pretty sure only women can go on maternity leave. That's not to say this couldn't also happen to a new father on paternity leave... but paternity leave barely exists in the US to begin with.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
wehadfun 11y ago
What are companies supposed to do when their employees become mothers? Women have baby and when this happens she is going to be out for a month probably longer. Her family will encounter medical cost along with whatever expences existed before and she will not be able to work to pay for this. We point the finger at whatever company happens to be her employeer and act like it is there responsibility to pay the bills. I feel like society through the government should either pay this bill or be willing to accept what a company does in its financial interest.
- HelloMcFly 11y ago
  > What are companies supposed to do when their employees become mothers? At the very least, they should do what they are required to do. What they are required to do is something that society has required of them through the government, even if the FMLA is weaker than it should be. Alternatively, they should honor any additional commitments made (publicly and privately) to candidates and employees that go beyond the bare minimum legal requirement.
  - wehadfun 11y ago
    Amazon did what they were required to do, which is give her 12 weeks before giving away her job. Obviously that was not good enough so I ask again what should the company have done? No one has answered that question
    - bonaldi 11y ago
      Ahem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10123800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10123800
    - mrgoldenbrown 11y ago
      One thing they could do is not make up lies (the PIP) about her performance to cover their intention to fire her.
    - FireBeyond 11y ago
      While 'glitching' her out of her insurance. And then instead of re-instating her insurance once the 'glitch' was discovered, offering her COBRA (ha, you're kidding, right? "Hey, -we- fucked up. But you can keep the insurance you are entitled to... if -you pay $1,000+ a month").
MCRed 11y ago
I totally understand and sympathize with her viewpoint, even though it differs from my own, because much of this reads like someone who was kicked out of Scientology but still thinks the Church of Scientology is full of brilliant people making the world a better place-- that adoration for how great a company Amazon is, that comes thru in this piece, is the exact same flavor that the company cult works to reinforce, much the way the scientology cult does. Yes, as someone who has dated a member of the church of scientology, and had a good friend get married there, then divorced when they discovered her husbands great grandfather worked for the IRS, and then re-married in a scientology arranged wedding, and seen the consequent personality changes and manipulations, .... and as someone who worked for Amazon for three years... I feel quite comfortable comparing Amazon to the Church of Scientology. The funny thing is, this article reminds me of something I didn't notice. Things really were different in the way women were treated. There's definitely a bit of male chauvinism going on, and also women were treated better at amazon, probably because they were seen as more helpless and delicate. They certainly got less abuse in my group than the men did. This is the lesson to take away-- the really dangerous thing is not just that Amazon is often a hostile and abusive workplace-- you can find that anywhere, and you can find pockets of decency in Amazon as well. The lesson to learn is-- and this is leaking out about Amazon over and over-- that Amazon is a cult. Her comment about the PIP being obviously a way to move out out-- shows that the actions (the PIP) have the opposite intended purpose to what they are supposed to. If an employee messes up (eg: goes thru a divorce and their work suffers) then they should be helped to improve. That PIP is obvious code for "we're giving this person the ax and we're only keeping them around to cover our asses legally" shows that the company is manipulative and deceitful. -- If a firing was legitimate, they wouldn't need to lie with the PIP. If PIPs were used for their intended purpose, people wouldn't know that it was time to resign. This kind of mantra heavy, "culture" heavy, ideological heavy, deceitful attitudes from a company are, in my experience, clear signs the company is very much like a cult. I saw it in Scientology, at Amazon and at another company I worked for (also terrible)... but none of this existed at the other 20+ companies I've worked for in my career.
tinbad 11y ago
This story doesn't surprise me at all. My 7 month pregnant wife is currently going through the exact same experience at Google. As soon as she notified her manager of her pregnancy, a week later they are trying to get rid of her. Made her pick between PIP or 2 months severance. Before she could make her decision, luckily, her doctor put her on leave because of a higher risk pregnancy (twins), she was entitled to short term disability but the company that handles Googles disability is a complete mess to deal with. It seems like make it super difficult to make use of these 'perks' so you just give up and don't bother. Anyway, long story short its the same everywhere. Im sure Larry and Jeff had good intentions when they started their companies but now that it's in the hands of middle management it's no different than any other big corp.
- sjg007 11y ago
  Get a lawyer.
- sharkweek 11y ago
  Wouldn't there be a pretty direct correlation between an attempted punishment and the pregnancy announcement? Like if there were no previous problems, isn't this pretty clear discrimination?
  - potatolicious 11y ago
    This is why the PIP exists - it's "documentation" and "proof" the the employee is an underperformer. PIPs provide legal cover for firings that would otherwise not pass cursory examination. [edit] The PIP may have started out as a good faith effort to improve underperformers, but at this point I see them used more frequently as political and legal tools than honest attempts at "salvaging" poor employees.
    - sharkweek 11y ago
      Totally, but couldn't you point back to telling your boss that you're pregnant and be like "I literally told you a few weeks ago that I'm pregnant and now you're putting me on a PIP, this is not a coincidence"
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
darren884 11y ago
This is why I would never want to work at Amazon. I get requests from their recruiters all the time and based on these stories even though they most it seems are not related to the technology department make me disgusted when I think of working for them. They have great products (which I really enjoy) and software but if they cannot take care of their employees how well can they take care of their customers? It is sad that a company like this does this. It tells me you cannot enjoy your life working for a company like them.
- sanderjd 11y ago
  Well, I think now we can all start replying to those recruiters by citing these issues and sending links to these articles. They may not care, because those of us for whom these are horror stories rather than romantic tales of an energizing sink-or-swim environment may just not be their target demographic for employees.
- shas3 11y ago
  There are always enough talented people who have been on the job market long enough to be desperate for an offer from even shitty employers. I'd imagine the net effect of all this fuss about working conditions, on Amazon's ability to attract talent would be minimal.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    This is the bottom line. There is almost always more available, desperate labor out there than job opportunities, and with the advances of automation, this is more and more likely to be the case. Expect even shittier behavior from employers because they will increasingly be able to get away with it.
- fixermark 11y ago
  > if they cannot take care of their employees how well can they take care of their customers? They take care of their customers very well. Their customers are their revenue stream, not their cost centers.
- jedahan 11y ago
78666cdc 11y ago
Why would you expect to be able to come back into having people report to you after a five month leave from a high-paced environment? Getting brought back up to speed will be obviously necessary, and the PIP thing sounds like an explicit effort towards exactly that. So, in the end, she collected half a year's pay for no work, and then quit. The insurance "glitch" is highly suspicious, but, aside from that, I can't help but coming away from this article with an impression of an air of self-entitlement. The obvious agenda (and probably the only reason this weakly composed and unconvincing narrative even got published) regarding gender in tech seems absolutely shoehorned in. At companies like these, women in fact have a clear advantage in getting hired - though that is damaged by stories of women collecting pay for no work and then quitting right afterwards. I am glad that the author has recovered and is healthy, but this article is very unconvincing.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  > Why would you expect to be able to come back into having people report to you after a five month leave from a high-paced environment? Getting brought back up to speed will be obviously necessary, and the PIP thing sounds like an explicit effort towards exactly that. So, in the end, she collected half a year's pay for no work, and then quit. PIP is a prelude to firing the majority of the time and is basically putting you on notice that you'll be laid off/fired if there is a need to reduce head count.
  - 78666cdc 11y ago
    She should explain that then. Another commented on this post said (s)he knows multiple people that have gone on PIP, gotten out of it, and are working normally now.
    - fweespeech 11y ago
      https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/never-sign-a-pip-heres-why/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/never-sign-a... > There isn’t any upside to signing the PIP because, once one is presented, the decision to fire has already been made. A manager who genuinely wants to improve a person’s performance will communicate off the record. Once the manager is “documenting”, the relationship’s over. Also, people very rarely pass PIPs. Some people get the hint and leave, others fail and are fired, and in the remainder of cases, the PIP is ruled “inconclusive”, which means “not enough evidence to terminate at this time”. That’s not exactly an endorsement. For a PIP to be passed would require HR to side with the employee over management, and that will never happen. If the employee is under the same manager in 6 months, there will be another PIP. If the employee tries to move to another team, that will be almost impossible, because a “passed” PIP doesn’t mean exoneration. The reputation for instability created by a PIP lingers on for years. What I am essentially saying here is that, once a PIP appears, you should not sign it for the sake of maintaining a professional relationship. There is no relationship at that point. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473232 http://www.askamanager.org/2013/05/what-to-do-when-youre-put-on-a-performance-improvement-plan.html http://www.askamanager.org/2013/05/what-to-do-when-youre-put... > Okay, here’s the deal with performance improvement plans: They are indeed very often the last thing that happens before you’re let go. In theory, if you meet the terms of the plan, you’ll preserve your job and be able to move forward, but in practice, by the time you’re on one, it’s often because things aren’t working out and aren’t likely to. > To be clear, that doesn’t mean that PIPs never end in success. Sometimes they do. But because they so often don’t, it’s smart to be job-searching meanwhile, because they’re so very much the writing on the wall giving you a warning that you might lose your job at the end of the process. (However, don’t let your job search interfere with your focus on work. If you have to pick between the two, choose work if that’s likely to make the difference between meeting the terms of the PIP and not meeting them.)
mjt0229 11y ago
A coworker of mine at Amazon was diagnosed with cancer, and as far as I can tell, he was treated with the utmost respect and decency. His team and managers made a lot of accommodation for him while he underwent treatment. Unfortunately, he eventually passed away - to my knowledge, he was still employed to the very end (I moved away and left the company for other reasons, but many of my friends/coworkers stayed and are still there today). So, I have an anecdote, and this story is an anecdote. I'm not saying that my friend's story offsets the story here (especially because I wasn't the cancer patient in either case). Let's slow down before we draw too many conclusions from either one.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  Even if this story is just an anecdote, it is completely and absolutely unacceptable that Amazon would let anyone be treated like that. This is the kind of story that should end with people being fired for incompetence.
  - mjt0229 11y ago
    I don't disagree. I only point out that people should not assume that this is the norm based on the single anecdote.
    - LoSboccacc 11y ago
      The point is it anectode don't cancel out like that It's like telling that's acceptable to have a plane crashing for every other plane that arrives safely.
- jobu 11y ago
  From the Article: "You can’t claim to be a data-driven company and not release more specific numbers on how many women and people of color apply, get hired and promoted, and stay on as employees. In the absence of meaningful public data — especially retention data — all we have are stories." Unless Amazon is willing to release the numbers, then most people will tend to believe the bad stories (like Julia's) over stories like your friend's.
torgoguys 11y ago
Lots to dislike about Amazon in that story, but 5 months leave and still have a job! (Or maybe not because of the PIP...) Oh to be so lucky on that point!
roymurdock 11y ago
I once took a class on business operations. In it, we studied the value discipline model of the firm: To succeed in the marketplace, companies must embrace a competitive strategy. Authors Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersma describe three generic competitive strategies, or value disciplines: operational excellence, customer intimacy and product leadership. These are described in their book, The Discipline of Market Leaders (1997). The author’s main premise is that companies must choose—and then achieve—market leadership in one of the three disciplines, and perform to an acceptable level in the other two. [1] Operational Excellence: Amazon, Walmart Product Leadership: Apple, Mercedes Benz Customer Intimacy: Nordstroms, Home Depot We studied Amazon and Walmart as case studies for companies that have pushed the boundaries of operational excellence. You can also think of these companies as the ones who cut costs on a race to the bottom; companies at which efficiency is prized above all else. Don't have a kid while working for a company that demonstrates a strict adherence to the value proposition of operational excellence. You will be regarded as just another expendable cost on the bottom line, and you will be replaced by a younger, hungrier individual with less commitments outside of work. The company will find a way around the laws that generally protect mothers/fathers in these situations - that is why they are a market leader, because they will go where no other companies are willing/able to in order to uphold the mantra of operational excellence. [1] http://www.marsdd.com/mars-library/competitive-strategies-in-operational-excellence-customer-intimacy-and-product-leadership/ http://www.marsdd.com/mars-library/competitive-strategies-in...
- alex_doom 11y ago
  How is Home Depot a model of "Customer Intimacy". Have you been to one of their stores? If you do, god forbid, don't ever go on the weekend and look for help.
  - roymurdock 11y ago
    Got the Home Depot example from an HBR article. [1] Just realized it was dated 1993. Home Depot has definitely changed a lot since then. Better examples might be Trader Joe's or Virgin Airlines. [1] https://hbr.org/1993/01/customer-intimacy-and-other-value-disciplines https://hbr.org/1993/01/customer-intimacy-and-other-value-di...
pbreit 11y ago
It's frustrating because Google and Amazon are no doubt extremely impressive and truly have "changed the world". The problem is that a lot of jerks are using the self-proclaimed "changing the world" mantle as cover for their lousy behavior.
KiDD 11y ago
I read working at Amazon gave me a baby and cancer
davidann 11y ago
As a shameless plug, where I work (Moz), offers 3 months of paid paternity/maternity leave. I'm always learning, always growing and it's a great place to work. https://moz.com/about/jobs https://moz.com/about/jobs
Xyik 11y ago
Thank you. For all this talk about Amazon being a 'data-driven' company, I have yet to see any data on their employee churn rates from the people defending Amazon. I wonder why we don't hear about these types of horror stories from other companies?
wwwhatcrack 11y ago
Congratulations?
williamtrask 11y ago
how does this have 420 points after 8 hours...yet is on the 4th page?

458 points by tchalla 11y ago

The NYTimes article just turned the tap on. I am sure that the snippets in the nytimes article were not one off anymore.

gdulli 11y ago
I roughly 2006 I planned to leave my job and go to a new city, and Amazon was the first company I considered working for because the Pacific northwest interested me. Some light research online indicated that Amazon would not be a good place to work. It was just anecdotes, but I had a nagging feeling that these negative anecdotes about Amazon were easier to find than for other large companies I was considering. I decided against pursuing Amazon, but wondered if I had put too much weight on this research. It stuck in my mind and all the other negative things I've heard about Amazon between 2006 and now sort of snowballed for me. How they treat their corporate employees, how they treat their warehouse employees. How they treat their business partners. How they treat their sellers. (Hint: the opposite of how they treat their buyers.) And so on. So the recent NYT article told me nothing new. I had already realized that Amazon had this definite pattern. Whereas the occasional anecdote you hear about other companies just remains a few anecdotes, it doesn't become a pattern.
- MCRed 11y ago
  For most readers of Hacker News, though, I suspect that they see these anecdotes rarely, and for many the NYT article is the first one... yet they have seen press releases from Amazon that are designed to tout it as a tech company and Jeff Bezos as the next Steve Jobs, every month, like clock work for the past decade. (and we'll get even more of them now.) The anecdotes are hard to find. Glassdoor promotes positive reviews over negative ones, effectively burying them, even when the negative ones have more up votes and you're looking at reviews ranked by vote! Most people Amazon is hiring aren't exposed to the negative reviews of the company.
  - redblacktree 11y ago
    Even before getting to anecdotes about the experience of working there, I was put off by the interview process. They have asked me to drive from Indianapolis to Chicago to interview with a large group of people. Thanks, but no thanks.
  - gdulli 11y ago
    > Most people Amazon is hiring aren't exposed to the negative reviews of the company. Yeah, that's why it's so important for people to gain awareness of this while it's so visible. It's not just anecdotes, it's a pattern. Every large company has things about it that suck, every company has its former employees with complaints about it. But Amazon is in a qualitatively different category. Other companies don't get such a bad overall reputation.
  - fludlight 11y ago
    Glassdoor's revenue comes from companies advertising to job seekers. It would not surprise me if this comes with a handshake deal to make the advertiser look good.
    - shostack 11y ago
      Glassdoor's entire revenue stream is dependent on having a user-base visit them to generate the impressions that comprise their inventory of job seekers. That user-base will only continue to visit Glassdoor if they maintain their reputation of having credible reviews around companies. It really does not seem in their best interest to shoot themselves in the foot in that regard. Of course Yelp was accused of similar things (whether true or not) and I'm not sure it really hurt them, so who knows.
  - Apocryphon 11y ago
    After all of the excitement of the keynotes and the dazzling new hardware and software products are released, few forget that Steve Jobs was also a very authoritarian and abusive figure, and that Apple is a company just like any other.
  - morgante 11y ago

kevcampb 11y ago

If you can lose your health insurance for being sick, it's not insurance.

xlm1717 11y ago
If you can only use it for routine and preventative care, and not for emergencies, it's not insurance. It's a backwards payment plan that puts all the risk on the patient, instead of the insurance company. It doesn't "insure" anything. It only insures that you lose coverage when it stops being a payment plan. Calling it insurance is a farce.
- raverbashing 11y ago
  I agree Insurances should not be priced 'bottom to top', the basic coverage should cover the more needed and costly procedures then start adding more 'optional' coverage with increased payments.
- pbreit 11y ago
  That's the one thing a really don't like about Obamacare: it's doing away with "catastrophic insurance" which is really what insurance actually is. But I suspect when given the choice between cheap insurance or an expensive payment plan, everyone would pick the former.
  - yuliyp 11y ago
    That's because the US has turned into a defacto buyer-coalition system where you have to pay to join a club (health insurance provider) which negotiates rates with health care providers. If you don't join such a club, you get charged rates that can be significantly higher (read 2x or more).
- FireBeyond 11y ago
  Yeah, in the US (as someone who works in the health insurance industry) - what is described as 'health insurance' in the US meets very few of the definitions of 'insurance'. It's really more accurately "(Group) Healthcare Cost Amortization".

angersock 11y ago

This is pretty horrendous--at the same time, I'm a little puzzled: if you are gone for almost half a year and you're in a leadership position, is it that surprising the company will route around you? EDIT: I guess what I'm asking is: how do we square "hey, workers need to be able to take family leave for potentially long periods of time" with "this team needs a leader"? It's a tricky question, and the shittiest answer is "oh, well, you can work from home! XD".

RaSoJo 11y ago
Routing around would happen. But putting her on the Performance Improvement Plan was inhuman.
- sjg007 11y ago
  She probably would have won the lawsuit had she sued.
  - WaltPurvis 11y ago
    On what grounds could she have sued?
littletimmy 11y ago
I guess one solution is that Amazon hires a separate leader, and then puts the other employee up in a separate position. Ultimately, the employer will have to take a bit of a hit if we want employees to have more secure lives.
potatolicious 11y ago
You need people who can cover in leadership positions - this happens all the time, how do you handle a leader going on a 3-week vacation to Bali? Obviously, longer term absences are qualitatively different, but again not insurmountable. More importantly though is that not only had someone else taken over her position permanently, but she was put on a PIP. A PIP is usually reserved for extremely poor performers who are on the razor's edge of termination, not an otherwise good performer who just returned from an extended absence. But of course I know multiple people at Amazon who had PIPs used against them politically - a PIP is an employment lawsuit mitigation strategy, even though it's a "Performance Improvement Plan" there is never an actual intention to follow through, it's always the precursor to firing. Her team being taken away from her because she went on maternity leave is extremely shitty. Her being put on a PIP immediately after returning is what takes this from "shitty" to "heinous".

brookside 11y ago

Cold.

Sealy 11y ago

If you aspire to be a startup entrepreneur, take note. Stories are the most powerful form of communication you can use. Whether its your experience in working for Amazon, or a multi billion dollar pitch for your next startup. Great piece.

untog 11y ago
This seems like a very strange lesson to take away from a woman being denied healthcare.

grecy 11y ago

It saddens me that in the 21st century in the richest country in the world people having babies and being diagnosed with cancer have to worry about treatment and money, the last thing they should be thinking about. What a sad state of affairs.

w1ntermute 11y ago
In those countries where such luxuries are provided, the option of working for a (homegrown) tech giant isn't even available: http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/08/24/why-europe-hates-us-internet-giants-in-six-charts/ http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/08/24/why-europe-hates-us-int...
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  How terrible. Perhaps healthcare for all is tradeoff worth making. Or we can continue on as savages in the US. EDIT: I can see my karma for this comment is swinging around wildly. Consider the following: * You are (based on the typical HN audience) probably young now, most likely healthy. You will eventually get older, and will likely have medical issues eventually. * I argue that healthcare is not something to be earned, but something you are entitled to as a human being. No one should ever die from health reasons due to not having enough money. If its too expensive to do this (which is clearly false, as other countries are able to do so with less money than we spend in the US), we use R&D spending to ruthlessly drive down the cost. * I came to this point of view over time. I am a healthy young male. I've known people who have died because they couldn't afford healthcare. I've known someone who worked as a prostitute to pay for her SOs cancer treatment. My mother would not have been able to afford a surgery to mediate her degenerative disc disease in her spine without the affordable care act. I am not arguing for the elimination of the tech startup scene in order to have universal healthcare. I'm arguing for the transition to single payer and the streamlining of healthcare deliver in the US to lower costs AND ensure coverage for everyone. We're a first world developed country, and its about time like we acted like one.
  - davidw 11y ago
    I don't think it's even a tradeoff: in countries like Italy, health care costs less, as a percentage of GDP, than in the US. In a startup like the one I worked at there, with about 30 people, there were 0 people in the company who had anything to do with health care stuff, because it's not the company that deals with it. That's a net win. Of course, there are other things that are not so good for businesses in various European countries, but I'd chalk up the health care system as a win for small companies and entrepreneurs.

bechampion 11y ago

Good for her that switched jobs and carried on. In terms of Amazon ... who knows .. another company that don't give a shit about their people.

atopuzov 11y ago
Exactly, Amazon does not give a shit!

amyjess 11y ago

> I was placed on a dubious performance improvement plan, or PIP, a signal at Amazon that your employment is at risk. Ah, the PIP. Shorthand for "we're going to get rid of you because of office politics, but only after we humiliate you and make you feel like a horrible person".

atopuzov 11y ago
Yup, but all the cool kids are/were on PIP ;-)
cpeterso 11y ago
The PIP also encourages the employee to resign instead of waiting to be fired, minimizing employer risk of wrongful termination lawsuits or having to pay severance. In the author's case, she resigned; the PIP was a success for Amazon.
notNow 11y ago
Amazon's Room 101, very neat Bozos indeed. I must say that I admire this guy's "ingenuity" and psy ops he subjects employees to to make them conform and yield at their job.

curveship 11y ago

Holy cow: "After my surgery [for cancer], while I was still on maternity leave, I received a form letter saying that the health insurance provided by my employer had been terminated. Dozens of panicked emails and phone calls later, the whole thing was, I was told, a glitch in the system. After a week of back and forth, I was offered COBRA coverage, by which point I had already switched to my husband’s insurance, where I remained for the duration of my care." That's a pretty GIGANTIC "glitch," one that turned out hugely in Amazon's favor. Cheiffetz claims she accepts that it was an "administrative error," but you have to wonder. By getting her to switch to her husband's plan, Amazon may have saved themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars.

xcyu 11y ago
Sounds like a great application of their Frugality principle. http://www.amazon.jobs/principles http://www.amazon.jobs/principles
- josephjrobison 11y ago
  On another note, those are some of the cheesiest stock photos they ever could have picked.
  - rdtsc 11y ago
    I had to look at them preparing for my AWS interview, then I had to parrot the principles back at them through my own experience. "What was your biggest failure?" (Alright...let me try to pick one of the leadership principle to parrot back through my biggest failure while also having my self-esteem show down thinking about my failures).
  - mmagin 11y ago
    Surprisingly they have less of the deliberate yes-we-have-diversity than the usual selection of stock photos used on such a document by a big company.
  - magic_beans 11y ago

danharaj 11y ago

No matter how skilled you are, no matter how much you're compensated, to be labor is to be the disposable, exploitable end of these modern relations of production. To management, to the owner (whether an individual or a corporation owned by institutions owned by faceless stakeholders) you are but labor-power. Your body, your self, your individual knitted from human fabric is a liability. If they could chop your labor-power from your flesh, from your family, from your community, and expropriate it as their own, the owners would. The labor market is not a market for human beings, it is a market for working bodies. Bodies that don't work profitably are bad bodies.

mindcrime 11y ago
So are we just going to spout Marxist dogma, or do you have some idea for a solution? Preferably something that doesn't require a massive government apparatus and that doesn't infringe on the rights of every individual to make their own choices?
- praptak 11y ago
  Cry me a river about individual rights to bend over for the employer. I am ok with a huge government to protect me from having to compete with workaholics.
  - mindcrime 11y ago
    I am ok with a huge government to protect me from having to compete with workaholics. Cry me a river about competing with people with a greater work ethic. I'm not OK with government doing anything that involves initiation of force to achieve political ends.
    - danharaj 11y ago
      "greater work ethic" meaning "performs well in this system of labor relations". It is a circular moral judgment. The status quo is maintained by force. The government you have distrust for is the thing that keeps everything from breaking down.

coderdude 11y ago

I'm going to take the road less traveled and be critical. For a piece that is essentially about a (painful and harsh) health insurance screw-up, this article is shoehorning quite an agenda: > I met some of the strongest, most brilliant women of my career there. > I quickly noted, when it came to leadership positions, they were almost all men. > the voices commenting on the New York Times piece so far have been predominantly male leaders of male-dominated teams. > Women power your retail engine. They buy diapers. They buy books. They buy socks for their husbands on Prime. > On behalf of all the people who want to speak up but can’t: Please, make Amazon a more hospitable place for women and parents. > You can’t claim to be a data-driven company and not release more specific numbers on how many women and people of color apply, get hired and promoted, and stay on as employees. Those types of statements can make sense in the right context but they seem out of place here, in this article. I wasn't able to make that connection that she seems to be able to make readily and without effort.

busterarm 11y ago
Also, at the same time that she resigned from Amazon, several other editors did as well and returned to more standard publishing jobs. This was right at the peak of the Amazon/Hachette beef. If you're an editor, it's not a big leap to realize that if you need a new job after Amazon, you're going to be less and less welcome the more time you spend there. Some of her other projects fit in with the comments you quoted.
jordan0day 11y ago
I'm pretty sure the point of the article was about women and Amazon, not "about a (painful and harsh) health insurance screw-up". The health insurance "screw up" only occurred because she was on maternity leave. As a man, this isn't necessarily my area of expertise, but I'm pretty sure only women can go on maternity leave. That's not to say this couldn't also happen to a new father on paternity leave... but paternity leave barely exists in the US to begin with.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

wehadfun 11y ago

What are companies supposed to do when their employees become mothers? Women have baby and when this happens she is going to be out for a month probably longer. Her family will encounter medical cost along with whatever expences existed before and she will not be able to work to pay for this. We point the finger at whatever company happens to be her employeer and act like it is there responsibility to pay the bills. I feel like society through the government should either pay this bill or be willing to accept what a company does in its financial interest.

HelloMcFly 11y ago
> What are companies supposed to do when their employees become mothers? At the very least, they should do what they are required to do. What they are required to do is something that society has required of them through the government, even if the FMLA is weaker than it should be. Alternatively, they should honor any additional commitments made (publicly and privately) to candidates and employees that go beyond the bare minimum legal requirement.
- wehadfun 11y ago
  Amazon did what they were required to do, which is give her 12 weeks before giving away her job. Obviously that was not good enough so I ask again what should the company have done? No one has answered that question
  - bonaldi 11y ago
    Ahem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10123800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10123800
  - mrgoldenbrown 11y ago
    One thing they could do is not make up lies (the PIP) about her performance to cover their intention to fire her.
  - FireBeyond 11y ago
    While 'glitching' her out of her insurance. And then instead of re-instating her insurance once the 'glitch' was discovered, offering her COBRA (ha, you're kidding, right? "Hey, -we- fucked up. But you can keep the insurance you are entitled to... if -you pay $1,000+ a month").

MCRed 11y ago

I totally understand and sympathize with her viewpoint, even though it differs from my own, because much of this reads like someone who was kicked out of Scientology but still thinks the Church of Scientology is full of brilliant people making the world a better place-- that adoration for how great a company Amazon is, that comes thru in this piece, is the exact same flavor that the company cult works to reinforce, much the way the scientology cult does. Yes, as someone who has dated a member of the church of scientology, and had a good friend get married there, then divorced when they discovered her husbands great grandfather worked for the IRS, and then re-married in a scientology arranged wedding, and seen the consequent personality changes and manipulations, .... and as someone who worked for Amazon for three years... I feel quite comfortable comparing Amazon to the Church of Scientology. The funny thing is, this article reminds me of something I didn't notice. Things really were different in the way women were treated. There's definitely a bit of male chauvinism going on, and also women were treated better at amazon, probably because they were seen as more helpless and delicate. They certainly got less abuse in my group than the men did. This is the lesson to take away-- the really dangerous thing is not just that Amazon is often a hostile and abusive workplace-- you can find that anywhere, and you can find pockets of decency in Amazon as well. The lesson to learn is-- and this is leaking out about Amazon over and over-- that Amazon is a cult. Her comment about the PIP being obviously a way to move out out-- shows that the actions (the PIP) have the opposite intended purpose to what they are supposed to. If an employee messes up (eg: goes thru a divorce and their work suffers) then they should be helped to improve. That PIP is obvious code for "we're giving this person the ax and we're only keeping them around to cover our asses legally" shows that the company is manipulative and deceitful. -- If a firing was legitimate, they wouldn't need to lie with the PIP. If PIPs were used for their intended purpose, people wouldn't know that it was time to resign. This kind of mantra heavy, "culture" heavy, ideological heavy, deceitful attitudes from a company are, in my experience, clear signs the company is very much like a cult. I saw it in Scientology, at Amazon and at another company I worked for (also terrible)... but none of this existed at the other 20+ companies I've worked for in my career.

tinbad 11y ago

This story doesn't surprise me at all. My 7 month pregnant wife is currently going through the exact same experience at Google. As soon as she notified her manager of her pregnancy, a week later they are trying to get rid of her. Made her pick between PIP or 2 months severance. Before she could make her decision, luckily, her doctor put her on leave because of a higher risk pregnancy (twins), she was entitled to short term disability but the company that handles Googles disability is a complete mess to deal with. It seems like make it super difficult to make use of these 'perks' so you just give up and don't bother. Anyway, long story short its the same everywhere. Im sure Larry and Jeff had good intentions when they started their companies but now that it's in the hands of middle management it's no different than any other big corp.

sjg007 11y ago
Get a lawyer.
sharkweek 11y ago
Wouldn't there be a pretty direct correlation between an attempted punishment and the pregnancy announcement? Like if there were no previous problems, isn't this pretty clear discrimination?
- potatolicious 11y ago
  This is why the PIP exists - it's "documentation" and "proof" the the employee is an underperformer. PIPs provide legal cover for firings that would otherwise not pass cursory examination. [edit] The PIP may have started out as a good faith effort to improve underperformers, but at this point I see them used more frequently as political and legal tools than honest attempts at "salvaging" poor employees.
  - sharkweek 11y ago
    Totally, but couldn't you point back to telling your boss that you're pregnant and be like "I literally told you a few weeks ago that I'm pregnant and now you're putting me on a PIP, this is not a coincidence"

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

darren884 11y ago

This is why I would never want to work at Amazon. I get requests from their recruiters all the time and based on these stories even though they most it seems are not related to the technology department make me disgusted when I think of working for them. They have great products (which I really enjoy) and software but if they cannot take care of their employees how well can they take care of their customers? It is sad that a company like this does this. It tells me you cannot enjoy your life working for a company like them.

sanderjd 11y ago
Well, I think now we can all start replying to those recruiters by citing these issues and sending links to these articles. They may not care, because those of us for whom these are horror stories rather than romantic tales of an energizing sink-or-swim environment may just not be their target demographic for employees.
shas3 11y ago
There are always enough talented people who have been on the job market long enough to be desperate for an offer from even shitty employers. I'd imagine the net effect of all this fuss about working conditions, on Amazon's ability to attract talent would be minimal.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  This is the bottom line. There is almost always more available, desperate labor out there than job opportunities, and with the advances of automation, this is more and more likely to be the case. Expect even shittier behavior from employers because they will increasingly be able to get away with it.
fixermark 11y ago
> if they cannot take care of their employees how well can they take care of their customers? They take care of their customers very well. Their customers are their revenue stream, not their cost centers.
jedahan 11y ago

78666cdc 11y ago

Why would you expect to be able to come back into having people report to you after a five month leave from a high-paced environment? Getting brought back up to speed will be obviously necessary, and the PIP thing sounds like an explicit effort towards exactly that. So, in the end, she collected half a year's pay for no work, and then quit. The insurance "glitch" is highly suspicious, but, aside from that, I can't help but coming away from this article with an impression of an air of self-entitlement. The obvious agenda (and probably the only reason this weakly composed and unconvincing narrative even got published) regarding gender in tech seems absolutely shoehorned in. At companies like these, women in fact have a clear advantage in getting hired - though that is damaged by stories of women collecting pay for no work and then quitting right afterwards. I am glad that the author has recovered and is healthy, but this article is very unconvincing.

fweespeech 11y ago
> Why would you expect to be able to come back into having people report to you after a five month leave from a high-paced environment? Getting brought back up to speed will be obviously necessary, and the PIP thing sounds like an explicit effort towards exactly that. So, in the end, she collected half a year's pay for no work, and then quit. PIP is a prelude to firing the majority of the time and is basically putting you on notice that you'll be laid off/fired if there is a need to reduce head count.
- 78666cdc 11y ago
  She should explain that then. Another commented on this post said (s)he knows multiple people that have gone on PIP, gotten out of it, and are working normally now.
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/never-sign-a-pip-heres-why/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/never-sign-a... > There isn’t any upside to signing the PIP because, once one is presented, the decision to fire has already been made. A manager who genuinely wants to improve a person’s performance will communicate off the record. Once the manager is “documenting”, the relationship’s over. Also, people very rarely pass PIPs. Some people get the hint and leave, others fail and are fired, and in the remainder of cases, the PIP is ruled “inconclusive”, which means “not enough evidence to terminate at this time”. That’s not exactly an endorsement. For a PIP to be passed would require HR to side with the employee over management, and that will never happen. If the employee is under the same manager in 6 months, there will be another PIP. If the employee tries to move to another team, that will be almost impossible, because a “passed” PIP doesn’t mean exoneration. The reputation for instability created by a PIP lingers on for years. What I am essentially saying here is that, once a PIP appears, you should not sign it for the sake of maintaining a professional relationship. There is no relationship at that point. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473232 http://www.askamanager.org/2013/05/what-to-do-when-youre-put-on-a-performance-improvement-plan.html http://www.askamanager.org/2013/05/what-to-do-when-youre-put... > Okay, here’s the deal with performance improvement plans: They are indeed very often the last thing that happens before you’re let go. In theory, if you meet the terms of the plan, you’ll preserve your job and be able to move forward, but in practice, by the time you’re on one, it’s often because things aren’t working out and aren’t likely to. > To be clear, that doesn’t mean that PIPs never end in success. Sometimes they do. But because they so often don’t, it’s smart to be job-searching meanwhile, because they’re so very much the writing on the wall giving you a warning that you might lose your job at the end of the process. (However, don’t let your job search interfere with your focus on work. If you have to pick between the two, choose work if that’s likely to make the difference between meeting the terms of the PIP and not meeting them.)

mjt0229 11y ago

A coworker of mine at Amazon was diagnosed with cancer, and as far as I can tell, he was treated with the utmost respect and decency. His team and managers made a lot of accommodation for him while he underwent treatment. Unfortunately, he eventually passed away - to my knowledge, he was still employed to the very end (I moved away and left the company for other reasons, but many of my friends/coworkers stayed and are still there today). So, I have an anecdote, and this story is an anecdote. I'm not saying that my friend's story offsets the story here (especially because I wasn't the cancer patient in either case). Let's slow down before we draw too many conclusions from either one.

s73v3r 11y ago
Even if this story is just an anecdote, it is completely and absolutely unacceptable that Amazon would let anyone be treated like that. This is the kind of story that should end with people being fired for incompetence.
- mjt0229 11y ago
  I don't disagree. I only point out that people should not assume that this is the norm based on the single anecdote.
  - LoSboccacc 11y ago
    The point is it anectode don't cancel out like that It's like telling that's acceptable to have a plane crashing for every other plane that arrives safely.
jobu 11y ago
From the Article: "You can’t claim to be a data-driven company and not release more specific numbers on how many women and people of color apply, get hired and promoted, and stay on as employees. In the absence of meaningful public data — especially retention data — all we have are stories." Unless Amazon is willing to release the numbers, then most people will tend to believe the bad stories (like Julia's) over stories like your friend's.

torgoguys 11y ago

Lots to dislike about Amazon in that story, but 5 months leave and still have a job! (Or maybe not because of the PIP...) Oh to be so lucky on that point!

roymurdock 11y ago

I once took a class on business operations. In it, we studied the value discipline model of the firm: To succeed in the marketplace, companies must embrace a competitive strategy. Authors Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersma describe three generic competitive strategies, or value disciplines: operational excellence, customer intimacy and product leadership. These are described in their book, The Discipline of Market Leaders (1997). The author’s main premise is that companies must choose—and then achieve—market leadership in one of the three disciplines, and perform to an acceptable level in the other two. [1] Operational Excellence: Amazon, Walmart Product Leadership: Apple, Mercedes Benz Customer Intimacy: Nordstroms, Home Depot We studied Amazon and Walmart as case studies for companies that have pushed the boundaries of operational excellence. You can also think of these companies as the ones who cut costs on a race to the bottom; companies at which efficiency is prized above all else. Don't have a kid while working for a company that demonstrates a strict adherence to the value proposition of operational excellence. You will be regarded as just another expendable cost on the bottom line, and you will be replaced by a younger, hungrier individual with less commitments outside of work. The company will find a way around the laws that generally protect mothers/fathers in these situations - that is why they are a market leader, because they will go where no other companies are willing/able to in order to uphold the mantra of operational excellence. [1] http://www.marsdd.com/mars-library/competitive-strategies-in-operational-excellence-customer-intimacy-and-product-leadership/ http://www.marsdd.com/mars-library/competitive-strategies-in...

alex_doom 11y ago
How is Home Depot a model of "Customer Intimacy". Have you been to one of their stores? If you do, god forbid, don't ever go on the weekend and look for help.
- roymurdock 11y ago
  Got the Home Depot example from an HBR article. [1] Just realized it was dated 1993. Home Depot has definitely changed a lot since then. Better examples might be Trader Joe's or Virgin Airlines. [1] https://hbr.org/1993/01/customer-intimacy-and-other-value-disciplines https://hbr.org/1993/01/customer-intimacy-and-other-value-di...

pbreit 11y ago

It's frustrating because Google and Amazon are no doubt extremely impressive and truly have "changed the world". The problem is that a lot of jerks are using the self-proclaimed "changing the world" mantle as cover for their lousy behavior.

KiDD 11y ago

I read working at Amazon gave me a baby and cancer

davidann 11y ago

As a shameless plug, where I work (Moz), offers 3 months of paid paternity/maternity leave. I'm always learning, always growing and it's a great place to work. https://moz.com/about/jobs https://moz.com/about/jobs

Xyik 11y ago

Thank you. For all this talk about Amazon being a 'data-driven' company, I have yet to see any data on their employee churn rates from the people defending Amazon. I wonder why we don't hear about these types of horror stories from other companies?

wwwhatcrack 11y ago

Congratulations?

williamtrask 11y ago

how does this have 420 points after 8 hours...yet is on the 4th page?