There's a lot of pressure internally, I think, to refute the whole thing and go into full-denial mode. After all, Amazon's culture got this way for a reason -

There's a lot of pressure internally, I think, to refute the whole thing and go into full-denial mode. After all, Amazon's culture got this way for a reason - and it's not by taking complaints seriously, admitting to cultural failures, and making real substantive change. So, background, I'm an ex-Amazonian, converted from internship to full-time along with a few dozen others, so we all kept in touch on FB. Nearly all of us are gone now - nearly all of us left within 2 years, a few have stayed on as long-term Amazonians. When the NYT article first hit it was kind of a weird sight. Among the (legion of) ex-Amazonians the response has been pretty universally "yeah I recognize the Amazon in this article". Among the (few) current Amazonians the response was universally "all lies! slander! hit piece! yellow journalism!". The gap was startling - every single one of these long-term Amazonians knew many ex-employees, some they called friends, who left disgruntled and unhappy, and yet here they are insisting that the whole thing was a pack of lies. Odd to say the least, but lines up with what I saw myself internally when I was there - criticism of Amazon's culture was always met with overt hostility and vehement denial on the internal mailing lists that discussed such things. It never seemed like an environment where change could take root simply because no one was willing to own the failures to begin with. Bezos made some conciliatory gestures, but I'm personally skeptical - even if he's serious about change, the rest of his company isn't.