The interesting thing about this is that Lyons quotes Jeff Bezos's letter to shareholders, which some places described as ‘a very late response’ (http://www.the

The interesting thing about this is that Lyons quotes Jeff Bezos's letter to shareholders, which some places described as ‘a very late response’ (http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/5/11373438/amazon-corporate-culture-comment-jeff-bezos http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/5/11373438/amazon-corporate-c...) to the NYT's own story from earlier this year… Lyons quotes it to demonstrate how Amazon is totally down for this exploitative culture he's trying to describe. But while I was pretty horrified reading the NYT's original story, Bezos responded—admittedly internally—shortly after the original article came out. He basically dismissed the idea of the type of culture Lyons is describing (‘I strongly believe that anyone working in a company that really is like the one described in the NYT would be crazy to stay. I know I would leave such a company.’), and that response was fairly widely circulated. To me, while I recognize some of the anecdotes that Lyons is describing as indeed representative of things that happen at startups, this is the kind of cherry picking that rapidly turns a potentially interesting book (or article) into total nonsense. If you can't choose your supporting arguments well, your main argument falls over. (Worth noting: Pretty sure these sundry* articles all just possibly-adapted excerpts from the book.)