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Last time there negative press about Amazon's culture, Bezos wrote an email encouraging people to contact him directly if they suffered abuse. Apparently if yo
by stupidcar 10y ago
Last time there negative press about Amazon's culture, Bezos wrote an email encouraging people to contact him directly if they suffered abuse.
Apparently if you actually try it, you get fired:
https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired-for-contacting-jeff https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired-for...
- throwanem 10y ago> if you actually try it, you get fired Of course! What more efficient way could there be to identify and weed out potential troublemakers in the organization?
- sanderjd 10y agoIf that is true, I'm surprised I haven't seen a follow up in the NYT after they got somewhat tarnished by Amazon's response to their initial article.
- exolymph 10y agoMy guess is they couldn't confirm it... or they're in the process of reporting a follow-up story, who knows :)
- akerro 10y agoAll other stories are sad, but this one is ironically funny.
- PhantomGremlin 10y agoApparently if you actually try it, you get fired Well, of course you get fired. You're obviously a malcontent, and clearly not a team player. But, in fairness to Bezos, this is pretty much SOP at many companies.
- bluelu 10y ago1-2 years ago, before all the public coverage, I was interviewing one person from amazon. He was not happy with his former work situation (pager duty pushed on him, requests in the evening, ...) and he was terminated in the trial period because he brought it up to HR. I didn't believe him at that time.
- Noseshine 10y agoOn the other hand I question the "wisdom" of saying anything negative about a past employer, no matter how deserved it may be. It's just a big "never do it!".
- hutzlibu 10y agoI mean where would we get to, if people actually would start telling the truth!
- dpark 10y agoIt's one thing to openly express discontent with a prior employer. It's another thing to do it in an interview.
- hutzlibu 10y agoI know that this is considered "bad style". But I still disagree. I don't own a company (yet), but I would like to have employees, who are strong enough, to tell the truth, even though it might hurt some feelings. And if they honestly can tell me, what they like or did not at their former place, it would be much easier for me and also for them, to decide, if they would fit in this (imaginary) company. And if, later, my company would be bad in their perception, they may say so, in the next interview. I just like solid facts, even though they are sometimes not nice.
- dpark 10y agoIt's not necessarily about "bad style". It's possible to share legitimate reasons for leaving a company if asked in an interview, but you have to be careful. It's really bad to turn it into a time to badmouth another company. It is frankly risky to say anything bad about a previous company, because even something minor like, "management micromanaged too much" could be interpreted by a cynical interviewer as "this person doesn't get anything done and whines when someone asks him what he's doing with his time." But even a good interviewer will take it as a bad sign if you spend five minutes enumerating everything you hate about your previous/current employer.
- azernik 10y agoLet A Hundred Flowers Bloom.
- lbhnact 10y agoAs a former student of Chinese history, this comment is right on target. "Let a hundred schools of thought contend" Ah, how history repeats itself.
- pandybar 10y agoWe still have a lot to `learn ` from the great chairman.
- chmike 10y agoCould you please explain what it means ?
- joshuacc 10y agoIt's a reference to the Maoist Hundred Flowers Campaign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign The short version is that Mao encouraged people to openly express non-communist political philosophies and then killed or imprisoned those who had done so.
- Renegades 10y agoFirst google result, and it certainly has similarities to the situation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- wyldfire 10y agoIt refers to the Hundred Flowers Campaign in China. Excerpt from the wikipedia article [1]: > The first part of the phrase is often remembered as "let a hundred flowers bloom". It is used to refer to an orchestrated campaign to flush out dissidents by encouraging them to show themselves as critical of the regime, and then subsequently imprison them. This view is supported by authors Clive James and Jung Chang, who posit that the campaign was, from the start, a ruse intended to expose rightists and counter-revolutionaries, and that Mao Zedong persecuted those whose views were different from the party's. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign
- 0xmohit 10y ago> Bezos wrote an email encouraging people to contact him directly if they suffered abuse. > Apparently if you actually try it, you get fired Apparently, firing ensures that there is no further "abuse".
- kevindong 10y agoStrictly speaking, that is true.
- Aelinsaar 10y ago"Death solves all problems." -Stalin
- hartator 10y agoProbem solved.
- 00098345 10y agoOperation success; patient died.
- masklinn 10y agoThe white-collar version of "beatings will continue until morale improves"?
- tympaniplayer 10y agoMore like "Beheadings will continue until morale improves."
- kamaal 10y ago>>Bezos wrote an email encouraging people to contact him directly if they suffered abuse. That is to identify dissenters so that they can be eliminated before they create some damage in the news. Not to solve any of their problems. Whistle blowing never works. Its a mechanism to identify dissenters and eliminate them.
- CaptSpify 10y ago*non-anonymous whistle-blowing
- nickpsecurity 10y agoExactly. I exclusively encourage anonymous, evidence-based whistleblowing to reduce odds of damage to whistleblower. It's a ridiculous notion that whistleblower should suffer negative consequences if it's illegal or harmful activity they're revealing. Let those doing the harms own up to it.
- dllthomas 10y agoTreating whistle-blowers well can be a commitment device.
- CyberDildonics 10y agoSounds more profitable than quitting.