Disclosure: I worked at Amazon 97-01 in Operations. Amazon’s culture, when I worked there was firm but fair. It was largely manual labour with a veneer of tec

Disclosure: I worked at Amazon 97-01 in Operations. Amazon’s culture, when I worked there was firm but fair. It was largely manual labour with a veneer of technology on top that has grown thicker over time. I hired and fired countless people. In my opinion, the bifurcated culture at Amazon found on Glassdoor contrasts Amazon Operations with Amazon Corporate white collar jobs. I believe it stems from the early days of the company. Priorities were: 1)Customer ecstasy, get the orders out the door accurately. 2)”Average Up” with every single new hire. Those two priories left little(read none) capacity for coaching, development, or even diplomatic warnings/terminations. There would be a large pool of ex-Amazon folks who were involuntarily terminated for being unable, unwilling to meet a minimum standard. And there would be an even larger pool of general population who look at Amazon, and Jeff in particular, as a money machine. The reality is that Amazon is far more like McDonalds than Google from the perspective of Amazon workers in Operations. Profit per Amazon Operations employee is exceptionally low. I think it’s more accurate to describe and view Amazon as a basket of companies. Working AWS or Alexa is a completely different beast from working as a picker in an Amazon warehouse. But they are conveniently, and intentionally, confused and conflated to portray Amazon poorly when comparing Amazon Operations to a peer like UPS, DHL, or FedEx would probably be more fair and relevant. However, it would appear that the unintended consequences of focusing only on the customer and “averaging up” with hiring at the expense of all else has had lasting effects on culture and perception. Just my 0.02c