Amazon's dirty laundry smells not really different

So, it is the turn of Amazon in the New York Times. There's the article, the response by Mr. Bezos, and all web publications have their say.

So, what's going on?

Nothing you won't find in other companies in the online world, although the anonymous feedback feature, which might warrant the name InstaSnitch, is a first for the blogster.

Why do we claim "nothing you won't find elsewhere"?

Having worked in the brave new online/software world, as employee #2 in one company and employee #5000 or so in another, having slugged as a contractor and as a nicely paid stock optioned permanent employee, having been a lowly individual contributor and a manager, the details of Amazon are interesting but - again - nothing is new.

If you seriously believe that -- sorry for singling out you guys -- Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft are fundamentally different from Amazon, you might want to re-think.

Amazon's parental leave policy sucks for sure, the absence of a free lunch may sound like punishment, and telling an employee who is undergoing cancer treatment that she does not perform as expected is certainly callous.

But unique, none of this is.

Culling employees?

Seen it done two decades ago via quarterly performance reviews (almost everybody was on annual then).

80 hour weeks?

Done them myself.

Telephone conferences at 2 am?

Done.

The myth of the startup that never grew up?

A myth, bunk.

But here is the rub. If you read some of our earlier posts on what it is like to work in the IT  industry, you have read about the coping mechanisms employees come up with.

We just outline them here in a few sentences
Long work hours were often achieved by super long lunch breaks during which people did the basic things of life, like go shopping, get that haircut, buy a car.
A friend couple had a baby, and the friend could not do much weekend work because the newborn had all sorts of health issues -- well, the baby was in perfect health, but the parent wanted to stay healthy and get out of mandatory weekend work, so yeah.
The 2 am telephone conferences were really great -- after the first one, where the blogster was the only dumbass on the line and realized how that scheme worked.
If you want to see how to become a super respected manager by using management through email forwarding, find that post.
Departments in a large company can feel like different companies -- even Amazon seems to have some "slower" departments. You will find atrocious departments at, say, Apple just as you will find nice ones.

A caveat
Corporate "surveillance technology", aka. big data and the merging of previously siloed communications, has progressed, so some of the time tested coping mechanisms are likely to lose some efficiency, and this may well be the case at Amazon.

The financial rewards
The NYT does not talk much about the compensation of office workers at Amazon but does mention that some middle managers get a second salary's worth of dough out of stocks.
The point we are trying to make is this: the blogster and many others will work 80 hours a week for a year or so if the price tag is right.
So, Amazon, if "you" read this: pay me a 250 K a year, and I'll sign up for a year at 70 hours.

The real Amazon scandal is in the shipping centers and in delivery
That's where the minimum wage jobs are. That's where the time you spend going through security is not counted as work hours. That's where the sick are not put on a performance plan but chucked like used coffee cups.

Don't expect the world of Mr. Bezos
Look folks, the man is human. Don't demonize him -- at least not until he throws a hissy fit like Boss of My Big Company when the previously docile employees dragged the company before a judge in a class action lawsuit over unpaid overtime (the issue of exempt and non-exempt employees).
I don't know him, and the blue collar issues make me hesitant to ascribe only the best of motives, but here is one thing you find over and over in successful companies: they tend to attract ruthlessly ambitious second or third line managers who tend to make a relentless atmosphere more gruesome as it already is.