Silicon Valley Work Environments — Better Than Sweatshops?: "I Do Not Know One Person Who Is Happy at Amazon"

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com (Photo by James
Duncan Davidson)

"Amazon is an amazing company.
As long as you don't work here."

Several insiders at Amazon describe the company's bizarre and sometimes exploitative workplace culture.

By Hamilton Nolan

"Everyone is so tired, all the time"

I've been with Amazon for a little over a year and you can count my experience in the Ugly category.

This soulless machine looks down on employee work-life balance as "weak" and "uncommitted to the customer." I've got to hand it to them though. Amazon does put the customer first. Many other huge corporations make the same claim, but this company backs it up. The problem is that it comes at the expense of the employees, their health and their families. I've heard that the average employment of an Amazon corporate staffer is less than a year and a half. I am not sure if that is true, but it would not surprise me at all.

Think about how expensive it must be (financially and to their reputation, which are not so different in the long term) to lose hard-working, smart people at such a frequency. Trust, morale and institutional knowledge erode every day, only to be buoyed by the wide-eyed n00bs who start in their place. It is not long until those people get tired too, and so it goes. That approach to employee replacement cannot go forever. It is only a matter of time until the tech world runs out of smart people who believe it will be "different for me." (My theory: they bank on candidates from other countries who are not only unaware of the rumours, but who see the compensation as a windfall and don't care about the consequences.)

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