Reacting to the New York Times investigation report on the world's most valuable online retail major, many Amazonians came down heavily condemning the report. New York Times website is flooded with comments from employees at Amazon.
It's estimated that over 4,000 comments were posted on nytimes.com in addition to other sites such as Reddit and Hacker News carrying the comments from Amazonians.
Many workers express their concern about the way the report was doing damage to Amazon's image. Amazon's founder and CEO Jeff Bezos also wrote a letter addressing his employees.
In his letter to the staff, Bezos said that he wouldn't tolerate the "shockingly callous management practices" described in the report. Bezos also asked his employees to consult him immediately as soon as they heard of abuses.
If one could go through the numerous comments posted on a workplace review website Glassdoor, several comments were mixed with some favoring the company and some agreeing on few facts reported in the New York Times article.
The 7,000-word article incorporated views and experiences of about 100 employees, who were interviewed by the publication. According to the report, a majority of employees say that senior managers try to put down the others' opinions, suggestions or ideas in meetings.
In addition to this, an internally available phone directory advises employees on how to send information about their colleagues secretly. If employees are identified to be suffering from illness such as cancer, miscarriages or other chronic diseases, they would be fired as normal as anyone who doesn't meet the company's standards.
The New York Times article on Amazon received the most viewed story among other news items. This article is also subject to many comments and structural criticism as well.
For instance, Jeff Jarvis, an author and a professor in Journalism, opined that the article lacked balance. In his post, Professor Jarvis criticized the article and said that The Times should have presented enough conflicting information enabling readers to weigh the evidence and decide for themselves whether Amazon is hell in Seattle.
While pointing out a point mentioned in the report, Nick Ciubotariu, an existing employee at Amazon, said that he never saw any employee cry during the office hours. Ciubotariu is head of infrastructure development at Amazon. He further stated: "No one tells me to work nights, No one makes me answer emails at night. No one texts me to ask why emails aren't answered.
On the other hand, Amazon's media representative said: "While we generally don't comment on individual news stories, we quickly saw current Amazon employees react."
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