Following a damning report on Amazon’s workplace culture, many people are questioning whether it’s ethical to keep buying from the mega-retailer. But in comments on our article about Amazon, some Gizmodians don’t sound surprised about the conditions — they’d experienced the same. Tell us about your workplace horrors.
I was struck by reader responses today on Jeff Bezos’ email to his employees in the wake of the New York Times article. As Adam Clark-Estes points out, Bezos’ statement came across as basically telling his employees to fall in line or GTFO. While there’s a lot of outraged commentary about the alleged conditions at Amazon—crying employees, emails and texts coming in after midnight, yearly “social Darwinism” culls of staff who didn’t cut it, a system to rat out and report your fellows—some of you greeted these revelations with a resounding “meh.”
“What job isn’t soul crushing?” writes commenter astrocramp, who goes on to outline their own tough schedule and poor managerial interactions. Is Amazon really that much of an outlier, or just big and shiny enough to serve as an apt target?
Do the conditions described by the Times strike you as “bruising,” or is this par for the course in tech and other industries? If Amazon’s ethos sounded familiar to you, describe what you’ve endured in the comments. And have some cats hugging, in advance:
Top image: Horrible Bosses