This post by Mark Judge at Chronicle may give you a new perspective on Amazon, the Washington Post, Mark Judge, or all three. Here’s a snippet:
At Amazon, things are very tightly organized. You are given a uniform, training, and very clear guidelines. There is a point system that penalizes you if you are late or absent. You get a point for arriving late or leaving early, even on your 30-minute lunch break. If you hit eight points you’re gone. You are expected to perform with efficiency.
It was reported that Bezos doesn’t mind firing a lot of workers because if they are there too long, the thinking goes, they get complacent. Bezos believes that workers who have been at the company too long get comfortable and their productivity declines. Amazon’s reported goal is to filter out the bottom 6 percent of performers to avoid a “march to mediocrity.”
The number of people who quit or are fired each year at Amazon is higher than the total employment at the company. Seventy percent of those hired leave within 90 days. This is double the turnover rate for similar employers and it costs Amazon an estimated $8 billion every year. When I worked at Amazon, there was a crazy dual emphasis on both working you to death and trying to make sure you didn’t quit.
That sounds remarkably like the workload of a Japanese salaryman and I can’t help but wonder if it is not deliberate. Consider this:
(Extracted from Amazon’s web site.) Mr. Judge has mentioned the high turnover rate at Amazon. I can’t help but wonder if kar?shi (death from overwork) is a phenomenon there. I suspect not.
His main point in the piece is that both Amazon and the post should be reformed by treating Amazon employees the way they treat Post employees and Post employees the way Amazon employees are treated which sounds remarkably vindictive to Post employees to me.
“Bezos doesn’t mind firing a lot of workers because if they are there too long, the thinking goes, they get complacent”
My understanding is that it’s not Bezos or Amazon’s hiring or retention philosophy at all. The key assumption Amazon makes is that the “hiring process” of resumes and interviews is a limited indicator if someone is a good hire; the incentives are to pad resumes and interviews can be practiced, technical aptitude can be faked by memorization. So instead, Amazon has a low “initial” hiring bar, and treats the first two years as glorified probation, and if one impresses / survives those 2 years, then Amazon considers the employee a keeper.
If one has ever seen Amazon’s interview process, compensation structure for new employees and existing employees, it supports what I stated. Also, it shows in Amazon’s turnover rate, which is very high in the first two years (~50%), but much lower after that.
I don’t know why this post referred to Amazon’s employees ethnic composition; its similar to the composition of most technology companies — including ones with relatively good work-life balance, like Microsoft or Google.
Its important to note my observations pertain to the “white collar” part of Amazon and not the “blue collar” part of Amazon.
I think Bezos is a jerk, but he is a successful one so what do I know. As an aside, there have been a number of articles written about the Japanese salary man lately noting that their hours remain long but productivity is way down. Stories about how a lot of them have make work jobs and mostly sit and read. Amazon is more like Japan of the 70s and 80s. I looked and Amazon has not made the numbers publicly available but I would bet that a lot of those Asian workers are first or second generation immigrants.
Steve
Bezos is a jerk. But everyone who has done something significant in technology (and probably in business) is a jerk.
Jobs, Gates, Musk, Zuckerberg, Kalenick, all jerks. Just watch / read the biopics, biographies about them.
Maybe there’s a truth that a willingness to run over people in pursuit of a goal is fundamental to achieving things that are societally significant.
“Amazon has not made the numbers publicly available but I would bet that a lot of those Asian workers are first or second generation immigrants.”
The statement is true, but it has no meaning. Most Asian Americans are first and second generation, as is practically anyone who isn’t “White” or “African-American”. In 1970, the country was 98% “White” or “African-American” vs 74% in 2020.
Because there may be less pushback on the abusive practices by Amazon Mr. Judge describes on the part of recent Asian immigrants than among other groups.
BTW when I was in Germany work was like being in elementary school. When it was time to start work a bell rang; at the end of the day a bell rang. By the time the echoes had died down the only people left in the building were Americans and Brits. Maybe things are different in Germany now but I doubt it.
That highlights a pet peeve of mine. Encouraging Hispanics to think of themselves as anything but white is divisive, IMO intentionally and cynically so. If the Irish, Italians, Greeks, etc. had been encouraged to think of themselves as non-white, the U. S. would not have been 98% white or black in 1970.
BTW I spent much of my teenage years (12-20) among Asian-Americans, mostly Nisei and Koreans.
“there may be less pushback on the abusive practices by Amazon Mr. Judge describes on the part of recent Asian immigrants”
That’s just a stereotype. I have seen plenty of first gen / second gen Asian immigrants quit or refuse to join Amazon due to a perceived lack of work / life balance.
A second objection is the categorization in those reports is misleading. Asian is anyone from the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. The “Japanese salaryman” concept is applicable to East Asian Confucian cultures (Chinese, Korean, Japanese) which is a substantial but minority portion of Asians in the tech industry.
“But everyone who has done something significant in technology (and probably in business) is a jerk.”
I think that is a false stereotype. Look at Grant’s work from Wharton. Some CEOs and leaders in general are jerks but the majority are decent people concerned about employee welfare. They dont really enjoy firing people and on an interpersonal level they are decent people. They dont have trouble finding people who want to work with or for them. Note, that doesnt mean they are pushovers. They still need to be able to fire people who need firing and make business assessments that might be bad for some groups of employees.
Steve
Bezos isn’t a “CEO” or “Leader”. He’s a founder, which is different.
I don’t consider most CEO’s to have done something societally significant — they are important, but they manage something that already pre-existed. By “societally significant”, I mean building an organization that is one of the largest in the world; or introducing or popularize things that become household terms. Like “Cloud Computing”, “Smartphone”, “PC”, “electric cars”, “starlink”.
It goes back to the point. Being a jerk and squeezing every drop out of your employees to squeeze 2% more profit in say the shampoo business is pointless. Getting everything out of your employees to do something that changes out of the world and people consider impossible is a lot more acceptable as long employees know what they signed up for.
Like i saw a job posting for starlink/SpaceX pre-pandemic. It basically said, “the expectation of this position is you won’t mind or relish doing overtime to get the job done, don’t apply if that isn’t you.” I thought it was a huge request; but given what they were trying to do, its understandable.