What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon(medium.com) |
What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon(medium.com) |
It doesn't matter. If the devil tells the truth, it's still the truth.
And in this case, if Mr. Olsen did in fact get caught by such an investigation, he may be significantly biased against Amazon. That does not automatically make what he says untrue, but it does increase suspicion that it may not be the straight story.
Jay Carney did an excellent job debunking it; however, it's much like debunking a Buzzfeed article. You might come out ahead logically, but that isn't what people are going to be talking about. The NYT isn't going for truth, they need people to read their newspaper, and then talk about it so they decided to write a bad article about Amazon, and then they found the "sources" for it.
I canceled my NYTimes subscription last year because it has become increasingly frustrating to read, especially their "women in tech" articles. For example, their recent "What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech"[0] op-ed blames nerd male culture for making women uncomfortable, and argues for a more neutral environment with no Star Wars posters or tech magazines or nerdy t-shirts...
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/what-really...
http://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-fo...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10123456 ( https://medium.com/@jcheiffetz/i-had-a-baby-and-cancer-when-... )
This response from Amazon continues to amaze me - first a post from Bezos that quoted an employee's anecdotal experiences and makes the (totally absurd) claim that Bezos doesn't know what life is like working there.
Then they have a post (http://recode.net/2015/09/25/why-i-work-for-amazon-a-respons...) from a Senior VP who doesn't have the same experience as someone who isn't a Senior VP.
Now they are digging up dirt on employees to paint them with a bad brush. First, the person with the killer quote should have been removed, no question. Huge bias.
But the second and third people? Nothing in the piece is wrong - they could have been strafed with aggressive language and/or they could have been berated in their reviews. Look at the wording:
All three included positive feedback on strengths as well as thoughts on areas of improvement.
Far from a “strafing,” even the areas for improvement written by her colleagues contained
language like: “It has been a pleasure working with Elizabeth.”
The third example is similarly vague/wrong: "Chris Brucia, who recalls how he was berated in his performance review before being promoted, also was given a written review... Mr. Brucia was given exceptionally high ratings and then promoted to a senior position." That doesn't mean he wasn't berated - it could have been overly aggressive/wrong (and you cannot dispute ANY claims written in the feedback, all you can do is complain to your manager), just because it ended on a good note doesn't make it less hurtful.
But what this really shows is that Amazon is as ruthless as ever. They WILL go after you, they will dig up dirt on you, and they will terrify you into never speaking out. If you are a former employee (as I am), you know the stories are very very true, and NEVER speak out publicly.
When the story came out, we knew it misrepresented Amazon.
glassdoor has spelled this out for a long time but its amusing that amazon doesn't admit they'll change.
my thinking is: a company that relishes in frugality = your machine your monitors and your coffee will suck, you will never get promoted, stack rank Plus all this bs about suing via nda and indebtedness around relo assistance etc sounds like the suck .. amazon is downright hostile
http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/using-data-...
At the very least the reporters could have checked Glassdoor and seen that employees actually rate Amazon fairly well.
How should companies interact with the press today in order to avoid an outcome like the original NYT article?
I assume by this they mean managers can see who left feedback.
Jay Carney Rebuts New York Times Article About Amazon's Work Culture, perhaps?
Am I the only one tired of click-bait titles that don't tell you anything about the article? Had to read the comments here to understand what the article was about and decide if it was worth reading.
All it takes is 4 extra words to give the title context:
> What The New York Times Didn’t Tell You [about working at Amazon]
Note how they don't really deny or refute the text of original article but just go full on to personally attack a person to discredit him.
My entirely baseless suspicion is that unlike many other tech companies, Amazon is a direct competitor in its ability to drive information to their customers through their proprietary devices and channels, and can also slowly chip away at the newspaper's clout with Amazon ratings for books displacing the Times' bestseller list, for example. Instead of reading Times' reviews of books, films, products, and so on, a customer might consider Amazon's 5-star review system to be enough for them.
Amazon's work culture is hardly unique in corporate America, especially among the tech industry. The New York Times knew that they would make an adversary with that piece. They chose their target carefully.
i don't think the article was entirely fair, but amazon has some deep flaws. There was a pastebin on reddit by a few that was much more accurate.
I do think in the right situation I would consider working there again. It really is a minefield though.
I don't doubt that New York Times purposely misrepresented or omitted facts to make this story. Their stories tend to be very agenda driven and the facts tend to be subservient to the narrative, a policy which is deemed acceptable because it "starts a conversation" or the story is "probably true for someone". This is typical of the left wing.
However, I did in fact have an absolutely awful experience at Amazon, in AWS specifically. It really is an awful place to work where management is entirely ego driven and in cover your ass mode 24/7 to the supreme detriment of everyone involved. Subordinates are seen as drones who should work without appreciation or thought for self. And the idea that subordinates are not drones is considered un-Amazonian.
I did in fact witness someone cry at their desk. Well, they didn't cry, it was more like they were in an emotionally precarious daze after being berated for 30 minutes straight by a manager who only did it to make himself feel better about his own worries about the project.
This is hardly an issue isolated to "left wing" media.
"This is typical of the left wing."
Can at best undermine whatever point you are trying to make.
Journalists lying to support a narrative is an extremely damaging trend that has taken hold on the left and it should be pointed out whenever it happens.
This of course happens on the right but it is not moralized or justified in the same way.
My bosses were excellent and cared deeply about my personal and professional development. I never got the impression that I was viewed as a drone. I have nothing but respect for the members of upper management that I met, who came off as smart, driven, and truly passionate about their work.
I had worked at a few other companies before joining Amazon, and what I found most refreshing was that, even when I was an SDEI, my opinion about the direction of the team and the projects we were working on was sought and valued. I had never experienced that before at previous employers, where I was very much a "drone".
However, AWS does promote a blunt culture where direct feedback is encouraged. Having never been encouraged at previous employers to provide thoughts on high level design and strategic roadmap decisions before, the ideas I would present would often times be suboptimal, and a senior dev would be quick to point out the flaws in my approach. Let me be clear, however, that it was always the IDEA that was attacked and never ME, personally. I found this approach incredibly helpful in my journey to become a better software engineer. I got along incredibly well with my colleagues and at no point did I ever not feel like a respected and valued member of the team.
I am willing to concede that I was fortunate to have very good direct managers during my time at AWS, and while members of other teams around me also reported similar contentment when I talked to them, I did notice a team or two whose direct managers did not seem up to the task. I firmly believe your experience with a company is at least 80% your direct manager, and if I was reporting to one of those managers that I did not respect I would probably be telling a different story.
This is all to say, I believe you when you say you had a terrible experience, but I wanted to balance your negative anecdote with my positive one.
Would have been great if things had worked out differently because the project I was working on was extremely cool.
Was it hard work? Check. 10-12hr days were my norm. They still are, now I'm a startup.
Is it a polarising workplace? Check. That internal culture is a strong flavour. And like many strong flavours, you'll either love it or hate it.
If I wasn't building something I felt compelled to create, I'd go back there in a heartbeat.
>“Of course it is....These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you’ve been reading the paper with your eyes closed.” — New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent in a July 25, 2004 column which appeared under a headline asking, “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?” [0]
>Some conservative critics of the media say liberal bias exists within a wide variety of media channels, especially within the "Main Stream Media", including network news shows of CBS, ABC, and NBC, cable channels CNN, MSNBC and the former Current TV, as well as major newspapers, news-wires, and radio outlets, especially CBS News, Newsweek, and The New York Times. [1]
[0] http://archive.mrc.org/biasbasics/biasbasics2.asp
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias_in_the_United_State...
E:
So I'm being downvoted for pointing out that a liberal newspaper calls itself liberal? Next thing I know I'll be getting downvoted for calling Trump a right-wing presidential candidate.
Amazon: what Carney just posted was very inappropriate. I am completely amazed you did this (assuming it was done with approval at the company level). You should be aware that you will start having serious problems hiring and retaining quality employees if you post things like this about your employees.
Step 1: start by bringing up something negative about a person that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the issue at hand.
Okay, so the guy resigned because he did something bad. How does that make what he experienced while there not true? Oh, that's right, it doesn't. And the admission of fraud isn't a "crucial piece of context." You and I both know that. Unfortunately, you think the reader is dumb enough not to know it.
Step 2: Assert statements in the form of a question so that you can deny every making the assertion.
"Did Ms. Kantor’s editors at the Times ask her whether Mr. Olson might have an axe to grind?" Here, we don't actually assert that Mr. Olson has an axe to grind. We don't assert he's purposely lying to get revenge. We just highly insinuate it and make the reader believe it by putting it in question form.
This is an obvious attempt at character assassination and to cast doubt in the minds of the reader without actually saying he was lying.
If Mr. Olson is lying - sue him. You're within your rights to do that. But you're not suing him. Or the Times.
So, what's the point of this? Propaganda. And sleazy propaganda at that.
[Edit: Not only it smells of whitewashing, but it also looks deceptive.
And PR? Seriously? Not only it's a sleazy piece, but Amazon chose the worst possible position to convey the message. Get some engineer, accountant, designer, heck, get the HR intern who just joined 2 weeks ago to talk about this.
It would have more credibility than a PR person who's been in the company for less than one year.]
https://medium.com/@NYTimesComm/dean-baquet-responds-to-jay-...
> In response to your posting on Medium this morning, I want to reiterate my support for our story about Amazon’s culture. In your posting — as well as in a series of recent email exchanges with me — you contested the article’s assertion that many employees found Amazon a tough place to work.
Specifically, he says had they known Olson had a conflict, they would have disclosed it. But the NYT asserts that Mr. Olson never disclosed such allegations, nor does he admit to them now.
> Olson described conflict and turmoil in his group and a revolving series of bosses, and acknowledged that he didn’t last there. He disputes Amazon’s account of his departure, though. He told us today that his division was overwhelmed and had difficulty meeting its marketing commitments to publishers; he said he and others in the division could not keep up. But he said he was never confronted with allegations of personally fraudulent conduct or falsifying records, nor did he admit to that. If there were criminal charges against him, or some formal accusation of wrongdoing, we would certainly consider that. If we had known his status was contested, we would have said so.
edit: re-reading Carney's statement, it seems pretty unequivocal: "An investigation revealed [Olson] had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately" The NYT is likewise unequivocal: "[Olson] said he was never confronted with allegations of personally fraudulent conduct or falsifying records"
Well, only Amazon has the time-stamped records that could prove who is lying here. It was a questionable tactic for Carney to start his response with such a bold and salacious allegation against someone who constituted a single quote in the NYT's story...assuming that Carney is right (because it's a complete unmitigated disaster if he isn't) now it seems he's going to have to go even more salacious, perhaps even post the actual pertinent records online.
How was this mudfest good for Amazon's image, again? And so late after the original story and Bezos's (pretty decent) response?
Together with the inappropriate disclosure of performance reviews, this statement just makes me think that Amazon probably has a culture of defrauding vendors, and usually gets away with it, but sometimes has to blame a junior hire to save face when caught.
But after looking at Jay Carney's post, I'm thinking that that BI's Biz Carson might have nailed it. Even if the premium pay channel doesn't exist yet ... the temptation to create it is clearly there
http://www.businessinsider.com/medium-pr-newswire-revisited-...
The most damning claim of the NYT article that isn't addressed here is the lack of caring and support for people on parental leave, FMLA, and people going through major health issues (cancer, stillborn child). If the authors embellished on those claims then that would actually hurt the original article.
Some comments:
> Chris Brucia, who recalls how he was berated in his performance review before being promoted, also was given a written review. Had the Times asked about this, we would have shared what it said.
Amazon is willing to "share" with the press the contents of performance reviews of its employees? That's bad (worse than what was in the article).
> Dina Vaccari, the former employee who is quoted saying she didn’t sleep for four days straight to illustrate just how hard Amazon forces people to work, posted her own response to the article. Here’s what she said: "Allow me to be clear: The hours I put in at Amazon were my choice."
That's ridiculous and meaningless; if you choose to not sleep for 4 days in order to carry out your job, isn't it obvious the expectations were set too high, and work/life balance is regarded as irrelevant, as a company policy (or lack thereof)?
> When there are two sides of a story, a reader deserves to know them both.
Well, ok (in general; sometimes there's no "other side"; creationism is not "another side" to the story of evolution, for example). But in this case, the "other side" should be Amazon employees doing normal hours and performing spectacularly, not the voice of management -- as rendered by someone who used to be the Mother of All Spin Doctors!
> The next time you see a sensationalistic quote in the Times (...) you might wonder whether there’s a crucial piece of context or backstory missing — like admission of fraud
That's a cheap, defensive shot; what it really says is you're hurt; and that you'd probably be less hurt if there was not a lot of truth to the original article.
That said, it sounds like NYT (a newspaper of record, btw) did more than reasonable selective reporting, to evoke certain feelings in the readers, to get clicks, to start a conversation, or what the reason may be. And it's lousy to see this in modern news reporting. Even the respectable publications err on the side of sensationalism, and it's notoriously hard to get unbiased information as a reader.
Where can someone go to read unbiased, well-researched, both-sides-of-the-story news?
I personally think we're spoilt for choice. Just bear in mind everyone, everywhere has an inherent bias. Some more so that others.
I read these to get what I feel is a well rounded opinion http://america.aljazeera.com/ http://www.bbc.com/news
Al Jazeera, The Economist, Bloomberg, and Quartz have well-researched and relevant stories but they usually come with a bias.
I think we should consider the possibility that this post will be more effective at intimidating current and former Amazon employees into silence, rather than persuading NYT readers.
Amazon: Your current employees had already written much better responses than this within 48 hours of the NYT article coming out. What is this drivel supposed to accomplish? Why is PR rant hosted on Medium? Why are you exposing old employee personnel records? Why are you putting political operatives like Carney in charge of your PR?
Get it together guys. The NYT article is ancient history now and didn't merit further response. It was an obvious hit piece but your reaction has been quite poor.
This piece reads exactly like an oppo-research piece that you would use as a hatchet-job on a political opponent. I had to check twice to ensure that this was not some kind of satire (it is getting harder for me to tell these days). It goes into great detail making personal attacks against the "complainers" while doing nothing to address the substantive allegations made by the articles.
So 1) yes there is a "snitch" tool that amazon encourages employees to use 2) the people identified have all quit after complaining of excessive work one way or another 3) when the initial story came out Almighty Leader Jeff even wrote a memo "please be more considerate" 4) PR flunky now makes sleazy attacks on ex-employees to blunt the negative perceptions.
Updated to add- You want an unsubstantiated ad-hominem here you go: "Jay Carney was encouraged to quit his white-house posting because of his incompetence. Also how seriously can you take a PR guy with the last name of 'Carney'? He had to go!"
Even if that is true it was a really ham handed way of doing it. The only people this appeals to are ones that already like Amazon. The ones on the fence look at it and see "hey they drug out why this was a bad person" and think that they don't want to be on the receiving end of that and thus turn into ones that aren't inclined to work for them.
Just because it's in a major newspaper, don't believe reporting is evenly balanced or without an agenda.
When I compare the credibility between the NYT and Amazon's chief PR flack, who does not hesitate to share internals from personnel records in order to smear former employees then I know who gets my vote.
Most certainly not Mister Carney, who I think can be rightfully described as a paid liar.
And I don't mean to imply that even the paper of record is free from problems (remember Jayson Blair?)
[edited for clarity]
You're going to go through hell working for them, and you're going to go through hell if you speak out after you leave. Now, they might think this is a winning strategy for them, but in fact the logical conclusion for potential hires is -- stay away from Amazon, because you'll hate it, and then they will ruin your reputation if you speak out. Which is really helpful for everyone else who's hiring right now, because intelligent people paranoid about their reputation will steer clear of any potential Amazon interviews.
Their PR guy doesn't understand that he just cost his employer an entire generation of talented engineers. Oh well, this is great for everyone else.
Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10065243 (424 comments)
Inside Amazon
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10070115 (98 comments)
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos defends company's workplace culture
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10072389 (73 comments)
My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10083475 (331 comments)
A spin doctor doing his best to protect the people that pay him. Pay this article no mind; unrelated assaults on a source's character have no bearing on already established facts.
If he admitted it and resigned over it, sounds like a pretty cut and dried case that he did it. Screw his reputation, and screw him. Maybe if this stuff was made public more often so that misbehaving executives got more punishment than a tiny ass fine and a huge sum of money, we'd have less of a crony-capitalist system going on these days.
Fraud may have been the outlier case here: he's also outing reviews of other people whose opinions he/his employers don't like. That's one way to deal with whistle blowers, and scare the rest of the herd: don't mess with us - we've got your files, and we ain't afraid to put them on Medium.
- I have zero problem with a company releasing info pertaining the character of an employee.
- If you're an employee doing your job honestly, you shouldn't either.
Back to the Amazon thing you're discussing, while I'm sure it's a high pressure workplace that isn't suited for everyone, the Times piece was as sensationalized if not moreso than the rebuff here. The rebuff I'm sure is biased to the company. As with most things, the truth isn't on either side, it's somewhere in the middle, though frankly the matter of fact stating and the clear context of the Amazon rebuff does ring true-r to me, but that's only IMHO.
Two months after Bezos' internal memo is "leaked" to the press saying that the Amazon in the NYT peice isn't the Amazon he knows, and that employees should email him directly if something like that happens. Now it's time for the offensive. Apparently two months is the amount of time you no longer have to pretend to care about work conditions, and go back to reputation.
This medium piece attacks the character of the NYT's source, which is comedy gold coming from someone who was paid to be a lying weaselly bastard, performing active disservice to the citizenry.
I started reading and got halfway through and went back to see who the author was and stopped at that point.
The one guy who doesn't have a shred of credibility attacking sources as less than credible? Unreal.
As to sharing the reason an employee resigned from the the company, I don't think an employee's conduct while at a company is confidential, and if they are a strongly biased source, then the NYT needs to know that, and then adjust their reporting accordingly.
* NYT response: https://medium.com/@NYTimesComm/dean-baquet-responds-to-jay-...
>But I think if you're fired for fraud
Sure, but this is only a claim that Amazon/Carney have made. They have presented zero evidence for the claim.
Also, Amazon/Carney released information about other employees that they have not claimed committed fraud (nor have they claimed any wrongdoing by those individuals).
The people named in the article and refuted by Amazon put their personal story a public story.
If someone "slanders" a business it can't reply with evidence? Must the company say it is a personal matter that we can't disclose, which reads they are guilty and don't want the truth to come out?
End of Devil's Advocate
Seems like they were making a statement of if you talk will will fully disclose our information to refute what you said. I think this was hurting Amazon so much that they are willing to payout the "out of court settlement" and "set the record straight."
The fact that it was also published on medium by the head of PR baffles me - why are they aiming this refutation at the tech crowd that would probably see through this cover-piece pretty easily, instead of getting it into a high-readership, Amazon consumer oriented publication? Poorly planned and executed all around, regardless of legality.
Amazon, like most employer, can fire at-will. And Amazon has the money and lawyers to fight long and hard ( unlike most ex-employees ).
This is a pure ad hominem attack that has nothing to do with the question at hand:
how good or bad is amazon as a place to work?
What would the response be if Jay had casually outted someone as transgender or gay?
"Back when Mr. O. was a woman before the sex change operation, ...."
or
"When Mr. O. came out as gay, ..."
Neither statement has anything to do with the issue of how Amazon is as a work place.
But Jay's decision to reveal unsubstantiated accusations in a public forum designed to sabotage an ex-employee's future earning potential says a lot.
I'd say the real problem is, honestly, they didn't reply with evidence. If they claimed someone engaged in fraud, and believed they had a case, they'd take them to court and set an example.
If they have a software feedback tool with largely positive feedback, they'd show data showing it was an anomaly.
Etc.
They aren't showing evidence so much as providing anecdotes of their own and if that is the strongest defense they have by a top-level journalist wrangler...
Well, honestly, it makes it pretty clear Amazon's position is:
A) We can't prove this is bullshit. We know it but we hope you don't.
B) If you fuck with us, we'll fuck you right back.
That isn't likely to be an effective strategy but they chose it nevertheless.
What evidence did the business present here? All that has been made are claims. I have not seen any internal investigation or performance report.
>Seems like they were making a statement of if you talk [we?] will fully disclose our information to refute what you said.
They don't seem to be making that statement.
The information Amazon has was not fully disclosed, but selectively sampled and leaked. If Amazon was serious about full disclosure, they would release all the records they are using as evidence.
Would it not work for Amazon to come out with more of a "Look, it's a difficult business and our folks work incredibly hard. Sometimes it might get a little out of hand. We want to make sure all of our employees are healthy and treated with respect while fulfilling Amazon's mission of delighting customers around the world. We are constantly looking at our practices and the work environment at Amazon and will continue making improvements as we see fit. We don't think the environment portrayed by the Times article is accurate but it has prompted us to work even harder to make Amazon the best place to work."
Even with breaking news, journalistic standards would encourage working hard to uncover any bias in a key source.
- then scrolled down to see Jay Carney's bio: "Senior Vice President for Global Corporate Affairs at Amazon. Previously, he served as White House Press Secretary and spent 20 years as a reporter for TIME."
It's also standard in newspaper opinion pieces to put the bio at the end.
I actually prefer it -- as a game -- to guess who writes the author's paychecks as I'm reading.
I'd say your version would have gone over better and/or providing actual evidence rather than more anecdotes.
> The next time you see a sensationalistic quote in the Times like “nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk”, you might wonder whether there’s a crucial piece of context or backstory missing — like admission of fraud — and whether the Times somehow decided it just wasn’t important to check.
Mr Carney is basically saying when you read an interesting article in the NYT, you should assume that they are withholding information. Ironically, this is exactly what the press accused him of doing not so long ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKcDUi1-lbA
You know what Jay? I'll do my own trust and fear evaluations, thank you very much. I don't need some mega corporation telling me what to think.
But I get it, you don't like them. But it blinds you to the obvious, and makes your argument weak.
Yep. Additionally, its pretty clear Carney was hired as a political PR wrangler for the sole purpose of cleaning up messes like this and this is the best he can do.
If it was someone inexperienced, I'd assume this was just an error in judgement. However, with Carney's experience, is pretty clear this is the best spin that could be put to paper ... and that really says something. Their only option is to attack the character of the people involved in the articles about Amazon. They have no data, no evidence of any kind beyond "These are bad people".
For a data driven company, it shows they either failed to collect related data and/or that data shows the article was accurate despite the poor choice of sources.
> (By the way, the tool that the Times suggests is institutional encouragement to anonymously stab people in the back is rarely used and, when it is, most feedback is positive. Also, it’s not anonymous. The reporters knew that and dropped some qualifying language deep in the story after painting a picture that was far more entertaining than accurate.)
Yeah, I'll believe if you if you were able to quantify it. The fact you didn't even try to provide data for this claim causes me call bullshit.
> We decided to participate by sharing much of what Ms. Kantor asked for, yet the article she specifically said they were not writing became the article that we all read. And, despite our months-long participation, we were given no opportunity to see, respond to, or help fact-check the “stack of negative anecdotes” that they ultimately used.
Then provide data, rather than anecdotes of your own that show you in an even more negative light among the privacy minded?
They do an annual survey of SDEs, and they do release that data internally (aggregated/anonymously). SO they do have data. The problem is if they release data taht says "Oh well X% of our engineers are happy with the company" Then when happens when someone says why not (X+Y)?
It's data without comparisons to give better context.
I assume from the article this meant including the consent of the employee in question, given that they were part of the article. It does seem a little odd though.
It doesn't make it true or false, of course. What it does (if true) is make his report that such a thing happened less credible.
This is because fraud is a form of dishonesty, closely related to the telling of lies.
Also, being fired for wrongdoing (again, if that is true) creates the basis for an obvious bias. A person who was fired for wrongdoing can't be expected to be objective in reporting something about the former employer, even if they aren't trying to deceive. If that person's report is relayed, but the firing is concealed, the journalist is effectively concealing that bias.
Of course, Jay Carney (Senior Vice President for Global Corporate Affairs at Amazon) has an obvious bias as well.
It's not clear whom to believe in this particular case---but biases and track records of fraud are generally relevant context.
Disbelieving someone because of a bias or a past dishonesty isn't the ad hominem fallacy at all.
Ad hominem refers to a declaration that an argument is right or wrong based on the identity or attributes of the person making the argument, rather than its content, and relevant references.
The disbelief in a report based on the nature of its source isn't a declaration that it is false. It is rationally justified prudence.
"Attackers are simply ... a propaganda agency so far as we are concerned. They have proven they want no facts and will only lie no matter what they discover. So BANISH all ideas that any fair hearing is intended and start our attack with their first breath. Never wait. Never talk about us - only them. Use their blood, sex, crime to get headlines. Don't use us."
That was L. Ron Hubbard. Amazing how Carney's tactics so closely match those of scientology.
There is also the principle that the burden of proof is on the one making a claim, and not on those who disbelieve. Lots of people cried on their desks? A few names, or it didn't happen.
What part of Carney's piece do you think similarly depends on us trusting him? Do you think he fabricated the email from Kantor? Do you think he's outright lying about the context of Olson's dismissal to the extent that it wasn't incumbent on the Times to disclose this in the original article?
I'm totally willing to accept for the sake of argument that Carney is dishonest, but I think that is largely beside the point here. If you accept the truth of the bare facts presented by Carney, putting aside his spin, then the badness of Carney and/or Amazon is irrelevant for assessing the badness of the NYTimes.
1. Personal attach on a former employee as the head of public relation for a multi-billion corporation from a personal blog seems cowardly. Did he give Olson a chance to respond? Is there extenuating circumstances? How did Amazon carry out the investigation? Who knew what when? He accused NYTimes lapses in journalistic standard; he isn't even pretending there is any standard.
2. His attack on reporters is unconvincing. His rhetorical questions sound conniving. The reporters might not have asked those exact questions but they must have examined the named sources' credibility and employment history. Amazon might have refused to give details about Olson's termination, ironically on employee's privacy concern, and then itself divulges specifics, though I am sure after being cleared by their legal department. Noticed that Carney went into hyperboles here rather than stating any facts. A few sentences describing Amazon's interaction with reporters would go a long way here. But no, nothing.
3. His refutation of other three named sources amounts to verbal parsing. Some parts of the review are good so no parts can be called bad. Written review is good so no verbal review can be abusive. No direct requirement so everything is employee's fault and they deserve everything they get. It is almost offensive to read this part. If this is the best Amazon can come up with, it must be bad.
4. Cheery picking Amazon's interaction with NYTimes' reporter. Select publication of correspondence and one-sided characterization of interaction is sly. Make public all correspondence, with proper permission, so we can get a full picture.
Fundementall Carney is a former reporter and whitehouse spokesman who is now attacking former employees in behalf of a giant corporation with enormous resources on personal blog. He is committing every bad act he accuses NYTimes of and a lot more. It is debatable whether NYTimes followed the ideal journalistic standards but it is clear Carney follows none here.
So, look at the ex-employees opinions, and see if there's one. (And no, PR pieces are not credible.)
At this phase, where the story has run and the damage has been done -- the response should be done by Carney. Take the rebuttal to Mr. Olson, for example. That revelation is absolutely not something that should be revealed by Mr. Olson's boss or a coworker. First of all, just because you're an engineer doesn't mean you have all of the facts. The PR person is in a position to collect the facts, including whether or not it's legal to reveal Mr. Olson's reason for termination, and confirming that reason for termination with HR. Even Mr. Olson's boss wouldn't have that same level of confirmation.
The other advantage of having Carney make this response is that you can be sure that this is, for better or worse, the official company response. If instead, this was a blog post by Mr. Olson's co-worker calling him out for being a fraud...and the reaction to it was negative...then Amazon could pedal back and say, "Oh well that co-worker blogged something he shouldn't have and now he is being punished".
But since the condemnation of Mr. Olson has come straight from Mr. Carney, any backlash will be rightly the reaping of what Bezos, Carney, and all their lawyers have sowed.
edit: FWIW, a non-anonymous redditor is saying that he knows Bo Olson, personally, and says "I can assure you that Bo was not the one defrauding vendors that was another employee in the same department"...it strikes me as improbable that Carney (again, not just Carney, but Amazon's lawyers and HR) would get this wrong. But if they did...it's going to be a great backlash, and a much more lasting one than had this allegation come from someone other than Carney or Bezos himself.
https://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/3pcnlh/what_the_n...
You don't find out who Carney is until the very bottom of the article, and it's presented as just another journalistic article published by Medium and not an official rebuttal by the company.
If the whole thing was prefixed with "Following is Amazon's official rebuttal to the New York Times article", I don't think many people would have a problem with it.
This will likely allow legal entrance into all of Amazon, as all internal policies will need to be examined.
Quite the opposite: there's absolutely nothing official about it. It isn't published on an amazon domain, doesn't carry any signature as amazon, and the only evidence that this is in any way related to amazon is that the guy works at amazon.
I suggest we ignore Amazon's commentary and accept the worst vision as reality. That way, if we were to end up working there, we might be pleasantly surprised by a rosier picture, rather than upset by something that is below expectations. After all, the bottom line can't accommodate the truth most of the time.
> After all, the bottom line can't accommodate the truth most of the time.
And pessimism will almost certainly become self-fulfilling prophecy.
Olson is clinging to a lie, trying to defend his reputation.
Notice how he tries to blame Amazon for his departure, the "revolving series of bosses" and "overwhelmed" with work. "He and others couldn't keep up". Deflection.
He's doing his best to construct a version of events where he is one of the innocents, caught up in the nasty Amazon shit-storm.
I bet he got a shock to see Amazon reveal his fraudulent activity in a medium post! You think Amazon would make such a claim if it weren't true?
Nobody wants to see personal information released like this, but Amazon were slapped in the face with that NYT piece. Let 'em have their medium return fire.
Fraudsters and liars stick to their guns till the bitter end and beyond. It's best to weed them out, and have karma deliver what is deserved.
So your stance is "it must be true, because it would be really stupid of them if it wasen't?"
I think its equally valid to say they are acting stupidly, and counting on dollars and cents to keep any trouble off their door.
The truth is, they have just claimed the above. They pressed no charges, and have provided no documentation to sustain it. Right now, they have no more proof then him, and have a strong reason (redeeming their reputation though mudslinging) to say that he was a bad man, so his opinion doesn't matter. Of course,as the NYT responds, they interviewed way more people than just the ones Amazon cherry picked to respond too, and those people all disagree with the new Amazon spin.
> Bo Olson was one of them. He lasted less than two years in a book marketing role and said that his enduring image was watching people weep in the office, a sight other workers described as well.
If other workers described the same sight, I don't think his input's important enough to require personal credibility, so I'm not too concerned. But the use of "lasted less than two years" would be more honest written as "spent less than two years" or something, because there's an implication that he chose to leave voluntarily.
Ah, here's the story: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employee-lawsuit-kivin...
http://www.geekwire.com/2014/former-amazon-employee-ends-hun...
Especially with the Discover fraud whistle blowing lawsuit
"Trend" implies a kind of special currency for which I see no evidence; its a "trend" as old as journalism itself. But, yes, its a bad thing.
> that has taken hold on the left
I see no evidence that this is particularly true such that claiming it is a trait of the left, rather than a common feature not especially associated with the left, is anything but a dishonest distortion to support a narrative.
> This of course happens on the right
Indeed.
> but it is not moralized or justified in the same way.
The claim that there is some significant difference here that is worthy of attention desperately could use some support.
That was in fact a point I was making.
In practice almost all such statements (I do not differentiate the style of partisanship) are some combination of disingenuous, lazy, or unintelligent. They are far too broad a brush to be on point, and far too divisive to use unadvisedly. So much so that there is a vanishingly small chance that the addition of such a statement was both necessary to your point, and improves your clarity of argument.
If your intent is intelligent discourse, compelling argument, or even just getting your opinion across clearly then use of this sort of language is actively counter to your purpose. Other aims exist, clearly.
And I'm not comfortable with a meme that if you're attacked, you shouldn't defend yourself, because defending yourself will make you look bad. That just makes you easier to attack.
https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2iea97/i_am_a_former_r...
I dunno, I think if you go out and try to call out your former employer on a public forum (that they own), they have the right to lay out their side of the story at least. It would have been more evil for them to remove the comment entirely - which is exactly what many companies would have in this situation.
"But [Olson] said he was never confronted with allegations of personally fraudulent conduct or falsifying records, nor did he admit to that." "If there were criminal charges against him, or some formal accusation of wrongdoing, we would certainly consider that. If we had known his status was contested, we would have said so." - https://medium.com/@NYTimesComm/dean-baquet-responds-to-jay-...
That said, I don't know if this is them trying to be intentionally deceptive or if this is just a clunky use of the medium (no pun intended). It is his first post on Medium, and it's written not in the first-person (as a way to make a personal connection with the reader) but uses "we", e.g. "We were in regular communication with Ms. Kantor from February through the publication date in mid-August"...I don't think there's much evidence to show that they are trying to hide the author's bias or position, other than it's on Medium and not on news.amazon.com.
I guess I agree with #2, except that the alternative scenario -- that the reporters based their piece on an employee who they didn't know had an axe to grind -- just makes them incompetent/negligent rather than malicious.
I agree with #3, and honestly just ignored the relevant section of Carney's post for exactly the reasons you give.
I disagree with #4. I'd love to see the entire correspondence process too, but I can't imagine a reasonable scenario where the reporters aren't dishonest about their intentions. I think being willing to betray one's subject with bald-face lies completely destroys a journalist's credibility, and it doesn't matter how evil their subject is, or if they call it investigative reporting.
I'm sure the reporters felt they were justified, or only bent the truth rather than lying, or whatever. But it's exactly that ability to self deceive that makes them untrustworthy writers.
When the NYT times story came out I remember thinking it sounded a bit spinny. "Let's find an angle" is symptomatic of a desperate click-baity news media industry. NYT isn't as guilty of this as other outlets by a large margin, but the story had what I perceived as fabricated bite.
At the time, I wondered if any Amazon employees would come out defending their employer. Took me 5 seconds to find something... https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2015/08/16/Working-a...
Are there others? Who knows, I don't care enough to search!
I'm not interested to take sides, but in big companies it's more likely there's pockets of problems, rather than company-wide problems.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10414033
As danso notes, the NY Times editor and Amazon's Carney have now made pretty unequivocal contradictory statements, with little room for them both to be right without one of them outright lying. (And I don't think either one would go on the record here with an outright lie.) Except that the NY Times says "But he [Olson] said he was never confronted with allegations of personally fraudulent conduct or falsifying records, nor did he admit to that... If we had known his status was contested, we would have said so". That is, they can both be telling the truth if Olson was lying to the Times about his departure.
That's my prediction for how this shakes out. And in that case, the Times will have egg on their face for having not properly vetted their sources.
People often act out when they are emotionally upset, which the former Amazon employee clearly was.
This whole HN thread is kind of amazing -- it's filled with ad hominem attacks against Carney because of his history in politics.
Very few of the articles actually addressed Carney's main idea: the primary source from the NYT had a possible agenda/bias. The NYT reporters knew that, but did not report it. They also misled the Amazon people about their objective, pitching it differently and hiding facts that would have undercut their point.
It seems like Carney presented a lot of facts. If you dispute the facts in the article, or think Carney flat-out made up the email he quotes at length (or the reason for dismissal), then you are at least addressing the content of what he says.
granted, i have no idea what his political history is, as I'd never heard his name before.
I say no, we should not pollute our minds with propaganda in general, nor Mr. Carney's latest medley of trying to shift the conversation away from Amazon's shitty culture.
The verdict is supported in this very thread: Amazon employees and former Amazon employees are coming out of the woodwork to refute Mr. Carney's whitewashing and support the original NYT article alleging that Amazon is an awful place to work. The dispute is settled.
We already know beyond a shadow of a doubt Carney will say whatever he's paid to, and that Amazon is a bad place to work... I'm not sure what's left to argue over.
It's the signal they're sending to future employees that matters here.
Jay wouldn't need to attack Mr. Olson personally if the message was wrong.
Why does Jay lead with an attack on Mr. Olson? Could it be that that is the best he can do?
Short of the actual, detailed facts from an impartial source (apparently not the NYT it seems) we're forced to make assumptions based on individual's personal experiences / comments. Maybe Amazon indeed was a horrible place to work at...for those individuals that complained. But if we're at that level, surely we should consider motives/personal circumstances?
That said, my experience very much is totally an anecdote. It was a big company and different teams ran in very different manners.
My team was a mediocre place to work; better than some places, worse than others. Worlds away from the bizarro world depicted in the NYT.
Got two already, so it's at least not universal.
If the statements Amazon made are false, then they are clearly defamatory, since they accuse the employee of criminal action. Do you really believe that Amazon's expensive lawyers didn't vet this post before it went out?
>If the statements Amazon made are false, then they are clearly defamatory, since they accuse the employee of criminal action.
Here's a key piece. If Amazon is now claiming that their former employee took criminal actions:
1) Amazon took criminal actions.
2) Why reveal this now, instead of taking it to the proper authorities when it was discovered?
>Do you really believe that Amazon's expensive lawyers didn't vet this post before it went out?
Does it matter? Expensive does not mean they are competent, nor does it mean they are correct.
If the roles were reversed, you would undoubtedly be supporting an Amazon PR piece in the Times, because the truth "wasn't the point of the article", correct?
If they can show a clear majority are happy with their jobs, that is the strongest argument they have. It also shows the articles claiming otherwise are in error.
There is always going to be someone who complains but data is more valuable than "well, all these people are malcontents or misquoted".
I'd be happy with a low bar. My guess is it isn't even hitting that low bar.
Well, they've made a bigger problem for themselves if they're publicly libeling someone in addition to releasing private information.
Sorry, but you have no idea what the employee did. The employee claims such allegations had never been made to him and that they do not pertain to him.
Yet Carney smeared the NYT and ex employees rather than highlighting the positives (I'm sure there are many, but I don't know what they are because he didn't mention them) of working at Amazon.
Better yet, Amazon could have just carried on being a good place to work. If your company is doing good, important things its going to take a lot more than a biased NYT piece to really deflate employee sentiment and drive down the quality of your applicants. "Show not tell" is usually a good principle to operate on.
I'm assuming they published it on medium as a blog post targeting the tech community because they were trying to persuade potential future employees that Amazon is a good place to work.
I for one would never, ever work for an employer willing to use such despicable tactics.
I'm not sure how to respond to this, except that the idea makes me deeply upset.
Shouldn't that point to a problem of the HN crowd being homogeneous/type-A personalities and not representative of what most people see at Amazon?
Would be cool, but they don't offer that to the public; the closest thing to that seems to be Amazon Prime Student, which is obly available to students (as the name suggesets) and is $49/yr for unlimited 2-day shipping of Prime-eligible items, and same-day (or one-day, depending on timing) shipping of a narrower selection of items in a narrow set of geographic locations with a $35 per order minimum.
The equivalent, more generally available thing is Amazon Prime, which is $99/yr (same restrictions apply to Prime eligible items, same-day/one-day-eligible items, and same-day/one-day delivery areas.)
Amazon builds warehouses all over the place to avoid air shipping, but optimizes it's internal fulfillment to the prioritized customers. So you either buy Prime (ie. the online version of a warehouse club) or wait 3-5 days for Amazon to sit on your order, pre-sort it and send it out UPS Ground or Parcel Post, just like they do with prime.
I live in New York. If I order from Newegg or WalMart, they typically ship from New Jersey or Philadelphia. That's a 1-2 day UPS Ground shipping zone. Sometimes I pay some nominal amount for shipping, but the product typically costs substantially less from Newegg or Walmart than Amazon.
Amazon is superior to smaller ecommerce operations. My wife orders swimsuits from a vendor in Texas without a distribution network. So she pays about 50% of retail UPS ground charges, and waits a day for the retailer to pick the product, then 3-5 business days for her suit to take a train to Chicago, another train to Syracuse, and then a truck to our home in Albany.
I don't think any of the employees mentioned in the NYT article worked in software. It looks to me like the NYT found a statistically significant set of experiences that they wrote about while acknowledging that not everyone at Amazon would have these experiences.
I can't downvote, but I assume you're being downvoted for calling a relatively centrist paper left-wing. Perhaps if you'd said 'liberal'/'left-leaning', the downvotes would have been lesser? Who, in your opinion, is a centrist-ish paper in the US?
>Who, in your opinion, is a centrist-ish paper in the US?
Doesn't exist in-so-far of my reading. It's a majority left, minority right split with MSM being largely left to various degrees.
It is my opinion that the general public has shifted so far to the left in the past 10-15 years that everything appears to be right-leaning. http://i.imgur.com/03Qpa94.png
By this argument, North Korea is democratic (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea). Of course what people call themselves does not define their position if they act in opposition to it.
> It is my opinion that the general public has shifted so far to the left in the past 10-15 years
US voters still vote to the right of what they did during the Reagan years. It's not that long ago that Obama would have fit solidly in the Republican party. The idea that the general public in the US has shifted far to the left is just bizarre.
Consider that e.g. Obamas healthcare policies are not far off from policies proposed by Nixon 40 years ago, and that the level of horrified response to any kind of tax rises of Republicans these days would have had them up in arms over people like Reagan (and it's quite funny to see them try to explain away Reagan's various tax rises).
And the North Korean government calls itself "Democratic".
>A lot of us live in places where NYT would be seen as quite right wing.
Sweden? Half joking, but the "standing so far left that even the left looks right" is something I mentioned in another reply. I don't think being an extreme-left makes slight-left any less left. I don't feel it is a Fox News "Liberal in name only" scenario. Even I can see the conservative slants on talking points in Fox news.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/10/21/le...
> "standing so far left that even the left looks right"
Except that it's the US that pretty much represents the big aberration in terms of what is considered left and right today. In part because it's in the US what almost everyone else considers their left wing was pretty much crushed from the 20's onwards, back when there were actual socialists running for office on a regular basis. The political centre in US politics slid to the right by virtue of your actual left disintegrating and never recovering, followed by the big democrat/republican switcheroo on civil rights.
Of course, these are all subjective measures, since by the original left/right measure, the split would be bizarre today (the original split was between supporters and opponents of the monarchy in the French national assembly).
> Even I can see the conservative slants on talking points in Fox news.
Meanwhile, most European conservatives would be embarrassed by being compared to the kind of stuff spouted on Fox News. Their talking points are in line with the kind of right wing populists that regularly gets compared to fascists here, even by many on the right.
The 21st century Washington Post is pretty strongly right-leaning, and in 2014 visibly shifted farther to the right, so I'm not sure that says much.
I can't guess what every person means from behind their screen. I can only read the text you post.
[0]: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/05/statement-jeff-bezo...
I don't go around recording random conversations, and corporations have a lot of ways to cover their tracks. When that is your reality and the burden of proof is on you, you don't do anything. You get fucked and you learn from it.
Even in the unlikely event that someone would start a libel suit, and win (Or, more likely, quietly settle), the PR victory may be worth the cost.
You can leave an employer less than amicably, and not have done anything wrong. Even Amazons claims about the firing are just that, claims. They haven't posted any evidence that it occurred, or that it was against their practices. Its entirely likely that based on their culture, what he was doing was silently encouraged, up until the point they needed a scapegoat.
What is does tell you is that if you work at Amazon and ever disagree with them, they will burn your reputation to the ground, and you will have no real recourse. Thats a giant, flaming "go fuck yourself" to any potential hires in the future.
1. Many of the facts in your HR files are based on heresay - what your colleagues/managers/HR personnel think about you. These are highly subjective facts, very domain and company specific. Airing those out without context is a breach of privacy and can cause great damage to the employee down the line.
2. These files belong to the employer - he can alter them to show whatever he wants them to; either in real time, or after the fact, to justify wrongful termination etc. I've actually seen that happen, when a pregnant colleague of mine was let go, and the management later invented a non-existent reason (right before they settled out of court).
3. Privacy here goes one way: if you, the ex-employee, decide to protect your good name, or retaliate - maybe by discussing what you think really happened, you may be violating the NDA you signed. At worst, you could be sued for libel. Most of the time you have no facts on your side, and you can refer to #2 to see what happens to the facts aligned against you.
Finally, imho, if your employee was caught in the process of criminal activity, report him to the appropriate authorities and fire him. Letting him go quietly, only to use this fact against him later, smells of shoddy behavior to your current and past employees, and to your customers.
Also, you may have misunderstood the meaning of privacy. If I tell I'm terminally ill, it is no longer a private matter, since you know it too. Does that mean you telling the whole world is the right thing to do?
What you appear to be arguing is that your employer may choose to make public anything about you that happened on company time. That is a huge power imbalance, as you certainly don't have the same privilege about your employer, as you depend on them for your livelihood.
We have laws to remedy that power imbalance, that is why you have a reasonable expectation of privacy even in the workplace. It has nothing to do with "private" in itself. It is just one of the tools civilization has developed to prevent exploitation.
I'm not sure what you are arguing for. That if a person complains about a company that company can instead of replying to the issue just bring up things it thinks are wrong with the character of an employee? I'm not sure how that makes anything healthier.
What has been harmed by the NYT article is Amazon's ability to recruit. And what Mr Carney did makes it even harder. Why would you willing join a company that then goes all Scientology on you if you dare speak against it?
He's preaching to the kool aid drinkers when he should have been working on the ones that weren't sure if they should join.
This is PR 101.
1) Vendor manager Jim tries to defraud a vendor. He gets caught, and confronted about it. He realizes he messed up, accepts responsibility, and resigns on the spot.
2) Vendor manager Joe gets pressured by boss to defraud a vendor because the boss is under pressure from his boss to cut costs or be fired. Joe pushes back, gets reprimanded for not following Amazon's "disagree and commit" principle, and gets a poor performance review. Joe learns his lesson, defrauds his vendors, and everything is fine. The boss's boss and boss leave eventually because they never could get costs down, and the newly re-orged boss notices some discrepancies. Joe gets blamed for defrauding customers, and is told that he is now violating Amazon's "Insist on the Highest Standards" leadership principle. Joe immediately quits out of frustration with Amazon's leadership and culture.
Here is the problem: Both scenarios have the same paper trail of a fraud allegation and immediate resignation. And that paper trail is enough security to defend a position in court...especially if it is the employee's burden of proof to show what really happened.
2. This pushes into the conspiracy area though, you'd have to have an entire chain of staff (at least in a company the size of Amazon) that couldn't not know this had occurred, and somehow convince them all to be silent. Not impossible, just unlikely.
3. If the company is releasing info about whatever occurred, an NDA would no longer apply. Why would it? The information is now public knowledge.
This I definitely agree with, when employees are found to be stealing it should be handled like any other matter; call the cops and let the process handle itself. Again I think we'd have a much less corrupt corporate culture in our society if we started treating these criminals like criminals.
2. Not far fetched at all, as I said, I saw it happen more than once. Usually we're discussing just the direct manager and one HR "specialist". I can put whatever I want in your file, whenever I want it. If it ever reaches a court, lawyers may discuss the what, why and when. But as someone else here mentions, people rarely sue their employers, so 99% of the time I can feel completely secure in retconning reality to fit my narrative.
3. Nope. Read through NDAs signed in big companies - they are very one-sided. Unless a court specifically negates an NDA, you may still be charged for violating it. Take again the case in point 1. Suppose said employee responds back to the leak about him being lazy by saying: "our project for customer Z was already behind schedule, due to us switching mid project from Java to Scala" - you just revealed privileged information: name of customer, status of project, technologies used. You may be sued for those. If customer Z decides to cancel their contract as a result of the leak, I'm sure the legal department of the former employer would be glad to talk to the employee about incurred damages.
Finally, remember that this is an uneven fight to begin with: ex-employees are usually in a vulnerable position (sometimes even financially), seeking their next job, and with no readily-available legal resources. Employers have legal departments, lawyers on retainer, and significant funds and time to tie you in court. That's why 99.9% of people keep below the radar even when they feel slighted.
