Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Amazon Does Stack Ranking Evaluations Too

The NY Times explains why Amazon is a nasty, nasty place to work:

But if Amazon aspired to reduce friction for customers, Mr. Stone suggests that it remained a high-friction place to work. He describes the in-house culture as “notoriously confrontational,” and writes that because managers in departments of 50 or more people are required to “top-grade” their subordinates along a curve (and dismiss the least effective performers), “many Amazon employees live in perpetual fear” of termination.

Nothing like having a job in a place where everyone is in "perpetual fear of termination.

This is exactly the kind of atmosphere that Gates, Bezos and these other corporate criminals/education reformers are bringing to schools.

Perpetual fear of termination - the 21st century disease brought to you by the corporate criminals.

Ironic thing is, it doesn't work for their own companies.

I used to buy lots of stuff from Amazon, as did my wife.

We both noticed more and more that items were coming damaged - torn books, broken cd cases, etc.

Doing a little research, I discovered that Amazon employees are timed on how many orders they fill per hour.

They must reach their quota on a consistent basis or they risk termination.

It doesn't take a genius to see that because of this evaluation system, the employees are forced to run around, throw items into a box, get the box ready for shipping, then head back to the next order so that they can meet their hourly quota in a mad frenzy of never-ending activity.

Is that when the items are getting damaged?  Or ar they damaged beforehand?

Hard to say without access to the Amazon warehouses, but clearly this is a company that doesn't give a whit how it treats its employees and increasingly it is a company that doesn't give a whit how it treats it's customers.

After calling and complaining about damaged items and being told we have to send them back in order to get new items, my wife and I decided to stop ordering from Amazon.

I try and use Ebay sellers for my music purchases, she uses B&N for book purchases.

Bezos won't care about losing two customers but I bet we're not the only two who have had this experience and as Amazon puts more and more companies out of business and becomes the sole seller of items like music cds and dvds, they will give a whit less and less in how they treat their customers.

It all goes back to how they treat their employees - any company that prides itself on having employees in "perpetual fear of termination" is an evil company owned by an evil man and frankly, not enough bad stuff can happen to that company.

It's hard to find other retailers these days for purchases like books and music cds, but I am trying to do my best to order as little as possibel from Amazon, to purchase from smaller sellers and local merchants even if that means paying more.

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