> "Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?" -Jeff Bezos
That an interesting read, thanks.
I struggle to square what Bezos is saying with what Amazon has become. He is clearly incredibly clever but appears devoid of any kindness toward his low level employees. Am I missing something?
That's the feel I get from reading Brad Stone's "Amazon Unbound" .There were multiple instances where Bezos appear devoid of kindness towards employees.
E.g
'...In 2009, Onetto’s human resources deputy, David Niekerk, wrote a paper titled “Respect for People,” and presented it at an S-team meeting. The paper drew from Toyota’s proven Lean ideology and argued for “treating people fairly,” building “mutual trust between managers and associates,” and empowering leaders to inspire employees rather than act as disciplinarians.
Bezos hated it. He not only railed against it in the meeting but called Niekerk the following morning to continue the browbeating. Amazon should never imply that it didn’t have respect for people embedded in the very fabric of how it operated, he said...'
"...Among the final straws for Onetto was a September 2011 story in the Morning Call newspaper in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The paper reported that the company’s warehouse in the Lehigh Valley had gotten so swelteringly hot that summer that workers were passing out and being transported to nearby hospitals by ambulances that Amazon had waiting outside. An ER doctor even called federal regulators to report an unsafe work environment..."
"...Before the incident, Onetto had presented a white paper to the S-team that included a few paragraphs proposing to install rooftop air-conditioning units in Amazon’s facilities. But according to Niekerk, Bezos bluntly dismissed the request, citing the cost. After the Morning Call article drew widespread condemnation, Bezos approved the $52 million expense, establishing a pattern of making changes only after he read criticism in the media. But he also criticized Onetto for not anticipating the crisis.
Fuming, Onetto prepared to remind Bezos of his original proposal. Colleagues begged him to let it go, but he couldn’t. As they anticipated, the meeting did not go well. Bezos said that as a matter of fact, he did remember the paper and that it was so poorly written and ambiguous that no one had understood what course of action Onetto was recommending. As other S-team members cringed, Bezos declared that the entire incident was evidence of what happens when Amazon puts people in top jobs who can’t articulate their ideas clearly and support them with data..."
"...Bezos didn’t want another empathetic business philosopher to replace Onetto as the head of Amazon’s operations; he sought an uncompromising operator..."
Sounds like a very one-sided story based on an interview with Onetto and nobody else...[1]
> people in top jobs who can’t articulate their ideas clearly and support them with data..."
That IS a legitimate problem. Through the lens of Hindsight, and based on an interview with Onetto it's easy to retell this story as "Bezos was told upfront, had all the available information upfront, and chose to do nothing until it was too late."
But another way to present the same story is "Onetto didn't articulate the importance of his ideas. Did not present data to support it. And it led to a catastrophic outcome."
I'm not saying the latter interpretation is correct. The truth is somewhere in the middle - probably closer to the original telling of the story. But the key is that good ideas are useless unless you can convince the right people of them. Ultimately, Onetto did not convince Bezos of his ideas. The blame for that can't rest solely with Bezos, because clearly there is ample evidence throughout Amazon's history that people can convince him, and situations like this are an outlier.
I actually think this is worse for Onetto because the "one-sided story based on...Onetto..." has Onetto extolling high abstract ideas for the ostensible wellbeing of employees when he obviously needed to be presenting hard cause and effect realities to his boss and caring for employee welfare directly on the ground. If you are discussing the lives of warehouse workers I just don't see how it's being responsible to spend your time writing academic papers only possibly able to affect very much more privileged employees if at all.
> > "Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?" -Jeff Bezos
> I struggle to square what Bezos is saying with what Amazon has become. He is clearly incredibly clever but appears devoid of any kindness toward his low level employees.
That seems perfectly consistent - he chose option A.
Are you only believing what you read in the media or do you know people that actually work at Amazon? The fact that Amazon employees in a warehouse rejected unionization speaks volumes. And I know plenty of Amazon engineers that love working there.
To put it in perspective, there may be employees that hate working at Amazon, but there are also 100,000 employees. If only 10% of the employees hated working there, that's still 10,000 employees. But a 90% satisfaction rate for any company is amazingly high.
I've only once had an employer I would describe as kind. Even then, it was but for the generosity of an aberrant manager, and not a commercial institution.
In most low-skill positions (especially the ones which favor physical labor over soft-skills), you are a body to be instrumentalized until you either leave leave or are disposed of. That's the reality of most work. Retention is as high as it needs to be to ensure continuous operations, and employee happiness is either incidental or primarily a slogan. The human element is made to be as irrelevant as the market will allow.
The Amazon Warehouse workers I've known have described it as warehouse work. Little better or worse in their experience than working at any other distribution center, though some centers are naturally likely to be ran more poorly than others.
That an interesting read, thanks. I struggle to square what Bezos is saying with what Amazon has become. He is clearly incredibly clever but appears devoid of any kindness toward his low level employees. Am I missing something?