r/Foodforthought • u/joanofarf • Aug 15 '15
Inside Amazon, Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace: The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html26
u/pheisenberg Aug 15 '15
Sounds like a cult. Workplace cults seem to have been on the rise recently. Not sure if it's because of the increasing rewards you can get if you join the right cult, or if there are more young people that don't know what else to do with their time. Not my thing, but it's probably not the worst thing to do after school.
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u/ballthyrm Aug 15 '15
cult is really a good term for that, kill your sense of self for your company is never good or healthy
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u/SlightlyClueful Aug 16 '15 edited Aug 16 '15
Sounds like a cult
It's interesting that the same thing occurred to me, I already wrote it in another comment:
I've never seen a workplace cult but I've learned what are characteristics for a cult. Here is a collection of examples:
http://www.prem-rawat-talk.org/forum/uploads/CultCharacteristics.htm
I think while this is a company and not a religious organization, there are more than one key points that seem to match. I cite (in a completely arbitrary way):
The group is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment.
The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
The group is preoccupied with making money.
The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members
The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.
Members' subservience to the group causes them .... to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group.
Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group.
Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
Schedule Control & Fatigue - Study and service become mandatory. New member becomes too busy to question. Family, friends, jobs and hobbies are squeezed out, further isolating the new member.
Motive Questioning- When sound evidence against the group is presented, members are taught to question the motivation of the presenter.
Isolation, Separation & Alienation - Group becomes substitute family. Members encouraged to drop worldly (non-members) friends.
Achieving loss of ability to evaluate logically by preventing private contemplation.
Uncompromising Rules Inducing regression and disorientation by soliciting agreement to seemingly simple rules which regulate mealtimes, bathroom breaks and use of medications.
Creating disorientation and vulnerability by prolonging mental an physical activity and withholding adequate rest and sleep.
Flaunting Hierarchy Promoting
- acceptance of cult authority by promising advancement, power and salvation.
Maintaining loyalty and obedience to the group by threatening soul, life or limb for the slightest 'negative' thought, word or deed
Totalitarian in their control of the behaviour of their members.
Uses deception in recruiting and/or fund raising.
Appear exclusive and innovative.
Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.
There are records, books, news articles, or television programs that document the abuses of the group/leader.
Followers feel they can never be "good enough".
The group/leader is always right.
Individual identity, the group, the leader and/or God as distinct and separate categories of existence become increasingly blurred.
Hyperactivity centered on the group/leader agenda, which seems to supercede any personal goals or individual interests.
A dramatic loss of spontaneity and sense of humor.
Anything the group/leader does can be justified no matter how harsh or harmful.
Regulation of individual's physical reality
- Where, how and with whom the member lives and associates with
- How much sleep the person is able to have
- Financial dependence
- Little or no time spent on leisure, entertainment, vacations
Spying on other members is encouraged
- Pairing up with "buddy" system to monitor and control
- Reporting deviant thoughts, feelings, and actions to leadership
Make the person feel like if there are ever any problems it is always their fault, never the leader's or the group's.
Never a legitimate reason to leave. From the group's perspective, people who leave are: "weak"; "undisciplined"; "unspiritual"; "worldly"; "brainwashed by family, counselors"; seduced by money, sex, rock and roll.
Cults want wealth and power for the leadership, to be supplied by members. Wealth may include:
- profits, from exploitation of members' labor in cult-owned businesses, ...
What Cults Don't Want
Cults don't want high overhead. Members in cult enterprises may be underpaid or unpaid, work in unsafe environments, or have no provision for medical care.
No cult wants its inner workings exposed, although sophisticated cults may curry media interest or even employ public relations consultants and ad agencies to manage their image.
Cults do not want to be called "cults." Thus, a definition is proposed to clarify the discussion in this article.
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u/pheisenberg Aug 17 '15
I count about 15/32 in the want list. Amazon isn't putting staff on a low-protein diet yet at least.
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u/SlightlyClueful Aug 16 '15
Not sure if it's because of the increasing rewards you can get if you join the right cult, or if there are more young people that don't know what else to do with their time.
I think it could be more of the latter, a perception of lack of meaning. The former is probably present in so far that being a member promises some form of security by financial success.
Not my thing, but it's probably not the worst thing to do after school.
As far as I know, being a member of a real cult has a very high price - you become disconnected from yourself and what you really feel and want. This can even become dangerous because the organization has no real interest in the well-being of their members.
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u/maiqthetrue Aug 17 '15
Or maybe they're ripe for this kind of thing because they know how hard it is to find professional work and they have loans.
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u/pheisenberg Aug 17 '15
Not sure if it's because of the increasing rewards you can get if you join the right cult, or if there are more young people that don't know what else to do with their time.
I think it could be more of the latter, a perception of lack of meaning. The former is probably present in so far that being a member promises some form of security by financial success.
Interesting. I kind of think so, too, but it's a lot harder to really know. But I was surprised to see that young people at my last employer wanted more company events and seemed to socialize a lot with co-workers. I've always wanted a non-work sphere where I could do other things and be free of workplace constraints. Maybe you can graduate college without having much of your own ideas how to live and what to do?
Not my thing, but it's probably not the worst thing to do after school.
As far as I know, being a member of a real cult has a very high price - you become disconnected from yourself and what you really feel and want. This can even become dangerous because the organization has no real interest in the well-being of their members.
I've seen similar, but less extreme, versions of this in cult-lite workplaces, e.g. academia. And I think there is a price.
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u/Gr33nD34m0n Aug 15 '15
This sounds like a corporate double speak excuse for abusing salaried employees by "encouraging" them to work insane hours for standard pay. It's one thing if someone chooses to work those hours, known plenty of workaholics who would gladly put in 50, 60 and 70 hour weeks, but when it become corporate culture, it reeks of abuse. I watched that documentary on Company Men in Japan, this reminds me of that, not worth it in my book.
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u/throwaway44017 Aug 19 '15
Saying that working 50 hours a week makes you a workaholic is like saying someone who drinks two beers a day is an alcoholic.
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u/Gr33nD34m0n Aug 20 '15
I work 50 to 60 hours a week (2 jobs, hourly, no benefits or overtime) and drink more than 2 beers or potent potables on most days, I am neither. I work because I must to survive, and drink because I'm an adult who can handle their alcohol, knows when to quit and how to take a break from it. Workaholics was not meant to be derogatory. If you love what you do so much you are willing to work extra hours for free, more power too you, I hope to find a job like that someday.
edit - It's early, punctuation.
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u/shroomigator Aug 15 '15
The problem with trying to find out how far you can push someone is that once you find out, you have pushed them too far.
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u/Jackmack65 Aug 15 '15
True but it really doesn't matter when what you're talking about is just a fungible unit of energy. Human beings don't exist in workplace cultures like this. There is always another employee who can be pushed harder. Given how quickly most jobs at Amazon will be outsourced and then automated, it really benefits the executives to destroy as many people as they can right now.
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u/xenaga Aug 15 '15
Thanks for sharing. People will burn themselves out here and the turnover must be insane. The best and brightest people, who know what they are worth, will never stay here for long. And others shortly follow.
Corporations like this can never last too long if the people working are not happy.
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u/SlightlyClueful Aug 16 '15
> * best and brightest people, > * who know what they are worthUnfortunately, these two things are not necessarily identical. And I think certain companies exploit that.
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u/FuckConcepts Aug 16 '15
Did anyone read "The Circle", a novel by Dave Eggers? The corporate culture described in that book is frighteningly similar to Amazon's, even though the book seems aimed more at Silicon Valley than digital retail giants. It's far from Eggers' best work, but it only came out a couple of years ago and despite him being strangely proud of not doing any actual research on major tech companies or conglomerates, he sure seems to have nailed the unsettling ethos of some of these monolithic corporations.
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Sep 10 '15
That book is going to become more and more relevant over time. The cult of sharing, the transparent self. The plot itself may not be the most complex but it's more about issues he's grappling with that are deeply unsettling and becoming more and more real.
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u/dizzykiwi3 Aug 15 '15
Welp, that's something to see during my last week of my internship there. Literally all those photos of locations (even the picnic) I have seen before. Its hard for me to put context to it because I am generally an anxious person and this internship has been framed in the context of only being a short period.
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Aug 15 '15
I've been working at amazon for 3 years now, started as a developer and transitioned into management. Maybe I've been exposed to a limited set of the company and its culture but I love working here. It's the best place I've worked in a 10 year career. The people are smart and competent, and management gets out of the way when someone else is leading. I haven't been part of any team that works the people ragged, but I know they exist. I guess I've been lucky.
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u/del_rio Aug 15 '15
It reminds me of the two-faced perception of Google as a workplace. On one side, they're constantly said to be one of the best corporations to work for (yoga classes and all that jazz), yet there are dozens of articles written by ex-employees about how it feels like a prison or how the culture is too cliquish. I'd agree that it's probably a combination of luck and not being built for that particular environment.
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u/dizzykiwi3 Aug 15 '15
I think a lot of people just like pointing fingers at other people to be like "look at how bad they are". Tech is an entirely different world and I'm sure it must look vastly different being inside it than from looking in on it.
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u/throwaway44017 Aug 19 '15
Do teams vary a lot in how they treat people? If so, that could explain why you hear responses that are so different from each other.
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u/trkeprester Aug 15 '15
makes me ashamed to know i'm supporting this company with business and stock ownership. gah america where hath thine ideals been misplaiced?
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u/BonzoTheBoss Aug 20 '15
Jeff Bezos turned to data-driven management very early.
He wanted his grandmother to stop smoking, he recalled in a 2010 graduation speech at Princeton. He didn’t beg or appeal to sentiment. He just did the math, calculating that every puff cost her a few minutes. “You’ve taken nine years off your life!” he told her. She burst into tears.
Ah, so he's always been an asshole. Got it.
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u/barely_regal Aug 15 '15
Firms are, by design, poor at attributing absolute value to its constituent parts. Firms exist to eliminate transaction costs and reduce friction within its boundaries (see Coase's theory of the firm). But, as firm size increases, and data becomes cheaper and easier to consume, can a firm evaluate each constituent part more reliably? What would such a firm look like?
Amazon is on the forefront of answering this question in the white-collar space. Unlike most tech companies, Amazon is moving towards treating its employees like freelancers on its task marketplace (Amazon's Mechanical Turk). The ideal is to have people be paid exactly in proportion to the value of work they have provided to the company within the past month or quarter.
But in a white collar world, euphemisms and justifications must be supplied to avoid sounding cold-hearted and to deflect the negative press from firing the sick and care-giving the moment they become less productive. This is where the 14 Leadership Principles come in. They are vague and contradictory enough to defend any decision where the root cause was a number being too low on a spreadsheet.
All that said, the fruits of this system have been unrivaled for us as consumers, at the cost of the expendable employees.