Ex-Top Gear trio’s Amazon move worth the price says Jeff Bezos

“The pattern of burn and churn at Amazon, resulting in a disproportionate number of candidates from Amazon showing at our doorstep, is clear and consistent”, said former Amazon employee Nimrod Hoofien, now a director of engineering at Facebook.

“I can’t stand here and defend you if your peers are saying you’re not doing your work”, she told the Times her boss said.

Amazon is in the hot seat after a New York Times profile of the tech company pulled back the curtain on their less than welcoming company policies.

One would imagine that Amazon Seattle office workers have it a little bit easier, but no. CEO Jeff Bezos doesn’t simply run a tight ship, he actually requires workers to work endless hours, including answering emails past midnight.

1. “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk”, said Bo Olson That’s unacceptable.

However, more than 100 current and former Amazonians – members of the leadership team, human resources executives, marketers, retail specialists and engineers who worked on projects from the Kindle to grocery delivery to the recent mobile phone launch – described how they tried to reconcile the sometimes-punishing aspects of their workplace with what many called its thrilling power to create.

On Monday mornings, fresh recruits line up for an orientation intended to catapult them into Amazon’s singular way of working.

In a deep dive into the corporate culture fostered at internet mega-retailer Amazon by founder Jeff Bezos, the New York Times reports on a piece of management software that is particularly controversial among the company’s employees: The tool, called “Collaborative Anytime Feedback”, was built into the company directory and allowed workers to send feedback about their colleagues directly to managers. “For those of us who went to work there, it was like a drug that we could get self-worth from”. 80 hour weeks are not the exception, they are the requirement.

“In the scheme of things the UK regulatory agencies have been very advanced”, he said. Still, even, another was forced to go on a business trip the day after a miscarriage.

Amazon was described as an environment where work-life balance was often hard to achieve. Their accounts echoed others from workers who had suffered health crises and felt they had also been judged harshly instead of being given time to recover. In January 2014, Amazon shelled out another $52 million to purchase a fourth block, bringing the total amount of office space the company leases or owns in the area to 3.2 million square feet. The company pushed them past what they thought were their limits. The derisive local nickname for Amazon employees are “Amholes” – pugnacious and work-obsessed.