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.
> 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.
This is hardly an issue isolated to "left wing" media.
And when it comes to supporting corporations (biased or not), this is mostly a right wing media thing. Just because they do it from opposing sides doesn't make it ok.
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.
> Journalists lying to support a narrative is an extremely damaging trend
"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.
You may have chased a point there but you failed to make it.
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.
I also recently quit Amazon. I also worked within AWS. However, I absolutely loved it, and had the complete opposite experience to almost everything you are describing. My reasons for leaving had absolutely nothing to do with Amazon, and I would work there again.
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.
In a lot of ways Amazon reminds me of Wal-mart, both from the market space they occupy and how terribly they treat employees. I think this is really a byproduct of chasing after low costs without other substantial service improvements. At least with Uber you get a legitimately better hailing and payment experience, not just being cheaper.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Amazon offers pretty substantial service improvement from just about any other online retailer. $50/year for unlimited 1-day shipping?
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.)
Not really, at least with higher tier retailers.. Amazon is charging more for product, and with Prime you're really paying for prioritization.
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 am also ex-AWS and frankly your description of the environment is the opposite of my experience. My experience was one of driven, hardworking, high-octane people working with a collegiate respect for one another under thoughtful, nuanced leadership.
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.
Thinking the NYT isn't left-wing shows more how far left you must stand. Even the NYT calls itself liberal/left. Even after 11 years - and as an independent - I see the NYT as decidedly left.
>“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]
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.
>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.
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?
A paper that calls itself liberal is not centrist unless they are not allowed to define themselves. When an editor goes as far as saying "If you think we're playing it down the middle you're reading with your eyes closed" that's the exact opposite of an unbiased centrist paper. That's openly stating their liberal slant in an "you're an idiot if you don't think we're liberal" sort of way. This isn't my opinion this isn't some random Joe's opinion this is an editor of the paper itself making the claim.
>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
> A paper that calls itself liberal is not centrist unless they are not allowed to define themselves
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).
The Washington Post ranks it left-leaning up there with Al Jeezera which is so far left I can't stand to read it.
>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.
I'm Norwegian, but live in the UK. Even by UK standards, that are fairly right wing for Europe, the NYT would be rather unlikely to be considered left wing by most. They might be accepted as "social liberal", which is traditionally centre right most places. The might have fit on the left before ca. 1870...
> "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.
To tie that back in with the original discussion, Jeff Bezos bought the paper in mid-2013 [0], so a change in ownership may reflect the paper's changed editorial direction.
I think you're being downvoted because: left, right, these are meaningless bullshit distinctions (unless you can supply some very specific definition of "liberal/left").
Long before the NYT article came out I had been hearing stories like this from ex-Amazon employees. This is only anecdotal evidence, but it's the same basic anecdote again and again. The NYT article may be many sensationalized and the characters in it may not be ideal people, but the story's core message is one I've heard from a diverse set of people in a diverse set of circumstances. There seems to be a kernel of truth in there.
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.