Amabots and Amholes; employees sobbing at their desks; colleagues spamming the internal employee-review tool in an attempt to eject their managers from the company; cancer survivors returning to work, only to be put on “performance improvement plans.” These and other rich anecdotes made the New York Times broadside against Amazon an entertaining and brutal read, which drew a rebuke from the company’s top dog.
Amazon.com Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos wrote a memo to his employees last night contesting the Times article and asking anyone who witnesses such displays of corporate callousness to report it to human resources or e-mail the CEO. “I don’t recognize this Amazon, and I very much hope you don’t, either,” Bezos wrote. “I strongly believe that anyone working in a company that really is like the one described in the NYT would be crazy to stay. I know I would leave such a company.”
