Amazon employees gripe about work culture

Amazon.com workers’ complaints about company culture — a frequent sight on anonymous and internal forums — turned public last week with a popular LinkedIn post that struck a chord with current employees.

The post, by former Amazon worker Stephanie Ramos, criticised bureaucracy at the company. “Instead of the exciting, fast-paced environment I remember, I experienced a place bogged down in pointless meetings and middling middle managers,” wrote Ramos, explaining why she quit her job less than three months after being rehired by Amazon.

Ramos posted her thoughts Monday afternoon. By the end of the week, more than 100 000 people had viewed it, she said in an interview. Of the more than 200 people who commented on her post, about 20 are currently employed by Amazon in various departments around the world – and many were critical of the company.

Some lambasted Amazon’s direction under Andy Jassy, who assumed the CEO role from co-founder Jeff Bezos three years ago. “Love him or hate him, Bezos had courage and a vision — he had real all-hands meetings that weren’t pre-recorded with hard questions,” wrote Todd Leonhardt, whose LinkedIn profile describes him as an Amazon Web Services software developer in Virginia.

Another person, Laura Barry, whose LinkedIn profile says she’s worked at Amazon for nearly 20 years, wrote that the company today reminded her of a bank. She pointed to the new policy of requiring workers to be in the office five days a week.

“I’m waiting for a dress code to be implemented after 5 days a week starts,” she commented on the post. “Hide those tattoos!”

Employee complaints are common at any company, but the public forum made this week’s outpouring on LinkedIn unusual.

Layoffs

Amazon spokeswoman Margaret Callahan declined to address the specific criticisms lobbed by employees. She noted that Amazon ranked second this year in LinkedIn’s Top Companies list, a ranking of the 50 best large workplaces compiled using LinkedIn data on such things as promotions.

Jassy’s tenure has been defined by layoffs and cost cutting — moves that pleased Wall Street investors but rankled some staff. The executive also openly criticised the company culture himself in a memo to employees in September, when he announced that the five-day policy would begin in January.

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Jassy said he intended to cut management layers that were slowing the company down and the return-to-office plan would help Amazon rekindle its defining culture. The announcement prompted backlash, but much of it was contained to anonymous forums such as Blind, where employees can complain under pseudonyms.

Ramos, the original poster, previously worked for the company for six years as a logistics project manager before getting laid off in 2023. This year, she was rehired, but decided to quit. She didn’t mind the return to the office, she wrote, but was frustrated by the culture.

She was initially nervous about posting her thoughts, but felt a sense of solidarity with her former colleagues when she saw the reactions accumulate, Ramos said. “I’m not alone,” she said.  — Spencer Soper, (c) 2024 Bloomberg LP