Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington, on July 5, 1994.

The company started as an

online marketplace for books but expanded to sell electronics, software, video games, apparel,
furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. In 2015, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in
the United States by market capitalization. In 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market for US$13.4
billion, which substantially increased its footprint as a physical retailer. In 2018, Bezos announced that
its two-day delivery service, Amazon Prime, had surpassed 100 million subscribers worldwide.

Amazon is known for its disruption of well-established industries through technological innovation and
mass scale. It is the world’s largest online marketplace, AI assistant provider, live-streaming platform
and cloud computing platform as measured by revenue and market capitalization. Amazon is the largest
Internet company by revenue in the world. It is the second largest private employer in the United States
and one of the world’s most valuable companies.

Amazon distributes downloads and streaming of video, music, and audiobooks through its Prime Video,
Amazon Music, Twitch, and Audible subsidiaries. Amazon also has a publishing arm, Amazon Publishing,
a film and television studio, Amazon Studios, and a cloud computing subsidiary, Amazon Web Services. It
produces consumer electronics including Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, Fire TV, and Echo devices. Its
acquisitions over the years include Ring, Twitch, Whole Foods Market, and IMDb. The company has been
criticized for various practices including technological surveillance overreach, a hyper-competitive and
demanding work culture, tax avoidance and for being anti-competitive.
“A lot of people who work there feel this tension: It’s the greatest place I hate to work.”

That’s what former Amazon executive John Rossman, author of The Amazon Way, told The New York
Times.

The newspaper, on Aug. 15, published an article about Seattle, Wash.-based Amazon as a workplace
with narratives from more than 100 current and former employees, including members of the
leadership team, human resources executives, marketers, retail specialists and engineers, many of
whom describe the culture as one with the exceedingly high demands, unmanageable pressure and
employee distress. Interviewees described a constant battle to reconcile the punishing, even oppressive
aspects of their workplace with the thrilling power of matching ambition with creation.

Mr. Rossman’s statement is representative of how many Amazon employees feel about their work for
the United States’ most valuable retailer, with a valuation of $250 billion. In its attempt to increase
productivity, be more nimble and anticipate the needs of consumers, Amazon is harsh and unforgiving
on the inside, according to testimony from current and former employees.

Amazon authorized only a few senior managers to talk to NYT reporters for its article, and declined
requests for interviews with Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder and CEO, and his top leaders.

Here are nine key problems with Amazon’s corporate culture that may serve a cautionary function to
other leaders.

1. Unreasonably high standards and expectations. According to the report, the company boasts a
set of standards that are deliberately “unreasonably high.” Though devised with the intention of
developing top-tier talent, the unreachable expectations and pressure employees feel to meet
them can cause significant distress.

Bo Olson, who held a book marketing role for less than two years, told NYT his lasting image of Amazon
is watching people cry at their desks, a sight other interviewees confirmed as a common occurrence.
“You walk out of a conference room and you’ll see a grown man covering his face,” Mr. Olson told NYT.
“Nearly every person I worked with, I saw them cry at their desk.”
Some, especially those who defend of Amazon’s high expectations, said those who cannot handle the
demands are simply not the right fit. “This is a company that strives to do really big, innovative,
groundbreaking things, and those things aren’t easy,” Susan Harker, Amazon’s top recruiter, told NYT.
“When you’re shooting for the moon, the nature of the work is really challenging. For some people it
doesn’t work.”

Liz Pearce, who spent two years at Amazon, told NYT, “The pressure to deliver far surpasses any other
metric. I would see people practically combust.”

2. Overly forthright leadership. Mr. Bezos’ management style is largely influenced by his borderline
abrasive personality, including an “eagerness to tell others how to behave; an instinct for
bluntness bordering on confrontation; and an overarching confidence in the power of metrics,”
NYT wrote.

From its early years, Mr. Bezos led Amazon to resist the forces he thought fetter businesses and limit
potential: “Bureaucracy, profligate spending and lack of rigor,” according to the report. As a result, Mr.
Bezos codified many of his counterintuitive workplace ideas into a simple instruction manual called The
Articles of Faith. These guidelines help enlist and develop a brigade of elite workers. They also helped to
instill a need in employees to constantly prove their worth, outperform their colleagues and even
sabotage their careers.

3. Breeding unhealthy competition among co-workers. “You can work long, hard or smart, but at
Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three,” Mr. Bezos wrote in a 1997 letter to
shareholders, according to NYT.

Fundamental to Amazon’s culture is transparency about who is a high-achiever and who is not.
Employees are expected to and often work long into the evening hours — emails that arrive after
midnight are frequently followed by text messages asking for a prompt response.

According to the report, employees are encouraged to publicly rip apart their co-worker’s ideas in
meetings. Additionally, the Anytime Feedback Tool, a widget in the company directory that allows
workers to send praise or complaints about their co-workers to their bosses, is often used to sabotage
others. Since team members are ranked, and those with the lowest ranking are fired, it is in each
individual’s best interest to outdo their teammates.

Many employees told NYT the Anytime Feedback Tool is used for scheming. They revealed secret pacts
with colleagues that were used to bury one employee at the same time or praise another. In many
cases, criticism from the tool, though displayed anonymously, was copied directly into employee
performance reviews.

While “winners” might excel in their jobs, “losers” quit or are fired in annual eliminations. This is the
description of “purposeful Darwinism,” as one former Amazon human resources director told NYT.