Amazon.com Inc. employees’ complaints about firm tradition — a frequent sight on nameless and inside boards — turned public this week with a well-liked LinkedIn put up that struck a chord with present staff.
The put up, by former Amazon employee Stephanie Ramos, criticized forms on the firm. “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 stop her job lower than three months after being rehired by Amazon.
Ramos posted her ideas Monday afternoon. By the tip of the week, greater than 100,000 individuals had considered it, she mentioned in an interview. Of the greater than 200 individuals who commented on her put up, about 20 are at the moment employed by Amazon in numerous departments around the globe – and plenty of had been crucial of the corporate.
Some lambasted Amazon’s course underneath Andy Jassy, who assumed the chief government officer function from co-founder Jeff Bezos three years in the past. “Love him or hate him, Bezos had courage and a vision — he had real all-hands meetings that weren’t prerecorded with hard questions,” wrote Todd Leonhardt, whose LinkedIn profile describes him as an Amazon Net Companies software program developer in Virginia.
One other particular person, Laura Barry, whose LinkedIn profile says she’s labored at Amazon for almost 20 years, wrote that the corporate right now reminded her of a financial institution. She pointed to the brand new coverage of requiring employees to be within the workplace 5 days per week.
“I’m waiting for a dress code to be implemented after 5 days a week starts,” she commented on the put up. “Hide those tattoos!”
Worker complaints are frequent at any firm, however the public discussion board made this week’s outpouring on LinkedIn uncommon.
Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan declined to handle the precise criticisms lobbed by staff. She famous that Amazon ranked second this 12 months in LinkedIn’s High Corporations checklist, a rating of the 50 greatest giant workplaces compiled utilizing LinkedIn information on things like promotions. JPMorgan Chase & Co. topped the checklist.
Jassy’s tenure has been outlined by layoffs and value slicing — strikes that happy Wall Road traders however rankled some employees. The chief additionally overtly criticized the corporate tradition himself in a memo to staff in September, when he introduced that the five-day coverage would start in January.
Jassy mentioned he supposed to chop administration layers that had been slowing the corporate down and the return-to-office plan would assist Amazon rekindle its defining tradition. The announcement prompted backlash, however a lot of it was contained to nameless boards equivalent to Blind, the place staff can complain underneath pseudonyms.
Ramos, the unique poster, beforehand labored for the corporate for six years as a logistics mission supervisor earlier than getting laid off in 2023. This 12 months, she was rehired, however determined to stop. She didn’t thoughts the return to the workplace, she wrote, however was annoyed by the tradition.
She was initially nervous about posting her ideas, however felt a way of solidarity together with her former colleagues when she noticed the reactions accumulate, Ramos mentioned.
“I’m not alone,” she mentioned.
