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 coworker'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.
4. Insensitive management. Employees who endured great personal hardship
— including cancer, miscarriages and other personal crises — said they were
unfairly judged or pushed out without sufficient time to recover and perform at
their highest ability.
The mother of a stillborn child told NYT, "I had just experienced the most
devastating event in my life." She was soon after informed her performance
would be monitored "to make sure my focus stayed on my job." She soon left the
company.
Craig Berman, an Amazon spokesman, told NYT this type of response to
employees' crises was "not our policy or practice," and "if we were to become
aware of anything like that, we would take swift action to correct it."
5. Favoring criticism over harmony. One of Mr. Bezos' most distinctive
management beliefs is that harmony in the workplace is often overvalued and
suppresses honest criticism, according to the report. Amazonians are told to
instead "disagree and commit" (rule No. 13 of The Articles of Faith), which can
mean delivering painfully blunt feedback to colleagues before agreeing on a
decision.
"We always want to arrive at the right answer," Tony Galbato, vice president for
human resources, said in an email statement, according to the report. "It would
certainly be much easier and socially cohesive to just compromise and not
debate, but that may lead to the wrong decision."
6. Lack of benefits. Unlike its tech peers such as Google and Facebook, which
motivate employees to prioritize personal wellness with gyms, meals and other
special benefits "designed to take care of the whole you," as Google describes it,
Amazon does not give any hint that catering to employees is a priority.
Although successful midlevel managers receive competitive salaries, other
workers are expected to demonstrate frugality (rule No. 9). This includes their
bare-bones desks, cellphones and travel expenses, which they frequently must
cover themselves. Instead, employees are told to refine their "customer
obsession" (rule No. 1), always striving to satisfy customer demands.
Amazon requires new workers to repay part of their signing bonus if they quit
before a year's time, and a portion of their relocation fees if they leave within two
years, according to the report.
7. Disregarding employees' need for work-life balance. Some former
Amazonians said nurturing bosses or relatively slow divisions shielded them from
unmanageable pressures, but many others said the culture encouraged them to
erase work-life boundaries. For instance, employees often spend hours working
from home at nights and on the weekend. They could be required to attend
conference calls on Easter Sunday and Thanksgiving, and face criticism from
superiors for poor Internet connection while on vacation.
"One time I didn't sleep for four days straight," Dina Vaccari, told NYT. Ms.
Vaccari began working at Amazon in 2008 to sell Amazon gift cards to other
companies. According to the report, she once used her own money, without
asking for approval, to hire a freelancer in India to enter data so she could work
faster. "These businesses were my babies, and I did whatever I could to make
them successful."
Another employee said her fiancé was so concerned about her working nonstop
that he would drive to the Amazon campus at 10 p.m. and call her cellphone until
she agreed to go home for the night. During a vacation to Florida, she used the
free Internet at Starbucks every day to work, according to the report.
8. Lack of praise. Employees said in interviews with NYT they felt their work at
Amazon was never done or good enough. Noelle Barnes, who worked in a
marketing role at Amazon for nine years, said a repeated saying around campus
was, "Amazon is where overachievers go to feel bad about themselves."
David Loftesness, a senior developer, told NYT he admired everyone's drive but
couldn't tolerate the hostile language used in meetings. He eventually quit and is
now a director of engineering at Twitter.
9. Unfair systems of ranking. Amazon holds annual Organization Level
Reviews, where managers discuss and determine subordinates' rankings.
Reviews begin with the discussion of lower-level employees in front of higherlevel managers. Team leaders described preparing for the reviews as preparing
for a court case, complete with paper trails to defend wrongful accusations or
incriminate members of competing groups, or identifying sacrificial lambs to save
more valuable players.
"You learn how to diplomatically throw people under the bus," a marketer who
spent six years in the retail division told NYT. "It's a horrible feeling."
Other large companies, such as Microsoft, General Electric and Accenture, have
dropped the practice of stack ranking, or "rank and yank," largely because it
leads managers to fire valuable talent solely to meet a quota.
"Amazon is O.K. with moving through a lot of people to identify and retain
superstars," Vijay Ravindran, who worked at the retailer for seven years,
told NYT. "They keep the stars by offering a combination of incredible
opportunities and incredible compensation. It's like panning for gold."
Mr. Bezos responds: Amazon's CEO wrote to staff in defense of his company's
culture and human resources policy. CNBC obtained a copy of the memo, which
encouraged staff to read The New York Times article, but added:
"The article doesn't describe the Amazon I know or the caring Amazonians I work
with every day. But if you know of any stories like those reported, I want you to
escalate to HR. You can also email me directly at jeff@amazon.com. Even if it's
rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.
The article goes further than reporting isolated anecdotes. It claims that our
intentional approach is to create a soulless, dystopian workplace where no fun is
had and no laughter heard. Again, I don't recognize this Amazon and I very much
hope you don't, either. More broadly, I don't think any company adopting the
approach portrayed could survive, much less thrive, in today's highly competitive
tech hiring market. The people we hire here are the best of the best. You are
recruited every day by other world-class companies, and you can work anywhere
you want."
As one of the leading online selling platforms, Amazon rapidly grows especially now that every
transaction happens through online due to pandemic. Thus, many complaints, problems or
issues arise and these are inevitable, but they can be reduced or resolved. But before going to
the solutions, determining these issues are essential.

Amazon’s contact support being unresponsive
Amazon has millions of customers and sellers, thus, making its contact support quite
busy and has tantamount workload. In result, some of the complaints and inquiries
coming from the customers and sellers are unresolved and unanswered. This issue or
lapse can make the customers disappointed and irritated especially when the concern is
very urgent.

Amazon’s Intensive Corporate Culture
Amazon has high standards and expectations that drives some of the employees
physically pressured with an extensive emotional. In this company, only those who can
work under immense pressure and fast-paced environment can survive. Despite of having
high standards, Amazon replaced Google as the best place to work in US, according to
LinkedIn. This company has unique corporate culture where it focuses in having a
constant reinvention and optimization of corporate culture, customer—centricity and
diversity among workforce.
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High cost for databases