Which One Should You Believe?

Now with a stable job for the time being, I can get to writing about things that I think are important and have relevance to my work and studies.  

The biggest news or one of the biggest news this week has been the eye-opening article about how employees or former employees, feel about a major, world-wide company.

I really haven't read the original article but I have read a lot of articles that have taken snippets of the original article to post their own ideas.

According to this article, which I can link later, employees tell stories about how management in Amazon takes care (or doesn't care about) their employees.  It is kind of hard to believe that because Amazon is such a big company.  But you never hear about Amazon having free lunches or playing games inside Amazon offices.  I guess that should be one of the bells about Amazon especially when you hear so much about other bit companies that do offer interesting perks (Netfix).  I never hear one thing about the perks of working at Amazon.  Yet people want to work for Amazon because it's such a big name and looks good on a resume.  Even I have applied for Amazon a few times.

My first experience with this human resource mess was an article on LinkedIn from an employee. The article went through the original article stating things and contradicting things that were stated in the original article.  The problem is that the employee is in upper management.  Of course the view is different when you are management than if you are a regular employee.

It made me think about what I think about various places that I have worked.

For example, when I worked for an inventory service, I thought it was the best company in the world.  Even though it was no startup or IT company, I thought it was the best thing I ever encountered in my life.  The reason I thought so, was that I was out of work for 2 1/2 years so being hired was a blessing.  I was there for four years and I enjoyed the majority of it.  Many say that the schedule was the hardest thing about it, but you stay there because you love the people.  I never thought that I was being treated bad, although I am sure that there have been problems and a couple of class-action suits.  But those class-action suits came against something that happened to a few people.  Still, I would never say that this company was a horrific place to work.  I know there are people who hate this company.  I know that there are people who would never work there again whereas I would go back in an instant if I knew they would pay me enough to live.  I would defend it to the end. 

On the other hand, I have worked for a couple of companies this last year where the company makes a lot of money, people talk wonderfully about the company, and I just sat there thinking this is the worst place I could've ever worked for.  I found a lot of faults with the companies, took notes, pictures and recorded a few meetings. 

What I'm saying is that for up to a point, the view of what you think about the company depends on you.  Although, some of those things that were stated in the original article about Amazon were a nightmare for me to read about, as someone in human resources.  There's another side to all of that.
I'm learning that even though human resources has to be the watchdog, and everything comes back to human resources, depending on the culture of the company, sometimes the executive management will try to override the procedures to allow employees or customers to be satisfied. It's business, which I understand.

Some of the more interesting things I've been reading are the comments about to these articles.  One of them was interesting because everyone who was against the horrible things that were reported, had particular comments about the CEO.  They stated that the CEO, who had given either an interview or wrote an article, to retort or comment about the original article, knew the culture and that it was his fault that the culture was following the path that had found its way to this particular article.  I find it interesting because I can say that the culture of the company that I worked for four years, the CEO was so far away from the company, that he would not have had a hand in how the culture formed.  I think, and we study it this way, that the top management does have a hand, and the research and studies have theorized that all culture comes from the top.  That's not always the case.  It is supposed to work that way, with procedures and processes.  I argue that if the CEO so far away from the company especially something as worldwide as Amazon, that you can put in procedures, you can put in measurements, you can put in goals, but you can't always control the culture of the company.  I know this for fact because I worked for company whose culture was different with every single office.  I would warn my new hires.  I would tell them that the culture in one city is completely different than another office and that as soon as you stepped into the office, you could tell that it was different.  There was no way that the CEO or anybody past the district manager or even the regional manager could have a say in how the culture was formed.  Sometimes the cultures formed just by having a majority of an ethnic group.  They're going to bring their own culture into the company.

So whether or not I believe that the CEO of Amazon or the executives of the company knew about the culture, they should've known about the various things were happening in the company.  But an article out there stated people are afraid of losing their jobs, which is why they don't tell.  Fear of not finding a job is a real thing.  I have experienced longer than I want to remember.  Nowadays, it has been said by many people now and I truly believe it-that the tide is turning from employers to employees.  It is becoming the employees arena and it is better for job searchers to find a job.  They have their pick of jobs.  It may not be a job with Amazon or Google or any other top companies, but you can find a relatively similar job for companies around nowadays.

The other side of this is as a customer; are you happy with Amazon?  I have to say yes I am for the most part.  But it doesn't matter to me if I get my packaging in two days or one day.  Amazon isn't my first place shopping place.  Even though there are companies out there that aren't as big as Amazon, I do a lot of shopping elsewhere.  There are better prices on things that Amazon doesn't have any more.  I also don't trust a lot of sellers on Amazon.  It's nice that Amazon has included outside sellers but it's also not one of my favorite things.

The only way that anything would happen is if half of us stop shopping Amazon.  Is that going to happen?  I highly doubt it.  Amazon is too easy to shop and too many people have the desire to get what they want asap.  Amazon delivers that way.

So what can anybody do?  I guess a class-action can happen against the company.  It does open the ideas and minds of people that are starting to make sure that their employees are treated as human beings.  Hearing that a building was so hot that they didn't fix or couldn't fix the air conditioning but had emergency vehicles just in case?  That is absolutely ridiculous.  What's wrong with getting a bunch of fans?  Unless the electricity was out.  No one had windows?  I don't know I wasn't there.  In human resources we always say: document, document, document.  If I had been in the situation I would've started taking videos.  I would've taken pictures.  I would have started recording conversations.

I have been known to take pictures of things that happened around me.  That's why I have a phone.  I have also recorded conversations I have had with people, and they knew it.  USE YOUR DEVICES!

Anyways, who should you believe?  It depends how you feel about your work situation.  If you think your company is wonderful, you might think that employees are out to get the big companies.  If you are or have been treated wrong at a job, you will probably believe the employees.

No company is perfect.  I hope that companies take a look at their employees and management to make sure that they are complying with federal and state laws with regards to treatment of their employees.  If Amazon learns something from this, that would be amazing and worth it.  

The orginal article: The NY Times
The Linked article: Linkedin
An interesting article: overwork
The CEO defends the company:  seattletimes.com