A Toxic Workplace
Category: Business Lessons
Written
by Chris Cotter
According
to a recent article, Amazon's work environment is toxic. To start, employees
complain about pressure, stress, and job insecurity. They work
past midnight, receive complaints if too slow to respond to emails, argue
during meetings, and betray colleagues.
More than one hundred former employees gave information for
the article. They told stories about grown men crying after meetings. And each
month, the employees with the lowest performance ratings are fired.
The result is an extremely competitive
environment. It has been called "rank and yank," which means employees
are ranked and the least productive members are fired. Such a system
creates distrust, and goes against all of the ideas of good
management practices. After all, if colleagues are likely to stab you in the
back, no one values teamwork or knowledge sharing.
Jeff
Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, quickly responded to the
article. He explained that the environment at his company is friendly but intense. People work hard, and he couldn't recognize the
toxic environment in the article. In fact, it would be hard for any tech
company to survive with these kinds of policies. He wrapped up his response by
stating that these management practices are untrue and unacceptable.