Ubiquitous, yet remote. Disruptive, yet family friendly. A technologist's dream, yet dedicated to “working back from the customer.” Among writers on my newsfeed, First Things deputy editor Matthew Schmitz was the lone respondent to the recent New York Times article reporting on current and former Amazon employees who alleged extreme working hours, hostility by superiors to family and sick leave, and an office culture of intense confrontation and anonymous sniping. It made for good copy and the unique e-commerce giant is always worth another look.
Employees and ex-employees, of which I am neither, will have an opportunity to share more details on what it's really like inside Amazon. Some of the Times's details are stale, covered in Brad Stone's The Everything Store. From the company's founding, CEO Jeff Bezos applied lessons from idiosyncratic hedge fund D. E. Shaw to his plan to build something truly different at Amazon.
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