Workplace Abuse is Real & Really Underreported From Amazon to Uber The Sociopathic Business Model™

UPDATED BELOW:  August 27, 2015  Employee Accomplices become Employee Victims in The Sociopathic Business Model™ Amazon Lays Off (blames) Engineers Behind Fire Phone (while not taking accountability) Reorganizes Hardware Division

August 16, 2015

Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big
Ideas in a Bruising Workplace

The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push
white-collar workers to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions.

 

VS

An Amazonian’s response to “Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace”

 The New York Times published an article by Jodi Kantor & David Streitfeld which highlights Amazon’s unethical & illegal behavior as it relates to workplace abuse; and, not surprising on LinkedIn an Amazon middle manager, Nick Ciubotariu, came out to in defense of the company’s unethical & illegal behavior.

Killing My Career: Through the Tears, Fears, Jeers & on to the Best Years, exists because of my former employer’s pathological history of manipulating the facts, not recognizing the rights of their employees without, shame, remorse, guilt or accountability all for their financial gain. A prevalent pattern highlighted through personal experience via Startup Case Study: Acclarent through the sale to conglomerate Johnson & Johnson, where the same unethical & illegal behavior (or workplace abuse) was encouraged, replicated and rewarded. Johnson & Johnson, fearful their own negative truth could damage their corporate image which is tied to profits, further engaged in unethical & illegal behavior to silence those employees who exposed the company’s negative truths (unethical & illegal behavior) by forcing employees out, wrongfully terminating or further still killing careers.

Out of Killing My Career came The Sociopathic Business Model™ a diagnostic tool to help patients, consumers, employees & taxpayers alike identify, protect, and expose corporate abuse as a means to create positive change by forcing accountability back on to the otherwise pathologically unrepentant companies engaging in unethical & illegal behavior.

My personal experience with Johnson & Johnson has done more than bruise where a Band-Aid cannot repair the damage; but, that’s by design of companies that try and justify their unethical & illegal beahvior at the expense of first their (accomplice) employees,  patients, consumers and taxpayers, who eventually become vicitms of their corporate abuse.  In the interest of trying to help others recognize patterns in workplace abuse as a means to quickly identify, protect and expose to create positive change (victims transition to empowered survivors) by forcing corporate accountability we’ll look at The New York Times article and the LinkedIn Amazon Middle Manager response and run it through The Sociopathic Business Model™ and when relevant real world examples from my time at startup Acclarent who was purchased by Johson & Johnson. 

Workplace Abuse Amazon Case Study: The Sociopathic Business Model™

(Please keep checking back for updates)

PRSpin: Amazon Middle Manager 

I wrote the article because it was the right thing to do. I would have written it regardless of whether PR would have approved or not, because the NYT article is so blatantly incorrect, and additionally, purposefully designed to make past data reflect current reality at a company that has done quite a bit to change its ways and continues to work hard to do so.

PRSPinUnSPun:

• Manipulation of the facts while not recognzing the rights of others
• PR & HR should be thought of a your spouse’s divorce attorney & not your friend
• Middle Mangers are often just minions of executing unethical & illegal behavior on behalf of the company
• It’s also interesting to note that many commenting under the Amazon’s Middle Manger’s response to The New York Times article were in fact more middle managers at Amazon.

PRSpin: Amazon Middle Manager 

Step 1: Have bias
Step 2: Find ex-employees with anecdotal stories that fit in with your bias
Step 3: Gather old stories and criticism while glossing over changes made to improve on that, and completely ignore that it’s still significantly better than industry practice
Step 4: Take half-truths and spin spin spin!!
Step 5: Publish article

UPSpinUnSpun:

Corporate placing blame without taking accountability often is masked as “angry disgruntled employees” when the question is why are there so many ex-employees with anecdotal stories?

Abusive Corporations will often try and dismiss or insult or demean as a means to not be challenged on the facts and further avoid accountability.

NY Times:

At Amazon, workers are encouraged to tear apart one another’s ideas in meetings, toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered), and held to standards that the company boasts are “unreasonably high.” The internal phone directory instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another’s bosses. Employees say it is frequently used to sabotage others. (The tool offers sample texts, including this: “I felt concerned about his inflexibility and openly complaining about minor tasks.”)

PRSpinUnSpun:  Welcome to any startup where any day ending in “y” is a work day.  It’s not right but it’s accurate.  Or worse:

#WorstBossIn5Words Sends drunk emails to self (then yells at YOU for not responding) #TheSociopathicBusinessModel http://t.co/XN5CT897je

— Melayna Lokosky (@MelaynaLokosky) March 5, 2015

Abusive companies or managers within these companies will often encourage, replicate and reward the employees who “play along” with the abusive unethical & or illegal behavior they’ve positioned as “company standards,” while shaming employees who expose the truth.

A company who lacks transparency is also a sign they’re likely employing tactics from The Sociopathic Business Model™.

NY Times:

Losers leave or are fired in annual cullings of the staff — “purposeful Darwinism,” one former Amazon human resources director said. Some workers who suffered from cancer, miscarriages and other personal crises said they had been evaluated unfairly or edged out rather than given time to recover.

It’s very common for abusive companies to take an elitist stance “not everyone is cut out this kind of hard work” which is further instilled as we saw last year with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, who publically retaliated against his own employees for having health issues, this is nothing more than management by fear which is abusive.

“This is a company that strives to do really big, innovative, groundbreaking things, and those things aren’t easy,” said Susan Harker, Amazon’s top recruiter. “When you’re shooting for the moon, the nature of the work is really challenging. For some people it doesn’t work.”

Retaliating against an employee for health issues or “purposeful Darwinism,” is workplace abuse and it’s illegal.  Abuser’s strength comes from making their victims feel shame, remorse, guilt or accountability for things out of their control like health issues; and, the only way to beat the abuse is to expose it!

“It’s not Pinterest where people are putting up pins. You’re changing the way cities work, and that’s fundamentally a third rail.”— Uber CEO Travis Kalanick May 28, 2014, Code Conference

Susan Harker, Amazon’s top recruiter’s elitist “for some people it doesn’t work,” or Uber’s manipulation the facts where they’ll deflect and say people “against technology or innovation”  when people are against the company’s unethical & illegal tactics or fraud.  Innovation is not justification for abusive unethical and illegal behavior. 

Employees conditioned by a corrupt Coporate America are told that enduring abuse is a sign of strength when the opposite is true. Enduring & accepting chronic workplace abuse is a symptom of PTDS not strength. But again abusive people with abusive companies manipualte the facts at the expense of their employees and their fear is those who expose the negative truth they’d rather remain hidden.

(Please keep checking back for updates and feel free to leave your anonymous comments below to share your workplace abuse stories)

UPDATED BELOW:  August 27, 2015  Employee Accomplices become Employee Victims in The Sociopathic Business Model™ Amazon Lays Off (blames) Engineers Behind Fire Phone (while not taking accountability) Reorganizes Hardware Division

Amazon Employee Engineer Accomplices become Employee Victims

The Sociopathic Business Model™ maintains that when a company lays-off employees it is a direct result of unethical and or illegal behavior from the executive level.   Blame is unfairly shifted to employees (lay-offs) while the executives without shame, remorse, guilt or accountability reorganize or restructure as a means to change a name of a department or subsidiary to distance from corporate past wrong doing. Case Study example: Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiaries DePuy Synthes & Acclarent

Corporate restructuring or reorganizing is a RED FLAG there’s are problems in a company and those problems start at the top as we’ve seen with Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiaries DePuy Synthes  & Acclarent and now today with Amazon Fire Phone Engineers.  What this means is that the Amazon engineers likely know where the unethical and or illegal corporate bodies are buried and if somebody hasn’t already exposed it, they’re about to-stay tuned!