Amazon--With 5 Pa. Warehouses--Exposed for 'Darwinian' Workplace

Amazon, the most valuable retailer in the country—and one which operates a Nashua warehouse—has come under fire after an expose detailing its unforgiving workplaceculture.

The New York Times this weekend published an extensive feature about Amazon’s white-collar workplace, which one employee said operates on “purposeful Darwinism.”

“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 Times wrote. “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.”

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos issued a rare statement in response to the story.

“The article doesn’t describe the Amazon I know or the caring Amazonians I work with every day,” he wrote in a memo to employees. “Anyone working in a company that really is like the one described in the NYT would be crazy to stay.”

• Former Amazon workers: What was your experience like?

Amazon has five warehouses across Pennsylvania, including Lewisberry, Pittsburgh, Carlisle, Hazelton, and Breinigsville. 

Last month, Amazon overtook Walmart as the country’s most valuable retailer, with a market value of about $250 billion.

• Read “Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace”

Photo credit: Elvis Fool via Flickr