A miserable year

I joined Amazon in Late October 2014 just prior to Peak.  I had been promised an operations manager position, however was placed in an “area managers role” to help through peak.  Despite a week-long training initiation, I was never informed of my shift or schedule until 2 days before reporting.  I took over 3 departments that were sadly under-performing in production and safety.  Within 3 months I had reduced accidents by 80%, injuries by 90% and my 3 departments were averaging 140% of the requested rate.  My peers struggled to make 75% of rate most nights and never made 100%.  A very good night for them was 85-90% but I was told that we were an indirect work center so it didn’t matter.  In 1 year I did 4x the amount of improvement projects as anyone else on my shift.  My departments had the lowest turnover in the bldg.

The problem was that my manager and peers were all 24-34.  I was 52.  All but 1 of my peers were ex-military and none had distribution experience.  Not that it was a big thing because amazon is just a big ole grist mill of production.  The whole management environment is one of building cliques, getting each other promoted via those cliques and manipulating data.  It was commonplace for people to hide productivity report hours in my building to make their numbers look better than they were.  And the sad thing was either no one in upper mgmt did anything about it.  In my opinion, this is why their earnings reports swing so wildly.  They have senior ops managers literally lying about productivity every day.  When you see their quarterly reports and there are “operational cost surprises”, this is why. 

I have 25 years of direct to consumer operations and distribution experience which was twice as much as my boss, his boss, and my 6 peers combined.  I was responsible for night shift, 3 departments,  7 days a week although my boss and all my peers only had 3.5 days of responsibility.  From a nightly delivery and metrics standpoint, we were performing very well but several key reports were being produced by a high level transportation guy who was in the clique.  The reports were full of errors that me and my direct reports would have to correct each day.  This high level transportation guy had been in the military with my boss though.  As soon as I started to illustrate that reports being produced were incorrect, things started going south.  Even though we were 1 facility of about 30 on the reports, I was told that I had to get the reports fixed.  Despite trying to get my ops mgr to help and even the Sr ops mgr to help, I was just ignored and ridiculed for a.) looking bad on the report and b.) not getting the report fixed.  I could prove the daily report was wrong but the publisher had nothing to gain from fixing it and ignored requests.  He wouldn’t return calls or emails.  I worked nights and they worked days so they had morning meetings with bad data before I could even get in to dispute it.  Sr ops and the GM of the building didn’t seem to care either.  They were too busy working on getting that next job and sucking up to the people about fake production numbers. 

By month 9, despite stellar departmental production, I was placed on the infamous PIP.  I was told that I didn’t have a “bias for action” and my associate scores were low.  I was judged as being in the bottom 5%. The reality was that I was 50 and not 30.  They have their annual meetings to cull the 5%.  Since I had not been going out and drinking beer with my boss and peers, I was expendable.  Every department had to have their 5% cut.  Amazon rolled out this program called voice of the associate where they ask associates questions about work and their leaders on a daily basis.  They are often very leading questions.  One of my first monthly reports showed very low scores.  They brought me in to talk about it and when I reviewed the scores I asked why there were only 18 responses for the month? It was a month's worth of data and so with 50+ associates I should have had several hundred.  They didn’t know but said they would look into it. 

I came to find out that they didn’t think about the fact that my associates were in an indirect role and so they didn’t sign into a computer or scanner and didn’t get the questions every day.  Only my 3 leads were answering the questions and one of them was being managed out, so of course his answers on me were terrible.  Because of substandard scores, they started doing the infamous employee feedback calls on my department.  All other departments would have 5-10 calls per month.  They were drilling my 50+ associates with 2+ calls per month each.  The funny thing was that they were not getting the answers that they wanted so they just kept on doing them without giving me the scores.  My associates loved me and we did a great job together. I kept pushing for them to give me the results after the first 4 weeks and they wouldn’t give them to me.  Part of the PIP that they put me on was to improve the these scores.   Finally, I pushed the matter with Sr HR and when they got my scores, low and behold, I was in the top 3% of the managers in the building.

The problem was they had already told me I was in the bottom 5% and put me on a pip because of it. The PIP process was a farce. Every week I had a list of menial tasks to perform and I would have to come in and report on them.  I had to do a daily recap report on it also. It was basically slow waterboarding to make me exit so they wouldn’t have to fire me.  “Go out daily and perform interaction with your team and report back on what you are hearing and how you can become a better manager”.   It was all comical because my boss had about 3 years of managing people.  He was horrible managing people but excellent at politics and making himself look good at other people's expense.  He just loved to talk about how smart he was while verbally and mentally abuse people in front of their peers. Calling someone stupid in front of others was a daily thing for him. Yes, true to the NYT article, I saw adults cry.

Luckily, I had already found a real job by the time I hit one year.  I timed it as well as I could, so I didn’t have to pay back the signing bonus.  I had my offer letter, watched my first 5% shares vest and turned in my notice the next day.  It was 3 weeks before peak and I was more than happy to leave them over a barrel.  

The bottom line is that if you are looking for a rewarding career opportunity, then Amazon is not your place.  They will offer wonderful promises of a great place to work and stock options but I would bet that 75% of them go unrealized because people quit or are fired.  It is truly a miserable place to work. You see it every day in people’s faces and expressions. On the other hand, if you like mental torture and abusing people, then go for it! You probably deserve this place.