Amazon is not just a surviving company of the 1990s tech boom; it is now one of the largest and most successful companies in the world in any industry. Amazon employes approximately 647,000 full time and part-time people. Amazon is the leading e-commerce retailer in the United States with about $178 billion dollars in 2017 revenus growing. It has leveraged its game-changing approach to selling books to selling almost everything to almost everyone almost anywhere. Today Amazon is the leader in all things Customer Service and it has achieved this leading position through groundbreaking tehnological innovation. Tehnological innovation has also made Amazon one of the largest web services companies in the world and much more than a formidable retailer. All these legendary accomplishments are the result of the commitment and contributions of thousands of extremely talented employees. As to be expected, the standards to be hired are exceptionally high. What it takes to thrive and survive at the company is even more challenging.

IT IS NOT ALL SUNSHINE AND ROSES: While Amazons accomplishments and future endeavors are widely reported, relatively little was known about its approach to managing employees until recently. Recent reports describe a punishing corporate environment, long hours, disparaging bosses, extremely high stress, and no time or space to recover. All of these pressures have resulted in unprescedent and uncommonly high employee turnover. Just how bad is it? PayScale ranked Amazon 464th among the Fortune 500, with median employee turnover of approximately 1 year!

What pressures drive such high turnover? In a letter to shareholders in 1997, founder and CEO, jeff Bezos wrote: You can work long, hard and smart, but at Amazon you cant choose two out of three. This suggests thst employees must always be on, be in the game and play it well. Amazonians experience many of the common pressures of todays workplace 80-plus-hour workweeks, 24/7 connectivity, noreal vacations or holidays.

Amazons ALWAYS ON culture is manifest in a number of chilling stories, such as that of an employee who negotiated a 7:00AM to 4:30PM work schedule with her boss after having her first child. The problem was that her co-workers didnt see her arrive early and crushed her in anonymous peer feedback, which employees are encouraged to use. Her boss said he couldnt defend her in her performance review if her own co-workers were critical of her.

Can it Get Worst? Yes. Amazon also uses a Rank and Yank performance management system. Employees are ranked by their managers, and those near the bottom are terminated every year. This leaves little room for taking a breath or backing off, even if an employee has a miscarriage, has to take care of an ailing parent, or receive chemo treatment for cancer. There are stories of employees in all of these predicaments who were essentially told that their lives were incompatible with working at Amazon. It is no wonder that one former employee stated, I saw nearly every person I worked with cry at their desk. Amazon disputes some of these claims as simply those of disgruntled former employees. (Because Amazon has so many current employees, approximately 650,000, even a small percentage amounts to numerous employees, and that dosent include former employees.)

MEASUREMENTS: Another key contributor to the pressure-cooker environment is that everything is measured. Everything. Warehouse employees are monitored using sophisticated systems to track the number of boxes they pack in an hour. White-collar employees participate in routine business review meetings, for which they need to prepare, read and absorb 50 to 60 pages of reports amounting to thousands of data points. During these review meetings, employees are often quizzed on particular numbers by their managers. It is not uncommon to hear managers say that responses are stupid or tell workers to just stop it. The company succeeds in large part because of the immense customer data it collects and uses to select products it sells. The plan is to use data the same way to make performance management an efficient and effective everyday process, rather than a once-a-year event. Many employees describe the result as purposeful-Darwinism, in which every employee constantly competes eith other employees to see who survives. Such relentless and pervasive competition has many undesirable consequences. As an example, it is common for employees to hoard ideas and talent, because sharing becomes a personal loss for the sharer and a gain for someone else. Moreover, ideas are not just scrutinized; they are undermined. Groups of employees often conspire against others on the Peer Feedback System to get ahead or to put someone behind. As for managers, they must both defend and direct reports they deem most valuable to their own performance., and at the same time decide whom they can sacrifice since not everyone can pass the performance test.

AMAZON is BEZOS: Much of the praise and many of the complaints are directed to Jeff Bezos. Not only is he the founder and CEO, but he is the chief architect of all things Amazon. His personality is embodied in the company values and the way it operates. Like Bezos himself, employees are expected to use data, confront, persevere and win. This approach appeals to and is sustainable for only a very specific type of employee. One former employee described Amazons hiring process as panning for gold. The company is looking for the rare stars who can thrive in its demanding environment and it must sift through many, many people to find them. This strategy is a real challenge for Amazon. Its size, growth rate and turnover rate require the company to hire thousands and thousands of employees every year, and this dose not include the thousands of temporary workers it hires to meet the holiday rush. Interviews with male employees in their 40s revealed that many are convinced that Amazon will replace them with employees in their 30s, who also worry that the company prefers younger employees in their 20s. The implecation? Younger employees have fewercommitments and more energy.

WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? To combat the churn, Amazon has structured its stock optionsto vest employees on an unusal schedule, Instead of vesting evenly over a period of time, Amazon employee optionsvest at 5% in one year, 15% in year two, 40% in year three and another 40% in year four. Employees who leave within one year of hire must repay part of their signing bonus and if within two years , they must repay their relocation package, if any. Many experts question the effectiveness of such policies. Lindsey Thorne, manager at at Seattle recruiting firm that places many Amazon employees stated, The potential payout of waiting for a stock to vest wont tie down unhappy employees who are ready to jump ship. Still others question whether Amazon can continue to innovate and lead in the marketplace if its most valuable asset is ground up and discarded in such a way and at such a high rate. Some percentage of the companys current 650,000 employees are quite satisfied and successful. The system works for some and for many others it works for a period of time. The incredibly high bar, marquee name and extreme work ethic required to get hired at Amazon makes former employees very valuable to competitors as well as many other companies both inside and outside the technology industry.

Define the Problem. One or two sentences

Identify the Primary Cause of the Problem as well as Ancillary Causes. One or two sentences for the Primary Cause. Ancillary Causes

Propose a Resolution Bullet points for your Recommendations