Back in August I wrote a posting about the New York Times portrayal of Amazon as a sweatshop. Most of my friends who have worked at Amazon were there in the mid-1990s and have departed for various reasons (“called in rich” being one; didn’t agree with Jeff Bezos being another; wanted to help rid the world of Republicans being a third). Thus I don’t have personal knowledge that would support or contradict the Times story. As a database programmer, though, I find Amazon’s rebuttal interesting. Some of the response rests on information queried from database management systems:
Elizabeth Willet, who claims she was “strafed” through the Anytime Feedback tool, received only three pieces of feedback through that tool during her entire time at Amazon. All three included positive feedback on strengths as well as thoughts on areas of improvement. Far from a “strafing,” even the areas for improvement written by her colleagues contained language like: “It has been a pleasure working with Elizabeth.”
Chris Brucia, who recalls how he was berated in his performance review before being promoted, also was given a written review. Had the Times asked about this, we would have shared what it said. “Overall,” the document reads, “you did an outstanding job this past performance year.” Mr. Brucia was given exceptionally high ratings and then promoted to a senior position.
I’m wondering if this is the future. Companies who are attacked by journalists will be able to use DBMS queries to argue that information was presented selectively and/or incorrectly.
NY Times gives a rebuttal to the rebuttal. https://medium.com/@NYTimesComm/dean-baquet-responds-to-jay-carney-s-medium-post-6af794c7a7c6
Basically he says that Carney rebuts 4 out of the 24 people quoted in the story plus hundreds of others have confirmed the gist of the story in comments and elsewhere. Notice that they didn’t say that Olson was lying when he said that he saw people crying at their desks, just that we should not believe anything he says because he resigned under a cloud. Is everything that Olson says for the rest of his life automatically a lie? It does not follow.
This is all inside baseball now – for every 100 people who read the original story, 1 will read the rebuttal in medium.com (a website I didn’t know existed until 5 mins ago). I didn’t know that Amazon had hired former Obama spokesman Carney but I’m not surprised. I wonder how much they are paying for such a heavy hitter?
I am questioning a lot of the so-called journalism in recent years. Lengthy Rolling Stone piece (discredited a few weeks later) about a gang rape at a UVA fraternity immediately struck me as implausible as one of the fraternity brothers, according to the accuser, worked as a lifeguard at a UVa athletic complex. Having a son who recently graduated from Mr. Jefferson’s University, and who declined an opportunity to join a fraternity when “punched” due to inherent additional cost beyond out-of-state tuition & expenses, this did not gel with the demographics of those who join fraternities. Fraternity brothers don’t have to work minimum wage jobs during the term (and sometimes take Organic Chem in the summer rather than working), so already this was an unlikely fraternity brother. (Even my own son worked as a TA during the term, which pays better than lifeguarding, which he did whilst in high school.) As it turned out, the young man in question, on whom the accuser had a crush, attended her Fairfax County high school and hadn’t seen the accuser in two years. Dunno whether DBMS would detect inconsistencies like this, but ready for more truth in “journalism.”