- Engineer was forced to attempt suicide after receiving a performance review
- In a memo to all staff, including Jeff Bezos, he called his boss a “murderer”
- If you’re struggling, you can get help at the International Association for Suicide Prevention
An Amazon engineer, so desperate because of his working conditions, threw himself off the roof of the company’s 12-story Seattle headquarters.
That morning in November 2016, he typed a suicide note and sent it to his entire staff, including Jeff Bezos, ending it with the words, “If you have time, please look out the window and watch me fall.” Concluded.
The contents of the email were revealed in a new book by investigative reporter Dana Mattioli. all wars – He detailed what prompted him to end his life.
“Engineers thought Amazon would be their dream job,” Mattioli writes. “However, the first few months proved less than ideal. He worked late most nights, sometimes until 4 a.m., and worked all weekend long. The concept of work-life balance It didn’t matter to him. He put all of his energy into his work.
“After he asked his boss to transfer him to another team, he began experiencing retaliation.” and began to criticize him.
A few weeks later, the engineer’s boss put him on a performance improvement plan (PIP).
“PIPs are feared at Amazon because they are usually a precursor to termination. This is Amazon’s way of letting employees out.”
This felt like the last straw. The engineer did everything he could to please his boss. So he typed. He called PIP an insult and even called his boss a murderer.
The engineer was injured but survived the suicide attempt.
However, the book claims that none of Amazon’s senior executives mentioned the incident to staff, and that the IT team quickly deleted the email because it contained “offensive and inflammatory language.” ing.
An Amazon spokesperson told DailyMail.com this week: “We are grateful that this individual was able to receive the help he needed and was able to recover from this very sad incident.”
“We have worked to support him, his family and team, and out of respect for them, we do not believe it is appropriate to share any further details.”
But stories of the horrors inside Amazon’s factories are the stuff of urban legend, with one ex-convict saying conditions are worse than prison.
Emergency personnel were then called to the warehouse. The Daily Beast reports that between 2013 and 2018, there were at least 189 incidents across the United States due to suicide threats or poor mental health.
Mattioli’s book paints a picture of a “ruthless” company where bosses say: jeff bezoshas an unquenchable thirst to win at any cost.
And, she explains, “how that ability can shift from intermediaries and partners to gangsters can happen in the blink of an eye.”
These are just some of her amazing claims.
1. Cheap bra knockoffs
In 2012, New York-based Adore Me launched a direct-to-consumer lingerie line. Three years later, a campaign featuring trans activist Rose Montoya and Sports Illustrated model Nina Agdal bare-breasted in front of the White House was so successful that Amazon began to show interest.
According to the report, executives implored the company’s founder and CEO, Morgan Hermand Weish, to sell the site. However, Helmand Weish refused.
Fast forward to 2019, and the lingerie mogul claims that she started noticing several obvious copies of her products appearing on Amazon.com. One brand was called Adore Me, and they not only sold cheaper versions of their products, but also “stolen” product photos from Adore Me’s own website.
Hermand-Waiche identified more than a dozen brands on Amazon using his images or selling cheap knock-offs, but when he asked the company for help, he never received a helpful response. He claims he didn’t get it.
By the summer of 2020, Helmand Weish had had enough and finally decided to sell on Amazon. He said there were few other options. It would have been too expensive to litigate.
But he says the Amazon marketplace is still full of Adore Me knockoffs.
A spokesperson said: “Amazon has a zero-tolerance policy against counterfeit products. We take proactive measures to prevent counterfeit product listings and to continually monitor our stores.
“When we identify issues, we act quickly to protect our customers and brands, including removing counterfeit products and blocking accounts. We will protect our customers from malicious parties.”
2. Carhartt rip-off
The book said that while Amazon was copying third-party sellers on its website, it was also copying larger labels.
Mattioli exclusively details how executives from trendy workwear apparel maker Carhartt walk the floor of a factory in China, inspecting the brand’s latest line. Along the way, he came across another production site in another part of the factory making what appeared to be Carhartt’s best-selling bib overalls and workwear pants.
Carhartt executives were perplexed. Products in the competing line had exactly the same materials, the same colors, and even the same hardware like zippers and trims as the Michigan family-owned company.
When he asked the factory he ordered the duck from, he was told it was Amazon Essentials.
In a clash with another popular brand, a whistleblower claimed Amazon “tried to crush Trader Joe’s” by copying the supermarket’s best-selling snacks.
Carhartt raised the issue with Amazon, which led to production being halted and a new policy to replace it with a private brand manager. Identify just one best-selling product that Amazon uses as “inspiration”they choose three and combine aspects of all of them to avoid future copycat charges.
While the new policy helped Amazon avoid the appearance of copying brands on its site, Mattioli, one of the whistleblowers, wrote that he reported that nothing actually changed. There is.
“Copying never stops. We’ll get better at figuring out how to do it.”
Meanwhile, Amazon said, “We have a strong and ongoing relationship with Carhartt and continue to be a valued seller.”
3. AmazonBasics pricing
Mattioli cites Fortem, a small Brooklyn-based company that makes car accessories and has just four employees.
“Their first product and best seller is the popular car trunk organizer,” she writes. “Fortem she launched her trunk organizer on Amazon Marketplace in March 2016 and eventually became the number one seller in the category on the site.”
But as with Adore Me, its success went unnoticed, and in early 2019 Amazon Basics product developers had access to a detailed report of Fortem’s metrics, the whistleblower said.
Mattioli writes: “This was a gold mine of data. Instead of spending expensive R&D to develop the right product and risk it not selling, they had a roadmap to create a hit quickly. ”
She described it as like breaking into a virtual mall after it closes and taking all the data.
By October of the same year, three trunk organizers similar to Fortem’s were released under the Amazon Basics brand.
“Employees in Amazon’s private label division receive annual ethics training and are told that they are prohibited from accessing the personal data of third-party sellers,” Mattioli wrote.
But in reality, dozens of employees told her that the firewall was inadequate, and many were able to quickly retrieve the reports themselves.
Amazon disputed this, saying, “While we thoroughly investigate reports that employees have acted contrary to our policies, we have found no evidence to support this allegation.”
4. The issue of fakes
Buying a poorly made handbag is another matter. It’s a completely different story if the product you purchased is not just a fake, but a dangerous product.
Mattioli interviewed an Amazon customer named Christian Fletcher who purchased what appeared to be a tourniquet made by TacMed Solutions. This device is used in emergencies to stop blood flow from arteries and veins to prevent bleeding.
“After the tourniquet arrived, Fletcher compared the product instructions and features to the photos on TacMed’s site and realized it was a fake. He sent the fake to TacMed, but TacMed “If you try it and it doesn’t work, you’re dead,” Fletcher said.
Similar issues exist with babywearing, Mattioli argues. “Among the spiked listings were children’s pajamas and hoodies with drawstrings near her neck,” she wrote.
“The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has banned children’s clothing with drawstring ties due to the strangulation hazard.”
But when administrators alerted senior staff to the issue, they allegedly told them it was not their job to make the website safer for parents shopping for their children.
“The prevalence of counterfeit products and the fact that there are few regulations governing sales on Amazon’s website has deterred even many former Amazon employees from shopping on the website they helped build. ” Mattioli wrote.
An employee who worked in Amazon’s consumables department until 2015 said, “I don’t buy consumables on Amazon anymore unless they come directly from a brand.”
All wars: Amazon’s ruthless quest to own the world Remake Corporate Power by Dana Mattioli is published by Little, Brown.