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I was blown away by this article yesterday. The more I thought about it the more Amazon sounded like where academia is going. Brian On Sun, Aug 16, 2015 at 1:23 PM, Louis Proyect <l...@panix.com> wrote: > Molly Jay, an early member of the Kindle team, said she received high > ratings for years. But when she began traveling to care for her father, > who was suffering from cancer, and cut back working on nights and > weekends, her status changed. She was blocked from transferring to a > less pressure-filled job, she said, and her boss told her she was “a > problem.” As her father was dying, she took unpaid leave to care for him > and never returned to Amazon. > > “When you’re not able to give your absolute all, 80 hours a week, they > see it as a major weakness,” she said. > > A woman who had thyroid cancer was given a low performance rating after > she returned from treatment. She says her manager explained that while > she was out, her peers were accomplishing a great deal. Another employee > who miscarried twins left for a business trip the day after she had > surgery. “I’m sorry, the work is still going to need to get done,” she > said her boss told her. “From where you are in life, trying to start a > family, I don’t know if this is the right place for you.” > > A woman who had breast cancer was told that she was put on a > “performance improvement plan” — Amazon code for “you’re in danger of > being fired” — because “difficulties” in her “personal life” had > interfered with fulfilling her work goals. Their accounts echoed others > from workers who had suffered health crises and felt they had also been > judged harshly instead of being given time to recover. > > A former human resources executive said she was required to put a woman > who had recently returned after undergoing serious surgery, and another > who had just had a stillborn child, on performance improvement plans, > accounts that were corroborated by a co-worker still at Amazon. “What > kind of company do we want to be?” the executive recalled asking her > bosses. > > The mother of the stillborn child soon left Amazon. “I had just > experienced the most devastating event in my life,” the woman recalled > via email, only to be told her performance would be monitored “to make > sure my focus stayed on my job.” > > > full: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > pe...@lists.csuchico.edu > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Brian McKenna, Ph.D. Department of Behavioral Sciences CASL 4025 Dearborn, Michigan _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
