15 August 2015

...[Amazon] is conducting a little-known experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is acceptable...[More] than 100 current and former Amazonians...described how they tried to reconcile the sometimes-punishing aspects of their workplace with what many called its thrilling power to create...

Amazon is in the vanguard of where technology wants to take the modern office: more nimble and more productive, but harsher and less forgiving...

In Amazon warehouses, employees are monitored by sophisticated electronic systems to ensure they are packing enough boxes every hour. (Amazon came under fire in 2011 when workers in...[a] warehouse toiled in more than 100-degree heat with ambulances waiting outside, taking away laborers as they fell. After an investigation by the local newspaper, the company installed air-conditioning.)...

Many women at Amazon attribute its gender gap — unlike Facebook, Google or Walmart, it does not currently have a single woman on its top leadership team — to its competition-and-elimination system. Several former high-level female executives, and other women participating in a recent internal Amazon online discussion...said they believed that some of the leadership principles worked to their disadvantage.

[also refers to Netflix]