The obligatory Amazon take

By now you have read (or at least heard about), the New York Times' blistering takedown of life working at Amazon, your favorite online shopping destination for just about anything you'll ever need, (and lots and lots of things you don't). If you are interested in work, workplaces, culture, and performance, the piece is definitely worth a long read, and it just might make you pause for a moment before you order your next shipment of stuff from the giant retail machine.

Most interestingly, the Times' piece largely focuses on working culture for Amazon's white collar or professional workers, and not on the many, many thousands of Amazon employees and contractors that toil away in their massive distribution centers, often in extremely harsh conditions. Most Amazon customers already know how tough the warehouse workers have it at Amazon, and judging by Amazon's continued revenue growth, we have shown that we really don't care about people in the warehouses all that much. We just want our stuff faster.

The responses to the Times piece have more or less fallen into two camps - one; Amazon is a horrible, terrible, dystopian place and shame on them for not (for some inexplicable reason), treating their white collar professional staff 'better' than their front-line warehouse staff; or two, creating a high-performing organization demands focus, dedication, long hours, and most importantly, no tolerance (for long anyway), for average performance. No exceptions. And as the Times reports this lack of tolerance for anything less than high performance and an almost singular dedication to the Amazon cause can look really cold, ugly, messy, and heartless.  

So where does the 'truth' lie in all of this? Kind of hard to say unless you have direct experience working at Amazon. Chairman and Founder Jeff Bezos issued a kind of non-denial denial of the Times piece. Something along the lines of 'This is not the Amazon I know. This can't really be true or no one would want to work here.' That sort of thing. Note he didn't really say 'This is NOT true, just that it probably can't be true.'

And ultimately, like in most other complex situations the real truth is somewhat blurry, inconsistent, and as always very, very subject to interpretation and bias. What do I think? Well since it is my blog I get to share.

I think that any organization that, at least for a time, was willing to subject any of its workforce to the kind of brutal conditions like at the 115 degree Pennsylvania warehouse where workers had to be carried off by paramedics, has pretty much determined that performance, or rather the ability and willingness to sacrifice in order to achieve high performance, is what matters most. 

Amazon is/has been willing to push warehouse workers to the point of heat exhaustion and collapse, why should we be surprised (and angered), that it is willing to push its professional staff into 80-hour weeks, emails and texts at all hours of the night, and has, if the Times piece is true, to have persistently pushed employees to think of their work first, last, and at every time in between?

I think, more or less, this 'outrage' against Amazon is at least a little misplaced. Most of us, by virtue of how we spend our money, (and let's not even talk about under what conditions our iPhones are assembled), don't really care how badly most companies treat their workers. 

We only start to care when these workers begin to, uncomfortably, look a little too much like us, and do the same kinds of jobs that we do.

Signs of the Corporate Death Spiral #1 - Talking about dress codes

We have probably all been, at one time in our careers, in an organization where things were not going so well. Maybe sales were down due to increased competition, maybe our products and services were not in alignment with what the market was demanding, or maybe we flat-out had exhausted the supply of every customer who might want one or two of whatever it is we were offering. There are probably thousands of reasons why once successful organizations can fall on hard times. 

But often, especially when working in a classic support function like IT or HR, we are not immediately aware of just how bad things are becoming for the organization overall. Sure, the CHRO probably has some idea of what is going on, when he/she is asked to provide some numbers on potential staffing reduction scenarios, but often awareness of these plans does not reach very far down into the organization until, of course, it is too late for impacted folks to react or 'pro' act, if you get my meaning.

So for rank and file folks, who are always the last to know everything, it pays to get attuned to the signs or signals that things in the organization might not be going as well as they once were. These are smaller, more subtle kinds of things that are not as dramatic as a layoff or a C-level shakeup, but might be as important nonetheless, as they point to a present and future that might not be as fun and gamesy as the past. 

What are some of these signals? First up, courtesy of our pals at venerable technology giant HP is the 'Dress Code Crackdown'. Check this excerpt from The Register:

Troubled HP has hit upon what it thinks is a terrific idea to revive its fortunes: tell techies to leave their T-shirts and shorts at home and obey the corporate "smart casual" dress code instead.

Some R&D teams within HP Enterprise Services were sent a confidential memo this week reminding them to follow the IT giant's rules against workplace fashion faux pas, The Register has learned.

"If you aren't dressed like the models in the posters that HP displays around its locations, then your appearance is sapping the productivity of the workers around you," one source, who asked to remain anonymous, quipped.

The dress code memo was sent out because higher-ups believe customers visiting HP's offices will be put off by scruffy-looking R&D engineers, we're told.

The order to tuck in shirts and smarten up for guests has not gone down well, apparently: some HP developers, who do not deal with customers directly, were quite enjoying wearing T-shirts and shorts at work during these warm summer months.

According to HP, men should avoid turning up to the office in T-shirts with no collars, faded or torn jeans, shorts, baseball caps and other headwear, sportswear, and sandals and other open shoes. Women are advised not to wear short skirts, faded or torn jeans, low-cut dresses, sandals, crazy high heels, and too much jewelry.

The Enterprise Services division employs more than 100,000 people across the world, from the UK and Australia to India and Germany, as well as cities in the US.

"There are customers around, and HP doesn’t want them to think riffraff work here," one source told El Reg.

Nice. At least HP is sticking to the script and the classic reasoning of the dress code police - that 'customers' somehow might be offended if they spot a coder in a T-shirt and a hoodie. 

What matters here has nothing at all to do with customers, or even if there are really some technical folks at HP that are going a little too far with 'coder casual' attire at work. No company has a 'dress code' problem. They might have a few people here and there that need a little bit of guidance, sure. But when organizations, especially massive ones like HP start going off with internal memos about dress codes and posting up examples of 'acceptable' dress, then you can be sure there are problems far, far worse than the Queensryche T-shirt that Jeremy wore last Tuesday.

It is a signal, and an ominous one at that. 

When you are talking about dress codes you are not talking about things that really matter. And often it is because you've run out of ideas for how to attack the things that do matter.

If you are in a company and get one of those memos, take it as a sign that worse news is coming. and maybe sooner than you think.

Have a great week!

The worst people in the workplace, ranked

You probably work. You probably work with other people. Many of those other people are terrible. Here is your incomplete, yet definitive guide to the worst of these other people.

10. The five people in your conference room who are still meeting at 11:05 when they only booked the room until 11 - Your meeting is probably a waste of time and money. The seven of you standing around in the hallway waiting to get inside the conference room is certainly a waste of time and money.

9. The host who is late to the Conference Call - The virtual equivalent of standing around in the hall at 11:05 because the idiots who reserved the conference room from 10 - 11 can't stop yapping. But only this time you have terrible 'hold' music to listent to.

8. The 'I never got the email' guy - You got the email, you liar. You forgot/ignored/deleted the email. But you got the email.

7. The 'Half day?' guy - This is the jerk who feels obligated to track the comings and goings of everyone else in the office. Anyone who drops the 'Half Day?' line at you at 5:02PM is a terrible, sad, humorless dullard.

6. The 'Marked as urgent' emailer - If it were urgent, you would just call. It is an email, therefore it can't be urgent. Look up the word urgent sometime you jerk.

5. The Sunday night emailer - Hey guess what? Sunday is (still) technically part of the weekend. You may feel the need to work on Sundays, but that doesn't mean the rest of us want/need/care to. Work on your own stuff on Sundays if you must, but keep the rest of us out of it until Monday morning. 

4. The 'wears headphones all day' guy - You are at work. You are not on a LAX - JFK flight in an economy class middle seat. You want us to think that actually trying to talk to you is such a burden and will somehow ruin your 'flow'. Give it a break, it won't kill you to take off the headphones once in a while and act like a human being.

3. The 'community candy' lady - This story is 100% true, (small details changed to protect everyone, especially me).  Think massive, Fortune 100 type tech company housed in a giant high-rise. On each floor there is a central reception desk manned by one or two people throughout the day. On said desk on Floor 29, there lied a large candy bowl with the expected assortment of treats, chocolates, twizzlers, whatever. Everyone coming and going from that floor would take a treat or two from the bowl as they walked by. No one really 'asked' if they could have a piece, it was just understood that the candy was for everybody. Then one day one of the company employees, who was wearing a visible company badge, actually asked the lady at reception if it was ok if he could take a piece of candy. And the reception lady said 'No'. for whatever reason, she refused to allow this particular employee to take a piece of the community candy. The rejected employee proceeded, (irrationally for sure), to freak out, accuse the receptionist of racism, shout a few choice and unprintable words in her direction, and knock the candy bowl and its contents to the floor. This exchange led to a series of urgent emails, executive meetings, HR interventions, written warnings and literally tens of thousands of dollars worth of managerial time to sort out. The bottom line: Community candy is terrible.

2. War story guy - This is the guy who shows up to work every Monday in a splint, with a soft cast, with some kind of bandage over the eye, or a noticeable limp. He then has to regale you, (because you feel like you have to ask), with some crappy story about how he totally rocked it on the side of some cliff or shooting the rapids or playing on the 40+ rugby team. Hey doofus - once you hit say 35 or so, it is time to grow the hell up and quit turning up for work like it is the first day of 5th grade. And no, we don't want to see your killer Go Pro footage of that radical tumble you took on the Black Diamond slope.

1. Nothing is good enough for my high standards guy - The standard issue office chair? Not going to work. The whiteboard that fits on the wall of each office leaving room for the door to open? Not big enough. The pens and pencils that are stocked in the office supplies drawer that are used by everyone else? Not going to cut it. Basically nothing in the way the office works is good enough for this guy who needs a special version of EVERYTHING. I am not talking about any real accommodation issues here, no, this guy just has to be different. This is often accompanied by bringing personal supplies like staplers and binders, and frequent references to former employers, something along the lines of 'When I was at ACME Company, we had the nice pens.' You know what? Go the heck back to ACME company, and take your stupid stapler with you.

Ok, that is it...

Who did I forget? Let me know in the comments.

If you could pass a new (workplace) law, what would it be?

Note: This week on the blog I am trying out a little experiment - writing on the first five (or so) subjects that popped out at random from a cool little app called Writing Exercises. The app provides suggestions for topics, characters, first lines - that kind of thing. I tapped the 'Random Subject' button a few times and will (try) to come up with something for each subject I was presented. It may be good, it may stink - who knows? But whatever the topic, I am taking like 20 minutes tops to bang something out. So here goes...

Today's topic: If you could pass a new (workplace) law, what would it be?

Quick disclaimer, the Writing Exercises app actually didn't include the work 'workplace' in the topic suggestion, but since I have been really running off the rails this week with these posts and I have no desire to wade into any kinds of issues that actually are important and that stir people up, I will keep my answers to this question limited to work and workplaces. I can think of three workplace 'laws' that I would enact once I am granted the title of Czar of Work. Here we go...

1. Email use would be subject to some strict conditions - I have an entire laundry list of edicts I would lay down with regards to workplace email use and practices. Just some of my proposals: No email on the weekend, designated 'email free' blocks of time during the week, and the auto-deletion of any incoming messages that you receive when you are out on vacation. And one more thing, any email that is flagged as 'Urgent' is immediately returned to sender with the question 'Really?' in the subject line. Under a Steve Boese administration, email would be dramatically different.

2. Meeting and Conference Call 'start' times would be taken much more seriously - Showing up late for a meeting or a Con Call would be just cause for termination. Maybe not on the first offense, but once a pattern of 'my time is much more important than your time' is established, then that person HAS TO GO. Show up on time, or decline the meeting in advance. Media outlets love to report on how much productivity is lost in workplaces from silly things like March Madness office pools. I bet the sums wasted on the combined amount of time people spend sitting around waiting for meetings and calls to start would dwarf whatever is wasted by workers chatting about their NCAA brackets.

3. Where, when, and how people work would be (mostly) up to them - Saving the obvious occupations (ER nurse, elementary school teacher, NBA point guard), who have to work at a specific place at a specific time, under Czar Steve's benevolent rule, most employees would be granted the flexibility to work where, when, and how they feel the most productive. We would stop 'asking' to work from home on Tuesday since the plumber is coming to the house or if could we pretty please have a couple of hours off on Thursday to see little Joey in the school concert. Workers would be free to make choices, like adults, and be held responsible for their performance and outcomes, (like they are anyway). 

Ok, that's it. Those are Czar of Work Steve's three new workplace laws. What laws for the workplace would you enact if you had the chance? 

Whatever you do, don't stare at his eye

Yesterday I had the increasingly rare experience of meeting a professional acquaintance for the very first time in person who despite having corresponded with this person over email and having one or two calls, I had no idea what they actually looked like. While we were connected on LinkedIn, and I think following each other on Twitter, this person had no profile pic up on either site. I had also never come across any pictures of them from other events or conferences. I 'knew' this person a little, but would not have been able to pick them out of a crowd (unless the crowd were all wearing name tags, which thankfully for me, they were).

Why bring this up? Because it seems to me in the modern world, this kind of thing almost never happens anymore. Every professional, or so it seems, is on LinkedIn. And every single piece of LinkedIn 'advice' tells people to post a profile picture, and probably most do. Add in Twitter, and if you are really a little bit stalker/creepy, Facebook, and with a little bit of sleuthing you can find a picture online of just about anybody. So meeting a professional contact that you have had a fair bit of interaction with and having no clue what they looked like just doesn't seem to happen much anymore, at least not with me.

The episode reminded me of the first 'real' job I ever had, way back in the day. It was an entirely normal, professional office job, but since these were the days pre-LinkedIn and social media of any kind, (yes, the Dark Ages), I did not know what anyone looked like at my new workplace. Which was not a big deal back then, as we expected to know almost nothing about people we were meeting for the first time. As I look back, it is actually kind of refreshing to think we didn't start every business relationship with a bunch of pre-determined conclusions we've made from spending 15 minutes checking out the other person's social networking profiles. We took people more at face value, and judged based on how they behaved.  

But anyway, back to the new job. When I started the person who would be my direct manager was on vacation, and would not be back for a couple of days. In his absence the alternate 'onboarding' person ('Your desk is here, the bathroom is over there'), said 'Bob (my manager), is a really great guy. You will like him. Just one thing you need to remember when you meet him. Whatever you do, don't stare at his eye.' Ok, I thought, I will try not to stare at Bob's eye. Can't be that hard, right? 

Fast forward a couple of days when Bob returned from vacation and we met for the first time. And Bob was, in fact, a really nice guy. Exceedingly nice. Honestly even to this day one of the very best managers I've ever had. But there was one shall we say, unusual element in Bob's appearance. His left eye was prosthetic, a glass eye. And the fact that I had been warned in advance not to stare at the eye made it all the harder to not stare at the eye, if you know what I mean. It would have been better, I think, if no one had mentioned it at all to me prior to the meeting. I would have noticed it sure, but hopefully, would have not sort of fixated on it as much as the notion of 'Don't stare at his eye' had been bouncing around my head for days.

Need to wrap up this nonsense here. Don't be so creepy stalking people online before you meet them. It's ok to be surprised sometimes. It's even ok to not know everything there is to know about a person before you even talk to them once. 

And don't stare at their eyes.