Reprint of response to Jeff from wife of former employee.

This thread has been archived - replies are not allowed. We could not process your request at this time. Please refresh and try again. You can also email me directly at jeff amazon. Amazon prides itself on being a workplace that encourages a constant flow of feedback—even when that feedback may be difficult to hear.

I hope you remember your own management principles when listening to my story.

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We gave up our entire life when my husband got his job at your company. Leaving behind our friends and family—not to mention my own job—seemed a small price to pay for such an amazing opportunity.

I wanted to move, and I was so proud of my husband getting hired at such a well-known, high-caliber company. Our first years were heady and dazzling. We were moved into corporate housing with a waterfront view. Seattle was lonely, but exciting.

It felt like our lives had leveled up. But little by little, the shine wore off. With warehouses around the globe, my husband would get paged to fix problems in China in the middle of the night, in the UK in the wee hours of the morning, and then in the Kentucky warehouse during work hours. When his pager went off, he was expected to respond within 15 minutes or risk blowback or a call from a manager. If something came directly from you, Jeff, it was all hands on deck until that problem got figured out.

No matter the emotional or physical toll. This meant he was expected to be on-call every three weeks. As his one-woman pit crew, it was my responsibility to wake up with him when he was paged in the middle of the night, to pull over somewhere on the highway to find him WiFi if he was paged on the road, and to make sure that our lives never involved traveling anywhere more than 15 minutes from an internet connection.

Without children, this schedule was grueling. But when our girls were born, it became almost unbearable. With my husband unable to take off more than two weeks after they each arrived, I became like so many other quasi-single parents, married to a partner who was married to the job. Today, the ridiculousness of this policy is compounded by the stories of other tech companies and their increasingly generous paternity leave. When our first daughter was about a month old, my husband was asked to go on a business trip.

I imagine he could have turned that down, but I was insistent that he go so that his managers would not worry that his home life was impacting his work ethic.

This is the Amazon way, after all. It was also one of the loneliest weeks of my life. Then there was the weekend trip we planned with my parents one summer, when we were forced to cancel our hotel room and come back a day early. Jeff, you wisely set it up so that Amazon freezes their code to provide a stable platform for customers during the busy retail holiday season.

When my husband returned from his aboded vacation that Monday, the writing was on the wall. Nevermind that he was no longer working with the boss who had hired him, or that the new management team had been shifting his priorities every two weeks. He had been under so much stress that after the meeting I asked him to go to therapy. We love this city, and its tech culture, so much. We gained so many things from the move out here—not the least of which was better career opportunities for both of us!

If only you had asked for our feedback earlier, and responded with the same kind of intensity with which you expect your own employees to respond to yours. While I empathize with this man's issues, in defense of Amazon Getting two weeks of paternity leave is reasonable in my opinion.

Issues with a business trip when you have a one month old. When do you think travel is acceptable? Being "on call" as a software developer should be expected. When on call, responding within 15 minutes to a software issue is logical. How do we feel when seller central is down or we can't upload inventory? MAG, I think the point being made is that the company appears to be sucking the life blood out of its employees and then tossing them out the door.

Details about how long for X, what's acceptable for Y aren't the real issue. It's great to be working for an exciting tech company.

But one day you realize that the rush is not temporary and it is never going to let up because there are not enough new hires and layoffs keep happening. You are just expected to do more. Bezos didn't know this was going on, then he needs to get out of his office more and look around. Jeff is shocked, SHOCKED and will spring into action to take care of this immediately.

The Lunatick Fire and EMS Store wrote: Or even maternity leave. We all probably have dealt with a poorly trained Seller Support Rep. We have have felt the effects of poorly trained Amazon employees. Those employees are trained and managed by other employees. If the level of service, lack of knowledge and incipiency is acceptable by their supervisors, one has to wonder about those supervisors. It is beyond imagination to think those who poorly trained the line level employee are also poorly trained and lack the supervisory skills needed to properly manage people?

How far up the chain does the lack of training, the lack of understanding the rules, the failure to know what other department do, and the lack of respect go? Is it unimaginable to think it goes all the way to the top?

My husband used to get middle-of-the-night pages. Maybe the graveyard crew or tech can fix the issue? I have worked the graveyard crew doing accounting so it would be ready by dawn and my brother worked for a tech company working the graveyard shift. If there was a problem at night, he fixed it. I am surprised that Amazon is singled out The higher the pay the more is expected If it is so bad why he did not leave earlier?

Vending Toy Pride wrote: Can you troubleshoot an exchange-level switch? Nope, but I bet I can find someone who can.

How often does an exchange level switch need attention from a tech. How often does a issue arise that requires someone on-call? If it happens often enough Hire someone to be there at night or at least alternate the days the tech is on call.

Is the on call-person is rarely needed, then this is not an issue but if it become a common occurrence, Amazon should spend the money to properly staff their business and hire more people. We are not getting the whole story. We don't know if it is an employee upset about the once or twice a month phone call or if the calls came nightly. We don't know the level of issues and if the problem could have been address by someone else or if the person on call was the only person in the company qualified to handle the problem.

View Thread RSS feeds. Search Forum Ask a question Back to Thread List. Answered question Unanswered question with answer points still available Unanswered question Seller Forums Status Icons. SlideDown 'ul' ; if languageList. THEN HIRE MORE PEOPLE!!!!!!!! Route those issues to another who is on duty!!!!!!!!!!

The present system is cheap and sleazy to the employees. Actually it's a violation of the family medical leave act. They are entitled to 12 weeks. Being "on call" seems like a violation of labor laws and probably moves him from "salaried worker" to a Per hour worker entitled to overtime there are currently lawsuits against tech companies over this.

They also have to give you at least 8 hours off. So If he worked 8 hours and was on call and worked 8 hours straight he is required by law to time off. You've never worked for a tech company, apparently. On-Call was exaggerating things a teensy bit. She knew about her husband's work hours and they still started a family right then? Isolated in Seattle with no friends, no family support? It doesn't ring true. I also note the same people who are whinging about this are the ones who want broken things fixed RIGHT NOW whenever something goes down.

Who did you think fixes them? Sometimes he'd go in and be there for the next 36 hours. He never complained about it. It was his job, because he was working at the West Coast Internet exchange -- literally keeping the Internet running.

Technically there is no such thing anymore it all falls under FMLA. They have to hold your job. If you have the leave available they have to give it to you paid, if not unpaid. Companies can give more if they choose, but they can't give less. We're talking about millions of dollars worth of equipment.

Don't feel bad, I couldn't fix it either. Sure, they can deal with simple stuff, but when you've got customers in this case customers are huge Internet companies like Netflix, eBay and yes, Amazon that are "down" to a portion of their customer base, you need someone who knows what they're doing. They page the expert and get him out of bed.

He knows who to call at the vendor if need be to get support, get a software patch, whatever. And that guy gets his sleep interrupted, too. I will say that my guy is happier now that he's in a research group that doesn't do high level operational support.

But here's the difference between Mr.

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On-Call and my guy: Mine never wanted to advance in the company. He could have been a manager years ago but didn't want the hassles. He just wants to do what he does. Whereas there's no point in going to work at Amazon if you don't have ambition.

On-Call omitted to mention are the restricted stock units that all Amazon employees get. The first couple of years the RSUs vest at a low percentage, then in the third or fourth year I forget which there's a big bump, presumably as a reward for sticking around.

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Since RSUs are significant compensation, you can bet the On-Calls stuck it out in Seattle for the money. You can't really blame Amazon for that.

The way Amazon customer support works I don't know exactly how seller support works is there are three levels: Supervisor levels are not really supervisors, they just have more experience. A trainee works with a support-level person for days then they become support-level themselves.

The turnover rate at support is so great that a newly hired trainee will be moved to "supervisor level" in just a few months. I suspect seller support works the same way. So it is no surprise that the technical skills of many support persons are not that great. But do not blame them - it is the system that causes it - no one has a chance to create skills before they are gone.

All this is from a blog post a support person wrote about her experience at Amazon. I thnk she stayed four months and left. Back to Thread List. Unanswered question with answer points still available.