Jeff Bezos

Amazon Softens Blow of Times Piece, But Attorneys Warn Against Celebrating Too Soon

In recent days, Amazon has worked to soften the blow of a blistering piece about its culture in Sunday’s New York Times. In the article’s immediate aftermath, Jeff Bezos wrote a memo to employees, saying the account “doesn’t describe the Amazon I know or the caring Amazonians I work with every day.” He further pointed employees to a newer piece by current Amazon engineer Nick Ciubotariu that praises the company’s workplace environment.

The moves helped push the story in a positive direction for the company, as did the Times’s own public editor’s assessment of the story, which, she wrote Tuesday, should have provided more balance and context. (The Times’s executive editor, Dean Banquet, later let her know that he disagreed entirely with her assessment.)

Still, employment attorneys suggest it may be a little soon for Amazon to break out the bubbly. They think there could well be a class-action lawsuit in the many anecdotes cited by the Times of employees who were treated poorly — particularly those who appear to have they lost their jobs owing to health issues and other demands outside of Amazon.

Says Wilma Liebman, a visiting scholar at Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations, who spent three terms as a member of the National Labor Relations Board (including, most recently, as its chair): “Being a very tough boss, not being nice, not being sympathetic – that isn’t illegal in itself.” Violating overtime law and discriminating against women because they are pregnant is, however.

More here.

What Is Amazon Thinking?

Back in October, when the bestselling book about Amazon, “The Everything Store,” was first published, I talked about Jeff Bezos with Michael Maccoby, a psychoanalyst who writes about business executives and teaches leadership at Oxford’s Saïd Business School. His impression of Bezos, he told me, was that Bezos needed a strong right-hand man, something that Bezos – unlike Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and others – hasn’t seemingly had or wanted. Maccoby then veered into what sounded slightly absurd to me at the time, even if it made for provocative copy; he compared Bezos to Napoleon.

In recent weeks, the analogy has begun to seem a little less outlandish.

As I noted in my interview with Maccoby, both Bezos and Napoleon enjoyed success at a young age, both rejected the established wisdom, and both took on seemingly invincible enemies and defeated them.

Napoleon also pushed his luck eventually, ignoring repeated advice not to invade Russia. And however stretched, it’s hard not to see some comparisons to Amazon’s recent assault on suppliers that have fallen out of the company’s favor. Yesterday, it was Warner Home Video, whose popular movies Amazon is refusing to pre-sell or market, much to the chagrin of its customers.

Two weeks ago, it was the German publishing company Bonnier Media Group, the delivery of whose books Amazon has slowed dramatically because Bonnier seemingly refuses to give Amazon a bigger cut of the earnings of its electronic books.

Meanwhile, the publishing house Hachette and Amazon have been at odds for months, reportedly over deep discounts on Hachette’s electronic books that Amazon wants to impose. While publishers are rooting for Hachette’s CEO, no one is expecting a quick fix, and Hachette, its authors, and consumers are being made to suffer in the meantime. Said one author to CNN Money this week, “I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the back by a company I supported.”

Are its tactics going to stir up a tsunami of congressional subcommittees and political investigations and give ammunition to Walmart and Target, which sorely want to take back the ground that Amazon has stolen from them? Will they embolden Alibaba, which just opened its first online storefront for U.S. customers? We don’t know yet, but what’s worse, it doesn’t seem like anyone at Amazon is asking these questions.

Back in October, Maccoby noted that “Napoleon was very successful as long as he had Talleyrand as his foreign minister.” When he lost Talleyrand, he spun out of control. “The danger with someone like Bezos is the same danger that Napoleon had,” Maccoby had added. Without enough pushback, “you can go too far.”

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Does Jeff Bezos Need a Wingman?

Yesterday, Bloomberg published an excerpt from a new book on Jeff Bezos that portrays the billionaire CEO of Amazon as a brilliant but ruthless dictator, one who treats workers “like expendable resources.”

Michael Maccoby, a psychoanalyst who writes about business executives and teaches leadership at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, doesn’t view Bezos’s tendencies to mistreat employees as his biggest liability, though. Rather, it’s his lack of a strong number two.

Amazon’s success has certainly been stunning. As the book points out, 20-year-old Amazon now has roughly $75 billion in annual revenue, a $140 billion market cap, and nearly 100,000 full-time and part-time employees, up 40 percent from last year. In late summer, Bezos personally acquired the Washington Post newspaper and some related properties for $250 million.

Maccoby, who has worked closely with 40 CEOs over the years but has studied many more, thinks Bezos resembles “narcissistic visionaries” like Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, and Bill Gates — with one major exception. All had a right-hand man; Bezos seemingly does not. And “that kind of personality needs to have strong partners who balance them and who complement their skills,” insists Maccoby.

Maccoby points to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who, in the company’s earlier days, could dream about the future while sidekick Steve Ballmer obsessed about Microsoft’s day-to-day operations. Maccoby also cites Steve Jobs’ relationships, first with his Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak and much later with Apple executives Tim Cook and Jony Ive. And there is Oracle’s Larry Ellison, who has brought in a string of executives over the years, only to chew them up and spit them out. (Ellison’s current number two is co-president Mark Hurd.)

Asked whether Bezos might be an exception to the rule, Maccoby says, “So far, so good.” Still, he thinks Amazon’s decision to forego profits in favor of reinvestment are reminiscent of numerous endeavors throughout history, including those of, gulp, Napoleon.

It’s not necessarily an unfavorable comparison. Both enjoyed success at a young age, both rejected the established wisdom, and both took on seemingly invincible enemies and defeated them. If historians are to be believed, Napoleon – like Bezos – also had unrivaled intellectual powers and an astonishing capacity to integrate information from different disciplines.

Of course, as brilliant as Napoleon was, he eventually pushed his luck, ignoring repeated advice not to invade Russia. Says Maccoby: “Napoleon was very successful as long as he had Talleyrand as his foreign minister.” When he lost Talleyrand, he spun out of control.

“The danger with someone like Bezos is the same danger that Napoleon had,” Maccoby adds. Without enough pushback, “you can go too far.”

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