No company would be thrilled to be portrayed as the worst corporate workplace in the world, but thanks to a blistering critique of Amazon in The New York Times in August, the massive Seattle-based online retailer more or less won that ignominious blue ribbon. One memorable part of the piece, for example, quoted a books marketing employee, Bo Olson, confessing, "Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk."
Amazon Senior Vice President for Global Corporate Affairs Jay Carney (yes, the former journalist and ex-White House press secretary) wasn't having any of that. In a piece published Monday morning, Carney slammed The New York Times for poor reporting, and appeared to discredit a number of testimonies used as proof of Amazon's allegedly nightmarish workplace. That books marketer who claimed he saw everyone crying at his or her desks? Carney outs Olson as possibly having "an axe to grind": "[Olson's] brief tenure at Amazon ended after an investigation revealed he had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately." Carney continues:
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