> As I cracked open my laptop to write this article, people were already discussing its existence on certain email distribution lists, and the expressions were mostly of disbelief at how uninformed the article was

Company email lists? Why would those do anything but praise Amazon?

or you know, people would complain and someone would shut down the discussion. "Let's take it offline" was a pretty common trick. "This isn't the right forum" is another.

> I sit on the floor, in a desk, not an office, because I like to be close to my folks

Also because you aren't a high enough level to be given an office.

> which means I’m part of a select group of people at Amazon who not only has visibility into our hiring standards and practices, but has the direct responsibility of ensuring they are always met.

True, and you can give insight into how the process works. Consider though, can you actually give good insight into how and why candidates might think it is broken?

> As long as Amazon is around, and I’m here, we’ll continue to be customer-obsessed

I really can't go into details, but Amazon is at best inconsistent with this ideal. They do a lot of things right, especially in retail, but they get a lot wrong. I have seen decisions made that were decidedly anti-customer.

This also cuts the other way, if something doesn't have customer impact it becomes hard to get it done. Shortsighted engineering practices.

> No one, I repeat, no one is encouraged to “toil long and late.” As a matter of fact, I’ll take a bit of time to expand on this:

of course not, you just get a deadline dropped on you instead.

> Yes. Amazon is, without question, the most innovative technology company in the world. The hardest problems in technology, bar none, are solved at Amazon.

okay.

> Our cafeterias are subsidized,

you mean the ones that serve mediocre sandwiches at mediocre prices?

> Executive mandates don’t fly around here

we had so many "drop everything and do this" moments because some exec found a problem. Sometimes it was justified. Sometimes it would not have happened if it was anyone but the boss.

Besides, the situation would probably go something like this for a mandate...

Manager: We are doing X
Engineer 1: I think X is a bad idea because of Y.
Engineer 2: I agree, and I wonder if we should do Z instead.
Manager: Lets discuss this offline.

Then nothing happens.

> I’ve never been called an Amhole, and I’m completely certain this is made up, as I’ve never heard anyone say this, and as an insult, it wouldn’t make a very good one, in my opinion.

It's used by people complaining about Amazon "ruining" seattle.

> I won’t discuss Organizational Level Ranking, or OLR. Some companies, such as Microsoft and Accenture, no longer use it

Gee, I wonder why. The defender of the company won't discuss one of their more criticized practices. Despite being in a good position to do so.

> To assert otherwise without a single shred of data is irresponsible and just plain wrong.

So he said/she said basically. Both sides have bias, but considering what you hear about the process while inside the company I'd go with the idea that it is pretty harsh.

> I have seen Amazon do more to encourage diversity than any other company I’ve worked for.

Like having a joke of a maternity leave policy and refusing to discuss diversity figures for engineering roles?

> How could being an attentive, respective leader, who is vocally self-critical and candid be a bad thing??

It's not really an amazon issue, but data shows that women who are more vocal and disagree (i.e. disagree and commit) tend to get labelled as more difficult to work with, relative to males who do the same. That's a tough issue since it probably involves unconscious bias.

> This part of the articlea deals with attrition

Unlike you who immediately pivots to how people want to work at amazon and how innovative and awesome the company is. Fact is, attrition is a known problem at Amazon and from personal experience it doesn't seem to be one that is dealt with well. Excuses are made, new people are hired, everything continues as normal.