Amazon VP quotes internal employee reviews to rebut NY Times feature

The New York Times' feature-length report about the work culture at Amazon's Seattle headquarters came and went in August without an official, public response from the online retailer despite its largely negative portrayal of the company. That changed on Monday when Amazon posted a harshly worded rebuttal on blogging site Medium—which quickly turned into a Medium-fueled back-and-forth between the retailer and the Times.

Amazon SVP Jay Carney fired the first shot in the morning with a post titled "What the New York Times didn't tell you." Carney explained that he posted it because Amazon had privately sent its concerns to the Times "several weeks ago, hoping they might take action to correct the record."

The post focused its criticism on four ex-Amazon employees who had been quoted in the original report. Carney divulged work-sensitive information about three of those ex-employees, including quotes from internal Amazon reviews. In one case, Carney rephrased one person's allegations of being "strafed" with criticisms as being offered "thoughts on areas of improvement." He also alleged that one employee, Bo Olson, "had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records" and then resigned when "confronted with the evidence." (Carney described Olson's tenure as "brief" in spite his being at the company for longer than a year.)