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Essay: The Dark Side of Amazon: Issues with Work-Life Balance and Senior Management

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  • Subject area(s): Sample essays
  • Reading time: 4 minutes
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  • Published: 27 July 2024*
  • Last Modified: 27 July 2024
  • File format: Text
  • Words: 1,124 (approx)
  • Number of pages: 5 (approx)
  • Tags: Amazon essays

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Amazon is one of the fastest developing companies that outperforms most retail marketplaces. Amazon is an online retail company, that started off as a store that only sold books, to now selling almost every item you think of that comes to mind. As well as the development expanding at an exceptional pace, the business has now expanded offline. Amazon was created in 1995 and grew to be one of the most proliferating sectors in the business industry.

 The founder of the business is Jeffrey Preston Bezos, also referred to as Jeff Bezos. Bezos is an American entrepreneur as well as a philanthropist and investor known to be the CEO of Amazon. Other leaders of the company are Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon web services, Jeff Blackburn, SVP, business and corporate development, and Jeff Wilke, CEO of a worldwide consumer. Working for a business and also being the leader of such a striving business, major issues are always bound to happen. With this business, many issues have occurred that have taken a toll on the business itself.

 For instance, one big issue with Amazon was the work-life of the employees. Research studies have shown that Amazon employees complained about the need to increase productivity. The lack of the business to take initiative to obtain more consumers & the lack of consumers. Employees have said that the business can be quite harsh and unfair to the way they treat the employees, as well as unforgiving to minor and reasonable conflicts that have happened.

Even opportunities that have come across for the business to develop and skyrocket even more have been surpassed. Such as Amazon lacking senior managers, interviews have come in their direction to give the company more advantage and they have been declined due to Jeff Bozos, as well as the company's leaders have gotten requests for interviews that weren't very relevant to them, therefore led to a decline.

  Other issues occurring again affected with the work-life such as the standards of the company, employees addressing the fact that their standards are “unreasonably high”. Amazon had the intention of creating top talent with their staff and business, this led to the quantity of staff decreasing because the standards were causing intolerable amounts of distress. From the leaders giving the employees responsibilities and goals that were in no shape or form reachable.

According to reporters, Bo Olsen had discussed with New York Times, about how he had a book marketing job with the company for several years and he witnessed people on the job getting depressed and overstressed about their responsibilities on the job. He even said, “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw them cry at their desk”. Another problem was “Insensitive management”. Employees who had much going on with their personal life such as miscarriages, cancer etc., were treated very unfairly. With a wide range of judgment and not enough leave time to recover, therefore having a downgrade of their performance at work.

  Other issues that have been proven separate from the work life are problems such as, their operation method to gain solutions to other issues the business has faced starting from logistics, to global markets, payments, cloud computing, advertising, personalization, and much more. Conflicts they have realized is that the root of many of these problems isn’t pivoting on new inventions and technologies that are growing rapidly around us but the business itself that needs to be changed for the business. From not changing prices to slower delivery or even taking things from Amazon making the selection and variety even smaller for customers to pick from. The business and CEO’s are more focused on what is happening outside of the business and taking less time to focus on what's inside the business, not concluding that small changes within the business could, later on, have a big effect.

  Walmart and Target are proven to be the biggest businesses with more quantity which makes them stand out and is the reason why they are the biggest and the best, pushing Amazon to be the 3rd best. One of Amazon’s biggest targets is their primary focus on technology, and what is trending and what other businesses are providing. This is a big deal because this is one of the top flaws with the company, they shine no light on themselves as a business and don't focus enough on what the buyers want. A wise concept that Amazon created that has its pros and cons is with “Amazon books”, providing customers with scores besides the books as well as reviews. Also putting up “If you liked this book, you would like these”. This was so useful to customers that this concept isn't only used on books but most of the items on Amazon leaving customers with better or just as great options that the customer has viewed or searched that were similar to the options, they were already searching in the first place. This idea is what brings up the numbers as well as more customers because when customers discover a product, they haven't discovered themselves that Amazon provided them with it urges them to talk about the product with others. The reason why this incredible idea isn’t even more incredible is due to the fact that Amazon’s competition is shop-in stores, where people physically view and touch items getting a better feel and advantage of whether or not they like or dislike the product. Rather than just viewing pictures and reading reviews. If they even get the slightest dislike of the item, they can just easily remove it from their cart. Showing that simply, Amazon has a zoom button and Target and Walmart have shelves you can take the item off of and get a physical feel of and better understanding.

  Furthermore, Amazon has put so much time and effort into the online store, more than 5 years working on the development of the business making it the best and trying to prove to other markets that even though they are online they can still be the best and provide just as much as other retailers, if not more. Making Amazon have a head-start compared to most retailers because they focus online, not in-store. But even problems with customers such as people need items right away, these days everyone can be impatient so instead of waiting a few days for a package to deliver from Amazon, buyers rather just take a 20-minute trip to Walmart. Small issues such as these play a major role in business and development, which is why Amazon is the 3rd best. As well as the actions of the CEO’s of Amazon, not putting the customers first but instead the competition.

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