Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace

On Monday mornings, fresh recruits line up for an orientation intended to catapult them into Amazon’s singular way of working.

They are told to forget the “poor habits” they learned at previous jobs, one employee recalled. When they “hit the wall” from the unrelenting pace, there is only one solution: “Climb the wall,” others reported. To be the best Amazonians they can be, they should be guided by the leadership principles, 14 rules inscribed on handy laminated cards. When quizzed days later, those with perfect scores earn a virtual award proclaiming, “I’m Peculiar” — the company’s proud phrase for overturning workplace conventions.

At Amazon, workers are encouraged to tear apart one another’s ideas in meetings, toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered), and held to standards that the company boasts are “unreasonably high.” The internal phone directory instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another’s bosses. Employees say it is frequently used to sabotage others. (The tool offers sample texts, including this: “I felt concerned about his inflexibility and openly complaining about minor tasks.”)

Many of the newcomers filing in on Mondays may not be there in a few years. The company’s winners dream up innovations that they roll out to a quarter-billion customers and accrue small fortunes in soaring stock. Losers leave or are fired in annual cullings of the staff — “purposeful Darwinism,” one former Amazon human resources director said. Some workers who suffered from cancer, miscarriages and other personal crises said they had been evaluated unfairly or edged out rather than given time to recover.

Even as the company tests delivery by drone and ways to restock toilet paper at the push of a bathroom button, it is conducting a little-known experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is acceptable. The company, founded and still run by Jeff Bezos, rejects many of the popular management bromides that other corporations at least pay lip service to and has instead designed what many workers call an intricate machine propelling them to achieve Mr. Bezos’ ever-expanding ambitions.

“This is a company that strives to do really big, innovative, groundbreaking things, and those things aren’t easy,” said Susan Harker, Amazon’s top recruiter. “When you’re shooting for the moon, the nature of the work is really challenging. For some people it doesn’t work.”

Bo Olson was one of them. He lasted less than two years in a book marketing role and said that his enduring image was watching people weep in the office, a sight other workers described as well. “You walk out of a conference room and you’ll see a grown man covering his face,” he said. “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”

Thanks in part to its ability to extract the most from employees, Amazon is stronger than ever. Its swelling campus is transforming a swath of this city, a 10-million-square-foot bet that tens of thousands of new workers will be able to sell everything to everyone everywhere. Last month, it eclipsed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the country, with a market valuation of $250 billion, and Forbes deemed Mr. Bezos the fifth-wealthiest person on earth.

Tens of millions of Americans know Amazon as customers, but life inside its corporate offices is largely a mystery. Secrecy is required; even low-level employees sign a lengthy confidentiality agreement. The company authorized only a handful of senior managers to talk to reporters for this article, declining requests for interviews with Mr. Bezos and his top leaders.

However, more than 100 current and former Amazonians — members of the leadership team, human resources executives, marketers, retail specialists and engineers who worked on projects from the Kindle to grocery delivery to the recent mobile phone launch — described how they tried to reconcile the sometimes-punishing aspects of their workplace with what many called its thrilling power to create.

by Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Ruth Fremson

How Much I Like Sushi

Why are Millennials so obsessed with food?

[ed. It's not just Millennials.]

Zero 7

Miles Aldridge, Home Works #3 (2008)
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Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, Die Infusionsthierchen als Vollkomene Organismen.
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[ed. I love rotifers.]

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Eazy E

How NWA came straight outta Compton and went mainstream.

[Ed. Not strictly NWA, but Eazy E was a member. The jaw-dropping misogyny and swagger in this song still cracks me up... like the lemon to the lime and the bumble to the bee.]

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Interview With The Vampires

Drinking blood isn’t what Hollywood makes it out to be, according to real-life vampires.

First of all, there’s no biting – that’s neither safe nor sanitary – and with too many vital arteries, the neck isn’t the favored spot. Transactions aren’t carnages leaving the victim lifeless behind in a dark alley, and nor do vampires sleep in coffins or burn in daylight. They’re generally cool with garlic. Most of them don’t even have fangs.

Instead, modern vampires get their sustenance from inch-long incisions made by a sterilized scalpel on a fleshy part of the body that doesn’t scar. Though the vampire may suck it up directly from the source, medically trained personnel usually perform the procedure. There’s paperwork too: “donors” don’t just have to consent, but also provide health certificates proving the absence of blood-borne diseases. Still, feeding is a sensual and sacred ritual.

The people who claim to be vampires are in the thousands worldwide, with demographics transcending borders, class, race and gender. And increasingly, researchers study them.

“We’re people you pass on the street and likely socialize with on a daily basis,” says Merticus, the 37-year-old founding member of Atlanta’s Vampire Alliance. “We often keep this aspect of our life secret for fear we’ll be misunderstood and to safeguard against reprisals from what society deems taboo.”

Merticus has identified as a real vampire since 1997, and speaks eloquently and passionately about what vampirism is and what it is not. (“Not a cult, a religion, a dangerous practice, a paraphilia, an offshoot of the BDSM community, a community of disillusioned teenagers and definitely not what’s depicted in fictional books, movies or television.”)

An antique dealer by profession, married with two dogs, he’s one of exceptionally few vampires to be open about his identity (“I hide in plain sight,” he explains). For almost a decade, he has personally worked with academics, social scientists, psychologists, lawyers, law enforcement agencies and others on how to best approach, research and understand the vampire subculture.

An Atlanta native, he is known as Merticus both legally and personally – even on his Starbucks card. And while he mostly dresses head-to-toe in black, he doesn’t don colored lenses or fang prosthetics. In fact, he is keen to say he isn’t into it because vampirism is “cool”. Real vampires don’t care much for pop culture buzz, and most don’t look the stereotype (only some 35% of real vampires are into goth, he claims). Some even sneer at the “lifestylers” (also known as “fashion vampires” and “posers”).

Apart from the societal taboos attached to the practice, consuming human blood is generally not advisable: not only can it carry a range of diseases – including Hepatitis, HIV and parasites – but also hazardous amounts of iron. Indeed, modern vampires often insist that their cravings are not voluntary – life would have been easier without them – but something they’re born with. Yet, it isn’t necessarily sexual: though they can and do overlap, real vampirism should not be confused with blood fetishism.

Insiders refer to the realization of one’s vampiric nature as an awakening. It isn’t like the dramatic process often portrayed in movies, and one isn’t be “turned” through vampires bites. For most vampires, it’s a gradual and frightening process, normally manifesting itself in puberty or possibly following trauma. Through trial and error, vampires learn what curbs their hunger.

No one knows what causes haematomania, the craving to drink blood. Those who experience it describe it as an intense thirst-like sensation, an addiction with withdrawal-like symptoms. Animal blood or rare steaks may act as substitutes, but for most vampires nothing beats fresh blood. Frequency and amount vary but for many a few teaspoons once a week is enough. This, naturally, is supplemented with a normal diet: after all, real vampires are humans with human needs.

“Most people are able to maintain healthy energy levels through diet, exercise, social interactions and the occasional cappuccino,” says Mertucus. “We’ve had to develop alternative means to sate our energy needs.”

Not all drink blood, either. The community generally acknowledges two types of vampires: the blood vampires (“sanguinarians”) and the psychic or energy vampires who drain of “life-force” (also known as prana or chi) rather than blood from others.

“We do not identify with fictional characters, supernatural powers, or immortality, nor do we have any difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality,” Merticus says, adding that if anything, pop culture is catching up to them.

Real vampires, he says, have existed as an organized community for nearly 30 years, and in solitary for far longer. As there is no “test” for vampirism, everyone is welcome and it’s a remarkably diverse crowd, ranging from doctors, lawyers, soldiers, scientists, soldiers, artists, teachers and parents of all age, gender, ethnicity and religion. Some chose to align with like-minded through courts and houses, though the majority, he says, do not.

If there’s one thing real vampires seem to have in common, it is their reluctance to tell the world about who, and what, they are.

by Kim Wall, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image; Alarmy

How To Have An Actual Conversation With A Woman

I know the headline may have ruffled your peacock feathers, but please, hear me out. Many men do not know how to have a conversation, and it would behoove our communities, our country, and dare I say the entire human race if this disconnect could be bridged. I’m not referring to suaveness in the pickup department or clever introductory lines. I mean an old-fashioned, no-frills exchange that uses words to indicate something on the order of I’m interested in your multidimensionality as a fellow human being and would like to achieve greater insight into your infinite subjectivity. Don’t be intimidated: It’s easier than you may think, albeit (apparently) non-intuitive. Let’s get started.

Because this isn’t about hitting on folks you don’t know, this advice presumes you already have a relationship with the person in question—or at the very least, her phone number.

Initiate. A texted hi is a lame way to start. No one on the planet except maybe your mother is excited to get a hi from you. Hi makes it obvious you’re only willing to do the bare minimum to call attention to your existence, and that the other person will have to do all the conversational heavy lifting. The only good response to hi is another hi, and then it’s only four seconds in and you’re both already bored as hell, ready to scroll through Instagram or watch the “Bitch Better Have My Money” video for the 60th time.

What really makes a conversation is enthusiasm. Be excited to talk to this person, whether that excitement stems from the sheer awesomeness of her existence or from finally having the right audience (her) for sharing something hilarious you saw last night. Don’t try to force it—just be honest. Not to get heavy, but why do you like having this person in your life? They get your jokes, they share the best remixes, they love you and make you feel good about yourself? If something made you think of her, say so. If you miss hanging out with her, say that. Keep in mind that it won’t kill you to use exclamation points every now and then.

Maybe you’re trying to play it cool in front of someone you have a crush on, and your approach is to be the Disaffected Brooding Sensitive Guy. But trust me, this rule of thumb still applies. You can get worked up about something in front of her without giving away your crush. Enthusiasm is contagious, and a very close cousin to charisma. (And charisma is just style plus friendly confidence mixed with super-advanced conversation skills.)

by Charlotte Shane, Adequate Man | Read more:
Image: Tara Jacoby

How Wall Street’s Bankers Stayed Out of Jail

The probes into bank fraud leading up to the financial industry’s crash have been quietly closed. Is this justice?

On May 27, in her first major prosecutorial act as the new U.S. attorney general, Loretta Lynch unsealed a 47-count indictment against nine FIFA officials and another five corporate executives. She was passionate about their wrongdoing. “The indictment alleges corruption that is rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted both abroad and here in the United States,” she said. “Today’s action makes clear that this Department of Justice intends to end any such corrupt practices, to root out misconduct, and to bring wrongdoers to justice.”

Lost in the hoopla surrounding the event was a depressing fact. Lynch and her predecessor, Eric Holder, appear to have turned the page on a more relevant vein of wrongdoing: the profligate and dishonest behavior of Wall Street bankers, traders, and executives in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. How we arrived at a place where Wall Street misdeeds go virtually unpunished while soccer executives in Switzerland get arrested is murky at best. But the legal window for punishing Wall Street bankers for fraudulent actions that contributed to the 2008 crash has just about closed. It seems an apt time to ask: In the biggest picture, what justice has been achieved?

Since 2009, 49 financial institutions have paid various government entities and private plaintiffs nearly $190 billion in fines and settlements, according to an analysis by the investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. That may seem like a big number, but the money has come from shareholders, not individual bankers. (Settlements were levied on corporations, not specific employees, and paid out as corporate expenses—in some cases, tax-deductible ones.) In early 2014, just weeks after Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, settled out of court with the Justice Department, the bank’s board of directors gave him a 74 percent raise, bringing his salary to $20 million.After the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s, more than 1,000 bankers were jailed.

The more meaningful number is how many Wall Street executives have gone to jail for playing a part in the crisis. That number is one. (Kareem Serageldin, a senior trader at Credit Suisse, is serving a 30-month sentence for inflating the value of mortgage bonds in his trading portfolio, allowing them to appear more valuable than they really were.) By way of contrast, following the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s, more than 1,000 bankers of all stripes were jailed for their transgressions. (...)

Any narrative of how we got to this point has to start with the so-called Holder Doctrine, a June 1999 memorandum written by the then–deputy attorney general warning of the dangers of prosecuting big banks—a variant of the “too big to fail” argument that has since become so familiar. Holder’s memo asserted that “collateral consequences” from prosecutions—including corporate instability or collapse—should be taken into account when deciding whether to prosecute a big financial institution. That sentiment was echoed as late as 2012 by Lanny Breuer, then the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, who said in a speech at the New York City Bar Association that he felt it was his duty to consider the health of the company, the industry, and the markets in deciding whether or not to file charges.

by William D. Cohan, The Atlantic |  Read more:

Image: Matt Chase

The Final File

Due to some flaw in my personality I love thinking about where my data goes after I fill out a form. Friends who work for giant banks describe projects that take years—endless regulatory documents, huge meetings, all to move a few on-screen pixels around. It can take 18 months to change a couple of text boxes. Why? What bureaucracy forces that slow pace? I like to imagine the flow of paperwork through the world, even if there’s no paper to consider.

This happens to me every few months, the desire to just grab and hold on to and explore a large database. I’ll download the text on Wikipedia, for example, and mess around with it. I might erase it to save space later. I’ll go fetch a few thousand public domain books and make a list of word frequencies, or get a list of millions of songs. I don’t have a motive; some idea just tugs at my shirttails, and, well, why not? It’s only a few hours of a lifetime, and perhaps I’ll discover something new. Databases are interesting to read and explore. They’re one of the things that makes the web the web.

Which explains how I found myself in possession of the names of more than 85 million dead Americans—the Social Security Death Master File. I’d asked on Twitter for interesting databases, and someone told me: Check this one out! It’s full of corpses! But after I had a copy, I realized that it’s a strange thing to be in possession of a massive list of dead people. It turns out that not just anyone is supposed to download the government’s book of death; you must undergo a certification by the National Technical Information Service, to demonstrate a legitimate reason to use the data, plus pay $1,825 for an entry-level subscription to access it. Restrictions on use and security were added to the federal budget for 2014. Its customers are banks and other organizations that want to track data about dead people to protect their interests and avoid fraud. The data also shows up on genealogy web sites while other companies resell access as a service.

Social Security numbers were first issued in 1936, to track people through the Social Security system—payment of benefits, and so forth. Getting a Social Security card became a ritual of American life. I remember going to some blank office, aged eleven, and signing with pomp, because how often do eleven-year-olds get to sign anything official?

A universal identifying number for Americans turned out to be extraordinarily handy for all: You already had nine digits identifying you; why should a giant company go to the trouble of creating another? So the numbers began to be used outside of the Social Security system. This was bad. Having a single, semi-secure number that represents an American citizen turns out to be a massive security flaw in how we identify and manage human beings online. Very leaky. The numbers, required for banks and mortgages and college applications, are used way too broadly. They are listed in vulnerable databases. Those databases are hacked. The stolen information is distributed and resold. A secondary industry of credit fraud has flourished to handle this flaw. We were not ready for a world where everyone can be associated with a number; no one anticipated how broken our digital world would become.

But that’s all for the living. When we are done with life, like great baseball players, our numbers are retired, and this being the government, filed, into the Death Master File. Which is, as you’d expect, a list of dead people and their similarly deceased SSNs. (...)

A name is just some impulse by your parents; it does not determine who you are, except alphabetically, and yet it’s hard not to have at least a little occult sensitivity about one’s name. I have a common name and, occasionally, will hear from other people on Twitter or via email who share it, marveling at the coincidence; one person wrote to ask me to keep our name cool. I don’t know how I’m doing at that.

Being a digitally minded person I’ve followed the large public conversation about what happens to our passwords and social media presences when we die. How do you get into a dead person’s gmail? What should happen to their blog posts? Every social media platform must eventually face the consequences of its users dying. The tension is between these relatively new institutions, like Facebook and Twitter, and our typically long lives. They are too young to know what to do with our deaths and are learning to cope, as all children must.

by Paul Ford, TNR |  Read more:

Image: Mikey Burton

Shibata Zeshin, Landscape
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'Godzilla El Nino' may be coming.

Yeast Can Now Make Opiates

Yeast isn’t just for beer and bread — now it makes opiates, too.

A strain of yeast engineered in a lab was able to transform sugar into a pain-killing drug — called hydrocodone — for the first time. And a second strain was able to produce thebaine, an opiate precursor that drug companies use to make oxycodone. The findings, published in Science, could completely change the way drug companies make pain-relieving medicine. Unfortunately, it may also open the door to less positive outcomes, like"home-brewed" heroin.

Opiates like heroin and morphine are made from opium poppies grown in places like Australia, Europe, and the Middle East — producing the stuff in a morphine drip is an expensive process that takes over a year. An estimated 5.5. billion people have trouble accessing pain treatments worldwide, partly because of their cost. So scientists have been hoping to drive down costs with yeast-made opiates. But until recently, engineered yeast have only been able to make small quantities of a chemical precursor that, through a number of steps, could be used to make morphine and codeine. That's why today's study is so important; it's the first example of scientists altering yeast's genetic code to successfully transform sugar into an actual opioid painkiller. (...)

In the short term, yeast-made opiates might lead to cheaper drugs. But the true excitement is farther down the road: scientists may be able to use this technology to make more effective pain-killers. "We're not just limited to what happens in nature or what the poppies make," Smolke says. "We can begin to modify these compounds in ways that will, for example, reduce the negative side effects that are associated with these medicines, but still keep the pain relieving properties."

The two yeast strains aren't anywhere near ready for commercial use. Right now, they make such small quantities of drugs that it would take about 4,400 gallons of engineered yeast to make a single dose of standard pain-relieving medicine. So the next step for researchers is boosting the drug yields — which could take years. And for once, that might actually be a good thing; health officials and scientists will need that time to figure out how to keep these strains from being used to fuel the illegal drug market.

by Arielle Duhaime-Ross, The Verge | Read more:
Image: (Lily_M / Wikimedia Commons)

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Social Security At 80

Social Security turns 80 on Friday, and the massive retirement and disability program is showing its age.

Social Security's disability fund is projected to run dry next year. The retirement fund has enough money to pay full benefits until 2035. But once the fund is depleted, the shortfalls are enormous.

The stakes are huge: Nearly 60 million retirees, disabled workers, spouses and children get monthly Social Security payments, a number that is projected to grow to 90 million over the next two decades.

And the timing is bad: Social Security faces these problems as fewer employers are offering traditional pensions, forcing older workers to think hard about how they will afford retirement.

"This is a program that's been immensely popular since it began," said Nancy LeaMond, executive vice president of AARP. "Increasingly, people recognize that saving for retirement is becoming harder and harder, and Social Security is becoming even more important."

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act on Aug. 14, 1935. Here are things to know about the federal government's largest program on its 80th birthday: (...)

How big is the long-term problem?

The numbers are beyond comprehension.

Social Security uses a 75-year window to forecast its finances, so the projections cover the life expectancy of every worker paying into the system. Over the next 75 years, Social Security is projected to pay out $159 trillion more in benefits than it will collect in taxes, according to agency data.

That's not a typo.

Adjusted for inflation, it comes to $35.3 trillion in 2015 dollars. That's nearly twice the national debt, which took the entire federal government 239 years to accumulate.

Did Congress already spend the trust funds?

Yes. For much of the past three decades, Social Security produced big surpluses, collecting more in taxes than it paid in benefits. Social Security invested those surpluses in special U.S. Treasury bonds, which are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.

They are now valued at $2.8 trillion.

But as Social Security was generating surpluses, the rest of the federal government was running deficits, for all but a few years around the turn of the century.

To finance deficit spending, the Treasury borrowed from the public and from other federal programs, including Social Security.

by Stephen Olemacher, AP |  Read more:

Image: AP

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Her Hair

While riding my university shuttle, I used to stare at women’s hair. They were mostly young white women like me, who would sit in rows facing each other at the front of the bus, compulsively checking their phones. I would ride to campus in the afternoons and just gaze, marveling at how well-coiffed they were, all of them with the same long, straightened, voluminous hair—the hair that sets the standard for all other hair. The rows of hair would be so perfect and shiny and smooth—not a single strand out of place, no flyaway or split ends—that I could stare into them as if they were one luminous mass, like volcanic glass.

I come from a line of perfect women: perfectly dressed, cordial, well spoken. An unbroken line of scheduling and doing and achieving. I remember my mother telling me, more than once, that the only thing that matters is that I be an intelligent, educated woman. I was squandering my potential if I was anything less. And that would be a shame, she said.

As a little girl, I remember watching her at her vanity, doing her hair. She would take an impossibly long time to get ready each morning: daubing on makeup out of shiny containers, plucking earrings off her jewelry stand—and curling her hair. As a young mother in the ’90s, she had a chin-length bob and bangs that she styled precisely at the end of her morning routine using a prickly curling brush, which looked like a plant from a Dr. Seuss book. Hair, to me, was the crowning glory. It’s the last thing you fix and put into place before you walk out the door, the thing that signifies that you’re really together.

My mother has never shown up underprepared in her life. She is a doctorate-holding professor, an only child, the first in her family to go to college. When I think of her as a mother, I picture the perfect calendar she kept for my brother and me as children: the times of our gymnastics classes and choir practices and basketball games all penned neatly into the squares, with dentist and doctors’ appointment cards taped in columns down the sides. Her mother was the same way.

I’ve never known how to live up to my maternal line, though I’ve burned up a lot of energy trying. Womanhood to me is the feeling of always striving. Striving even when there is no endpoint. I learned early on that to be a good woman—a strong woman—means scheduling, doing, achieving. You execute this series flawlessly and without any complaints. You survive in this world by showing up, pretty and prepared and perfect, hopefully more articulate than anyone else in the room—and always with done hair.

In the chapter of The Second Sex where Simone de Beauvoir makes her famous pronouncement that one is not born, but rather becomes a woman, she further argues an essential part of this “becoming” involves practicing womanhood through an alter ego: a doll. De Beauvoir describes how it represents the female body, a passive object to be coddled:

The little girl coddles her doll and dresses her up as she dreams of being coddled and dressed up herself; inversely, she thinks of herself as a marvelous doll… she soon learns that in order to be pleasing she must be “pretty as a picture”… she puts on fancy clothes, she studies herself in a mirror, she compares herself with princesses and fairies.

Feminists have often identified hair grooming as the first lesson in gender socialization. Dolls are perfectly designed to aid girls in learning submission, letting them play-act the labor that will later be expected of them when it comes to appearances.

Naturally, the most famous example of this is Barbie. Ann duCille, who writes extensively about black Barbie in her 1996 book Skin Trade, recalls in the book her experiences researching: poking around in the aisles of Toys “R” Us looking for the latest black Barbie doll. In the book, she includes an impromptu interview she had with a black teenage girl, who confessed to duCille “in graphic detail” the many Barbie “murders and mutilations” she had committed over the years. “It’s the hair! It’s the hair!” the girl told duCille. “The hair, that hair; I want it. I want it!”

by Rachel Wilkinson, Vela |  Read more:
Image: Mike Mozart