Holiday in Amazonia

Compared to most bookstore workers, Amazonians have it made

by the staff of WashTech

Reprinted with permission from WashTech, the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers. Read more at http://www.washtech.org

he rocketing growth at Amazon.com has left some employees of the Seattle-based Internet retailer looking for the pod bay door.

Workers say they have borne the brunt of the growing pains resulting from the Internet retailer's phenomenal expansion. Customer service representatives (CS reps) express an increasing frustration about the lack of a clear career path for advancement, rising job expectations, a top-down management style, and a compensation scale that does not reflect the skills they bring to the job. The longer hours demanded by the holiday season has brought issues to a head for workers.

The three-year-old company has grown to nearly 1600 workers, including more than 400 customer service workers, according to employee estimates in early December. Compare current estimates to the 667 employees Amazon noted in its 1997 annual report -- nearly doubling its work force within a year -- and the rate of growth becomes clear.

When problems arise, management often blames the pace of growth at the young company. Workers say managers need to stop perceiving Amazon.com as a small company and start establishing procedures for better communication and advancement.

"At some point, you quit being a start-up company and you start being a company with a responsibility to your employees and your community," says one worker who asked that WashTech not use his name (we'll call him Bill).

People Make the Company

Despite the problems, many workers say they still enjoy working at Amazon.

"It's a great place to work," says Bill, "but it could be better." Bill is one of a group of Amazon workers who recently contacted WashTech to discuss workplace issues at the company.

Customer service is one aspect that distinguishes Amazon from other online retailers. Customers can usually expect a response to queries within 24 hours. One reason for the strong reputation of customer service is the quality of the people Amazon hires. Amazon boasts of its stringent hiring standards in its investor relations literature, including requiring all employees to have college degrees. As one worker noted, Amazon employees are "bookstore people."

"People are the best part of what Amazon is all about," says another worker, who also asked to remain anonymous (we'll call him Fred).

Although many people in the first two tiers of customer service representatives hold advanced degrees, their pay reflects that of a less skilled and less educated work force. CS reps earn $10 and $11 an hour (with at least 10 hours of overtime expected each week at the second level). Some Amazon workers believe the relatively low hourly wages are part of a strategy to make mandatory overtime more appealing. They also wonder why they have to work overtime to earn a living wage.

Despite all their education, customer service workers handle traditional catalog retail duties such as answering questions, canceling orders, taking credit card numbers over the telephone, and tracking down problem shipments -- not very exciting work if you have, for example, a masters in literature. Many people take the jobs thinking that it will lead to another job in the company, such as editorial work.

"I think a lot of people go into it thinking that it's something else," Fred says.

Customer service workers describe their work environment as an e-mail factory floor. Because of the incredible growth in CS staff, employees labor sometimes four to a cube. They can barely push their chairs back without bumping their co-workers. Cramped quarters or not, workers must meet quotas for how many e-mail messages they answer per week and how many messages are processed per hour -- a minimum of 500 per week for workers on the second tier. If they don't meet expected quotas, workers can be put on probation, and told to work no overtime for a period -- a key issue considering many workers need the overtime to make ends meet. As one management memo read: "Reps... will be expected to achieve a certain level of e-mail productivity in order to maintain access to overtime."

The route from Tier I to a Tier II CS rep is clear, but beyond that, things become murky. All customer service workers start as temporary workers payrolled through General Employment. They undergo extensive training on the increasingly numerous tools and UNIX commands they must know to do their jobs. After one month on the job, under the watchful eye of supervisors and a peer mentor (a volunteer position for which the mentors receive no extra pay), the company may decide to hire them as full-time employees.

In keeping with software industry culture, Amazon employees work in a relatively relaxed environment without a dress code and control their own schedules. Those who work weekends, however, must wear a coat and hat because the two buildings that house CS are not heated on Saturdays and Sundays.

In return for their labor, employees receive medical, dental, and vision coverage, as well as paid vacation and personal days. Currently, the company grants new customer service workers about 100 shares of Amazon stock (which vest over five years). This contrasts to an earlier practice, where new customer service workers received far greater numbers of options and were granted additional options after moving up from Tier I to Tier II (also a practice no longer observed). As Amazon.com ages and the stock price continues to soar, the number of shares granted at the time of hire shrinks. Amazon stock recently reached a high of nearly $300 a share.

Breaking out of the CS factory floor is difficult, although some manage. The workers we spoke to said they really didn't know how the few who made it escaped to other jobs in the company.

"I think there needs to be a clear definition of a career path," Bill says. "Where you go after [CS Rep] is unclear. Who helps you get there is unclear."

Even moving beyond CS Tier II can be confusing and inconsistent. Workers described a slightly contentious internal interview process for two supervisory CS positions. At the end of the process, the supervisors were hired, but then the following week eight new positions were created and filled without any interview process or prior announcement.

Despite the crucial role that customer service plays at Amazon, CS reps say they don't get much respect, other than lip service at quarterly company meetings. Amazon's success as a retailer depends on repeat customers, and the ballooning stock price depends on investor and consumer confidence. Workers say Amazon managers sometimes forget that much of the retailer's success relies on its customer service department.

"They've hired people who take pride in their work, no matter what they're doing and Amazon needs to respect that," Bill says.

Expanding Job Responsibilities

During the time that Bill and Fred have been at Amazon, their job responsibilities have continued to increase as the company expanded from selling books to music CDs, videos, and a variety of gifts. The company also recently started a "Shop the Web" section that points to other retailers on the Web. As their jobs become increasingly complex, customer service specialists are expected to perform new duties without much training, including sometimes having to learn how to use new computer tools in a matter of minutes.

In the rush to dominate the market, workers say company management doesn't take the time to create and consistently implement procedures for customer service workers to handle new products. Fred says the recent move to include gifts, such as portable CD players, on the site was driven by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who focused a large share of technical resources on developing the structure to handle the gift orders. Yet the new gift tools were implemented with minimal information passed on to CS reps, mostly in the form of small group meetings of about 15-20 people. All of this ignores the reality that customer service workers are on the front lines during any expansion. CS reps complain that when a customer calls or e-mails with questions, reps must find answers on their own.

"Jeff Bezos talks a lot about the customer but he doesn't seem to realize that we jump into the deep end for them," Fred says. "Customer service workers are being pushed farther and farther out on a ledge for the customer," he adds. "They've been forced to become not just customer service specialists, but technical and billing specialists as well."

Because other departments at Amazon have also been nearly overwhelmed by success (although the company is not yet profitable) with a customer base of 4.5 million people, customer service specialists have fewer internal resources on which to draw. Amazon eliminated its internal technical help line and told customer service workers to solve most billing problems on their own.

"It's amazing how much stuff I have around my computer and bookmarked on my browser [to do my job]," Fred noted.

Management Inexperience

Many managers within CS worked their way up in the company, and as such they tend to lack much outside managerial experience. Both Bill and Fred say many supervisors could benefit from management training.

"I've become disheartened over the lack of managerial experience in new managers," Fred says. "Many of them do not know how to pass information that will not feel threatening."

Communication is a major issue. Managers tend to tell workers after the fact, rather than tell them a major decision is in the works. Messages tend to come down from the top-level and mid-level managers can get caught in a bind between workers and company leadership. Workers feel as if they have little control over the direction of their jobs because they have no recourse other than to talk to their supervisor.

"They need to get better buy-in," Bill says. "Workers need to be a part of the big picture."

Workers say the message from management has been that if you have a problem, present a solution. But when workers suggested a CS advisory committee elected from the 12 or so quads (groups of 15-20 people), management responded by announcing plans to handpick CS representatives for the advisory panel -- not quite the same.

Workplace Issues

The Amazon workers who spoke to WashTech say for the most part that they enjoy their jobs and like working at the company. Some plan to make their careers at the company while others hope to cash-out their stock options and leave when they can. All agree that they would like to see a more open relationship between management at CS, including stronger lines of communication.

Tier II workers carry many responsibilities, as do volunteer peer mentors, whose feedback has much to do with temp-to-permanent hiring decisions. However, compensation isn't really reflected in the job. Several months ago, managers changed Tier II compensation from salaried to hourly plus overtime based on a minimum 50 hours a week, but the difference worked out to be about an additional 30 cents an hour. Fred urged reworking the compensation scale to better reflect what is required of people.

Workers also want the realistic option of a 40-hour workweek. Some people simply cannot work overtime week in and week out. Although work can be fast-paced and challenging at times, customer service workers would like a clear process for moving on to other departments within the company. Consistently announcing internal job openings would be a step in the right direction.

Employees at Amazon say that the company is doing things that no one has ever done before, but beyond commercial success, they want to see the company achieve its potential with regard to its workforce.