Amazon not that amazing

Amazon, for us who are not its employees might represent a great, huge conglomerate; a truly global company. But stories of its employees, of grueling working hours and tremendous amount of stress is legendary. Working at Amazon is often referred to as “soul crushing”.

Though it now looks like the company has done some soul searching and is trying to rectify this, not for all departments but at least for its technical team. The news is that it is pilot testing a program which will allow technical teams to clock in just 30 hours of work per week. These employees will be salaried and receive the same benefits as those working traditional 40-hour weeks, but their pay will be reduced proportionally by 25%.

Some 12-15 lucky employees will test this shorter schedule, working Monday to Thursday from 10 am to 2 pm; after these hours, they are flexible to do whatever they choose to do.

If one may recollect, last year there was a revealing report by New York Times, which reported that employees had an 80-hour workweek and employees were penalized when personal problems interfered with their work.