NYT details Amazon working conditions
The New York Times publishes an article titled, Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace, that talks about difficult working conditions at Amazon.
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.”)
Voting rights defense
President Obama writes letter to New York Times saying voting rights must be vigorously defended. The Times published the letter in response to an article in its Sunday magazine last month describing efforts to undercut or dismantle the protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Obama:
These efforts are not a sign that we have moved past the shameful history that led to the Voting Rights Act. Too often, they are rooted in that history. They remind us that progress does not come easy, but that it must be vigorously defended and built upon for ourselves and future generations.