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Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy
Apparently it's pretty brutal working for amazon. A very Darwinian, cutthroat style "meritocracy". Are there 50,000 people like this in Calgary? Do we want that sort of impact on our city's culture?
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After reading the NYT article about Amazon's work culture, it's pretty clear it would not be a good fit for this city. Sure, Calgary has a lot (for a smaller city) of skilled and tech-savvy workers. But those workers are accustomed to a corporate culture that could scarcely be more different from Amazon's. With its flex days, generous vacation, flex hours, maternity and paternity leave, and informal workplace atmosphere, Calgary's oil patch culture came about because of a severe worker shortages. Companies bent over backwards to make themselves as attractive as possible to employees, and so created one of the more employee-focused and agreeable workplace environments around.
Amazon is the opposite. I doubt there are enough highly skilled, ferociously competitive workaholics in this city to fill 10 per cent of the positions. And Amazon churns through employees at an incredible rate, with most lasting only a year. Where are the replacements going to come from for that rate of attrition? Amazon isn't going to want to pay for expensive international relocation for thousands of positions a year. A city in the population and education dense northeast U.S. makes far more sense.