Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
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.
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While I do agree with your conclusion about how Calgary may not be the best fit for Amazon, I would say the oil patch office mentality is in the minority in this city and simply not available for a large segment of the population. Hence why many of those individuals right now are on the outside looking in during this time of economic hardship. Many hiring managers in non-O/G fields do exclude former O/G office workers from consideration for those reasons, which does create a different work cultures in this city. I know some companies have already slashed some perks like flex days and unless times get really bad again, I doubt they will be in any rush to bring them back.
If Amazon is looking for a large logistics or retail oriented workforce that isn't used to those types of perks, Calgary certainly does have a significant supply of that.