> "If I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy," Bezos said. "And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy."<p>Surely that same thinking goes the other way: if you are having a rough time at home and it's clearly affecting your work performance, Amazon understands and tries to improve your home situation since real life is intertwined with work, right?<p>Right?
Debilitating to a few men's fortunes perhaps, but richly rewarding to the thousands of people with a broader outlook to life.<p>Bezos holds fair amount of respect for his accomplishments, but statements like these make him sound more like Mr. Burns than anyone. Just trying to extract maximum output out of his labourers. I for one am fairly surprised by the shamelessness demonstrated by some of these excess haves.<p>Reminds me of another billionaire egging on people for 60 hour weeks at a time when his company was raking in record profits due to the covid IT boom - <a href="https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/indians-should-work-60-hours-week-next-2-3-yrs-revive-economy-narayana-murthy-123661" rel="nofollow">https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/indians-should-work-60...</a>
It's funny how unlikable that guy is. There is still time to sign the petition that would have Bezos stay in space after his upcoming launch [1][2]. Once it hits 150,000 signatures shortly, it will likely generate another set of headlines, which is one (if somewhat silly) way to hurt the guy.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/25/how-a-petition-to-keep-jeff-bezos-in-space-got-started.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/25/how-a-petition-to-keep-jeff-...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.change.org/p/the-proletariat-do-not-allow-jeff-bezos-to-return-to-earth" rel="nofollow">https://www.change.org/p/the-proletariat-do-not-allow-jeff-b...</a>
> Bezos said his new hires should stop trying to find "balance" within their professional and personal lives since that implies a strict trade-off between the two. Instead, Bezos envisions a more holistic relationship between work and life outside the office.<p>If those are his views it certainly doesn't reflect in Amazon's actions. For example why did Amazon first try to get everyone back in the office? It was only after a backlash they allowed for a meager 2 days of work from home.
Other debilitating phrases for Jeff Bezos include "til death do us part", "reduce, recycle, reuse", and "the meek shall inherit the earth."<p>Never take advice from outliers.
He should perhaps publish stats of staff turnaround and regrettable attrition. How long does an average junior hire last? Its easy to be happy at work when <i>your</i> bathroom breaks are not counted and timed.
> Instead, Bezos envisions a more holistic relationship between work and life outside the office.<p>Unfortunately, this appears to mean that employees have to be available 24/7 for work for the rest of their lives. There is a way that employees can be freed of this by means of manumission [0], but this generally requires that they have a lot of money.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manumission" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manumission</a>
Easy to say when you’re there’s no stack ranking for your position. He’s created a super competitive culture that makes his working habits impossible for anyone else at Amazon.
There is no substance to what he was quoted as saying in this article. What does he mean by it being a 'circle' ? I think work life balance is more of a dodecahedron.
>"If I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy," Bezos said. "And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy."<p>I know Bezos has folded a lot of boxes himself when the company started out, but somehow I get the impression he can't really relate to people who've been pulling night shifts at his warehouse for years to maybe get a few dollars of a raise because after a few of those you don't come home with tremendous energy.
It’s debilitating if you don’t want to have a non-work life, which fits what he wants from his employees and from himself. It sure doesn’t fit what I want from myself.
Not to defend the tone-deaf comments, but in some circumstances there's maybe part of a point? When you're aligned with your work, when it's meaningful and aligned with your personal goals, hard separations between work and life matter a lot less. You can be in a flow kind of state for quite a while and be happy.<p>I believe that discounting finding meaning from work is too cynical. But it only exists for some people in some jobs, some of the time. I think the visceral reaction to Bezos' comments is because we know it definitely can't exist in so many Amazon jobs.
It's much easier talk about integrating life and work and shun compartmentalization of work when you see much more direct returns from the output of your work/not work, rather than having a fixed salary.
It IS a strict trade-off. The very definition of work is time I spend doing something that someone else wants me to do instead of doing something I want to do. I only do this because our capitalist society demands it. The goal of capitalism is to escape capitalism by having enough money to spend 100% of your time on what you want to do, and I have not yet won at capitalism.<p>Jeff Bezos, who has won at capitalism, by definition, does not work at all. He spends all his time doing what he wants to do. He never spends one second of his time doing what someone else wants him to do, unless he also wants to do it.<p>The balance is that I always try to spend the absolute minimum time working and the maximum time not working. If Jeff Bezos wants to work, I'm happy to have him do things I want him to do, that he does not want to do, for 40 hours a week every week.
It's easy to be 1000% dedicated to your job when you make over $9,000,000 an hour. But he wants the same dedication from people he pays $6.<p>He's also vicious about crushing unions and is known for giving employees so little breaks they have to piss in bottles.<p>Fuck Bezos. The US has a real problem with wealth worship. People lap up every drop that comes out of this asshole just because he's a million times richer than everyone else. So they think he's a million times smarter.<p>Jeff Bezos is a rich asshole and treats his employees like toilet paper. It's laughable that anyone would take life advice from this clown