Nope, your spidey senses are way off. He's been at Amazon for about 8 1/2 months. His job level is one which is normally associated with a director level role.
Nope. Burden of proof falls on the party making the assertion. The NYT says X, based on no cited sources. When X is challenged, the burden falls to the NYT to prove X, not the person challenging the assertion.
The fact that I'm an Amazonian has no bearing on any of that, and is actually little more than a red herring. The fact that I'm posting from a throwaway matters even less.
Amazonian here. My experience has been nothing like what was described in the article. A few quick hits:
-In three years, I have never once seen anyone cry at Amazon. I've never even heard of anyone crying at work.
-In re: secret feedback tool -- Note that it isn't anonymous. I know the article doesn't say it is, but "secret feedback" seems to imply it is, at least IMO. It's little more than a form for submitting an email to someone's boss. I've only ever heard of a sabotage attempt happening once, and it backfired as predictably as one would expect.
-I remember hearing the phrase "climb the wall" once during my first week at orientation. Reading it in this article was the first time I've heard it in the three years since then.
The company’s winners dream up innovations that they roll out to a quarter-billion customers and accrue small fortunes in soaring stock. Losers leave or are fired in annual cullings of the staff
Correct. Good employees do well. Bad employees are eventually weeded out. This was not invented at Amazon.
Some workers who suffered from cancer, miscarriages and other personal crises said they had been evaluated unfairly or edged out rather than given time to recover.
I legitimately laughed out loud when I read this. Cancer! Miscarriages! Literally the two worst things to ever happen to most people in their lives when they strike! And, of course, not a single shred of evidence to support the claim.
Well, unless you count "some workers" as a reliable source.
Source: I work at Amazon.