Dive Brief:

• While it took a while (two months), Amazon recently fired off a lengthy response to the controversial New York Times article that painted the e-tailing giant as a pretty lousy place to work for many in its workforce (particularly white collar workers).
• Jay Carney, Amazon senior vice president for global corporate affairs (and former White House Press Secretary) specifically rebutted one of the most discussed quotes from a former employee, who said, “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”
• Carney posted his rebuttal on Medium, and soon afterwards, New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet countered Carney’s claims that the person who made that statement was a disgruntled ex-employee who left Amazon for trying to "defraud" vendors.

Dive Insight:

The Amazon-New York Times war is fascinating and will probably never really be resolved. But many of the anonymous comments under the Seattle Times article (and the New York Times as well when the initial piece was published) indicate that working at Amazon was a stressful experience. Of course, there are also comments supporting Amazon.

If nothing else, the Times shining a light on Amazon's culture has led the company to make some changes in the way it interacts with certain groups of employees. In this latest battle, the Times stands by its account and says in its Medium post that the Amazon employee in question “disputes Amazon’s account of his departure,” and “he was never confronted with allegations of personally fraudulent conduct or falsifying records, nor did he admit to that.”