News Amazon.com Fires Stranger Blogger
posted by on February 14 at 14:59 PM
This man:
got this man fired:
…sort of.
Yesterday afternoon, Stranger blogger Sam Machkovech was fired from his temp job at Amazon.com for violating the company’s non-disclosure agreement. Machkovech did not leak company secrets, or steal Jeff Bezos’ secret space plans. Machkovech was fired from his temp job at Amazon.com for posting about an impromptu Billy Ray Cyrus concert held at Amazon’s office in the Columbia Center at 5th and Jefferson.
Machkovech had been working at Amazon since Thanksgiving, through Corestaff, a local temp agency, and had recently been reassigned to another department at the online retailer. “I hadn’t been there very long, but they had a reason to believe I was worth keeping at the company,” he says.
According to Machkovech, he was half-way through his work day when he received a call from Corestaff. “They basically called up and said ‘pack up your things [and] come down to [our] office.’” When Machkovech arrived, he was presented with a copy of his post, which, he says, had been passed along by someone at Amazon.
Machkovech says he was let go for breaking Amazon’s non-disclosure agreement, and for blogging during work hours. Amazon is not identified as Machkovech’s employer in the post.
According to Amazon Spokesman Craig Berman, Amazon employees are allowed to blog. However, Berman says, “The way [Machkovech] wrote the blog post, using the language that he wrote, was just really bad judgment,” adding that Amazon “encourage[s] employees to work with pubic relations when they’re going to be commenting externally.”
Berman believes Machkovech’s writing reflected poorly on Amazon—which, again, is not named in the post—claiming Amazon’s identity was “very thinly disguised.”
Corestaff did not return calls for comment.
According to Amazon’s temporary employee contract, obtained by The Stranger, employees are barred from discussing “all nonpublic information about any Amazon Group Company employee, officer, director or agent,” which apparently includes pop-country singers with mullets soul patches.
“I don’t think I’m the victim,” Machkovech says. “[But] Amazon could’ve handled it better than firing [me] over Billy Ray Cyrus.”
Wow. This really sucks. Soon it'll make a great story, though: "Hey, remember that time Billy Ray Cyrus got me fired?"
Pubic relations!
I totally thought he was talking about working at The Stranger. Amazon: you are a little overzealous sometimes.
Sam, if I was a major company, I'd TOTALLY let you blog about impromptu concerts on my campus. It would make me look cool.
Why I know of other people that have quit Amazon. But hey, I interviewed for a secret position that Amazon was involved with for a privately run rocket company. I was told that I should never talk about it but did not get the job. So you know, screw them!
It was called Blue something another and I interviewed for the position on south 4th Avenue in Gerogetown. Oh well, it was a couple of years ago.
Count yourself lucky, young man.
I horse-whipped the impudent whelp that posted about Kenny G's impromptu appearance at the NapoleonXIV corporate Christmas party.
I didn't guess he worked at Amazon. I figured he worked at Nintendo, actually (they had Fall Out Boy play in their cafeteria once!)
Unemployment compensation!
Wow! Billy Ray Cyrus! Isn't he Hannah Montana's dad?
THERE IS A SORTA NEW CONCEPT THAT THE JOB IS AN EXTENSION OF YOUR LIVING ROOM - NOT TRUE
ALSO, IF I WERE NEW TO SUCH A SITUATION, I WOULD BE VERY, VERY CAREFUL
KEEP BUSY, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT, BE VERY PLEASANT AND EVEN KEEL AND TAKE IT ALL IN
THE OLD TIMERS WILL TELL YOU ALL THE CRACKS IN THE SYSTEM (DON'T DO CAPS ON EMAIL)
give me a break. this is a very common practice, and i don't believe for a second sam didn't know he could get busted for this. lame post.
Amazon has a reputation as a nice guy, hipstery kind of company to work for, and to some extent that is true, but there ARE some assholes there...and for supposedly being a cool company to work for, they have a very high turnover rate among employees.
As for blogging at work, TONS of people at Amazon are blogging and not just contract workers; if they canned everyone who was on MySpace or Blogspot at work, there wouldn't be any need for Amazon to build that new South Lake Union campus...they could fit them all in a building the size of the Stranger offices.
Not even Amazon can score Hannah Montana right now. Next best thing I guess.
That does suck for Mr. Machkovech; I suppose he'll have to continue slogging for rent now.
During my tenure at Amazon I was usually so fucking bored that all I could do was blog or go on Myspace or Facebook (or Slog.) Being a temp anywhere sucks and the whole non-disclosure bullshit is just that. Don't blog about your work though, it just isn't a good idea. Evah. Oh, and at Amazon, just like Microsoft, Temps aren't generally allowed to events where say a Billy Rae Cyrus would be "performing." So kudos for him for getting past the Blue Badge Police.
and the Kindle blows.
You'll never eat lunch in this town again!
@11 Did you get fired from there, too?
Achy breaky bummer.
yes. I made the dreadful mistake of entering into a mutually consensual fag/hag relationship with my manager which she eventually bailed on and ended by abruptly canning me and telling corestaff that our relationship was getting "too personal". This, of course, sounded like I was trying to fuck her which completely flummoxed my very nice Corestaff manager who 1)had a pretty good idea that I was as gay as a picnic basket and 2)my Amazon manager was a plain and plump female.
Needless to say, I've learned my lesson and will stay far away from any more nurturing relationships with sympathetic female managers.
However, sympathetic well-hung MALE managers can continue to nurture me all they want...
Hilarious. I don't know which department he went to, but the department he used to work for is thoroughly dysfunctional, and there's a pall of depression hanging over that floor. He's joining a mass exodus...
Amazon! The Internet abides by OUR Terms!
>>> Amazon “encourage[s] employees to work with pubic relations when they’re going to be commenting externally.”
I'd love to work for Amazon's pubic relations department. do you have the name of their hiring manager?
Oh, oh, I can't resist the danger...
Check the employee dress code (re: tattoos, revealing female clothing and piercings) for that "edgy" web hosting company with the girl mascot...
...yep, "Do as I tell you not as I do."
boo hoo - i got fired from amazon for getting seriously ill and not working the way my inexperienced troll of a manager wanted me to work and then after they fired me they turned the job i was doing into 2 jobs. amazon sucks and it's such a shame because it totally doesn't have to be that way.
I guess I'll cross Amazon and Corestaff off my potential employers list... oh wait, they were never there in the first place.
That sucks, Sam. Hope you land with a better agency soon. You can certainly do better.
You got yourself fired for being an idiot. Period.
I too thought the concert happened at The Stranger.
I guess it makes sense that it didn't, since no one else had mentioned it.
not always
There are always the official Amazon blogs! No mention THERE about Billy Ray I see.....
Were Amazon employees polled on whether they'd rather have a couple extra dollars in their paychecks instead of a frigging Billy Ray Cyrus concert? I'd rather put chiggers in my ears.
It's amazing to me how much shit Americans will take from their employers. This is bullshit, Sam, through and through. Any respectful, acceptable employee-employer relationship A) wouldn't start with you being a temp (sans benefits, privileges, concerts (!) etc) and B) wouldn't fire you for this nonsense. Blogging on company time is only an issue if you're not handling your shit and missing deadlines.
When are Americans going to stop taking this bullshit and start getting pissed off? You're an adult, goddammit, they should treat you like one.
Uh, no. That's the image their PR department tries to put out there, sure, but talk to anyone in Seattle in the HR biz, and you'll hear a *very* different story.
This is an example of passive-aggressive self-sabotage. If you start writing bad things about your company (i.e. calling an in house performer a "cockwipe".) and then have the misjudgment to brag to your supposed work buddies about your catty blog post, you can expect to be fired. Especially if you are a temp. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Next time you want to be fired, do it in a way that gets you benefits. Maybe you could claim discrimination against extended-adolescent, video game playing white males with Aspergers.
#22
Seriously, they have a policy against tattoos and piercings? I can understand that if you're some fancy pants lawyer at Preston Gates Ellis, or some such, but really?
Well, here's one heavily tattooed PM who'll happily stay at another big beast of a tech firm where there's more interest in my tats that revulsion...
@33:
You would be suprised at the number of Seattle companies that have policies against tattoos & piercings. It'aint all as liberal as it seems on the surface in good ol' C-Town...
In its early years, in the 90s, Amazon was a cool place to work. It has long not been that any more.
I'm a long-time customer of Amazon, and I don't like this reaction AT ALL. I've also done many years of "temporary" work, and I know that such deals almost always favor the employer to — what should be — an embarrassing degree, and this is another example of that rotten arrangement.
At the same time, the firing doesn't surprise me much. I guess Sam hadn't learned how things work yet, huh? FTEs have almost no power; temps have even less.
Didn't people in the old days, who had such a crappy deal, form unions? Hmmm.
They did, but the same assholes that made workplaces such a miserable place took over the unions, and now they're misguided, impotent entities that become harder to support with each passing year.
Normally would be posting with a name, but given the circumstances...
I think they're an amazing company to work for and will be starting full time there next year. The place had a great sense of camaraderie and fun/relaxation.
HOWEVER. If this sort of shit flies I think I might reconsider staying there for long. I mean Billie Ray Cyrus? Come on. I'll be a full-time programmer, so I don't know if there are different rules for me (likely), but even a temp worker shouldn't be fired for this.
But I suppose such things will never affect me given that I'll likely never apply for a temp job. So it goes.
I've seen three workers fired in the last year for blogging about their job (a Nintendo worker, this, and one more), but all three were temp workers.
Sam's post was anything but "bad PR for the company", though. Seriously wtf.
BTW S3 was down for 4 hours today... THAT's the kind of shit people should be axed over, not this.
It's pretty rare that anywhere that I'm working, or any type of work that I'm doing, merits blog mention.
If you miss your cubicle that much, then set one up in your living room.
I'm SURE Dan Savage would NEVER EVER fire a temp worker for blogging about non-confidential information.
I used to work for Amazon. If you idolize them or think it's a great company to work for, you are a fool simple as that.
The company at the highest levels are assholes and promote assholes. That is all there is to it. For you Amazonians, one word: WBR.
I'd ignore anything their PR says.
As for S3 - is anyone surprised? I'm not.
As yet another former Amazon employee, I can't help but weigh in. When I started the job, it was the best job I'd ever had. A year and a half later, I was actually relieved when they fired me for what I consider to be legitimately dubious reasons, which seems to be a common experience these days.
Several of the good mid-low-level managers left and were replaced by drones who were way more interested in sucking up to their new bosses than they were in actually being a leader for the people underneath them.
It's too bad, really. I'll still shop there because that's the one thing that ain't broken, but I wouldn't recommend it for a career to anyone except programmers looking for a fat paycheck.
"Anonymous" wrote BTW S3 was down for 4 hours today... THAT's the kind of shit people should be axed over, not this.
And that's exactly what people are NOT fired for over there. You'll soon find that out. It's all "optimizing for optics" despite what the handbook says...
Comments Closed
In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).