A Tuesday Night Memo: A few thoughts on turning six

Michael Dickens / A selfie.

Hooray! A Tuesday Night Memo turns six today.

Here's some background about my blog:  I started writing A Tuesday Night Memo in January 2010 as a means of sharing musings about my life filled with music, sport, and urban travel, and to foster community with my friends, family and Facebook acquaintances while giving me an opportunity to hone my writing skills. People who know me well know that I'm passionate about music, sport, and urban travel. Additionally, I have used my blog as a vehicle for writing about art, food, fashion, religion and gardening. Sharing news and photos about our flower gardens at home always seem to generate great interest and enthusiasm. Perhaps, it's the pretty shapes and colors of our flowers that others find appealing?

Up to now, I have "blogged" 309 entries for A Tuesday Night Memo, which collectively have received over 63,000 page views. Among many subjects I have written about include: my appreciation of tennis champion Roger Federer, a history of the world as seen through 100 objects, classical music conductor Gustavo Dudamel, validating our travel through our photographs, Jerry Seinfeld's Internet comedy Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, and a profile of Issues, my favorite news and magazine shop that's located in Oakland, Calif. I have included my interest in digital photography within my blog, which has enabled me to illustrate my posts with nice visuals to match the words I write.

The feedback you have given me after reading my blog posts is not only very much appreciated, but I also find it very useful. Most of it has been positive, but sometimes it's also been critical. Whether good or bad, I've found the feedback you provide to be a valuable learning tool. From time to time, I like to sneak a peek at my blog's statistics, which are the key indicators that show how many total "hits" my blog has received, which stories have been read the most, and what countries comprise the blog's readership. While modest, the numbers are nevertheless interesting.

Here are a few fun facts about A Tuesday Night Memo I thought you might enjoy:

* Since May 2010 (the earliest date data is available), my blog has been read in dozens of different countries, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, France, Morocco, Turkey and Hong Kong -- even Brazil, India, Vietnam, and Australia. The top five countries reading my blog include the U.S, Germany, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

* The most widely-read blog entry in terms of "hits" was one I wrote back in December 2010 about "CNN International: Connecting the world," in which I explored the intelligent -- albeit sometimes irreverent -- manner that CNN International delivered the news and how it different from it's American cousin based in Atlanta, Ga. Other top "hits" include musings about the artist Pablo Picasso and the British comedian Ricky Gervais. Go figure!

Looking ahead, I hope to explore many different topics including:

* Connecting our world through digital music and media.
* My ongoing fascination with British television.
* What we can learn by visiting museums.

In the meantime, I've thoroughly enjoyed sharing my thoughts with you throughout the past six years, and I look forward to sharing my thoughts about another exciting year that awaits all of us.

Stay tuned.

Is Amazon's company culture innovative or punishing?

Amazon / More than just a dot.com that sells books and music.

The play story on the cover of Sunday's print edition of The New York Times, "Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace" by Jodi Kantor with help from David Streitfeld, has grabbed the nation's attention and lit up social media, but not necessarily for all the right reasons. According to Kantor, Amazon is conducting an experiment in how far it can push its force of white-collar workers in order to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions.

Amazon is the U.S.'s biggest retailer with a market capitalization of $250 billion -- bigger than Wal-Mart and Target -- and most of us know this dot-com powerhouse from being consumers. Indeed, they've come a long way since being just an online retailer for books and music. Now, it's possible to buy over 20 million items -- from Amazon's Kindle to digital cameras to even toilet paper -- and if you're willing to pay the price for Amazon Prime, you can have it delivered the next day.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos

Part of the success that Seattle-based Amazon has enjoyed starts with its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who is the fifth-richest man in the world -- yes, the world. According to Kantor, part of Bezos's success can be attributed to his inventing a way to get the most out of every employee. Yet, while some may look at his management style as draconian, others consider some of the data-driven tactics and practices coupled with the passive-aggressive work environment he's promoted at Amazon as innovative and fascinating.

One thing's for sure, Amazon has a reputation for having hard-working employees. "They do pride themselves on being a tough culture," said Kantor on Monday in an interview with American Public Media's "Marketplace" program, which aired nationwide via NPR. "You know Bezos tells people 'This is a culture of working incredibly hard.' They use the phrase 'unreasonably high' to describe their standards and expectations."

According to Kantor, who interviewed current and former employees over the past six months which included several executives, employees value a lot of aspects about Amazon, including the fact that "it's a culture of innovation, there isn't a lot of red tape, relatively junior people can have a lot of responsibility." However, in reading her damning Sunday story in The New York Times about Amazon's company culture, it came across to me -- and I'm sure was noticeable to everyone -- that Amazon's employees are being hurt by the harsh company culture. "I found that in most of our interviews, we were talking to people who really loved aspects of working for the company, but they were struggling with this kind of punishing culture," she said during her "Marketplace" interview.

Among the practices which Kantor cited that upset Amazon employees included how team members had to compete with one another. "Team members are ranked against each other," said Kantor. "It's a very competitive atmosphere." Yet, because of this, it has morphed into an uncomfortable working environment. Imagine, because of this particular directness, it's possible to send secret negative feedback about your peers to your peers' bosses. While the bosses see who it's from, other workers are not privy to this information.

On Monday, Mr. Bezos responded to The New York Times article about Amazon's uncompromising attitude and hard-hitting management style, saying "I don't think any company adopting the approach portrayed could survive, much less thrive, in today's highly competitive tech hiring market."

In a letter to Amazon's 180,000 employees, Mr. Bezos added: "I strongly believe that anyone working in a company that really is like the one described in the NYT would be crazy to stay. I know I would leave such a company.

"But hopefully, you don't recognize the company described. Hopefully, you're having fun working with a bunch of brilliant teammates, helping invent the future, and laughing along the way."

It became very apparent from reading Kantor's article that work-life balance -- the "Amazon way" that promotes climbing the wall after you've hit the wall -- skews towards employees who rank their work life more important than their personal life. Amazon, by all accounts, has perfected a balance between pushing its employees to the brink -- driven to tears amid a climate of fear -- while making sure they haven't hit their breaking point.

I can imagine Amazon employees asking themselves the following questions: "Is this right for me? Do I really want to work this way?"

Where do you draw the line?

If anything, after reading The New York Times article, I hope it brings the debate about workplace culture into the open and starts a public discussion about Amazon.

Listen to Jodi Kantor's "Marketplace" interview:
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/amazons-company-culture-innovative-or-punishing

Read the New York Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html?_r=0

Photos and images: Courtesy of Google Images.