Amazon and Personnel Wizardry?
March 11, 2021
Amazon likes to say it successfully promotes diversity and inclusion in its company, and some of the numbers it touts do represent a measure of success. However, there appears to be a lot of work left to do and not enough will to do it from the powerful “S Team.” Recode discusses “Bias, Disrespect and Demotions: Black Employees Say Amazon Has a Race Problem.” The extensive article begins with the story of former employee Chanin Kelly-Rae, a former global manager of diversity for AWS. She began the position with high hopes, but quit in dismay 10 months later. Reporter Meron Menghistab writes:
“Kelly-Rae, who is Black, is one of more than a dozen former and current Amazon corporate employees — 10 of whom are Black — who told Recode in interviews over the past few months that they felt the company has failed to create a corporate-wide environment where all Black employees feel welcomed and respected. Instead, they told Recode that, in their experience, Black employees at the company often face both direct and insidious bias that harms their careers and personal lives. All of the current and former employees, other than Kelly-Rae, spoke on condition of anonymity either because of the terms of their employment with Amazon or because they fear retribution from Amazon for speaking out about their experiences. Current and former Amazon diversity and inclusion professionals — employees whose work focuses on helping Amazon create and maintain an equitable workplace and products — told Recode that internal data shows that Amazon’s review and promotion systems have created an unlevel playing field. Black employees receive ‘least effective’ marks more often than all other colleagues and are promoted at a lower rate than non-Black peers. Recode reviewed some of this data for the Amazon Web Services division of the company, and it shows large disparities in performance review ratings between Black and white employees.”
Amazon, of course, disagrees with this characterization, but it is difficult to argue with all the points Menghistab considers: the many unsettling comments made to and about Black employees by higher-ups; the reluctance of management to embrace best practices suggested by their own diversity experts; the fact that diversity goals do not extend to top management positions; the rampant “down-leveling” of employees of color, its long-term effects on each worker, and the low chances of promotion; a hesitation to hire from historically Black colleges; and the problematic “Earns Trust” evaluation metric. We suggest interested readers navigate to the article to learn more about each of these and other factors.
Some minority employees say they have reason to hope. For one thing, the problems do not pervade the entire company—many teams happily hum along without any of these problems. The company is making a few small steps in the right direction, like requiring workers undergo diversity and inclusion training, participating in the Management Leadership of Tomorrow’s Black Equity at Work Certification, and holding a virtual career-enrichment summit for Black, Latinx, and Native American prospective employees. There will never be a quick and easy fix for the tech behemoth, but as Kelly-Rae observes:
“Amazon is really good at things it wants to be good at, and if Amazon decided it really wanted to be good at this, I have no doubt it can be.”
Time to step it up, Amazon.
Cynthia Murrell, March 11, 2021
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