An open letter to Jeff Bezos, and it's practically worthless to a CEO. If the point is, "stop hiring contract workers," the letter should get to that point rather than complaining.
Let's look at the merit's of the authors argument, stated mostly in the second paragraph. Allegedly contract workers produce low quality or inconsistent work, and that training costs are wasted. All of the supporting evidence is anecdotal, and most of the anecdotes contain heaps of information that is completely irrelevant to the argument. What does the author's bad manager have to do with any of these arguments? Whether Amazon has poor management hiring procedures is another issue altogether.
If a CEO made any decision based on this article alone, he should be fired. At least it may raise enough awareness to get someone looking into it and gathering facts and options for action.
I agree that it is nothing any CEO would act on of itself but..
I suspect the point was to put enough personal context into the complaint to provoke sympathy, provoke noise, get it widely read and even hopefully get it across the CEO's desk at some point where the author's thesis will at least fleetingly get considered.
At that point, gathering information to test whether the temp system is a net loss or a net gain could begin.
Calling it a "thesis" is awfully generous. It really doesn't matter if it accomplishes the same, but I have a hard time believing that the author was so deliberate. The simpler explanation is that he was just emotional and complaining about perceived unfair treatment.
Sympathy can lead to action, but provoking sympathy on an irrelevant point can lead to action you never expected. It might simply lead to finding the manager in question and dealing with that one problem. Whether thoughtful or emotional, focusing on the process itself would be more likely to inspire the prescribed changes.
"The simpler explanation is that he was just emotional and complaining about perceived unfair treatment."
I didn't get 'emotional', I thought the OA was actually quite measured and well written. The audience isn't Mr Bezos of course.
What I did get was annoyance at the lack of quality in the process. I agree that the author has not established that the lack of quality arose from the hiring policy. If the first manager had not been reassigned, would things have been better?
Let's look at the merit's of the authors argument, stated mostly in the second paragraph. Allegedly contract workers produce low quality or inconsistent work, and that training costs are wasted. All of the supporting evidence is anecdotal, and most of the anecdotes contain heaps of information that is completely irrelevant to the argument. What does the author's bad manager have to do with any of these arguments? Whether Amazon has poor management hiring procedures is another issue altogether.
If a CEO made any decision based on this article alone, he should be fired. At least it may raise enough awareness to get someone looking into it and gathering facts and options for action.