Amazon may be ruthless, but in a different way than you expect

The New York Times ran a profile on Amazon.com that painted it as a deliberately Darwinian organization, where employees must either evolve or leave. It describes 85-hour work weeks, brutally-frank meetings, and one former employee was quoted as saying he saw nearly every colleague he worked with cry at their desk.

That brought a response from founder Jeff Bezos, who said even he wouldn’t work for a company like that. It also brought a response from Amazon spokesman Jay Carney.

Related: Dave Ross may spend more at thought of crying Amazon workers

“The fundamental flaw in the story is the suggestion that any company that had sort of a cruel, Darwinian atmosphere in the workplace could survive and thrive in today’s marketplace,” Carney commented to the press.

Which makes sense, but note that Amazon’s spokesman is Jay Carney, who used to be the White House press secretary under President Barack Obama. That’s the kind of resume you’re competing with there.

I read another response from a current Amazon supervisor who admitted that once upon a time, Amazon may have been the kind of company that made employees cry. But not now.

Yes, employees will get frank e-mails from the boss, but they do not criticize so much as suggest growth opportunities, or “course-corrections” was the term he used.

In fact, last year, a high-ranking Amazon executive ordered that Amazon would no longer “burn people into the ground,” and any manager who did that would need to “course-correct.”

So Amazon may have been ruthless once, but the only thing it’s ruthless about now is ridding itself of managers who are ruthless. Just keep in mind as you compile your resume, their PR guy spent three-and-a-half years as the White House press secretary.