Former Microsoft chief: ‘People don’t want to work’ for Amazon

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is taking aim at Amazon over a New York Times story that argues the retail giant is a harsh work environment for white-collar workers.

“I think they are a place that people don’t want to work,” he said when asked about the story on Bloomberg TV. “Anybody who ever left at Microsoft to Amazon, we could count on them coming back within a year or two because it’s not a great place to work, to do innovative stuff as an engineer.”

{mosads}He said that there was an “intense competition” for talent between Microsoft and the retailer, which are both based in Seattle and its environs.

“Many, many people round trip,” he said. “Not everybody, but many people round trip.”

However, he added: “Microsoft’s culture is very strong. Hard driving, people are really focused on changing the world, people work really hard. I believe the same is true at Amazon.”

Ballmer stepped down from Microsoft’s top spot last year and later gave up his seat on the company’s board after buying the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team.

His comments reflect the new scrutiny on Amazon’s labor policies in the aftermath of the Times story. The report quotes former Amazon employees who said that they had faced brutal working conditions and a pugilistic culture that drove many away. The paper said that the company “is conducting a little-known experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is acceptable.”

Amazon has pushed back against the story.

“I don’t recognize this Amazon and I very much hope you don’t, either,” said Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, after the story was published.

And this week, two months after the Times report, former White House press secretary Jay Carney, now an executive at Amazon, posted an aggressive rebuttal to the story.

In a post on Medium, he argued that one of the sources quoted in the Times article had left the company after being accused of fraud.

Carney also published quotes from individual employee performance reviews in an attempt to undermine other sources in the Times’ story. Amazon declined to comment at the time on whether employees are told that their performance evaluations can be published by the company.

The controversy has not, however, hurt Amazon’s standing with investors. The company’s stock soared on Thursday after it announced an unexpected profit.