Amazon’s direct workforce rose by 500,000 people in 2020 — that's half a million people — to nearly 1.3 million employees. The extraordinary hiring, supporting the rapid expansion of Amazon's warehouse and delivery operations, raised the natural question: what would be the consequences of all that growth?

An eight-month New York Times investigation, published this week, provides much of the answer, telling the stories of warehouse workers caught up in an unforgiving, error-prone system that struggled to keep pace with Amazon’s growth, the unique challenges of the pandemic, and unprecedented customer demand.

The piece reveals the limitations of Amazon's automated HR technology, but it also demonstrates the impact of policy decisions by Amazon executives, including founder Jeff Bezos and operations-leader-turned-consumer chief Dave Clark.

Among them, according to the story: a conscious decision to encourage turnover and limit upward mobility among hourly warehouse workers.

Karen Weise, the Seattle-based New York Times tech reporter who reported the story with her colleagues, Jodi Kantor and Grace Ashford, speaks with us about their key findings on this episode of Day 2, GeekWire's podcast about everything Amazon.

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