Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Highlight

There is a grain of truth to the techno-optimist version of Amazon’s rise. It is not, however, True, not in the ways that are important for our larger story. Unlike some of its peers, Amazon found real production efficiencies, but firms can reduce their labor costs in more than one direction, and the Bezos company wanted all of them. That meant equipping workers with the latest and greatest in hardware and software to maximize their output. But as workers have always been quick to understand, maximizing output tends to suck.