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Slate Technology

Political Gabfest - Gabfest Reads: How to Survive Working for Amazon

Slate Technology

Slate

History, Technology, Society & Culture

4.6636 Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2023

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

David Plotz talks with author and 12-year Amazon senior employee, Kristi Coulter about her new memoir, Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career. They discuss the good, the bad, and the confusing parts of Coulter’s career at Amazon, starting in 2006. They talk about the culture of Amazon, the frustrating gender dynamics, and why she was constantly “a year away” from a promotion. 


Tweet us your questions @SlateGabfest or email us at gabfest@slate.com. (Messages could be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)


Podcast production by Cheyna Roth.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

I made you think you was dream.

0:02.0

My name is Caden Sinclair.

0:04.0

Some people call us American royalty.

0:06.0

We were liars.

0:07.0

A new series on Prime Video.

0:09.0

We were happy. We wanted for nothing.

0:12.0

Based on the best-selling novel.

0:15.0

Something terrible happened last summer,

0:17.0

and I have no memory of what or who hurt me.

0:20.0

No one in my family will tell me.

0:22.7

When you're left for dead, you want answers. We Will Liars. New series, watch now, only on

0:28.9

Prime Video.

0:37.3

Welcome to Gapfest Reeds. I'm David Flots, one of the hosts of Slate's political Gap Fest.

0:44.2

Exit interview, The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career, would be a brilliant book if it were about any workplace in America.

0:51.2

Christy Coulter writes hilariously and cuttingly about meetings,

0:55.5

performance reviews, more meetings, the big boss, corporate memos, also meetings. And it is as

1:02.0

vivid a portrait of modern American white-collar work as the office or severance. But exit interview

1:08.5

is not about any workplace. It's about Amazon, the biggest and most important

1:13.2

company in the world. So this very funny memoir is also the most gripping insider account of

1:19.1

life in the company ever written. It is filled with so much dirt and so much insight. I've spent

1:25.6

a bunch of my time while I was reading exit interview, wondering how it is that Christy has not been sued or how it is that she has not been disappeared into a prime truck by some Jeff Bezos Minion.

1:37.9

So, Christy, glad you're here. You're in an undisclosed location, perhaps hiding from Bezos Minions.

...

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