Thread by @JasonAbbruzzese

Here’s a deeply reported piece not just about Amazon’s safety issues in its last-mile delivery system but really the conditions the company created that led to them: nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…

I order a lot of stuff on Amazon I don’t need to, and working on this piece made me think hard about that.

Amazon doesn’t have decades of experience in last-mile delivery. What it does have is a massive customer base with a near-unquenchable appetite for quick delivery.

Combine that with the company’s customer-focused ethos, you get a problematic situation. And with third-party delivery companies in the mix, you add even more chances for a system to break down.

Most people we talked to who spoke to us about safety issues sounded exhausted.

They stretched extremely thin, working crazy hours, on their feet all day trying to move as fast as possible in a system they didn’t build and had little control over.

It was also a system that didn’t seem particularly responsive to problems.

We heard a variety of euphemisms for how the company tended to overlook or ignore warnings and complaints: turned heads, get it done, etc.

In some ways, it’s classic tech stuff — move quickly into an area filled with incumbents and push your operation to do things quicker, cheaper, etc.

That often leads to problems, which a company like Amazon can eventually find and fix.

But in the meantime, that often means stressing systems to their breaking points. That’s one thing when it’s your company’s app.

It’s another thing when it means pushing people well beyond their limits to the point where they’re breaking rules and putting themselves in danger.

One former logistics employee told us “Amazon builds the plane while they’re flying it.”

Not a great idea with a real plane! Or really anything that has the kind of real-world harm that last-mile delivery has.

So yes, please click and share. Thanks.