This sounds like a big enterprise company taking the next evolutionary step. Soon the tactics will be labelled as "best practices", talks and conferences will be given, the mentality accepted and the rest of the herd will continue to froth at the mouth to be more enterprise-y than the next. As the article states:

> "Amazon may be singular but perhaps not quite as peculiar as it claims. It has just been quicker in responding to changes that the rest of the work world is now experiencing: data that allows individual performance to be measured continuously, come-and-go relationships between employers and employees, and global competition in which empires rise and fall overnight. Amazon is in the vanguard of where technology wants to take the modern office: more nimble and more productive, but harsher and less forgiving.

“Organizations are turning up the dial, pushing their teams to do more for less money, either to keep up with the competition or just stay ahead of the executioner’s blade,” said Clay Parker Jones, a consultant who helps old-line businesses become more responsive to change."

And I suspect that Mr Bezos has a long list of people who have "put him down for later" to quote my mate who's a v senior HR person (think a real version of Malcom Tucker)

Note how in the conclusion of the article it mentions that Amazon is already running out of candidates in the Seattle area.