Review of "Inside Amazon: My Story," by Gisela Hausmann

 Review of

Inside Amazon: My Story, by Gisela Hausmann, ISBN 9781732421189

Five out of five stars

The inside story by an expert

 Few people can match the breadth and depth of experience of Gisela Hausmann in the area of book publishing as well as dealing with Amazon. She has extensive business and managerial experience outside of Amazon and her experience with Amazon began before the year 2000, when Amazon was still a fledgling company where many people questioned its survivability. The capstone of her experience with Amazon was her working in an Amazon warehouse. It was here that she was exposed to many of the ways that Amazon actually functions at the worker bee level.

 My experience with Amazon also dates back to before the year 2000. At the time, I was the book reviews editor for “Journal of Recreational”  and my first interaction with Amazon was when an author asked me to post my review on the Amazon site. I was hooked and at one point was briefly ranked number 48 in their top reviewer list before it became popular. I have also sold books on their site since the early 2000’s. For these reasons, I also have a lot of experience in dealing with Amazon.

 Therefore, there were some things mentioned in this book that I already knew. For example, as a follower of employment issues, I knew that Amazon treats their warehouse workers as automatons. Their work can be described by the phrase, “Grab next object, move it from here to there, repeat as quickly as possible.” Amazon does not offer their workers even the smallest of perks if they do not have to.

 Yet, I was surprised at how much I learned from reading this book. Hausmann is an excellent expository writer, and she gives enough of her history, so the reader understands her perspective when she walks into her job at Amazon. I have had both positive and negative experiences with Amazon and now I understand many of the reasons for that.

 In the final analysis, there is one thing that Amazon is an expert at, avoiding a federal tax bill and getting massive state and local subsidies. Hausmann provides some explanations as to the mechanisms employed by the Amazon executives to achieve this goal. Especially striking is how Amazon hired more workers  during the pandemic so that they could achieve tax savings. The executives at Amazon even manipulated this into their advantage.

 Whatever you think of Amazon now, that will change when you read this book.