If such pressures are common in high-tech workplaces, at Amazon they have been cranked up to an extreme level. Current and former Amazon employees interviewed for the article spoke of colleagues weeping at their desks. They described the demand for frequent self-criticism and the anonymous criticisms directed at fellow workers seeking to drag them down in the eyes of managers. By design, Amazon sets impossibly high goals while monitoring and measuring every aspect of an individual’s productivity. Those who thrive in the environment are rewarded with stocks rising in value. Those many more who burn out leave after a few years of having been compensated with only what used to be a typical middle-class salary. Those who resist sacrificing their personal lives for their work are even more quickly discarded.