Jeff Bezos has defended the corporate culture at Amazon in an open letter to shareholders.

Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, sent the letter on Tuesday following criticism from The New York Times on the e-tailer’s working conditions.

“The reason cultures are so stale in time is because people self-select,” said Bezos. “Someone energised by competitive zeal may select and be happy in one culture, while someone who loves to pioneer and invest may choose another.”

The Times investigated Amazon for several months, accusing the ecommerce giant of enabling an aggressive environment where poorly evaluated workers were edged out by managers and peers. In riposte, Amazon spokesman Jay Carney wrote a public letter and went as far as revealing granular details about an employee mentioned in the The Times‘ story.

In justifying the company‘s “culture”, Bezos highlighted the success that has resulted from bold decisions such as setting up Amazon Web Services and Prime, which is estimated to have over 40m members in America alone.

“Used well, our scale enables us to build services for customers that we could otherwise never even contemplate,”he continued.

Bezos made sure to let shareholders know that the online behemoth was far from done making bold decisions.