9 ms·

>The practice, which violates company policy, is particularly pronounced in China, according to some of these people, because the number of sellers there is sky

by clubm8 8y ago

>The practice, which violates company policy, is particularly pronounced in China, according to some of these people, because the number of sellers there is skyrocketing. As well, Amazon employees in China have relatively small salaries, which emboldens them to take risks. Sounds like Amazon is finding out the hard way that you need to pay for trust, not just skill. When you pay the absolute bare minimum to your employees, coupled with other coercive practices, you drastically increase the chances they will steal. There's a reason casino cage cashiers don't make minimum wage despite it being a low skill job, and it's not out of the goodness of their hearts.

walshemj 8y ago
And casinos have a large security staff and I suspect do better background checks than FANG companies do. Its the same at a large uk telco I worked at only a limited amount of people had widespread access to data and where positively vetted as well. I know one team leader who was going to have to pass DV (TS in US terms) clearance.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
This is counterintelligence 101. There are four traditional motivations of insider threats (MICE): M: Money I: Ideology C: Coercion E: Ego The thinking around that is changing, but the financial motivation is still at the top of the list. [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol.-57-no.-1-a/vol.-57-no.-1-a-pdfs/Burkett-MICE%20to%20RASCALS.pdf https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...
- fcuck_actuarial 8y ago
  I think M,I,and E (hopefully not C) could also be considered motivations for convincing someone to change jobs? (In my experience, recruiters from a well known FAANG company like to lean HEAVILY on E. Jokes on them, because the right answer is M!)
  - AndrewKemendo 8y ago
    Coercion and Ego are almost never used because they aren't reliable and are fear based. Money and Ideology are positive incentives, Coercion and Ego are generally painful incentives.
    - fcuck_actuarial 8y ago
      What I had in mind by Ego was "flattery", so in a positive sense. In retrospect, ego without M is an empty, impotent argument.
      - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
        Or ego in the form of bait and switch offers of getting to have leadership responsibility or opportunity to heavily influence decision making about technical choices. Hype a position up like someone has creative autonomy to lead, because it strokes their ego, then later just shrug.
        mcny 8y ago
        You could argue that the US military uses ego very successfully. The money isn't good all things considered but it is reliable/stable. So, I think it is a mix of M and E. Now imagine if we make universal health care and universal college education free of cost and available everywhere to everyone regardless of income. I bet military recruiters' job will become a lot harder. This makes me wonder: why can't we use ego in civil service? I'm thinking police, firefighters, and transit workers (from the bottom all the way to top management). Because after all, if we want to reduce cost (and I hope we all do) then what's better than to reduce pay?
      - dang 8y ago
        Please don't make a trollish username on HN. It's distracting, since the account basically trolls every thread it posts to. We can rename the account for you if you email a better username to hn@ycombinator.com, but I've banned this account in the meantime.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- joshmn 8y ago
  Heaven forbid any country vote for an elected official who this could apply to.
  - pizzazzaro 8y ago
    Those poor yanks.
userbinator 8y ago
Don't forget that China is ultimately a far more collectivist society, and stuff like this happens all the time. The money just provides additional motivation; people's natural tendency is to share things.
- nyolfen 8y ago
  i think it's more likely that people generally (anywhere) would feel little natural allegiance or loyalty to a foreign multinational corporation
- chibg10 8y ago
  Eh, how do you define collectivist? Ever tried to get on a Chinese subway or stand in a Chinese queue? I'm not sure you can compare e g. US and Chinese collectivism unidimensionally.
  - marcell 8y ago
    I'm not a sociologist but this is a fairly common distinction in sociology. Countries like Russia or China are considered to be more collectivist. For example in China they are very OK with using eminent domain to seize individual property to build rail roads. America is considered to be more individualist. We also have eminent domain here, but it's much less common to use it, (eg. see California high speed rail).
- benologist 8y ago
  Where possible Bezos has Western employees pissing in bottles and penalized for taking sick days, working without vacations, retirement savings and health care supplemented with food stamps and tent-camps so it's pretty generous to blame Chinese culture for toxicity from the top.
  - analog31 8y ago
    Indeed, the "data leaks" that Amazon experiences in the US are people taking pictures of their working conditions and sharing them with the public.
gist 8y ago
> There's a reason casino cage cashiers don't make minimum wage despite it being a low skill job, and it's not out of the goodness of their hearts. Not sure that is even the primary reason. Could also be: - Paying more attracts a higher level of employee with a more professional image (which yes matters even if someone is cashing in chips). In other words you are assuming they also don't pay the proverbial janitor a higher salary than they could get away with. After all, all else equal, if you were doing that job wouldn't you rather work in a nice building cleaning up rather than a older building or situation? Even for the same or close to low pay you were able to get elsewhere? And if this is the case why wouldn't employees still be stealing left and right. They aren't. - Require a higher intelligence level that is more likely in a higher paid worker. That way less likely to be able to con the cashier or take advantage of them. Also no surprise that people steal at all levels of income and in all situations. It's like when people wonder why some famous and successful person (with money) takes their own life. They say 'wow they have everything'. If that were true and a reason not to kill yourself then you'd expect people with no money to be taking their own lives left and right. And obviously that is not happening.
jorblumesea 8y ago
Then why China, and not India or other low COL areas? I don't believe it's as simple as purely salary.
- trhway 8y ago
  Speaking as Russian, I'd speculate that China is the subject to the same effect when having collective memory of socialism when property belonged to nobody makes for a society where cheating the System (big foreign company would seem close to it) isn't that big of a vice, if any, and may be even a sign of being smart/entrepreneural.
- msaharia 8y ago
  Agreed. Amazon has a large operation in India. And FANG has had development centers there forever. Espionage is unheard of.
  - vadym909 8y ago
    cos Indian suppliers aren't as big players yet. I think the Chinese suppliers care about US buyer data which is supplied from Chinese factories.
dredmorbius 8y ago
Noted, FWIW, by Adam Smith: The five following are the principal circumstances which, so far as I have been able to observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counterbalance a great one in others: first, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and, fifthly, the probability or improbability of success in them. https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/Chapter_10 https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_...
- dmix 8y ago
  We need a stronger culture of paying people better in our western economies. The value and ROI from paying people more is not well promoted enough. Decades of globalism, private equity acquisitions, and corporate competition obsessed business literature where lower prices is always revered. But in knowledge/service based industries it's not always about shaving pennies to make businesses better and there are many chances for better returns for small salary investments.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    Smith speaks to this as well, as I'd recently posted. And to clarify, because the point is often missed: I'm not mentioning Smith because I agree with all he's written, and certainly not for what he's claimed to have said, or to suggest that Jacob Viners very tortured re-assembling of various snippets across three separate books of the work is the book's central message. Smith is verbose as hell, but can, and does, get to the point when he really wants to: "Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." "A man must live by his work." "No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable." "[Political economy proposes] first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people...; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services." Smith isn't the last word on economics. And he's not the first. His views, even when wrong, are almost always well-considered, and it's usually possible to learn from his mistakes. And he anticipates a verry surprisingly large number of present concerns (with a few gaping holes: mechanisation and automation are almost wholly ignored, even though Smith personally arranged for a position for James Watt at Edinborough). He is simultaneously highly influential, greatly ignored, and tremendously misrepresented. Reading him is extremely revealing, though I'd suggest he not be thee sum total of your economic education. But what he absolutely is not is the laissez-faire advocate of harsh market therapy for all things, and corporate apologist, he's often represented to be, by both critics and so-called advocates. Which even brief passages can make clear. His two chapters on wages particularly.
paulpauper 8y ago
Or not let low-level Chinese employees have access to secrets. Apple is known for being very punitive against leakers and is very secretive. It seems to work for then.
- wmeredith 8y ago
  Is this sarcasm?
  - shard972 8y ago
    Why would it be? Seems reasonable to not let low-level chinese employees access to company secrets given their track record.
    - ohnoesmyscv 8y ago
      This seems incredibly racist. There could be low level employees of other ethnicities or countries of origin leaking information. That’s like saying ban all muslims from entering the US due to their ‘track record’
      - fipple 8y ago
        Except that China has a state sponsored IP exfiltration program (like Alexander Hamilton funded for the US in the 1700s). So the same logic doesn’t apply to Indian, Turkish, etc. employees.
        cm2187 8y ago
        Like pretty much every other major country in the world, including the US.
        manfredo 8y ago
        How many Chinese companies are giving Americans access to high level permissions in their computing infrastructure?
mediterrenean 8y ago
I do not think this is due to low wages. Quality of ones morality is not necessarily measured by ones wage. If one is corruptible/corrupt there’s always a price point (or some other excuse) one falls for it.
- y4mi 8y ago
  Do a minimum wage job for a few months and you'll be surprised how quickly this changes. If everyone treats you like shit and you get a shitty wage as well... Well, a lot happens to your mind
- EpicEng 8y ago
  >If one is corruptible/corrupt... Which is pretty much everyone.
- Gustomaximus 8y ago
  I agree somewhat but feel it better to say I dont think wage (assuming it is a living wage) is the biggest variable in moral behaviour. Wage likely has some weighting (especially under a living standard), but I cant see how people disagree it is a big factor. If the counter point was true we would see reducing corruption as people go up the wealth scale. Whereas I feel there is a reasonable portion of lax morals at every level of wealth, and there is higher proportion of corruption the higher the level. My logic to this and why; 1) Firstly I am aware corruption and 'wealth have a negative correlation in terms of GDP per capita but would position this as, countries with less corruption get wealthier, and culture plays a huge part in corruption so to understand this you have to look within cultures and country to country comparison is not accurate in understanding wealth/corruption relationship. 2) There is always someone wealthier and if 'getting to the top' is a huge personal driver it doesn't matter whether you are in the bottom middle class or the top 5%. There is always more to go up. 3) Corruption scales, so at the lower level someone might be taking a $1k bribe, the wealthy are taking $million bribes so the desire for immoral money scales in value to the risk/reward so people dont become dissuaded as they get wealthier and it is more to do with personal morals. 4) Wealthy have more opportunity for corruption. E.g. as you go up corporate ranks you get bigger budgets/access and more autonomy in signing things off. And there is more grey in decisions for contracts awarded etc. Its a heap easier for a senior person to be corrupt than it is for a minimum wage employee. Side point: I dont think its fair people downvoted the original comment. HN is better than voting on I disagree with you. It is a fair comment and while maybe could have been expressed more please lets not become the community of hivemind and agenda pushing. Lets have interesting conversation regardless of if it aligns with your opinion.
siruncledrew 8y ago
Amazon can’t eliminate bribery with certainty only by paying more. The principle of bribery is someone exploiting greed in the weakest link to get something they want. The Chinese sellers/brokers are also successfully bribing employees because they want the information more. They have the manufacturing to produce the things to sell on Amazon, the cheap labor to write fake reviews, and the cheap distribution/shipping to make the sale economically viable while also low-price for buyers. This is a great scenario for Chinese sellers, and a huge advantage over many US sellers that don’t have those abilities (or have to go through a middle-man to work with Chinese production anyways). The stakes are much higher with the potential to have Amazon be Alibaba 2.0.
- manfredo 8y ago
  Increasing wages does, however, increase the consequences of getting caught. If someone stands to lose their $12,000 annual salary if they get caught, then selling user info for a couple thousand is tempting - it increases their annual income by double digits. By comparison, I think considerably fewer people would accept such a bribe if they stood to lose a $120,000 salary. This is Singapore's logic: their government officials are some of the highest paid in the world.
jkingsbery 8y ago
(Disclaimer: I'm an Amazon employee, but I can only speak my own opinion on this matter.) A couple factual problems with this: first, the employees that have access to this sort of data are in white collar roles, and are hardly being paid "absolute bare minimum." Second, when Amazon interviews employees, we ask about our Leadership Principles (https://www.amazon.jobs/principles https://www.amazon.jobs/principles), one of which actually is that leaders "Earn Trust." Trust is absolutely something we look for in employees.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 8y ago
  Does it really matter what a company talks about when they interview employees? Prevailing culture that is shaped by what the organization rewards seems way more important.
  - grkvlt 8y ago
    Yeah, every company in the world wants employees that they can trust, are team players, and so on. At least, I've never seen a job spec for 'Untrustworthy, slightly shifty, loner required. Must be antisocial and lazy. Must have a University degree in science or mathematics and a current drivers license.'
    - X6S1x6Okd1st 8y ago
      If it's a prerequisite then does it really matter if it's said.
  - jkingsbery 8y ago
    Sure, let me be a little more specific: - We ask candidates about times that they earned trust, behaved in a trust-worthy manner in the past. - Employees in their reviews are judged in part based on how well they earn the trust of their peers, managers, etc. - Promotions happen based on demonstrating the Leadership Principles, including earning trust. I can't speak to whether every pocket at Amazon has implemented it the way it's supposed to, nor can I say that every employee at Amazon excels at this. I would hope though that someone who reads a statement like "Sounds like Amazon is finding out the hard way that you need to pay for trust, not just skill" understands that this is something that has been explicitly understood within Amazon for years.

by clubm8 8y ago

walshemj 8y ago

And casinos have a large security staff and I suspect do better background checks than FANG companies do. Its the same at a large uk telco I worked at only a limited amount of people had widespread access to data and where positively vetted as well. I know one team leader who was going to have to pass DV (TS in US terms) clearance.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

This is counterintelligence 101. There are four traditional motivations of insider threats (MICE): M: Money I: Ideology C: Coercion E: Ego The thinking around that is changing, but the financial motivation is still at the top of the list. [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol.-57-no.-1-a/vol.-57-no.-1-a-pdfs/Burkett-MICE%20to%20RASCALS.pdf https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...

fcuck_actuarial 8y ago
I think M,I,and E (hopefully not C) could also be considered motivations for convincing someone to change jobs? (In my experience, recruiters from a well known FAANG company like to lean HEAVILY on E. Jokes on them, because the right answer is M!)
- AndrewKemendo 8y ago
  Coercion and Ego are almost never used because they aren't reliable and are fear based. Money and Ideology are positive incentives, Coercion and Ego are generally painful incentives.
  - fcuck_actuarial 8y ago
    What I had in mind by Ego was "flattery", so in a positive sense. In retrospect, ego without M is an empty, impotent argument.
    - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
      Or ego in the form of bait and switch offers of getting to have leadership responsibility or opportunity to heavily influence decision making about technical choices. Hype a position up like someone has creative autonomy to lead, because it strokes their ego, then later just shrug.
      - mcny 8y ago
        You could argue that the US military uses ego very successfully. The money isn't good all things considered but it is reliable/stable. So, I think it is a mix of M and E. Now imagine if we make universal health care and universal college education free of cost and available everywhere to everyone regardless of income. I bet military recruiters' job will become a lot harder. This makes me wonder: why can't we use ego in civil service? I'm thinking police, firefighters, and transit workers (from the bottom all the way to top management). Because after all, if we want to reduce cost (and I hope we all do) then what's better than to reduce pay?
    - dang 8y ago
      Please don't make a trollish username on HN. It's distracting, since the account basically trolls every thread it posts to. We can rename the account for you if you email a better username to hn@ycombinator.com, but I've banned this account in the meantime.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
joshmn 8y ago
Heaven forbid any country vote for an elected official who this could apply to.
- pizzazzaro 8y ago
  Those poor yanks.

userbinator 8y ago

Don't forget that China is ultimately a far more collectivist society, and stuff like this happens all the time. The money just provides additional motivation; people's natural tendency is to share things.

nyolfen 8y ago
i think it's more likely that people generally (anywhere) would feel little natural allegiance or loyalty to a foreign multinational corporation
chibg10 8y ago
Eh, how do you define collectivist? Ever tried to get on a Chinese subway or stand in a Chinese queue? I'm not sure you can compare e g. US and Chinese collectivism unidimensionally.
- marcell 8y ago
  I'm not a sociologist but this is a fairly common distinction in sociology. Countries like Russia or China are considered to be more collectivist. For example in China they are very OK with using eminent domain to seize individual property to build rail roads. America is considered to be more individualist. We also have eminent domain here, but it's much less common to use it, (eg. see California high speed rail).
benologist 8y ago
Where possible Bezos has Western employees pissing in bottles and penalized for taking sick days, working without vacations, retirement savings and health care supplemented with food stamps and tent-camps so it's pretty generous to blame Chinese culture for toxicity from the top.
- analog31 8y ago
  Indeed, the "data leaks" that Amazon experiences in the US are people taking pictures of their working conditions and sharing them with the public.

gist 8y ago

> There's a reason casino cage cashiers don't make minimum wage despite it being a low skill job, and it's not out of the goodness of their hearts. Not sure that is even the primary reason. Could also be: - Paying more attracts a higher level of employee with a more professional image (which yes matters even if someone is cashing in chips). In other words you are assuming they also don't pay the proverbial janitor a higher salary than they could get away with. After all, all else equal, if you were doing that job wouldn't you rather work in a nice building cleaning up rather than a older building or situation? Even for the same or close to low pay you were able to get elsewhere? And if this is the case why wouldn't employees still be stealing left and right. They aren't. - Require a higher intelligence level that is more likely in a higher paid worker. That way less likely to be able to con the cashier or take advantage of them. Also no surprise that people steal at all levels of income and in all situations. It's like when people wonder why some famous and successful person (with money) takes their own life. They say 'wow they have everything'. If that were true and a reason not to kill yourself then you'd expect people with no money to be taking their own lives left and right. And obviously that is not happening.

jorblumesea 8y ago

Then why China, and not India or other low COL areas? I don't believe it's as simple as purely salary.

trhway 8y ago
Speaking as Russian, I'd speculate that China is the subject to the same effect when having collective memory of socialism when property belonged to nobody makes for a society where cheating the System (big foreign company would seem close to it) isn't that big of a vice, if any, and may be even a sign of being smart/entrepreneural.
msaharia 8y ago
Agreed. Amazon has a large operation in India. And FANG has had development centers there forever. Espionage is unheard of.
- vadym909 8y ago
  cos Indian suppliers aren't as big players yet. I think the Chinese suppliers care about US buyer data which is supplied from Chinese factories.

dredmorbius 8y ago

Noted, FWIW, by Adam Smith: The five following are the principal circumstances which, so far as I have been able to observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counterbalance a great one in others: first, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and, fifthly, the probability or improbability of success in them. https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/Chapter_10 https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_...

dmix 8y ago
We need a stronger culture of paying people better in our western economies. The value and ROI from paying people more is not well promoted enough. Decades of globalism, private equity acquisitions, and corporate competition obsessed business literature where lower prices is always revered. But in knowledge/service based industries it's not always about shaving pennies to make businesses better and there are many chances for better returns for small salary investments.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Smith speaks to this as well, as I'd recently posted. And to clarify, because the point is often missed: I'm not mentioning Smith because I agree with all he's written, and certainly not for what he's claimed to have said, or to suggest that Jacob Viners very tortured re-assembling of various snippets across three separate books of the work is the book's central message. Smith is verbose as hell, but can, and does, get to the point when he really wants to: "Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." "A man must live by his work." "No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable." "[Political economy proposes] first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people...; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services." Smith isn't the last word on economics. And he's not the first. His views, even when wrong, are almost always well-considered, and it's usually possible to learn from his mistakes. And he anticipates a verry surprisingly large number of present concerns (with a few gaping holes: mechanisation and automation are almost wholly ignored, even though Smith personally arranged for a position for James Watt at Edinborough). He is simultaneously highly influential, greatly ignored, and tremendously misrepresented. Reading him is extremely revealing, though I'd suggest he not be thee sum total of your economic education. But what he absolutely is not is the laissez-faire advocate of harsh market therapy for all things, and corporate apologist, he's often represented to be, by both critics and so-called advocates. Which even brief passages can make clear. His two chapters on wages particularly.

paulpauper 8y ago

Or not let low-level Chinese employees have access to secrets. Apple is known for being very punitive against leakers and is very secretive. It seems to work for then.

wmeredith 8y ago
Is this sarcasm?
- shard972 8y ago
  Why would it be? Seems reasonable to not let low-level chinese employees access to company secrets given their track record.
  - ohnoesmyscv 8y ago
    This seems incredibly racist. There could be low level employees of other ethnicities or countries of origin leaking information. That’s like saying ban all muslims from entering the US due to their ‘track record’
    - fipple 8y ago
      Except that China has a state sponsored IP exfiltration program (like Alexander Hamilton funded for the US in the 1700s). So the same logic doesn’t apply to Indian, Turkish, etc. employees.
      - cm2187 8y ago
        Like pretty much every other major country in the world, including the US.
        manfredo 8y ago
        How many Chinese companies are giving Americans access to high level permissions in their computing infrastructure?

mediterrenean 8y ago

I do not think this is due to low wages. Quality of ones morality is not necessarily measured by ones wage. If one is corruptible/corrupt there’s always a price point (or some other excuse) one falls for it.

y4mi 8y ago
Do a minimum wage job for a few months and you'll be surprised how quickly this changes. If everyone treats you like shit and you get a shitty wage as well... Well, a lot happens to your mind
EpicEng 8y ago
>If one is corruptible/corrupt... Which is pretty much everyone.
Gustomaximus 8y ago
I agree somewhat but feel it better to say I dont think wage (assuming it is a living wage) is the biggest variable in moral behaviour. Wage likely has some weighting (especially under a living standard), but I cant see how people disagree it is a big factor. If the counter point was true we would see reducing corruption as people go up the wealth scale. Whereas I feel there is a reasonable portion of lax morals at every level of wealth, and there is higher proportion of corruption the higher the level. My logic to this and why; 1) Firstly I am aware corruption and 'wealth have a negative correlation in terms of GDP per capita but would position this as, countries with less corruption get wealthier, and culture plays a huge part in corruption so to understand this you have to look within cultures and country to country comparison is not accurate in understanding wealth/corruption relationship. 2) There is always someone wealthier and if 'getting to the top' is a huge personal driver it doesn't matter whether you are in the bottom middle class or the top 5%. There is always more to go up. 3) Corruption scales, so at the lower level someone might be taking a $1k bribe, the wealthy are taking $million bribes so the desire for immoral money scales in value to the risk/reward so people dont become dissuaded as they get wealthier and it is more to do with personal morals. 4) Wealthy have more opportunity for corruption. E.g. as you go up corporate ranks you get bigger budgets/access and more autonomy in signing things off. And there is more grey in decisions for contracts awarded etc. Its a heap easier for a senior person to be corrupt than it is for a minimum wage employee. Side point: I dont think its fair people downvoted the original comment. HN is better than voting on I disagree with you. It is a fair comment and while maybe could have been expressed more please lets not become the community of hivemind and agenda pushing. Lets have interesting conversation regardless of if it aligns with your opinion.

siruncledrew 8y ago

Amazon can’t eliminate bribery with certainty only by paying more. The principle of bribery is someone exploiting greed in the weakest link to get something they want. The Chinese sellers/brokers are also successfully bribing employees because they want the information more. They have the manufacturing to produce the things to sell on Amazon, the cheap labor to write fake reviews, and the cheap distribution/shipping to make the sale economically viable while also low-price for buyers. This is a great scenario for Chinese sellers, and a huge advantage over many US sellers that don’t have those abilities (or have to go through a middle-man to work with Chinese production anyways). The stakes are much higher with the potential to have Amazon be Alibaba 2.0.

manfredo 8y ago
Increasing wages does, however, increase the consequences of getting caught. If someone stands to lose their $12,000 annual salary if they get caught, then selling user info for a couple thousand is tempting - it increases their annual income by double digits. By comparison, I think considerably fewer people would accept such a bribe if they stood to lose a $120,000 salary. This is Singapore's logic: their government officials are some of the highest paid in the world.

jkingsbery 8y ago

(Disclaimer: I'm an Amazon employee, but I can only speak my own opinion on this matter.) A couple factual problems with this: first, the employees that have access to this sort of data are in white collar roles, and are hardly being paid "absolute bare minimum." Second, when Amazon interviews employees, we ask about our Leadership Principles (https://www.amazon.jobs/principles https://www.amazon.jobs/principles), one of which actually is that leaders "Earn Trust." Trust is absolutely something we look for in employees.

X6S1x6Okd1st 8y ago
Does it really matter what a company talks about when they interview employees? Prevailing culture that is shaped by what the organization rewards seems way more important.
- grkvlt 8y ago
  Yeah, every company in the world wants employees that they can trust, are team players, and so on. At least, I've never seen a job spec for 'Untrustworthy, slightly shifty, loner required. Must be antisocial and lazy. Must have a University degree in science or mathematics and a current drivers license.'
  - X6S1x6Okd1st 8y ago
    If it's a prerequisite then does it really matter if it's said.
- jkingsbery 8y ago
  Sure, let me be a little more specific: - We ask candidates about times that they earned trust, behaved in a trust-worthy manner in the past. - Employees in their reviews are judged in part based on how well they earn the trust of their peers, managers, etc. - Promotions happen based on demonstrating the Leadership Principles, including earning trust. I can't speak to whether every pocket at Amazon has implemented it the way it's supposed to, nor can I say that every employee at Amazon excels at this. I would hope though that someone who reads a statement like "Sounds like Amazon is finding out the hard way that you need to pay for trust, not just skill" understands that this is something that has been explicitly understood within Amazon for years.