57 ms·

Bye, Amazon

• simonebrunozzi 7y ago
  > I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers Assuming this is the real true reason (I would trust Tim, but you never know, so just being explicit here), it takes huge balls to do something like this. The economic loss has to be somewhat taken in relation to your total wealth (e.g. if you lose $1M by quitting but you already have $10M+ in the bank, it's not as hard as if you had zero in the bank), but still... Very few people would have the courage to walk away from big sums of money purely on principle. Again, assuming this is all true, I admire Tim for this move, and plaude him. I had my issues with Amazon when I was there (2008-2014), some of them made me uncomfortable, but I would have never had the courage to walk away. It also potentially damages Tim's ability to get hired in the future, as some other large organization might not like his behavior with Amazon and be reluctant to bring him on board. At the same time, hopefully there are smaller startups that want exactly this type of courage and rectitude and will hire him for his talents. Good luck, Tim.
  • nivenkos 7y ago
    Also takes huge balls to publish an article about it publicly (rather than just resigning quietly). I'd be worried about being sued for defamation, etc.
    • jdc 7y ago
      The Streisand Effect helps to some degree there.
    • simonebrunozzi 7y ago
      IANAL, but I think he didn't write anything that would put him in danger; plus, if Amazon would sue him, it would be one of the worst moves from a PR perspective.
    • toyg 7y ago
      He's Canadian and lives in Canada. Canadian laws on libel and defamation might be less oppressive than US ones (hopefully they're not as bad as in the UK).
      • btilly 7y ago
        US laws on libel and defamation are shockingly good. Free speech is woven into our culture and the Constitution. This post is squarely in the center of what is meant to be protected. UK laws are so horrible that the USA passed a law that UK libel judgements are not enforceable here. See https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-10940211 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-10940211 for more. Canada is somewhere between the two. Incidentally the country with the worst libel laws in the world is Australia.
        • 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
          I'm pretty sure South Korea wins that contest: libel is a criminal offense and truth is not a sufficient defense. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/fighting-for-justice-in-south-korea-where-truth-can-be-a-crime https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/fighting-for-jus...
          • btilly 7y ago
            Ouch. You’re right. Too bad I can no longer edit my comment
          • TulliusCicero 7y ago
            > A growing number of alleged sex abusers are seeking to use legal actions of their own to force victims into silence or into dropping their accusations. > Filing a report to police is not in itself grounds for a defamation action, but if a rape victim goes public with their allegations, a criminal complaint can be filed against them. My God, that's horrifying.
        • matthewheath 7y ago
          UK libel laws aren't that bad for situations like this — if he were sued in the UK, he could rely on the defence of honest opinion and I imagine he would prevail.
    • bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      it isn't defamation if it is true and I think everything not pertaining to Tim Bray was already a matter of public record.
    • darkerside 7y ago
      Agreed. This takes more courage than quitting itself, in my opinion. What if he wrote this letter, sent it to the media, and then worked in good faith within Amazon to change things for the better? That seems like the hardest road, and also the one that might make the most difference.
      • sulam 7y ago
        As he said, you don’t go to the media when you’re a VP at a company. You go through channels. Anything else -would- make you radioactive, because it means you can’t be trusted to work at fixing things that you carry some responsibility for as a senior leader. Caveat: companies where everyone is a VP probably have another title that denotes senior leadership: Managing Director, Partner, etc.
        • darkerside 7y ago
          While I see where you're coming from, "that's not how it's done" might not be the right answer when the things that are happening are already crossing ethical boundaries that are more serious than breaking with corporate traditions. I think I would agree that making media rounds would be a crude move, but there are actions you can take along a continuum before that (like this blog post) that might help apply external pressure while still having access to the internal levers. It reminds me a bit of Congresspeople who gain the courage to speak honestly after they've left their government roles. Yes, it's still courageous, and there are good reasons not to speak out while you're inside the system, but damn, you've just given up your best chance at making actual change.
          • sulam 7y ago
            Something I didn’t know before I became a VP at a middling tech co — as a senior leader, your actions are considered more reflective of the company in general and specifically legally. Obvious in hindsight, but an underling that gets fired is considered representative of not much. A VP, even if they get fired, opens the company to accusations that the behavior they were fired for is representative of the company, because of their role. For roles where you are a voice of the company, you need people who will use channels, because the alternative is literally bad for the company in ways that are very concrete. Put more viscerally, I would not want one of my peers going to the media before they talk to me and give me a chance to address their concerns.
    • rsynnott 7y ago
      There don’t really seem to be any factual claims in the article which weren’t previously public?
  • reitzensteinm 7y ago
    I think you can trust that it's the real reason, because either way it's going to make him radioactive for the next gig like this. No large company keeps its hands completely clean. Defense contracts, Chinese censorship, exploiting addiction, anticompetitive behaviour, sexism, the list goes on. Having a public figure at your company that's willing to martyr themselves to push the knife in just a little deeper when you have a scandal is a dumb idea.
    • wegs 7y ago
      He's also 64. That's near retirement age, and I imagine he can afford to retire early.
      • simonebrunozzi 7y ago
        I wouldn't dismiss how hard it can be to quit a job you love, just because you're 64. I know people that love doing what they do well in their late 70s, and job satisfaction for them is way more important than any monetary aspect.
        • Symbiote 7y ago
          There might be charities, non-profits or other organizations that would appreciate his skills. I remember my dad spent all of about two weeks "retired" (resigned in protest in similar circumstances, but from a staff of maybe 100) before finding a part-time job at a local charity he liked.
      • labster 7y ago
        He has a few reasons to retire -- and a few reasons not to retire. And he laid them out for us about a year and a half ago: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2018/10/25/On-Retirement https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2018/10/25/On-Retire... > Progressive friends, people whose opinions I respect, give me shit about working for Amazon. I claim that the problem is capitalism, flaccid labor laws, and lame antitrust enforcement, not any particular company; maybe I’m right. And now he's basically admitting he was wrong. Impressive.
  • sradman 7y ago
    It doesn’t require huge balls, it requires ranking virtue signalling over monetary gain. Firing whistleblowers is a terrible thing but after forming/joining an activist group demanding that your employer addresess climate change, and promoting Naomi Klein as a spokesperson for the blue collar workers at the same corporation, I suspect that your ability to distinguish between whistleblower and social justice activist is compromised.
    • morelisp 7y ago
      > ranking virtue signalling over monetary gain I'll cop to not being completely au fait with current right-wing rhetoric, but I thought a core part of "virtue signalling" (insofar as it might actually exist beyond "position I disagree with", which your post suggests it might not) was that it was low-effort / low-cost. In other words, no action where the alternative is non-trivial monetary gain could be virtue signalling. Between this and Bray's arrest for environment activism previously, I'd propose that this is not "virtue signalling" but simply being virtuous.
      • DagAgren 7y ago
        In pretty much every case, "virtue signalling" is code for "this person is being virtuous, and I don't like it".
        • bryanrasmussen 7y ago
          right but there is a rhetorical undercurrent of this person doesn't really believe in this virtuous thing they are doing, and is thus a hypocrite. Because being a hypocrite is one of the top sins of our culture. Of course it is weird because the person doing the accusation of hypocrisy is actually against the virtuous act, and is thus for people not believing in the virtue. It's a weird rhetorical trick that sounds sort of unhinged the more you hear it.
          • munchbunny 7y ago
            I've heard the same accusation being made by minorities, LGBT, women, etc. especially in the context of someone else, typically not from the less privileged group in that context, who is abusing the moral concern to shut down discussion rather than actually trying to help. One of my friends, as somewhat of an activist on these issues (I'm purposely staying vague for anonymity), has gotten exactly that type of vitriol from people who obviously see themselves as "woke". They got hit with some pretty nasty stuff that was pretty transparently moralistic character assassination rather than an honest attempt at disagreement. I'm impressed that they're able to continue working on these issues despite the crap they put up with from people who are supposedly on the same side of the issues. To put things into context, I hear/see the above issue orders of magnitude less often than people parroting right wing talking points, but in the cases where I think the accusation is well-founded, I don't think it's about hypocrisy at its root. I think it's about being disingenuous. Then again we may be using two words to mean the same thing.
  • austincheney 7y ago
    He has stated in the past that his short stint at Google gave him enough wealth that he never needs to work again. Tim is known for stating things on his blog that are easily interpreted as self-complementary so the real reason for him doing anything, as stated from his blog, is irrelevant.
  • ex_amazon_sde 7y ago
    > it takes huge balls to do something like this. > The economic loss has to be somewhat taken in relation to your total wealth > Very few people would have the courage to walk away from big sums of money purely on principle. A good number of engineers refuse to even interview with FAANGs and other nasty companies on principle and they don't get any public praise.
    • paulintrognon 7y ago
      It's one thing to refuse interviews, and another thing to quit a job you love and invested 5 years of your life and that paysvery well.
      • ex_amazon_sde 7y ago
        The latter it's much easier: the stocks are vested after 5 years, the unspent disposable income is saved somewhere and now and you are ready to leave. Also the turnover of engineers in Amazon is among the highest in the industry and only a few stay beyond 5 years. In comparison, refusing to work for some FAANG takes 10 times more courage for someone out of college and without saving.
        • otterley 7y ago
          Tim himself acknowledged in his message that he’s leaving over a million dollars in unvested RSUs on the table by leaving.
          • esoterica 7y ago
            It's a little silly to talk about unvested RSUs as "leaving money on the table" when they are analogous to future unearned salary, which everyone by definition gives up when they quit a job. If you don't have any RSUs but you make $100k a year, and an actuarial table says you can expect to live for 50 more years, then you're theoretically "leaving $5 million on the table" when you quit your job, but no one describes it that way.
  • artsyca 7y ago
    Somewhere between university and the present day we went from being idealistic to realistic to defeatist and the tone of this conversation stinks of pre-covid stereotypes let me guess you enjoy the free coffee and casual culture too much to walk away from a neo-fascist dictatorship with corporate characteristics or maybe you're mortgaged up to your eyeballs Edit: don't you think some liberal leaning corporate behemoth would want this guy whoever he is to use as a pawn because he took an ethical stand and can lend a patina of legitimacy to their gray area shady dealings? the world has suddenly become too complex for the IT crowd it seems
    • artsyca 7y ago
      Yea the downvotes are designed to create a climate of fear https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3bjpj/amazon-vp-tim-bray-resigns-calls-company-chickenshit-for-firing-protesting-workers https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3bjpj/amazon-vp-tim-bray... Look it's made the cool kid news
    • kspacewalk2 7y ago
      Just out of curiosity, which neo-fascist dictatorship paying you lots of money did you walk away from? Which has offered you a job? An interview?
      • artsyca 7y ago
        I've walked away from tons dude two mega corporations and an agency and at a heavy personal cost may I add but what choice did I have? Selling my ethics was too high a price Listen every large organization becomes a leftist surveillance state unless we drastically work against that tendency As systems professionals we should know that by now but we collectively turn a blind eye need I remind you who was selling counting machines to the bad guys during that war in Europe all those years ago? How many engineers had the courage to step into their 1:1 and indict their managers for treason back then? If you haven't become a corporate outcast by 40 you're a traitor Edit -- before you say it's my way of claiming sour grapes for my failings as a software engineer you shouldn't be surprised that every corporation is essentially the same corporation with different plutocrats at the helm repeating each other's tired monologues to the same masses of unwashed pizza eating feature trolls It's the same in north America as it is in socialist dictatorships only here the managers pretend they're our friends and there they're our dads
  • nicoburns 7y ago
    > Very few people would have the courage to walk away from big sums of money purely on principle. On the contrary, bucketloads of people do this all the time. The world would be a better place if more people did.
    • 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
      Citation needed. From what I've seen, there tends to be other reasons, and the ethical issues are at best the straw that broke the camel's back, and at worst cover for quitting ahead of getting fired. (For avoidance of doubt, I'm not saying either is the case here.)
      • take_a_breath 7y ago
        People work in less profitable industries and choose less-profitable majors all-the-time. Teaching, non-profit, nursing and research are fields where the pay doesn’t always match the schooling or knowledge required.
        • 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
          Sure, I'll grant you that, but it's much harder to give up something you already have than to abstain from something you don't have.
          • Symbiote 7y ago
            I'm surely not the only one here who declines or ignores messages from headhunters for companies with politics or technology I fundamentally disagree with.
          • SubiculumCode 7y ago
            This is just extemporizing to deny a strong point...and in any case, it is easier to give up on an income of you have a lot in the bank.
    • bob33212 7y ago
  • _ta_2323221 7y ago
    So as an already rich person he forewent becoming slightly richer after realizing his work supported an exploitative system that happily puts low-level employees at risk for the financial benefit of the company? A true hero indeed. Sorry for being slightly sarcastic here, but Amazon has a long history of treating its warehouse workers badly, that behavior didn't start with Covid-19. I find it a bit hypocritical therefore to become rich on the back of such a system and then, from a comfortable position of privilege and wealth, grandly declare that you will no longer partake in it. I realize he worked for AWS but it still supports the same company and provides the infrastructure they surveil and control their workers with. I think who deserves more credit here are the workers that protested their treatment, which are often paid only slightly over minimum wage and don't have any savings that they can live off before landing another high-paying job.
  • Waterluvian 7y ago
    > Very few people would have the courage to walk away from big sums of money purely on principle. I think assuming this is revealing of one's own attitude more than anything. I also feel like big companies have people convinced that they're being paid a lot because they're exceptional or special in some way. Really, they're being compensated for either stress or location or working more than 40 hours or giving away their morals. I say this because I know a few people who made this kind of decision. And speaking with them about it, it wasn't difficult. They just had a more complete compensation model to evaluate against.
  • st1ck 7y ago
    > if you lose $1M by quitting but you already have $10M+ in the bank Losing money is hard, but if you reframe it as being rewarded $1M (with pretty low marginal utility after $10M) by losing your freedom, then such a choice is only rational.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • gumby 7y ago
    > Assuming this is the real true reason (I would trust Tim, but you never know, so just being explicit here), it takes huge balls to do something like this. Agree: People can quit and say what they want. People in high paying jobs can quit and often find an equivalent replacement; perhaps have one lined up before they leave; in such a case the impact is limited. But if you quit on principle and take a public stand on it other large companies are more likely to treat your decision as a sign you are dangerous. So it takes not just the ability but also the willingness to take such action.
    • koheripbal 7y ago
      He even alludes to it in his post when he mentions that he generally dislikes the toxic culture at Amazon.
      • gumby 7y ago
        Despite having a few friends who like it, by and large “toxic environment” has been the impression I've gotten from most people I know who have worked there, so I’ve never applied.
  • ubermonkey 7y ago
    Seriously great move by Tim. He has power and celebrity (of a sort), so he's likely insulated from any real blowback here, but it definitely makes Amazon looks very, very shitty. Well, shittier. Anyway, this is what a principled tech leader looks like.
  • throw_m239339 7y ago
    I am glad he said it so that people here can't claim it is not happening. I'm also glad he is making clear these policies come from the top at Amazon so that people can't claim that Bezos knows nothing about that and isn't involved in any of this. These are the most important things to me. People with principles are rare these days. And people here can't just spin these stories into something else now.
    • koheripbal 7y ago
      In his post, he states... > It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. So clearly he's had other issues and encounters with the toxic work culture there. It really shouldn't be any surprise that people usually have multiple reasons for quitting their job.
    • stronglikedan 7y ago
      > people here can't claim it is not happening > people can't claim that Bezos knows nothing about that and isn't involved in any of this. All of this assumes that people will believe Tim. People still can claim those things simply by saying they don't believe him.
    • joeys7 7y ago
      He is the only person resigning at Amazon over these firings. I’ve seen other emails sent to the activist email lists over people resigning due to this. But he’s the most high profile. I have tolerated a lot of evilness from Amazon and justified it as a “different organization”. I work in Amazon Music which isn’t responsible for facial recognition or warehouse abuses. But seeing them fire whistleblowers... that’s just heartbreaking to watch. Makes me want to quit too. The only reason I haven’t yet is to keep up the activism.
      • clevergadget 7y ago
        do it keep it up dont quit, he should have made them fire him for his activism rather than walk away. mad respect to him but there are better ways to go.
  • iancmceachern 7y ago
    I disagree, I think it makes him more hirable. I guess it depends, perhaps he is less hirable at a company that values profits over humanity, but definitely more hirable at a company that values humanity over profit.
  • ashconnor 7y ago
    Assuming Tim is in Canada he's probably not eligible for Employment Insurance too.
    • sachdevap 7y ago
      I don't think employment insurance concerns him. He has earned way too much money for that to be a problem.
  • cowpig 7y ago
    Starting the comment with "assuming this is the real reason" seems disingenuous in a post that seems to be supportive of the author. But that it's repeated again in the 3rd paragraph, and that the final paragraph then mentions that it'll make Tim "hard to hire"? There's no basis in evidence: Tim's wikipedia page shows a history of activism consistent with taking this kind of stand, and a staggering resume that indicates it's unlikely he'll have any trouble finding work if he wants it. I'm pretty disappointed in HN that this is the top-voted comment on this article..
    • berryjerry 7y ago
      There are always multiple reasons. As people below had pointed out he is 64 and already planning on retiring per announcements a year ago. This is another reason on top of the previous ones he stated. The straw that broke the camels back?
    • craigsmansion 7y ago
      > There's no basis in evidence It's hard to rise to the top in a morally lax organisation without making some compromises on the way there. Furthermore, it's easy to take a stand when you're financially secure because of those compromises. So in my opinion the OP is right: it's good for Tim to take a stance if truly, deep down, he feels this is morally wrong, but ultimately him being outspoken means little when compared to those who did the right thing from the start and as such never got a position to make a headline on HN in the first place. Tim is assured of a cozy job with a "good guy" startup regardless. If genuine, it's certainly a personal victory for him, but it doesn't mean much for the rest of us (except, cynically, that selling out and then raising your profile by denouncing the party you sold out to is a valid career path).
    • abvdasker 7y ago
      I agree that the subtext of the parent comment makes it seem a lot like concern trolling. Even if it is sincere, the qualifications riddled throughout the comment totally undercut any message of support the author may have intended.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • ignoramous 7y ago
    > Very few people would have the courage to walk away from big sums of money purely on principle. No shit. Cognitive dissonance (in justification of Amazon's policies) even from some of the smartest people I know is a sight to behold: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16249272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16249272
    • CobrastanJorji 7y ago
      That's a pretty amazing comment. I worked at Amazon many years ago and recall many convesations where it was generally agreed that we were surely being paid better than at other tech companies because the compensation at other tech companies included all of the perks. It wasn't remotely true, but it had to be true, because we were all smart people, and we were still here, weren't we?
  • madeofpalk 7y ago
    > It also potentially damages Tim's ability to get hired in the future, as some other large organization might not like his behavior with Amazon and be reluctant to bring him on board For what it's worth, I'm sure he would consider this a feature. Given his already stated beliefs, I'm sure he wouldn't want to work at a company that would be turned off by this. (just to be clear, I don't actually know Tim. I've never heard of him before this).
  • code_duck 7y ago
    >Very few people would have the courage to walk away from big sums of money purely on principle. Some people are wise enough to understand that having 20 million vs 10 million does not actually do much to improve your quality of life.
  • VRay 7y ago
    EDIT: Wait a second, I wasn't able to read TFA originally since it was overloaded with traffic. It's back up now, and I can see that Tim Bray was a VP.. This will probably have some impact on him getting more jobs as a VP at FAANG corps, haha. I doubt he'll have trouble finding ethical employment and/or starting his own company though... > It also potentially damages Tim's ability to get hired in the future Can confirm that it'll have zero effect. I know a guy who, when he left Amazon, sent an e-mail to about 5,000 people parodying the scene from Half Baked where the guy curses out his coworkers and quits. Amazon's HR was furious with him, but all that came of it was that they didn't give him severance pay. He didn't have any higher purpose in quitting either, he just wanted more money and to work on something more interesting somewhere else. Apparently he's on some sort of blacklist within Amazon, but he's been doing fine at another FAANG company for years.
  • cbsmith 7y ago
    It might make certain large organizations reluctant to bring him on board, but I imagine those organizations wouldn't be places he'd like to work. I think there will be other large organizations that would be more inclined to hire him; if nothing else, this makes hiring him a good branding exercise with other employees. Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I'd like to think at least when you are talented enough, sticking true to your nature probably serves you better than to do otherwise.
    • cbsmith 7y ago
      As expected: https://twitter.com/timbray/status/1257383599424315397 https://twitter.com/timbray/status/1257383599424315397
  • pbreit 7y ago
    Guessing he was able to leave because he is financially stable.
  • Naracion 7y ago
    As cowpig has mentioned in another comment, I also doubt Tim would have trouble finding other opportunities if he wants to. However, as Tim says: "The victims weren’t abstract entities but real people; here are some of their names: Courtney Bowden, Gerald Bryson, Maren Costa, Emily Cunningham, Bashir Mohammed, and Chris Smalls." What about these people that were fired? When people get fired for whistle blowing, what does that mean for their future job prospects? Does it severely hurt your chances at a faang? As a PhD student of color guided by a moral compass who has to make employment decisions soon, this is an important question for me.
    • efa 7y ago
      I'm not sure why he includes: "I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right?" Is race as issue here? I thought they were fired for whistle blowing? Is he saying a white whistle blower wouldn't have been fired?
• _pmf_ 7y ago
  Impressive.
• gadders 7y ago
  As the saying goes "A principle isn't a principle unless it costs you money." Fair play to him for standing up for what he believes.
  • gowld 7y ago
    Hehe 64 and very rich. It cost his grandchildren money (if he has any), not him.
• miked85 7y ago
  > I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right? Including this bit is interesting. So he is accusing Amazon of being both sexist and racist in addition to treating workers poorly.
  • soulofmischief 7y ago
    That is quite a bold statement. Perhaps he meant management is generally discriminatory against those with a minority representation within the company, which is a less aggressive framing.
    • bigiain 7y ago
      I suspect Tim chose his words extremely carefully there, it's bold because he intended it to be bold.
      • spurgu 7y ago
        This is my hunch as well.
  • simonhfrost 7y ago
    In my opinion it was more from the perspective that minorities may have a more empathetic view on problems, after likely experiencing dealing with problems other more privileged people don't have to. In this case: one of the biggest benefits of hiring minorities... ending up being the reason you fire them.
    • soulofmischief 7y ago
      I think he may have meant what I said in my sister comment but I think you're probably right about that being a factor. I googled "are minorities more likely to speak against injustice" hoping to find some threads of discourse or studies, but everything was coronavirus related... perhaps another time when search engines aren't trying to decide what I need to see.
• paganel 7y ago
  The right thing to do. I've never met Tim and I will probably never meet him, I only know that he was one of first programmers/computer people whose blog I started reading back when I got into programming (more than 15 years ago, closer to 20) and as such one could say that I looked up to him. I'm glad that I chose the right person to "look up to".
• jsnell 7y ago
  Does anyone know what the "laughable justifications" for the firings were?
  • morelisp 7y ago
    In one case, an organizer was fired for refusing to not come to work after being put on "quarantine", three weeks after he was initially exposed and not given any leave, and no one else involved in the exposure was quarantined. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/31/amazon-strike-worker-fired-organizing-walkout-chris-smallls https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/31/amazon-strik... The specific incidents Bray discussed seemed to be on a private internal list, and specifically related to AECJ so probably not this issue - I doubt anyone will leak it as unless there's something especially egregious (not just specious justification, but something like a racial or sexist slur) it doesn't really benefit either side.
    • schnischna 7y ago
      Nevertheless, he was quarantined and came to work. Why?
      • morelisp 7y ago
        I mean, he's absolutely explicit why: Smalls felt, by all evidence reasonably, that Amazon's working conditions were unsafe and unfair and wanted to advocate for better conditions for himself and his fellow workers. Why do you feel the need to ask this question? What ridiculous conspiracy theory are you concocting that somehow gives an ulterior motive to this situation?
        • schnischna 7y ago
          Because he was fired for refusing to comply to the orders of his employer. Whether they seemed reasonable or not. And he seems to have switched from worrying about his safety to campaigning against Amazon. Why should anybody be forced to employ somebody who has made it their job to damage their employers reputation?
• simonhfrost 7y ago
  > It’s that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st-century capitalism is done. Stung me the most. Capitalism seems to have such an increasingly firm grip on the world that I'm starting to think the only way out is from some drastic worldwide event (Corona?).
  • asah 7y ago
    21st century? 20th century? 19th? Seems to me, this is the story of the industrial revolution and arguably all civilization pre-IR, when serfs were fungible labor units to the landed gentry. Standardize the design and production of something, then bring in labor to produce mass quantities to a certain level of quality. Coronavirus won't change this: with 8B people on the planet, we've come to depend on industrial production for food, medicine and more.
    • awild 7y ago
      Industrial production and capitalism are not the same thing. I don't know about the ethics nor the day-to-day, but Mondragon is a largecorporation and worker owned.
    • bigiain 7y ago
      > 21st century? 20th century? 19th? Does it matter? We can't change the 19th or 20th centuries. Perhaps we can change the 21st...
  • schnischna 7y ago
    What is so bad about treating somebody as someone who can pick and pack your parcels? It's just a job? And what does it have to do with Capitalism. You think under Socialism they would care about your individuality? No they wouldn't - Socialism is a Collectivist ideology, after all. The way to strengthen workers is to increase demand for their work, or find ways to make their (limited) skills more useful, or give them new skills. Those are all compatible with Capitalism.
    • 7y ago
• dcgudeman 7y ago
  How many "Amazon VP"s are there, 1000? Whenever I see stories like this the majority of the time the position of the individual is embellished to make the act seem more dramatic.
  • soulofmischief 7y ago
    If that's the case, perhaps it's also newsworthy that only one VP stepped down from Amazon for these public reasons? And doesn't that make him newsworthy anyway for being one out of a thousand?
  • stepbeek 7y ago
    iirc there are very few distinguished engineers at Amazon. Tim Bray is high flying from a technical standpoint.
  • jrockway 7y ago
    "Distinguished Engineer" is kind of a big deal, title-wise. It's not something that is just handed out.
    • new2628 7y ago
      As Napoleon said, a soldier will fight long and hard for a piece of colored ribbon.
      • sgt 7y ago
        And yet, some soldiers will let it go again in order to maintain their honor.
  • patentfox 7y ago
    Amazon is not a bank where VP position is like a senior engineer. VPs are very few and wield a lot of power and influence.
• TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  [Applause!]
• stupidcar 7y ago
  > At the end of the day, it’s all about power balances. The warehouse workers are weak and getting weaker... Whenever I speak to someone working in a "low-skilled" job, I'm always astonished and embarrassed by how different their work environment sounds to the kind of offices I work in. There seems to be a consistent theme of employees being treated with suspicion, condescension and outright hostility. This gets to the heart of the idea of "privilege", and why it can be so difficult to see yourself as privileged. Because it often involves nothing more than being given a basic level of trust and respect that, once you have them, can seem like a bare minimum, not something that you would need to fight for.
  • schnischna 7y ago
    That's why people work hard to acquire skills, to be able to work in better jobs. I have never run a warehouse, but I suspect that many of the strange seeming rules are in place because people otherwise try to exploit the system (like getting paid for smoking on the toilet for hours on end). It may seem inhumane, but perhaps it makes it possible to give people jobs who don't deserve automatic trust. Such people exist, unfortunately. I found very interesting the book of the guy who founded "The Big Issue", a magazine that homeless people sell in Britain. They also had to put some rules in place that seem strange, for example the vendors (homeless people) had to buy the magazines they wanted to sell. They are alcoholics, gamblers, addicts, so unfortunately some special rules were necessary to make it work.
    • whymauri 7y ago
      >That's why people work hard to acquire skills, to be able to work in better jobs. I know it's a common mantra in these circles to 'acquire skills' and 'learn to code!' And by all means, if you are capable go for it - I know I did. But it's really hard to do this when your priorities are your day-to-day expenses. When your uncertainties are whether you'll have a home or food. It's also hard when traditional means for acquiring skills, like going to college, no longer have the same returns they used to. All of my friends who work at Amazon warehouses have college degrees. So it's not even a call to learn fulfilling skills, it's a call to specifically learn profitable skills.
• mettamage 7y ago
  So if I get this right, now a VP will be hired that will approve of these things? I wonder if there'd have been utility to attempt to change the system from the inside out. I guess there wouldn't be. Then this would be the only option left.
  • Vinnl 7y ago
    Reading through his post, it doesn't sound like the goal was to change things - he just didn't want to be co-responsible for them. That said, it doesn't sound like there was much more he could've done to change things from the inside-out; and even though it might not be the intention, this public statement does sound like it might contribute to changing it anyway.
    • bigiain 7y ago
      > Reading through his post, it doesn't sound like the goal was to change things I think he did everything he could think of to change things: "At that point I snapped. VPs shouldn’t go publicly rogue, so I escalated through the proper channels and by the book. I’m not at liberty to disclose those discussions, but I made many of the arguments appearing in this essay. I think I made them to the appropriate people." with no result, and no evident likelyhood of positive change. Which is why he had to quit.
      • Vinnl 7y ago
        Yeah that's what I meant: it doesn't sound like the goal was to change things by resigning. Rather, it was admission that since he could not change things, and he also didn't want to be part of them, the only option was to resign.
  • DagAgren 7y ago
    He tried to use whatever influence he had to change things. It did fuck all. At that point, he would just be lending legitimacy to them by staying.
• zimpenfish 7y ago
  Whilst this is laudable and it would be great if more people stood up for principles, it does rather imply he was ok with every other shady practice Amazon was involved in for the previous 5 years.
• te_chris 7y ago
  Genuinely inspiring. Made me realise how long it's been since someone high up in tech actually took a stand and a risk and defended their principles publically. Thank you and know that your actions are meaningful and appreciated.
• lorec0re 7y ago
  You're a good human!
• wtmt 7y ago
  I appreciate the candid statement he has made about one of the things that ails Amazon's leadership. > Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st-century capitalism is done. I wonder if there's any future opportunity for him in the existing set of well known names or large enough companies. I can't think of any widely known tech company that doesn't do "21st-century capitalism" (treating people as disposable cogs). Seems like getting into some non-profit that also has a decent track record may be the way to go for him.
  • bantunes 7y ago
    I hear he's 64, so this might not be a big deal for him going forward.
    • cowsandmilk 7y ago
      Yeah, his blog has previously indicated he’s been considering retiring.
    • acdha 7y ago
      I'm with OP on the non-profit route: if you're a relatively healthy retiree who's concerned about the future your children are going to live in (a recurring theme of his blog posts) there are a lot of activist organizations which can use serious talent which they can't pay market rates for and he'd have the luxury of picking the one whose views most closely align.
  • chippy 7y ago
    I doubt it's an in depth criticism of capitalism, rather the specific sub-branch of worker-exploitative practices that the company does. He'd be quite happy (as are we all here, if we are truthful) making more millions in other more worker-friendlier ways.
• red_admiral 7y ago
  This is what being a capital-A Ally looks like. I take my hat off to you, sir.
  • chippy 7y ago
    with the emphasis on Capital (his millions) The joke being "ally" is a term used by those fighting against the injustices of capitalism, and this dude has millions from literally being the Boss and accrued from exploitation. Of course that doesn't matter as he's now a good guy speaking up for the oppressed. It's quite amusing if you believe in anti-capitalism.
    • Infinitesimus 7y ago
      Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. It often takes a while for us to internalize and accept how some hard things and maybe he spent years trying to make sense of this problem and finally reached a breaking point.
      • chippy 7y ago
        I really don't see Tim Bray as coming out as an anti capitalist here. That's why this is amusing. To clarify, it's not bad what he did, he is the good guy now. To put him up as an example of anti capitalism in its own right (even discounting the fact that the warehouse workers who were sacked are not) is hilarious. Edits - As most comments in the thread suggest, most people are not seeing this as a form of anti-capitalism at all.
        • red_admiral 7y ago
          Upvoted as I don't see why you deserve the downvotes. We might not agree, but you made a defensible and coherent point.
        • blueline 7y ago
          literally in the article, in his own words: >At the end of the day, the big problem isn’t the specifics of Covid-19 response,” ... “It’s that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st-century capitalism is done. how is it "hilarious" to take this sentiment as anti-capitalist? how could this be interpreted another way?
• tannhaeuser 7y ago
  Looking forward to what tbray is on to next. He has co-authored W3C's original XML spec and the RFC spec for JSON while at Google. Now leaving AWS on matters of principle, he could just be the kind of person who can turn things around and being trusted by enough people to get behind new "digital humanism" initiatives in a post-cloud era, like cross-cloud computing/service standards, and digital media/privacy/advertising rights and standards in an increasingly monopolistic market.
• synecdoche 7y ago
  How does resigning better serve the cause than conscientious refusal to take part in despisable activities and get fired instead?
  • lazugod 7y ago
    He wasn’t directly involved with the response to the whistleblowers, people higher up at Amazon were (it sounds like he wasn’t VP of the entire company but of the web services section specifically).
    • icebraining 7y ago
      Not of all the web services. Amazon has a lot of VPs.
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • deleted 7y ago
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• Havoc 7y ago
  >humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st-century capitalism is done. That's the part that scares me - it's not just Amazon. Automation hasn't even kicked off properly and we've already got humans being replaceable at best
  • fastball 7y ago
    I'm not sure what else you can expect in a world where jobs that require effectively 0 skill exist. I'd prefer the "full automation" route, as I think it would be better for humans to not need to perform these jobs. But until then, isn't it a good thing that jobs which require no skills exist? Since there seem to be many people with little-to-no skills?
    • mtrower 7y ago
      This is the fear. Increased automation will come whether we resist it or not; what hardships will the breaking point bring?
    • Havoc 7y ago
      >I think it would be better for humans to not need to perform these jobs. Depends on how this plays out. Either some sort of UBI future...or potentially dramatically increased inequality and much suffering by a big chunk of humanity that can no longer economically compete at all. Could go either way I think.
• mercury_craze 7y ago
  Amazon is a great evil. It will not be remembered as a company that has had been a positive influence on the world but as a company that has treated its employees (both hourly and salaried) with contempt, driven independent stores out of business and refused to play on a level playing field both through its shady business practices or its refusal to pay tax. Well done to Tim Bray for acting according to his conscience. Hopefully this sets an example to other Amazon employees and other tech workers working in similarly morally compromised organisations.
  • enitihas 7y ago
    Which is the mythical company treating their low-skill workers far better than Amazon? Does the rest of big tech even employ their non professionals directly? Which of big tech directly employ their janitors and treat them much better than Amazon warehouse workers? Which of big non tech company does this? >its refusal to pay tax. What do you even mean by this? Companies can't refuse to pay tax. They have to pay tax as per law. If you mean they are using legal mechanisms to not pay their maximum possible tax, how is that different from Apple or other big tech keeping money in tax heavens. > driven independent stores out of business And which big/successful comapny doesn't drive out competitors out of business? Google/FB have driven local newspapers out of business by sucking away all the ad money. MSFT squashed all the competition by extremely evil business practices. > It will not be remembered as a company that has had been a positive influence on the world Again, which is the mythical company you are using as a benchmark here?
    • mercury_craze 7y ago
      Ignoring the bad faith questioning, I dont have to provide a gold standard in order to criticise Amazon. Everything I've said is extremely well documented.
      • enitihas 7y ago
        Off course, you don't have to provide any standard to criticize whatever you deem fit. The point of my comment is not to ask you to provide a benchmark, but more to point out the flaw in your arguments to future readers. I admit I could have done this in a better way. But my point is without a relative benchmark, one can criticize anything and everything, even though the criticism encodes very less information. To brand something evil, it has to be compared to it's peers in it's time frame. Or else I can brand every single company and human being on the planet evil for n number of reasons, e.g, for not paying their lowest paid workers enough, or for not doing enough to combat climate change. These will apply to every single company for some definition of "enough", and if I don't have to provide a benchmark, I can set enough at any point.
• asdf21 7y ago
  It's crazy how stuff like this keeps coming out, but Amazon's stock just keeps going up..
  • hobofan 7y ago
    It's almost like people with morals and people investing in Amazon are two completely separate groups.
  • alexandercrohde 7y ago
    Well, as somebody who is unimpressed Amazon's corporate dystopia, yet also owns a significant amount of Amazon stock, I don't think the stock market is the place to look for these changes. At a stock level, I imagine their longterm plan is to replace warehouse workers with robots anyways.
• alexpetralia 7y ago
  This article now hit the front page of the Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/ea6946d8-532e-4724-ada7-eebb887c8c43 https://www.ft.com/content/ea6946d8-532e-4724-ada7-eebb887c8...
  • dredmorbius 7y ago
    http://archive.md/D2qjy http://archive.md/D2qjy
• jillesvangurp 7y ago
  It's a wake up call, or at least an attempt at that, for the likes of Amazon that if they are looking to have reputable people, like Tim Bray, associate themselves and their name with you, there are certain standards that have to be met. Amazon, MS, Google, Apple, etc. rank among the most wealthy companies in the world and they've each had to deal with internal pressures where their employees voiced concerns about certain things or where there was some kind of whistle blower situation. And they each dealt with it in their own ways. IMHO firing whistle blowers is the kind of action that should be called out as very negative and not something to be apologetic about. So, I admire what Tim Bray is doing here and fully understand that he's having a hard time justifying working for what he's diplomatically not quite calling out as aholes; though the undertone is quite clear. Of course as he is pointing out, he's in a position where he can afford to do so financially. But then, being able to and actually doing are two things and he's showing some back bone here by 1) walking away and taking a hit financially, and 2) writing about it in the hope that leadership steps up and acts to correct the situation: compensate individuals affected, offer to rehire them, and discipline executives involved in pushing this through. Unlikely to happen, but one can hope for someone with a backbone stepping up. It would be the right thing to do. At the minimum, they've just been exposed for what they are and that might have consequences elsewhere for them.
  • aguyfromnb 7y ago
    >It's a wake up call, or at least an attempt at that, for the likes of Amazon that if they are looking to have reputable people, like Tim Bray, associate themselves and their name with you, there are certain standards that have to be met. Prominent VCs are calling for people to get back to work every day on Twitter. The rest of the world is waking up to these people, but we have a long way to go before Silicon Valley cares.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • vkaku 7y ago
      It is surprising that the rest of the world is already woke, but the software engineers in these companies have not risen to the reality yet. And that has led to their successful manipulation of neglecting anything but money.
• adreamingsoul 7y ago
  I'm still feeling blue from leaving AWS back in mid-2019. I worked with a talented team, had an amazing manager, and overall miss everyone all the way up to the VP of the org. Articulating why I left has not been easy, but Mr. Bray touches on some of the issues that resonate with me.
• acdha 7y ago
  Kudos to Tim for not being blinded by the money. A whole lot of people are going to wish they’d had his courage when the history of this era is being written and our descendants are wondering why more people didn’t act.
• paulintrognon 7y ago
  cached: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wi2hPnTXhhoJ:https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-Amazon+&cd=1&hl=fr&ct=clnk&gl=fr&client=firefox-b-d https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wi2hPn...
• sumfoni 7y ago
  I don't get it. What does he win doing that? One publicity stunt. Thats it He could have done much more inside Amazon and get fired later.
• Maakuth 7y ago
  His page seems to be melting under HN effect (was: Slashdot effect), luckily IA seems to have a copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20200504111506/https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-Amazon https://web.archive.org/web/20200504111506/https://www.tbray...
  • Jaruzel 7y ago
    HN 'Hug-of-death' is what we call it around here.
    • greenyoda 7y ago
      Bray's blog post was linked to by a story on CNBC, which has much more traffic than HN: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/04/amazon-engineer-resigns-over-companys-treatment-of-workers.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/04/amazon-engineer-resigns-over...
  • rantwasp 7y ago
    i would expect his blog to be able to withstand the traffic. something about scalability and how he should know better
• lftherios 7y ago
  We need more Tims in the tech world. From a place for renegades, the valley has quickly become a safe place for "yes men", that all they do is to obey to their corporate overlords.
  • scarface74 7y ago
    It’s easy to take a moral stand when you have millions and are close to retirement.
    • lftherios 7y ago
      agreed. still very few do it.
    • Lammy 7y ago
      s/easy/possible/
• econcon 7y ago
  I also quit tech, so I don't really respect the people who get job at these companies, they are basically modern day enabler for bad things that happen at these companies. Companies aren't nothing without their employees helping them do the things and that unfortunately includes the bad things. I now run my own business and pay everyone fairly and treat everyone well.
  • otachack 7y ago
    Is your business non-tech related? I've had ideas to leave, myself, but with the times we're in with small businesses getting hit hard it seems it'll take extra courage to do so.
    • econcon 7y ago
      It's small scale manufacturing for communities, I am doing this work in India where it can help quality of life of people who are not aware about mechanism/machines which can improve their productivity and safety.
• thanksforfish 7y ago
  > Any plausible solution has to start with increasing their collective strength. Legislation or unionization. Any other routes?
  • TimJRobinson 7y ago
    A UBI would go a long way to give power to the lowest paid workers. Without the threat of starvation companies will find it much harder to exploit them.
    • afshin 7y ago
      A basic income that truly covers the basic needs of modern life (food, shelter, electricity, running water, heat, healthcare, broadband, education, etc.) would give the lowest paid workers bargaining power. A basic income that doesn't cover those things might instead just make it easier to pay workers even less. Think of what some restaurants do when their employees get tips: they pay less than the legal minimum wage because they expect tips to "top off" worker earnings until they meet minimum wage requirements, so they explicitly pass that tip from customers into the business's revenue stream, skipping the intended tip recipient altogether. If we don't protect recipients of UBI, their employers can do the same thing.
  • pgrote 7y ago
    >unionization I am confused why there weren't wholesale strikes in the grocery, retail, warehouse, gig workforces during the shutdowns. Workers had complete power to force change.
    • thanksforfish 7y ago
      How many of those employees have alternate work they can take if fired or have enough money saved up to make ends meet if they don't get a paycheck for a while? Many people live paycheck to paycheck and theres a huge batch of people newly unemployed to compete with for jobs. I don't think that's a lot of power. Without a union, theres also challenges in organizing such an event.
    • 7y ago
• lmilcin 7y ago
  I don't think many people take it into account, but many companies look up to tech giants and replicate their actions. When company the size of Amazon can get away with this kind of heavy handed employee treatment, the results are affecting many, many more people that it might seem on the surface.
• TLightful 7y ago
  f.uc!3k y(o.!u.
• gowld 7y ago
  Is he donating all the excess money Amazon paid him to the workers or unions?
  • afshin 7y ago
    Would publicizing such a donation help him or would you then want to know why he published the details of his donation? Your question is one where both possible outcomes result in attacking the messenger instead of considering his message.
• yalogin 7y ago
  Am curious, what happens if an engineer quit like this after writing a blog about the company, does it have a negative impact on their hirability? Do other companies not want him or does it not matter?
  • sulam 7y ago
    Tim Bray? Won’t matter to his employability at all. May even help it, and low pass filter places he wouldn’t want to work anyway.
  • msoad 7y ago
    Tim is not "an engineer". He is not gonna look for jobs.
    • yalogin 7y ago
      I should have clarified, the question was about a general engineer, not Tim.
  • alkibiades 7y ago
    i’d think it would make you unemployable at another big company. but startups might still be interested
• lazyjones 7y ago
  Somewhat understandable reaction, but wise? As a VP you should have some influence at Amazon. Even if not, you'd still do more good by speaking out about it internally instead of resigning, thereby harming mostly yourself and apart from HN drama having little effect on the problem. Unless the real problem is that there is no actual reasonable argument against Amazon's actions because the danger is exaggerated and all precautions have been taken, in which case the doubts could have been resolved internally as well... But, his money, his consciousness, his emotions, his decision.
  • braythwayt 7y ago
    You make good point, but it can be extraordinarily difficult to change a company's toxic management culture from the inside. You speak out, you lead by example, you ask tough questions... Then you start getting bad reviews. Colleagues speak of you as being "difficult." You are passed over for involvement in important initiatives. You quit in disgust, but now they leak that you are a poor performer who is no longer relevant, and your speaking out about worker conditions is just a poor performer trying to distract everyone from their inability to get things done. It is very, very difficult to win some battles from the inside. Toxic cultures are ruthless when defending themselves from change. Ask any woman about challenging inappropriate sexual behaviour. I believe we'll hear the same thing.
    • lazyjones 7y ago
      > You quit in disgust, but now they leak that you are a poor performer who is no longer relevant, and your speaking out about worker conditions is just a poor performer trying to distract everyone from their inability to get things done. I'm not sure this is worse than quitting in disgust and then publishing drama and negative opinions about your past employer. At least the poor performance claim can be countered with actual past reviews. > It is very, very difficult to win some battles from the inside It's even more difficult if you don't even try and when everyone who wants to and could do it just leaves.
      • AlexandrB 7y ago
• tom_mellior 7y ago
  > Fast-forward to the Covid-19 era. Stories surfaced of unrest in Amazon warehouses, workers raising alarms about being uninformed, unprotected, and frightened. Official statements claimed every possible safety precaution was being taken. Then a worker organizing for better safety conditions was fired, and brutally insensitive remarks appeared in leaked executive meeting notes where the focus was on defending Amazon “talking points”. Sorry, but none of this is new in "the Covid-19 era". There is a long Wikipedia page dedicated to criticism of Amazon detailing decades of criticism of how Amazon treats its workers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon Better of Tim to exit late than never, but let's not pretend that until recent firings and this blog post we all thought that Amazon was a nice and cuddly company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Bray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Bray says he started there in December 2014. He must have known at that point what he was getting into. For reference, here's the state of the criticism page at that time: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Criticism_of_Amazon&oldid=634843846 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Criticism_of_Amaz...
  • SeeTheTruth 7y ago
    The fear of death due to infection by a pandemic is new. The need for PPE and lack thereof is new. Firing whitleblowers in the face of a pandemic and meeting to smear them (with public proof thanks to a leak) is new. We didn't think Amazon was nice and cuddly - but this is a good point for Tim to exit. Jumping on someone doing a principled thing at personal cost for "not doing it sooner" is so cynical. I think we can criticize Amazon's long history of being repressive without shaming someone who publicly did the right thing.
    • lidHanteyk 7y ago
      Sure, but at the same time, it is our civic responsibility as skilled programmers to deliberately starve Amazon of the labor needed to build their oppressive systems. It is not wrong to remind ourselves of that greater responsibility, especially in the context of Amazon being vulnerable to organized labor action today.
• emilfihlman 7y ago
  >I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right? And at that point the author lost my respect. Sad, since otherwise he's making good points with a lot of merit, but if he's making that "argument" I don't even want to know what more vocal "activists" were saying. This comes down purely to cost and slow moving rock on the Amazon side.
  • eplanit 7y ago
    I stopped at the mention of Naomi Klein.
• dandare 7y ago
  > Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st-century capitalism is done. I am really tired of all these off-hand attacks on capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system. It is characterized by private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. If you prefer a centralized or shared economy, that is fine, although I was born in a communist country and I bet you have no idea what you wish for. Capitalism is not responsible for some local injustice, corruption, or mistreatment of workers. If you think there is no corruption in a dictatorship or that communism is a worker paradise you are grossly misinformed. Europe runs on capitalism too, but Europe also has strong worker protections and ethical norms.
  • jacamera 7y ago
    It's incredibly frustrating that "21st-century capitalism" has become a shorthand for the anti-free market clusterfuck of a system that we've ended up with. The ignorance displayed by so many people blaming "capitalism" makes me feel like things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
  • unreal37 7y ago
    Also, there's an argument to be made that America is not actually truly capitalist. The government intervenes in the market all the time, especially now. Nothing big is allowed to fail. $Trillions to keep the party going. That's not capitalism. Even Buffett is sitting this "recovery" out because he can see the lack of a free market.
    • james-mcelwain 7y ago
      Isn't this the same rhetorical move that communists/socialists get accused of all the time? How can you claim that the most ideologically capitalist country on the planet isn't actually capitalist?
      • dandare 7y ago
        To be fair, a lot of the criticism of communism/socialism really is misguided :). But is US the most ideologically capitalist country on the planet? Or is that is just election campaign populism? Few examples: US has high barriers to enter certain markets in the form of bureaucracy and incumbent market manipulation. US has low overall taxation - 25% of GDP, (which is good) but the taxes come disproportionally from the poor. Then the portion of transfers back to the people is lover than average causing effects like #27 place in social mobility.
• querez 7y ago
  > I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right? This part of the article jumped at me -- If this is true, then I'd have to say "yes, coincidence". No company (let alone one as large as Amazon) would be that stupid in 2020.
  • alkibiades 7y ago
    if anything i’d expect them to go out of their way to fire some white men to avoid lawsuits
    • gdy 7y ago
      Yep, not diverse enough without white men.
  • gdy 7y ago
    It may not be a coincidence, but in a different way. It's possible that they spoke up because they thought that 'no company would be stupid enough' to fire them but miscalculated. At the same time white males kept their mouth shut because they knew that 'no company would be stupid enough' doesn't apply to them. Need more data.
• untog 7y ago
  Perhaps a little off topic but I notice that despite the huge number of upvotes, this thread is ranked below other stories with far fewer points from around the same time. Are people flagging this story? It would be interesting to be able to see the number of flags a thread attracts on Hacker News.
  • yhoiseth 7y ago
    I think I read somewhere that the algorithm de-emphasizes controversial stories.
• dirtydroog 7y ago
  > The victims weren’t abstract entities but real people; here are some of their names: CB, GB, MC, EC, BM, and CS. > I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right? I hope this guy got permission from these people to post their names on a public forum. Also, there's really nothing in those names to tell if someone is a PoC or not. At least one of those names is both a male and female name.
• deleted 7y ago
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• deleted 7y ago
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• herostratus101 7y ago
  Good for Amazon for not caving to activist pressure. Google's past fecklessness in this domain has come to haunt it.
• jeffrallen 7y ago
  Come on, Tim. You lost me at, "cost me a million dollars". Congrats that you did the right thing, but no one should care how much it cost you to be ethical.
  • btown 7y ago
    > no one should care how much it cost you to be ethical Well, sure, no one should care, but from a purely pragmatic perspective, privileged people tend to hold in higher regard the actions of other privileged people. Sad, but it's how systematized injustice self-sustains. And if Tim including that detail makes even one other highly compensated executive, somewhere in the world, treat with just a tiny bit more respect the concept of walking away from golden handcuffs to push for ethical change... it's worth Tim treating that detail with gravitas.
• _curious_ 7y ago
  "That done, remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised. So I resigned." Hope to see more individuals in tech standing up for what they believe to be right, willing to make sacrifices or even walk away if needed, and ultimately tell their story publicly. This is how you do it!
• rdsubhas 7y ago
  > At the end of the day, it’s all about power balances. The warehouse workers are weak and getting weaker More and more victims of trickle down economics.
• caleb-allen 7y ago
  I'm having issues with this url, here is a link from archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20200504093003/https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-Amazon https://web.archive.org/web/20200504093003/https://www.tbray...
• kerng 7y ago
  Bezos in front of congress just got a lot more interesting. This is something that they will likely spend a lot of time on.
• apexkid 7y ago
  Amazon is every other on fire in media for poor working conditions but they don't care because stock buyers of Amazon don't care. They will continue to invest as long as their wealth grows. This is what true capitalism is.
• gigatexal 7y ago
  Mad respect for this guy.
• techntoke 7y ago
  Will Jeff Barr do the right thing too?
• tinyhouse 7y ago
  |"May 1st was my last day as a VP and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon Web Services, after FIVE years and five months of rewarding fun" 5.5 years means more than fully vested and probably time for a change anyway...
  • DVassallo 7y ago
    You're never fully vested. I $650K of unvested AMZN stock when I left after 8.5 years.
    • tinyhouse 7y ago
      By fully vested I meant the initial 4 years, which is the package you usually get when joining a tech company. Given his caliber I bet it was a fat one. Add to that the run the stock had in the last 5 years. At his age and with his wealth, it's not unlikely he has been considering leaving regardless.
  • arduinomancer 7y ago
    I doubt DE salaries work the exact same as regular SDEs... They probably get refreshers along the way too
• akerro 7y ago
  Let's not forget to link the FACE of Amazon https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/ https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/
• therealdrag0 7y ago
  Splitting AWS off from Amazon Markets is one split-up I would support the government doing. Without the cash-cow, it might reduce Amazon Markets domination, and allow more competitive alternatives.
• sbussard 7y ago
  > Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st-century capitalism is done This type of business practice is a big threat to capitalism. Bottom-line thinking is over-optimization w.r.t. to revenue that doesn’t even consider those who generate the revenue. It’s a local maximum that makes crummy business people look smarter than they are. Conscientious capitalism is not a socialist concept, it’s a human concept. If the leaders have no empathy, people will leave, revenue will go down.
• alkibiades 7y ago
  if he’s so against capitalism he should donate his considerable net worth to amazon workers instead of pointless virtue signaling. but somehow think that won’t happen :)
  • blueline 7y ago
    having money means you aren't allowed to critique capitalism? what kind of logic is that?
    • alkibiades 7y ago
      if you made your money off the thing you’re criticizing seems a tad hypocritical. he should try socialism and redistribute his wealth
• treve 7y ago
  Nice to see someone standing up. I have a hard time understanding how developers with options to move to different companies ethically justify working for companies like Amazon, Facebook, Oracle or Walmart.
  • abvdasker 7y ago
    I personally have a list of tech and finance companies I've resolved to never work for, and anecdotally I know other engineers with similar lists. Amazon is near the top of mine for its harmful business practices and open contempt for its workers. The former Amazon employees I know tend to describe the experience of being an engineer there in less than favorable terms (and as engineers their experience is obviously going to be much better than a warehouse worker's). Maybe if companies like Amazon which treat their workers poorly were to face a kind of engineering labor boycott, they could be forced to behave more ethically.
• pleddy 7y ago
  I worked there in 2004. Fired for insubordination. My team was harassed by the VP of QA, he was soon also fired, just to prove that I was indeed onto something in my whistleblowing. Larry something, can't remember. One of those super two-faced goofballs. Amazon culture then? It was sad. Workers are pawns. The dreams of the Internet startup culture dashed and dying. I was on the team w the first Infosys flood. Amazon is a place to make money. That's it. It's a strict military hierarchy like all US corporations. No real culture of betterment for humanity. Quite the opposite. Yes, those that got and kept their options possibly doing very well. Yes, if tech is what you live for, yippee! A better future for all of humanity: strong "no!". Stormtroopers and low flying helicoptors for any that dare organize. Didn't you see the HR video where a plastic Jeff spews all the corporate lies and BS? Made me sick back when. I was an idealist. You were probably spared the worst and protected, given the humanist version on the surface. There's a culture of trying to get rid of people after a few years. Not many make it over the 3-5 years mark, right? Policy of "fire the bottom 10%" thing every year, so trump up some lies to have excuses. Anyways, better you got out before the rot set into your heart. No idealists there. The top guy is obviously quite extraordinary. Thanks for making a statement. Maybe something will break one day. Whistleblowing needs to be kept alive. It's our only hope.
• runawaybottle 7y ago
  I often have this discussion with a friend about how to figure out your place in a company. It is very important to figure out what class you belong to in a company. Some try to boil this down to ‘cost-centers’, but it isn’t always that simple. Warehouse workers are second class citizens at Amazon. This can be true for a developer in certain environments, it can be true for designers, etc. I’ve worked at places where developers are second class citizens compared to Project/Product management, and then I’ve seen where designers are second class citizens to developers. It can be even more granular where frontend is second class to backend, or vice versa. However you figure it out, if you find out you are a second class citizen there, you have to move on, as your potential is capped by the business priorities/culture/structure. It’s never a good fit.
• pleddy 7y ago
  https://youtu.be/Y666duJMDnQ https://youtu.be/Y666duJMDnQ
• mcguire 7y ago
  Is there any irony to be found in the fact that, reading the linked article (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dm8bx/leaked-amazon-memo-details-plan-to-smear-fired-warehouse-organizer-hes-not-smart-or-articulate https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dm8bx/leaked-amazon-memo...), I'm seeing 4 copies of the ad for the Audible original "Escape from Virtual Island"?
• flavmartins 7y ago
  While I don’t disagree with the decision to step down from the organization, I’m always concerned that in the long run, if committed, principled individuals just leave the organization, who will be left to stand up for those who don’t have that option. The Amazon warehouse workers certainly don’t have the power in the organization. And they don’t have the representation at the highest management levels of the organization. So if the ones that do in the VP and Director roles leave, who will standup for them?
• LatteLazy 7y ago
  I think a lot of the reason people hate on Amazon is just bad PR. Plenty of other companies are just as bad, or worse. Walmart has been a shit hole long before Amazon even existed and its worse than amazon. But Amazon steadfastly refuse to pretend they care. Bezos isn't constantly paying people to lie and pretend Amazon is a family and its workers are deeply valued. Perversely, I actually think that's more honest and more likely to bring about changes to actually help workers...
• ableal 7y ago
  Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wi2hPnTXhhoJ:https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-Amazon&hl=en&gl=pt&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wi2hPnT...
• fortran77 7y ago
  As an Amazon customer, I've gone from admiring the company to distrusting them. I can't trust products I buy from them; this lack of care is a problem with the very fabric of the organization. One nit to pick: "Climate Change" groups, and the like should keep their focus narrow. I have trouble getting behind many groups because they seem to need to have a position on every "progressive" issue. The Climate Change group should have stuck to climate change, and another employee action group created to make sure the needs of all the Amazon employees across the company are being taken seriously.
• xrd 7y ago
  I've read a few comments here that Tim Bray would be better off staying at Amazon to make change from within. This morning I attempted to renew a domain at a GoDaddy subsidiary, and as I scrolled down to look for the contact information I saw that GoDaddy appears to be registered in the Cayman Islands. I'm genuinely curious (I mean that) to ask if the same question is asked of companies that go offshore. Isn't this all about tax evasion? And, shouldn't they be asked to fight for change from within in the same way? I honestly think many people on HN would support overhauling our tax code alongside a corporation with deep pockets. So why not?
• ssklash 7y ago
  I'm shocked that so many bright, talented engineers go to work for Companies like Google and Amazon and Facebook. While I'm glad some see the light about the real mission of these companies (it's not about "connecting people", "providing delightful customer experiences", "doing no evil" or any of that BS) and ultimately quit, but what concerns me is how so many clearly incredibly bright and talented people are able to ignore so many red flags and go to work for these companies. Google and Facebook are about acquiring personal data to sell ads, that's it! You're not adding value, no matter what interesting, complicated, bleeding edge, world-class problems you're solving. The world is worse off for all of it, and you're helping.
  • joeys7 7y ago
    Back when I was in university, I feel like they really brainwashed me to think these tech companies were making the world a better place. I was too naive. I think a lot of young software engineers started out like me. There’s also the fact that these companies are so big, they have a lot of variation inside them. For example at Amazon Music, there really isn’t a lot of evilness there, it’s just getting people to pay up for music streaming. Still some unfairness in the music industry for smaller artists, but that’s often the labels stepping on them. A lot of us at Amazon knows this company is kinda evil now. I was thinking about resigning over these recent firings, but another activist convinced me to stay so we can continue pushing the company to be less evil. Essentially if we are willing to resign from a job, we have nothing to lose so we can take bigger activism risks.
    • pm90 7y ago
      Same. When I was in college, all my peers talked about FAANG's in glowing terms. Doesn't help that these companies often recruit heavily from Universities, so you have alum networks that talk about how great the companies are etc. Its quite an evil genius. When people finally do get a job, they often realize its not always the cool shit that they heard about; most often than not its some uncool shit that brings in a ton of money. This isn't to discount the amazing engineering work that these orgs tend to do. But look at their workforce numbers and tell me with a straight face that all their engineers are working on solving tough engineering problems and not just a cog in the optimization machine.
• throwawayfortb 7y ago
  Tim is a really nice and likable person. That said, I'm really disappointed in his one sided take here. Amazon did not fire these people without cause. They fired them because they violated company policies. These employees were using company time and resources to push personal political agendas that have no place at work. They were rightfully fired, and a huge number of Amazon employees are thankful they are gone. There is a big silent majority, probably at all major tech companies, that is left voiceless because the progressive left is vocal and aggressively shouts down anyone who is even slightly to the right of their own views. At Amazon, most of us seek a professional workplace where employees are working towards the common goal of helping customers. These employees that Tim is standing up for were the opposite of that, distracting everyone with loud activism and probably not focusing on their own jobs either. To provide a counter to Tim's account: Chris Smalls was told to quarantine himself and not come to the work site because he was in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19 (https://thehill.com/regulation/labor/490805-fired-amazon-striker-demands-bezos-protect-workers-in-open-letter https://thehill.com/regulation/labor/490805-fired-amazon-str...). He came to the site anyways to protest. Why wouldn't he get fired for putting others at risk? People who think this firing was malicious are speculating. If this was a topic that Hacker News readers had a different group perspective on, they would call it a conspiracy theory. Someone would surely be quoting Hanlon's Razor by now. Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham were the most visible ringleaders of activists pretending to be employees. They clearly were not doing their job as well as they could, because they had time enough to engage in lengthy political discussions on mailing lists during the workday. They were also repeatedly disrupting everyone else's work. They, and others from their group, would spam hundreds of company mailing lists repeatedly. They would send long political rants, links to activist events, and even solicit employee information. It was very over the top, and pleas from list moderators to stop spamming were ignored or met with baseless accusations of racism (or another -ism). That reaction, to shout down opposing views with absurd justifications, is the mental gymnastics of intersectionality at work. It's the unfortunate culture of intolerance that this aggressive flavor of progressive activism has taken on in workplaces like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. I'm also dismayed at the public reaction to these events. For some reason, the general public simply craves stories attacking winners, and the same is true for Amazon. If you want to balance out the info you've been exposed to, check out Amazon's official blog on the large number of changes they've made in response to COVID-19, at https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazons-actions-to-help-employees-communities-and-customers-affected-by-covid-19 https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazons-actions-to.... Were you aware that Amazon set up a nonprofit COVID-19 supply store for healthcare and government organizations (https://business.amazon.com/en/work-with-us/healthcare/covid-19-supplies https://business.amazon.com/en/work-with-us/healthcare/covid...)? What about Jeff Bezos's statement on the expenses relating to COVID-19 (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazons-ceo-tells-investors-if-youre-shareowner-you-may-want-to-take-a-seat-as-he-explains-why-the-company-will-spend-entirety-of-4-billion-profit-2020-04-30 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazons-ceo-tells-investor...)? Tim Bray quitting is his personal choice. I respect that he has the right to make this choice. But he's not a hero, and the HN crowd would do well not to immediately put him on a pedestal or to take all his opinions and claims at face value. When it comes to those fired employees he is standing up for, Tim is willfully overlooking their clear abuse of Amazon's employee rules, company resources, and other employees. I don't think it's an accident that he's leaving all those details out. He may be calling Amazon a 'chickenshit', but I actually think he's the coward in this instance.
• futureproofd 7y ago
  Site is down, here's the image: http://archive.md/XcnJv http://archive.md/XcnJv
• arkanciscan 7y ago
  I don't see how quitting helps the workers he claims to care about. Many of them would probably love to have the amount of influence that a VP has. Seems disingenuous to claim that as a reason for quitting.
• ksec 7y ago
  I am going to ask a slightly different question relating to the problem. How do you get another job? Do you tell your potential employer you quit because of (your) principle? That you fundamentally disagree with your previous company? How will the new company judge you? Now of coz if you are in the market that is chasing for talent ( like programming and tech ) this wouldn't be a much of a problem. What if you were the Amazon Warehouse Manager? Which is probably 100x more replaceable than say a software engineer? Most business seems to operate with talent are everywhere, opportunities are scarce mentality. They would much rather they hire a class B employees than a class A activist.
  • rantwasp 7y ago
    OP does not have this issue. He is a highly visible/highly respected for his technical skills. I’m willing to bet you money that he is being flooded as we type with offers. Not all people have this position but the act of quitting out of principle is still something that takes a huge amount of courage.
• rosywoozlechan 7y ago
  If conscientious people leave Amazon it will result in Amazon being less conscientious, but it will probably not result in Amazon being any less powerful or dominant. I also think Amazon a right to expect its employees to abide by its rules. Individuals have a right to organize and to protest, even when they're supposed to be at work, but companies have a right to want to discontinue their business relationship, that is fire, their employees, especially if they're not working when they're supposed to. Ultimately the employees made the mistake of organizing and being loud before they had the critical mass to have the leverage needed, and they outed their organization leadership.
  • behringer 7y ago
    AFAIK in the US it's illegal to fire somebody due to union organizing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_busting#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_busting#United_States Therefore, the employees made no mistake if Amazon breaks the law by firing unionizing employees.
    • rosywoozlechan 7y ago
      I am not convinced that the protests were attempts to unionize or that the law is clear that on if these firings at Amazon were illegal.
• shaan1 7y ago
  Made money, now is the ideal time to quit :-) Similar to the google engineers who quit after working for 10 to 15 years.
• hourislate 7y ago
  Completely anecdotal. It's possible some Amazon Warehouses are run better than others. A friend who recently got a job (5 weeks ago) at one of Amazons warehouses (NJ/NYC area) has only praise for the way things are run. They take his temperature 3 times a day, provide a mask, constantly monitor social distancing, clean washrooms every hour, enforce social distancing in any break rooms, work areas, etc. He says it's never an issue with breaks, lunch, etc. He has mentioned that they encourage him to keep an eye out for other positions he might have an interest in since he is eligible (after 30 days)to apply (he has some skills that can be more useful to Amazon). I was always under the assumption from what I have read that Amazon was a sweat shop. It seems that at least his facility is run very well.
  • TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    > 5 weeks ago Still in the honeymoon period, give it time.
  • grawprog 7y ago
    But as a corporation, every poorly run warehouse reflects on Amazon. It doesn't matter if some of them are good, Amazon is allowing the sweat shop level ones to exist and continue to be run that way. This implies they're ok with this or at the very least don't give a shit about how their warehouses are run or whether their employees are treated properly.
    • o10449366 7y ago
      Which warehouses are "sweat shop" level?
      • dessant 7y ago
        I think all of them, given that workers are severely underpaid compared to the value they provide, and have no means to influence the future of the company, other than to speak up and be fired. Though it's possible that the parent was referring to Amazon warehouses where workers had to pee in a bottle to keep their productivity points above the cutoff level.
• darksaints 7y ago
  Just want to point out this: >Amazon Web Services (the “Cloud Computing” arm of the company), where I worked, is a different story. It treats its workers humanely, strives for work/life balance, struggles to move the diversity needle (and mostly fails, but so does everyone else), and is by and large an ethical organization. I genuinely admire its leadership. Having worked there, I 100% agree with this statement. I'd go so far as to say that the blame for this toxic and intolerable atmosphere lies with a single person who is not Jeff Bezos. His name is Dave Clark. When I was in his org, I regularly interacted with FC General Managers, Ops Managers, and Area Managers. There was a humorous nickname that quite a few called him behind his back, and I think it fits him perfectly. It was Dave Mussolini. Not so much a nazi in his evil, but rather someone who desired and cultivated and enforced a pure cult of personality for his own personal ego gratification and career advancement. Amazon's "Disagree And Commit" leadership principle gets thrown out in his org and becomes "Disagree amongst yourselves if you want, but never ever disagree with me, never do anything that I do not approve of, and kiss my ass any time you are around me". Subsequently, all of his subordinates adopt the same attitude, and becomes a culture of complete subservience to your master, no questions asked. I have personally witnessed people get fired within 10 minutes of sending out an email making a suggested path that Dave Clark had already decided. The email came out, Dave Clark walked into his managers office with an HR rep, and literally within 10 minutes they were packing their things and saying goodbye. I have been in an elevator which opened up to him and his EA, and instead of getting in and going to his floor, he told us we needed to step out of the elevator and get a different elevator because he needed to talk confidentially. He couldn't wait to get to his office, he had to make one of his lemmings take the long way to accommodate 10 seconds of his time. The Kiva acquisition was something he pushed for extensively. They weren't even Kiva customers at the time, he just jumped the gun and bought the company. It turned out that Kiva's productivity improvements didn't scale very well at Amazon's level. They really worked well for much smaller companies, but in large FCs, their optimization and routing algorithms hit NP Complete complexity bottlenecks, resulting in much lower productivity than had been advertised to them. But instead of taking the blame for his lack of due diligence, he created a hellfire and damnation environment, regularly storming into their offices and throwing Steve Jobs level temper tantrums. He made the entire place so toxic that half (not exaggerating) of the Kiva engineers that were acquired had left the company before their very lucrative aquisition stock grants could vest. We're talking hundreds of engineers who would rather give up hundreds of thousands of dollars than deal with Dave Clark (Mussolini) for one more minute. Dave Clark is a toxic asset. He is failing at his job. Fulfillment costs are skyrocketing, inventory turns are tanking, and profitability of the retail division is at an all time low, despite all time high revenues. He has burned through staffing so heavily that they have had to abandon entire fulfillment centers because there aren't enough people in these small blue collar towns that are eligible to work for Amazon anymore because they've all been fired. He is a constant PR nightmare for the company. I have no fucking clue why Jeff Bezos hasn't fired him yet.
• moneymoney 7y ago
  https://techgig1.blogspot.com/2020/05/bye-amazon-tm-bray.html https://techgig1.blogspot.com/2020/05/bye-amazon-tm-bray.htm... link to original article
• alexashka 7y ago
  'Poor people are being treated poorly, I'm rich and can get a job by walking across the street. Capitalism is bad blah blah blah.' Quality content. People born with a silver spoon in their mouth are so predictably 'shocked' by how the rest of the world functions. People are mistreated? People are fired? There is injustice in the world? Oh my, I'm going to blog about it! Have you heard of Buddha? You're in that stage of discovering old age, sickness and death by wandering outside your golden palace walls out into the streets.
• telaelit 7y ago
  Finally someone who actually cares about his workers. I wish more higher ups cared this much about us
• alex_young 7y ago
  I really wish there was a stand-alone cloud provider to work with. AWS is a part of this unethical beast, GCP is a side project of a huge advertising company, Azure is under the wing of a major monopolist. I guess there is Linode, but their services are more of a traditional VPS than a cloud host. It's kind of crazy that most of the net income of Amazon comes from this business, but we've accepted that a stand alone cloud business won't work for some reason.
  • praveenperera 7y ago
    DigitalOcean is quickly becoming just that.
    • alex_young 7y ago
      Thanks! I hadn't followed up on DO in a while, it looks like their service offerings are a lot more robust these days.
  • SamWhited 7y ago
    I've been sad and wishing for something new ever since Joyent shut down Triton (which was absolutely fantastic, so much easier to use than the alternatives). Now that DigitalOcean has VPCs it might be considered an alternative, but I haven't had the best experience with their portal or customer support in the past, but maybe I should give them another shot. Other suggestions would be welcome.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• cek 7y ago
  tbray.org has been /.'d (is that still a thing?). Either that, or the strongly worded anti-defamation language found in Amazon's employment agreement has come into play, forcing it to be shutdown.
• gnicholas 7y ago
  > What with big-tech salaries and share vestings, this will probably cost me over a million (pre-tax) dollars ... > The average pay [in his group, AWS] is very high, and anyone who’s unhappy can walk across the street and get another job paying the same or better. Not sure how to square these two statements. Is the lost money all in stock vesting? If so, why bother mentioning the salary? If not, how does that fit with his claim about AWSers being so readily employable?
  • bitcurious 7y ago
    He’s an executive, most employees are not.
    • gnicholas 7y ago
      I considered that, but it also means that his blog post gets lots of publicity (case in point: top of HN). Even if he doesn't land another job immediately, this creates goodwill among certain folks which could increase his future earnings or put him on the speaker circuit. Not saying he isn't losing money here, just that it's a little odd to make those two contradictory statements without any explanation.
  • s1artibartfast 7y ago
    Last I hard, Amazon had a 4 year 5/15/40/40 vesting schedule. In my experience, stock compensation exceeds salary for most executives. If 50% of compensation was in stock, they would be walking away from 2.2 years salary worth of grants, which would have appreciated since the grant date. Amazon stock is also up >4x in the last 4 years.
    • gnicholas 7y ago
      I've heard the same; that would mean that AWS employees in general would stand to lose a decent amount of equity, depending on where they are in their cycle.
      • s1artibartfast 7y ago
• sneak 7y ago
  > What about AWS? · Amazon Web Services (the “Cloud Computing” arm of the company), where I worked, is a different story. It treats its workers humanely, strives for work/life balance, struggles to move the diversity needle (and mostly fails, but so does everyone else), and is by and large an ethical organization. I find it very difficult to reconcile this statement with the fact that AWS provides services to the US military to help them perpetrate mass murder more effectively and directly vends to the suborganization inside the US government that operates concentration camps for children. It's fallen out of the news cycle, but this is still happening today, and AWS is still accepting money to help them carry out their crimes. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/training-the-warfighter-on-the-cloud/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/training-the-warfi... https://www.govexec.com/sponsor-content/enabling-the-warfighter/ https://www.govexec.com/sponsor-content/enabling-the-warfigh... https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/10/22/139639/amazon-is-the-invisible-backbone-behind-ices-immigration-crackdown/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/10/22/139639/amazon-is... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/us/immigrant-children-sexual-abuse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/us/immigrant-children-sex... These are the people AWS collaborates with. That's not ethical under any framework of ethics I've ever heard of. It's not even like they just happen to serve the military along with all comers: they voluntarily built a special set of datacenters with racist hiring policies just to court government work: https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/ https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/ It's almost as if people have a gigantic ethical blind spot just so long as it's the state doing the mass killings and torture of children.
  • herdodoodo 7y ago
    So. Much. This. Google. Microsoft. Apple. Facebook. All have had contract supplying the U.S. military, an organization who's "greatest achievement" is mass murder of Iraqi children. I believe some of these companies also directly offer services to ICE, who are currently comitting a Holocaust against undocumented children. One day, maybe, when a sensible president holds office, she will break up these companies, or even better, nationalize them.
    • sneak 7y ago
      I think it is a mistake to equate Microsoft and Amazon's behavior (active collaboration and voluntary engagement in provision of dedicated/custom services or even one-off entire lines of business) and Apple's behavior (we sell the same hardware, unmodified, to everyone who wants to buy it) in this instance. Addendum (EDIT): Bad phrasing on my part attempting to characterize the behavior. I am not affiliated with Apple in any way.
• treebornfrog 7y ago
  Completely anecdotal. I went on an amazon warehouse tour in Tilbury, UK. (1). It was a tour of everything they do, at one stage they asked the guy stowing to do a demo and he flat out refused because he had to hit his targets. (1) Amazon UK Services Ltd. Tilbury - LCY2 London Distribution Park, Windrush Rd, Tilbury RM18 7AN https://g.co/kgs/8E4bgd https://g.co/kgs/8E4bgd
• xenocyon 7y ago
  My personal snapping point as a consumer occurred several years ago, over something that's definitely not anecdotal: When Amazon employees are frisked at the end of their shift (which is a practice that applies to at least some warehouses), they are not paid for the time they spend waiting in line to be frisked. This is not an anecdote; indeed Amazon fought and won a court case insisting that it has the right to not compensate employees for this time. (See https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-amazon-com/u-s-supreme-court-rejects-amazon-warehouse-worker-wage-appeal-idUSKBN1WM1FI https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-amazon-com/u-s-...)
  • specialp 7y ago
    Yes for me too. The fact that Amazon is so cheap that they want employees to sit around for 20-30 minutes after their shift unpaid to get searched to make sure they aren't stealing blew me away. It is one thing if Amazon wants to do this and pay their employees, but to not pay is wrong. And they felt so strongly about this they appealed a case all the way to the Supreme Court... That was the snapping point for me too and I have not ordered from them in a long time.
    • pathseeker 7y ago
      Where do you draw the line? Should people be compensated for their commute? It's an interesting debate that has emerged in airports as well: https://www.talbottlawfirm.com/does-an-employer-have-to-pay-employees-for-time-spent-in-security-screenings-u-s-supreme-court-to-decide-this-issue/ https://www.talbottlawfirm.com/does-an-employer-have-to-pay-...
      • jankassens 7y ago
        To me, the door of the building seems to be a pretty clear line. For a fixed location job, the commute is fully under control of the employee and fair not to count as hours. For variable location jobs like in construction, my view is that potential additional commute time should be compensated.
      • ses1984 7y ago
• chanmad29 7y ago
  Amazon deserves this criticism but I think there is nothing to single them out. Most for-profit companies would behave in a similar fashion unless there is a competition for these workers that will force Amazon to treat them better. Since Amazon is operating in virtual monopoly here, there is no incentive for them to behave differently unless there are stronger laws such as minimum wage etc..
  • birdyrooster 7y ago
    On the contrary, Amazon's success is precedent setting and it is such a strong company that singling them out can cause the rest of the industry to shift.
• softwarejosh 7y ago
  big ass respect for this person, of course its anecdotal, thats all the evidence you will ever get. you want a professional investigation done on these guys you are dreaming. this person saw evil, no matter how much, and took their side.
• kbash9 7y ago
  > What about AWS? · Amazon Web Services (the “Cloud Computing” arm of the company), where I worked, is a different story. It treats its workers humanely, strives for work/life balance, struggles to move the diversity needle (and mostly fails, but so does everyone else), and is by and large an ethical organization. As a former employee of AWS, I can vouch for this. AWS and Amazon.com should be looked at two totally different entities in terms of employee experience.
  • twomoretime 7y ago
    I feel like the only people who are surprised by the difference are those who have only ever held white collar jobs. They're totally different cultures. Weren't talking about two different classes of people. And unfortunately you can't expect the same standards and rules to be appropriate for both groups.
• youeseh 7y ago
  People who need to job to make ends meet usually have a lot more to lose. This very quickly creates an environment where there are real imbalances. The perception of these real imbalances can be even greater if there's a breakdown in trust / communication.
• mcantelon 7y ago
  Reports of shitty working conditions aren't exactly a new thing in Amazon warehouses.
• x3blah 7y ago
  http://web.archive.org/web/20200409045004/https://www.oann.com/tag/david-zapolsky/ http://web.archive.org/web/20200409045004/https://www.oann.c... CNBC interview with Smalls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HUGc7R8hw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HUGc7R8hw
• seph-reed 7y ago
  A site that lists alternatives for Amazon in all of its subcategories: https://threshold.us/c/cancelprime/amazon-alternatives https://threshold.us/c/cancelprime/amazon-alternatives
• cmurf 7y ago
  It's way past time for an Amazon boycott. This blog post makes the case without saying the word. But even here on HN there's a long history of complaints about fraud on Amazon: fake reviews, fake products, and little to no action by Amazon. And they show they have the power to take corrective action when something happens they don't actually like, while standing idly by when they don't care. The actions, and lack thereof, are what matter.
• dilandau 7y ago
  I am surprised to see a high-profile software engineer take this step. It seems from the post that his motivation was mostly in protest to the company's efforts to shut-down any form of worker organization. It's these strange ways that COVID is changing our economy that make me very bearish long-term on the economy. Businesses around here can reopen legally but many are choosing to stay closed. The customers aren't back yet and they can't pay their regular staff. If they reopen, the staff can also no longer collect the massive unemployment benefits. It's a fucking shitstorm and it's hitting the highly-paid as well, I guess. Good luck to OP.
• MrStonedOne 7y ago
  tbray.org does not resolve from within amazon's work vpn.
  • pbourke 7y ago
    seriously?
• mmaunder 7y ago
  Very difficult to put emotion aside when thinking about these things. I expect to be crucified for even asking this question because the audience here has a bias towards supporting activism. But oh well here goes: If Amazon condone and even enable employee activism, what bad things could that enable? I don’t mean unions. I mean a group of say 20 employees trying to bring about a change they truly believe in. Amazon has over 500,000 employees. Think of the number of edge cases. You agree with these good folks that were fired. But what about carrying guns to work? Conservative or liberal issues if you’re the other side of the table? That employee base is a small city. Is every warehouse a town square with freedom to assemble? Every office? Fighting the good fight is often necessary. But it’s also a seductive idea until it’s not your fight and disrupting your day - or worse, something you vehemently disagree with and is causing you distress. Is there another side to this argument? (Edit for spelling)
  • tayo42 7y ago
    I think your argument is based off of a slippery slope. Your assuming future groups of people aren't being realistic or wont ask for things that are moral.
  • jzoch 7y ago
    There is nothing wrong with allowing employees to protest (voice their opinions). This would be like protesting that you want to bring a gun to work - not bringing your gun to work. Amazon is not allowing the conversation to even happen - and even then, there is no collective bargaining power given to these employees. They have no way to ensure that their voices are heard. The only downside to this approach can be that democracy has its faults and a simple majority-rules approach can prove problematic (see elections going wonky these past few years while ignoring all the shady stuff going on). Its worth it.
    • hank_z 7y ago
      Personally, I believe democracy is a lie unless people are well educated. People are so easy to be manipulated by media nowadays. Education can teach people how to think, how to question things, how to justify themselves.
• elwell 7y ago
  Site fails to load. Hosted by AWS? puts on tin foil hat
• tsegratis 7y ago
  Can we also do something ourselves? AWS spending and consumers turning a blind eye enables such issues to arise These things are fueled not just by desire for profit, but also our own materialistic focus. If we buy into the latest and greatest products, rather than where they came from, then to some extent isn't it we who have enabled these rights abuses in various countries and companies, to support our own appetites?
• jzer0cool 7y ago
  > That done, remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised. So I resigned. You are courageous and have taken tremendous sacrifice. Although it is not much a condolence, it makes me happy to hear there are people to stand their ground for well being of others. I do not know the whole situation, but, I can hear it was against your own moral / core values. And I feel you are a great leader for what I believe, you are protecting, those around you. And your leaders have failed which resulted in this outcome. I wonder how many people have been in similar situation and decided to leave a job (or an excuse, for one). Reminds me of Nasa's launch when there were safety concerns (e.g. "On January 28, 1986, as the Space Shuttle Challenger broke up over the Atlantic Ocean 73 seconds into its flight, Allan McDonald looked on in shock -- despite the fact that the night before, he had refused to sign the launch recommendation over safety concern ..." ) -- as well other situations which may rise from privacy concerns, security concerns, etc, and with pushbacks with "Do you have proof? Have data to support? Is it reproducible? ...). Today, I wonder with COVID-19 if there are pressures to release Test Kits / vaccines to market before it is ready or skipping of any processes necessarily as another example.
• uoaei 7y ago
  Big props to Tim Bray. I think I speak for everyone when I say I'm not sure I would have been able to make the same step if I were in that position. Really impressed by the fortitude of his psyche and ethical framework. It doesn't sound like this decision was taken lightly.
• bawana 7y ago
  Is amazon evil because it's big or because they compete with more evil abroad?
• fataliss 7y ago
  I wish there was of some sort of association or union for people in the Software industry. While we are typically much better treated than basically every single other type of worker out there, we lack the assurance of protection when it comes to challenging our employers. In a country where your healthcare, your retirement and possibly your immigration status are tied to your employment, how can one feel confident that sticking to their convictions like you did will not cost them and their family a cost so great that they cannot bear it. I would like for Software and more generally tech workers of all trade to be able to say NO or ENOUGH, when working for a company that steals tips, coerces workers into unfavorable situation or plainly disrespects human rights. I dream of a world where workers can rely on something having their back when making the right decision.
  • rrrrrrrrrrrryan 7y ago
    Unions are primarily useful for workers who don't have the ability to negotiate their salary before accepting a job. By banding together, they're able to negotiate wages that more closely align with the value of their work. Knowledge workers are expected to do this for themselves on an individual basis as they're not really interchangeable. I do wish people pushed for more democratic decision-making in their places of work, though. I've read that in Google's early days people were mainly promoted by peer-evaluations, and there was a mechanism to remove a manager from power if they lost the confidence of most of their subordinates.
    • fataliss 7y ago
      Yeah, I am more interested in union in it's power to uphold moral values. If you ever were to be sued for whistle blowing something despicable or wrongly fired for defending a coworker's right and other behaviors we see at the likes of Amazon. There is power in unity beyond money.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• kjgkjhfkjf 7y ago
  I don't mean to rag specifically on Tim here, but most posts like this one probably should not be taken entirely at face value. My guess is that he left Amazon mostly for other more mundane reasons, and he used the well-known issues with how Amazon treat their workers as a means to exit in a blaze of righteous glory.
  • WolfeReader 7y ago
    Do you have any evidence of these more mundane reasons? Otherwise, you're just speculating. And since Bray did a very good job of linking to sources for his stated reasons, I'm inclined to take his claims seriously at least until other evidence indicates otherwise. (On the other hand, I highly suspect that you yourself have "other" reasons to cast doubt on Bray's claims. I have as much reason to doubt your motives as you do to doubt Bray's, right?)
    • kjgkjhfkjf 7y ago
      Is it not clear that I was speculating from language like "my guess is", and is it not clear that I'm not trying to cast aspersions on Tim's specific motives from language like "I don't mean to rag specifically on Tim"?
      • WolfeReader 7y ago
        All of your uses of "he" were referring to Bray himself. That's how pronouns work. And you can say "guess" all you want. There was nothing in his post, or any other article I know of, that indicates Bray's motives were anything other than what he said (and backed up with extensive supporting evidence). So your motivation to "guess" doesn't come from the article itself, nor from any competing evidence (which I doubt exists since you would've already posted it). "I don't mean to specifically call out kjgkjhfkjf, but my guess is that he feels compelled to downplay legitimate criticisms of Amazon, and he used the well-known techniques of ad-hominem and FUD as a means to defend Amazon without actual compelling counterarguments." <- I assume you agree with that sentence, since it uses all of your same rhetorical techniques.
• jbj 7y ago
  looks like it hit the mainstream media: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/business/amazon-tim-bray-resigns.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/business/amazon-tim-bray-...
• tracker1 7y ago
  This is something I deeply respect. To often it feels like proper are trying to burn the world down from the inside. Such as with some of the struggling media companies. And while I won't speak to the two that the author cites as their impetus for action, I absolutely respect someone who quits over a moral stance, and writes an exit statement. Not everyone needs to quit and leave to speak out. There's a lot of gray. If just prefer to see sane actions and reactions in general.
• myroon5 7y ago
  "From: James Gosling (May 04 2020, at 10:36) Great letter. I struggle with the contradictions every day."
• thruwawy32535 7y ago
  This is one of the most up-voted posts on this site, and the post itself is a mere 20hrs old. Yet it's been bounced from the front page. The bias of the HN mods really showing itself today.
• odysseus 7y ago
  It's interesting that Mr. Bray is declining to post comments on his site that are even slightly constructively critical of some of the things he's advocating for in this post. (Can anyone find a non-congratulatory or even slightly critical comment below his post on his site? Did I miss one?) He has every right to filter negative comments, but it makes me not want to read his site further if all he does is post non-contrary opinions.
• cromantic 7y ago
  I applaud this move from Tim. It takes gumption to walk away from a VP-level FAANG salary for anything, especially personal morals. I have only one small thing to add as an ex-Amazon employee: >Amazon Web Services (the “Cloud Computing” arm of the company), where I worked, is a different story. It treats its workers humanely, strives for work/life balance, struggles to move the diversity needle (and mostly fails, but so does everyone else), and is by and large an ethical organization. I genuinely admire its leadership. This was not and (as far as I keep in contact with old coworkers) is not the case for people working in the data centers operations department. I imagine that area shares similarities with the average warehouse environment. There is a quick turnover (a year on average), a dependence on contracted workers, demanding physical labor, untrustworthy managers, and most of all, the dehumanizing metrics. I remember most of us had dreams to transition to cloud support and get away from the lonely and stressful life as a data center tech. I think the only people feeling okay at Amazon are corporate and/or AWS software engineers. The rest are feeling the full effects of Amazon's corporate culture. Which is to say, the full rod of Bezos' sadistic corporate philosophy.
• flyinbryan125 7y ago
  You would think the (ex)VP from amazon could get a decent website together that is legible on a mobile device... He must have been the one keeping the archaic layout on the amazon website from the early 2000s.