6 ms·

Response to Tim Bray's Departure

Tomte 6y ago
Fascinating how a senior Amazonian actually works hard to taint his reputation. I mean, sure, you're "deeply offended" by the allegations. But you have no real response. What about all those reports about work conditions? You just ignore them. What about the despicable libel or slander (I can never remember which is which) Amazon heaped upon the recently fired employee? But sure, you wrote AI software to protect workers. That makes everything right.
mapleoin 6y ago
Clear BS, textbook example of cherrypicking. Tim Bray's post makes it clear that he was concerned with how the management reacted to employee strikes on numerous ocassions, not how fast Amazon is changing their response to the pandemic.
justin66 6y ago
Very unimpressive.
TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
> Ultimately though, Tim Bray is simply wrong when he says “It’s that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential.” I find that deeply offensive to the core. For those of us who work in World-Wide Operations, nothing could be farther from the truth. As if the depth of your offense should matter. We've all read the stories, and I won't belabor them here. If this is true, then pay them well, and respect them. That's how you prove that what Tim said about how you treat workers couldn't be further from the truth, not by grandstanding about your personal offense. Companies expect to buy our loyalty with platitudes. I don't understand how the best and brightest, sitting at the top of some of the largest organizations in the world, don't see how that rankles a lot of people, when they could easily SPEND THE MONEY to make a difference, instead of just paying lip service to "caring."
- michaelbuckbee 6y ago
  Amazon literally has a robotics competition where the goal is to replace their human workers: http://amazonpickingchallenge.org/ http://amazonpickingchallenge.org/
- yborg 6y ago
  >I don't understand how the best and brightest, sitting at the top of some of the largest organizations in the world, don't see how that rankles a lot of people Because they don't actually care if it rankles anybody. It doesn't affect their compensation. It doesn't even affect their organization because they know people will continue to flock to work there because they have little choice. The platitudes are pro forma precisely because they are boring and thus won't attract coverage, either news or legal. I actually appreciate the rare Master Of The Universe that slips up and just tells people that they'll get nothing and like it, but it's rare because this is considered gauche and you have a harder time getting invited to Davos.
- notJim 6y ago
  > My organization invented an ability to use AI to review social distancing compliance Compliance. Ask some of the people who work in these warehouses how grateful they are that the company invests so many resources into "compliance."
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
agency 6y ago
bootlicker
fsociety 6y ago
Interestingly Brad just proved Tim Bray's point by stroking his own ego and only talking about processes that Amazon is introducing in response to COVID-19 - instead of talking about the worker being fired for raising concerns about their workplace conditions. Even better is scrolling down to the comments section and seeing all the managers comment about how great they are. It's like an Amazon version of VC's congratulating themselves. This one paragraph bugged me quite a bit. "You can allow time off and leaves of absence. You can commit to taking care of employees if they do get sick, regardless of where they caught the virus. These are all things Amazon did almost immediately. But you can’t entirely eliminate the fear and concerns that we all share. ". You could try not firing people when they raise real concerns about dieing for the cause of raising Amazon's market cap. That'd be a good start. Next Amazon should recognize the power dynamic they've created with this firing and work to destroy it. It's too bad we can't see the memos Tim talked about with the disgusting comments about the workers. That would put the nail in the coffin as the 'distinguished engineers' of Amazon duke it out. Lastly, props to Tim for not stroking his ego when he wrote his post. Boo to Brad for stroking his ego when talking about respecting low-skilled workers as humans.
- tw202005061625 6y ago
  The manager replies all praising seems more like what a bunch of underlings to a dictator would do to praise the dictator. Or cult-like if they really believe that - but I have to think many of them are doing it for "points" in the political game - and really understand that the warehouse people are treated like complete crap.
raiyu 6y ago
Completely misses the point that the main reason for Tim Bray leaving is because Amazon retaliated against an employee that was highlighting concerns.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Almost certainly missed that point on purpose.
  - rumanator 6y ago
    It's as if his goal was to shift the focus away from the problem.
eyeareque 6y ago
This read like it was written or highly edited by PR.
suthakamal 6y ago
Gross. The lack of empathy or recognition of the terrible conditions warehouse workers have complained of (and have been well documented by journalists) is pretty striking.
jeffrallen 6y ago
I worked with Brad and I know he's got good judgement and ethics. But he missed the point: Tim quit because he could not make Amazon understand that taking the chickenshit way out by firing union organisers is bad business and bad for society.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  There’s a good chance he knows what Bray was saying, but couldn’t respond effectively to that.
- mercer 6y ago
  If he's good good judgment and ethics, surely his missing the point should make you question your judgment? Ultimately what you 'know' is his behavior, not whatever impression he's given you?
Edmond 6y ago
When your first instinct is to defend those with all the power and privilege, you've already lost the debate. Especially at a moment like this.
zentiggr 6y ago
Upvoted for awareness of just how tone deaf and self-congratulatory this sounds. Never a word about unfair firings, poor warehouse conditions, or all the other ongoing stories. Somebody drank too much kool-aid, and can't see the reality at the lowest paid levels anymore.
haunter 6y ago
Those comments tho from the other Amazon employees, it's like a cult
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
throwawayfortb 6y ago
Commenters here are putting too much trust in Tim Bray's one sided take, and are criticizing Brad Porter unnecessarily for setting the record straight on just how much Amazon has done to protect warehouse workers. Not to mention they increased their baseline and overtime wages before the online outrage machine spun up, and were paying industry leading wages for such a position to begin with. Resharing a different perspective: 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 activist 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.
lmilcin 6y ago
Companies that have good principles and act on them do not need to fire people for speaking up. If they speak up and are right, you thank them and correct the problem. If they speak up and are not right, you provide proofs or ignore it altogether if it is going to be obvious. The only reason to fire is if you know they are right but you have no intention to correct it. Scaring your employees into silence is going to be difficult to defend.
glimmung 6y ago
His "faux offended" stance in a matter of (other people's) life and death is not a good look. He says "If we want people to choose to work for Amazon helping deliver packages to customers, job number one is to convince those valuable employees that you are doing everything you can every day to keep them safe. ", which sounds right - but is it appropriate to fire people for Amazon's failure in this regard?

Fascinating how a senior Amazonian actually works hard to taint his reputation. I mean, sure, you're "deeply offended" by the allegations. But you have no real response. What about all those reports about work conditions? You just ignore them. What about the despicable libel or slander (I can never remember which is which) Amazon heaped upon the recently fired employee? But sure, you wrote AI software to protect workers. That makes everything right.

mapleoin 6y ago

Clear BS, textbook example of cherrypicking. Tim Bray's post makes it clear that he was concerned with how the management reacted to employee strikes on numerous ocassions, not how fast Amazon is changing their response to the pandemic.

justin66 6y ago

Very unimpressive.

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago

> Ultimately though, Tim Bray is simply wrong when he says “It’s that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential.” I find that deeply offensive to the core. For those of us who work in World-Wide Operations, nothing could be farther from the truth. As if the depth of your offense should matter. We've all read the stories, and I won't belabor them here. If this is true, then pay them well, and respect them. That's how you prove that what Tim said about how you treat workers couldn't be further from the truth, not by grandstanding about your personal offense. Companies expect to buy our loyalty with platitudes. I don't understand how the best and brightest, sitting at the top of some of the largest organizations in the world, don't see how that rankles a lot of people, when they could easily SPEND THE MONEY to make a difference, instead of just paying lip service to "caring."

michaelbuckbee 6y ago
Amazon literally has a robotics competition where the goal is to replace their human workers: http://amazonpickingchallenge.org/ http://amazonpickingchallenge.org/
yborg 6y ago
>I don't understand how the best and brightest, sitting at the top of some of the largest organizations in the world, don't see how that rankles a lot of people Because they don't actually care if it rankles anybody. It doesn't affect their compensation. It doesn't even affect their organization because they know people will continue to flock to work there because they have little choice. The platitudes are pro forma precisely because they are boring and thus won't attract coverage, either news or legal. I actually appreciate the rare Master Of The Universe that slips up and just tells people that they'll get nothing and like it, but it's rare because this is considered gauche and you have a harder time getting invited to Davos.
notJim 6y ago
> My organization invented an ability to use AI to review social distancing compliance Compliance. Ask some of the people who work in these warehouses how grateful they are that the company invests so many resources into "compliance."
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

agency 6y ago

bootlicker

fsociety 6y ago

Interestingly Brad just proved Tim Bray's point by stroking his own ego and only talking about processes that Amazon is introducing in response to COVID-19 - instead of talking about the worker being fired for raising concerns about their workplace conditions. Even better is scrolling down to the comments section and seeing all the managers comment about how great they are. It's like an Amazon version of VC's congratulating themselves. This one paragraph bugged me quite a bit. "You can allow time off and leaves of absence. You can commit to taking care of employees if they do get sick, regardless of where they caught the virus. These are all things Amazon did almost immediately. But you can’t entirely eliminate the fear and concerns that we all share. ". You could try not firing people when they raise real concerns about dieing for the cause of raising Amazon's market cap. That'd be a good start. Next Amazon should recognize the power dynamic they've created with this firing and work to destroy it. It's too bad we can't see the memos Tim talked about with the disgusting comments about the workers. That would put the nail in the coffin as the 'distinguished engineers' of Amazon duke it out. Lastly, props to Tim for not stroking his ego when he wrote his post. Boo to Brad for stroking his ego when talking about respecting low-skilled workers as humans.

tw202005061625 6y ago
The manager replies all praising seems more like what a bunch of underlings to a dictator would do to praise the dictator. Or cult-like if they really believe that - but I have to think many of them are doing it for "points" in the political game - and really understand that the warehouse people are treated like complete crap.

raiyu 6y ago

Completely misses the point that the main reason for Tim Bray leaving is because Amazon retaliated against an employee that was highlighting concerns.

ashtonkem 6y ago
Almost certainly missed that point on purpose.
- rumanator 6y ago
  It's as if his goal was to shift the focus away from the problem.

eyeareque 6y ago

This read like it was written or highly edited by PR.

suthakamal 6y ago

Gross. The lack of empathy or recognition of the terrible conditions warehouse workers have complained of (and have been well documented by journalists) is pretty striking.

jeffrallen 6y ago

I worked with Brad and I know he's got good judgement and ethics. But he missed the point: Tim quit because he could not make Amazon understand that taking the chickenshit way out by firing union organisers is bad business and bad for society.

ashtonkem 6y ago
There’s a good chance he knows what Bray was saying, but couldn’t respond effectively to that.
mercer 6y ago
If he's good good judgment and ethics, surely his missing the point should make you question your judgment? Ultimately what you 'know' is his behavior, not whatever impression he's given you?

Edmond 6y ago

When your first instinct is to defend those with all the power and privilege, you've already lost the debate. Especially at a moment like this.

zentiggr 6y ago

Upvoted for awareness of just how tone deaf and self-congratulatory this sounds. Never a word about unfair firings, poor warehouse conditions, or all the other ongoing stories. Somebody drank too much kool-aid, and can't see the reality at the lowest paid levels anymore.

haunter 6y ago

Those comments tho from the other Amazon employees, it's like a cult

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

throwawayfortb 6y ago

Commenters here are putting too much trust in Tim Bray's one sided take, and are criticizing Brad Porter unnecessarily for setting the record straight on just how much Amazon has done to protect warehouse workers. Not to mention they increased their baseline and overtime wages before the online outrage machine spun up, and were paying industry leading wages for such a position to begin with. Resharing a different perspective: 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 activist 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.

lmilcin 6y ago

Companies that have good principles and act on them do not need to fire people for speaking up. If they speak up and are right, you thank them and correct the problem. If they speak up and are not right, you provide proofs or ignore it altogether if it is going to be obvious. The only reason to fire is if you know they are right but you have no intention to correct it. Scaring your employees into silence is going to be difficult to defend.

glimmung 6y ago

His "faux offended" stance in a matter of (other people's) life and death is not a good look. He says "If we want people to choose to work for Amazon helping deliver packages to customers, job number one is to convince those valuable employees that you are doing everything you can every day to keep them safe. ", which sounds right - but is it appropriate to fire people for Amazon's failure in this regard?