16 ms·

On responses to “Bye, Amazon”

344 points by chmaynard 7y ago

dareutodownvote 7y ago
Overpaid FAANG executives humble bragging about walking away from millions because of a sudden crisis of conscience qualifies as an entire genre at this point and my only question is why did it take these people so long to realize they were working for Evil Corp?
- mschuster91 7y ago
  > and my only question is why did it take these people so long to realize they were working for Evil Corp? Everyone has a different tolerance on how much bullshit they'll tolerate near them. As for "overpaid": I'd wish more employees, not just across the IT industry but everywhere, were paid according to the value they create for the business with their work. At the moment, many see labor costs as a "race to the bottom" with most value going to shareholders - unsustainable for society in the long term, as all the stuff that companies are selling needs buyers, and it will get really nasty if the only ones able to afford more than absolutely necessary items such as food and clothing without going deep in debt are a couple of rich elites.
  - neilwilson 7y ago
    Going deep into debt is the point. What do you think stabilisation by interest rate requires? Lots of people terrified of foreclosure.
- psweber 7y ago
  Hero of our own story bias? The incentives are lined up to make naivete very comfortable for some people.
- enitihas 7y ago
  The same reasons a vast number of HN works in either adtech, or companies which don't employ or give benefits to their janitors but have them as contractors, or have very poor privacy, or have a huge rent seeking mindset due to their monopolistic position, and several other unethical companies. It's because it gives them challenging problems, and money to continue their current lifestyle as is. If people here are working in companies whose behaviour they find totally ethical in all regards, please give your employer a shout. It will help widen the perspective of others.
  - rubidium 7y ago
    “ totally ethical in all regards“ is a high bar. But at least try building real products for real people, not scummy adtech spyware. Despite its flaws (eg drug prices) working in biotech is pretty awesome. I get to support work in treating cancer, figuring out covid, stopping rare diseases. Give it a look y’all. Working in ad “tech” is trading your soul for $$. Get out.
    - searchableguy 7y ago
      https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/16/apple-and-google-named-in-us-lawsuit-over-congolese-child-cobalt-mining-deaths https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/16/a...
  - dareutodownvote 7y ago
    >It's because it gives them challenging problems, and money to continue their current lifestyle as is. Chasing resume prestige belongs on that list.
    - enitihas 7y ago
      For folks insecure enough to chase resume prestige, the money part is much more important enough than challenging problems part. The problems part is more important for people who have already enough cash in the bank to be financially secure enough to stop working for a long time.
  - samvher 7y ago
    Obviously ethics are on a spectrum. I'm pretty happy with my employer - a science-driven NGO using tech that's cheap to scale (telephony) with the aim of reducing poverty. Not perfect, but among other things I've been quite impressed by how the COVID crisis has been handled.
- simion314 7y ago
  Probably some big event had to happen to put a giant spot light, though if you read the comments in the previous HN thread there are many that still don't see any problem with Amazon, as long as someone gets paid 1 cent and can quit then you can exploit the person to the limit the laws allow you.
  - enitihas 7y ago
    Who is getting paid 1 cent though? Or are you unaware of the fact that Amazon pays in the top percentile for warehouse work?
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >Or are you unaware of the fact that Amazon pays in the top percentile for warehouse work? That's like saying, "For a slave owner, X was quite generous with his subjects" - the bar is quite low to begin with...
    - simion314 7y ago
      I am referring to the people that promote the idea that there should not be a minimum salary , that free market and freedom is always the solution, I am referring to people that say "you don't like it don't work there, nothing is forcing you" About Amazon the issue did not appear to be the money but the working conditions and now with the virus this people are exposing themselves and family to risk Amazon should focus on reducing that risk and not on exploiting the situation to make the biggest profits ever.
      - enitihas 7y ago
        > exploiting the situation to make the biggest profits ever. But what makes you think they are trying to exploit the situation to make the biggest profit ever? On the contrary, their quarterly guidance say they expect all of Q2 profits to be spent on COVID19 related expenditure.
- marcinzm 7y ago
  Which company isn't Evil Corp? I can argue for most every company small and large out there being "evil" in some tangible way.
  - Pfhreak 7y ago
    Worker coops?
  - 0zymandias 7y ago
    No. Don’t fall for this. Just because every company has some aspect that is bad, it doesn’t mean they are the same. You can differentiate. It is not hard. Some extremes: Patagonia vs. Outbrain. Gates Foundaton vs. Juul. Same? By that same rationale all humans are evil, so there is no point in differentiating.
    - marcinzm 7y ago
      I never said they were the same but rather that from someone's perspective your employer is also evil. Yet you are fine working there. That same feeling and justification and reasoning applies to someone working at a company that you view as evil. The line in the sand you chose is fairly arbitrary and you shouldn't view yourself as a paragon of ethics versus someone who chose a line slightly further away.
      - 0zymandias 7y ago
        Both these things are true. 1. A line in the sand is arbitrary. 2. There are huge differences in the ethical behavior of companies (as there are among people) 2 is the one that is important to recognize and where we in tech should have conversations. 1 is a semantic distraction and an excuse to avoid responsibility.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      I don't know man, I think Juul is pretty questionable too.
- taneq 7y ago
  I imagine if you were earning a million a year at your really nice job that you'd worked your ass off for 20 years to acquire, you'd overlook quite a lot of not-really-nice-but-that's-business-isn't-it treatment of some of the peripheral staff who probably don't even work in your city let alone your building.
  - dareutodownvote 7y ago
    How that boot taste?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
randallsquared 7y ago
> Two things can be true at once: You work hard to preserve your employees’ health, and your administrative culture treats them as fungible units. This is some pretty agile dancing. :)
- close04 7y ago
  Not necessarily. You can work hard on something and still not cover all the bases, leaving the door open for abuse somewhere else. A corporation is not a single unit. Some are working hard on one avenue, some on another. It just happens that one avenue is squeezing more profit and if this comes at the price of treating employees as fungible units and firing "inconvenient" ones so be it.
- syshum 7y ago
  It is reality at many organizations largely down to competing and mutually exclusive metrics and objectives that are being reviewed separately For example one Team may review and be responsible for Production Metrics and standards, and a completely separate team is responsible for reviewing Safety standards, and often the 2 groups create directives that impact the other with out giving a shit how the people that have to implement and follow them actually go about doing that
  - zebrafish 7y ago
    This happens often in large enterprises. A way to optimize your internal meritocracy is to have competing interests. “Reduce our cost to serve” and “improve our customer service” are very often competing parallel tasks. For IT, “improve our effectiveness” and “improve our efficiency”. On one hand your internal apps and policies need to satisfy your “internal customers”. On the other hand, your total costs per FTE need to be the lowest in your industry peer group.
- lultimouomo 7y ago
  Why? A farmer works hard to preserve his cows' health (every cow that gets sick is lost money), yet they are fungible units on their way to the meet grinder. The two things are perfectly compatible.
rb808 7y ago
Someone gets to FIRE built on the backs of the workers then gets praise for doing so. A more meaningful response would be better to donate the millions of Amazon stock he had to the workers on the front line.
- croon 7y ago
  You and I have diametrically opposed views on what "meaningful" means. Donating a few million dollars to a few hundred thousand workers makes close to 0 difference. Taking a public stand in the hopes of making a systemic difference in the long term could change a lot.
- joemg 7y ago
  He lost a lot of money (circa 1m according to original story) in salary and stock vesting taking the decision to quit. Although you make a good point that he can FIRE due to previous income. Something nigh impossible on a warehouse picker wage.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    After he made a million a year from Amazon for six years. No matter when you leave Amazon you’re leaving money on the table since they are always giving employees RSUs that will vest at some later date.
    - andrewzah 7y ago
      So what? I don't understand this attempt to discredit the person because they previously made some money at amazon. A million dollars is still a lot of money. They still had to make a decision to turn down that easy money and speak up about it. They could have just as easily continued to work at amazon and save up 10+ million, etc.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        He didn’t “leave” money on the table anymore than anyone else who works for big tech, is always getting RSU’s that vest over time.
Pfhreak 7y ago
Super glad to see Tim pointing media organizations to the actual impacted folks. Emily Cunningham, for instance, is a good speaker with an important story to tell and a passion for change. It's nice to see someone with Tim's position handing the megaphone off.
- subpixel 7y ago
  Sadly I can't find a single television interview with Emily Cunningham or Maren Costa.
  - dylan604 7y ago
    Someone in the PR department and part of the response team just smiled in appreciation of your comment. "Job well done" they think to themselves.
    - lstamour 7y ago
      There was an interview reported Wednesday evening in a story published yesterday, but I only found this after lots of Googling and transcript searching, and it did not mention the “Tim Bray” story: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/technology/amazon-coronavirus-whistleblowers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/technology/amazon-coronav... The only coverage I saw that mentioned their words cited a thank you tweet. The story remained on Tim Bray until the above story happened, which likely received less coverage because it was political. I don’t want to say it’s one of those “people only listen to white guys” stories but it does kind of feel that way. I found only one photo published of any of the folks who were previously laid off for said “chickensh*t” reasons and it wasn’t a nice photo. I can understand though. Tim Bray has been blogging for ages and controlled the story’s timing. He didn’t promote the tweets or work with others to make sure they were available for interviews the way, presumably, Warren’s team did. And everyone is laid off, they can’t go have professional headshots taken, covid makes any TV interview harder, nobody had B-roll or PR people to help coordinate on the side of the whistleblowers. So... it happens then that the personal stories fall through the cracks. It’s possible folks have NDAs too, of course.
- 7y ago
akerro 7y ago
The "bye, amazon" post made me think about my consumer habits. I'm building a gaming rig now, I decided to avoid amazon and ebay as much as I ca to let shops avoid paying selling and advertising fees.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  This is the year I canceled Prime, and I'm trying to act in solidarity with worker actions (eg no purchases on May 1st). We can debate the merits of individual choices, but collective actions have impact. I wouldn't be surprised to see an anti prime day or cancel prime day organized to coincide with Amazon's retail holiday "Prime Day".
- thomaslord 7y ago
  Amazon is also a pretty terrible place to buy computer hardware, especially with their track record of shipping terribly-packed hard drives.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    And outright counterfeits.
  - jowsie 7y ago
    The benefit of Amazon, at least in the UK, is they will take a return for basically any reason regardless of whether its been opened or not.
    - akerro 7y ago
      > The benefit of Amazon, at least in the UK, is they will take a return for basically any reason regardless of whether its been opened or not. Then they package the returned drive correctly and send to you, where it dies 5 months after warranty ended.
- throwaway0a5e 7y ago
  I'm curious what the reason for avoiding eBay is? They don't seem to be engaging in any of the more egregious behaviors that earn Amazon flak simply by virtue of not having their own product lines and warehouse/distribution system.
dbg31415 7y ago
Having done a bit of time at Amazon, I'm so perplexed by some of the news coming out around them now. * Amazon.jobs || https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles Ownership, Insist on the Highest Standards, Earn Trust, Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit... Their response to whistle blowers should have been, "Hey thanks for bringing this up internally, that's what the internal communication tools were for. We're trying, but clearly these are unprecedented times and we need to do better. Thanks for bringing your voice and your data to the table so we can improve." I don't love the idea of airing dirty laundry without going through internal channels first... but assuming these people did that first, they should never have been shown the door. Amazon is a startup at scale, and if you take away the ability for people to openly raise concerns, you ruin the culture. It shouldn't just be about the stock price, y'know? Amazon was a great place to work, and grew, because people challenged authority and found better ways of doing things. It's a mistake, and hugely damaging to the brand, to lose sight of that.
- bambataa 7y ago
  It’s almost as if company values are empty words.
  - dylan604 7y ago
    And they wonder why employee loyalty is a thing of the past. In previous generations, it was not uncommon for people to start and end a career with one company. Companies respected that loyalty, and the employees worked hard to earn it. Now, a 2-3 year stint at the same company start to look weird on your resume.
    - toyg 7y ago
      > they wonder why employee loyalty is a thing of the past I think that line stopped applying 20 years ago, dude. > a 2-3 year stint at the same company start to look weird on your resume. I wish I could be as disinhibited as you are, about changing jobs. I've had 3 jobs in 15 years...
- _curious_ 7y ago
stevespang 7y ago
Bezos will continue to be the hatchet man as long as the Gov't penalties for firing protesting employees are less than the cost of suffering more inciters and rabblerousers stirred up and activated at Amazon . . . by firing them he's showing all other Amazonians this is your fate if you screw with me. Bezos has more resources to deploy hordes of lawyers to bog down DOJ than the US Gov't has lawyers to prosecute him.
tybit 7y ago
Brad Porters response is really disappointing. It’s possible that he and his team are doing everything in their power but that Amazon completely fails it’s warehouse workers nonetheless.
- x0x0 7y ago
  Hard to make someone see something they've gotten rich deliberately ignoring.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  Completely agree. I saw this on LinkedIn where some of my ex-colleagues gave it a bunch of "Well said!" platitudes (side note: comments on LinkedIn posts must be the largest collection on useless banal drivel that humanity has ever produced, and in a world of ubiquitous social media, that's saying a lot). It was so disappointing not because it was wrong - all of the points Brad made about Amazon going to great lengths to protect workers and rejigger processes rang true. But it missed the point and completely did not address at all Amazon's culture WRT responding to whistleblowers. Furthermore, all the other "yeah, that's right!" comments from other very highly paid white collar Amazonians (with barely a peep from Amazon's factory workers, though not unexpected given the medium) came across as extremely tone deaf and the equivalent of the aristocracy congratulating each other over how well they treat the servants.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
    I think the problem with LinkedIn is that it is exhibitionist by its very nature. Your audience is not just your co-workers, but potential employers, so most people say the things that are accepted within that group ( though it could be argued many groups are like that -- even HN to an extent ) and/or please prospective recruiters. I agree about one thing though. LinkedIn was the only place when I was straight up 'attacked' by random people, who did not agree with my opinion. All of a sudden, all my posts started talking about coke I do and whatnot. It was a weird experience for me, but I immediately stopped all actual conversations on LinkedIn based on that. The risks are not worth it.
- 7y ago
einpoklum 7y ago
Amazon is a very problematic mega-corporation in many respects, not the least of which being worker exploitation. It really needs to be either broken up or socialized.
- Loughla 7y ago
  I honestly don't understand how Amazon could be socialized, or why it would need to be socialized. Breaking it up, sure. I believe Amazon has profited in the way many tech companies have - in that law makers don't understand the inter-connectedness of technology and how an advantage in one area will lead to an advantage in other areas. But socialization of Amazon? Why? We already have a publicly funded package delivery service. . . .
  - lexs 7y ago
    Package delivery is actually a good comparison. Socialising amazon would simply add a warehousing portion to it.
    - einpoklum 7y ago
      Exactly. By the way - in some world states, mail delivery is being privatized, or becomes under-funded, starved - and then privatized. Overall, this process results in postal service quality deteriorating significantly, letters getting lost etc.
  - lidHanteyk 7y ago
    Fair enough. Let's just turn Amazon off, then.
- scarface74 7y ago
  It amazes me how unself aware some HN users are when it comes to giving Government more power. I wonder do they know how much bad tech regulation has been both passed and stopped. The government would love to have more power over tech to both gather information on people and to control the narrative. Did anyone not see how Tim Cook was kissing up to the President and how much he enjoyed it? Do you really prefer to have a potential abusive government With the power of the state with more power.
ken 7y ago
> Yeah, the story is about firing whistleblowers, not about a random Canadian Distinguished Engineer’s reaction to it. So news organizations should follow the primary sources, not me. Yes and no. I appreciate where he's coming from, but "mega-corporation exploits and mistreats blue-collar workers" isn't new. That happens every day, and has since corporations have existed. "White-collar worker quits over own company's treatment of blue-collar workers" is news. It points to a shift: even the people profiting off this are starting to think it's getting ridiculous. I'm having trouble thinking of any other cases where this has occurred. The only thing that comes to mind is Gates and Buffet saying they should pay higher taxes, but that has much less personal impact on them.
- scarface74 7y ago
  s/is profiting/has profited. He is a multi millionaire close to retirement. It wasn’t actually a great sacrifice. It’s like all of the former Google and Facebook employees “bravely” speaking out after they have already cashed in their lucrative RSUs
  - MiroF 7y ago
    I don't understand the point of this comment.
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      I think the comment is trying to indirectly say that existing Amazon employees shouldn't be expect to follow the standard he's setting, because they haven't made their millions yet.
    - throwaway2048 7y ago
      The point is to try to make him out as a hypocrite who should be ignored, as if being a hypocrite has anything to do with being right or wrong.
  - jeromegv 7y ago
    "Wasn't a great sacrifice", what do you know of his personal situation? It's funny how some can be more critical of the employees that dare to speak out, than the actual companies that have enacted policies that put thousands of workers at risk across the globe.
OrgNet 7y ago
I just purchased from Amazon but they gave me $100 to open a new credit card that I will disable in 1 month. (edit: actually, I think that I will disable it today so that I can re-apply more quickly)
seemslegit 7y ago
I still don't understand in what way Amazon warehouse workers are being treated worse than an average American warehouse worker working for someone other than Amazon.
- PragmaticPulp 7y ago
  I've had friends who worked in Amazon warehouses. They've all been puzzled by the news stories about bathroom break issues and unreasonable performance targets, because it doesn't match their experience at all. When a company reaches Amazon's scale, I have no problem believing that someone, somewhere, was mismanaging a team. I don't believe it's the norm though. As for recent events, the complaints seem to be that Amazon didn't implement enough COVID-19 countermeasures early enough, and that their implementation of COVID-19 policies hasn't had perfect coverage. From https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/10/21216172/amazon-coronavirus-protests-response-safety-jfk8-fired-covid-19 https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/10/21216172/amazon-coronavir... > Smalls, 31 years old and father of three, had worked at JFK8 since it opened in 2018 and Amazon warehouses in New Jersey and Connecticut before that. It’s a good job, he says, with good benefits, and he hadn’t had any complaints. But in early March, he became concerned about what would happen when the virus reached the warehouse with its 5,000 employees. You can read more anecdotes in the article. I fully believe the managers involved in those incidents should be fired, but I'm still not convinced that those negative anecdotes are the norm across all of Amazon.
  - katbyte 7y ago
    And then you hear story after story about mass infections at meat processing pants where the employee conditions sound far worse, but that doesn’t make the news like this ️
  - projektfu 7y ago
    There’s a lot of heterogeneity because of contractors. Many of the egregious violations known were are contracting facilities, often in depressed towns where the line to get a job is long and the workers feel powerless.
- 7y ago
Aeolun 7y ago
I just cannot see any response on LinkedIn as anything other than exhibitionism. It’s always the Directors/VPs that I see doing this. Is it just their in-group doesn’t have time for personal blogs any more?
- toyg 7y ago
  Did they ever...? Most "personal" blogs from VP-and-over personalities have always read like carefully-scripted PR.
- recursive 7y ago
  No. I'm not a director or VP. I have time for neither a personal blog nor LinkedIn.
kick 7y ago
Wow, the linked response to his initial post from Brad Porter is actually the single slimiest business communication I think I've ever read. Snake. What is it about corporations that strips your personhood? EDIT: On further inspection, the other post (by Anton Okmyanskiy) is actually worse. The undercurrent of "Yes, we're being evil. No, we're not going to change in meaningful ways. I don't even feel bad about the ways we're currently being evil. Why? Ideology!" within it is somehow slimier: with Porter, he's at least lacking self-awareness (or public-facing self-awareness), but in Okmyanskiy's case, it's definitely there, he just doesn't care.
- projektfu 7y ago
  It was a surprisingly typical PR piece. The issue is firing whistleblowers, the whole response is about working real hard and saying the truly offensive thing was a comment in the other’s article. I guess people internalize this way of presenting things when they get to this level.
mmsimanga 7y ago
With big companies should we (as in the world) not be singling out the actual people who make the shitty decisions in these big organisations. From the previous thread I got the impression that not all Amazon warehouses are equal. I have been in corporate companies where senior management make really rubbish decisions and hide behind the PR company releases. In the end it reflects badly on the whole company but it really is a few bad apples. Disclaimer I know nothing about how the whole PR world works.
tharne 7y ago
It's uncomfortable to think about, but the companies that serve us are largely reflections of what we value as a society. Right now people value low-cost and convenience. If consumers were willing to pay more for the same goods because a retailer treated employees well, retailers would follow suit. Don't blame Amazon, they're just giving us exactly what we want, and I say that as someone who buys from Amazon, feels bad about it, but keeps buying because I just can't give up the low cost and convenience. Instead of asking Amazon to do better, we should be asking ourselves why we are so unwilling to pay anything but the absolute lowest cost for something in spite of all the negative consequences for others.
- kick 7y ago
  Willing isn't equivalent to able. For tech workers, sure, they can afford expensive products. When you've got a household income of $44,097 (literally West Virginia's median household income), it stops being "willing" and becomes "able." Don't blame consumers when the problem is companies and law itself.
stjohnswarts 7y ago
I choose to stay with Amazon, but I have a lot of respect for people who do what their heart tells them to do. It's not my fight to fight though.
- fsociety 7y ago
  The thing is, that’s totally alright too! I don’t think we should realistically expect everyone bothered by it to quit.. our current environment doesn’t support this ideology. The disgusting thing is when Brad posted a PR piece that avoided the issue Tim raised. Brad could be the best person in the world but that action was not good or fair.
supjeff 7y ago
If I search these comments for the word "union", there are no relevant results. Why don't we unionize tech workers?

344 points by chmaynard 7y ago

Overpaid FAANG executives humble bragging about walking away from millions because of a sudden crisis of conscience qualifies as an entire genre at this point and my only question is why did it take these people so long to realize they were working for Evil Corp?

mschuster91 7y ago
> and my only question is why did it take these people so long to realize they were working for Evil Corp? Everyone has a different tolerance on how much bullshit they'll tolerate near them. As for "overpaid": I'd wish more employees, not just across the IT industry but everywhere, were paid according to the value they create for the business with their work. At the moment, many see labor costs as a "race to the bottom" with most value going to shareholders - unsustainable for society in the long term, as all the stuff that companies are selling needs buyers, and it will get really nasty if the only ones able to afford more than absolutely necessary items such as food and clothing without going deep in debt are a couple of rich elites.
- neilwilson 7y ago
  Going deep into debt is the point. What do you think stabilisation by interest rate requires? Lots of people terrified of foreclosure.
psweber 7y ago
Hero of our own story bias? The incentives are lined up to make naivete very comfortable for some people.
enitihas 7y ago
The same reasons a vast number of HN works in either adtech, or companies which don't employ or give benefits to their janitors but have them as contractors, or have very poor privacy, or have a huge rent seeking mindset due to their monopolistic position, and several other unethical companies. It's because it gives them challenging problems, and money to continue their current lifestyle as is. If people here are working in companies whose behaviour they find totally ethical in all regards, please give your employer a shout. It will help widen the perspective of others.
- rubidium 7y ago
  “ totally ethical in all regards“ is a high bar. But at least try building real products for real people, not scummy adtech spyware. Despite its flaws (eg drug prices) working in biotech is pretty awesome. I get to support work in treating cancer, figuring out covid, stopping rare diseases. Give it a look y’all. Working in ad “tech” is trading your soul for $$. Get out.
  - searchableguy 7y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/16/apple-and-google-named-in-us-lawsuit-over-congolese-child-cobalt-mining-deaths https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/16/a...
- dareutodownvote 7y ago
  >It's because it gives them challenging problems, and money to continue their current lifestyle as is. Chasing resume prestige belongs on that list.
  - enitihas 7y ago
    For folks insecure enough to chase resume prestige, the money part is much more important enough than challenging problems part. The problems part is more important for people who have already enough cash in the bank to be financially secure enough to stop working for a long time.
- samvher 7y ago
  Obviously ethics are on a spectrum. I'm pretty happy with my employer - a science-driven NGO using tech that's cheap to scale (telephony) with the aim of reducing poverty. Not perfect, but among other things I've been quite impressed by how the COVID crisis has been handled.
simion314 7y ago
Probably some big event had to happen to put a giant spot light, though if you read the comments in the previous HN thread there are many that still don't see any problem with Amazon, as long as someone gets paid 1 cent and can quit then you can exploit the person to the limit the laws allow you.
- enitihas 7y ago
  Who is getting paid 1 cent though? Or are you unaware of the fact that Amazon pays in the top percentile for warehouse work?
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >Or are you unaware of the fact that Amazon pays in the top percentile for warehouse work? That's like saying, "For a slave owner, X was quite generous with his subjects" - the bar is quite low to begin with...
  - simion314 7y ago
    I am referring to the people that promote the idea that there should not be a minimum salary , that free market and freedom is always the solution, I am referring to people that say "you don't like it don't work there, nothing is forcing you" About Amazon the issue did not appear to be the money but the working conditions and now with the virus this people are exposing themselves and family to risk Amazon should focus on reducing that risk and not on exploiting the situation to make the biggest profits ever.
    - enitihas 7y ago
      > exploiting the situation to make the biggest profits ever. But what makes you think they are trying to exploit the situation to make the biggest profit ever? On the contrary, their quarterly guidance say they expect all of Q2 profits to be spent on COVID19 related expenditure.
marcinzm 7y ago
Which company isn't Evil Corp? I can argue for most every company small and large out there being "evil" in some tangible way.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  Worker coops?
- 0zymandias 7y ago
  No. Don’t fall for this. Just because every company has some aspect that is bad, it doesn’t mean they are the same. You can differentiate. It is not hard. Some extremes: Patagonia vs. Outbrain. Gates Foundaton vs. Juul. Same? By that same rationale all humans are evil, so there is no point in differentiating.
  - marcinzm 7y ago
    I never said they were the same but rather that from someone's perspective your employer is also evil. Yet you are fine working there. That same feeling and justification and reasoning applies to someone working at a company that you view as evil. The line in the sand you chose is fairly arbitrary and you shouldn't view yourself as a paragon of ethics versus someone who chose a line slightly further away.
    - 0zymandias 7y ago
      Both these things are true. 1. A line in the sand is arbitrary. 2. There are huge differences in the ethical behavior of companies (as there are among people) 2 is the one that is important to recognize and where we in tech should have conversations. 1 is a semantic distraction and an excuse to avoid responsibility.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    I don't know man, I think Juul is pretty questionable too.
taneq 7y ago
I imagine if you were earning a million a year at your really nice job that you'd worked your ass off for 20 years to acquire, you'd overlook quite a lot of not-really-nice-but-that's-business-isn't-it treatment of some of the peripheral staff who probably don't even work in your city let alone your building.
- dareutodownvote 7y ago
  How that boot taste?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

randallsquared 7y ago

> Two things can be true at once: You work hard to preserve your employees’ health, and your administrative culture treats them as fungible units. This is some pretty agile dancing. :)

close04 7y ago
Not necessarily. You can work hard on something and still not cover all the bases, leaving the door open for abuse somewhere else. A corporation is not a single unit. Some are working hard on one avenue, some on another. It just happens that one avenue is squeezing more profit and if this comes at the price of treating employees as fungible units and firing "inconvenient" ones so be it.
syshum 7y ago
It is reality at many organizations largely down to competing and mutually exclusive metrics and objectives that are being reviewed separately For example one Team may review and be responsible for Production Metrics and standards, and a completely separate team is responsible for reviewing Safety standards, and often the 2 groups create directives that impact the other with out giving a shit how the people that have to implement and follow them actually go about doing that
- zebrafish 7y ago
  This happens often in large enterprises. A way to optimize your internal meritocracy is to have competing interests. “Reduce our cost to serve” and “improve our customer service” are very often competing parallel tasks. For IT, “improve our effectiveness” and “improve our efficiency”. On one hand your internal apps and policies need to satisfy your “internal customers”. On the other hand, your total costs per FTE need to be the lowest in your industry peer group.
lultimouomo 7y ago
Why? A farmer works hard to preserve his cows' health (every cow that gets sick is lost money), yet they are fungible units on their way to the meet grinder. The two things are perfectly compatible.

rb808 7y ago

Someone gets to FIRE built on the backs of the workers then gets praise for doing so. A more meaningful response would be better to donate the millions of Amazon stock he had to the workers on the front line.

croon 7y ago
You and I have diametrically opposed views on what "meaningful" means. Donating a few million dollars to a few hundred thousand workers makes close to 0 difference. Taking a public stand in the hopes of making a systemic difference in the long term could change a lot.
joemg 7y ago
He lost a lot of money (circa 1m according to original story) in salary and stock vesting taking the decision to quit. Although you make a good point that he can FIRE due to previous income. Something nigh impossible on a warehouse picker wage.
- scarface74 7y ago
  After he made a million a year from Amazon for six years. No matter when you leave Amazon you’re leaving money on the table since they are always giving employees RSUs that will vest at some later date.
  - andrewzah 7y ago
    So what? I don't understand this attempt to discredit the person because they previously made some money at amazon. A million dollars is still a lot of money. They still had to make a decision to turn down that easy money and speak up about it. They could have just as easily continued to work at amazon and save up 10+ million, etc.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      He didn’t “leave” money on the table anymore than anyone else who works for big tech, is always getting RSU’s that vest over time.

Pfhreak 7y ago

Super glad to see Tim pointing media organizations to the actual impacted folks. Emily Cunningham, for instance, is a good speaker with an important story to tell and a passion for change. It's nice to see someone with Tim's position handing the megaphone off.

subpixel 7y ago
Sadly I can't find a single television interview with Emily Cunningham or Maren Costa.
- dylan604 7y ago
  Someone in the PR department and part of the response team just smiled in appreciation of your comment. "Job well done" they think to themselves.
  - lstamour 7y ago
    There was an interview reported Wednesday evening in a story published yesterday, but I only found this after lots of Googling and transcript searching, and it did not mention the “Tim Bray” story: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/technology/amazon-coronavirus-whistleblowers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/technology/amazon-coronav... The only coverage I saw that mentioned their words cited a thank you tweet. The story remained on Tim Bray until the above story happened, which likely received less coverage because it was political. I don’t want to say it’s one of those “people only listen to white guys” stories but it does kind of feel that way. I found only one photo published of any of the folks who were previously laid off for said “chickensh*t” reasons and it wasn’t a nice photo. I can understand though. Tim Bray has been blogging for ages and controlled the story’s timing. He didn’t promote the tweets or work with others to make sure they were available for interviews the way, presumably, Warren’s team did. And everyone is laid off, they can’t go have professional headshots taken, covid makes any TV interview harder, nobody had B-roll or PR people to help coordinate on the side of the whistleblowers. So... it happens then that the personal stories fall through the cracks. It’s possible folks have NDAs too, of course.
7y ago

akerro 7y ago

The "bye, amazon" post made me think about my consumer habits. I'm building a gaming rig now, I decided to avoid amazon and ebay as much as I ca to let shops avoid paying selling and advertising fees.

Pfhreak 7y ago
This is the year I canceled Prime, and I'm trying to act in solidarity with worker actions (eg no purchases on May 1st). We can debate the merits of individual choices, but collective actions have impact. I wouldn't be surprised to see an anti prime day or cancel prime day organized to coincide with Amazon's retail holiday "Prime Day".
thomaslord 7y ago
Amazon is also a pretty terrible place to buy computer hardware, especially with their track record of shipping terribly-packed hard drives.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  And outright counterfeits.
- jowsie 7y ago
  The benefit of Amazon, at least in the UK, is they will take a return for basically any reason regardless of whether its been opened or not.
  - akerro 7y ago
    > The benefit of Amazon, at least in the UK, is they will take a return for basically any reason regardless of whether its been opened or not. Then they package the returned drive correctly and send to you, where it dies 5 months after warranty ended.
throwaway0a5e 7y ago
I'm curious what the reason for avoiding eBay is? They don't seem to be engaging in any of the more egregious behaviors that earn Amazon flak simply by virtue of not having their own product lines and warehouse/distribution system.

dbg31415 7y ago

Having done a bit of time at Amazon, I'm so perplexed by some of the news coming out around them now. * Amazon.jobs || https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles Ownership, Insist on the Highest Standards, Earn Trust, Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit... Their response to whistle blowers should have been, "Hey thanks for bringing this up internally, that's what the internal communication tools were for. We're trying, but clearly these are unprecedented times and we need to do better. Thanks for bringing your voice and your data to the table so we can improve." I don't love the idea of airing dirty laundry without going through internal channels first... but assuming these people did that first, they should never have been shown the door. Amazon is a startup at scale, and if you take away the ability for people to openly raise concerns, you ruin the culture. It shouldn't just be about the stock price, y'know? Amazon was a great place to work, and grew, because people challenged authority and found better ways of doing things. It's a mistake, and hugely damaging to the brand, to lose sight of that.

bambataa 7y ago
It’s almost as if company values are empty words.
- dylan604 7y ago
  And they wonder why employee loyalty is a thing of the past. In previous generations, it was not uncommon for people to start and end a career with one company. Companies respected that loyalty, and the employees worked hard to earn it. Now, a 2-3 year stint at the same company start to look weird on your resume.
  - toyg 7y ago
    > they wonder why employee loyalty is a thing of the past I think that line stopped applying 20 years ago, dude. > a 2-3 year stint at the same company start to look weird on your resume. I wish I could be as disinhibited as you are, about changing jobs. I've had 3 jobs in 15 years...
_curious_ 7y ago

stevespang 7y ago

Bezos will continue to be the hatchet man as long as the Gov't penalties for firing protesting employees are less than the cost of suffering more inciters and rabblerousers stirred up and activated at Amazon . . . by firing them he's showing all other Amazonians this is your fate if you screw with me. Bezos has more resources to deploy hordes of lawyers to bog down DOJ than the US Gov't has lawyers to prosecute him.

tybit 7y ago

Brad Porters response is really disappointing. It’s possible that he and his team are doing everything in their power but that Amazon completely fails it’s warehouse workers nonetheless.

x0x0 7y ago
Hard to make someone see something they've gotten rich deliberately ignoring.
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
Completely agree. I saw this on LinkedIn where some of my ex-colleagues gave it a bunch of "Well said!" platitudes (side note: comments on LinkedIn posts must be the largest collection on useless banal drivel that humanity has ever produced, and in a world of ubiquitous social media, that's saying a lot). It was so disappointing not because it was wrong - all of the points Brad made about Amazon going to great lengths to protect workers and rejigger processes rang true. But it missed the point and completely did not address at all Amazon's culture WRT responding to whistleblowers. Furthermore, all the other "yeah, that's right!" comments from other very highly paid white collar Amazonians (with barely a peep from Amazon's factory workers, though not unexpected given the medium) came across as extremely tone deaf and the equivalent of the aristocracy congratulating each other over how well they treat the servants.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
  I think the problem with LinkedIn is that it is exhibitionist by its very nature. Your audience is not just your co-workers, but potential employers, so most people say the things that are accepted within that group ( though it could be argued many groups are like that -- even HN to an extent ) and/or please prospective recruiters. I agree about one thing though. LinkedIn was the only place when I was straight up 'attacked' by random people, who did not agree with my opinion. All of a sudden, all my posts started talking about coke I do and whatnot. It was a weird experience for me, but I immediately stopped all actual conversations on LinkedIn based on that. The risks are not worth it.
7y ago

einpoklum 7y ago

Amazon is a very problematic mega-corporation in many respects, not the least of which being worker exploitation. It really needs to be either broken up or socialized.

Loughla 7y ago
I honestly don't understand how Amazon could be socialized, or why it would need to be socialized. Breaking it up, sure. I believe Amazon has profited in the way many tech companies have - in that law makers don't understand the inter-connectedness of technology and how an advantage in one area will lead to an advantage in other areas. But socialization of Amazon? Why? We already have a publicly funded package delivery service. . . .
- lexs 7y ago
  Package delivery is actually a good comparison. Socialising amazon would simply add a warehousing portion to it.
  - einpoklum 7y ago
    Exactly. By the way - in some world states, mail delivery is being privatized, or becomes under-funded, starved - and then privatized. Overall, this process results in postal service quality deteriorating significantly, letters getting lost etc.
- lidHanteyk 7y ago
  Fair enough. Let's just turn Amazon off, then.
scarface74 7y ago
It amazes me how unself aware some HN users are when it comes to giving Government more power. I wonder do they know how much bad tech regulation has been both passed and stopped. The government would love to have more power over tech to both gather information on people and to control the narrative. Did anyone not see how Tim Cook was kissing up to the President and how much he enjoyed it? Do you really prefer to have a potential abusive government With the power of the state with more power.

ken 7y ago

> Yeah, the story is about firing whistleblowers, not about a random Canadian Distinguished Engineer’s reaction to it. So news organizations should follow the primary sources, not me. Yes and no. I appreciate where he's coming from, but "mega-corporation exploits and mistreats blue-collar workers" isn't new. That happens every day, and has since corporations have existed. "White-collar worker quits over own company's treatment of blue-collar workers" is news. It points to a shift: even the people profiting off this are starting to think it's getting ridiculous. I'm having trouble thinking of any other cases where this has occurred. The only thing that comes to mind is Gates and Buffet saying they should pay higher taxes, but that has much less personal impact on them.

scarface74 7y ago
s/is profiting/has profited. He is a multi millionaire close to retirement. It wasn’t actually a great sacrifice. It’s like all of the former Google and Facebook employees “bravely” speaking out after they have already cashed in their lucrative RSUs
- MiroF 7y ago
  I don't understand the point of this comment.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    I think the comment is trying to indirectly say that existing Amazon employees shouldn't be expect to follow the standard he's setting, because they haven't made their millions yet.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    The point is to try to make him out as a hypocrite who should be ignored, as if being a hypocrite has anything to do with being right or wrong.
- jeromegv 7y ago
  "Wasn't a great sacrifice", what do you know of his personal situation? It's funny how some can be more critical of the employees that dare to speak out, than the actual companies that have enacted policies that put thousands of workers at risk across the globe.

OrgNet 7y ago

I just purchased from Amazon but they gave me $100 to open a new credit card that I will disable in 1 month. (edit: actually, I think that I will disable it today so that I can re-apply more quickly)

seemslegit 7y ago

I still don't understand in what way Amazon warehouse workers are being treated worse than an average American warehouse worker working for someone other than Amazon.

PragmaticPulp 7y ago
I've had friends who worked in Amazon warehouses. They've all been puzzled by the news stories about bathroom break issues and unreasonable performance targets, because it doesn't match their experience at all. When a company reaches Amazon's scale, I have no problem believing that someone, somewhere, was mismanaging a team. I don't believe it's the norm though. As for recent events, the complaints seem to be that Amazon didn't implement enough COVID-19 countermeasures early enough, and that their implementation of COVID-19 policies hasn't had perfect coverage. From https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/10/21216172/amazon-coronavirus-protests-response-safety-jfk8-fired-covid-19 https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/10/21216172/amazon-coronavir... > Smalls, 31 years old and father of three, had worked at JFK8 since it opened in 2018 and Amazon warehouses in New Jersey and Connecticut before that. It’s a good job, he says, with good benefits, and he hadn’t had any complaints. But in early March, he became concerned about what would happen when the virus reached the warehouse with its 5,000 employees. You can read more anecdotes in the article. I fully believe the managers involved in those incidents should be fired, but I'm still not convinced that those negative anecdotes are the norm across all of Amazon.
- katbyte 7y ago
  And then you hear story after story about mass infections at meat processing pants where the employee conditions sound far worse, but that doesn’t make the news like this ️
- projektfu 7y ago
  There’s a lot of heterogeneity because of contractors. Many of the egregious violations known were are contracting facilities, often in depressed towns where the line to get a job is long and the workers feel powerless.
7y ago

Aeolun 7y ago

I just cannot see any response on LinkedIn as anything other than exhibitionism. It’s always the Directors/VPs that I see doing this. Is it just their in-group doesn’t have time for personal blogs any more?

toyg 7y ago
Did they ever...? Most "personal" blogs from VP-and-over personalities have always read like carefully-scripted PR.
recursive 7y ago
No. I'm not a director or VP. I have time for neither a personal blog nor LinkedIn.

kick 7y ago

Wow, the linked response to his initial post from Brad Porter is actually the single slimiest business communication I think I've ever read. Snake. What is it about corporations that strips your personhood? EDIT: On further inspection, the other post (by Anton Okmyanskiy) is actually worse. The undercurrent of "Yes, we're being evil. No, we're not going to change in meaningful ways. I don't even feel bad about the ways we're currently being evil. Why? Ideology!" within it is somehow slimier: with Porter, he's at least lacking self-awareness (or public-facing self-awareness), but in Okmyanskiy's case, it's definitely there, he just doesn't care.

projektfu 7y ago
It was a surprisingly typical PR piece. The issue is firing whistleblowers, the whole response is about working real hard and saying the truly offensive thing was a comment in the other’s article. I guess people internalize this way of presenting things when they get to this level.

mmsimanga 7y ago

With big companies should we (as in the world) not be singling out the actual people who make the shitty decisions in these big organisations. From the previous thread I got the impression that not all Amazon warehouses are equal. I have been in corporate companies where senior management make really rubbish decisions and hide behind the PR company releases. In the end it reflects badly on the whole company but it really is a few bad apples. Disclaimer I know nothing about how the whole PR world works.

tharne 7y ago

It's uncomfortable to think about, but the companies that serve us are largely reflections of what we value as a society. Right now people value low-cost and convenience. If consumers were willing to pay more for the same goods because a retailer treated employees well, retailers would follow suit. Don't blame Amazon, they're just giving us exactly what we want, and I say that as someone who buys from Amazon, feels bad about it, but keeps buying because I just can't give up the low cost and convenience. Instead of asking Amazon to do better, we should be asking ourselves why we are so unwilling to pay anything but the absolute lowest cost for something in spite of all the negative consequences for others.

kick 7y ago
Willing isn't equivalent to able. For tech workers, sure, they can afford expensive products. When you've got a household income of $44,097 (literally West Virginia's median household income), it stops being "willing" and becomes "able." Don't blame consumers when the problem is companies and law itself.

stjohnswarts 7y ago

I choose to stay with Amazon, but I have a lot of respect for people who do what their heart tells them to do. It's not my fight to fight though.

fsociety 7y ago
The thing is, that’s totally alright too! I don’t think we should realistically expect everyone bothered by it to quit.. our current environment doesn’t support this ideology. The disgusting thing is when Brad posted a PR piece that avoided the issue Tim raised. Brad could be the best person in the world but that action was not good or fair.

supjeff 7y ago

If I search these comments for the word "union", there are no relevant results. Why don't we unionize tech workers?