21 ms·

Imagine being worth 185 billion dollars and still obsessing about your workers advocating for better pay and conditions? What a miserable existence that must b

by cecida 6y ago

Imagine being worth 185 billion dollars and still obsessing about your workers advocating for better pay and conditions? What a miserable existence that must be. Bezos has always struck me as a man who cares about nothing else only his own personal wealth and success. There is no joy in his life.

hooande 6y ago
how would you respond if people said you were treating your employees unfairly? financial worth has nothing to do with it. if he feels that charge is untrue, he should push back against it. I would not be nearly as measured in my response. no sir, I am not the one
- gsk22 6y ago
  Financial worth absolutely has to do with the fairness or lack thereof. Bezos has created nearly 200 billion dollars (!) of wealth for himself since founding Amazon, so debating the moral value of those gains in comparison to how everyday employees are compensated is well within reason. And if my employees said I was treating them unfairly, I would try to understand their perspective and make changes to improve working conditions. But maybe that's why I'll never be a CEO.
  - fenderbluesjr 6y ago
    Some people don't think that 'fair treatment' should be determined with the bosses wealth as a factor
    - stnmtn 6y ago
      Why not? The workers have created enormous value, more than any other time in the history of humanity. Why shouldn't we frame this in terms of where that value goes to?
      - refurb 6y ago
        Workers enter into an agreement - compensation for labor. There are plenty of people at Amazon who are now millionaires or very highly paid.
        TheRealSteel 6y ago
        People have rent to pay. The "you agreed to it" argument only works if the person genuinely had other realistic options available to them. Nobody would work for peanuts and pee in bottles if they had another realistic option.
        refurb 6y ago
        Why would you assume workers don’t have other options? The unemployment rate before Covid was the lowest since the 50’s. If the Amazon job is so bad then there must be plenty of better options?
        stnmtn 5y ago
        Why do you think that? Doesn't it make more sense that if people are accepting a bad job it's because all their options are bad as well?
    - Agenttin 6y ago
      It's not about his wealth. If Jeff had been independently wealthy before starting Amazon this wouldn't be an issue. The problem is the percentage workers receive of the value they generate. Jeff has gotten rich by pushing that number as low as possible, while also working to kill off businesses that might offer alternative employment to low skill workers.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    It's relatively common wisdom that you don't become a billionaire without fucking over a lot of people. You can be CEO just fine, but billionaire CEO is probably not in the cards for you.
  - skrtskrt 6y ago
    > Bezos has created nearly 200 billion dollars (!) of wealth for himself Bezos' employees have created nearly 200 billion dollars of wealth for Bezos
    - merpnderp 6y ago
      Your implication is that Bezos was inconsequential to the creation of all that brand new wealth. Surely you don't actually believe that and this is just your ideological rhetoric to further your politicized beliefs?
      - QuixoticQuibit 6y ago
        Your implication is that Bezos’ employees were inconsequential to the creation of all that brand new wealth. Surely you don't actually believe that and this is just your ideological rhetoric to further your politicized beliefs?
        merpnderp 6y ago
        Ah-hah, you made a joke by making up something I never said. Funny, but could be improved. Next time try working in something I actually said.
      - sharkjacobs 6y ago
        > Your implication is that Bezos was inconsequential to the creation of all that brand new wealth How much wealth would Bezos have created without his employees? I sort of imagine one guy with a computer running an online bookstore running fulfillment out of his garage. I bet he could make an okay living if he's smart and hardworking and lucky but it's a pretty inconsequential fraction of 200 billion.
      - asdff 6y ago
        At some point, however, it's momentum and people in the engine room driving the ship rather than the captain. Replace bezos with another decent business person and I'm sure they would have made similar decisions along the way and ended up in a similar place today. It's not like bezos has some sacred gut, he just hires experts and listens to them like any other CEO would do.
- josefresco 6y ago
  > how would you respond if people said you were treating your employees unfairly? Not sure how "richest man in the world" version of myself would react. Certainly I wouldn't use my corporate Twitter account to attack (badly) US politicians.
  - edoceo 6y ago
    Yea, for all that money to spend on the attack, how'd they do such an obvious shit-job of it?
    - josefresco 6y ago
      My theory is that it doesn't need to be high quality as the perception that Amazon is "fighting back" against corrupt politicians will still take.
- ivan888 6y ago
  > how would you respond if people said you were treating your employees unfairly? Hopefully anyone with that level of wealth would look into fixing the actual problem instead of trying to cover it up with fake testimony. The point is, he has the money to build a working culture where people can feel like they are treated fairly, he just chooses not to
  - SyzygistSix 6y ago
    It's not like he is the only one at Amazon making decisions. Along with Bezos, there's a whole host of bad actors at Amazon who have decided not to treat workers well.
- davidcbc 6y ago
  > how would you respond if people said you were treating your employees unfairly? I'd cry myself to sleep every night on my pile of billions of dollars. Poor Jeff.
- gremlinsinc 6y ago
  If people said that about me, I'd call off union vote, and just give the union "my blessing" no vote needed, in fact I'd encourage a union from day one for any business I start. A union will not break Amazon, many companies with unions still are plenty profitable.
- Tiktaalik 6y ago
  It would not be a good trait if one would reflexively push back at such accusations instead of reflecting inwardly and taking in the criticism.
- Can_Not 6y ago
  > how would you respond if people said you were treating your employees unfairly? Easy: "I have $185 billion less than Bezos to spend on treating my employees better, but I've also spent $0 on propaganda against my employees interests."
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
Equating every action of a million person company with their (soon to be former) CEO is disingenuous. Jeff Bezos isn't personally directly every action of every employee at Amazon. I know it's popular to hate Amazon, but we don't even have any evidence that this handful of Twitter accounts was created by Amazon employees in the first place, let alone personally directed by Jeff Bezos.
- bitcharmer 6y ago
  It was under his reign that this toxic workplace culture was created. It's 100% his doing.
- coldcode 6y ago
  Former CEO my foot, he is just as in charge as ever; nothing happens without his approval.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    There are news articles floating around now saying that Bezos was a direct influence on the recent aggressive nature of Amazon twitter accounts attacking/fighting back. Not sure how many former employees would be able to wield that kind of power. Granted this former CEO is still the President of the Board or whatever Grand Poobah title he has.
- bbreier 6y ago
  He is still the CEO. He will step down later this year.
- lm28469 6y ago
  He wasn't "former" CEO for the last 26 years though, talking about being disingenuous
- WalterSear 6y ago
  He did this. https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/3/28/22354604/amazon-twitter-bernie-sanders-jeff-bezos-union-alabama-elizabeth-warren https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/3/28/22354604/amazon-twitter...
ActorNightly 6y ago
Imagine building a company from the ground up that is succesfull solely because it produces a lot of value to people, and yet random people on the internet still think all you care about is hoarding money and think they can make better decisions than you. Here is the summary of the issue. Firstly, pre-pandemic, unemployment was at an alltime low (and its trending that way to as places are reopening), very close to frictional unemployment rates, while Amazon was still able to roll out things like 2 day deliver and same day delivery. This means that it was able to staff accordingly. This in turn means that the pay that people recieve is worth whatever the working conditions are, and people can quit and go find easier job at any time. This is also true of people that are able to work overtime, for double the pay $30 an hour. Not to mention that benefits are also included, which as far as health insurance is a big plus for people. Secondly, the number of reports of poor working conditions are far and few in between. For the scale of amazon, its expected that some warehouses are going to be run poorly. There isn't a single shred of credible evidence that this is a widespread problem. Also, with unskilled manual labor, there are people that are going to have a harder time than others. Taller pickers for example, have an advantage over shorter pickers that don't have to use the step stool. But again, 3% unemployment rate. As far as unionization goes, this is the general gist of it. If the workers unionize, the service capability will undoutably go down. When workers realize they can take it easy and keep their jobs, productivity will go down. While its true that worker conditions will improve, the problem is along will come Walmart thats not as much in the spotlight, and offer better service and shipping while having shit working conditions, and people will just switch over because thats more beneficial to them. In no way shape or form the will continue supporting Amazon just because their workers unionized, out of the "good of their heart". So Bezos is doing the correct thing by being anti union. Unionization is messing with the free market, which never leads to good outcomes historically. If you care about the lower income people, then go out and vote for politicains that support higher taxation for the rich, social programs for the poor, so that ones living condition does not depend on ones job. Also, for your brain health, get of the domapine fix that is the outrage of the internet lefism.
- marricks 6y ago
  Amazon warehouses have a far, far, higher turn over rate than other warehouses, probably because the conditions are so cruel. It’s really sad how many people get super invested in defending mega corporations. I hope it’s just employees trying to move up but you never know. https://labor411.org/411-blog/warehouse-worker-turnover-rate-is-100-in-counties-that-have-amazon-warehouses/ https://labor411.org/411-blog/warehouse-worker-turnover-rate...
WC3w6pXxgGd 6y ago
Maybe you need to stop reading propaganda about Bezos.
alienthrowaway 6y ago
> What a miserable existence that must be. Bezos has always struck me as a man who cares about nothing else only his own personal wealth and success. On the contrary, he is probably very happy with the way things are. You may be buying into the "Just World fallacy"; there are plenty of people you may find despicable who are leading happy, fulfilling lives, by their standards. I think the antipathy towards workers a combination of 2 things: it takes a fair amount of conceit/self-belief to dare think you can change the world (statistically speaking). The second thing is, even if you didn't start of with that mindset, success usually brings a certain post-hoc justification in the vein of "Clearly, I have been successful, therefore I'm better than most", which easily morphs into "My needs are more important; the little people are too focused on short-term goals and yet I have to compete with them for the same resources to achieve even more important goals I have planned". As someone from a low-income background, I have noticed that the more successful I have been, the less empathy I have, and I'm only middle-class. I don't know if it's because of my increasing income, increasing age, or combination of both.
- hda2 6y ago
  There's a meaningful distinction between happy and comfortable. He might lead a very comfortable life but I have to agree with GP that he doesn't /seem/ to be a very happy person. Of course, I (and you) say this from the position of people who don't know the man in person. It's all baseless backbiting.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    He always seems smiling and laughing in all the interviews I've seen him in. I know he has children plus a partner (and ex-wife). He's super rich, famous, gets to do what he wants, likes newspapers so he bought a big one, likes rockets so he is giving his own rocket/space company a go... Obviously this isn't dispositive to say he's happy, but I don't think it proves he's unhappy either. Not wanting your workers to unionize hardly seems like proof of an unhappy life.
    - cies 6y ago

by cecida 6y ago

hooande 6y ago

how would you respond if people said you were treating your employees unfairly? financial worth has nothing to do with it. if he feels that charge is untrue, he should push back against it. I would not be nearly as measured in my response. no sir, I am not the one

gsk22 6y ago
Financial worth absolutely has to do with the fairness or lack thereof. Bezos has created nearly 200 billion dollars (!) of wealth for himself since founding Amazon, so debating the moral value of those gains in comparison to how everyday employees are compensated is well within reason. And if my employees said I was treating them unfairly, I would try to understand their perspective and make changes to improve working conditions. But maybe that's why I'll never be a CEO.
- fenderbluesjr 6y ago
  Some people don't think that 'fair treatment' should be determined with the bosses wealth as a factor
  - stnmtn 6y ago
    Why not? The workers have created enormous value, more than any other time in the history of humanity. Why shouldn't we frame this in terms of where that value goes to?
    - refurb 6y ago
      Workers enter into an agreement - compensation for labor. There are plenty of people at Amazon who are now millionaires or very highly paid.
      - TheRealSteel 6y ago
        People have rent to pay. The "you agreed to it" argument only works if the person genuinely had other realistic options available to them. Nobody would work for peanuts and pee in bottles if they had another realistic option.
        refurb 6y ago
        Why would you assume workers don’t have other options? The unemployment rate before Covid was the lowest since the 50’s. If the Amazon job is so bad then there must be plenty of better options?
        stnmtn 5y ago
        Why do you think that? Doesn't it make more sense that if people are accepting a bad job it's because all their options are bad as well?
  - Agenttin 6y ago
    It's not about his wealth. If Jeff had been independently wealthy before starting Amazon this wouldn't be an issue. The problem is the percentage workers receive of the value they generate. Jeff has gotten rich by pushing that number as low as possible, while also working to kill off businesses that might offer alternative employment to low skill workers.
- hinkley 6y ago
  It's relatively common wisdom that you don't become a billionaire without fucking over a lot of people. You can be CEO just fine, but billionaire CEO is probably not in the cards for you.
- skrtskrt 6y ago
  > Bezos has created nearly 200 billion dollars (!) of wealth for himself Bezos' employees have created nearly 200 billion dollars of wealth for Bezos
  - merpnderp 6y ago
    Your implication is that Bezos was inconsequential to the creation of all that brand new wealth. Surely you don't actually believe that and this is just your ideological rhetoric to further your politicized beliefs?
    - QuixoticQuibit 6y ago
      Your implication is that Bezos’ employees were inconsequential to the creation of all that brand new wealth. Surely you don't actually believe that and this is just your ideological rhetoric to further your politicized beliefs?
      - merpnderp 6y ago
        Ah-hah, you made a joke by making up something I never said. Funny, but could be improved. Next time try working in something I actually said.
    - sharkjacobs 6y ago
      > Your implication is that Bezos was inconsequential to the creation of all that brand new wealth How much wealth would Bezos have created without his employees? I sort of imagine one guy with a computer running an online bookstore running fulfillment out of his garage. I bet he could make an okay living if he's smart and hardworking and lucky but it's a pretty inconsequential fraction of 200 billion.
    - asdff 6y ago
      At some point, however, it's momentum and people in the engine room driving the ship rather than the captain. Replace bezos with another decent business person and I'm sure they would have made similar decisions along the way and ended up in a similar place today. It's not like bezos has some sacred gut, he just hires experts and listens to them like any other CEO would do.
josefresco 6y ago
> how would you respond if people said you were treating your employees unfairly? Not sure how "richest man in the world" version of myself would react. Certainly I wouldn't use my corporate Twitter account to attack (badly) US politicians.
- edoceo 6y ago
  Yea, for all that money to spend on the attack, how'd they do such an obvious shit-job of it?
  - josefresco 6y ago
    My theory is that it doesn't need to be high quality as the perception that Amazon is "fighting back" against corrupt politicians will still take.
ivan888 6y ago
> how would you respond if people said you were treating your employees unfairly? Hopefully anyone with that level of wealth would look into fixing the actual problem instead of trying to cover it up with fake testimony. The point is, he has the money to build a working culture where people can feel like they are treated fairly, he just chooses not to
- SyzygistSix 6y ago
  It's not like he is the only one at Amazon making decisions. Along with Bezos, there's a whole host of bad actors at Amazon who have decided not to treat workers well.
davidcbc 6y ago
> how would you respond if people said you were treating your employees unfairly? I'd cry myself to sleep every night on my pile of billions of dollars. Poor Jeff.
gremlinsinc 6y ago
If people said that about me, I'd call off union vote, and just give the union "my blessing" no vote needed, in fact I'd encourage a union from day one for any business I start. A union will not break Amazon, many companies with unions still are plenty profitable.
Tiktaalik 6y ago
It would not be a good trait if one would reflexively push back at such accusations instead of reflecting inwardly and taking in the criticism.
Can_Not 6y ago
> how would you respond if people said you were treating your employees unfairly? Easy: "I have $185 billion less than Bezos to spend on treating my employees better, but I've also spent $0 on propaganda against my employees interests."

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

Equating every action of a million person company with their (soon to be former) CEO is disingenuous. Jeff Bezos isn't personally directly every action of every employee at Amazon. I know it's popular to hate Amazon, but we don't even have any evidence that this handful of Twitter accounts was created by Amazon employees in the first place, let alone personally directed by Jeff Bezos.

bitcharmer 6y ago
It was under his reign that this toxic workplace culture was created. It's 100% his doing.
coldcode 6y ago
Former CEO my foot, he is just as in charge as ever; nothing happens without his approval.
- dylan604 6y ago
  There are news articles floating around now saying that Bezos was a direct influence on the recent aggressive nature of Amazon twitter accounts attacking/fighting back. Not sure how many former employees would be able to wield that kind of power. Granted this former CEO is still the President of the Board or whatever Grand Poobah title he has.
bbreier 6y ago
He is still the CEO. He will step down later this year.
lm28469 6y ago
He wasn't "former" CEO for the last 26 years though, talking about being disingenuous
WalterSear 6y ago
He did this. https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/3/28/22354604/amazon-twitter-bernie-sanders-jeff-bezos-union-alabama-elizabeth-warren https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/3/28/22354604/amazon-twitter...

ActorNightly 6y ago

Imagine building a company from the ground up that is succesfull solely because it produces a lot of value to people, and yet random people on the internet still think all you care about is hoarding money and think they can make better decisions than you. Here is the summary of the issue. Firstly, pre-pandemic, unemployment was at an alltime low (and its trending that way to as places are reopening), very close to frictional unemployment rates, while Amazon was still able to roll out things like 2 day deliver and same day delivery. This means that it was able to staff accordingly. This in turn means that the pay that people recieve is worth whatever the working conditions are, and people can quit and go find easier job at any time. This is also true of people that are able to work overtime, for double the pay $30 an hour. Not to mention that benefits are also included, which as far as health insurance is a big plus for people. Secondly, the number of reports of poor working conditions are far and few in between. For the scale of amazon, its expected that some warehouses are going to be run poorly. There isn't a single shred of credible evidence that this is a widespread problem. Also, with unskilled manual labor, there are people that are going to have a harder time than others. Taller pickers for example, have an advantage over shorter pickers that don't have to use the step stool. But again, 3% unemployment rate. As far as unionization goes, this is the general gist of it. If the workers unionize, the service capability will undoutably go down. When workers realize they can take it easy and keep their jobs, productivity will go down. While its true that worker conditions will improve, the problem is along will come Walmart thats not as much in the spotlight, and offer better service and shipping while having shit working conditions, and people will just switch over because thats more beneficial to them. In no way shape or form the will continue supporting Amazon just because their workers unionized, out of the "good of their heart". So Bezos is doing the correct thing by being anti union. Unionization is messing with the free market, which never leads to good outcomes historically. If you care about the lower income people, then go out and vote for politicains that support higher taxation for the rich, social programs for the poor, so that ones living condition does not depend on ones job. Also, for your brain health, get of the domapine fix that is the outrage of the internet lefism.

marricks 6y ago
Amazon warehouses have a far, far, higher turn over rate than other warehouses, probably because the conditions are so cruel. It’s really sad how many people get super invested in defending mega corporations. I hope it’s just employees trying to move up but you never know. https://labor411.org/411-blog/warehouse-worker-turnover-rate-is-100-in-counties-that-have-amazon-warehouses/ https://labor411.org/411-blog/warehouse-worker-turnover-rate...

WC3w6pXxgGd 6y ago

Maybe you need to stop reading propaganda about Bezos.

alienthrowaway 6y ago

> What a miserable existence that must be. Bezos has always struck me as a man who cares about nothing else only his own personal wealth and success. On the contrary, he is probably very happy with the way things are. You may be buying into the "Just World fallacy"; there are plenty of people you may find despicable who are leading happy, fulfilling lives, by their standards. I think the antipathy towards workers a combination of 2 things: it takes a fair amount of conceit/self-belief to dare think you can change the world (statistically speaking). The second thing is, even if you didn't start of with that mindset, success usually brings a certain post-hoc justification in the vein of "Clearly, I have been successful, therefore I'm better than most", which easily morphs into "My needs are more important; the little people are too focused on short-term goals and yet I have to compete with them for the same resources to achieve even more important goals I have planned". As someone from a low-income background, I have noticed that the more successful I have been, the less empathy I have, and I'm only middle-class. I don't know if it's because of my increasing income, increasing age, or combination of both.

hda2 6y ago
There's a meaningful distinction between happy and comfortable. He might lead a very comfortable life but I have to agree with GP that he doesn't /seem/ to be a very happy person. Of course, I (and you) say this from the position of people who don't know the man in person. It's all baseless backbiting.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  He always seems smiling and laughing in all the interviews I've seen him in. I know he has children plus a partner (and ex-wife). He's super rich, famous, gets to do what he wants, likes newspapers so he bought a big one, likes rockets so he is giving his own rocket/space company a go... Obviously this isn't dispositive to say he's happy, but I don't think it proves he's unhappy either. Not wanting your workers to unionize hardly seems like proof of an unhappy life.
  - cies 6y ago