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I am glad you bring this up. If I am wrong, people can downvote me and my voice will lose visibility (quite literally - the comment will get grayed out and will

I am glad you bring this up. If I am wrong, people can downvote me and my voice will lose visibility (quite literally - the comment will get grayed out and will drop to the bottom of the page). What happens if the reporter is wrong? Assuming they don't spread their lies knowingly, legally they will be in safe territory. And they will still cash in on all the controversy they create with their fake reporting. So my view on this specific topic may or may not be right, but my claim that the journalism landscape is out of balance should stand regardless.

tyuqfromhere 5y ago
Is that how you would feel if "we were talking about your favorite high school teacher who just had their career destroyed because some dude needed to get a few extra [upvotes on HN]"? Saying "my statement may or may not be right, I'll let the general public decide" is lazy and shirking responsibility. If you have reason to believe that your statements are wrong, you should retract those statements or at least put a disclaimer on them. I think that's the bar you would hold Inc to, and you should hold yourself to it as well.
- aerosmile 5y ago
  You created this account an hour ago, so perhaps you don't have the full context here. Amazon has so much emotional baggage associated with it, that it would be hard to present an argument which is factually accurate but indirectly shows support for Amazon. Therefore, taking the argument out of the Amazon context helps with discussing the accuracy of the underlying facts.
- aerosmile 5y ago
  I might have misinterpreted what you actually wanted to ask. If your question is if I stand by my comments, the answer is 100% yes. The Inc journalist did a lazy job of presenting facts [1], and my suspicion is that this is not by coincidence - as a journalist, you either do a stellar job of researching every last bit of a story, or you do the opposite - close an eye and report as vaguely as possible, mostly citing external sources but somehow making the story sound original so you get some credit as well. Both are safe approaches; the space in between is dangerous - you can't take someone else's shitty reporting and then check if it's true before publishing - that's how you get sued for libel. Fun fact: if you prepend "in my opinion, ..." you're 100% safe from any libel risk. If we consider additional evidence that came to light through the BI article, I am still aligned with mabbo's view - the Amazon management seems to have taken a conscious step against the hire-to-fire scenario by separating the ownership of hiring and firing. [1] Note: this topic originally linked to an Inc article
  - tyuqfromthere 5y ago
    >The Inc journalist did a lazy job of presenting facts And so are you. As has been pointed out multiple times, the assertions made about BRs and HMs in this thread are flat out incorrect, and yet you are continuing to rely on them and even go as far as to tout them in other comments in other threads as well. >close an eye and report as vaguely as possible, mostly citing external sources but somehow making the story sound original so you get some credit as well This is exactly what you are doing throughout this thread by repeating the notion that Amazon "separat[es] the ownership of hiring and firing", which if you were willing to do any amount of research rather than just blindly trusting a random internet comment, you would find just isn't true. You are holding yourself to a different bar than Inc, which is hypocritical. The point about removing Amazon emotional context here also applies to Inc, because it's clear you personally have a lot of emotional baggage related to journalists. So the question is: would you post these same disparaging comments, and still maintain the same "my statement may be incorrect but I will continue to repeat it anyway" if it was your favorite high school teacher you were disparaging, potentially ruining their career? I would certainly hope not, so I don't see any reason other than arrogance of why you would do so here.
    - aerosmile 5y ago
      Damn, you're on a roll. Ok, I'll bite. > the assertions made about BRs and HMs in this thread are flat out incorrect The assertions are that there is a hire to fire practice. Those assertions are based on 1) the evidence of an attrition goal, and 2) anecdotal stories of people who know people. My argument is that 1) is not the same as a hire to fire practice [1], and 2) is hard to verify - there are a lot of people with an axe to grind. What I would love to see is an analysis of people who started their job at Amazon and didn't reach their first 12 months. If that rate is any higher than at FAANG for comparable positions, then we have a smoking gun. How hard would it be to do this? Not very. The lack of this effort is telling. Also, I tend not to subscribe to every conspiracy theory, which admittedly is hard these days. But you should try it, it would calm you down a bit. > just blindly trusting a random internet comment Thank you for making so many assumptions about me. You're wrong. It was a slow day today, and I was really intrigued by this concept, so I dug a bit deeper and read a lot of posts on this topic. My takeaway from all this is that this is a bit like a political discussion: some people really passionately hate Amazon's recruiting practices, and some defend it. I certainly wouldn't say that everyone is aligned that BRs and HMs are colluding and that the system is not working as designed. > You are holding yourself to a different bar than Inc, which is hypocritical That's a ridiculous statement. Journalists have a code of ethics, whereas the general population doesn't. This is a fact, let's please not debate something as fundamentally verifiable like this. Not everyone can do everyone's job. My job is not to spend my whole day verifying facts of what some journalist published, but it's very much the journalist's job to do that for their pieces. We're not in the same position, nor should we be. Not that this fact matters at all since I stand behind what I said, but you're starting your argument right off the bat with a fundamental inaccuracy. > you personally have a lot of emotional baggage related to journalists That would be weird - I worked for many years for the NYT and I think they are a wonderful org. So... your instincts are wrong again. I really hope you don't rely on your instincts for a living. > would you post these same disparaging comments Totally nonsensical reasoning once again. My comments are not disparaging, so let's just end that discussion right there. If anything, let's turn our attention a bit to your interesting HN career. You created an HN account called tyuqfromhere 8 hours ago, which you used exclusively to attack Amazon. And then this new account, tyuqfromthere, was created an hour ago, and... you guessed it, it's used exclusively to attack Amazon. Someone said elsewhere that there's a lot of anti-Amazon propaganda recently, and I sure as hell would love to know who you are and what your real motives are. To be clear, Amazon can crash and burn for all that I care, but there's one thing I do like about Jeff Bezos - it's his last sentence in his blackmail response letter [2]: "I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out." I doubt we'll ever find out what kind of a creature you are and what you're trying to accomplish with your HN trolling, but it sure as hell would be interesting. [1] I am not defending the attrition goal strategy, but its presence is not a proof of abuse. I know that if someone presented me with the requirement to let 2 of my 30 member team go within the next 12 months, and I was given 2 new team members to try out, I would definitely give everyone a fair chance. Also, every other manager I've ever worked with would do the same. I find it hard to believe that somehow that all managers at Amazon are suddenly different from anyone I've ever worked with. [2] https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146e3922310f https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146...

tyuqfromhere 5y ago

Is that how you would feel if "we were talking about your favorite high school teacher who just had their career destroyed because some dude needed to get a few extra [upvotes on HN]"? Saying "my statement may or may not be right, I'll let the general public decide" is lazy and shirking responsibility. If you have reason to believe that your statements are wrong, you should retract those statements or at least put a disclaimer on them. I think that's the bar you would hold Inc to, and you should hold yourself to it as well.

aerosmile 5y ago
You created this account an hour ago, so perhaps you don't have the full context here. Amazon has so much emotional baggage associated with it, that it would be hard to present an argument which is factually accurate but indirectly shows support for Amazon. Therefore, taking the argument out of the Amazon context helps with discussing the accuracy of the underlying facts.
aerosmile 5y ago
I might have misinterpreted what you actually wanted to ask. If your question is if I stand by my comments, the answer is 100% yes. The Inc journalist did a lazy job of presenting facts [1], and my suspicion is that this is not by coincidence - as a journalist, you either do a stellar job of researching every last bit of a story, or you do the opposite - close an eye and report as vaguely as possible, mostly citing external sources but somehow making the story sound original so you get some credit as well. Both are safe approaches; the space in between is dangerous - you can't take someone else's shitty reporting and then check if it's true before publishing - that's how you get sued for libel. Fun fact: if you prepend "in my opinion, ..." you're 100% safe from any libel risk. If we consider additional evidence that came to light through the BI article, I am still aligned with mabbo's view - the Amazon management seems to have taken a conscious step against the hire-to-fire scenario by separating the ownership of hiring and firing. [1] Note: this topic originally linked to an Inc article
- tyuqfromthere 5y ago
  >The Inc journalist did a lazy job of presenting facts And so are you. As has been pointed out multiple times, the assertions made about BRs and HMs in this thread are flat out incorrect, and yet you are continuing to rely on them and even go as far as to tout them in other comments in other threads as well. >close an eye and report as vaguely as possible, mostly citing external sources but somehow making the story sound original so you get some credit as well This is exactly what you are doing throughout this thread by repeating the notion that Amazon "separat[es] the ownership of hiring and firing", which if you were willing to do any amount of research rather than just blindly trusting a random internet comment, you would find just isn't true. You are holding yourself to a different bar than Inc, which is hypocritical. The point about removing Amazon emotional context here also applies to Inc, because it's clear you personally have a lot of emotional baggage related to journalists. So the question is: would you post these same disparaging comments, and still maintain the same "my statement may be incorrect but I will continue to repeat it anyway" if it was your favorite high school teacher you were disparaging, potentially ruining their career? I would certainly hope not, so I don't see any reason other than arrogance of why you would do so here.
  - aerosmile 5y ago
    Damn, you're on a roll. Ok, I'll bite. > the assertions made about BRs and HMs in this thread are flat out incorrect The assertions are that there is a hire to fire practice. Those assertions are based on 1) the evidence of an attrition goal, and 2) anecdotal stories of people who know people. My argument is that 1) is not the same as a hire to fire practice [1], and 2) is hard to verify - there are a lot of people with an axe to grind. What I would love to see is an analysis of people who started their job at Amazon and didn't reach their first 12 months. If that rate is any higher than at FAANG for comparable positions, then we have a smoking gun. How hard would it be to do this? Not very. The lack of this effort is telling. Also, I tend not to subscribe to every conspiracy theory, which admittedly is hard these days. But you should try it, it would calm you down a bit. > just blindly trusting a random internet comment Thank you for making so many assumptions about me. You're wrong. It was a slow day today, and I was really intrigued by this concept, so I dug a bit deeper and read a lot of posts on this topic. My takeaway from all this is that this is a bit like a political discussion: some people really passionately hate Amazon's recruiting practices, and some defend it. I certainly wouldn't say that everyone is aligned that BRs and HMs are colluding and that the system is not working as designed. > You are holding yourself to a different bar than Inc, which is hypocritical That's a ridiculous statement. Journalists have a code of ethics, whereas the general population doesn't. This is a fact, let's please not debate something as fundamentally verifiable like this. Not everyone can do everyone's job. My job is not to spend my whole day verifying facts of what some journalist published, but it's very much the journalist's job to do that for their pieces. We're not in the same position, nor should we be. Not that this fact matters at all since I stand behind what I said, but you're starting your argument right off the bat with a fundamental inaccuracy. > you personally have a lot of emotional baggage related to journalists That would be weird - I worked for many years for the NYT and I think they are a wonderful org. So... your instincts are wrong again. I really hope you don't rely on your instincts for a living. > would you post these same disparaging comments Totally nonsensical reasoning once again. My comments are not disparaging, so let's just end that discussion right there. If anything, let's turn our attention a bit to your interesting HN career. You created an HN account called tyuqfromhere 8 hours ago, which you used exclusively to attack Amazon. And then this new account, tyuqfromthere, was created an hour ago, and... you guessed it, it's used exclusively to attack Amazon. Someone said elsewhere that there's a lot of anti-Amazon propaganda recently, and I sure as hell would love to know who you are and what your real motives are. To be clear, Amazon can crash and burn for all that I care, but there's one thing I do like about Jeff Bezos - it's his last sentence in his blackmail response letter [2]: "I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out." I doubt we'll ever find out what kind of a creature you are and what you're trying to accomplish with your HN trolling, but it sure as hell would be interesting. [1] I am not defending the attrition goal strategy, but its presence is not a proof of abuse. I know that if someone presented me with the requirement to let 2 of my 30 member team go within the next 12 months, and I was given 2 new team members to try out, I would definitely give everyone a fair chance. Also, every other manager I've ever worked with would do the same. I find it hard to believe that somehow that all managers at Amazon are suddenly different from anyone I've ever worked with. [2] https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146e3922310f https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146...