7 ms·

At Taser maker Axon, ex-staffers say loyalty meant being tased or tattooed

127 points by striking 3y ago

t0pth4t 3y ago
Surprised no one has mentioned this but there is actually a documentary called "All Light, Everywhere" with a pretty extensive tour of the Axon offices. I believe it is available to stream on Hulu (in the US at least).
pschuegr 3y ago
I don't know what is with companies who pretend that the work environment should be more than an exchange of skills for compensation. Even ignoring these kinds of egregious examples, I find the rah-rah-rah of companies where people are excited to hear the CEO speak to be creepy and weird.
- asveikau 3y ago
  > pretend that the work environment should be more than an exchange of skills for compensation. > rah-rah-rah of companies where people are excited to hear the CEO speak to be creepy and weird. I think these two examples are actually pretty different. You could think highly of the mission and attach a high amount of value to your work without the CEO being a cult figure. I've been in an environment where I had the former but not the latter.
  - pschuegr 3y ago
    Hm, I guess I wasn't specific enough - you're right that you could just be excited by the mission of the company and that seems healthy and cool. It's the borderline worship and the cheering (to be fair I think this might be an American cultural thing) that seems off. Or maybe it's my gut feeling that many of the people involved in aforementioned rah-rah-rah behavior are just putting on their "work persona" face a little bit too enthusiastically, which itself feels a bit sus to me.
yuppie_scum 3y ago
Good thing it’s not a gun company
coolspot 3y ago
Watching many DonutOperator videos, I know that the taser doesn’t work most of the time anyway.
metaphor 3y ago
Sigma Chi...unsurprising[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma_Chi#Controversies_and_member_misconduct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma_Chi#Controversies_and_me...
- hooverd 3y ago
  An /unrecognized/ Sigmachi chapter, so all the nasty parts without the threat of nationals coming down on your ass.
talldatethrow 3y ago
Employees of a taser company getting tased doesn't seem that extreme, as long as you COULD opt out. My old employer asked men in the office to take a photo wearing red high heels as a photo of solidarity to idk.. #metoo or feminism or who knows. I imagine the men in that office felt more pressure to be in that photo than people felt pressure to get tased. And if it was up to me, I'd rather get tased than have a photo of me in high heels. Luckily I was gone by then. But I've seen the photo.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  The point of the story is the pressure. "Opting out" is not an option if the company's culture made it clear that everyone was expected to do it. The comparison to being asked to wear high heels (which is stupid) is distasteful: tasers kill people, and Axon is well aware that their product, in particular, has deaths attributable to it[1]. You might feel stupid in high heels, but they won't kill you. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-taser-911 https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-tase...
  - vorpalhex 3y ago
    High heels kill people, usually by being the cause for a fall. Though if your argument is that your less-than-lethal product is safe.. testing it on yourself seems pretty on point. The alternatives to tazing someone are pepper spray (has it's own deaths caused by it) or 9mm which is quite a bit more fatal.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      I don't think the GP was at significant risk of dying from a fall in stationary heels; this is a distraction. > The alternatives to tazing someone are pepper spray (has it's own deaths caused by it) or 9mm which is quite a bit more fatal. The alternative is none of the above. American police use "less-lethal" weaponry to a far greater extent (and with far more ease) than comparable countries.
      - 3y ago
JohnFen 3y ago
I find that the demand for "loyalty" is even more problematic than the tasing or tattooing, to be honest. When anyone stresses "loyalty", especially to such a degree, that's an indication that something is very, very wrong with that person or group of people.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  These are cults that provide a paycheck. Don't work for cults. Report them when they break the law (or seek counsel when it's a civil/contractual infraction).
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  Or country! That is the US, and US corporate culture can be very different (read: far more predatory) than the european.
- flangola7 3y ago
  Loyalty is a 2 way street. Otherwise it's just slavery.
  - vasco 3y ago
    It's not slavery, it's just insecurity from who demands the loyalty. Employees are free to leave.
    - flangola7 3y ago
      "Free" with many serious conditions. If you have to see a doctor every week for a chronic medical condition, you are very much not free to leave whenever you want.
    - lafar6503 3y ago
      Everyone can request a vacation, but first a traditional bzzzzzt
- woodruffw 3y ago
  I tend to agree; explicit demands for "loyalty" is usually a strong proxy for a mobster mentality. That being said, I know more than a few companies that "encourage" (or at least explicitly approve of) employees getting tattoos, and it's always struck me as a significant red flag. It's usually tied to some kind of expression of loyalty.
_a_a_a_ 3y ago
The tattoo thing really shocked me but I've seen people with Nike logo tattoos, of their own free will, choosing (unpaid!) for their body to be an advertisment for a company. So I guess so what, if you're sufficiently stupid or ovine.
- Fnoord 3y ago
  I suppose it wasn't the 9/11 WTC Nike "Just Do It" logo I saw back end 2001 which was used to protest War in Afghanistan (and later Iraq) back in the days. That logo as tattoo would surely lead to conflicts back then. Every tattoo is going to lead to regret at some point. Or situations where your tattoo is inappropriate (nevermind the hypothetical example above, think about wearing wrong brand in areas of LA). There's probably even a name for these phenomenons. The crown though is sportsmen. Sportsmen with an abundance of tattoos. While tattoos make you more warm, requiring more sweat elsewhere, bottom line leading to higher body temperatures. I've seen it in football (which Americans call soccer), I think it was David Beckham who set the trend here (regarding the full body tattoos).
  - tremon 3y ago
    it wasn't the 9/11 WTC Nike "Just Do It" logo I saw I've never heard of this before. Isn't it a bit... tasteless, at the least, to get a tattoo of a wing in relation to 9/11?
    - Fnoord 3y ago
      Oh it was (I wasn't able to find the picture, might retry in weekend). The person I knew who used that avatar was a friendly guy but... some people just really hate the USA being world police. You know, Chomsky followers, for example. I'd say in 2023 it has been pointed out by world events the USA is the best world police. Because the alternatives are far more nefarious. Anyway, tasteless, sure I can follow that. Is it going to lead to physical aggression? Very possibly. There's other examples, too. People getting swastikas having to hide them at work or later renouncing such politics. Relationships breaking up, painful reminder. Military people getting tortured over having certain tattoos (happening in a current military conflict) And to the person claiming I'm a bot, you should read the news guidelines about making such statement. If you want you can use some tooling for such to give your comment merit but before you put time into that see my other comments.
klabb3 3y ago
> James defended Axon’s culture, describing it as “a collaborative environment of mission-driven individuals who join forces to deliver an extraordinarily profound impact on society.” Meta: ChatGPT is excellent at generating blanket corp speech. It’s quite fun to prompt for passive aggressive statements in that style.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
phillipcarter 3y ago
Axon hosted an AI meeting in Seattle recently. Their office was a bit...much. There were these weird spaceship-looking doors that opened to the office itself and the theme was very much "you are in a scifi space ship". I didn't get any vibes that this would be a place wherein you'd have to be tased, though. Bad if true.
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  I've been to the Seattle office you described for interviews and to the Scottsdale HQ, which is a normal very modern but not bespoke office building; it's in Scottsdale where they had the display of tasers and the offer to be tased if you wanted to see how it was. (I was just interviewing, and the people seemed quite normal, but i hadn't worked on what i was being interviewed for, and screwed up a puzzle, so never joined.)
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    So Axon isn’t my cup of tea for a lot of reasons but if I were building tasers, I’d definitely want to know what I was doing to my er customers. I’d absolutely get myself tased during the interview.
    - falsebeliefs 3y ago
      [dead]
treis 3y ago
I'm mildly ok with this. The cops seem to use these pretty willy nilly for how painful and dangerous they seem. There's a kind of karmic balance in executives suffering the same ordeal that they unleashed into the world. Appeals to my sense of balance.
- Stevvo 3y ago
  Part of the training for any cop that is issued a taser is getting tazed.
- rx_tx 3y ago
  I think the issue is less execs getting tased, but more peer pressuring any and all employees to "ride the lightning" and get tased, lest they be shunned as not being "all in". (similar for getting company logo tattoos as the article mentions.)
- antiterra 3y ago
  Context matters, though. Being punched hard in the face in your martial arts class is very different than being sucker punched in public by a stranger. Cops tasering each other on gym mats are definitely not having the experience a citizen would.
MilStdJunkie 3y ago
Do you mean the inventors of "Excited Delirium" who paid a bunch of doctors to make up a disease that justifies the use of their product might not be on the up-and-up? ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Ah crap, my HN filters are slipping. What I meant was, "oh gosh, bad apples, the truth is in the middle, etc".
- ryanwhitney 3y ago
  I'm not sure why this is at the bottom. There's sarcasm and exaggeration, but it's a very legitimate point. [edit: ok, no longer gray and at the bottom.] Read through the wikipedia page[0] on how it's not recognized by most medical associations. > a specialist in investigating deaths in custody, describes excited delirium as "a boutique kind of diagnosis created, unfortunately, by many of my forensic pathology colleagues specifically for persons dying when being restrained by law enforcement." Or a deeper Reuters investigation[1] on how closely the diagnosis and acceptance of the "condition" is tied to police and taser manufacturers, Axon specifically. Cmd+F'ing "Mash" will jump you to the parts where they're paying the medical examiner who also happens to diagnose these deaths as exited delirium. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excited_delirium#Lack_of_acceptance_by_most_medical_associations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excited_delirium#Lack_of_accep... 1: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-taser-experts/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-tase...
  - everforward 3y ago
    > Or a deeper Reuters investigation[1] on how closely the diagnosis and acceptance of the "condition" is tied to police and taser manufacturers, Axon specifically. Cmd+F'ing "Mash" will jump you to the parts where they're paying the medical examiner who also happens to diagnose these deaths as exited delirium. I think you may have misread that part. Mash isn't and wasn't the medical examiner ever that I can find online. As best I can piece this together from that article and some Googling, Taser hired Mash as an expert witness in 8 trials for a total of ~$24,000 (included just because I believe that's in the normal range for that kind of testimony). Then Mark Shuman, who is an Associate Medical Examiner, sent brain tissue samples to Mash's lab without knowing that Taser had previously paid her for testimony. That's not to say the situation or diagnosis is okay, just that I think this is accusing them of something that didn't happen. There's plenty of crap they have done to criticize them for. That Wikipedia article would be funny if the situation wasn't so tragic. It's utterly unintelligible. A condition with no proposed cause, which causes death with no specified mechanism, and a list of symptoms that matches everything from "stressed out about being arrested", to a psychotic break, to "actively overdosing on PCP". How they ever manage to convince a jury that the cardiac arrest is from some vague syndrome and not the police having basically put nipple clamps connected to mains voltage on them is beyond me.
ryanwhitney 3y ago
> “Most of our board and many of our most senior executives have chosen not to experience Taser devices.” I can understand younger employees—or maybe those who give a shit about what they’re inflicting on others—being curious about “experiencing Taser devices”. Making it a cult camaraderie ceremony seems ill-advised.
clumsysmurf 3y ago
"Less well-known is the all-in corporate culture at Axon, which has tested employees’ commitment and fealty in unusual ways Shawn Gorman, a lawyer who worked at Axon until 2019, said the company had a high-pressure culture of loyalty, unlike anything he has seen in nearly two decades of practice. “It was truly toxic,” he said." Axon wants to expand their Arizona campus with residential housing for their employees ... after reading this it sounds like a recipe for disaster. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/scottsdale/2023/08/23/axon-proposes-2500-apartment-units-near-scottsdale-headquarters/70654497007/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/scottsdale/2023/0...
- neilv 3y ago
  Well, that strange compelled stock gambling program (has the SEC seen that?) is already a little like getting paid in scrip for the company store. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store
pierat 3y ago
Lol, my "loyalty" is that I show up and expect agreed upon money and benefits. Real loyalty is saved for family and friends.
adamsb6 3y ago
Almost as bad as having to dogfood Windows Vista.
neilv 3y ago
It sounds more fratbro than many tech companies. But this is an opportunity to look at one's own company, and what stereotypical fratbro influences it's picked up. Commonplace ones in tech: hazing rituals for negging pledges, bro/class culture fit screening, demonstrations of loyalty, questionable organizational behavior with everyone complicit...
fadeborne 3y ago
Preface this with I’ve been at axon for a few years now. Feel free to skip reading my opinion. I don’t subscribe to the whole being loyal to a company we are a team stuff that many tech companies seem to have (you can’t always expect the same “loyalty” back once times are hard or stock price needs some help). I can say that in the time I’ve been here I’ve never seen any of this and I’ve been at corporate h.q. for much of that time (remote now). I haven’t been tased. Honestly I kind of wanted to and when I joined some folks I worked with said it was always an option if I wanted to. I kind of like the idea in some ways - we are selling these products to the police and others to use on people - it makes some sense to me to understand just what the use of our products entail in the instance to get the gravity of the situation etc. All that being said if folks have felt this way that’s no good to me and I guess I can’t really speak to other teams in the company. I’m farther in my career and a middle age white guy, it’s always possible that I don’t experience a feeling of pressure, regardless of whether it is intended to be there, the same way younger or more junior folks might.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  > I kind of like the idea in some ways - we are selling these products to the police and others to use on people - it makes some sense to me to understand just what the use of our products entail in the instance to get the gravity of the situation etc. FWIW, police training involves recruits getting maced and tased themselves for this very reason.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  The company you work for paid doctors to make up a fake medical state to justify the use of their products in police brutality. Maybe you should not work there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excited_delirium#cite_note-Reuters-5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excited_delirium#cite_note-Reu...
lafar6503 3y ago
Maybe it's not entirely bad that employees are subjected to effects of their products this way. Police officers should also be tased as a part of weapon training, just to understand how the device works

127 points by striking 3y ago

Surprised no one has mentioned this but there is actually a documentary called "All Light, Everywhere" with a pretty extensive tour of the Axon offices. I believe it is available to stream on Hulu (in the US at least).

pschuegr 3y ago

I don't know what is with companies who pretend that the work environment should be more than an exchange of skills for compensation. Even ignoring these kinds of egregious examples, I find the rah-rah-rah of companies where people are excited to hear the CEO speak to be creepy and weird.

asveikau 3y ago
> pretend that the work environment should be more than an exchange of skills for compensation. > rah-rah-rah of companies where people are excited to hear the CEO speak to be creepy and weird. I think these two examples are actually pretty different. You could think highly of the mission and attach a high amount of value to your work without the CEO being a cult figure. I've been in an environment where I had the former but not the latter.
- pschuegr 3y ago
  Hm, I guess I wasn't specific enough - you're right that you could just be excited by the mission of the company and that seems healthy and cool. It's the borderline worship and the cheering (to be fair I think this might be an American cultural thing) that seems off. Or maybe it's my gut feeling that many of the people involved in aforementioned rah-rah-rah behavior are just putting on their "work persona" face a little bit too enthusiastically, which itself feels a bit sus to me.

yuppie_scum 3y ago

Good thing it’s not a gun company

coolspot 3y ago

Watching many DonutOperator videos, I know that the taser doesn’t work most of the time anyway.

metaphor 3y ago

Sigma Chi...unsurprising[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma_Chi#Controversies_and_member_misconduct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma_Chi#Controversies_and_me...

hooverd 3y ago
An /unrecognized/ Sigmachi chapter, so all the nasty parts without the threat of nationals coming down on your ass.

talldatethrow 3y ago

Employees of a taser company getting tased doesn't seem that extreme, as long as you COULD opt out. My old employer asked men in the office to take a photo wearing red high heels as a photo of solidarity to idk.. #metoo or feminism or who knows. I imagine the men in that office felt more pressure to be in that photo than people felt pressure to get tased. And if it was up to me, I'd rather get tased than have a photo of me in high heels. Luckily I was gone by then. But I've seen the photo.

woodruffw 3y ago
The point of the story is the pressure. "Opting out" is not an option if the company's culture made it clear that everyone was expected to do it. The comparison to being asked to wear high heels (which is stupid) is distasteful: tasers kill people, and Axon is well aware that their product, in particular, has deaths attributable to it[1]. You might feel stupid in high heels, but they won't kill you. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-taser-911 https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-tase...
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  High heels kill people, usually by being the cause for a fall. Though if your argument is that your less-than-lethal product is safe.. testing it on yourself seems pretty on point. The alternatives to tazing someone are pepper spray (has it's own deaths caused by it) or 9mm which is quite a bit more fatal.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    I don't think the GP was at significant risk of dying from a fall in stationary heels; this is a distraction. > The alternatives to tazing someone are pepper spray (has it's own deaths caused by it) or 9mm which is quite a bit more fatal. The alternative is none of the above. American police use "less-lethal" weaponry to a far greater extent (and with far more ease) than comparable countries.
    - 3y ago

JohnFen 3y ago

I find that the demand for "loyalty" is even more problematic than the tasing or tattooing, to be honest. When anyone stresses "loyalty", especially to such a degree, that's an indication that something is very, very wrong with that person or group of people.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
These are cults that provide a paycheck. Don't work for cults. Report them when they break the law (or seek counsel when it's a civil/contractual infraction).
_a_a_a_ 3y ago
Or country! That is the US, and US corporate culture can be very different (read: far more predatory) than the european.
flangola7 3y ago
Loyalty is a 2 way street. Otherwise it's just slavery.
- vasco 3y ago
  It's not slavery, it's just insecurity from who demands the loyalty. Employees are free to leave.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    "Free" with many serious conditions. If you have to see a doctor every week for a chronic medical condition, you are very much not free to leave whenever you want.
  - lafar6503 3y ago
    Everyone can request a vacation, but first a traditional bzzzzzt
woodruffw 3y ago
I tend to agree; explicit demands for "loyalty" is usually a strong proxy for a mobster mentality. That being said, I know more than a few companies that "encourage" (or at least explicitly approve of) employees getting tattoos, and it's always struck me as a significant red flag. It's usually tied to some kind of expression of loyalty.

_a_a_a_ 3y ago

The tattoo thing really shocked me but I've seen people with Nike logo tattoos, of their own free will, choosing (unpaid!) for their body to be an advertisment for a company. So I guess so what, if you're sufficiently stupid or ovine.

Fnoord 3y ago
I suppose it wasn't the 9/11 WTC Nike "Just Do It" logo I saw back end 2001 which was used to protest War in Afghanistan (and later Iraq) back in the days. That logo as tattoo would surely lead to conflicts back then. Every tattoo is going to lead to regret at some point. Or situations where your tattoo is inappropriate (nevermind the hypothetical example above, think about wearing wrong brand in areas of LA). There's probably even a name for these phenomenons. The crown though is sportsmen. Sportsmen with an abundance of tattoos. While tattoos make you more warm, requiring more sweat elsewhere, bottom line leading to higher body temperatures. I've seen it in football (which Americans call soccer), I think it was David Beckham who set the trend here (regarding the full body tattoos).
- tremon 3y ago
  it wasn't the 9/11 WTC Nike "Just Do It" logo I saw I've never heard of this before. Isn't it a bit... tasteless, at the least, to get a tattoo of a wing in relation to 9/11?
  - Fnoord 3y ago
    Oh it was (I wasn't able to find the picture, might retry in weekend). The person I knew who used that avatar was a friendly guy but... some people just really hate the USA being world police. You know, Chomsky followers, for example. I'd say in 2023 it has been pointed out by world events the USA is the best world police. Because the alternatives are far more nefarious. Anyway, tasteless, sure I can follow that. Is it going to lead to physical aggression? Very possibly. There's other examples, too. People getting swastikas having to hide them at work or later renouncing such politics. Relationships breaking up, painful reminder. Military people getting tortured over having certain tattoos (happening in a current military conflict) And to the person claiming I'm a bot, you should read the news guidelines about making such statement. If you want you can use some tooling for such to give your comment merit but before you put time into that see my other comments.

klabb3 3y ago

> James defended Axon’s culture, describing it as “a collaborative environment of mission-driven individuals who join forces to deliver an extraordinarily profound impact on society.” Meta: ChatGPT is excellent at generating blanket corp speech. It’s quite fun to prompt for passive aggressive statements in that style.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

phillipcarter 3y ago

Axon hosted an AI meeting in Seattle recently. Their office was a bit...much. There were these weird spaceship-looking doors that opened to the office itself and the theme was very much "you are in a scifi space ship". I didn't get any vibes that this would be a place wherein you'd have to be tased, though. Bad if true.

jjtheblunt 3y ago
I've been to the Seattle office you described for interviews and to the Scottsdale HQ, which is a normal very modern but not bespoke office building; it's in Scottsdale where they had the display of tasers and the offer to be tased if you wanted to see how it was. (I was just interviewing, and the people seemed quite normal, but i hadn't worked on what i was being interviewed for, and screwed up a puzzle, so never joined.)
- arcticbull 3y ago
  So Axon isn’t my cup of tea for a lot of reasons but if I were building tasers, I’d definitely want to know what I was doing to my er customers. I’d absolutely get myself tased during the interview.
  - falsebeliefs 3y ago
    [dead]

treis 3y ago

I'm mildly ok with this. The cops seem to use these pretty willy nilly for how painful and dangerous they seem. There's a kind of karmic balance in executives suffering the same ordeal that they unleashed into the world. Appeals to my sense of balance.

Stevvo 3y ago
Part of the training for any cop that is issued a taser is getting tazed.
rx_tx 3y ago
I think the issue is less execs getting tased, but more peer pressuring any and all employees to "ride the lightning" and get tased, lest they be shunned as not being "all in". (similar for getting company logo tattoos as the article mentions.)
antiterra 3y ago
Context matters, though. Being punched hard in the face in your martial arts class is very different than being sucker punched in public by a stranger. Cops tasering each other on gym mats are definitely not having the experience a citizen would.

MilStdJunkie 3y ago

Do you mean the inventors of "Excited Delirium" who paid a bunch of doctors to make up a disease that justifies the use of their product might not be on the up-and-up? ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Ah crap, my HN filters are slipping. What I meant was, "oh gosh, bad apples, the truth is in the middle, etc".

ryanwhitney 3y ago
I'm not sure why this is at the bottom. There's sarcasm and exaggeration, but it's a very legitimate point. [edit: ok, no longer gray and at the bottom.] Read through the wikipedia page[0] on how it's not recognized by most medical associations. > a specialist in investigating deaths in custody, describes excited delirium as "a boutique kind of diagnosis created, unfortunately, by many of my forensic pathology colleagues specifically for persons dying when being restrained by law enforcement." Or a deeper Reuters investigation[1] on how closely the diagnosis and acceptance of the "condition" is tied to police and taser manufacturers, Axon specifically. Cmd+F'ing "Mash" will jump you to the parts where they're paying the medical examiner who also happens to diagnose these deaths as exited delirium. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excited_delirium#Lack_of_acceptance_by_most_medical_associations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excited_delirium#Lack_of_accep... 1: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-taser-experts/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-tase...
- everforward 3y ago
  > Or a deeper Reuters investigation[1] on how closely the diagnosis and acceptance of the "condition" is tied to police and taser manufacturers, Axon specifically. Cmd+F'ing "Mash" will jump you to the parts where they're paying the medical examiner who also happens to diagnose these deaths as exited delirium. I think you may have misread that part. Mash isn't and wasn't the medical examiner ever that I can find online. As best I can piece this together from that article and some Googling, Taser hired Mash as an expert witness in 8 trials for a total of ~$24,000 (included just because I believe that's in the normal range for that kind of testimony). Then Mark Shuman, who is an Associate Medical Examiner, sent brain tissue samples to Mash's lab without knowing that Taser had previously paid her for testimony. That's not to say the situation or diagnosis is okay, just that I think this is accusing them of something that didn't happen. There's plenty of crap they have done to criticize them for. That Wikipedia article would be funny if the situation wasn't so tragic. It's utterly unintelligible. A condition with no proposed cause, which causes death with no specified mechanism, and a list of symptoms that matches everything from "stressed out about being arrested", to a psychotic break, to "actively overdosing on PCP". How they ever manage to convince a jury that the cardiac arrest is from some vague syndrome and not the police having basically put nipple clamps connected to mains voltage on them is beyond me.

ryanwhitney 3y ago

> “Most of our board and many of our most senior executives have chosen not to experience Taser devices.” I can understand younger employees—or maybe those who give a shit about what they’re inflicting on others—being curious about “experiencing Taser devices”. Making it a cult camaraderie ceremony seems ill-advised.

clumsysmurf 3y ago

"Less well-known is the all-in corporate culture at Axon, which has tested employees’ commitment and fealty in unusual ways Shawn Gorman, a lawyer who worked at Axon until 2019, said the company had a high-pressure culture of loyalty, unlike anything he has seen in nearly two decades of practice. “It was truly toxic,” he said." Axon wants to expand their Arizona campus with residential housing for their employees ... after reading this it sounds like a recipe for disaster. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/scottsdale/2023/08/23/axon-proposes-2500-apartment-units-near-scottsdale-headquarters/70654497007/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/scottsdale/2023/0...

neilv 3y ago
Well, that strange compelled stock gambling program (has the SEC seen that?) is already a little like getting paid in scrip for the company store. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store

pierat 3y ago

Lol, my "loyalty" is that I show up and expect agreed upon money and benefits. Real loyalty is saved for family and friends.

adamsb6 3y ago

Almost as bad as having to dogfood Windows Vista.

neilv 3y ago

It sounds more fratbro than many tech companies. But this is an opportunity to look at one's own company, and what stereotypical fratbro influences it's picked up. Commonplace ones in tech: hazing rituals for negging pledges, bro/class culture fit screening, demonstrations of loyalty, questionable organizational behavior with everyone complicit...

fadeborne 3y ago

Preface this with I’ve been at axon for a few years now. Feel free to skip reading my opinion. I don’t subscribe to the whole being loyal to a company we are a team stuff that many tech companies seem to have (you can’t always expect the same “loyalty” back once times are hard or stock price needs some help). I can say that in the time I’ve been here I’ve never seen any of this and I’ve been at corporate h.q. for much of that time (remote now). I haven’t been tased. Honestly I kind of wanted to and when I joined some folks I worked with said it was always an option if I wanted to. I kind of like the idea in some ways - we are selling these products to the police and others to use on people - it makes some sense to me to understand just what the use of our products entail in the instance to get the gravity of the situation etc. All that being said if folks have felt this way that’s no good to me and I guess I can’t really speak to other teams in the company. I’m farther in my career and a middle age white guy, it’s always possible that I don’t experience a feeling of pressure, regardless of whether it is intended to be there, the same way younger or more junior folks might.

jstarfish 3y ago
> I kind of like the idea in some ways - we are selling these products to the police and others to use on people - it makes some sense to me to understand just what the use of our products entail in the instance to get the gravity of the situation etc. FWIW, police training involves recruits getting maced and tased themselves for this very reason.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
The company you work for paid doctors to make up a fake medical state to justify the use of their products in police brutality. Maybe you should not work there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excited_delirium#cite_note-Reuters-5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excited_delirium#cite_note-Reu...

lafar6503 3y ago

Maybe it's not entirely bad that employees are subjected to effects of their products this way. Police officers should also be tased as a part of weapon training, just to understand how the device works