[HN Gopher] Bye, Amazon
___________________________________________________________________
Bye, Amazon
Author : grey-area
Score : 3396 points
Date : 2020-05-04 08:43 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tbray.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tbray.org)
| softwarejosh wrote:
| big ass respect for this person, of course its anecdotal, thats
| all the evidence you will ever get. you want a professional
| investigation done on these guys you are dreaming. this person
| saw evil, no matter how much, and took their side.
| ableal wrote:
| Cached version:
| http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wi2hPnT...
| rosywoozlechan wrote:
| If conscientious people leave Amazon it will result in Amazon
| being less conscientious, but it will probably not result in
| Amazon being any less powerful or dominant.
|
| I also think Amazon a right to expect its employees to abide by
| its rules. Individuals have a right to organize and to protest,
| even when they're supposed to be at work, but companies have a
| right to want to discontinue their business relationship, that is
| fire, their employees, especially if they're not working when
| they're supposed to.
|
| Ultimately the employees made the mistake of organizing and being
| loud before they had the critical mass to have the leverage
| needed, and they outed their organization leadership.
| behringer wrote:
| AFAIK in the US it's illegal to fire somebody due to union
| organizing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_busting#United_States
|
| Therefore, the employees made no mistake if Amazon breaks the
| law by firing unionizing employees.
| rosywoozlechan wrote:
| I am not convinced that the protests were attempts to
| unionize or that the law is clear that on if these firings at
| Amazon were illegal.
| darksaints wrote:
| Just want to point out this:
|
| >Amazon Web Services (the "Cloud Computing" arm of the company),
| where I worked, is a different story. It treats its workers
| humanely, strives for work/life balance, struggles to move the
| diversity needle (and mostly fails, but so does everyone else),
| and is by and large an ethical organization. I genuinely admire
| its leadership.
|
| Having worked there, I 100% agree with this statement. I'd go so
| far as to say that the blame for this toxic and intolerable
| atmosphere lies with a single person who is not Jeff Bezos. His
| name is Dave Clark.
|
| When I was in his org, I regularly interacted with FC General
| Managers, Ops Managers, and Area Managers. There was a humorous
| nickname that quite a few called him behind his back, and I think
| it fits him perfectly. It was Dave Mussolini. Not so much a nazi
| in his evil, but rather someone who desired and cultivated and
| enforced a pure cult of personality for his own personal ego
| gratification and career advancement. Amazon's "Disagree And
| Commit" leadership principle gets thrown out in his org and
| becomes "Disagree amongst yourselves if you want, but _never
| ever_ disagree with me, never do anything that I do not approve
| of, and kiss my ass any time you are around me ". Subsequently,
| all of his subordinates adopt the same attitude, and becomes a
| culture of complete subservience to your master, no questions
| asked.
|
| I have personally witnessed people get fired within 10 minutes of
| sending out an email making a suggested path that Dave Clark had
| already decided. The email came out, Dave Clark walked into his
| managers office with an HR rep, and literally within 10 minutes
| they were packing their things and saying goodbye.
|
| I have been in an elevator which opened up to him and his EA, and
| instead of getting in and going to his floor, he told us we
| needed to step out of the elevator and get a different elevator
| because he needed to talk confidentially. He couldn't wait to get
| to his office, he had to make one of his lemmings take the long
| way to accommodate 10 seconds of his time.
|
| The Kiva acquisition was something he pushed for extensively.
| They weren't even Kiva customers at the time, he just jumped the
| gun and bought the company. It turned out that Kiva's
| productivity improvements didn't scale very well at Amazon's
| level. They really worked well for much smaller companies, but in
| large FCs, their optimization and routing algorithms hit NP
| Complete complexity bottlenecks, resulting in much lower
| productivity than had been advertised to them. But instead of
| taking the blame for his lack of due diligence, he created a
| hellfire and damnation environment, regularly storming into their
| offices and throwing Steve Jobs level temper tantrums. He made
| the entire place so toxic that half (not exaggerating) of the
| Kiva engineers that were acquired had left the company before
| their very lucrative aquisition stock grants could vest. We're
| talking hundreds of engineers who would rather give up hundreds
| of thousands of dollars than deal with Dave Clark (Mussolini) for
| one more minute.
|
| Dave Clark is a toxic asset. He is failing at his job.
| Fulfillment costs are skyrocketing, inventory turns are tanking,
| and profitability of the retail division is at an all time low,
| despite all time high revenues. He has burned through staffing so
| heavily that they have had to abandon entire fulfillment centers
| because there aren't enough people in these small blue collar
| towns that are eligible to work for Amazon anymore _because they
| 've all been fired_. He is a constant PR nightmare for the
| company. I have no fucking clue why Jeff Bezos hasn't fired him
| yet.
| amai wrote:
| An article about this guy collected some interesting comments
| on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21818233
| darksaints wrote:
| Wow, I have never seen this article. I wouldn't be surprised
| if he was the one who pushed for this article to be written.
| fataliss wrote:
| I wish there was of some sort of association or union for people
| in the Software industry. While we are typically much better
| treated than basically every single other type of worker out
| there, we lack the assurance of protection when it comes to
| challenging our employers. In a country where your healthcare,
| your retirement and possibly your immigration status are tied to
| your employment, how can one feel confident that sticking to
| their convictions like you did will not cost them and their
| family a cost so great that they cannot bear it. I would like for
| Software and more generally tech workers of all trade to be able
| to say NO or ENOUGH, when working for a company that steals tips,
| coerces workers into unfavorable situation or plainly disrespects
| human rights. I dream of a world where workers can rely on
| something having their back when making the right decision.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Unions are primarily useful for workers who don't have the
| ability to negotiate their salary before accepting a job. By
| banding together, they're able to negotiate wages that more
| closely align with the value of their work. Knowledge workers
| are expected to do this for themselves on an individual basis
| as they're not really interchangeable.
|
| I do wish people pushed for more democratic decision-making in
| their places of work, though. I've read that in Google's early
| days people were mainly promoted by peer-evaluations, and there
| was a mechanism to remove a manager from power if they lost the
| confidence of most of their subordinates.
| untog wrote:
| Perhaps a little off topic but I notice that despite the huge
| number of upvotes, this thread is ranked below other stories with
| far fewer points from around the same time.
|
| Are people flagging this story? It would be interesting to be
| able to see the number of flags a thread attracts on Hacker News.
| yhoiseth wrote:
| I think I read somewhere that the algorithm de-emphasizes
| controversial stories.
| stupidcar wrote:
| > At the end of the day, it's all about power balances. The
| warehouse workers are weak and getting weaker...
|
| Whenever I speak to someone working in a "low-skilled" job, I'm
| always astonished and embarrassed by how different their work
| environment sounds to the kind of offices I work in. There seems
| to be a consistent theme of employees being treated with
| suspicion, condescension and outright hostility.
|
| This gets to the heart of the idea of "privilege", and why it can
| be so difficult to see yourself as privileged. Because it often
| involves nothing more than being given a basic level of trust and
| respect that, once you have them, can seem like a bare minimum,
| not something that you would need to fight for.
| taurath wrote:
| I tell people I've never worked as hard as I did the morning
| shift at taco bell.
|
| Just being treated like a human with independent thoughts and
| needs is a huge benefit in so many workplaces. There's a level
| of just violence and mistrust in the "normal" working world
| that is terrifying if you haven't experienced it, and jarring
| if you haven't experienced it in a while. The bean-counters who
| make up the systems where in human labor is a cog are really
| creating skinner boxes. The larger scale the corporation goes
| the less emphasis on empathy and human needs. You become a bit
| that can either do the work or can't.
|
| Our cold "efficient" corporate machines has actively done
| everything it can to take humanity and empathy away from every
| process. Consumers are numbers on a dashboard. Workers are line
| items in an S-1. As much as people like to claim otherwise, the
| companies actions never take a hit that they know doesn't have
| a benefit elsewhere. Amazon is a big pioneer in the space -
| take something and remove all human decision making from it,
| automate it and then move onto the next thing. Now they apply
| that against hundreds of thousands of warehouse employees.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > This gets to the heart of the idea of "privilege", and why it
| can be so difficult to see yourself as privileged
|
| That's because basic trust and respect shouldn't be a
| privilege, the lack of it is the issue. Calling someone
| privileged for being respected almost sounds like an insult.
| Let's focus less on privilege and more on disadvantage.
| mcguire wrote:
| "Why should we focus on those 'disadvantaged' people? My life
| is hard, too."
| [deleted]
| schnischna wrote:
| That's why people work hard to acquire skills, to be able to
| work in better jobs.
|
| I have never run a warehouse, but I suspect that many of the
| strange seeming rules are in place because people otherwise try
| to exploit the system (like getting paid for smoking on the
| toilet for hours on end). It may seem inhumane, but perhaps it
| makes it possible to give people jobs who don't deserve
| automatic trust. Such people exist, unfortunately.
|
| I found very interesting the book of the guy who founded "The
| Big Issue", a magazine that homeless people sell in Britain.
| They also had to put some rules in place that seem strange, for
| example the vendors (homeless people) had to buy the magazines
| they wanted to sell. They are alcoholics, gamblers, addicts, so
| unfortunately some special rules were necessary to make it
| work.
| lkramer wrote:
| You don't think there are higher skilled people trying to
| exploit the system?
|
| I suspect the real difference here is developers are in
| higher demand. If we feel the checks becomes to unfair, we
| can go look for a different job.
|
| If a warehouse worker doesn't like his smoke breaks being
| monitored, there is little recourse, someone else can be
| hired who will accept these condition out of desperation for
| a job.
| adamc wrote:
| Your explanation seems off to me. Why would lower demand
| necessarily imply there was someone suitable who was
| desperate?
|
| It seems like your explanation suggests that the pool of
| "suitable" would be larger, i.e., the job is less skilled.
| I think it is definitely true that less skilled workers
| have bad options, because, by definition, they are easily
| replaced.
|
| More highly skilled workers can end up in this situation,
| too... it's just less automatic that they can be easily
| replaced. In a recession, or after structural changes that
| render many such workers redundant... sure.
| azernik wrote:
| Low or high demand are always relative to supply. So
| think "high supply" rather than "low demand".
| luckylion wrote:
| > More highly skilled workers can end up in this
| situation, too
|
| And the moment that happens, all those nice benefits go
| flying out the window and the SWE find themselves having
| to clock out when going to the toilet. Demand (and
| therefore the easy of replacement) is what makes the
| difference.
| throwaway55554 wrote:
| > I have never run a warehouse,
|
| You don't know...
|
| > ... but I suspect that many of the strange seeming rules
| are in place because people otherwise try to exploit the
| system (like getting paid for smoking on the toilet for hours
| on end). It may seem inhumane, but perhaps it makes it
| possible to give people jobs who don't deserve automatic
| trust. Such people exist, unfortunately.
|
| ... but you're assuming low wage workers cannot be trusted
| and therefore treated humanely.
|
| I think these biases are the issue being discussed.
| mtrower wrote:
| > You don't know...
|
| Do you? I've worked in plenty of these "unskilled"
| environments. It's absolutely the reason for these rules.
|
| Is every low wage worker like this? Certainly not. I assure
| you I've encountered _plenty_ who are, and the system of
| un-trust tends to breed untrustworthiness in those who
| otherwise might be trustworthy.
|
| It's not just the system, however. My grandfather ran a
| small construction business. He had no such draconian rules
| (and paid far better than minimum wage). I can't count how
| many new-hires he had to fire for crazy things like
| constantly showing up drunk, showing up late or not at all,
| etc. One guy would only show up on payday when checks were
| being handed out, work two hours, then leave. (Obviously,
| he didn't last long; still, Grandpa was too generous.)
|
| I don't defend such draconian systems as just; I despise
| them. However they absolutely do exist so that large
| companies can just hire disposable employees en masse,
| regardless of their work ethic.
| throwaway55554 wrote:
| > Do you?
|
| I worked retail for a dozen or so years after HS, before,
| and later during, getting my eng deg. The bad apples (so
| to speak) were rare. People showed up, worked, went home
| just fine.
|
| On the other hand, in the 15 years I've been a
| professional developer, I've seen people spend all their
| time looking for their next gig and doing the programming
| challenges necessary to get that gig. I've seen people
| skirt IT rules so they could access sites they shouldn't
| at work. I've seen people throw absolute 3 year old style
| tantrums because they were asked to fix bugs. People
| routinely show up late to meeting. All things low-skilled
| workers would get fired for but is somehow acceptable in
| our "bro" culture.
|
| It isn't an issue with the skill necessary for the
| environment. It's the people. And it doesn't matter if
| they're making minimum wage or 150K.
| schnischna wrote:
| I know that the rules exist, so I can assign a highly
| likelihood for there to be a reason for the rules to exist.
|
| Also I have read the one or other thing.
| __s wrote:
| My father works at a warehouse. I've worked in flooring
|
| These are jobs where people work together. Everyone knows
| who's the slacker & who gets shit done
|
| In flooring the owner would stop by for 10 minutes at smoke
| breaks & listen to gossip to get an idea of what's going on.
| He'd shuffle people's schedules around so that he could
| figure out who was the common denominator of trouble. For the
| most part there was very little intervention necessary. I
| happened to take off one day a week at random no questions
| asked (combination of not being physically capable of doing 5
| days a week of that job while also happening to be scraping
| paint off a house that summer)
|
| So you don't need to keep people on a tight leash. Learn to
| analyze the noise & intervene when something is clearly going
| wrong
| roosterdawn wrote:
| This is one of the few voices of sanity I've seen on this
| thread. Your father seems wise.
|
| With that said, I do understand why companies try and
| install panoptical surveillance practices in places where
| it's basically overkill. Competent managers, as you said,
| don't need to keep people on a tight leash. They do, as you
| said, learn to analyze the noise and intervene when
| something is clearly going wrong. The panopticon is put in
| place beyond a certain size because manager quality cannot
| be guaranteed. Now, whether that's a sound reason for its
| existence or not can be debated (I'd tend to agree it's
| not), but it does seem to function efficiently.
| miscPerson wrote:
| Not just because manager quality can't be guaranteed, but
| because when you have 10,000+ employees, the odds that
| some are fired and subsequently make a false
| discrimination claim are high -- and you need a lot to
| deal with that.
|
| Look at how Amazon is treated: with nearly a million
| workers, a few dozen complaining is enough for major
| media outlets to broadcast that they're a bad employer.
|
| Can you point to _any_ employer where 1 in 10,000 workers
| doesn't have a bad experience?
| roosterdawn wrote:
| Right, that's the other side of the equation that needs
| to be fielded beyond a certain size in organizational
| scale. Organizational processes need to be in place that
| protect the organization from bad actors, in a manner
| which is most resistant to being corrupted. As you say,
| even a few parts per million is essentially enough to get
| a large scale PR headache.
|
| With that said, the question of whether the system could
| improved (and significantly, in a step-wise manner) how
| it handled this situation remains an open question to me.
| I don't know well enough what happened in the cases that
| caused Tim Bray to resign to comment, but it's possible
| that actions taken by the corporate management, HR and
| legal have taken backfired in a way that will be looked
| at as unforced errors. At a company (ostensibly THE
| company) that prides itself on operational excellence,
| I'd be surprised if this doesn't end up being the case.
| High profile resignations like this are sometimes the
| spark that sets the whole process in motion and the few
| externally visible signs that you can see later on as
| evidence. If this was attrition was truly regretted by
| corporate, and was something that could be prevented
| ahead of time, it will have been a very expensive black
| eye, waste of resources and loss of true executive
| leadership talent. For folks like Tim Bray, the
| difficulty of filling the organizational void they leave
| is very high, and potentially not guaranteed.
|
| I guess time will tell.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| Unfortunately that's incredibly hard to scale. I've seen
| many construction companies hit the growth wall thinking
| that they could grow using that model instead of building
| process.
| Someone wrote:
| _"perhaps it makes it possible to give people jobs who don 't
| deserve automatic trust. Such people exist, unfortunately."_
|
| They may exist, but I doubt there are enough of them, even in
| Amazon's warehouses, to warrant the draconian rules for all
| employees.
|
| I also think people more _behave_ that way then that they
| _are_ that way. The way you treat your personnel will affect
| whether they behave like that.
| schnischna wrote:
| "I doubt there are enough of them, even in Amazon's
| warehouses, to warrant the draconian rules for all
| employees."
|
| So why do you think those rules exist? Because Amazon
| managers simply are bad people who like to torture their
| underlings?
|
| To me, THAT sounds implausible. Maybe the rules are not
| well suited to solve the problems that arise in such work
| places. But I'd prefer the critics to propose better rules
| then.
|
| So, let's go. Assume you are manager of a warehouse and you
| find many employees take extremely long breaks on the
| toilet. What do you do?
| bluntfang wrote:
| >The way you treat your personnel will affect whether they
| behave like that.
|
| Anecdotally, I have family members that run a business that
| require low skilled workers. They don't really _need_ full
| time workers, so they hire part-time and don 't pay a
| living wage to them, even though it is viable to their
| business to do so.
|
| So what do they get? They get unreliable people. People who
| steal from them. People who don't clock out. People who
| collude with the other employees to clock them in/out.
| People they can claim "make bad decisions" like buy lotto
| tickets or spend their paycheck on drugs and alcohol. etc.
|
| It gives them a reason to treat them poorly. I've heard
| things like "if we paid them more they'd just buy more
| lotto tickets, so why should I?"
|
| I often wonder how they would act and or who they could
| hire if they made full time roles, offering health
| insurance and treating their employees with dignity.
| odysseus wrote:
| On living wages in particular:
|
| "A 2003 Cato Institute study cites data showing job
| losses in places where living wage laws have been
| imposed. This should not be the least bit surprising.
| Making anything more expensive almost invariably leads to
| fewer purchases. That includes labor."
|
| Also:
|
| "People in minimum wage jobs do not stay at the minimum
| wage permanently. Their pay increases as they accumulate
| experience and develop skills. It increases an average of
| 30 percent in just their first year of employment,
| according to the Cato Institute study."
|
| Both of these are quotes from noted economist Thomas
| Sowell, who has done a lot of research into many studies
| on actual effects of living and minimum wage law.
|
| As for the people you describe, there are plenty of
| people who make higher wages and are just as unreliable
| and untrustworthy. And there are plenty who do honest
| work for low wages, and work their way up.
| bluntfang wrote:
| >The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank
| headquartered in Washington, D.C.
|
| I would be curious if there were any other organizations
| that came to the same conclusions.
| odysseus wrote:
| Sure, another example:
|
| "... a number of American cities have passed "living
| wage" laws, which are essentially local minimum wage laws
| specifying a higher wage rate than the national minimum
| wage law. Their effects have been similar to the effects
| of national minimum wage laws in the United States and
| other countries--that is, the poorest people have been
| the ones who have most often lost jobs."
|
| - Thomas Sowell, referencing the Public Policy Institute
| of California's "Scott Adams and David Neumark, "A Decade
| of Living Wages: What Have We Learned?" California
| Economic Policy, July 2005, pp. 1-23."
| carti wrote:
| The Cato Institute, founded as the Charles Koch
| Foundation, is pro-capital, pro-deregulation, and anti-
| worker.
|
| Being a noted economist doesn't mean that you aren't full
| of shit.
| schnischna wrote:
| It's a nice thought. But where would all the unreliable
| people work then? Or you think they would just become
| reliable if they would get paid more? That seems unlikely
| to me. There are unreliable rich people, too. People with
| gambling addictions or drug habits. More money doesn't
| automatically cure bad habits.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > Or you think they would just become reliable if they
| would get paid more?
|
| Quite possible. "Good morals start with a full pantry"
| and all. Comfortable circumstances may encourage better
| behavior, or put another way: treat your employees like
| shit, and don't be surprised if they behave shittily.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's a pretty common rationalization to justify a
| certain hands off management approach. It's easier to
| scale certain businesses by just running them at arms
| length.
|
| My first job was on a small family farm at age 12 -- we
| worked very hard but were treated fairly and well. The
| owner of the business would be hip-deep in the muck with
| us and was fully accountable for everything that happened
| on that farm. After that I moved on to different jobs in
| the mall, culminating in a semi-commissioned sales job
| that got me through college.
|
| In that environment, you learned very quickly that most
| of the workers in that mall were completely disposable,
| and a significant population were discarded when the car
| that was handed down to them broke down or they were
| unable to float insurance. No car == bus, and more bus ==
| more late arrivals, which resulted in termination.
|
| The worst employers were run in a hands off way with
| straw-bosses (ie. people making 7.25/hr vs. 5.75/hr circa
| 1995) running the place, and the hire/fire decisions were
| made by an owner or manager at arms length. This was
| common with the smaller retailers, some behind the scenes
| jobs, and the food court. The turnover was 50% a week in
| some cases, and they would just over-hire and fire (or
| drop hours to nothin). The best paid gigs were janitorial
| and back of house restaurant workers -- they worked hard,
| but had steady work and often made off-book money. The
| easiest gigs were places with a salaried manager, and
| they usually had a cadre of full-timers backed by a bunch
| of part-timer people.
|
| In the middle you had places with commissioned people,
| and there was always a tension between having too few and
| too many employees. Too many and your best salesmen would
| leave (and profitability drops, as you need salesmen to
| move margin enhancers like service plans), too few and
| you'd lose volume.
| jason0597 wrote:
| Relevant book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolutio
| n_of_Cooperation
| toyg wrote:
| You know that stuff about the human brain being terrible at
| correctly calculating the odds? I think this sort of rule-
| making comes from that.
|
| Maybe you'll hire a bad sheep every 20, but you'll be so
| scarred that you'll make a rule making 19 lives miserable,
| just to avoid the lone asshole taking advantage. In the
| same way as we think children shouldn't be left out on
| their own (because we read about some pedophile at the
| other end of the country), we then assume employees are
| assholes until proven otherwise. It's shitty for everyone
| involved, really.
| felipemnoa wrote:
| Another example is renting apartments. One bad tenant can
| cause a lot of harm, especially if you are a small
| landlord ie. three apartment house. You can go by years
| without a single bad tenant but all it takes is one bad
| one for you to start checking credit reports, references,
| etc.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| If the lowest tier of job is relatively easily replaced,
| one assumes the next tier is as well meaning the people
| who are often making these rules are not well trained
| veteran managers but people who may be first time people
| managers or not be cut out to be a manager.
|
| I had an early crappy hourly gig as a kid (as most do) at
| a major chain and in the span of my two years there we
| had one manager get caught doing crystal meth, another
| get caught _flagrante delicto_ and a third who was just a
| jerk.
| User23 wrote:
| The lone asshole taking advantage also makes the other 19
| miserable. The effect on morale is crushing. Always think
| past the first order consequences.
| rchaud wrote:
| > I suspect that many of the strange seeming rules are in
| place because people otherwise try to exploit the system
| (like getting paid for smoking on the toilet for hours on
| end).
|
| There have been large, profitable corporations that preceded
| Amazon and did not need to implement such draconian tracking
| systems.
|
| Perhaps these rules are in place because the people creating
| the rules know that rank and file have no bargaining power
| and cannot advocate for a less draconian system without fear
| of termination.
| schnischna wrote:
| Can you give examples?
|
| "Perhaps these rules are in place because the people
| creating the rules know that rank and file have no
| bargaining power and cannot advocate for a less draconian
| system without fear of termination."
|
| If that was the case, the same would have happened at the
| previous large corporations.
| whymauri wrote:
| >That's why people work hard to acquire skills, to be able to
| work in better jobs.
|
| I know it's a common mantra in these circles to 'acquire
| skills' and 'learn to code!' And by all means, if you are
| capable go for it - I know I did.
|
| But it's really hard to do this when your priorities are your
| day-to-day expenses. When your uncertainties are whether
| you'll have a home or food. It's also hard when traditional
| means for acquiring skills, like going to college, no longer
| have the same returns they used to. All of my friends who
| work at Amazon warehouses have college degrees. So it's not
| even a call to learn fulfilling skills, it's a call to
| specifically learn profitable skills.
| xondono wrote:
| I'm sorry but the "day-to-day doesn't let me learn" always
| sounded like an excuse to me (not implying anything
| personal). It can be true for some time, but it's always a
| temporal situation.
|
| Adquiring skills has pretty much nothing to do with
| college, some of the most skilled people I know in sales or
| executive office didn't even got a high school degree
| (they're old, I live in Spain).
| OJFord wrote:
| I don't think GP meant that everyone who works in a
| warehouse should be joining 'coding bootcamps' and striving
| to become '10x ninja devs' instead.
|
| I took it as referring to people working hard (or to
| varying degrees) through compulsory education, and
| sometimes choosing to continue it. We need people working
| in warehouses too!
| DagAgren wrote:
| We absolutely need people working in warehouses. Our
| society would collapse far faster without them than if
| all of us reading this would go away.
|
| And that means we need to treat them with respect, and
| pay them properly.
| defnotashton2 wrote:
| I'm not disagreeing people deserve respect. But with
| automation do we need people in factories? Answer is no.
| GcVmvNhBsU wrote:
| It probably depends a bit more on how you define "need".
| Do factory owners need people in factories when a robot
| can do the job? Probably not. Does society need people in
| factories so that the individuals have a job, which
| creates a sense of purpose and means through which people
| can provide for themselves? Probably.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| > All of my friends who work at Amazon warehouses have
| college degrees.
|
| Quite a few of my friends who work in dead end jobs also
| have college degrees, and they have them in the things
| you'd expect: the fine arts, intricate degrees on languages
| or theory, and other non-profitable skills. A degree does
| not equal a job, even if your college recruiter would like
| to tell you differently.
|
| > And by all means, if you are capable go for it
|
| And that is one of the most disrespectful things I hear
| applied to low wage earners - that they are incapable of
| learning new skills, that they're not as capable as other
| workers or that they they're doomed in be in low wage jobs
| forever.
|
| That's false. Usually what many of these workers need is
| help navigating how to get a profitable job, what skills
| actually pay and where to learn those skills in a way that
| results in a job. As we've established above, "get a four
| year degree" usually isn't a great path and these folks
| know it - but right now our culture is stuck on that
| phenomenon.
| danans wrote:
| > And that is one of the most disrespectful things I hear
| applied to low wage earners - that they are incapable of
| learning new skills, that they're not as capable as other
| workers or that they they're doomed in be in low wage
| jobs forever.
|
| That's not what the GP said at all. Rather, their
| statement acknowledges that there are low age earning
| people who are capable. All they said is that the
| challenges of daily subsistence in a low-wage situation
| add a significant additional obstacle to gaining the
| skills and experience needed to get a higher paying job.
| keb_ wrote:
| > And that is one of the most disrespectful things I hear
| applied to low wage earners - that they are incapable of
| learning new skills, that they're not as capable as other
| workers or that they they're doomed in be in low wage
| jobs forever.
|
| That's not what OP said. It's not that they are incapable
| of acquiring new skills, it's that some people are
| generally more capable to acquire new _marketable and
| profitable_ skills than others.
|
| I think it's a matter of interest or natural inclination.
| Inspiring interest in folks who otherwise would never be
| drawn to a profitable profession is difficult, and
| without interest it's nigh impossible to get them to
| effectively acquire the necessary skills to become
| employable in that field.
|
| I think the most disrespectful thing to be applied to low
| wage earners, or people in general, is that they have no
| passion at all for any craft or hobby. I believe that
| everyone does, and that those things have intrinsic
| value, even if they may not presently be valuable to the
| market.
| whymauri wrote:
| Completely agreed.
|
| And, I'd like to add a bit more. When I say capable, I
| absolutely don't mean that in terms of intellectual
| capacity. I mean it in the context of actual, abject
| poverty. I'm talking about being incarcerated for a
| possession charge and having your young life spiral out
| of control. Or being raised in a homeless shelter while
| also being diagnosed with severe chronic disease (I've
| met students like this). Scenarios where there is just so
| much happening, that the idea of stopping to think about
| careers, college, or even learning English seems
| unthinkable. Cases where you have as many jobs as you
| have mouths to feed (not just children, but aging or sick
| family).
|
| Peter Temin from MIT conjectures that it takes a person
| born into poverty nearly "20 years of nothing going
| wrong" to exit [0].
|
| [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/
| economi...
| Pfhreak wrote:
| When people say the workers are incapable, some folks
| mean that there are systemic problems with capitalism
| (particularly in the US). The workers don't have a
| deficiency, the system is designed to keep them where
| they are.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| That seems a spectacular claim that will require
| spectacular evidence to support it. I realize it's a very
| trendy statement, but it does not appear supported by the
| data[^1].
|
| [^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_t
| he_United...
| dabraham1248 wrote:
| Umm, you do realize that the top .001% of incomes going
| up will (with most distributions) raise the median
| income, even if the mode family income decreases?
| jason0597 wrote:
| Sorry, I don't understand. What you said may be true for
| mean (aka average), but the graph shows the median, not
| the mean.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| That is not a correct understanding of median, though
| median will not always show certain kinds of disparities.
| However you're going to have to provide evidence and data
| if you're making a particular claim here.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Sorry, it seems axiomatic to me. There are pressures on
| the working class that make it very difficult to "skill
| up" through no fault of the worker.
|
| Also, the very next graph shows that real household
| income is virtually unchanged. And rent as a percentage
| of income is rising as well. One graph does not tell the
| whole story.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Ah, well I take it to be true that generally complex
| systems do not have intents, that complex systems do not
| select against subsets, and that complex systems with no
| single controller are in fact complex and made up of a
| multitude of push and pull pressures. That's just my take
| though.
|
| > Also, the very next graph shows that real household
| income is virtually unchanged. And rent as a percentage
| of income is rising as well.
|
| There is not a single graph on this page which mentions
| rent as a percentage of income. You may see Taxes as a
| percentage of income[^2], but this does not touch in
| rent. One graph does not tell the whole story, but you
| must offer evidence for your argument. You can't simply
| shrug and say "well I disagree with the evidence!"
|
| > There are pressures on the working class that make it
| very difficult to "skill up" through no fault of the
| worker.
|
| That's true for all of humanity. You haven't established
| that there's a special kind of pressure on low wage
| earners due to or related to capitalism. Whether you're a
| capitalist, socialist, or an 11th century peasant, you
| need to eat, work, pay your taxes, watch your kids and
| generally live life.
|
| [^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_t
| he_United...
| Pfhreak wrote:
| > well I take it to be true that generally complex
| systems do not have intents, that complex systems do not
| select against subsets
|
| I'm not suggesting the system has an intent. But they
| absolutely do select against subsets. For years we had
| systemic discrimination in this country, from redlining
| policies to voting laws, that absolutely selected against
| subsets. You don't just remove the bad policies and
| declare the playing field is equal.
|
| Heck, natural selection and evolution are clearly complex
| systems that obviously select against subsets.
|
| > you must offer evidence for your argument
|
| Here's a source for rent vs. income:
| https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth-
| since-...
|
| It's _especially_ impactful to lower class folks. There
| are plenty of other examples available via your favorite
| search engine.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I'm going to pick on the particular case of redlining,
| because I'm a bit more up to date on it than some others.
| The others are important too.
|
| Redlining is abhorrent behavior. It's also caused by
| people. We can look at a specific city where Redlining is
| a major problem, and pull the rezoning documents and
| contracts and actually point to specific people who acted
| with bad intent. We can say "Bob over there is a jerk and
| engaging in this prohibited behavior" (and hopefully do
| something about it like punish Bob).
|
| That's not some particular case against capitalism.
| Redlining occurs in non-capitalist and less-capitalist
| (mixed capitalist/socialist societies), it doesn't occur
| in all capitalist societies or areas, and it's not
| directly capitalist driven (instead having heavy racial
| and religious discriminatory elements). That doesn't mean
| redlining isn't bad, it means that it has nothing to do
| with capitalism being good or bad.
|
| > Here's a source for rent vs. income...There are plenty
| of other examples available via your favorite search
| engine.
|
| There's also plenty of examples for my points which I've
| been carefully citing as we go, and in general it's poor
| form to leave finding evidence as an exercise up to the
| reader. I realize it may be inconvenient to you to have
| to cite evidence for your arguments, but that's the
| nature of trying to have an argument about a real world
| thing and not just a partisan talking point.
|
| You'll notice your source stops at 2014 (which, it was
| written in 2016, that's reasonable) and it doesn't take
| into account the significant median income increase
| behavior from 2014-2020 per [^1] above. Yes, rents do
| rise, that part isn't very surprising in and of itself.
| Also note that comparing the increases as percentages of
| each other is misleading - a 130% rent increase compared
| to a 110% income increase is not 1:1 given the original
| 1960s figures are dramatically different [^3]. This also
| doesn't account for the decrease of family size [^4]. In
| general family units have shrunk, and we've gone from
| multiple generations sharing a house to people moving out
| sooner (which would result in median rent increase).
|
| [^3]: https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/hist
| oric/gros...
|
| [^4]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-
| size-of-h...
| bkberry352 wrote:
| I don't think the argument was that redlining was an
| example of why capitalism was bad. I think the argument
| was that discrimination and redlining is an emergent
| behavior/intent of the complex system that is our
| society. Clearly the complex social system doesn't have a
| single controlling entity and is instead driven entirely
| by the actions of individual participants. Just like
| redlining is an emergent behavior of our society caused
| by the aggregate total of individuals acting in the
| society (the "bad actors" in your terms), so too can
| aggregate behavior emerge that puts pressure against
| workers upskilling.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I realize we're both forecasting about someone elses
| intent now, and the original comment was very brief. In
| general I agree that a complex system can give rise to
| emergent behaviors. I had taken the original comment to
| suggest a particular system was at fault and given the
| spread of options (capitalism, human labor, democracy,
| etc) picked what felt the most likely - capitalism.
|
| But even if we back away from that,
|
| > aggregate behavior emerge that puts pressure against
| workers upskilling.
|
| That seems the tough point to prove and it doesn't seem a
| priori true except in such a vague sense (time being
| finite, life being busy, etc) as to be meaningless. There
| doesn't appear to be any particular pressure against
| workers upskilling in general. Learning comes at a cost
| (time, effort, availability) but those costs are
| generally constant. When we point to that as the main
| causative factor then we're dramatically over-simplifying
| the case.
|
| When I talk to my family and friends who are low wage
| earners (and obviously this is anecdotal and not
| necessarily a representative data sample) usually the
| issues that arise are not knowing that options exist
| outside of college, not realizing what career paths
| actually are available, and frequently being discouraged
| from whatever experience with school they had
| historically.
|
| This doesn't seem like an emergent behavior problem, it
| seems like a communication issue at it's root.
| g_sch wrote:
| I think the idea that workers need "profitable" degrees
| to work "profitable" jobs isn't as obvious as you think.
|
| It used to be said that a college degree was a ticket to
| a well-paying job. Now, a few decades later, we're told
| to get a STEM degree, because other degrees are
| worthless. Who's to say that the criteria won't get even
| narrower in the future?
|
| Degrees aren't a symbol of skill nearly as much as they
| are a way for the market to allocate well-paying jobs,
| and the allocation is getting smaller all the time.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| > It used to be said that a college degree was a ticket
| to a well-paying job
|
| I have never actually heard this said. Can you provide
| some sources or any kind of quote for this? I've heard
| references to this having been said, but never an actual
| source.
|
| This is anecdotal, but even my older family members saw
| college as meeting gating requirements for some jobs, not
| a promise of getting those jobs.
|
| > Now, a few decades later, we're told to get a STEM
| degree, because other degrees are worthless.
|
| I don't think a STEM degree promises you a job, nor is a
| STEM degree inherently valuable unless you otherwise have
| the qualifications to work in a STEM field.
|
| > Degrees aren't a symbol of skill nearly as much as they
| are a way for the market to allocate well-paying jobs
|
| They're a form of gating, agreed.
|
| > and the allocation is getting smaller all the time.
|
| That's not clear. For some fields like being a Doctor
| that seems to be true, but for many fields like being an
| engineer that's obviously not the case. That being said,
| I would be surprised if there's a compiled data set that
| accurately tells us one way or another - the BLS data
| might be the closest.
| sosborn wrote:
| > I have never actually heard this said
|
| I usually heard it phrased slightly differently: "Without
| a college degree you will be stuck doing low wage work."
| jlbnjmn wrote:
| Here are a couple to get you started:
|
| https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/201
| 1/c...
|
| https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-
| summaries/education...
| danans wrote:
| > I have never actually heard this said. Can you provide
| some sources or any kind of quote for this? I've heard
| references to this having been said, but never an actual
| source.
|
| This is like asking for a source for the expression "You
| get what you pay for". There isn't a source - it's a folk
| saying. That doesn't make it either right or wrong, it's
| just a thing some people say.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >It used to be said that a college degree was a ticket to
| a well-paying job. Now, a few decades later, we're told
| to get a STEM degree, because other degrees are
| worthless. Who's to say that the criteria won't get even
| narrower in the future?
|
| A degree was never a ticket to a well paying job. Showing
| that you have critical thinking skills and the ability to
| learn and a base level of organization/discipline in your
| life is what a degree might have meant when they were
| more rigorous and scarce.
|
| Now that there are a billion schools offering a billion
| bullshit degrees in exchange for money, one way to cut
| through that is to bet on people who can do calculus and
| chemistry and physics, as those are better measures of
| analytical skills and whatever else employers are looking
| for.
| arez wrote:
| I suspect the same percentage of people exploiting the system
| in warehouses as in office jobs, still you can see very
| "inhumane" rules only in warehouses.
| fastball wrote:
| The difference is that with unskilled jobs, you can
| immediately find a replacement for the position.
|
| It's not as easy with skilled labor, so there is more
| leniency.
|
| I think the leniency is inversely proportional to the
| replaceability.
| gowld wrote:
| Warehouse workers are disrespected for the same reason poor
| people are: because a nontrivial proportion are desperate and
| willing to act on it. Poor people get fired and prosecuted for
| things that rich people feel entitled to do every day, like
| fart around on HN at work while getting paid, or grab a soda or
| a whole meal from the cafe without paying for it.
| zouhair wrote:
| We live in a society where the most important and essential
| jobs are treated with condescension.
| bendbro wrote:
| Why are you embarrassed? Embarrassment over their workplace
| implies you feel you have some level of stewardship of their
| workplace.
| raven105x wrote:
| > This gets to the heart of the idea of "privilege", and why it
| can be so difficult to see yourself as privileged. Because it
| often involves nothing more than being given a basic level of
| trust and respect that, once you have them, can seem like a
| bare minimum, not something that you would need to fight for.
|
| I've wondered since coming to this country how such a large
| collective delusion continues to persist. The part of the world
| where I grew up, it is not unheard of for people to get stabbed
| for having a fresh loaf of bread or a big bag of potatoes.
| Don't get me wrong, it is a great ideal and I support it ...but
| it is not realistic. The very concept of the weak simply ASKING
| to be granted the same power / privileges is outlandish - how
| do 400M adults collectively delude themselves into believing
| this is true? Based on my observations, SJWs are the modern day
| gestapo. They do not get their whims catered to because they
| are weak and we are idealistic, but because they will witch
| hunt individuals and businesses into oblivion within the public
| eye and they are therefore dangerous, for example.
|
| What is privilege? Is it even inherently immoral? How about
| inequality (of outcome, not of opportunity)?
|
| Most importantly, how do we still not have a clear set of goals
| for when we know we "reached" it?
|
| Repeated sweeping, collective laws and actions based on
| something so vague are truly vexing.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| Frankly, I don't know what people are hoping to achieve by
| the whole 'privileged' thing. From what I've read, it's
| supposed to be an invitation to introspect your life and
| realize you have had various advantages. But:
|
| 1) The whole term "check your privilege" is a very accusatory
| phrase, and when somebody gets accused, they get defensive /
| offensive. Nobody is going to be very introspective at that
| point.
|
| 2) As you say, what is privilege? There's nearly 8 billion
| people in the world, and logically speaking, somebody out
| there is the absolute least privileged out there. And it's
| sure as fuck not some angry lady standing in line at
| Starbucks. Being a guy, am I more privileged than her? Sure,
| in certain (perhaps even most), metrics. But compared to the
| lowest people, we're about equal relatively speaking. Any
| change desired should be flowing to the lowest tier.
|
| Personally, these things make the whole movement feel
| hypocritical to me. But when I bring this up usually the
| response is something along the lines of that I wouldn't
| understand because I'm privileged.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| What are "SJWs"? (i don't know that acronym)
| livingparadox wrote:
| It stands for "Social Justice Warriors".
|
| This originally meant someone standing up for minorities
| and the disadvantaged, but the term has been twisted into a
| derogatory insult for anyone who disagrees with
| conservatives on social issues.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| The SJW term, like everything else touching this issue,
| is _not_ black and white. Both of your definitions exist,
| yes, but so does everything else in between. By making
| things black and white, you are perpetuating the exact
| same behavior you seem to be fighting against.
| raven105x wrote:
| Social Justice Warriors. I don't know how to "accurately"
| explain the definition, seems to mean something different
| to everyone. To me, it means anyone who wants to achieve
| equality of outcome ...typically people of no merit (yes,
| this is harsh to say). Anyone who meaningfully furthers
| equality of opportunity I think is doing a good and
| reasonable thing - if it's even apparent which is which.
|
| The best recent example I can think of is the law requiring
| % of Fortune 500 board member presence based on gender - it
| is blatantly sexist, and is a complete "equality of
| outcome" blanket with no counter-equivalent. Where's the
| law requiring 40% of undesirable positions, like trash
| collectors and electricians be a certain gender? More than
| anything, I would just like to see consistency and it is
| simply not there. My biggest issue with this is "equality"
| matters in high income prestigious positions, but for the
| other ones it is somehow not an issue. How can people even
| use the word "equality"?
|
| If you ever talk to a male nurse, good example. They're
| likely the only guy there, and the work environment for
| them is not good - but the answer there is: deal with it or
| get out. A counter-example this board would be very
| familiar with: what it's like to be the only woman on an
| engineering team. It sucks just as much, but the answer is
| very different. Alas, this contradiction is often just
| ignored.
|
| Personally the sad irony in this is that "privilege" is a
| real thing, I'm not contesting this - but the insane
| overreach is hurting the goal of providing equality of
| opportunity.
|
| My guess is that if equality of opportunity was objectively
| proven, and the outcome was not equal, people would still
| be upset ...and as a society, that's dangerous.
|
| Keep in mind I wrote the above with the assumption that
| equality of opportunity is the goal. Based on what I
| observe daily, it is very hard to actually believe that.
| skinkestek wrote:
| It means Social Justice Warriors.
|
| I'd like to say I'm one as I do stand up and fight for
| people who are less privileged than me, but the term is
| deeply tainted by people who pretend to care about others
| but are really just out to play the game of politics and
| use a weaker/minority group or individual to further tjeor
| own selfish cause.
|
| Don't use the word as I guess there are at least two
| subgroups of HNers ready to downvote and/or flag you for it
| ;-)
| [deleted]
| maximente wrote:
| > the weak
|
| well, there you have it. you're labeling a solid billion
| people (more?) as weak, ergo deserving of their fate. that is
| about as circular as it gets.
| raven105x wrote:
| There are those with power who reap it, those with power
| who are granted it, and those without it. That's just how
| it is, and if you disagree there is a much better way to go
| about that than putting your words into my mouth to portray
| your point of view.
|
| Any society worth much will do its best to provide the
| basics for everyone, and utilize everyone's capabilities
| regardless of range, but if you remove all that ...yeah.
| All you're left with is the weak and the strong. The whole
| point of societies is to incentivize those useful to the
| collective and grant them "power" rather than the
| psychopath killers who used to be emperors 1000 years ago.
| blueline wrote:
| > Based on my observations, SJWs are the modern day gestapo
|
| really? are you sure? "SJWs" are comparable to the state-
| sponsored secret police of nazi germany, which had unilateral
| power to imprison (physically imprison, you know, in a real
| jail where they would be tortured. not on twitter) anyone
| without justification, and who were instrumental in the
| genocide of millions of people?
|
| do you mind justifying that claim in any way whatsoever?
| raven105x wrote:
| Sure thing. How would you say the ability to wage free,
| self-fueled defamation campaigns (who bored people on the
| internet carry out for you) or things like false harassment
| / even worse (touchy topic, I do not say this lightly)
| false rape accusations are any different from the
| unilateral power to imprison (physically imprison, as in
| yes real jail ...maybe sans the torture) - just like you
| said?
|
| Better yet, in the good interest of being my own devil's
| advocate, what would you say is an equivalent for this on
| the other side of the gender coin flip? I want to be very
| clear about the above: shitty people will be shitty people
| regardless of race / gender / religion, nor do I imply this
| happens often. But the massive imbalance _of opportunity_
| is already there is my point.
| blueline wrote:
| i'm going to leave all the minutiae of this response
| aside, because i don't want to get lost in the weeds.
|
| the REALLY important part that you're missing is that the
| gestapo were an _arm of the state_. some blue checkmarks
| on twitter cancelling people can _never_ compare to a
| literal secret police force run by the government.
|
| the scale of effect is just comically different. even if
| i suspend my disbelief that outrage about false rape
| accusations and people being harassed for their opinions
| are 100% true exactly as stated, how in the everloving
| shit is that comparable to a secret police force that
| orchestrated the systematic torture/murder of MILLIONS of
| people?
|
| it's just not even close. use a better analogy.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| If you make a comparison between 2 objects with different
| properties, different people will look at different
| subsets of the properties that makes them see
| similarities or not, other people will pick on the
| differences to negate the first. In this particular case
| one person is looking at specific similarities and the
| other is pointing out to the differences; it does not
| help.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| I think this is a two way street. If you've never been involved
| at a management or ownership level of a business that has "low
| pay" labor (e.g., food service, warehouse, retail sales).
|
| For every 2-3 decent workers there is one that just takes pure
| advantage of the environment (e.g., stealing product, stealing
| time, etc). Sometimes this occurs at great cost for a period of
| time before it is discovered. EDIT: This was meant to be
| illustrative, not an exact ratio.
|
| This makes companies take extreme policy measures for the few
| instances of this that impact everyone, because the financial
| impact is so disproportionate.
|
| Now, the argument can (and is) made that pay is a factor. "If
| you pay me more I won't act like this". But depending on the
| business (e.g., a local pizza place) there is no affording
| that.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I worked at a major pizza chain in high school. One of the
| assistant managers would use his access to update his time
| sheet so that his login time was 12 hours off from his real
| login time. So if he logged in at 4pm, he would update it to
| really be 4am. At first glance his clock in times would look
| correct, but he was stealing 12 hours of wages. This went on
| for months before he was caught and fired.
|
| That was the biggest thing I saw. There was a TON of smaller
| theft in the form of drivers faking customer complaints so
| that the order was freed out, even though the driver had been
| paid cash for the order.
| Czarcasm wrote:
| I've seen a lot of the same stuff.
|
| A of my acquaintances from my hometown worked at a large
| retailer through highschool. They would hide merchandise
| under skids in the outdoor garden center during their
| shift, then come back at night to recover it. They would
| stuff small expensive items (ie: iPods), into the
| advertisement trays at the front of shopping carts, then
| recover them once the carts were pushed out into the
| parking lot. They built a "fort" between two aisles in the
| back warehouse to take naps during their shifts.
|
| I could give stories like this for a long time. They never
| got caught (to my knowledge).
|
| Not all low-level employees are thieves. But more of them
| are then most people realize.
| oppositelock wrote:
| I can confirm this, having first hand experience with it. We
| hired many low-skill workers at a big tech company that
| you've heard of about ten years ago. These workers received a
| couple of weeks of training, and then were set to do a rather
| simple, menial, repetitive job.
|
| These workers didn't sell products, but did very low level
| tech work, but the entire operation was mired in drama. For
| example, we had a strict no drugs policy, and no weapons
| policy on campus, zero tolerance. So, say that one of your
| employees comes up crying that she is getting fired because
| she did heroin during work hours, and she needs to money for
| her unborn child (this happened!), or a guy gets angry at
| being fired because he was pulling out his new .45 from his
| waistband to show his cubicle neighbors. We had a LOT of this
| stuff, and as a result, many zero tolerance policies.
|
| It's difficult to understand how many hard living,
| disadvantaged people there are in this country, even in
| wealthy areas like the Bay Area of CA, who bring their rough
| living to work with them. What do you do as an employer? Do
| you tolerate this to be friendlier to the employees, and
| someone gets killed, making you liable? Do you come down like
| a hardass and dehumanize them even more, but cover your butt?
| Neither choice is good, but it's the latter that usually
| happens.
| albinofrenchy wrote:
| It's amazing how this thread got derailed so quickly from
| "The power disparity between low skill workers generates
| worse working conditions" to "If we treat low skill workers
| well, don't we have to support them doing drugs and
| bringing guns?"
|
| Of course not. Allowing needles and guns at your workplace
| isn't friendlier to employees in general.
|
| The discussion went from "Maybe we shouldn't fire them for
| trying to organize so they don't die in a pandemic" to
| "Whats an employer to do with 33% time thieves and drug
| users?" embarrassingly quickly.
| oppositelock wrote:
| Why is it embarrassing? This is really a problem which
| employers must deal with.
|
| I think what Tim Bray did is heroic, I think that Amazon
| exploited workers way too much, all in the name of
| thinner overheads and lowering prices, which is the only
| thing their customers care about.
|
| Tim Bray's resignation won't change things, but if we
| decide that Amazon's unfair and refuse to patronize them
| because of their employee treatment, then perhaps there
| will be change. However, I think there are enough people
| living paycheck to paycheck where that is a secondary
| consideration after price, and Amazon does have good
| prices on many things.
|
| I, for one, will be curtailing my use of Amazon. I only
| used them sporadically anyway, preferring to support
| others, but still liked the convenience of Prime for some
| products. For work, I spend six figures a month with AWS,
| but there's no employee mistreatment there that I'm aware
| of.
| albinofrenchy wrote:
| It's embarrassing that the flow of the conversation went
| from "The power disparity between low and high skill
| labor is causing terrible working conditions" to "But the
| employers have to deal with theft and time theft" to "And
| sometimes drug use and guns" in two comments.
|
| It's a massive derailment from the point that makes it
| seem like employers are unduly burdened by their
| employees. It reads as 'Point', 'Counterpoint' but it
| really isn't -- nobody is going to argue that employees
| should be allowed to bring drugs and guns or steal from
| the company.
|
| (Although I imagine "Time theft" mentioned above includes
| behavior that if high skilled labor did wouldn't raise
| any eyebrows.)
| oppositelock wrote:
| Come on, HN is about weaving a tapestry from tangents to
| tangents :)
| jorblumesea wrote:
| Honestly just sounds like lower middle class in America and
| nothing to do with the job. We don't do a great job taking
| care of people. Drug user, violence, psychological issues
| and domestic problems are rampant.
| Vrondi wrote:
| Well, you can't behave in an uncivilized manner, and then
| expect someone to want to pay you for the privilege of
| having you around. Particularly if you are also low-
| skilled or only have skills which are extremely common
| and therefore low-valued. Menial or "low-skill" labor is
| not low paid because we don't need it. It is low-paid
| because the market is perpetually glutted. If you are
| unable to differentiate yourself to even the tiny extent
| of just behaving yourself while at work, then you are of
| course disposable, because literally thousands or
| millions wait to replace you. Why would any employer want
| to pay you to come do drugs at work, endangering everyone
| there and causing them liability? They are not your Mama.
| jshevek wrote:
| I can see how dehumanization could be a common occurrence
| when "coming down hard" or "covering your butt", but I
| don't think it's intrinsic. Having and enforcing standards
| isn't intrinsically dehumanizing. Going too far in the
| other direction could also involve dehumanization, in the
| form of denying people's agency and capacity for personal
| responsibility.
| johnmaguire2013 wrote:
| Maybe you can work on your hiring practices? Even for low-
| skill jobs, you can hire for soft skills.
|
| edit: I am being downvoted and don't know why. Can you
| please explain what's wrong with this idea? I think the
| parent paints a false dichotomy.
|
| For example - another option is to deal with problematic
| individuals on an individual basis. You don't have to ruin
| the entire company culture.
| oppositelock wrote:
| For some really annoying grunt jobs, you're not going to
| hire the most disciplined, most educated people with a
| good work ethic. People willing to do tedious, crappy
| work have no other options usually, and you also can't be
| too picky, or you won't hire anyone. These jobs typically
| have low value as well, so if you tried to pay more, the
| whole project may not be cost effective and won't happen.
|
| You definitely need to treat people with as much respect
| as possible, but in some jobs, you have to have all these
| rules in place knowing you'll get people who aren't model
| citizens. I was never in the HR org chart here, never saw
| finances, but I suspect the people that I mentioned were
| paid near minimum wage. Few stuck around more than six
| months, and those who did, moved onto better jobs. It was
| all very structured and regimented. I would never fire
| anyone for trying to make their workplace better,
| assuming they did it in a non-disruptive way.
| jshevek wrote:
| > _Can you please explain what 's wrong with this idea?_
|
| This may have more to do with the phrasing of your first
| sentence, which could be interpreted as flippant, or
| presumptive, or maybe even victim blaming.
|
| [After reading other comments, I think the behavior you
| noted is most likely to be the result of people engaged
| in ideological battle. If this is true, I would just keep
| engaging in good faith, there's little you can do.]
|
| Separately, in the future, you might frame your follow-up
| inquiry as:
|
| > _edit: Can anyone please explain what 's wrong with
| this idea? I think the parent paints a false dichotomy._
|
| Or similar. That is, leaving off explicit mention of your
| motivation for asking as [discussion of this specific
| motivation] is frowned upon in the site guidelines.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Being compelled by poverty to continue working elbow to
| elbow with a peer who flashes deadly weapons strikes me as
| fairly dehumanizing.
| zach_garwood wrote:
| I'm curious why you believe this type of behavior is only
| found in "disadvantaged" workers. In my brief career, I've
| encountered several white collar workers drinking alcohol
| and smoking cannabis on the job, and I even stumbled across
| a lawyer doing cocaine in a bathroom. I've seen desk
| workers get canned for bringing knives to work and leaving
| guns in their car. I've known office workers who have
| stolen both time and money from our employer and who have
| harassed and assaulted our coworkers. I even saw someone
| get escorted out of the building for downloading and
| _printing off_ porn from the internet. I 've seen all of
| these from white collar workers, and I've even perpetrated
| some of these acts myself! So, I'm having a really hard
| time swallowing the proposition that "hard living" people
| have some monopoly on being bad employees.
| taurath wrote:
| Maybe its because scooping up 100s of people at random from
| the population all at once and putting them in a box is
| asking for trouble.
|
| Tech companies don't understand culture. The same
| assumption that you give a bunch of kids laptops and
| they'll just automatically learn to program is the same
| that if you give people cubicles coffee and water they'll
| act like docile office workers. There are things that you
| needed that you didn't have a line item for.
| morelisp wrote:
| > we had a strict no drugs policy
|
| I have news that might surprise you about how widespread
| hard drug use in SV programming, finance, or any "startup"
| area.
|
| Zero tolerance for the phone banks but not for Elon Musk,
| right?
| cbsmith wrote:
| <sarcasm>Those stories sound nothing like the stories you
| hear about highly compensated employees at tech companies.
| You never hear stories of them ignoring strict company
| policies, engaging in drug abuse on the job, or displaying
| behaviour that makes other employees fear for their own
| safety.</sarcasm>
| natosaichek wrote:
| <sarcasm> No you don't understand. Cocaine is totally
| different from crack. </sarcasm>
|
| But I couldn't think of a 'danger' equivalent off the top
| of my head. What are some examples?
| cbsmith wrote:
| Well, for starters, you hear from a lot of women who feel
| like their safety may be at risk because of behaviour of
| certain individuals they work with...
| NullInvictus wrote:
| I have been involved in both working in services and in the
| management level of a restaurant business. It is still my
| opinion that the pay, disposability, lack of dignity, lack of
| future, lack of community, and disrespect are the primary
| drivers for bad workplace behavior. Treat people like
| animals, and they will act like animals. It's just
| exploitation, and I work my current job with fear of having
| to go back to that.
|
| > But depending on the business (e.g., a local pizza place)
| there is no affording that.
|
| This is maybe a radical argument, but I make it in good
| faith; if your business can only exist by paying workers at
| or below poverty wages, and/or enacting dehumanizing
| controls, it probably shouldn't exist. If the demand for the
| product or service is sufficient, price should follow
| accordingly to make that business viable and profitable.
| Saying a business can't afford to pay workers a living wage
| and treat them right is equivalent to unintentionally saying
| 'the business can't exist without worker exploitation'. I do
| not believe that is a defensible position if you don't
| axiomatically accept worker exploitation.
|
| Maybe any given business model doesn't have a god-given moral
| right to exist. It does suck if we lose that local pizzeria,
| but clearly we didn't want the pizza enough to pay what it
| cost to ethically support such a business. If you're worried
| about the job loss or availability of services caused by such
| a position, there a whole sea of political and socioeconomic
| thought on how to solve that. It's probably beyond the
| current conversation.
| jjeaff wrote:
| The idea that they "shouldn't exist" doesn't make much
| sense to me.
|
| As long as you treat your employees with respect and pay
| legal wages, who are we to say that the wages are "poverty
| wages".
|
| Many of these low wage, entry level positions are/were
| meant to be filled by young people, still living with
| parents, or part time workers who may have a spouse that is
| the primary earner.
|
| The problem is that due to lack of other options, many
| people are crowding out these type of workers and using
| these jobs as full time, primary income.
|
| If the alternative is no job at all (i.e. "shouldn't
| exist") then poverty wages sound better than nothing.
| [deleted]
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Your second sentence asserts that poverty is some
| nebulous concept, and that if wages are "legal" then they
| must be "moral".
| taurath wrote:
| > As long as you treat your employees with respect and
| pay legal wages, who are we to say that the wages are
| "poverty wages".
|
| When working those wages leave you in poverty its poverty
| wages.
|
| > Many of these low wage, entry level positions are/were
| meant to be filled by young people, still living with
| parents, or part time workers who may have a spouse that
| is the primary earner.
|
| This is not the case, and has never been the case. The
| economy is not set up for the benefit of teens on summer
| vacation.
|
| 44% of all workers aged 18 to 64 made a median of
| $10.64/hr and an annual income less than $20,000. Its
| hard to overstate how many people across the country are
| living on poverty wages - the "young people" theory to me
| frequently only comes about from people who've grown up
| in affluent areas and had evening jobs at grocery stores.
| Most low wage workers in this economy are invisible.
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/research/meet-the-low-wage-
| workfor...
| cmckn wrote:
| > the "young people" theory to me frequently only comes
| about from people who've grown up in affluent areas and
| had evening jobs at grocery stores.
|
| You've hit the nail on the head. This position is
| privilege exemplified, and indicates a lack of empathy
| for people who do not have the skills, opportunity, or
| desire to obtain higher-paying positions. Everyone in our
| society should be able to live with dignity, regardless
| of their vocation. No one needs to scrape by in the
| wealthiest country on earth, especially when minimum-wage
| jobs make so much of our society possible.
| taurath wrote:
| I don't think calling out people for having privilege is
| a good way to win someone to your side unless the person
| has had the opportunity to hear other perspectives and
| has chosen to ignore them. It turns an otherwise
| productive educational conversation (on both sides) into
| combat.
|
| I don't blame anyone for having a (relatively) sheltered
| life, as there's plenty in our life that all of us being
| on this forum are sheltered from. I consider it a good
| thing to be sheltered from a lot of traumas growing up.
| Our children need not feel the same pains we did. But by
| using a combative tone you're lessening the change for
| empathy to win out.
|
| Finally, thats not to say that combat (rhetorical,
| physical) isn't the solution in some cases.
| pnutjam wrote:
| This part of your your comment hits on the one thing I try
| to teach younger people, "It's just exploitation, and I
| work my current job with fear of having to go back to
| that."
|
| The difference between a job and a career is portability.
| If you have a career, you can switch employers and they
| will value your experience. You will make the same or more.
| If you have a job, when you switch employers you start back
| at the bottom. Sometimes there is a small premium for
| experience, but it's nowhere near what you can make at a
| good employer for longevity.
| kgin wrote:
| > This is maybe a radical argument, but I make it in good
| faith; if your business can only exist by paying workers at
| or below poverty wages, and/or enacting dehumanizing
| controls, it probably shouldn't exist.
|
| Come on now, those antebellum cotton plantations are
| operating on razor thin margins. You can't ask them to
| change their labor practices.
| lliamander wrote:
| > This is maybe a radical argument, but I make it in good
| faith; if your business can only exist by paying workers at
| or below poverty wages, and/or enacting dehumanizing
| controls, it probably shouldn't exist. If the demand for
| the product or service is sufficient, price should follow
| accordingly to make that business viable and profitable.
| Saying a business can't afford to pay workers a living wage
| and treat them right is equivalent to unintentionally
| saying 'the business can't exist without worker
| exploitation'. I do not believe that is a defensible
| position if you don't axiomatically accept worker
| exploitation.
|
| I respect your sincere intentions here, but I do object to
| that proposal, and I hope that there can be a constructive
| dialog on the subject.
|
| I think my primary objection is to the description of the
| small pizzeria as being exploitative. Sure, the workers are
| not payed very much, but the power differential is very
| small. It seems much more likely that the economic
| relationship is genuinely one of mutual benefit, and I have
| a hard time finding a moral objection to that.
|
| My other objection is to the ramifications of such a policy
| on a broader society. It seems inevitable to me that in
| such a society, everyone would be forced to be clients of
| large, faceless entities, be they private corporations or
| governmental entities. That we could rely on either of
| these institutions to protect individuals from exploitation
| is highly dubious. To my mind, it is the very existence of
| intermediary institutions (like small businesses) which are
| the best safeguards of individual autonomy and well-being.
| pnutjam wrote:
| It's possible that the owner is being exploited too, but
| the franchise corporation, or financial interests. That
| doesn't make it ok for them to exploit others.
| lliamander wrote:
| > It's possible that the owner is being exploited too,
| but the franchise corporation, or financial interests.
|
| Irrelevant. I'm not talking about the owner being
| exploited. We could just be talking about a independent
| small business that's trying to get by on small margins.
|
| > That doesn't make it ok for them to exploit others.
|
| You're assuming that low pay is exploitation when that is
| the very notion I'm challenging. The exploitation comes
| from a power differential that is leveraged to the
| benefit of one party. If neither party has much power
| over the other, and neither is benefiting unduly from the
| relationship, then there is not exploitation.
|
| It may very well be that neither the business nor the
| employee has much to offer each other. The point is that
| they're still willing to work together for mutual
| benefit, however small that mutual benefit may be.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| > This is maybe a radical argument, but I make it in good
| faith; if your business can only exist by paying workers at
| or below poverty wages, and/or enacting dehumanizing
| controls, it probably shouldn't exist.
|
| Yeah, I agree, but I think another false general assumption
| people might make is "every retail or food service job is
| minimum wage" and that every owner is just shortchanging
| their workers to pay themselves more. That isn't the case
| across the board.
|
| Best Buy doesn't pay minimum wage, heck even when I started
| there as a part time computer tech in 2002 I was paid
| $9.50/hr. That being said with the 1 year $80/share price
| they can damn well afford to pay more.
|
| My friend who owns the pizza business pays more than his
| franchise based competitors, he has employees who have
| worked for him for years because of this. So he's not
| paying close to minimum wage but the "meta market" for a
| pizza keeps his prices in a certain range. As I mentioned
| in a below comment there are other market forces at work
| here (e.g., a national franchise has buying power for food
| price reductions, etc).
|
| So knowing his very loyal customer base, if he had to
| increase prices to support extra cost, they'd probably stay
| to a certain extent, but maybe that results in less
| employees or hours. Who knows.
|
| > If you're worried about the job loss or availability of
| services caused by such a position, there a whole sea of
| political and socioeconomic thought on how to solve that.
| It's probably beyond the current conversation.
|
| Yeah, that's my whole point. Any legislation that increases
| wages has a disproportionate impact based on your business,
| and SBA says small business makes up 48% of jobs[0].
|
| But like you said, the conversation is a level up from
| this.
|
| [0]: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-
| Small-...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _This is maybe a radical argument, but I make it in good
| faith; if your business can only exist by paying workers at
| or below poverty wages, and /or enacting dehumanizing
| controls, it probably shouldn't exist._
|
| The problem is that once you close the business and fire
| the underpaid employees, they don't disappear. Now they're
| unemployed and make $0/hour.
|
| This blind spot fascinates me. The best explanation I've
| seen is "The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics". It says
| that "when you observe or interact with a problem in any
| way, you can be blamed for it".
|
| So in this scenario, once you've fired your employees, you
| are no longer connected to them, and their further destiny
| is _not_ your fault.
|
| I suspect this is a deep part of our moral instincts, and
| we have to be aware of it to get to a more rational
| approach.
|
| https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-
| eth...
| kanwisher wrote:
| Thanks that blog post was really opened my mind on the
| topic
| gilrain wrote:
| You're claiming that 1/2 to 1/3 of employees are criminally
| stealing time or product from their workplace. I need some
| robust citations for that, because it's ridiculous on its
| face.
| downerending wrote:
| I suspect that those of us who worked our ways through
| school at menial jobs can think of many examples right off
| the top of our heads.
|
| In my experience, "1/2" is too much (depending on how you
| define stealing). But it was quite common for both
| employees to steal from their employer, and for employers
| to steal (wages) from the employees.
|
| It was also quite common for employees to simply walk off
| when they felt they'd had enough.
| Frost1x wrote:
| If you consider employee and employer a resource exchange
| (time and abilities for money) then theft can also be
| tucked in as underemployment. If a task takes 10 minutes
| to complete an employee intentionally draws it out to 4
| hours, is that theft? They were there, they were working,
| but didn't do it at maximum efficiency. If an employer
| can afford to pay an employee $20/hr and was even
| expecting to but was able to get labor at $10/he, is that
| theft?
|
| Those in power define the rules and define things like
| 'theft.' Theft in the traditional sense is taking
| physical tangible resources that aren't yours. When we
| move to intangibles like time, businesses have defined
| all the rules around theft, not people.
| downerending wrote:
| In the US at least, businesses do have more power to get
| things written into law, yes, but certainly not all of
| the power. Minimum wage laws, for example, certainly
| aren't the work of business interests.
|
| In practice, the situation is rather gray. Employers will
| virtually never call the police in a case of theft (or
| "theft")--they'll simply fire the person involved.
| Likewise, most employees won't do much if they're stolen
| (or "stolen") from by employers, they'll just quit.
|
| We're not even consistent in the ways that we think about
| the topic. There has been talk of a "rent strike" during
| the pandemic, which amounts to stealing resources from
| one's landlord (who might be "rich" or might be quite
| "poor"). Few people would go along with the idea of a
| "grocery strike", in which those who need food but cannot
| pay simply shoplift from their local store. Somehow the
| former sounds more okay than the latter, even though the
| former would typically involve theft on a much larger
| scale.
|
| And of course, most of us posting here are "stealing"
| from our employers in some sense. The better employers
| typically realize that they're better off looking the
| other way.
| logfromblammo wrote:
| There's a handy chart out there that plots change in
| worker productivity and change in purchasing power by
| income percentile over time that answers this in a single
| graphic.
|
| If a task normally takes 10 minutes, and an employee
| completes it in five, is that a donation of effort?
|
| Is it theft to titrate the productivity of your labor to
| fit the rate of pay you receive for it? Employees do not
| get paid more for effort that exceeds par.
|
| If I get paid $7/hour, I can easily reduce my
| productivity until one hour of my labor produces $21 for
| the employer. Or maybe I work two hours to produce $160
| and slack off for six.
|
| Two consecutive generations of not being rewarded for
| contributing additional effort for the benefit of the
| company has taken its toll, culturally. Nobody is willing
| to uphold a string work ethic for an unethical employer.
|
| The employers burned through all their credit with labor,
| and are trying to refinance by redefining all the rules.
| It won't work. It's time for them to pay up.
| downerending wrote:
| > Two consecutive generations of not being rewarded
|
| Only two? Someone skipped history class. :-)
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| When I worked at Kmart, on more than one occasion they were
| forced to first to fire a large number of cashiers (10+)
| due to stealing. And the Kmart I worked in was definitely
| in the 'good' part of town.
|
| Now Kmart also paid literally the minimum wage, but it
| still shocked me the number of people who would steal when
| they clearly had video, and regularly fired people for
| doing so. And some of the people who stole got caught for
| stealing bottles of soda to drink while at work...
|
| As for stealing time, that was much more common, but I
| actually never saw anyone fired for that, no matter how
| often they took half hour long bathroom breaks, or spent an
| hour putting away 5 items. I guess Kmart understood they
| had to put up with something when paying literally as
| little as possible.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Maybe if Kmart paid their employees a little more they
| could afford to buy themselves something to drink at
| work.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If Kmart paid their employees more, people would shop at
| Walmart.
|
| And they did. Sears paid their employees very well, and
| consumers rewarded sears by shopping at their new
| competitors that offered lower prices.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Ironically enough Sears paid their employees well until
| they were bought by Kmart. When Lampert (Kmart CEO) took
| over he cut wages and jobs at Sears and then proceeded to
| run the company into the ground. Customers didn't stop
| shopping at Sears because employees were paid too much.
| Sears had _more_ customers at the time they were paying
| higher wages. Customers stopped shopping at Sears because
| extreme cost cutting efforts by a former hedge fund
| manager with no retail experience eroded the company's
| customer-oriented quality brand.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I think it was inevitable that Sears would lose customers
| to cheaper merchants. Sears was offering employees
| expensive defined benefit pensions and healthcare. The
| 80s, 90s, and 00s saw the spending power of the bottom 4
| quintiles drop. Even if people wanted to support a Sears
| type store, they can't afford to.
|
| Lambert didn't help, but I think we're still seeing the
| hollowing out of the middle class causing a loss of
| customers for places like Sears that could have paid
| middle class wages and sold decent quality goods.
| jellicle wrote:
| What actually happened to Sears: https://www.salon.com/20
| 13/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroy...
| jabedude wrote:
| I don't think that logically follows. Costco is well-
| known for generous compensation and are doing well.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Costco serves a limited range of items to middle and
| upper middle class areas only. As it already fulfills
| this segment of the population that can pay a little bit
| extra for quality, no competitor to Costco exists.
|
| The same dynamics exist with Nordstrom/Apple/Trader Joes.
| There's a few brands that can afford to offer more
| quality and better paid workers, but they don't exist in
| poorer parts of any city, and there's only one of each
| type of store.
|
| Everyone else has to offer the lowest prices.
| robotnikman wrote:
| Not to be nitpicky, but wouldn't Sam's Club be considered
| a competitor to Costco?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is, but last I heard Walmart was downsizing Sams Club
| operations. I also don't think it's known for quality and
| treating its employees well like Costco is. If you put a
| Sams Club next to a Costco, I would bet people choose to
| go to Costco.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| We had water fountains in the back, you can always bring
| your own drinks, etc. It's hard to make an excuse for
| someone stealing a bottle of soda, a luxury.
|
| It's not like anyone was stealing TVs, and that's what
| blew my mind about the stealing. It tended to be drinks
| and candy bars, stuff that not only was low value, but
| just simply wasn't necessary. It was stealing for the
| sake of stealing, because they thought they could get
| away with it.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| I think the total amount of people who steal would go
| down if paid more, but I think there is just a "base
| amount" of the population who will always do this
| regardless what job/how much they get paid.
| jshevek wrote:
| If thieves figure out that stealing incentivizes the
| employer to pay more (in an effort to reduce stealing),
| they now have a new motive to steal. That is, to increase
| the pressure on the employer to raise wages further. This
| new motive can even 'feel righteous', as it benefits the
| other low paid workers as well.
| Vrondi wrote:
| They can't afford to bring an empty bottle from home and
| fill it with the free water from the water fountains? You
| surely jest. Soda is not a life necessity owed to
| employees. Particularly if part of your business is
| selling soda. Every K-Mart I every saw had an employee
| lounge with fridge where you could bring your own drinks
| or lunch and store them as well.
| Emanation wrote:
| Why pay them more when you can offer some of what they're
| stealing as a benefit for working there. It's probably a
| lot cheaper and creates goof faith.
| griffinkelly wrote:
| I worked with a gas station chain and they had a similar
| approach. They cumulatively lost thousands of dollars
| from cashiers stealing from the registers, but I guess it
| was less than having to pay them more? They usually
| recouped the stolen money through store surveillance, but
| still, it was a surprisingly high amount of time and
| effort; I figure an easier solution would be just to pay
| people more.
|
| Now working with grocery stores, they commonly tell me
| how difficult it is to find cashiers. Pre-COVID, I was at
| one, and they had 10+ cashier openings, and no
| applicants.
| [deleted]
| supergeek133 wrote:
| My comment was pure anecdote from years spent in retail
| (Best Buy) and co-owning a pizza restaurant. I'll update it
| if it helps.
|
| A quick google finds a number of stats referencing what I'm
| talking about, but probably nothing scientific. Here is an
| example: https://losspreventionmedia.com/theft-by-
| employees-more-comm...
|
| Reliable help in "low skill" jobs (although I don't believe
| they are low skill) can be notoriously hard to find.
| ianjsikes wrote:
| And yet wage theft (by employers) seems to be the largest
| form of theft in the US by far. Is it really a wonder
| that people would steal / slack off when they are so
| consistently getting screwed at their workplace?
|
| https://www.nelp.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2015/03/BrokenLawsRe...
|
| https://www.deseret.com/2014/6/24/20543670/wage-theft-
| how-em...
| azinman2 wrote:
| Both can be true at the same time
| supergeek133 wrote:
| Yep, the most egregious daily example is Wal-Mart and
| basically showing their employees how to apply for
| welfare versus paying them a livable wage. Corporate
| welfare at its best.
|
| But how does an individual combat that? I personally just
| don't shop at Wal-Mart...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Walmart advising employees to receive benefits they are
| lawfully eligible for is not theft.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Sure, but for all the talk of socialism, Walmart is a
| state-subsidized entity. How is that a free market?
| logfromblammo wrote:
| Neither is downloading a car, and yet, we have a highly
| patronizing video prepended to a lot of home video
| releases that disingenuously equates copyright
| infringement to theft.
|
| Intentionally paying an employee less than a living wage,
| with the expectation that someone else will be charitable
| enough to make up the shortfall, is indeed not theft, but
| it is unethical. There is a popular movement to make that
| behavior illegal, via reforms to employment law.
|
| The obvious impediment here is that poor employees have
| little lobbying/campaign cash, as compared with the mega-
| corporations that underpay their laborers. So I feel
| confident that "Fight for $15" and similar movements will
| fail without more unionization.
| stale2002 wrote:
| What? Feel free to disagree with copywrite law, or
| whatever.
|
| But at the end of the day, I don't see anything wrong
| with helping workers take advantage of benefits that they
| are legally entitled to.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| Call it whatever you like, they're using it as a crutch
| to pay their employees as little as possible.
| Aunche wrote:
| Wal-mart already pays well above the minimum wage. By
| your logic, they're actually saving the government
| billions of dollars in welfare that the government would
| have to pay to take care of their own citizens.
| generalpass wrote:
| Even worse is when you evaluate hiring. It isn't unusual for
| a high-turnover entry-level type employer to have 15% or less
| of candidates who agree to fill a position still employed
| with the company 6 months later.
|
| The pure drag of having to deal with this, especially when it
| comes to all of the paperwork required, by law, to be
| completed with every single new hire makes this alone a huge
| expense.
|
| The vast majority of those employees left of their own will,
| not because they were fired. Usually when the leave, there is
| no notice. They just don't show up leaving management short
| handed and wondering whether the employee will show up the
| next day. Consequently, the policy can be to over-staff so
| that whenever some percentage isn't showing up the employer
| can still meet production needs.
|
| The employer cannot simply increase prices and pay people
| better. For the most part, employers already have prices at
| the highest their customers are willing to pay. Setting
| prices higher will result in loss of customers, less profit,
| then layoffs or business closure.
|
| Employees at this level are astoundingly uninterested in
| performing well, or, in other words, there is a reason they
| are working entry-level positions. This makes management yet
| more difficult because managers may have to become near
| micro-managers of cat herds trying to get the company to
| produce whatever it is supposed to produce.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Wait, so the complaint is that not enough people are
| getting stuck in your low-paid dead-end job? They're
| finding a better job and leaving?
|
| Is it less expensive constantly hiring and training new
| people than it would be to pay enough to retain employees
| you already have?
| Vrondi wrote:
| No, they are usually not finding a better job. They
| usually got too high, slept too long, had a family
| incident, or just "didn't feel like it". They usually go
| to another very similarly low-paid job. At this level of
| the employment market (Wal-Mart stockers, gas stations,
| big fast food chain kitchens), employers and employees
| both see each other as disposable and interchangeable. It
| is a two-way street.
| generalpass wrote:
| What a shocker that the upper middle-class users of HN
| immediately vote down a perspective on the world that they
| have never been exposed to. It must all be a lie, right?
|
| And even more shocking is the cowards can't even leave a
| comment. This is pervasive now and makes for terrible
| communities.
| jasondclinton wrote:
| I downvoted your GP and I will tell you why: it wasn't
| the observations of the way that businesses are run. It
| was this: "there is a reason they are working entry-level
| positions". This is Just World Hypothesis or "people are
| miserable because they deserve it". I flatly reject any
| hypothesis that the world we are living in is fair. You
| can consider any number of anthropological examples of
| societies that are not organized like capitalism in the
| West to see that the portion of the population that are
| "freeloaders" is not as high as the number of people who
| are stuck in "low skill" jobs. Just to take an example,
| the Amish do not experience this high level of
| stratification and wage slavery misery. They have their
| own problems, for sure, but humans are not en masse lazy.
| Most of us want to contribute to society and our system
| is exploitative.
|
| And before you accuse me of being upper class, I grew up
| on food stamps, didn't complete college because I was
| working full-time to pay my way through it and it just
| didn't work out, and I worked plenty of terrible, low-
| skill jobs before I landed a job in tech.
| generalpass wrote:
| > I downvoted your GP and I will tell you why: it wasn't
| the observations of the way that businesses are run. It
| was this: "there is a reason they are working entry-level
| positions". This is Just World Hypothesis or "people are
| miserable because they deserve it". I flatly reject any
| hypothesis that the world we are living in is fair. You
| can consider any number of anthropological examples of
| societies that are not organized like capitalism in the
| West to see that the portion of the population that are
| "freeloaders" is not as high as the number of people who
| are stuck in "low skill" jobs. Just to take an example,
| the Amish do not experience this high level of
| stratification and wage slavery misery. They have their
| own problems, for sure, but humans are not en masse lazy.
| Most of us want to contribute to society and our system
| is exploitative.
|
| > And before you accuse me of being upper class, I grew
| up on food stamps, didn't complete college because I was
| working full-time to pay my way through it and it just
| didn't work out, and I worked plenty of terrible, low-
| skill jobs before I landed a job in tech.
|
| There is no judgment in my statement, and from being the
| person who interviewed them and looked at their work
| histories, I can tell you that they are not what you
| think they are. They have a lot of problems. A lot of the
| people we hired not only because we needed the entry-
| level bodies and they were all that were applying, but
| also because we hoped they would turn a new leaf.
|
| You have inserted some long rant that is hard for me to
| consider as having anything to do with my statements, as
| I made no claims about humans being lazy. Some people,
| say in their 30s and even 40s, born in the U.S.,
| graduated high school, have kids, can't hold a steady
| job, can't show up to work on time, always take long
| breaks, disappear and no one can find them for hours,
| mess around on their cell phone all the time, never get
| the job done right, show up to work not more than 3
| consecutive days, take too long to get the job not done
| right, and it's got nothing to do with religion or other
| countries.
|
| If you haven't managed a business that relies on entry
| level employees, then I'm not clear you have the
| perspective, regardless of your other work experiences.
|
| As a side note, the mention of Amish seems rather silly,
| given that anyone who doesn't want to be Amish can leave,
| and anyone who wants to be Amish can join. So everyone
| there is where they want to be.
| jasondclinton wrote:
| You said:
|
| > Employees at this level are astoundingly uninterested
| in performing well, or, in other words, there is a reason
| they are working entry-level positions. This makes
| management yet more difficult because managers may have
| to become near micro-managers of cat herds trying to get
| the company to produce whatever it is supposed to
| produce.
|
| which very much sounds like an indictment of all low
| skill workers. If you didn't mean that, perhaps you could
| reword that paragraph.
|
| I haven't managed a business employing low-skilled
| workers because--and the reason that I grew up on food
| stamps--my father owned his own small business employing
| two to three such workers digging ditches or running
| electrical and construction type work. And the margins
| were incredibly thin and he paid them almost nothing and
| we still didn't have enough to eat. At various times
| throughout my childhood, those workers would inevitably
| have a heated argument with my father or otherwise steal
| from or slight him in some way. I think about that time a
| lot. Part of the reason that I think he continually
| failed as a manager/owner was that he had worked for
| medium sized companies when he was younger and went about
| replicating their management style in his own business. I
| often wonder if he would have done better if he made and
| treated these employees more as co-founders in a venture
| and allowed them have a sense of ownership and self-
| direction. I'll never know.
| socketnaut wrote:
| It's not a statement about fairness: it's a statement
| about filtering / sampling bias.
| [deleted]
| solarwind wrote:
| Sorry, your experience-based comment from the actual real
| world of running a business runs counter to the dominant
| Marxist post-modernist ideology here. Next time perhaps
| sprinkle in some barbs about class struggle or CEO
| compensation.
| voldacar wrote:
| Not sure that the dominant ideology around here is
| "Marxist post-modernist". More like coastal urban
| shitlib. Also, isn't Marxist post-modernism an oxymoron?
| overthemoon wrote:
| Come on. Forgive me if I don't take "low wage workers are
| inherently immoral by HR standards" seriously. Or whining
| about downvotes, for that matter.
| griffinkelly wrote:
| Purely anecdotal, but my dad has a story around this--his
| company wasn't doing great, and they needed to increase
| factory output, so one of the best ideas was to create a
| factory profit share amongst all the factory employees. They
| called a random group of employees together to run the idea
| by them, and after they presented, they asked them what they
| thought. One guy then asked, "So does this mean I have to
| work harder?" My dad replied something like, "Well yes, but
| you'll get a share of the factory's profits if you work
| harder." Random guy, "Well I don't want to work harder..."
|
| I think it just puts a voice to what a lot of people think,
| but never say.
|
| [edit] Sorry, to add details, they were trying to increase
| throughput with the same number of workers. The factory
| already went 24/7 under EU guidelines, so more hours were out
| of the question.
| fzingle wrote:
| Sure one way to read this story is "I don't want to work
| harder" and criticizing that attitude.
|
| Here's another way. As the worker, already working full-
| time, maybe you have better things to do with your life
| than working harder. Furthermore, the worker is probably
| thinking:
|
| "If they want me to work more hours, why not pay me for
| more hours, including time-and-a-half overtime, per the
| law? Why offer a profit-share? Answer, mostly likely
| because the profit-share costs them less, and therefore,
| pays me less".
|
| In that light, unless the factory management can explain
| how the extra hours they want people to work is likely to
| work out better for them then just getting paid for more
| hours, why should they accept?
| Vrondi wrote:
| In the example you are replying to, the employees are
| literally being promised they will be paid more for
| increased work.
| ambrice wrote:
| Profit sharing at a company that "wasn't doing great" is
| not a promise to be paid more.
| jellicle wrote:
| That story describes random employees being asked to become
| _investors, speculators, silent partners_ in the business.
| Here are the conditions:
|
| * you do lots of work now, up front
|
| * you have no say in the business
|
| * you have no say in the investment returns, for example,
| if profits are made, management can just give themselves
| higher salaries that come straight out of your share of
| returns
|
| * your investment isn't portable or recoupable, if you
| leave it's nothing
|
| * if management is bad, it's also nothing
|
| * you're skeptical of current management
|
| Should you invest your time in this business?
| ambrice wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this story. But
| the whole "work harder" is a business euphemism for "put in
| more hours". It probably wasn't the words that were used.
| Your dad was asking someone to put in more hours, maybe
| miss dinners with the family, maybe work some weekends, for
| an unknown "share of profits". But it seems like you're
| presenting a worker choosing better work/life balance over
| higher pay as proof of laziness.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| I think we all need to re watch the Office Space meeting
| with the Bobs!
| j2kun wrote:
| This is why cooperatives are so much better for food service.
| Set up the incentives to align the success of the business
| and the honesty of the employees.
| zelon88 wrote:
| > This makes companies take extreme policy measures...
|
| Governing to the lowest denominator is just poor management.
|
| > ...because the financial impact is so disproportionate...
|
| For who? Bob "steals" an hour of overtime worth $25 but he's
| still in your facility at your disposal. God forbid...
|
| > "If you pay me more I won't act like this"
|
| This I agree with. You get what you pay for. Period.
|
| > But depending on the business (e.g., a local pizza place)
| there is no affording that.
|
| So why is it alright to allow a failing business who can't
| create value in the workforce is allowed (and enabled) to
| stay open so it can ruin more lives and create more misery?
| Surely there's a decent pizza place around the corner that's
| well managed, creates value for employees, and deserves the
| business. Instead we crutch along shitty businesses for no
| reason. Case in point, at a debate in 2016 a woman asked
| Bernie Sanders how she would continue to grow her business if
| she had to offer her employees health insurance. She would
| have to scrap plans to open a second location.
|
| I'm sorry, but if your first location can't sustain itself
| and create a meaningful work environment maybe nobody needs
| that second location of yours. Get health coverage for your
| existing workforce before you go hiring more.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| Have you owned a margin strained small business before? Or
| had any experience working in a margin strained retail
| environment where your only competitive lever is price?
|
| > Governing to the lowest denominator is just poor
| management.
|
| Nevertheless, this is what happens. If you're running a low
| margin store of 50 employees, as a store general manager
| you notice one bad employee more and complain upwards about
| it. Hiring/retraining costs money. Granted this is a long
| time ago but I recall our training/hiring cost per employee
| at a Best Buy store to be in the thousands of dollars.
|
| If you're Best Buy you can afford to pay people more (they
| just are also being responsible to their Wall Street
| numbers), but an independent restaurant can't just turn the
| price lever without other impacts, and no, in the cases I'm
| familiar with, the owner is not making high wage. Some of
| them are lucky to make over $50-60k/yr and correctly re-
| invest in their business.
|
| > For who? Bob "steals" an hour of overtime worth $25 but
| he's still in your facility at your disposal. God forbid...
|
| Depending on the company, yes, one employee stealing
| anything can have more of an impact on your company than
| you realize. Especially if it goes on awhile without anyone
| noticing.
|
| > I'm sorry, but if your first location can't sustain
| itself and create a meaningful work environment maybe
| nobody needs that second location of yours. Get health
| coverage for your existing workforce before you go hiring
| more.
|
| First, health care is expensive. I work for a $4B company
| and my benefits are not great. My healthcare is expensive
| per-paycheck in my opinion.
|
| Let's discuss your Bernie example/quote further. Let's say
| you enforced what you're talking about. Say an independent
| Pizza shop charges $20 for a large pizza, Pizza Hut/Dominos
| charges $18. But I can charge $2 more because of my
| quality, but I still have high food costs because I don't
| have franchise buying power. But I already have less sales
| because I don't have brand recognition and/or the marketing
| power that a national franchise does.
|
| Also, at least in my friend's cases, they also pay their
| employees more than minimum wage out of the gate. IIRC they
| get paid fairly well for a pizza place, he also has
| employees that have been there for years and he pays them
| accordingly.
|
| OK cool, I'll increase my wage, and I'll buy everyone
| health insurance. Now I have to charge $22 or $25 for the
| same pizza. Maybe my customers are loyal and just deal with
| it, maybe not. What happens if not? Then I close my
| business, now not only are my employees unemployed but so
| am I.
|
| Say you make the same change to the big franchise, their
| costs only go up to $19-$20 for the pizza that cost $18
| before. At the extreme still $5 less than I was charging.
|
| Obviously the example gets more complex if everyone gets
| the same wage increase, right? Then you're just sort of
| raising the water line.
|
| I think it's super complex, honestly. Especially having
| managed this on the "Big Business" and small business
| sides.
|
| That being said:
|
| > This I agree with. You get what you pay for. Period.
|
| Not in all cases is my point, some people are just awful
| humans. He's had some of his employees (whom he pays well
| in comparison) steal food and money straight out of the
| register.
| tehjoker wrote:
| I agree with this. It's not about business owners needing
| to be more moral (although at the top of the economy
| maybe that would help a little). The problem is the
| economic system is based on competition, which means that
| in the workplace, anything that is good for ordinary
| people is ground down forever in the name of efficiency.
| If the boot is ever taken off when there are viable
| competitors present, the company will be destroyed and
| the competitor will buy its equipment and hire its staff
| at rock bottom prices.
|
| This is why structuring the economy based on competition
| is brutal and inhumane.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| My contemporary example since quarantine started is
| exactly Amazon. Have you tried the e-commerce experience
| ANYWHERE else? Haha.
|
| I tried ordering things from Home Depot for instance (I
| have extra time on my hands, might as well fix up the
| house). If it's not available in store, they quoted week+
| shipping time.
|
| Amazon had it to me in 3-4 days.
|
| Obviously Home Depot had little to no incentive to do
| better shipping until now.
| Vrondi wrote:
| If pizza costs more than a certain amount, I am eating at
| home, and so are a lot of other people, leaving a lot of
| restaurants, who exist on thing margins already, to close.
| fock wrote:
| so basically the invisible hand will take action and
| adjust to this more sustainable conditions (and now don't
| tell me, that a system, where a lot of people are obese
| and opioid-dependent, is sustainable...)
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| > Instead we crutch along shitty businesses for no reason.
|
| The cost of healthcare to employers has more than tripled
| over the last 17 years[1]. We're not "crutching them
| along," we are passively watching as opportunities to grow
| are eroded by rising costs.
|
| [1] - https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BF-
| AU065A_INSUR_9...
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _If you 've never been involved at a management or
| ownership level of a business that has "low pay" labor (e.g.,
| food service, warehouse, retail sales)..._
|
| You'd think Amazon treats its "high pay" engineers on-par
| with other FAANGs? It is not just the warehouse workers that
| they are paranoid about. They're paranoid about the human
| nature to slack, to rest, to err, to relax, to let their
| guard down for a moment, to not care enough at times, to deal
| with life's other problems, to fail... to live.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19751016
| treve wrote:
| If you can't afford to pay employees a decent wage, you
| shouldn't be in business. Minimum wages should be raised and
| nonviable businesses should adapt or go under.
|
| Amazon is not in this category
| twblalock wrote:
| > Minimum wages should be raised and nonviable businesses
| should adapt or go under.
|
| That's a recipe for significantly increased unemployment
| which would affect the most vulnerable workers the most.
|
| For most people in a low-paying job, the alternative is no
| job. If they were able to get higher-paying jobs they would
| have already done so.
| treve wrote:
| Then why have a minimum wage at all?
| twblalock wrote:
| Because, unlike what you suggested, policymakers are able
| to calibrate the minimum wage so it doesn't cause
| companies to go out of business.
| nearbuy wrote:
| Only about 2% of hourly paid workers earned federal
| minimum wage or less in 2018 in the US [1]. This
| percentage has been dropping over the past few decades. I
| think this implies that minimum wage has been calibrated
| to be low enough that it makes little difference overall.
|
| [1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-
| wage/2018/home.htm
| twblalock wrote:
| That's misleading because the federal minimum wage is
| lower than more than half of state minimum wages.
| nearbuy wrote:
| Right, because the federal minimum wage is calibrated to
| be low enough that it doesn't make much difference.
|
| In Texas, where the state minimum wage is the federal
| minimum wage, there are still only about 3% of hourly
| workers earning minimum wage or less.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Large corporations are making bigger profits than ever
| and the minimum wage isn't being calibrated to actually
| ensure a decent standard of living.
| Vrondi wrote:
| Because, before minimum wage, we had people being paid
| the price of a loaf of bread for an entire day's labor.
| We had people being paid in "company scrip" only
| spendable in the company's own store at inflated prices,
| instead of real national currency.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Why, indeed.
|
| In a society with a functioning safety net, minimum wage
| wouldn't be necessary. That wouldn't _only_ be better for
| those who can 't work at all. All employees would
| benefit, and eventually most businesses would as well.
| Here in USA I'm not sure if such a safety net is
| possible, but I hear good things about other societies.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Right. Everyone who lives in that world knows and understands
| this.
|
| People who only read about the non college degree people can
| have some very clueless ideas.
| this2shallPass wrote:
| Thankfully no "high pay" labor ever just takes pure advantage
| of the environment (e.g., stealing product, stealing time,
| etc) ;) And never at great cost for a period of time before
| it is discovered.
|
| Pay might be a factor. I think people are people, and their
| behavior and beliefs vary.
| Aunche wrote:
| Anecdotally, my friends in finance say that their chats are
| monitored with extreme scrutiny. You'll be written up for
| anything that can be perceived as screwing over your
| clients, even if it's an obvious joke. If this happened in
| any other sector, society would be quick to call this
| draconian. However, few people are aware of this form of
| micromanaging, and if they do, they recognize that it must
| be done.
|
| As for people stealing time, Amazon puts people on PIP all
| the time.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| >If this happened in any other sector, society would be
| quick to call this draconian.
|
| Believe it or not, finance is under extra scrutiny.
|
| That company has to log all chat messages in order to
| keep their FINRA certification, but that also means a
| court can subpoena and display the messages in a public
| trial. If they're a serious shop they will monitor and
| keep comms clean to the point of being Orwellian.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| I completely agree, but we, as a society tend to look down
| more on the low paid people who do this versus the high
| paid ones.
| yters wrote:
| Exactly, and the high paid thieves are those who can
| wreck the lives of millions vs the low paid thieves take
| an infinitesimal bit away from the bottom line of a multi
| billion dollar company.
| banads wrote:
| "We hang the petty thieves, and appoint the great ones to
| public office" -Aesop
| yters wrote:
| Hanging the petty thieves satisfies the crowds that are
| unhappy because the great thieves are robbing them blind.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| Death by a thousand cuts. It is just front of mind.
|
| People "see" the low paid thieves and their impact on
| themselves and others on a semi regular basis. The once
| in awhile "white collar crime" you might see if you turn
| on the news isn't top of mind.
|
| "That guy stole $5 from ME" versus "Wal Mart uses welfare
| as a way to get corporate welfare and pay their employees
| less"
|
| One is in the moment, and a purely emotional and
| potentially traumatizing experience based on
| circumstance.
|
| One I may not even experience (e.g., I don't work at Wal-
| Mart).
| [deleted]
| johnmaguire2013 wrote:
| The higher paid thief and the lower paid thief both steal
| from their companies (both of which are owned by people).
| Yet the higher paid thief is afforded more privilege and
| trust and respect. Do you see the problem yet?
| supergeek133 wrote:
| I'm agreeing with you, but I'm putting a reality spin on
| it. It's OK to have macro views, but you can't change
| anything without understanding psychology of the two
| scenarios for the average person.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| yes, that's the whole point about privilege.
| nixarian wrote:
| What do you expect, you delusional borderline psychopath. You
| have zero empathy, apparently. Why wouldn't they do things
| like that? They barely make enough to live. The whole system
| has told them they are barely worth anything. Why would they
| behave? Why are 2/3 of workers even decent, is the real
| question.
| wazoox wrote:
| No, indeed this gets to the heart of the idea of class warfare.
| buboard wrote:
| IT workers are partly to blame for it. By creating , embracing,
| extending, normalizing and advertising a culture where
| companies compete for office perks, they also allowed the
| creation of the underclass of unwashed workers whose businesses
| are not awash with cash and thus it's OK to treat them like
| wage slaves.
| cat199 wrote:
| pretty sure "the underclass of unwashed workers whose
| businesses are not awash with cash and thus it's OK to treat
| them like wage slaves." existed long before computers were
| ever thought of
| whymauri wrote:
| I don't think they're saying IT/computers are a root cause,
| but rather that they might be modern enablers of these
| power hierarchies.
| icebraining wrote:
| I think "allowed the creation" rather implies it is the
| root cause.
| whymauri wrote:
| Mm, yeah. You seem to be right.
| buboard wrote:
| did not mean it that way, but that i've never seen in the
| tech press someone noticing that e.g. walmart doesnt have
| massage rooms
| sokoloff wrote:
| I doubt the tech office perks are taking employee money from
| other companies. Warehouse work wasn't likely to ever be
| awash in cash to lavish on the workers because that's coming
| straight out of the customers' pockets; every other logistics
| company is competing on that basis and consumers are
| generally price-sensitive.
| hysan wrote:
| All the example replies to this I've seen so far are where the
| power imbalance between business owner and worker is huge. So
| I'll give my anecdote which is from the other side.
|
| I grew up watching, and often helping, my parents as they ran
| their own business. We were at best lower middle class. The
| economic gap between us and those we hired was far smaller than
| any of the examples given here. My parents treated the workers
| well, paid them fairly[1], and kept the business running as
| long as possible even after 9/11 + the recession killed the
| business.
|
| The workers in response didn't cheat hours, they were flexible
| when the times got really tough, and in the end, they greatly
| respected my parents for running business the "right way".
|
| People don't default to cheating the system. It's action-
| reaction. If there is a huge imbalance, if people think they
| aren't being treated fairly, if they see that it's very much
| possible for the system to be improved, that's when the
| thoughts of "this is unfair" begin to emerge.
|
| [1] My dad was by title the owner while my mom was in the union
| the workers belonged to. His salary was lower than my mom's.
| Not lower than the workers, but far lower than could have been
| possible had they attempted to fight the union on pay to nickel
| and dime them.
| wpietri wrote:
| You're totally right on the action-reaction bit. And it's the
| same way at much bigger scales. This American Life did a
| story on NUMMI, a Toyota/GM joint venture. Toyota took one of
| GM's worst plants and made it well run and productive, in
| large part by treating the workers like people. It's very
| moving: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
|
| The heartbreaking part is that even when GM saw it happen,
| they couldn't really get it. Manager-labor hostility was too
| baked in on the management side for them to really change.
| pathseeker wrote:
| >Manager-labor hostility was too baked in on the management
| side
|
| Don't forget that it's baked in on the labor side as well.
| NUMMI was not a 'fix' of a GM plant. It was a new venture
| started where a previous GM plant had closed.
| wpietri wrote:
| A new venture that rehired a lot of the same workers. If
| you listen to the TAL piece, you'll hear how they
| changed. It wasn't an overnight transformation, but
| ultimately the workers changed where GM managers
| couldn't.
| pathseeker wrote:
| The plant was open until GM went bankrupt. What do you
| mean the managers couldn't change?
| wpietri wrote:
| I mean that the purpose of the joint venture was for GM
| to learn Toyota's methods. That one plant was fine, but
| the broader purpose was for GM to learn how to do it
| everywhere. They never did. If you'd like to know more, I
| suggest you listen to the story linked above, or read the
| transcript which is linked from that.
| pkaye wrote:
| I live near that plant. It got shut down 10 years ago after
| the financial meltdown. Now its a Tesla plant.
| jyrkesh wrote:
| I grew up pretty close to NUMMI, and heard a lot about it
| in the news in both good times and the eventual bad
| times. My first car at 16 was a Pontiac Vibe, a GM
| rebrand of the Toyota Matrix (which in turn was a
| hatchback variant of the Corolla), all of which were
| built at NUMMI. It was kind of cool knowing that the car
| I was driving was built just a few freeway exits over.
|
| 10 years later, I totaled it and despite being a lot
| better off financially than I was at 16, I decided to buy
| another one. It's just such a solid car, maintenance is
| easy on it, etc. It's sad to me that there aren't more of
| the solid, low-tech, low-cost cars that NUMMI was so
| great at churning out.
|
| Maybe one day Tesla can get electric cars to that type of
| economy of scale, but I think it's going to be a while.
| esoterica wrote:
| No one who runs a business that hires multiple employees can
| reasonably call themselves lower middle class.
|
| Showing my work:
|
| > My parents treated the workers well, paid them fairly[1]
|
| >His salary was lower than my mom's. Not lower than the
| workers.
|
| Let X be a fair wage, Y be your dad's wage and Z be your
| mom's wage.
|
| Then Z>Y>X, so Z+Y>2X. Any household that makes more than
| twice a "fair wage" is not lower middle class (many lower
| middle class people don't even make 1x a fair wage).
| bumby wrote:
| In general, you are correct but it is very location
| dependent. Low income in SF is anything below $82k
| according to HUD
| derefr wrote:
| The names of the classes are not economic; they're
| political+. They have to do with one's ability to influence
| politics.
|
| The "middle class", i.e., the borgeoisie, are the class of
| business owners (and/or people who have the ability to
| start a business, i.e. who have a professional skill that
| could be sold freelance or with a one-person company
| "wrapped" around it.) What do you call a lowest-income-
| bracket-for-business-owners business owner, other than
| "lower middle class"?
|
| Meanwhile, a laborer--even a rich laborer (e.g. a waiter
| who makes a lot in tips; or a unionized dock-worker; or a
| soldier)--is, definitionally, in the lower class. If your
| professional skills are only in demand in the context of a
| capitalist organizing and value-adding on top of them, then
| you're in the lower class. (For example: dentist? Middle
| class. Dental hygienist? Lower class. The dentist can start
| their own dental clinic, whereas the hygienist cannot. Even
| if they both took home the same _salary_ from said clinic,
| one has access to corporate profits--capital--while the
| other does not.)
|
| People don't say "upper lower class", but the French
| equivalent "proletariat riche" _does_ make sense. (There
| are whole sectors of the economy that cater mostly to the
| proletariat riche. Anything referred to as "bling" is
| marketed mainly to the proletariat riche. Nightclubs cater
| mostly to the proletariat riche.)
|
| + In English, the terms are mapped to positions on a city's
| height map (lower/middle/upper), because cities used to be
| basins of smoke and filth, and the people who could, would
| move to the outlying hills to be away from it. But this is
| still a political distinction, not an economic one. No
| matter how wealthy you are, you can't get away from city
| life _entirely_ until you no longer need to work for a
| living at all. Once you don 't need to work at all, you
| unlock the time+energy+liquid assets required to influence
| politics. It's all part-and-parcel.
| pwinnski wrote:
| $50k/year where? And where did you get that number? I know
| someone who made $23k last year, less than any of their
| several employees. If not for his partner's job, he'd be
| flat-out poor.
| hysan wrote:
| I guess it depends on where you live. I'm going by the
| definition based on the income ranges in the city/state
| where we grew up where "middle class" is significantly
| higher than the rest of the US. If you prefer to average
| across the entire US, then sure, I'll be happy to edit that
| to say "middle class". However, I don't see how this is
| anything but a nitpick without addressing any of the
| content I wrote in my comment.
|
| Also, others have pointed out many examples where it's
| possible to hire many workers but still not be in a high
| income bracket.
| [deleted]
| hysan wrote:
| Interestingly, esoterica replied and then deleted before
| I could respond, but since this is actually bothering me
| (I know it's the internet, it shouldn't), I'm going to
| post this reply with the quote anyway.
|
| _> > My parents treated the workers well, paid them
| fairly[1],
|
| >>His salary was lower than my mom's. Not lower than the
| workers.
|
| > Let X be a fair wage, Y be your dad's wage and Z be
| your mom's wage.
|
| > Then Z>Y>X, so Z+Y>2X. Any household that makes more
| than twice a "fair wage" is not lower middle class (many
| lower middle class people don't even make 1x a fair
| wage)._
|
| Like I said, I'd be happy to edit it (can't because of
| the time limit). However, you're nitpicking on a single
| part of the comment that honestly means very little.
| You're also doing that without even using any numbers or
| locations.
|
| My question to you is, do you have anything constructive
| to say in response to the spirit and content of my
| comment with regards to the discussion thread?
|
| Edit: Also, remember that the "fair wage" is based on
| what the union negotiated (including raises). We paid on
| the higher end compared to others in our industry. "Fair
| wage" does not automatically mean that the workers are
| middle or even lower middle class. So your calculation is
| already making a huge mistake there.
| fchu wrote:
| > Then Z>Y>X, so Z+Y>2X. Any household that makes more than
| twice a "fair wage" is not lower middle class (many lower
| middle class people don't even make 1x a fair wage).
|
| That's terrible math that proves nothing, besides that the
| owners as a couple is making more (including by a tiny
| margin) than a couple of workers
| chirau wrote:
| Lower middle class in America is 30 to 50k.
| ndespres wrote:
| Food service, maintenance, landscaping, small tetail..
| plenty of possible examples come to mind.
| acolumb wrote:
| I disagree. Lower middle class people can open businesses
| propped up on loans, in which their drive to hit their
| margin is even higher.
| pathseeker wrote:
| Bad math. Two people making a "fair wage" in a single
| household does not make it suddenly unfair... unless your
| point is that people shouldn't be allowed to live together.
| dang wrote:
| This comment was edited without saying so, which explains
| why some of the replies don't make sense.
|
| If you're going to make an edit that changes the meaning of
| what other people have already replied to, please say that
| you're doing that. The best way is to make the edit append-
| only.
| tempestn wrote:
| How feasible would it be to actually enforce that in the
| code? Would be great if edits were append-only after some
| period of time. So you could correct a typo immediately
| after posting still, but after a few minutes you'd just
| be able to append. (Replying to your own comment doesn't
| serve the same function, since it could be lost under
| other replies.)
| krapp wrote:
| It would probably be better to just disallow editing to
| any comment with replies.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Or have an auditable edit history.
| krapp wrote:
| That might work if you could link individual comments to
| a version of their parent, otherwise confusing over
| comments not making sense in the current context would
| still occur, since most people aren't going to read an
| edit history first.
|
| The very least they could do is add some visual cue that
| a comment has been edited, like showing the header in
| italics or adding an asterisk.
| pvg wrote:
| There is a 2 hour edit window, after which you can't edit
| the comment. Editing a comment to change the meaning is
| usually noticed so I think social convention takes care
| of this (relatively uncommon) problem as it is.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| What's the best way to escalate this? Or rather, how do
| we make this recommendation to moderators and/or devs?
| ryanwinchester wrote:
| I once had two employees and was definitely not in a high
| income bracket.
| jshevek wrote:
| > _I 'm being angrily downvoted..._
|
| Your claim regarding others' emotional states sounds like
| speculation based on insufficient information.
| vageli wrote:
| I've owned a cafe and was able to pay myself and the head
| cook roughly $1000/week (each) when things were great. If
| that's not middle class, I'm not sure what is.
| esoterica wrote:
| $1000/week is higher than the median American personal
| income. That's by definition not lower middle class.
| vageli wrote:
| I never said "lower middle class". From this article [0],
| ~$50k doesn't seem like a stretch for middle class.
|
| [0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/middle-class-income-
| us-city-...
| lostcolony wrote:
| Depends on the area. The national median doesn't really
| give you insight into whether someone is middle class or
| not.
|
| I'd also point out it's 15% higher than the median. How
| small do you feel the middle class is? You mentioned
| "lower middle class"; I only see them mention "middle
| class".
|
| But even for the lower middle class, it rather depends on
| how you choose to count it, no? I've seen some economists
| define middle class as the middle 60%. Given that range
| (~$46k - $140k), they're in the lower end, if you want to
| hold them to that statement (that they never made).
| pathseeker wrote:
| It is in SFO.
| gertlex wrote:
| If wikipedia is any indication, the definition of middle
| class is nebulous.
|
| My hunch is most people don't base it on dividing the
| population in to equal fractions, which is kind of how I
| read your comments.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| I think your hunch is right, but economists' definitions
| do tend to be tied to numbers. Pew Research and others --
| although I doubt this is a universal definition--usually
| treat "middle class" as being two-thirds to double the
| median income in an area. That seems like an unusually
| high range -- I would have assumed two-thirds to four-
| thirds would make more sense, but I suspect it's to
| account for how sharply incomes rise at the high end of
| the scale (e.g., the median salary in the top quintile
| compared to that of the middle quintile is many times
| greater than the median salary in the middle quintile is
| compared to the lowest).
|
| Even with that there's an awful lot of caveats, though;
| as folks have noted, regional differences can be huge.
| The median income in Silicon Valley as of last year is
| just under $100K (despite the picture that Hacker News
| can sometimes paint!), but in Tampa Bay, Florida, it was
| just under $60K.
| kbenson wrote:
| First, they said "when things were great". Considering
| they stated that ownership as past tense, I would assume
| things didn't stay great, and just because you make $1000
| a week sometimes doesn't mean you make anywhere near that
| _consistently_.
|
| Secondly, it's much more important to look at local
| median income and local cost of living. $1000 a week in
| many areas won't get you far if most of it is taken up by
| taxes and housing. And before someone pulls out the
| "well, move to somewhere cheaper", there's no guarantee
| that a cheaper to live location would necessarily still
| support $1000/week to the owner, or if there was a
| commute, that it wouldn't eat significantly into that
| income (fuel + toll + car payment which may not be
| required if you live locally could be well over a
| $1000/month).
| [deleted]
| 101404 wrote:
| You are not "angrily" downvoted, you are downvoted because
| your statement is completely wrong.
| jamil7 wrote:
| You should speak to a few more cafe and restaurant owners
| if you believe that.
| jariel wrote:
| This is definitely not true.
|
| Literally drive down the street and look at those little
| no-name shops and stores: each of them have owners who
| employ other people.
|
| The lady who owns the salon and has 10 other ladies +
| receptionist working there is not wealthy, and is probably
| taking on a lot of risk.
|
| 'Small business owner' is one of the most precarious
| positions to be in - it's like all the low pay and crap of
| 'working class' life - but with all the risk and stress of
| capital class.
|
| I don't know why people do it.
|
| I wonder maybe if this class just 'gave up on it' it'd be
| interesting to see how we would all cope.
| kbenson wrote:
| > I don't know why people do it.
|
| Because it's the most common and consistent gateway to
| actual wealth, which is also non-coincidentally the
| gateway to independence (at least from a singular boss,
| there's always some dependence on the system in some
| way).
|
| This is slightly upended by startups and getting shares
| for signing on early, but that's really not all that
| different of a situation (partial ownership for partial
| risk), it just happens that at this particular point in
| history it's also applying towards people with a lot of
| prospects and/or resources so there's less on the line
| for them if it fails.
| Czarcasm wrote:
| As you point out, the risk is what people often forget.
|
| My parent's have run a small business for over 20 years.
| Between 10 and 20 employees depending on the season and
| the economic situation.
|
| When everything goes great, they can sometimes clear a
| few hundred thousand in the year. They are doing well and
| appear wealth.
|
| But then a bad job comes around, and they can lose their
| shirts. 3-4 times over the last 20 years, a big job has
| gone south and they have actually personally lost money
| for the year. One year in particular, they had to
| remortgage their house to meet payroll because conditions
| out of their control lost them a big contract. All the
| employees still get paid, but my parents have to go into
| debt and deal with the repercussions.
|
| The stress they deal with is immense. I've worked some
| high-stress corporate jobs, and it still has no compare
| to what I watched my parents deal with.
| hysan wrote:
| > _I don 't know why people do it._
|
| I can't answer this myself, but I've gotten some hints at
| it over my lifetime of hearing my dad's stories (repeated
| over and over...)
|
| One is that it's part of the American dream. As
| immigrants, being able to say that you made it and are
| self-made can mean a lot.
|
| Second and probably more importantly, successfully
| running a business, along with all the financial risks
| included like loans, can give you a leg up in one crucial
| area that is very hard to acquire as a poor immigrant -
| high credit score. This let's you get far better loans,
| mortgages, etc. Having that history where you can prove
| that "yeah, I make good on my debts" goes a very long
| way. Especially if you're as savvy as my dad.
| taurath wrote:
| > The workers in response didn't cheat hours, they were
| flexible when the times got really tough, and in the end,
| they greatly respected my parents for running business the
| "right way".
|
| The best way to get people who show up for work on time,
| don't steal from the register and don't call out sick is to
| pay them enough to have a life that isn't sent into a stress
| spiral by an electricity bill thats 10% higher.
|
| Corporations especially in the service industry (Fast food,
| etc) have tested and to their bottom line workers stealing
| and missing shifts and calling out every 3 days isn't worth
| more to them than paying people less. Not because they're
| unprofitable, but because they can, and there's enough
| desperate people EVEN WITH FULL EMPLOYMENT to not raise wages
| as long as none of the other corporations do.
|
| So now you have cargoculting amonst the business
| administrators that pay as low as possible is the only way to
| run a business. Except of course, when it comes to business
| administrators and those who interact with them.
| syshum wrote:
| >>there's enough desperate people EVEN WITH FULL EMPLOYMENT
| to not raise wages as long as none of the other
| corporations do.
|
| There is evidence to the contrary, as these companies have
| infact (or did pre COVID) raise their wages beyond the
| minimum wage they were doing. Some of it is in response to
| Retail raise wages (i.e Walmart when to a $11/12 nation
| wide min wage) in response most fast food also had to raise
| their wages.
| taurath wrote:
| I don't disagree that there is some wage pressure - its
| the fact that wage increases only started to outdistance
| inflation only have 3 sustained years of basically no
| unemployment, which is likely a once in a century event,
| that there are more factors at play holding wages down.
| syshum wrote:
| Of course there is more than just the unemployment rate
| the effects wages but Fast food will always be the lowest
| paid job in the economy and the idea that work is
| entitled to a high wage simply because it exists is not
| something I can get behind
|
| Fast food requires almost no skills, and most likely as
| wages increase it will simply be automated out of
| existence completely, given that literally almost any
| human that is breathing can fill the job there is not
| going to be much that will push those wages up.
|
| These jobs are not intended to be long term employment
| where a person would support a family on, hell they are
| not even jobs that should be filled by people supporting
| themselves, they are tailored to people for their first
| jobs normally while they are a dependent of another
| person
| wpietri wrote:
| And I think it's important to realize that this is all
| under a managerialist culture, where companies construct
| internal class distinctions. It's pretty obvious from
| history that a significant fraction of humanity really
| likes to have people to look down on, to control, to
| mistreat. To feel better than.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _People don't default to cheating the system. It's action-
| reaction. If there is a huge imbalance, if people think they
| aren't being treated fairly..._
|
| One of my HR friends was dismayed at the treatment of
| warehouse workers at Amazon:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21217969
| rexpop wrote:
| That URL to search "Ring" on r/privacy is broken. This will
| work, for now: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/search?q=ri
| ng&restrict_sr=1
| toasterlovin wrote:
| > People don't default to cheating the system.
|
| _Some_ people don 't. I think you may be underestimating the
| degree to which A) your parents were good judges of people,
| and B) having ownership close to the metal can make things
| work well.
| luckylion wrote:
| And being a _small_ business. Things run very differently
| when there are ten people and you know everyone vs when
| there are ten thousand people and you only vaguely know
| what 1 /10th of the departments actually do.
| exolymph wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias
| jimbokun wrote:
| > Because it often involves nothing more than being given a
| basic level of trust and respect that, once you have them, can
| seem like a bare minimum, not something that you would need to
| fight for.
|
| This is exactly why privilege is not an accurate or
| constructive term to use in these conversations.
|
| Privilege implies something undeserved. So it sounds like an
| argument for taking away those bare minimums, so everyone is
| equally treated with suspicion, condescension and hostility.
|
| Better words are "oppression", "discrimination" and "bigotry".
| Make it clear that the goal is treating everyone with a basic
| level of trust and respect, as a bare minimum, and nothing less
| than that is acceptable.
| Nelson69 wrote:
| A while back I helped a startup that was doing managed video
| services, specifically internal surveillance. A very logical
| "service" for them was to have actual humans review and verify
| various incidents and so they staffed up a small team of hourly
| video watchers.
|
| It was a culture shock. Things like acceptable workplace attire
| were issues; and there was no store-front or exposure to
| customers, it was just what's acceptable in a professional
| office. Someone quitting with no notice wasn't uncommon. I
| think the most shocking aspect was most lived in this sort of
| land of grand illusion, they had no concept that there were
| non-hourly jobs or workers building the system they used. All
| of them lived in a fairly delicate balance, a small
| inconvenience like some car trouble was potentially life
| altering for them. We did these somewhat terrible Thursday
| night deployments (think 4 hours most of the time) and more
| than a few times some of these guys wanted to "help" to get
| some overtime pay, they were incredulous at the idea that we
| didn't get paid extra for that. Everyone deserves dignity and
| respect but it's also easy to see how these untrusting sorts of
| institutions come to be.
|
| The big difference between ordering on Amazon and walking in to
| a Walmart is you have to look some of those people in the eye
| in Walmart. Credit to Tim for shining a little light on this.
| I've sort of thought that we might be in for a wave of 21st
| century unionization, I think the floor is a lot lower than
| that though. It's hard to imagine what could spark a cultural
| shift that would unite workers in today's world.
| troyvit wrote:
| > It's hard to imagine what could spark a cultural shift that
| would unite workers in today's world.
|
| It would have to be a huge cultural shift away from profits
| being the #1 goal of companies. We need something to replace
| it.
| esoterica wrote:
| > Things like acceptable workplace attire were issues
|
| That's the norm for many (most?) high-paying jobs, even more
| so than the typical low-paying job. Tech is kind of the
| outlier, if you're a banker or lawyer or consultant, you're
| expected to wear a suit everywhere.
| cbsmith wrote:
| There's also the reality that "low-skilled" really means
| "there's more supply of the skill than there is demand", or
| "depends _purely_ on a skill that can be developed, as opposed
| to natural talent /advantage that few people have".
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| There is the reality that ~ 10% of the population has an IQ
| so low, US army cannot recruit them by law. 10% is a lot of
| people, a few tens of millions in US. I have someone in the
| family that has the mind of a children of 8-10 years old, for
| that person a "low skilled" job in an Amazon warehouse would
| be excellent; the alternative is zero income.
| cbsmith wrote:
| There's also a IQ != skill.
|
| But I believe your specific example here fits the "depends
| _purely_ on a skill that can be developed, as opposed to
| natural talent /advantage that few people have".
| microcolonel wrote:
| > _There seems to be a consistent theme of employees being
| treated with suspicion, condescension and outright hostility._
|
| The reason for that is simple. For jobs with few
| qualifications, undisciplined people and people who struggle
| with thinking are in the highest supply. Ask anyone who
| operates a bar or restaurant what sort of behaviour they can
| expect from low-qualification employees, hired without
| significant attention, at the going rate.
|
| It may be a matter of privilege for a lot of people; I know
| many brilliant and well-intentioned people who have had a hard
| go of life because they picked up a counterproductive fear,
| insecurity, or opinion when they were young, but it would not
| surprise or offend me that their employers would grow to
| dislike them. I have had some advantages on this, because I was
| blessed with a referral for my first job, and my first
| colleagues guided me away from my self-destructive behaviours
| (I was 17).
|
| That's not to say it's all of them, but if you hire people for
| work that requires little or no discipline to meet the hiring
| requirements, you are going to be exposed to a lot of
| candidates who lack discipline.
|
| There are many people working jobs that have a low- or no-skill
| entry level, who are incredibly hard-working, disciplined, and
| passionate; but there are also many who are none of these
| things.
|
| You can observe a maybe-similar effect with specialized
| "consultants", who merely have to claim to be able to resolve
| problems like one you're experiencing; then they get paid for a
| few months to have a go at it, and it turns out they don't know
| any more than you do about your problem.
| chrisan wrote:
| > There seems to be a consistent theme of employees being
| treated with suspicion, condescension and outright hostility.
|
| I'd suggest working with or managing a place with low-skilled
| people. They of course aren't all like that but it seems it
| attracts low-motivation, low-effort, or low-caring. I can only
| provide 2 anecdotes, but I can see why people get treated this
| way after time.
|
| I highly doubt there are many people that just start their
| management role in a hostile, suspicion, condescension kind of
| way. Normally it takes something repeated over time to build up
| those kinds of traits of dealing with something
|
| In college I used to work for RPS (they got bought by Fedex or
| UPS, I forget) sorting packages. To get the job you had to lift
| up to 50lbs and memorize the first 2 digits of the zip code
| (just the region so it was like 20-30 numbers) and you'd stand
| in front of a big chute and sort boxes onto 1 of 3 conveyors.
| The amount of anger people would take out on other's boxes was
| insane. Kicking, punching(??), throwing over the ledge (we were
| like 3 floors up), or just outright stamping of boxes was nuts.
| After working there I learned what it means to package
| something well as I could not count on any package of mine
| being treated with respect.
|
| The other anecdote are my wife's pharmacy techs she has to
| manage. Some of them will bitch and moan if they have to remake
| a drug, sometimes outright REFUSE to make a drug if it means
| they have to gown back up and go back into the clean room. They
| will disappear for an hour after delivering a drug (up a few
| floors). They will take well over an hour for lunch breaks. It
| is a very maddening situation because all of these actions
| means the kids don't get what they need on time.
| ianleeclark wrote:
| > I'd suggest working with or managing a place with low-
| skilled people. They of course aren't all like that but it
| seems it attracts low-motivation, low-effort, or low-caring
|
| Pay low wage, get low motivation. No one's going to bust
| their ass over a mcgriddle for minimum wage.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Pay higher wages and your customers go somewhere else to
| save a dollar. Some businesses don't have the luxury of
| customers that will pay more than the lowest prices.
| mtrower wrote:
| I sure did. Harder than I worked at some better paying
| jobs, for sure. Wage itself does not seem to be the
| determining factor in motivation.
|
| I'd say it's more about barriers to entry and the work
| environment itself.
| qqssccfftt wrote:
| You're a chump lol
| dionidium wrote:
| > _No one 's going to bust their ass over a mcgriddle for
| minimum wage._
|
| I've always done what I agreed to do at every job I worked.
| And I've had some pretty awful jobs. I'm not a hero. Doing
| what you've agreed to do doesn't make you a hero. It's the
| minimum requirement if you want to call yourself an honest
| person whose word means literally anything at all.
|
| Don't do that for anybody else. Do it for _yourself_.
| theduder99 wrote:
| I busted my butt as a 16 y.o. minimum wage worker, didn't
| you?
| globular-toast wrote:
| Give an inch and they take a mile. You could pay a
| McDonalds worker all you like and he'll still just try to
| get away with doing less work.
| ianleeclark wrote:
| It's good were on the same page: your employees will be
| motivated to further their work-related skills and
| efficiency, thus doing less work.
|
| My deployment process at work used to require a ton of
| work, but I spent a few afternoons to automate it and now
| I get to do much less work.
| globular-toast wrote:
| > My deployment process at work used to require a ton of
| work, but I spent a few afternoons to automate it and now
| I get to do much less work.
|
| Clearly you're just like the majority of HN readership:
| living in a bubble a million miles away from what is
| reality for very large swathes of the population. Do you
| truthfully believe that someone flipping burgers in
| Burger King is capable of inventing machines and
| automating processes, but they refuse to do it because
| they don't get paid enough? Do you not see how absurd
| that sounds?
| ianleeclark wrote:
| No, but I don't think your response warranted anything
| serious. You said that any mcdonalds worker is inherently
| lazy, so I sidestepped that ridiculous sentiment.
|
| Also it's hilarious that you, the guy out there roasting
| all minimum wage workers, is somehow connected to the
| average working man.
| dunnevens wrote:
| > Do you not see how absurd that sounds?
|
| Not absurd at all. The people in the front lines
| understand the nature of their work better than anyone.
| When the engineers and the front line workers can
| actually communicate, and the workers feel like they're
| being heard, then great things can happen. Not only can
| productivity go up from making processes more efficient,
| but the hard-working front line people can feel a certain
| amount of ownership in their positions. Which will
| contribute to making them even better.
|
| I've seen this in person. Once worked for a teleco's
| internal training department. We somehow ended up making
| quick access utilities for the call center desktops. When
| we first deployed the tool, it rarely got used. This was
| because we made assumptions about what they needed. So we
| ended up talking to the call center reps. The people
| stuck dealing with the front line calls all day. They had
| very clear ideas about what they needed and what we
| should do. We listened. Followed their ideas. Had them
| give further feedback on the betas. And it ended up
| probably saving the company many millions per year in
| terms of efficiency gains. Plus it was a huge morale
| boost. These people finally got someone to listen to them
| and helped implement changes that made their job easier.
| Which gave them a sense of ownership and pride. And upped
| employee retention.
| globular-toast wrote:
| So you just did _your_ job and went and collected
| requirements from your user base? I really don 't see how
| this is the same thing. I worked in a large insurance
| company with its own call centre and we did the same
| thing. It's great for the business but I just don't see
| how this is connected to giving workers more money and
| freedom.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It really depends on the person; for a lot of McJobs, the
| people doing them never really pursued the job; they
| wanted / needed A job, any job. They work for money, not
| for love of the job.
|
| I mean you can learn to love a job, but that kind of
| loyalty has to be earned - by good pay, working
| conditions, career opportunities, and being valued.
|
| But there's too many jobs now - Amazon warehouse employee
| being one of them - where you are a number in a system,
| and very much replaceable.
|
| Bring back good jobs. Restaurant worker is not a bad job,
| but it's underpaid and unvalued.
| mtrower wrote:
| Underpaid, undervalued, exceedingly stressful, and often
| poorly managed at the shift level. Turnover and variable
| quality in co-workers aside, there's intense pressure on
| shift management to cut labor, such that stores are
| usually understaffed for the workload. Work throughput
| expectations don't change, however...
|
| I'm not sure what the answer to this is (McDonalds Corp
| will just introduce more automation if they have to raise
| wages, and a lot of people will go from stressful, low
| paying jobs to no jobs at all). But I don't think this
| occupation is in a good place.
| dunnevens wrote:
| Many people, maybe most, take some pride in their work.
| You pay people decently, give them trust, and treat them
| like adults, most of them will give good-to-great effort
| towards what they do. If you approach them with the
| attitude you currently have, then your prophecy becomes
| self-fulfilling.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Then make your own profitable company that takes
| advantage of this. I don't want things to be this way. It
| doesn't make me happy to say it, but all of the evidence
| is on my side. I suppose all companies start out with
| good intentions like you have. But the successful ones
| always end up like Amazon. The others are confined to
| your imagination.
| [deleted]
| mtrower wrote:
| Now that's just unreasonable. Please don't lump all McD
| workers together and assume they lack integrity as a
| whole...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > I'd suggest working with or managing a place with low-
| skilled people. They of course aren't all like that but it
| seems it attracts low-motivation, low-effort, or low-caring.
|
| As often as not, this is a failure of management. Of course
| no manager wants to admit to this. A great example is the
| turnaround at the NUMMI GM plant after drastic changes to the
| manufacturing process[1]. The same employees going from
| drinking on the job and creating tons of defects to a model
| of efficient manufacturing in North America.
|
| [1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/403/nummi-2010
| kmlx wrote:
| i worked in a warehouse carrying boxes around right after high
| school.
|
| the amount of brain effort to do this kind of job is close to
| 0. you need a bit of physical prowess, but this is easily
| attainable in a couple of week. since the job was basically the
| least complex job one can ever have, the pay was low. and it
| made sense back then: you want to move on to a better
| job/better pay/better conditions? get better qualifications,
| learn to do a different job etc. of course i can't comment on
| what happens at amazon, but these kinds of jobs are so easy to
| do that it's ridiculous they haven't been completely automated
| till now. i do wonder what will happen to all these people once
| automation is 100%.
| raverbashing wrote:
| You're right, they're not complex. For a person
|
| They haven't been automated because it is still hard to do.
| Simply carrying boxes is easy, but picking up products (of
| different sizes, shapes, weights, "grabability", etc and
| putting them into orders is complicated.
|
| That being said, it might be that different companies have
| different stress and pressure levels and different working
| conditions.
| darrenoc wrote:
| It's not that complicated. If you look up Ocado, they have
| entirely automated their warehouses.
| code_duck wrote:
| So your perspective is that only employment which requires
| advanced thinking deserves good conditions and a living wage?
|
| What is society to do with people who don't have sufficient
| brain power? Enslave them? Throw them in the wood chipper?
| quii wrote:
| Just because something isn't skilled doesn't mean it's not
| important or doesn't bring value. The people who do these
| jobs deserve a decent wage and respect, not psuedo-wage-
| slavery
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That's a political problem to solve with higher minimum
| wages/max work hours or universal basic income and
| universal healthcare.
| pm90 wrote:
| Well not quite. It's an economic problem in that if you
| don't pay your workers decent livable wages then they
| won't be able to continue to do a decent living while
| working for you.
|
| The whole idea of "this is a low paying job, anyone can
| do it, I'm paying you very low because you should get a
| better job" now that sounds like a political problem! It
| is all the invented justification to keep wages low. It's
| also a pretty stupid argument but has weight because an
| entire political party makes it.
|
| The thinking around these jobs needs to change; you can't
| pay people like shit and then expect them to be moral and
| upstanding workers.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It's a more immediate economic problem if paying
| employees more than competitors causes your products to
| become uncompetitive and you lose business because people
| shop elsewhere where prices are lower.
|
| The wages aren't low because of an ideology, the wages
| are low because if person A doesn't agree to the low
| wages then the employer can hire person B.
|
| Similarly, wages aren't high in tech/finance/law/medicine
| because people think they "deserve" it, they are high
| because those employees have options to work elsewhere.
|
| One employer deciding to be altruistic and paying more
| isn't going to fix the problem.
|
| Therefore the solution is to either give people better
| options for earning income (long term solution involving
| educating them and more), and increasing minimum wage and
| especially overtime wages.
| pm90 wrote:
| > The wages aren't low because of an ideology, the wages
| are low because if person A doesn't agree to the low
| wages then the employer can hire person B.
|
| This would be true iff the labor supply was perfectly
| elastic wrt to wages but we have repeatedly seen that
| this is not the case.
|
| Paying your employees higher isn't altruism as much as an
| investment in the health of your business. It's either
| that or you deal with higher turnover, insurance security
| etc.
|
| Wall Street has consistently pressured the larger
| employers to cut labor costs as much as they can; there
| is a lot more variation in wages offered by smaller
| businesses. Wall Street is always focused on quarterly
| growth and that is the "ideology" that's ripping apart
| the middle class across the US as employers fail to
| invest in the long term viability of the communities they
| operate in.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| We have decades of evidence where companies that opted
| for lower labor costs were more successful than their
| competitors. There's a reason all manufacturing moved to
| China, and there's no more mid market retailers left in
| the US.
|
| And labor supply elasticity shouldn't matter over a span
| of decades, any mis-pricing would have shown itself, at
| least in the context of maximizing profits. If anything,
| the comparatively overpaid US workforce is/was the "mis-
| priced" part of the equation.
|
| Also, larger businesses can afford to pay more,
| especially by way of tax advantaged benefits:
|
| https://www.ivyexec.com/career-advice/2015/do-big-
| companies-...
|
| My argument is that ideology has nothing to do with how
| much people are paid, it's supply and demand curves (over
| the long term). If people had better options for
| employment, they would be paid more. If employers had
| fewer options for employees, they would have to pay more.
| The rest of the up and coming world would have taken a
| bite out of US workers' pay no matter what.
| alharith wrote:
| I don't want to disagree with most of what you are saying, but
| this is where I can always tell the majority of HN hasn't
| started a non-tech, low skill business before (restaurants,
| sales, salons, construction, etc). Your workers consistently
| put you in bad positions. People will call out for no reason,
| no shows are frequent. Sometimes you just get people that
| completely disappear. That's fine in the tech world where most
| of our deadlines and time estimates are made up anyways, but
| when you have one of your line cooks or stylists or sales rep
| fail, to show on a busy Saturday it can be disastrous if you
| don't have the good will of another one of your employees
| covering.
|
| Seriously, next time you get a chance, talk to your local
| restaurant manager, construction manager, barber shop owner or
| sales manager, they all say the same things: how difficult it
| is to find good workers. (and "good" here is a pretty low bar:
| show up when you are scheduled on time)
| [deleted]
| toyg wrote:
| "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys."
|
| Manual labor in many sectors is structurally underpaid.
| Nobody with half a brain would ever choose waiting tables as
| a career, even if they enjoyed it. So you're left with people
| with no choice or with mental-health issues (or both), who
| often _resent_ having to do the job.
|
| Whether that's by design or a collateral effect of certain
| societal and economic structures, is open to discussion; but
| this is definitely the case. Until we allow that waiter and
| that delivery driver a level of dignity equal to this or that
| white-collar job, the situation will not change.
| alharith wrote:
| I somehow knew this would be the first comment.
| Unfortunately, for these industries, where you sell real
| goods at affordable prices (not over-inflated fantasyland
| prices to your "enterprise" customers) margins are razor
| thin. This is the sector of the economy that has been YoY
| consistently left behind since the Bush-Oil eras drove
| prices sky high. Trying my best not trying to sound snooty,
| but again this shows once more that the majority of people
| here really haven't ran a business like this.
| toyg wrote:
| _> margins are razor thin._
|
| I never said this wasn't the case. Clearly, entire
| industries are fundamentally underappreciated. Or, other
| industries are way overappreciated. Our system ends up
| overvaluing a few guys sat in an office who squeeze the
| last ounce of fantasy numbers out of stock tickers, and
| undervaluing everyone else.
|
| _> left behind since the Bush-Oil eras drove prices sky
| high. _
|
| Sadly, this issue is not limited to the US.
| globular-toast wrote:
| > There seems to be a consistent theme of employees being
| treated with suspicion, condescension and outright hostility.
|
| That's because, unfortunately, a lot of them do need their
| hands holding. Many of these people have very low IQ and will
| always avoid work if they can. You can't compare them with the
| people in the offices you work in who have top 10% IQs. I know
| it should be like this, and should be like that, but if you
| would actually expose yourself to the kinds of people who work
| in these places you will see why these seemingly hostile rules
| are put in place. But think of it like this: these people get a
| safe working environment, comfortable lives which no high
| levels of responsibility, and they get to reap the benefits of
| living in a modern society. If they were left to their own
| devices they'd be in poverty.
| [deleted]
| sargun wrote:
| I briefly worked on a timekeeping system (the one that records
| work hours). When I started running it against real data, I hit
| some bugs. The system was reporting that people had worked a
| few hours rather than a full shift. I had no idea how this
| could happen.
|
| When I started digging into the data, it became obvious. People
| were punching in at 08:00 on Monday, and wouldn't punch out
| until something like 12:00 on Friday (change days as required).
| This meant that they were clocking 24 hours / day. The only way
| this could happen is if they were colluding with their store
| manager, as the manager was meant to close out the time keeping
| system at the end of the day.
|
| The stores with employees that abused the system tended to have
| lower margins. This often led to them being closed down. It's
| not so much the individual being bad that's bad, it's that in
| industries where profit margin is razor thin, an individual can
| have an outsized effect on the group.
|
| I expect over time (10s of years) the computer industry will
| get closer to other professional industries as opposed to being
| the wild west it is today.
| koonsolo wrote:
| If you think clocking will make people more productive, you
| are terribly wrong.
|
| I've seen companies where this happens, and people have
| Friday afternoons off because they already did their hours
| that week. They have 0 loyalty to the company.
|
| Relationships work in 2 directions. If the company treats you
| like lazy scum, you will treat the company as an oppressive
| thing you want to avoid.
|
| If the company trusts you, you are less inclinded to breach
| that trust.
|
| This also works for blue collar workers, just look up Ricardo
| Semler of Semco.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Boeing tracked the projects people worked on to the _tenth
| of an hour_ when I worked there in IT as a salaried
| employee.
|
| It was a disaster and lead to all sorts of undesirable
| behaviors and malicious compliance.
| peterwoerner wrote:
| They are required to do that by law because they work on
| government contracts. I have worked at a couple of
| contractors, they are all required to do that. IN my
| experience it has all been self reported, but I wouldn't
| immediately assume that Boeing is being nefarious.
| kelvin0 wrote:
| I think both individual employees and companies are guilty
| of one thing: greed. I've seen it personally happen on all
| levels of many companies.
|
| The scale of the employee's greed make it's actions seem
| tame at a small scale (punching false times...). They
| justify it by saying they are getting their dues and for
| once they are the ones screwing and not getting screwed.
|
| The scale and visibility of a company's greed make it much
| more apparent that it's incentives and moral compass are
| way off (mistreating, exploiting...). They justify this
| behavior as helping the bottom line and making the numbers
| look good to investors.
|
| Until ALL the actors, both companies and individuals start
| adjusting their 'morality' and integrity this will continue
| happening.
| rerx wrote:
| > I've seen companies where this happens, and people have
| Friday afternoons off because they already did their hours
| that week.
|
| How is that a bad thing?
| koonsolo wrote:
| Not saying it's a bad thing, just saying that it might
| not improve productivity compared to their peers that
| still want to finish that one thing on Friday before the
| weekend starts.
|
| But indeed those employees (programmers, etc) saw that as
| a benefit of doing no more than 40 hour per week.
| rerx wrote:
| > finish that one thing on Friday before the weekend
| starts
|
| Sometimes you might fix that one bug that would haunt you
| over the weekend otherwise, I grant you that. More often
| than that, feeling that one has to enable oneself to
| finish stuff at the end of the week leads to fewer plans
| on Friday nights, too little socializing outside of work,
| less restful weekends. And those kill productivity and
| company culture in the medium term.
|
| In the short term I have seen my share of lost
| productivity because people feel like deploying hardly
| thought through changes (if only to internal system) on
| Friday afternoons to get it done that week.
| burkaman wrote:
| The correct solution to that would be to hand some collective
| ownership and responsibility to the employees of a store.
| Make schedules public, or if that's a privacy issue (I don't
| think it should be), at least discuss overall statistics at
| some regular meeting.
|
| "Hey team, we worked x hours this month, and our best
| employee worked 96 ours of overtime! Amazing!"
|
| In your example, the "individual [having] an outsized effect
| on the group" is the store manager. They need some oversight
| to ensure they're correctly wielding their power over the
| timekeeping system and their employees. You could have the
| next manager in the chain conduct oversight, but then you
| might end of with the same issue. Better to distribute power
| to the employees, so no one person can ruin the store, and
| everyone feels a little more responsible and important.
| loopz wrote:
| It's well established timesheets are an utter failure when
| concerning knowledge work and derived output. There have been
| times where every hour had to be accounted for, allotted to
| projects, cost centers/departments and various general types
| of allowed "hours". This is more unusual today because it
| provably reduced productivity and sometimes even led to
| pointless discussions where to "punch in your hours",
| employees stopped caring as the time was not theirs anymore
| anyways. In the end, data quality would be destroyed, and the
| entire system a time-consuming pointless exercise in C&C
| futility.
|
| The system of building on trust is a more basic form of
| reporting, actually more in line with business thinking.
| Trust is currency and life blood throughout organizations and
| across them. There's surely some people still doing the
| agonizing detailed reporting of timesheets, but even
| consultants are given same benefits of doubt nowadays, as
| companies tend to use the same system for everyone.
|
| I'm sure the cycle will restart at some point. That situation
| will be one where employees have much less say in the day to
| day work and operations again.
| da_chicken wrote:
| > _It 's not so much the individual being bad that's bad,
| it's that in industries where profit margin is razor thin, an
| individual can have an outsized effect on the group._
|
| If a business isn't capable of supporting it's labor at a
| rate where their employees can maintain their cost of living,
| then that business has _already_ failed. It means the
| business subsidizing the cost of goods and services with the
| quality of life of the employees providing those goods and
| services. That 's not a sustainable economic model, because
| it means those same workers are effectively excluded from the
| economy; they're only able to participate with essential
| goods and services, which harms the markets for anything else
| by artificially constraining demand. That means economics of
| scale won't pay off, which increases the effects of overhead
| on business.
| ajhurliman wrote:
| When I switched from mechanical engineering to software
| engineering people would ask me how the switch went, and I
| would tell them it was like I became a new class of citizen.
| The pay was better, I didn't get drug tested anymore,
| management was friendly, the rules were lax.
|
| This made a lot of people uncomfortable (software engineers
| didn't want to acknowledge the privilege they've been living
| with and non-software folks interpreted it as bragging). I
| think it must be pretty tough to understand the gap unless
| you've been in both.
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| I've known of DBAs who had drug-testing.
| myu701 wrote:
| > This made a lot of people uncomfortable (software engineers
| didn't want to acknowledge the privilege they've been living
| with and non-software folks interpreted it as bragging). I
| think it must be pretty tough to understand the gap unless
| you've been in both.
|
| I agree. Anecdote: The difference in treatment between a
| permatemp ('seasonal' worker at an entertainment facility
| working more than 9 months per year, later round-the-clock)
| and F.T.E. is massive.
|
| In the former, you are guilty until proven, if not innocent,
| then merely suspicious.
|
| In the latter, you are innocent until proven guilty or more
| commonly incompetent.
|
| I'm glad I work at one of the latter places now.
| twomoretime wrote:
| >software engineers didn't want to acknowledge the privilege
| they've been living with
|
| Maybe people would be less hostile to the idea if you didn't
| dismiss the fruits of their labor with accusations of
| "privilege." It's kind of insulting to be told that you
| effectively didn't earn part or all of your success because
| of your race and/or gender.
| ajhurliman wrote:
| Maybe privilege is the wrong word (I never used that word
| in these discussions), and race/gender is completely
| tangential to this conversation.
|
| I'm not trying to say that the status is unearned, either,
| but I see why developers wouldn't want to agree with me.
| It's not humbling at all, and can appear arrogant.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Because it often involves nothing more than being given a
| basic level of trust and respect that, once you have them, can
| seem like a bare minimum, not something that you would need to
| fight for.
|
| To add: from an European perspective, _much_ of US-Reddit /HN
| and their stories are frankly unbelievable. "Hire at will",
| bankruptcies because of cancer or people not calling an
| ambulance even if they are heavily injured because they fear
| thousands-of-dollars bills, MLMs, robocall terrorism, companies
| firing people for unionizing - basically unheard of, because
| there are laws that prevent this reasonably good, and
| transgressors will mostly be held accountable by courts and
| public opinion.
| jessaustin wrote:
| It's clear to anyone who isn't mainlining USA jingoist media
| that USA is failing the current test, hard. It seems likely
| that expanded unionization would help us make wiser and more
| humane decisions. We should have laws like the ones you
| describe. The legislative process seems incapable of
| producing them, however.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Mad respect for this guy.
| fortran77 wrote:
| As an Amazon customer, I've gone from admiring the company to
| distrusting them. I can't trust products I buy from them; this
| lack of care is a problem with the very fabric of the
| organization.
|
| One nit to pick: "Climate Change" groups, and the like should
| keep their focus narrow. I have trouble getting behind many
| groups because they seem to need to have a position on every
| "progressive" issue. The Climate Change group should have stuck
| to climate change, and another employee action group created to
| make sure the needs of all the Amazon employees across the
| company are being taken seriously.
| kbash9 wrote:
| > What about AWS? * Amazon Web Services (the "Cloud Computing"
| arm of the company), where I worked, is a different story. It
| treats its workers humanely, strives for work/life balance,
| struggles to move the diversity needle (and mostly fails, but so
| does everyone else), and is by and large an ethical organization.
|
| As a former employee of AWS, I can vouch for this. AWS and
| Amazon.com should be looked at two totally different entities in
| terms of employee experience.
| twomoretime wrote:
| I feel like the only people who are surprised by the difference
| are those who have only ever held white collar jobs.
|
| They're totally different cultures. Weren't talking about two
| different classes of people. And unfortunately you can't expect
| the same standards and rules to be appropriate for both groups.
| mettamage wrote:
| So if I get this right, now a VP will be hired that will approve
| of these things?
|
| I wonder if there'd have been utility to attempt to change the
| system from the inside out.
|
| I guess there wouldn't be. Then this would be the only option
| left.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Reading through his post, it doesn't sound like the goal was to
| change things - he just didn't want to be co-responsible for
| them.
|
| That said, it doesn't sound like there was much more he
| could've done to change things from the inside-out; and even
| though it might not be the intention, this public statement
| does sound like it might contribute to changing it anyway.
| bigiain wrote:
| > Reading through his post, it doesn't sound like the goal
| was to change things
|
| I think he did everything he could think of to change things:
|
| "At that point I snapped. VPs shouldn't go publicly rogue, so
| I escalated through the proper channels and by the book. I'm
| not at liberty to disclose those discussions, but I made many
| of the arguments appearing in this essay. I think I made them
| to the appropriate people."
|
| with no result, and no evident likelyhood of positive change.
|
| Which is why he had to quit.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Yeah that's what I meant: it doesn't sound like the goal
| was to change things _by resigning_. Rather, it was
| admission that since he could not change things, and he
| also didn 't want to be part of them, the only option was
| to resign.
| DagAgren wrote:
| He tried to use whatever influence he had to change things. It
| did fuck all. At that point, he would just be lending
| legitimacy to them by staying.
| mercury_craze wrote:
| Amazon is a great evil.
|
| It will not be remembered as a company that has had been a
| positive influence on the world but as a company that has treated
| its employees (both hourly and salaried) with contempt, driven
| independent stores out of business and refused to play on a level
| playing field both through its shady business practices or its
| refusal to pay tax.
|
| Well done to Tim Bray for acting according to his conscience.
| Hopefully this sets an example to other Amazon employees and
| other tech workers working in similarly morally compromised
| organisations.
| yalogin wrote:
| It's amazing that this is where it arrived. In its early days,
| the exact opposite was true. People loved Amazon because its
| going against the "big box stores". Movies were made
| romanticizing the downfall of the big box stores. Now Amazon
| became the villain. Similar thing is of course happening with
| Google.
| twomoretime wrote:
| I think that's the nature of public corporations. Once the
| board starts to gain influence, the company is gradually
| steered by people who are not interested in image or
| philanthropy any further than necessary for growth.
| pm90 wrote:
| Same with Google. Oh... remember Apple-David v/s MS-Goliath?
| or Apple-David v/s IBM-Goliath?
|
| Corporations change, just like people. I'm not sure if thats
| something that can be avoided. Maybe Valve is an outlier,
| perhaps. Size seems to be the factor here...
| enitihas wrote:
| Which is the mythical company treating their low-skill workers
| far better than Amazon? Does the rest of big tech even employ
| their non professionals directly? Which of big tech directly
| employ their janitors and treat them much better than Amazon
| warehouse workers? Which of big non tech company does this?
|
| >its refusal to pay tax.
|
| What do you even mean by this? Companies can't refuse to pay
| tax. They have to pay tax as per law. If you mean they are
| using legal mechanisms to not pay their maximum possible tax,
| how is that different from Apple or other big tech keeping
| money in tax heavens.
|
| > driven independent stores out of business
|
| And which big/successful comapny doesn't drive out competitors
| out of business? Google/FB have driven local newspapers out of
| business by sucking away all the ad money. MSFT squashed all
| the competition by extremely evil business practices.
|
| > It will not be remembered as a company that has had been a
| positive influence on the world
|
| Again, which is the mythical company you are using as a
| benchmark here?
| mercury_craze wrote:
| Ignoring the bad faith questioning, I dont have to provide a
| gold standard in order to criticise Amazon. Everything I've
| said is extremely well documented.
| rjkennedy98 wrote:
| That was not bad faith questioning at all. He was making
| excellent points that you refused to answer.
|
| Companies exist to make money period. Look at the most
| powerful companies throughout history (British East India
| Company, Standard Oil, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, IBM,
| Facebook, Google, Apple ect). Do any of these have as good
| of a record as Amazon? IBM for instance played a major part
| in the Holocaust. Goldman Sachs was involved in the scams
| crashing the world's economy. Facebook and Google prey upon
| people's addictive behavior and use it to sell adds. Apple
| simply has all their employees run out of sweatshops in
| China, and has all their tax havens in Ireland.
|
| I'm for workers rights and for people getting more pay, but
| let's be honest, expecting Amazon to fix our inequality
| problems is astonishingly naive. If Tim Bray wants to leave
| to have a good conscious about it - that's fine. I myself
| would never work for Facebook or Google because of how they
| addict people to their phones. We all have our own
| standards, but not our own facts.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The only reason that the other big tech companies don't get
| criticized for the way that their low wage "employees" are
| treated, is because they are subcontracted/outsourced
| either locally or in manufacturing plants in China.
| enitihas wrote:
| Off course, you don't have to provide any standard to
| criticize whatever you deem fit. The point of my comment is
| not to ask you to provide a benchmark, but more to point
| out the flaw in your arguments to future readers. I admit I
| could have done this in a better way. But my point is
| without a relative benchmark, one can criticize anything
| and everything, even though the criticism encodes very less
| information. To brand something evil, it has to be compared
| to it's peers in it's time frame. Or else I can brand every
| single company and human being on the planet evil for n
| number of reasons, e.g, for not paying their lowest paid
| workers enough, or for not doing enough to combat climate
| change. These will apply to every single company for some
| definition of "enough", and if I don't have to provide a
| benchmark, I can set enough at any point.
| jeromegv wrote:
| This is one of the largest company in the world, it is
| normal that they get criticized more than smaller
| companies. They have more resources and abilities to make
| changes than most companies. And I disagree, we can
| criticize a company regardless if we provide the example
| of a better company or not. When it comes to workers
| abuse in the middle of a pandemic, "everyone else is bad"
| is not a good answer, i'm sorry. That's just a recipe for
| never changing anything. One can hope for better worker
| treatment regardless, this is how progress is made.
| fastball wrote:
| Does AMZN in fact have more resources to make changes?
|
| I would generally argue that your ability to change your
| org is somewhat limited by your profit margins. It is
| hard to pay warehouse workers more, for instance, if your
| margins are razor thin. While AMZN's profit margin is not
| quite the 0 it used to be, it is certainly not stellar by
| any means. And it is certainly not as good as many, many
| other companies.
| lidHanteyk wrote:
| You may be interested in the Repugnant Conclusion [0]: At
| large-enough scale, every tiny movement of massive actors
| is consequential to those around them. This is not merely
| a utilitarian curiosity, but highly relevant to how
| states treat their subjects and how corporations treat
| their employees.
|
| I will set a basic standard: Our employers ought not to
| knowingly violate human rights. Here's a list of some of
| Amazon's more notorious violations [1]; among the ones
| that concern us in today's thread are labor rights like
| the rights to organize, take breaks, be well- and fairly-
| paid, and work in safe environments.
|
| The point of my comment is not to ask you to defend
| Amazon, but more to point out the flaw in your worldview
| to future readers. I admit that I could have dropped many
| more citations explaining Amazon's poor behavior, but
| again, that's not the point.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox
|
| [1] https://www.greenamerica.org/blog/10-ways-amazon-
| violates-hu...
| fastball wrote:
| How are these questions in bad faith?
| jshevek wrote:
| Internally accusing people of bad faith can be a
| mechanism for dealing with cognitive dissonance. Publicly
| accusing people of bad faith, with no evidence or
| justification, can be a rhetorical tactic.
| [deleted]
| iandanforth wrote:
| Wegmans is another good example. Decent company, happy
| workers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wegmans
| [deleted]
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Which is the mythical company treating their low-skill
| workers far better than Amazon?
|
| That's an easy one: Costco. Do a cursory Google search and
| you'll generally find positive stories going back years.
| There's nothing "mythical" here, it's a matter of explicit
| policy difference between the two retailers.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I knew a few people who worked at Whole Foods before they
| got bought; they seemed relatively happy with how they were
| treated.
| notatoad wrote:
| >before they got bought
|
| this is the key - the bigger the organization, the
| further removed the workers are from the leadership.
| Consolidation and expansion removes a company's humanity.
| There's tons of examples of smaller companies that treat
| _all_ their staff well. There 's no examples of huge
| conglomerates who do.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I mean, Whole Foods wasn't small before Amazon bought
| them. They've gotten bigger, no doubt, but they weren't
| exactly a neighborhood coop either.
| pgrote wrote:
| They have a good track record. The covid19 outbreak seems
| to have caused some bumps.
|
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/costco-
| thr...
|
| https://www.kuow.org/stories/costco-tells-office-workers
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/costco-workers-stressed-
| coro...
| sadturnip wrote:
| Costco is an okay place to work however, As someone who
| worked for Costco in the past, i think i was getting barely
| $1.50 more than minimum wage (this was 2015).
|
| Furthermore you have a ton of full time employees who will
| sing praises about the company. However part timers get
| shafted hard. Oh you can't work 3 days a week due to
| school, okay enjoy barely 8 hours a week. There were a lot
| of people there who had to work multiple jobs simply
| because they could not get enough hours.
|
| Unless you are fully willing to commit to them it isn't a
| great place to work.
| ngngngng wrote:
| Where was this? Sounds like the kind of things that are
| extremely variable depending on where you live. When I
| was working near minimum wage in California, companies
| would screw me like this. But when I moved to Utah,
| companies would give me nearly any hours I asked for
| since they really needed the work done.
| jsight wrote:
| > Again, which is the mythical company you are using as a
| benchmark here?
|
| Exactly. These kinds of criticisms are useless without a
| benchmark. Is Wal-Mart better, for example?
| gjs278 wrote:
| lol. take this box off the shelf and put a label on it. omg so
| evil
| moneymoney wrote:
| https://techgig1.blogspot.com/2020/05/bye-amazon-tm-bray.htm...
|
| link to original article
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Whilst this is laudable and it would be great if more people
| stood up for principles, it does rather imply he was ok with
| every other shady practice Amazon was involved in for the
| previous 5 years.
| alkibiades wrote:
| if he's so against capitalism he should donate his considerable
| net worth to amazon workers instead of pointless virtue
| signaling.
|
| but somehow think that won't happen :)
| blueline wrote:
| having money means you aren't allowed to critique capitalism?
| what kind of logic is that?
| alkibiades wrote:
| if you made your money off the thing you're criticizing seems
| a tad hypocritical. he should try socialism and redistribute
| his wealth
| [deleted]
| dirtydroog wrote:
| > The victims weren't abstract entities but real people; here are
| some of their names: CB, GB, MC, EC, BM, and CS.
|
| > I'm sure it's a coincidence that every one of them is a person
| of color, a woman, or both. Right?
|
| I hope this guy got permission from these people to post their
| names on a public forum. Also, there's really nothing in those
| names to tell if someone is a PoC or not. At least one of those
| names is both a male and female name.
| xenocyon wrote:
| My personal snapping point as a consumer occurred several years
| ago, over something that's definitely not anecdotal:
|
| When Amazon employees are frisked at the end of their shift
| (which is a practice that applies to at least some warehouses),
| they are not paid for the time they spend waiting in line to be
| frisked. This is not an anecdote; indeed Amazon fought and won a
| court case insisting that it has the right to not compensate
| employees for this time. (See https://www.reuters.com/article/us-
| usa-court-amazon-com/u-s-...)
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| To be fair, almost every single major retail establishment has
| this same policy. Many of which have also been fined. This is
| no where near unique to Amazon.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| So what? 'They're doing it too' doesn't excuse bad behavior,
| whether in the schoolyard or the multinational business
| world.
| uoaei wrote:
| "It's legal, so what is everyone complaining about?"
|
| Law != ethics
| saagarjha wrote:
| Apple did this too, until they lost a lawsuit:
| https://9to5mac.com/2020/02/13/apple-retail-bag-search-
| rulin.... Just because it's not unique doesn't mean Amazon
| shouldn't change their behavior.
| specialp wrote:
| Yes for me too. The fact that Amazon is so cheap that they want
| employees to sit around for 20-30 minutes after their shift
| unpaid to get searched to make sure they aren't stealing blew
| me away. It is one thing if Amazon wants to do this and pay
| their employees, but to not pay is wrong.
|
| And they felt so strongly about this they appealed a case all
| the way to the Supreme Court... That was the snapping point for
| me too and I have not ordered from them in a long time.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > The fact that Amazon is so cheap
|
| you mean the company that pays high wages?
| worik wrote:
| Yes. That one
| uoaei wrote:
| You have a very myopic view of what Amazon is and what
| roles the majority of its labor force occupy.
|
| The bulk of Amazon's workforce are delivery drivers,
| warehouse workers, and datacenter rats. They are not paid
| fairly. It's pretty obvious from the numbers. For more
| supporting evidence, read TFA.
| pathseeker wrote:
| Where do you draw the line? Should people be compensated for
| their commute? It's an interesting debate that has emerged in
| airports as well: https://www.talbottlawfirm.com/does-an-
| employer-have-to-pay-...
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| If your employer mandates that you take a certain route to
| work? And that route takes you more time? Then yes, a line
| is crossed and you should be compensated.
| stepbeek wrote:
| A worker has some control over their commute. That same
| worker cannot enact any control over security practices. We
| _do_ compensate employees for commuting to somewhere other
| than their usual place of work.
| sterlind wrote:
| my mom used to defend chicken plants on this issue - should
| workers be paid for the time they spend donning and doffing
| their smocks and hairnets? the law was ambiguous -- I was
| put through college on the money from these cases!
|
| One of these cases eventually made its way to the Supreme
| Court [0], but they ruled (in favor of the plaintiffs)
| about the validity of the collective action, not about
| whether the Fair Labor Standards Act covered donning and
| doffing (it does, at least so I believe.)
|
| It seems like donning and doffing is considered as time
| worked because it's a "principal activity" under the FLSA
| [1], and that includes waiting time. Seems like being
| frisked would be a "principal activity" as well - it's
| essentially doffing - so waiting time would be included
| too.
|
| Someone could make a pretty penny bringing a collective
| suit against Amazon over this.
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyson_Foods,_Inc._v._Bouap
| hake...
|
| 1. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/field-assistance-
| bulletins/...
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Commute is partially under the control of the worker, where
| I decide to live has a huge impact on how long my commute
| is. I can freely decide to trade commute for money, making
| it my responsibility.
|
| Waiting in line to be frisked is something mandated by the
| employer. They control whether or not I have to do it, and
| how long the lines are. Since it's under their control,
| it's their financial responsibility.
| kortilla wrote:
| That's a bit disingenuous when short commutes are
| literally not affordable to some of the people we're
| talking about.
| specialp wrote:
| To me, if you are not free to walk out the door and do
| whatever you please, you have an obligation to an employer,
| and are therefore working. I worked a college job fixing
| bowling equipment and they tried to make me clock out for
| my meals. I refused unless I was then free to leave the
| building. As if I have to be there on call then I am still
| working.
|
| Amazon is not allowing these people to walk out the door
| and go home. That is taking their time for company
| policies. So that is working.
| ses1984 wrote:
| Waiting to be frisked is not analogous to commuting at all.
|
| If amazon isn't paying for your time in line, they have no
| incentive to make it fast. They can invest the bare minimum
| to protect their own interests, and fuck over their worker
| who have to wait in line. If they had to pay workers for
| their time then there is an incentive for them to make the
| line move quickly.
|
| I can't imagine a setup that is more hostile to your fellow
| humans as forcing them to waste unpaid time.
| gffrd wrote:
| I think that reveals the motive: they don't want the line
| to be fast.
|
| Isn't the purpose of the screens less about catching bad
| actors and more about cultivating a culture of
| fear/suspicion, and hopefully getting a few effective
| informants out of the thing?
|
| If the lines go to 2 minutes, or I get paid while in
| them, where's my incentive to rat out a coworker?
| joshl325 wrote:
| Should people be compensated for the time they brush their
| teeth or have breakfast?
|
| Of course not.
|
| Once you step into your work, you should be paid for your
| time. Especially when you have no control over that.
| jankassens wrote:
| To me, the door of the building seems to be a pretty clear
| line.
|
| For a fixed location job, the commute is fully under
| control of the employee and fair not to count as hours.
|
| For variable location jobs like in construction, my view is
| that potential additional commute time should be
| compensated.
| smoe wrote:
| I always think it is a bit odd when a company wins a case like
| this, but then people blame the company, not the court or the
| law.
|
| Not saying, that you don't disagree with the courts decisions,
| but I keep getting this feeling especially from the US. Why do
| people realistically expect a company to not stretch things as
| far as legally possible? I get why libertarians would see it
| this way, but everyone else?
| chc wrote:
| You seem to be conflating blameworthiness and predictability.
| True story: I know a guy who's a real scumbag, just
| constantly taking advantage of people who don't know better
| and abusing those who do know better. I fully expect this
| person to do a lot of contemptible things. My ability to
| anticipate his behavior doesn't make me like him any more for
| it. And the fact that the law doesn't punish a particular
| misbehavior doesn't shift the blame for his behavior onto the
| law.
|
| In short: It is not ethical to do whatever you can get away
| with. You can choose to ignore questions of ethics, but if
| that's how you choose to live your life, expect to have a lot
| of people hate your guts. People treating you like a monster
| is a predictable consequence of living like a monster. This
| doesn't stop being true just because the choices are being
| made by multiple people under the banner of a corporation.
| all_blue_chucks wrote:
| A case can be made that making profitable misconduct legal
| DOES force businesses to misbehave because those that don't
| take full advantage of the law will be at a disadvantage to
| those who do.
|
| Furthermore, shaming one company to change its practices
| voluntarily does little to help workers at other companies
| subjected to the same thing.
|
| So we really should push to change the law with more
| urgency than we use to push any give single employer.
| smoe wrote:
| If you are in a position of power, why should you care
| whether people hate your guts? And only people that don't
| depend on you or that don't benefit from a good
| relationship with you will treat you like a monster.
|
| There is quite the discrepancy for example in European
| history between royals acting like monsters and people
| treating them as such. Sure, eventually you'll have the
| people grab the pitchforks and roll up the guillotine, but
| you might not want to wait that long.
|
| How much true accountability is there for those people
| making the choices under the banner of the corporations?
|
| In my opinion, big part of what law should be, whoever is
| in charge of enforcing it, is a set of rules based on
| societies ethical compass. If someone can get away taking
| advantage and abusing others, this begs the question if
| those acts are in fact unethical, or if the the law needs
| updating.
|
| It is not about shifting blame for behavior onto the law,
| but how you decide what behavior is blameworthy and should
| be punished. And I much prefer having a at least a somewhat
| transparent formalized system for this over Mob justice.
| jmcqk6 wrote:
| >Why do people realistically expect a company to not stretch
| things as far as legally possible?
|
| Because doing the right thing is different from doing the
| legal thing.
|
| If you're only interested in maximizing your profits under
| the umbrella of law, you are, by definition, not interested
| in acting morally. Which means you're probably doing many
| things that many people would consider immoral.
|
| It's a mismatch of motivations.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > Why do people realistically expect a company to not stretch
| things as far as legally possible?
|
| What I expect people to do, what the standards I hold people
| to are often different.
|
| I _expect_ Amazon to push things as far as they are able. I
| strongly dislike them because of it. My standards of
| acceptable conduct are above "barely legal" conduct. My
| expectations are below legal conduct.
|
| I also can blame _two_ entities for this outcome. The law and
| the courts are awful for allowing this to stand as the
| settled law on the matter. I blame them for the situation.
| Amazon is _also_ awful for pushing the law to this point and
| taking advantage of it. I blame them for the situation, too.
| smoe wrote:
| I think, putting acceptable conduct above barely legal
| conduct for corporations is how they get away with pretty
| much everything.
|
| A bunch of people on internet being mad at them has in my
| opinion not proven very effective at changing their
| behavior and making the people in charge accountable for
| their acts.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| > See https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-amazon-
| com/u-s-....
|
| Where is the 2014 Supreme Court ruling mentioned by this
| article?
| smoe wrote:
| Seems to be this one:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-
| ru...
|
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-433_5h26.pdf
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| Thanks.
| tzs wrote:
| Something went wrong with your link, replacing a large part
| of it with "..". I think this is the unmangled link [1].
|
| Anyway, there wasn't actually a Supreme Court ruling. The
| workers appealed their loss in the appellate court to the
| Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court declined to hear the
| case.
|
| Aside from a few specific types of cases the Supreme Court
| has discretionary jurisdiction rather than mandatory
| jurisdiction. This was one of those discretionary
| jurisdiction cases.
|
| When they decline to take a case they generally do not give a
| reason. It may be because they think the appellate court got
| it right and there is nothing more to say on the issue. On
| the other hand, it may be because they think the appellate
| court is not right but what is right is not clear and they
| want to see the issue arise in other districts and see what
| the appellate courts in those other districts decide before
| they take a case on the issue. Or they may be ready to tackle
| the issue, but they just don't like this particular case as a
| vehicle for deciding the issue and want to wait for a case
| that would work better.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-amazon-
| com/u-s-...
| te_chris wrote:
| Genuinely inspiring. Made me realise how long it's been since
| someone high up in tech actually took a stand and a risk and
| defended their principles publically. Thank you and know that
| your actions are meaningful and appreciated.
| lazyjones wrote:
| Somewhat understandable reaction, but wise? As a VP you should
| have some influence at Amazon. Even if not, you'd still do more
| good by speaking out about it internally instead of resigning,
| thereby harming mostly yourself and apart from HN drama having
| little effect on the problem. Unless the real problem is that
| there is no actual reasonable argument against Amazon's actions
| because the danger is exaggerated and all precautions have been
| taken, in which case the doubts could have been resolved
| internally as well... But, his money, his consciousness, his
| emotions, his decision.
| braythwayt wrote:
| You make good point, but it can be extraordinarily difficult to
| change a company's toxic management culture from the inside.
| You speak out, you lead by example, you ask tough questions...
|
| Then you start getting bad reviews. Colleagues speak of you as
| being "difficult." You are passed over for involvement in
| important initiatives.
|
| You quit in disgust, but now they leak that you are a poor
| performer who is no longer relevant, and your speaking out
| about worker conditions is just a poor performer trying to
| distract everyone from their inability to get things done.
|
| It is very, very difficult to win some battles from the inside.
| Toxic cultures are ruthless when defending themselves from
| change.
|
| Ask any woman about challenging inappropriate sexual behaviour.
| I believe we'll hear the same thing.
| lazyjones wrote:
| > You quit in disgust, but now they leak that you are a poor
| performer who is no longer relevant, and your speaking out
| about worker conditions is just a poor performer trying to
| distract everyone from their inability to get things done.
|
| I'm not sure this is worse than quitting in disgust and then
| publishing drama and negative opinions about your past
| employer. At least the poor performance claim can be
| countered with actual past reviews.
|
| > It is very, very difficult to win some battles from the
| inside
|
| It's even more difficult if you don't even try and when
| everyone who wants to and could do it just leaves.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I suspect Tim has a pretty good understanding of his
| ability to influence Amazon's corporate culture:
|
| > At that point I snapped. VPs shouldn't go publicly rogue,
| so I escalated through the proper channels and by the book.
| I'm not at liberty to disclose those discussions, but I
| made many of the arguments appearing in this essay. I think
| I made them to the appropriate people.
|
| And it seems that failed. What's left to do at that point?
| You can "sabotage" - in the sense of refusing to do your
| job. You can participate in a system you think is heading
| in the wrong direction (and with the knowledge you can't
| really change it). Or you can quit.
| sulam wrote:
| He specifically addressed this in the post. He tried that
| first.
| _curious_ wrote:
| "That done, remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect,
| signing off on actions I despised. So I resigned."
|
| Hope to see more individuals in tech standing up for what they
| believe to be right, willing to make sacrifices or even walk away
| if needed, and ultimately tell their story publicly. This is how
| you do it!
| alexashka wrote:
| 'Poor people are being treated poorly, I'm rich and can get a job
| by walking across the street. Capitalism is bad blah blah blah.'
|
| Quality content.
|
| People born with a silver spoon in their mouth are so predictably
| 'shocked' by how the rest of the world functions. People are
| mistreated? People are fired? There is injustice in the world? Oh
| my, I'm going to blog about it!
|
| Have you heard of Buddha? You're in that stage of discovering old
| age, sickness and death by wandering outside your golden palace
| walls out into the streets.
| querez wrote:
| > I'm sure it's a coincidence that every one of them is a person
| of color, a woman, or both. Right?
|
| This part of the article jumped at me -- If this is true, then
| I'd have to say "yes, coincidence". No company (let alone one as
| large as Amazon) would be _that_ stupid in 2020.
| alkibiades wrote:
| if anything i'd expect them to go out of their way to fire some
| white men to avoid lawsuits
| shaan1 wrote:
| Made money, now is the ideal time to quit :-) Similar to the
| google engineers who quit after working for 10 to 15 years.
| tom_mellior wrote:
| > Fast-forward to the Covid-19 era. Stories surfaced of unrest in
| Amazon warehouses, workers raising alarms about being uninformed,
| unprotected, and frightened. Official statements claimed every
| possible safety precaution was being taken. Then a worker
| organizing for better safety conditions was fired, and brutally
| insensitive remarks appeared in leaked executive meeting notes
| where the focus was on defending Amazon "talking points".
|
| Sorry, but none of this is new in "the Covid-19 era". There is a
| long Wikipedia page dedicated to criticism of Amazon detailing
| _decades_ of criticism of how Amazon treats its workers:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon
|
| Better of Tim to exit late than never, but let's not pretend that
| until recent firings and this blog post we all thought that
| Amazon was a nice and cuddly company.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Bray says he started there in
| December 2014. He must have known at that point what he was
| getting into. For reference, here's the state of the criticism
| page at that time:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Criticism_of_Amaz...
| thecampfire wrote:
| To be fair, he did say that AWS was quite different. When he
| started he wasn't a VP, and it looks like firing activists and
| Covid-19 triggered it, rather than regular working conditions
| in normal times.
| SeeTheTruth wrote:
| The fear of death due to infection by a pandemic is new. The
| need for PPE and lack thereof is new. Firing whitleblowers in
| the face of a pandemic and meeting to smear them (with public
| proof thanks to a leak) is new.
|
| We didn't think Amazon was nice and cuddly - but this is a good
| point for Tim to exit.
|
| Jumping on someone doing a principled thing at personal cost
| for "not doing it sooner" is so cynical. I think we can
| criticize Amazon's long history of being repressive without
| shaming someone who publicly did the right thing.
| tom_mellior wrote:
| > The fear of death due to infection by a pandemic is new.
| The need for PPE and lack thereof is new.
|
| Very specifically, yes. A bit more generally, it's not
| different from a pattern of conditions like "heat so extreme
| it required the regular posting of ambulances to take away
| workers who passed out, strenuous workloads in that heat, and
| first-person reports of summary terminations for health
| conditions such as breast cancer".
|
| > Jumping on someone doing a principled thing at personal
| cost for "not doing it sooner" is so cynical.
|
| I don't agree that doing one good thing undoes bad things
| that went before, and that it absolves one from criticism.
| lidHanteyk wrote:
| Sure, but at the same time, it is our civic responsibility as
| skilled programmers to deliberately starve Amazon of the
| labor needed to build their oppressive systems. It is not
| wrong to remind ourselves of that greater responsibility,
| especially in the context of Amazon being vulnerable to
| organized labor action today.
| [deleted]
| fock wrote:
| I think the difference is that, while before personal health
| was only on the line on an individual basis, now it's on the
| line on a collective basis and AMZ apparently seems to not care
| for human life in general...
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I thought that the introduction about the climate change issue
| was supposed to have addressed your concern. I interpreted it
| as him saying he was equally upset about the equal inaction on
| the climate change issue but had his priorities set such that
| it wasn't enough for him to quit until they started directly
| messing with human lives.
| thih9 wrote:
| > Sorry, but none of this is new in "the Covid-19 era"
|
| This seems a straw man argument. I don't think the author was
| saying that before Covid-19 Amazon listened to their workers.
|
| On the contrary, one sentence before what you quoted ("Fast-
| forward to the Covid-19 era"), the article describes how
| activists were threatened with dismissal.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| I often have this discussion with a friend about how to figure
| out your place in a company.
|
| It is very important to figure out what class you belong to in a
| company. Some try to boil this down to 'cost-centers', but it
| isn't always that simple.
|
| Warehouse workers are second class citizens at Amazon. This can
| be true for a developer in certain environments, it can be true
| for designers, etc.
|
| I've worked at places where developers are second class citizens
| compared to Project/Product management, and then I've seen where
| designers are second class citizens to developers. It can be even
| more granular where frontend is second class to backend, or vice
| versa.
|
| However you figure it out, if you find out you are a second class
| citizen there, you have to move on, as your potential is capped
| by the business priorities/culture/structure. It's never a good
| fit.
| xrd wrote:
| I've read a few comments here that Tim Bray would be better off
| staying at Amazon to make change from within.
|
| This morning I attempted to renew a domain at a GoDaddy
| subsidiary, and as I scrolled down to look for the contact
| information I saw that GoDaddy appears to be registered in the
| Cayman Islands.
|
| I'm genuinely curious (I mean that) to ask if the same question
| is asked of companies that go offshore. Isn't this all about tax
| evasion? And, shouldn't they be asked to fight for change from
| within in the same way?
|
| I honestly think many people on HN would support overhauling our
| tax code alongside a corporation with deep pockets. So why not?
| emilfihlman wrote:
| >I'm sure it's a coincidence that every one of them is a person
| of color, a woman, or both. Right?
|
| And at that point the author lost my respect. Sad, since
| otherwise he's making good points with a lot of merit, but if
| he's making that "argument" I don't even want to know what more
| vocal "activists" were saying.
|
| This comes down purely to cost and slow moving rock on the Amazon
| side.
| eplanit wrote:
| I stopped at the mention of Naomi Klein.
| lorec0re wrote:
| You're a good human!
| pleddy wrote:
| https://youtu.be/Y666duJMDnQ
| econcon wrote:
| I also quit tech, so I don't really respect the people who get
| job at these companies, they are basically modern day enabler for
| bad things that happen at these companies. Companies aren't
| nothing without their employees helping them do the things and
| that unfortunately includes the bad things.
|
| I now run my own business and pay everyone fairly and treat
| everyone well.
| otachack wrote:
| Is your business non-tech related? I've had ideas to leave,
| myself, but with the times we're in with small businesses
| getting hit hard it seems it'll take extra courage to do so.
| econcon wrote:
| It's small scale manufacturing for communities, I am doing
| this work in India where it can help quality of life of
| people who are not aware about mechanism/machines which can
| improve their productivity and safety.
| wtmt wrote:
| I appreciate the candid statement he has made about one of the
| things that ails Amazon's leadership.
|
| > Only that's not just Amazon, it's how 21st-century capitalism
| is done.
|
| I wonder if there's any future opportunity for him in the
| existing set of well known names or large enough companies. I
| can't think of any widely known tech company that doesn't do
| "21st-century capitalism" (treating people as disposable cogs).
| Seems like getting into some non-profit that also has a decent
| track record may be the way to go for him.
| bantunes wrote:
| I hear he's 64, so this might not be a big deal for him going
| forward.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| Yeah, his blog has previously indicated he's been considering
| retiring.
| acdha wrote:
| I'm with OP on the non-profit route: if you're a relatively
| healthy retiree who's concerned about the future your
| children are going to live in (a recurring theme of his blog
| posts) there are a lot of activist organizations which can
| use serious talent which they can't pay market rates for and
| he'd have the luxury of picking the one whose views most
| closely align.
| chippy wrote:
| I doubt it's an in depth criticism of capitalism, rather the
| specific sub-branch of worker-exploitative practices that the
| company does.
|
| He'd be quite happy (as are we all here, if we are truthful)
| making more millions in other more worker-friendlier ways.
| youeseh wrote:
| People who need to job to make ends meet usually have a lot more
| to lose. This very quickly creates an environment where there are
| real imbalances. The perception of these real imbalances can be
| even greater if there's a breakdown in trust / communication.
| asdf21 wrote:
| It's crazy how stuff like this keeps coming out, but Amazon's
| stock just keeps going up..
| hobofan wrote:
| It's almost like people with morals and people investing in
| Amazon are two completely separate groups.
| alexandercrohde wrote:
| Well, as somebody who is unimpressed Amazon's corporate
| dystopia, yet also owns a significant amount of Amazon stock, I
| don't think the stock market is the place to look for these
| changes.
|
| At a stock level, I imagine their longterm plan is to replace
| warehouse workers with robots anyways.
| ssklash wrote:
| I'm shocked that so many bright, talented engineers go to work
| for Companies like Google and Amazon and Facebook. While I'm glad
| some see the light about the real mission of these companies
| (it's not about "connecting people", "providing delightful
| customer experiences", "doing no evil" or any of that BS) and
| ultimately quit, but what concerns me is how so many clearly
| incredibly bright and talented people are able to ignore so many
| red flags and go to work for these companies. Google and Facebook
| are about acquiring personal data to sell ads, that's it! You're
| not adding value, no matter what interesting, complicated,
| bleeding edge, world-class problems you're solving. The world is
| worse off for all of it, and you're helping.
| diob wrote:
| I feel like Maslow's hierarchy of needs addresses why so many
| choose to work there.
| BrandonM wrote:
| I think that's taking things a bit too far. Of course, the
| ultimate goal of every for-profit corporation is to make a
| profit. But along the way, most of them are providing value to
| society.
|
| So much of the Internet as we know it is built atop AWS. Many
| people are able to shelter in place with minimal impact largely
| because of the groundwork laid by Amazon, during more than a
| decade of not being profitable. That includes ordering
| equipment to work from home, ordering home goods to avoid going
| out, running the compute infrastructure that powers
| teleconferencing tools like Zoom, providing entertainment
| options through Prime Video, etc. etc.
|
| How many families are staying in touch through Facebook
| Messenger, video chats, and just plain old photos? How many
| grandparents feel less alone because they can see their family
| members and a wealth of photos every day? How many old friends
| reconnect because Facebook exists?
|
| Google makes the world better in so many ways that I can't even
| pretend to address it exhaustively. I personally have been able
| to experience remote places thanks to Flights, Translate, and
| Maps. I use Search hundreds of times a week... the world's
| knowledge is more accessible than ever before thanks in part to
| Google's efforts to organize it.
|
| I think it's totally right to call out companies where their
| behavior is poor. I think we need to demand--both through
| social pressure and through laws--that companies respect
| privacy, treat workers well, and minimally impact the
| environment. But I think it's taking it a step too far to claim
| that the world is worse off for the effort of FAANG employees.
| Even those working on ads... if there's no ad revenue, none of
| those other benefits exist.
| ssklash wrote:
| I agree that we should demand that companies should respect
| privacy. And if they did, Facebook and Google would cease to
| exist, or have never existed in the first place. They are
| surveillance capitalism, pure and simple. They may make Gmail
| free and make it seem like a photo sharing service exists to
| help grandparents connect with their kids, but those are
| simply hooks to lure people in for their data. They have all
| sorts of cool, free services to disguise the fact that they
| are looking for your data. No one denies the usefulness of
| Maps or search or FB messenger. But to pretend that Google
| and Facebook do it out of the goodness of their hearts or
| because they care about "connecting people" is naive and
| exactly what their messaging is intended to convey.
|
| Amazon at least provides useful services. They do it on the
| backs of underpaid and poorly treated warehouse workers, but
| Prime shipping is sweet! Treatment of those interested in
| unionizing is about the biggest indicator of a company's
| values, and Amazon is quite clear on that point.
|
| My main point overall is why work for a company like that
| when there are others doing the good things FAANG companies
| pretend to be providing?
| BrandonM wrote:
| I don't think anyone is claiming that these companies are
| acting out of the goodness of their hearts. These companies
| all have missions, though. Companies are made up of people.
| Some of those people believe in those missions and choose
| to work for those companies for those reasons. A larger
| group of people are happy to exchange time for money,
| provided that their company does not stray too far from its
| mission.
|
| It's not a black-and-white choice between "goodness of
| their hearts" or ruthlessly exploitative capitalism.
| There's a huge gray area in between, and that's where
| social and legal guardrails (for better or for worse) have
| to help ensure that companies act in a socially responsible
| way.
|
| I don't have experience with Facebook specifically, but I
| have worked with Google's security team. From what I've
| seen, Google truly cares about securing their users' data
| in a way that exceeds the standards of other large
| enterprises that I've worked with. I get a ton of spam
| emails and phone calls every day, and never once have I
| suspected that it was because Google or Facebook violated
| my privacy.
|
| I'd rather focus my ire on companies like Equifax or
| popular browser plugin acquirers or the debt collection
| system or even mall sweepstakes. All of these entities
| egregiously violate privacy by blatantly sharing user
| information, auctioning it off to the highest bidder, or
| recklessly failing to secure it.
| joeys7 wrote:
| Back when I was in university, I feel like they really
| brainwashed me to think these tech companies were making the
| world a better place. I was too naive. I think a lot of young
| software engineers started out like me.
|
| There's also the fact that these companies are so big, they
| have a lot of variation inside them. For example at Amazon
| Music, there really isn't a lot of evilness there, it's just
| getting people to pay up for music streaming. Still some
| unfairness in the music industry for smaller artists, but
| that's often the labels stepping on them.
|
| A lot of us at Amazon knows this company is kinda evil now. I
| was thinking about resigning over these recent firings, but
| another activist convinced me to stay so we can continue
| pushing the company to be less evil.
|
| Essentially if we are willing to resign from a job, we have
| nothing to lose so we can take bigger activism risks.
| pm90 wrote:
| Same. When I was in college, all my peers talked about
| FAANG's in glowing terms. Doesn't help that these companies
| often recruit heavily from Universities, so you have alum
| networks that talk about how great the companies are etc. Its
| quite an evil genius. When people finally do get a job, they
| often realize its not always the cool shit that they heard
| about; most often than not its some uncool shit that brings
| in a ton of money.
|
| This isn't to discount the amazing engineering work that
| these orgs tend to do. But look at their workforce numbers
| and tell me with a straight face that all their engineers are
| working on solving tough engineering problems and not just a
| cog in the optimization machine.
| pathseeker wrote:
| That's just because 5+ years ago Amazon/Facebook/Google
| weren't "giant evil shit-lords" so-to-speak. They were cool
| even among industry folks. It wasn't long ago that having
| Google on your resume meant something was special about
| you.
|
| Facebook/Google/Amazon aren't really cool in colleges
| anymore either.
| [deleted]
| oneepic wrote:
| You can say that, but people gain a lot from working there.
| There are many pluses to working at these companies.
| Pay/benefits/relocation packages, provided on-the-job training
| and free access to a lot of technical courses, relatively-
| effective engineering practices (ethics are a separate issue),
| little-to-no dress code, free food, technical managers (not
| nontechnical ones) and a nice name on the resume when you
| leave, to name a few. I'm not saying they are unique to these
| co's, just that these co's tend to offer all of the above.
|
| Plus, oftentimes the job app requirements are pretty general
| and loose, as opposed to all those shitty firms that want
| entry-level engineers to have graduated in the past 6 mos, and
| have experience with 10 different Javascript frameworks. (And
| then underpay them and work the hell out of them.) I know I saw
| a lot of those when I was leaving college in 2017/18.
| ssklash wrote:
| > ethics are a separate issue
|
| They're kinda the main thing I'm talking about here. Everyone
| knows perfectly well you can gain huge amounts by working at
| FAANG companies, that's not in doubt. The question is at what
| cost, do the people doing it see their companies for what
| they are, and why do people continue to work there if they
| do. I'm sure being CEO of Phillip Morris or Palantir or
| Exxon-Mobile is quite lucrative, but I'll pass.
|
| Many people just need a job, and I don't begrudge anyone
| taking a job they need to support themselves or their
| families. But the kind of talent FAANG companies hire can
| likely work anywhere and are higher up the socioeconomic
| ladder. They have choices most others don't. And too many, in
| my opinion, work to get people to click ads and sell people's
| data.
| oneepic wrote:
| My point is that it's irresponsible to reduce these
| companies to their ads and data practices, because they
| also tend to be great places to work and tend to offer a
| positive culture and benefits. You should consider
| everything before deciding to work there.
| ssklash wrote:
| I'm not sure I see how having a great work environment
| and culture and compensation package justifies helping a
| company perform its primary function, if that primary
| function is harmful. I'm not reducing companies like
| Facebook and Google to their data and ad practices, those
| practices are their core business model. It's literally
| why they exist, despite what they may say. GM makes cars,
| Facebook and Google collect personal information to
| better sell ads. The awesome benefits and coworkers and
| cool problems and neat tech don't change why those
| companies exist. I'm simply questioning why people still
| work there, assuming they know what they're helping
| build. Ad tech. That no one wants or needs.
| vdnkh wrote:
| I think bright, talented engineers also want to get paid for
| their efforts. When FAANG pays 2-3x most other companies, it
| doesn't always make sense to go elsewhere.
| ssklash wrote:
| Sure, but the idea is about why they pay more. They can
| afford to, because of how massively lucrative monetizing
| personal data is. Doing it at scale is hard, and they need
| the best talent. My comment was about how the best telnet
| sometimes seem to ignore the hard reality of what they are
| helping a company do in favor of enjoying the excellent pay
| and focusing on the admittedly interesting problems they are
| solving. An intentional effort by those companies to seem
| glamorous and recruit young engineers out of college makes it
| worse, as mentioned above.
| francisofascii wrote:
| What companies should they work for instead? Is there a list of
| companies that are more moral than those you listed? Maybe the
| alternatives are worse. How do you even know?
| chanmad29 wrote:
| Amazon deserves this criticism but I think there is nothing to
| single them out. Most for-profit companies would behave in a
| similar fashion unless there is a competition for these workers
| that will force Amazon to treat them better. Since Amazon is
| operating in virtual monopoly here, there is no incentive for
| them to behave differently unless there are stronger laws such as
| minimum wage etc..
| birdyrooster wrote:
| On the contrary, Amazon's success is precedent setting and it
| is such a strong company that singling them out can cause the
| rest of the industry to shift.
| x3blah wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20200409045004/https://www.oann.c...
|
| CNBC interview with Smalls
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HUGc7R8hw
| mcguire wrote:
| Is there any irony to be found in the fact that, reading the
| linked article (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dm8bx/leaked-
| amazon-memo...), I'm seeing 4 copies of the ad for the Audible
| original "Escape from Virtual Island"?
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| > I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers
|
| Assuming this is the real true reason (I would trust Tim, but you
| never know, so just being explicit here), it takes huge balls to
| do something like this.
|
| The economic loss has to be somewhat taken in relation to your
| total wealth (e.g. if you lose $1M by quitting but you already
| have $10M+ in the bank, it's not as hard as if you had zero in
| the bank), but still... Very few people would have the courage to
| walk away from big sums of money purely on principle.
|
| Again, assuming this is all true, I admire Tim for this move, and
| plaude him. I had my issues with Amazon when I was there
| (2008-2014), some of them made me uncomfortable, but I would have
| never had the courage to walk away.
|
| It also potentially damages Tim's ability to get hired in the
| future, as some other large organization might not like his
| behavior with Amazon and be reluctant to bring him on board. At
| the same time, hopefully there are smaller startups that want
| exactly this type of courage and rectitude and will hire him for
| his talents.
|
| Good luck, Tim.
| st1ck wrote:
| > if you lose $1M by quitting but you already have $10M+ in the
| bank
|
| Losing money is hard, but if you reframe it as being rewarded
| $1M (with pretty low marginal utility after $10M) by losing
| your freedom, then such a choice is only rational.
| sradman wrote:
| It doesn't require huge balls, it requires ranking virtue
| signalling over monetary gain. Firing whistleblowers is a
| terrible thing but after forming/joining an activist group
| demanding that your employer addresess climate change, and
| promoting Naomi Klein as a spokesperson for the blue collar
| workers at the same corporation, I suspect that your ability to
| distinguish between whistleblower and social justice activist
| is compromised.
| morelisp wrote:
| > ranking virtue signalling over monetary gain
|
| I'll cop to not being completely au fait with current right-
| wing rhetoric, but I thought a core part of "virtue
| signalling" (insofar as it might actually exist beyond
| "position I disagree with", which your post suggests it might
| not) was that it was low-effort / low-cost. In other words,
| no action where the alternative is non-trivial monetary gain
| could be virtue signalling.
|
| Between this and Bray's arrest for environment activism
| previously, I'd propose that this is not "virtue signalling"
| but simply being virtuous.
| DagAgren wrote:
| In pretty much every case, "virtue signalling" is code for
| "this person is being virtuous, and I don't like it".
| gowld wrote:
| One side uses "virtue signaling" like another uses
| "Russian bot".
| DagAgren wrote:
| Russian bots are a thing, you know.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| right but there is a rhetorical undercurrent of this
| person doesn't really believe in this virtuous thing they
| are doing, and is thus a hypocrite. Because being a
| hypocrite is one of the top sins of our culture.
|
| Of course it is weird because the person doing the
| accusation of hypocrisy is actually against the virtuous
| act, and is thus for people not believing in the virtue.
|
| It's a weird rhetorical trick that sounds sort of
| unhinged the more you hear it.
| munchbunny wrote:
| I've heard the same accusation being made by minorities,
| LGBT, women, etc. especially in the context of someone
| else, typically not from the less privileged group in
| that context, who is abusing the moral concern to shut
| down discussion rather than actually trying to help. One
| of my friends, as somewhat of an activist on these issues
| (I'm purposely staying vague for anonymity), has gotten
| exactly that type of vitriol from people who obviously
| see themselves as "woke". They got hit with some pretty
| nasty stuff that was pretty transparently moralistic
| character assassination rather than an honest attempt at
| disagreement. I'm impressed that they're able to continue
| working on these issues despite the crap they put up with
| from people who are supposedly on the same side of the
| issues.
|
| To put things into context, I hear/see the above issue
| orders of magnitude less often than people parroting
| right wing talking points, but in the cases where I think
| the accusation is well-founded, I don't think it's about
| hypocrisy at its root. I think it's about being
| disingenuous. Then again we may be using two words to
| mean the same thing.
| DagAgren wrote:
| What "same accusation", exactly?
| thelibrarian wrote:
| Also "I don't know what I'm talking about".
| ben_w wrote:
| > I thought a core part of "virtue signalling" ... was that
| it was low-effort / low-cost
|
| Huh. I'm sure I was introduced to the idea with the exact
| opposite. It was described as the moral equivalent of Rolex
| watches: pointlessly expensive if considered as a
| timepiece, and ownership of a fake has negative
| consequences.
|
| But I agree with the general point that most of the people
| who use the phrase -- and all who use it as an insult -- do
| so without self awareness. It's pretty much universal in
| human behaviour.
| thelibrarian wrote:
| I always find it amusing that people who decry "virtual
| signalling" seem to be oblivious to the fact that they too
| are virtue signalling by doing so.
| simias wrote:
| "Virtue signaling" and "white knighting" are infuriating
| formulas because they can be used to dismiss anybody doing
| a morally good thing without any argument. Reducing your
| carbon footprint? Trying to be nice to other people? Taking
| a moral stance on anything? Somebody tells you that the way
| you act is pretty bad? Nice try, you virtue-signaler! It's
| utilitarianism pushed to the limit, only actions matter,
| ethic and morals are for poseurs.
|
| If you think people are being hypocritical then try to come
| up with a factual argument about why it may be, assuming by
| default that any moral stance is necessarily empty
| posturing is intellectually bankrupt and frankly quite
| terrifying.
| [deleted]
| overthemoon wrote:
| Agreed, it is a terrible thoughtless cliche. It purports
| to see into the mind and heart of the person doing it and
| smearing the act as disingenuous and therefore void of
| moral value. Obviously, we all KNOW deep down that
| they're doing it for bullshit reasons, it's obvious, we
| can all tell, can't we?
|
| Made worse by the fact that some famous and powerful
| people are phonies who in fact do things for bullshit
| reasons, which you can be convinced of by their past
| behavior. On top of that, doing stuff on the internet for
| attention is pretty common. People then make the leap to
| "doing X thing I don't like is virtue signaling". It's
| not that I think it never happens, people aren't always
| sincere and I didn't just fall off the turnip truck, but
| the accusation itself is just a baseless smear if it's
| not accompanied by something corroborating.
|
| We should be skeptical, not oafishly dismissive.
| pgcj_poster wrote:
| Except it's more like "vice signalling."
| code_duck wrote:
| >Very few people would have the courage to walk away from big
| sums of money purely on principle.
|
| Some people are wise enough to understand that having 20
| million vs 10 million does not actually do much to improve your
| quality of life.
| austincheney wrote:
| He has stated in the past that his short stint at Google gave
| him enough wealth that he never needs to work again. Tim is
| known for stating things on his blog that are easily
| interpreted as self-complementary so the real reason for him
| doing anything, as stated from his blog, is irrelevant.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| I am glad he said it so that people here can't claim it is not
| happening.
|
| I'm also glad he is making clear these policies come from the
| top at Amazon so that people can't claim that Bezos knows
| nothing about that and isn't involved in any of this.
|
| These are the most important things to me. People with
| principles are rare these days. And people here can't just spin
| these stories into something else now.
| joeys7 wrote:
| He is the only person resigning at Amazon over these firings.
| I've seen other emails sent to the activist email lists over
| people resigning due to this. But he's the most high profile.
|
| I have tolerated a lot of evilness from Amazon and justified
| it as a "different organization". I work in Amazon Music
| which isn't responsible for facial recognition or warehouse
| abuses.
|
| But seeing them fire whistleblowers... that's just
| heartbreaking to watch. Makes me want to quit too. The only
| reason I haven't yet is to keep up the activism.
| clevergadget wrote:
| do it keep it up dont quit, he should have made them fire
| him for his activism rather than walk away. mad respect to
| him but there are better ways to go.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > people here can't claim it is not happening
|
| > people can't claim that Bezos knows nothing about that and
| isn't involved in any of this.
|
| All of this assumes that people will believe Tim. People
| still _can_ claim those things simply by saying they don 't
| believe him.
| koheripbal wrote:
| In his post, he states...
|
| > It's evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the
| company culture.
|
| So clearly he's had other issues and encounters with the
| toxic work culture there.
|
| It really shouldn't be any surprise that people usually have
| multiple reasons for quitting their job.
| _ta_2323221 wrote:
| So as an already rich person he forewent becoming slightly
| richer after realizing his work supported an exploitative
| system that happily puts low-level employees at risk for the
| financial benefit of the company? A true hero indeed.
|
| Sorry for being slightly sarcastic here, but Amazon has a long
| history of treating its warehouse workers badly, that behavior
| didn't start with Covid-19. I find it a bit hypocritical
| therefore to become rich on the back of such a system and then,
| from a comfortable position of privilege and wealth, grandly
| declare that you will no longer partake in it. I realize he
| worked for AWS but it still supports the same company and
| provides the infrastructure they surveil and control their
| workers with.
|
| I think who deserves more credit here are the workers that
| protested their treatment, which are often paid only slightly
| over minimum wage and don't have any savings that they can live
| off before landing another high-paying job.
| VRay wrote:
| EDIT: Wait a second, I wasn't able to read TFA originally since
| it was overloaded with traffic. It's back up now, and I can see
| that Tim Bray was a VP.. This will probably have some impact on
| him getting more jobs as a VP at FAANG corps, haha. I doubt
| he'll have trouble finding ethical employment and/or starting
| his own company though...
|
| > It also potentially damages Tim's ability to get hired in the
| future
|
| Can confirm that it'll have zero effect. I know a guy who, when
| he left Amazon, sent an e-mail to about 5,000 people parodying
| the scene from Half Baked where the guy curses out his
| coworkers and quits. Amazon's HR was furious with him, but all
| that came of it was that they didn't give him severance pay. He
| didn't have any higher purpose in quitting either, he just
| wanted more money and to work on something more interesting
| somewhere else.
|
| Apparently he's on some sort of blacklist within Amazon, but
| he's been doing fine at another FAANG company for years.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I disagree, I think it makes him more hirable. I guess it
| depends, perhaps he is less hirable at a company that values
| profits over humanity, but definitely more hirable at a company
| that values humanity over profit.
| cowpig wrote:
| Starting the comment with "assuming this is the real reason"
| seems disingenuous in a post that seems to be supportive of the
| author.
|
| But that it's repeated again in the 3rd paragraph, and that the
| final paragraph then mentions that it'll make Tim "hard to
| hire"?
|
| There's no basis in evidence: Tim's wikipedia page shows a
| history of activism consistent with taking this kind of stand,
| and a staggering resume that indicates it's unlikely he'll have
| any trouble finding work if he wants it.
|
| I'm pretty disappointed in HN that this is the top-voted
| comment on this article..
| abvdasker wrote:
| I agree that the subtext of the parent comment makes it seem
| a lot like concern trolling. Even if it is sincere, the
| qualifications riddled throughout the comment totally
| undercut any message of support the author may have intended.
| [deleted]
| berryjerry wrote:
| There are always multiple reasons. As people below had
| pointed out he is 64 and already planning on retiring per
| announcements a year ago. This is another reason on top of
| the previous ones he stated. The straw that broke the camels
| back?
| craigsmansion wrote:
| > There's no basis in evidence
|
| It's hard to rise to the top in a morally lax organisation
| without making some compromises on the way there.
|
| Furthermore, it's easy to take a stand when you're
| financially secure because of those compromises.
|
| So in my opinion the OP is right: it's good for Tim to take a
| stance if truly, deep down, he feels this is morally wrong,
| but ultimately him being outspoken means little when compared
| to those who did the right thing from the start and as such
| never got a position to make a headline on HN in the first
| place.
|
| Tim is assured of a cozy job with a "good guy" startup
| regardless. If genuine, it's certainly a personal victory for
| him, but it doesn't mean much for the rest of us (except,
| cynically, that selling out and then raising your profile by
| denouncing the party you sold out to is a valid career path).
| gumby wrote:
| > Assuming this is the real true reason (I would trust Tim, but
| you never know, so just being explicit here), it takes huge
| balls to do something like this.
|
| Agree:
|
| People can quit and say what they want.
|
| People in high paying jobs can quit and often find an
| equivalent replacement; perhaps have one lined up before they
| leave; in such a case the impact is limited.
|
| But if you quit on principle _and_ take a public stand on it
| other large companies are more likely to treat your decision as
| a sign you are dangerous. So it takes not just the ability but
| also the willingness to take such action.
| koheripbal wrote:
| He even alludes to it in his post when he mentions that he
| generally dislikes the toxic culture at Amazon.
| gumby wrote:
| Despite having a few friends who like it, by and large
| "toxic environment" has been the impression I've gotten
| from most people I know who have worked there, so I've
| never applied.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > It also potentially damages Tim's ability to get hired in the
| future, as some other large organization might not like his
| behavior with Amazon and be reluctant to bring him on board
|
| For what it's worth, I'm sure he would consider this a feature.
| Given his already stated beliefs, I'm sure he wouldn't want to
| work at a company that would be turned off by this. (just to be
| clear, I don't actually know Tim. I've never heard of him
| before this).
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _Very few people would have the courage to walk away from big
| sums of money purely on principle._
|
| No shit. Cognitive dissonance (in justification of Amazon's
| policies) even from some of the smartest people I know is a
| sight to behold: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16249272
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| That's a pretty amazing comment. I worked at Amazon many
| years ago and recall many convesations where it was generally
| agreed that we were surely being paid better than at other
| tech companies because the compensation at other tech
| companies included all of the perks. It wasn't remotely true,
| but it had to be true, because we were all smart people, and
| we were still here, weren't we?
| cbsmith wrote:
| It might make certain large organizations reluctant to bring
| him on board, but I imagine those organizations wouldn't be
| places he'd like to work. I think there will be _other_ large
| organizations that would be _more_ inclined to hire him; if
| nothing else, this makes hiring him a good branding exercise
| with other employees.
|
| Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I'd like to think at least
| when you are talented enough, sticking true to your nature
| probably serves you better than to do otherwise.
| cbsmith wrote:
| As expected:
| https://twitter.com/timbray/status/1257383599424315397
| artsyca wrote:
| Somewhere between university and the present day we went from
| being idealistic to realistic to defeatist and the tone of this
| conversation stinks of pre-covid stereotypes let me guess you
| enjoy the free coffee and casual culture too much to walk away
| from a neo-fascist dictatorship with corporate characteristics
| or maybe you're mortgaged up to your eyeballs
|
| Edit: don't you think some liberal leaning corporate behemoth
| would want this guy whoever he is to use as a pawn _because_ he
| took an ethical stand and can lend a patina of legitimacy to
| their gray area shady dealings? the world has suddenly become
| too complex for the IT crowd it seems
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Just out of curiosity, which neo-fascist dictatorship paying
| you lots of money did _you_ walk away from? Which has offered
| you a job? An interview?
| artsyca wrote:
| I've walked away from tons dude two mega corporations and
| an agency and at a heavy personal cost may I add but what
| choice did I have? Selling my ethics was too high a price
|
| Listen every large organization becomes a leftist
| surveillance state unless we drastically work against that
| tendency
|
| As systems professionals we should know that by now but we
| collectively turn a blind eye need I remind you who was
| selling counting machines to the bad guys during that war
| in Europe all those years ago? How many engineers had the
| courage to step into their 1:1 and indict their managers
| for treason back then?
|
| If you haven't become a corporate outcast by 40 you're a
| traitor
|
| Edit -- before you say it's my way of claiming sour grapes
| for my failings as a software engineer you shouldn't be
| surprised that every corporation is essentially the same
| corporation with different plutocrats at the helm repeating
| each other's tired monologues to the same masses of
| unwashed pizza eating feature trolls
|
| It's the same in north America as it is in socialist
| dictatorships only here the managers pretend they're our
| friends and there they're our dads
| throwaway08320 wrote:
| > neo-fascist dictatorship with corporate characteristics
|
| > Listen every large organization becomes a leftist
| surveillance state
|
| You seem very confused.
| artsyca wrote:
| Yea the downvotes are designed to create a climate of fear
|
| https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3bjpj/amazon-vp-tim-
| bray...
|
| Look it's made the cool kid news
| pbreit wrote:
| Guessing he was able to leave because he is financially stable.
| ex_amazon_sde wrote:
| > it takes huge balls to do something like this. > The economic
| loss has to be somewhat taken in relation to your total wealth
|
| > Very few people would have the courage to walk away from big
| sums of money purely on principle.
|
| A good number of engineers refuse to even interview with FAANGs
| and other nasty companies on principle and they don't get any
| public praise.
| paulintrognon wrote:
| It's one thing to refuse interviews, and another thing to
| quit a job you love and invested 5 years of your life and
| that paysvery well.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| Erm... yeah it is a different thing, it takes a much
| stronger conviction to refuse the interviews in the first
| place. To follow your morals when you haven't first spent
| years looking the other way while saving up likely millions
| of dollars that allow you the option to never work again.
| ex_amazon_sde wrote:
| The latter it's much easier: the stocks are vested after 5
| years, the unspent disposable income is saved somewhere and
| now and you are ready to leave.
|
| Also the turnover of engineers in Amazon is among the
| highest in the industry and only a few stay beyond 5 years.
|
| In comparison, refusing to work for some FAANG takes 10
| times more courage for someone out of college and without
| saving.
| munificent wrote:
| I think you dramatically underestimate how hard change is
| for people.
|
| Sure, rationally it's easier to quit. But humans are not
| perfectly rational spherical volumes. Quitting means not
| having a place to go every day, not seeing the tribe
| you're used to spending most of your day with, not
| knowing what "normal" will look like tomorrow, and
| signing yourself up for making a series of very
| difficult, stressful executive decisions around what to
| do next.
| otterley wrote:
| Tim himself acknowledged in his message that he's leaving
| over a million dollars in unvested RSUs on the table by
| leaving.
| esoterica wrote:
| It's a little silly to talk about unvested RSUs as
| "leaving money on the table" when they are analogous to
| future unearned salary, which everyone by definition
| gives up when they quit a job. If you don't have any RSUs
| but you make $100k a year, and an actuarial table says
| you can expect to live for 50 more years, then you're
| theoretically "leaving $5 million on the table" when you
| quit your job, but no one describes it that way.
| otterley wrote:
| I think there's an implicit assumption being made that
| when a person quits a job, they're likely to get another
| one shortly that pays about the same or maybe a bit more,
| so the loss should be negligible in the grand scheme of
| things. But if the cost of switching would be very high
| -- as it might be in Tim's case, depending on what his
| next role pays, or if he retires altogether -- then it's
| worthy of mention.
| cbsmith wrote:
| They aren't analogous to unearned salary in this context.
|
| The RSUs are essentially going to show up as long as you
| stay employed. The same is not true of your salary (as a
| lot of people are learning first hand during this
| economic downturn). The value of RSUs changes with the
| value of the company, which is also not true with salary.
| While you could argue that RSUs granted at hiring might
| just be part of your comp, refreshers are generally seen
| as having been earned based on past performance, with
| income deferred to encourage retention.
|
| As a consequence, when you leave a job and go work
| somewhere else, it's far more likely that you will find a
| commensurate salary somewhere else than something
| commensurate with unvested RSUs; even if you get
| something to match the RSUs, it's likely not going to
| "vest" on the schedule you once had.
| esoterica wrote:
| >The RSUs are essentially going to show up as long as you
| stay employed. The same is not true of your salary.
|
| Huh? I'm pretty sure they have to pay you a salary to
| keep you employed.
|
| > refreshers are generally seen as having been earned
| based on past performance, with income deferred to
| encourage retention.
|
| If they won't pay you money until you do X, then the
| money is payment for X, not payment for previous work,
| even if they try to market it as "deferred" payment for
| previous work. Gotta be clever enough to see through the
| doublespeak.
|
| Future salary: you will get this only if you keep
| working, if you quit you will not get it.
|
| Unvested RSUs: you will get this only if you keep
| working, if you quit you will not get it.
|
| See the similarity? If it walks like a duck and quacks
| like a duck etc.
|
| The whole concept of unvested RSUs is basically a clever
| psychological trick to exploit the endowment effect to
| make quitting seem more punitive than it actually is.
| People react more negatively to losing money that is
| "already theirs" than losing future income. If you trick
| people into thinking their $1 million of unvested RSUs is
| "already theirs" then they are more averse to quitting
| and losing that $1 million then they would be to quitting
| and losing the same $1 million in future salary.
|
| > As a consequence, when you leave a job and go work
| somewhere else, it's far more likely that you will find a
| commensurate salary somewhere else than something
| commensurate with unvested RSUs; even if you get
| something to match the RSUs, it's likely not going to
| "vest" on the schedule you once had.
|
| That's obviously not true, since people in RSU-ville
| switch jobs all the time, which they wouldn't do if the
| new job weren't at least matching their old RSUs.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > Huh? I'm pretty sure they have to pay you a salary to
| keep you employed.
|
| That is pretty much in the definition of employment.
| However, what is not in the definition of employment is
| how much salary they pay you.
|
| > If they won't pay you money until you do X, then the
| money is payment for X, not payment for previous work,
| even if they try to market it as "deferred" payment for
| previous work. Gotta be clever enough to see through the
| doublespeak.
|
| Right, but the "gotta do X" in this case is, "still come
| in to work".
|
| > Future salary: you will get this only if you keep
| working, if you quit you will not get it.
|
| So that part isn't true, as many people have recently
| discovered. Your salary can be cut, either explicitly or
| implicitly by inflation.
|
| > The whole concept of unvested RSUs is basically a
| clever psychological trick to exploit the endowment
| effect to make quitting seem more punitive than it
| actually is.
|
| I think you misunderstand the value of RSUs. The trick
| you are listing above could be handled just as simply
| with "bonus cash payments". RSUs have other attributes
| beyond the simple endowment effect.
|
| > If you trick people into thinking their $1 million of
| unvested RSUs is "already theirs" then they are more
| averse to quitting and losing that $1 million then they
| would be to quitting and losing the same $1 million in
| future salary.
|
| I've never seen that play out. If anything, I've seen,
| relative to their value, people pay more attention to
| their future salary than their future unvested RSUs. Pay
| someone more than their market rate in salary, and it
| becomes amazingly psychologically difficult for them to
| step away from the job.
|
| > That's obviously not true, since people in RSU-ville
| switch jobs all the time, which they wouldn't do if the
| new job weren't at least matching their old RSUs.
|
| You may not have seen it, but I certainly have... first
| hand.
|
| There's this reality that as you get farther away from
| the time of issuance, if the company is growing and doing
| well, the value of the RSUs go up. It can consequently
| become very difficult for a prospective new employer to
| match the value of the RSUs, as they effectively become
| worth more than the market value of the employee's
| skills. The employee might hope that new employer RSUs
| can similarly grow in value like the ones they have from
| their current employer, but the same growth could happen
| with their extant RSUs. This is a key aspect of how RSUs
| can be different from "future salary".
|
| The key to golden handcuffs is that they get tighter as
| time goes on.
| esoterica wrote:
| > So that part isn't true, as many people have recently
| discovered. Your salary can be cut, either explicitly or
| implicitly by inflation.
|
| RSU values will also go down if shares prices go down. In
| practice they are much more volatile than salary,
| people's RSUs fall in value by >50% all the time, but
| it's pretty rare for people to get a >50% cut in salary.
| ljhsiung wrote:
| Stock refreshes are relatively common at FAANGs, the
| quantity of which depends on your performance.
|
| Tim, being a distinguished engineer, likely got a lot of
| RSUs. So while true his initial sign-on RSUs likely
| vested already, a sizable chunk did not fully vest yet.
|
| So yeah I'd wager he still walked from ~1 million.
| jldugger wrote:
| Indeed, at a steady state of annual refreshers, only
| something like 25 percent of your grant vests annually.
| My preferred approach here is to ignore the gross grant
| total and focus on the annual vesting portion. On that
| front you're not really walking away from 1 million only
| 250k? Still a lot for most folks but no different than
| engineers considering retirement. Presumably at age 64,
| as a distinguished engineer, Tim has enough cash to skip
| out on work in perpetuity if he so desires.
| koheripbal wrote:
| ...and that's why those companies become bastions for people
| who don't value (and indeed despise) socialist ideals.
| augustt wrote:
| As long as the top is rotten, there will never be some sort
| of successful moral coup d'etat.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Also takes huge balls to publish an article about it publicly
| (rather than just resigning quietly).
|
| I'd be worried about being sued for defamation, etc.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| IANAL, but I think he didn't write anything that would put
| him in danger; plus, if Amazon would sue him, it would be one
| of the worst moves from a PR perspective.
| rsynnott wrote:
| There don't really seem to be any factual claims in the
| article which weren't previously public?
| toyg wrote:
| He's Canadian and lives in Canada. Canadian laws on libel and
| defamation might be less oppressive than US ones (hopefully
| they're not as bad as in the UK).
| btilly wrote:
| US laws on libel and defamation are shockingly good. Free
| speech is woven into our culture and the Constitution. This
| post is squarely in the center of what is meant to be
| protected.
|
| UK laws are so horrible that the USA passed a law that UK
| libel judgements are not enforceable here. See
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-10940211 for more.
|
| Canada is somewhere between the two.
|
| Incidentally the country with the worst libel laws in the
| world is Australia.
| 9nGQluzmnq3M wrote:
| I'm pretty sure South Korea wins that contest: libel is a
| criminal offense and truth is not a sufficient defense.
|
| https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/fighting-for-
| jus...
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > A growing number of alleged sex abusers are seeking to
| use legal actions of their own to force victims into
| silence or into dropping their accusations.
|
| > Filing a report to police is not in itself grounds for
| a defamation action, but if a rape victim goes public
| with their allegations, a criminal complaint can be filed
| against them.
|
| My God, that's horrifying.
| btilly wrote:
| Ouch. You're right.
|
| Too bad I can no longer edit my comment
| matthewheath wrote:
| UK libel laws aren't _that_ bad for situations like this
| -- if he were sued in the UK, he could rely on the
| defence of honest opinion and I imagine he would prevail.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| it isn't defamation if it is true and I think everything not
| pertaining to Tim Bray was already a matter of public record.
| jdc wrote:
| The Streisand Effect helps to some degree there.
| darkerside wrote:
| Agreed. This takes more courage than quitting itself, in my
| opinion. What if he wrote this letter, sent it to the media,
| and then worked in good faith within Amazon to change things
| for the better? That seems like the hardest road, and also
| the one that might make the most difference.
| sulam wrote:
| As he said, you don't go to the media when you're a VP at a
| company. You go through channels. Anything else -would-
| make you radioactive, because it means you can't be trusted
| to work at fixing things that you carry some responsibility
| for as a senior leader.
|
| Caveat: companies where everyone is a VP probably have
| another title that denotes senior leadership: Managing
| Director, Partner, etc.
| darkerside wrote:
| While I see where you're coming from, "that's not how
| it's done" might not be the right answer when the things
| that are happening are already crossing ethical
| boundaries that are more serious than breaking with
| corporate traditions.
|
| I think I would agree that making media rounds would be a
| crude move, but there are actions you can take along a
| continuum before that (like this blog post) that might
| help apply external pressure while still having access to
| the internal levers.
|
| It reminds me a bit of Congresspeople who gain the
| courage to speak honestly after they've left their
| government roles. Yes, it's still courageous, and there
| are good reasons not to speak out while you're inside the
| system, but damn, you've just given up your best chance
| at making actual change.
| sulam wrote:
| Something I didn't know before I became a VP at a
| middling tech co -- as a senior leader, your actions are
| considered more reflective of the company in general and
| specifically legally. Obvious in hindsight, but an
| underling that gets fired is considered representative of
| not much. A VP, even if they get fired, opens the company
| to accusations that the behavior they were fired for is
| representative of the company, because of their role.
|
| For roles where you are a voice of the company, you need
| people who will use channels, because the alternative is
| literally bad for the company in ways that are very
| concrete.
|
| Put more viscerally, I would not want one of my peers
| going to the media before they talk to me and give me a
| chance to address their concerns.
| darkerside wrote:
| That is something I'm aware of, which is why I think it
| should only be done in conjunction with communicating
| through proper channels. Perfect example is the Navy
| captain who was fired, and may be reinstated. He went
| through proper channels, plus a little more, because he
| recognized this needed solving. He could have also just
| resigned and then went public, but instead he stuck it
| out until he was removed. My opinion: more courageous.
| sulam wrote:
| I very much hesitate to say which is more or less
| courageous. Certainly it takes fortitude to sit through
| the shitstorm that would result when you go to the media
| while you're still an employee. However you're still
| being paid, and forcing them to fire you, so there's some
| offsetting benefits.
| GVIrish wrote:
| He did go through the proper channels:
|
| "At that point I snapped. VPs shouldn't go publicly
| rogue, so I escalated through the proper channels and by
| the book. I'm not at liberty to disclose those
| discussions, but I made many of the arguments appearing
| in this essay. I think I made them to the appropriate
| people. P
|
| That done, remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in
| effect, signing off on actions I despised. So I
| resigned."
| sulam wrote:
| I think you're reading something I didn't say. I was
| responding to the comment that said he should have gone
| public while still an employee.
| GVIrish wrote:
| Ah, my mistake, I thought you were suggesting that he
| didn't go through proper channels when he went public.
| ashconnor wrote:
| Assuming Tim is in Canada he's probably not eligible for
| Employment Insurance too.
| sachdevap wrote:
| I don't think employment insurance concerns him. He has
| earned way too much money for that to be a problem.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| > Very few people would have the courage to walk away from big
| sums of money purely on principle.
|
| I think assuming this is revealing of one's own attitude more
| than anything.
|
| I also feel like big companies have people convinced that
| they're being paid a lot because they're exceptional or special
| in some way. Really, they're being compensated for either
| stress or location or working more than 40 hours or giving away
| their morals.
|
| I say this because I know a few people who made this kind of
| decision. And speaking with them about it, it wasn't difficult.
| They just had a more complete compensation model to evaluate
| against.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Very few people would have the courage to walk away from big
| sums of money purely on principle.
|
| On the contrary, bucketloads of people do this all the time.
| The world would be a better place if more people did.
| 9nGQluzmnq3M wrote:
| Citation needed. From what I've seen, there tends to be other
| reasons, and the ethical issues are at best the straw that
| broke the camel's back, and at worst cover for quitting ahead
| of getting fired.
|
| (For avoidance of doubt, I'm not saying either is the case
| here.)
| take_a_breath wrote:
| People work in less profitable industries and choose less-
| profitable majors all-the-time. Teaching, non-profit,
| nursing and research are fields where the pay doesn't
| always match the schooling or knowledge required.
| 9nGQluzmnq3M wrote:
| Sure, I'll grant you that, but it's much harder to give
| up something you already have than to abstain from
| something you don't have.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| This is just extemporizing to deny a strong point...and
| in any case, it is easier to give up on an income of you
| have a lot in the bank.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I'm surely not the only one here who declines or ignores
| messages from headhunters for companies with politics or
| technology I fundamentally disagree with.
| bob33212 wrote:
| Warren Buffet's has a famous quote about time being the only
| valuable thing he has. Once you have enough money to cover
| food/housing/healthcare/transportation it seems stupid to
| spend a lot of your time helping an organization that you
| don't like, even if they are paying you well.
|
| What is impressive here is that he make his decision public.
| Plenty of people have moral issues with their company and
| just say that they "Retire" or "Want to spend more time with
| the family" rather being honest about why they are leaving.
| CalRobert wrote:
| This is the challenge with large mortgages and heath care
| requirements taking away people's moral agency. Maybe
| that's the idea.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Talking to US friends about jobs is always weird because
| they're so afraid of quitting/being fired, because their
| health insurance is tied to their jobs. This whole system
| conspires to make people afraid and subservient. Why you
| guys haven't replaced it with someone that actually frees
| you, is always a mystery to me.
| euix wrote:
| when I worked stateside I knew a co-worker who had an
| auto-immune disorder and required medication which was
| heavily subsidized by his workplace insurance. Without it
| he would be in financial hardship. He was interested in
| moving into Machine learning and data science (he was a
| software developer by profession) and asked me for
| advise. I told him frankly he just needs to quit and
| learn the material, that's when I learned that was
| impossible for him to do that. (I was on my way out the
| door anyway by that time).
|
| This was a at a medium size traditional corp along the
| metro-north line of coast of Connecticut. By all accounts
| and my own experience was a pretty good place to work,
| with minimal (but some) scum baggery, good but not FAANG
| level salaries and excellent healthcare benefits.
| baggachipz wrote:
| Believe me, it's a mystery to many of us living here as
| well.
| rsynnott wrote:
| This always seemed particularly bizarre to me in the
| Clinton and Bush eras, where US politicians were vocally
| obsessed with small business (I think this has faded over
| the last decade, and the Republicans in particular seem
| to have totally dropped it as a talking point).
| Encouraging people to form small businesses while
| opposing policies which would actually make this feasible
| always seemed odd.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Well, some of us emigrated. But after I became a parent I
| realized my boss suddenly had far more control over me
| because I had to fear homelessness for the kids, not just
| me.
|
| Bought a house cash last year in an extremely low col
| area and honestly I think I might be _too_ uppity now.
| Find myself commenting how sad it is that people more
| senior than myself work on weekends (for the usual
| meaningless bs reasons). The freedom from having a roof
| over your head that is security for no loan, and
| affordable health insurance (about 200 eur a month for a
| family of 4), is amazing.
| southphillyman wrote:
| A handful of politicians have been trying to decouple
| health insurance from employment the last two election
| cycles but for whatever reason a significant portion of
| the country "likes their health insurance", whatever that
| means. Personally I've never loved any of my health plans
| and dread the yearly increases and frequent provider
| changes as I either jump between jobs or my job
| eliminates or adds new plans due to rising cost. As long
| as I can register with a competent physician and dentist
| and keep the cost low I could care less who administers
| my plan. It truly is a mystery but I suspect resistance
| is tied to a belief that a government implementation
| would some how be more inefficient than what we have and
| the general disdain people in the U.S have against taking
| "freebies" or public assistance due to the history of
| social/racial stratification in the country.
| philjohn wrote:
| It's laughable, the UK spends half as much (as a % of
| GDP) and has similar outcomes (and far better outcomes in
| areas like maternal death).
|
| It seems the default assumption is that the US government
| could never run something efficiently, but this is said
| in the same breath as claiming the US as the greatest
| country on earth. One of those things must therefore not
| be true. For a country with the resources and know-how of
| the USA to not be able to run a health service is not in
| doubt, what is in doubt is whether bad actors will
| deliberately underfund it and try to point to it as being
| badly run as a result.
| r00fus wrote:
| The kind of pretzels people will tie their brains into
| results in this kind of outcome. It's the view
| (reinforced by corporate media) that a) US corporations
| are the greatest force in the world and b) US Government
| is trying to restrain them because it's evil/incompetent.
|
| Easy to give an (incorrect) answer if you have an entire
| propaganda arm willing to support you.
| vidarh wrote:
| Notably the UK spends a smaller amount per person _of tax
| money_ than the US. Because of how poorly the US
| healthcare system is regulated, Medicare and Medicaid -
| which only covers a small proportion of the population -
| costs more per taxpayer than universal healthcare costs
| UK taxpayers.
|
| Americans pay twice: Once over the tax bill for a system
| that aims to provide some coverage, and then again for
| private insurance.
|
| If the US regulated healthcare properly, they could
| extend Medicare and Medicaid to most of the population
| _without increasing taxes_ as a starting point.
|
| Part of the problem is absolutely ludicrous limitations
| such as actively restricting Medicare from using its
| market power to negotiate drug prices the way the NHS
| does, for example.
|
| It's massive corporate welfare.
|
| EDIT: Here's a factcheck on a claim relating to
| prohibition for government to negotiate for a small part
| of Medicare as an illustration of the kind of messed up
| policies that drive up these costs:
| https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/jan/17/tammy-
| bald...
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I've seen the odd post from people along the lines of
| "why should my taxes pay for someone else's healthcare?
| No thanks, I'll stick with insurance" and the inevitable
| "you do understand how insurance works, right?"
| responses. Always fun.
|
| As usual, this seems to be partisan politics at work.
| Though I don't really understand why the right portrays
| universal healthcare as socialism when it's so clearly
| more "free".
| vidarh wrote:
| What they seem to not realise is that they already pay
| more for other peoples healthcare than people in places
| like the UK - Medicare and Medicaid costs more per tax
| payer than the NHS does in the UK despite covering a
| small proportion of the population...
|
| What the right really does in the US is protect massive
| wealth transfers from tax payers to corporations by
| restricting Medicare and Medicaid in ways that makes it
| impossible to make them cost effective.
| leetcrew wrote:
| right now I'm getting a high deductible plan with the
| premiums fully paid by my employer. for a young healthy
| person, it's hard to complain about that. if you
| decoupled insurance from my employer and made them add
| their contribution to my salary but changed nothing else,
| I would be strictly worse off. the premiums would go up
| because it's no longer a group policy, and I would have
| to pay for it with post-tax income.
|
| at least in principle, I am convinced by the argument
| that single-payer healthcare is cheaper on average. I do
| have my doubts that partisan politics in the US would
| actually realize that potential for efficiency, given the
| usual sabotage of public services in this country. I also
| doubt that my income bracket would end up saving much
| even in an optimal implementation.
|
| so at the end of the day, I don't oppose some sort of
| national healthcare, but I don't really see any personal
| incentive to rock the boat. possible outcomes for me
| range from "about the same" to "a lot worse".
| bsanr2 wrote:
| >the premiums would go up because it's no longer a group
| policy, and I would have to pay for it with post-tax
| income.
|
| But there would be no premiums.
| vondur wrote:
| Someone has to pay for it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >so at the end of the day, I don't oppose some sort of
| national healthcare, but I don't really see any personal
| incentive to rock the boat. possible outcomes for me
| range from "about the same" to "a lot worse".
|
| This answers southphillyman's question about why people
| like their employer health plans. Because they don't want
| to help pay for other people's healthcare, especially the
| sicker population that isn't condoned off into white
| collar employer health plans.
|
| The tax advantage is also a handout to big businesses,
| that people who are lucky enough to be employed by them
| get to enjoy and support, at the expense of the rest of
| the country.
|
| So summary of US healthcare political situation is
| everyone is all talk, but when it comes time to vote,
| nobody wants to pay more in taxes in case someone else
| gets to benefit more from it than they do.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| Most people don't understand their options. If they lose
| their job they probably qualify for medicaid, or for a
| subsidized plan through the exchange. In the short term
| they can purchase COBRA, and keep their existing
| healthcare. They may be able to purchase the same
| healthcare privately, or through the healthcare exchange.
| domador wrote:
| My best description for it so far is "corporate
| feudalism". Modern-day serfs are tied to their employer
| for the health protection they provide.
|
| What's strangest to me is seeing how many of the
| Americans whom I'd expect to benefit from single-payer
| health insurance seem to be the ones most wary of it and
| who argue most loudly against it.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| The cost? Because Americans don't want to be paid EU
| wages that are 1/2 to 1/3 what they're making in the
| states?
| bsanr2 wrote:
| It's especially ironic in that people are regularly
| ruined by health or mortgage issues even with insurance
| and a steady job. Once you realize this, it becomes a lot
| easier to look at your situation with clear eyes. More
| Americans should be walking away from their jobs, because
| it would make it easier to improve the conditions people
| work under if they held a credible threat to corporate
| stability.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| > Maybe that's the idea.
|
| It literally is. The post-war housing boom was meant to
| discourage activism by having workers tied to something
| they could lose.
| smogcutter wrote:
| Sounds reasonable that it had that effect, but citation
| needed on the intention.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| It becomes more reasonable to assume the intention when
| you realize how much of national infrastructure policy
| was meant to engineer specific social outcomes -
| particularly with regard to segregation. Also in how much
| of regulatory policy - particularly in telecommunications
| - was intended for the same.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| I heard from someone that the "biological clock" was made
| up after the war to convince women to quit their careers.
|
| Hearing all this, and hearing that homosexuality used to
| be tolerated, it's scary to wonder how much of the status
| quo is not just _a_ social construct, but purposely
| constructed for someone's benefit, and recently. And
| we're expected to presume that it's natural, or at least
| old, and therefore correct.
| projektir wrote:
| I went to poke at Wikipedia just for giggles:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility
|
| Love the [citation needed] and lack of clarity in that
| second paragraph.
| cbsmith wrote:
| Fortunately Tim is in Canada, where the health care
| requirements are met by default.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| I think, if it's not done on purpose, it's very
| convenient to those in power, so they don't want to stop
| doing it.
|
| When most people cannot afford to express morals, you
| have a host of hungry attack dogs. Some of them start to
| rationalize that having morals is wrong, that caring
| about people is wrong because, after all, they can't
| afford it, so the government can't either.
|
| And if there weren't people desperate for careers and
| education, the military wouldn't get enough volunteers.
| So it's very convenient to that whole system.
|
| Propagating the myth of houses as an appropriate working-
| class investment also sustains this. Index funds are far
| more liquid, far more diverse, and don't require debt or
| even a large amount of cash to start with, but a large
| mortgage is a tight leash.
| defterGoose wrote:
| Absolutely. Ostensibly, we have a "free" society where
| people are "free" to make their own decisions.
| Functionally what we have looks a lot like serfdom.
| tafox wrote:
| I had a boss that would try to bully employees into
| buying expensive cars they couldn't afford, just so they
| had too much debt and he could exploit them... because
| they could no longer afford to quit.
|
| One might be disappointed how effective this technqiue
| can be.
|
| Now imagine you have car payments, a mortgage, and a
| family to feed.
| tcbawo wrote:
| I have always advised friends and acquaintances never to
| tell an employer about a new house or car purchase. The
| less tied down you seem, the better off you are in
| negotiations!
| astura wrote:
| My mortgage company did an employment check with my
| employer, so they knew I was buying a house without me
| telling.
|
| My employer and co-workers also all see me driving
| to/from work everyday, so they know when I get a new car.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That's also why some people don't provide steady
| schedules or part time work, in order to prevent the
| employee from finding another job.
| eska wrote:
| That's a common tactic in the business world. Tell your
| salesmen "if you don't drive a nice car, your customers
| won't think that you're any good" and boom.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| It's true though for a lot of businesses. Imagine if your
| lawyer pulls up in a mid-nineties Toyota Corolla, and
| tell me if you think you're likely to win the case.
|
| More than likely, if you can afford another lawyer,
| you'll find one.
| Phlogistique wrote:
| I do not know how to put that nicely. I think that
| holding this opinion makes you a bad person.
|
| I strongly believe that your are misguided and many
| people would not actually care.
| rsynnott wrote:
| When are you even seeing the lawyer's car? They don't
| typically do housecalls.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I'd be sad we weren't somewhere they could cycle or take
| transit to a presumably city centre courthouse.
| [deleted]
| rcoder wrote:
| One of the most competent contract lawyers I've ever had
| the pleasure of working with came to every meeting we had
| in jeans and seasonally-appropriate "outdoors" shoes,
| coats, etc.
|
| He charged a healthy but not exorbitant amount for his
| legal services, and made no secret of the fact that he
| liked to go for a hike during his lunch hour and return
| to his exurban house on a few acres to do a bit of
| gardening and animal care after work each day.
|
| Dude was calm, professional, and utterly ruthless about
| protecting our business interests while not putting on
| any pretense of being a slick trial lawyer.
|
| Law is not inherently a "flash" field any more than sales
| is, unless you actually spend all day every day in a
| courtroom before a judge.
| randycupertino wrote:
| > Imagine if your lawyer pulls up in a mid-nineties
| Toyota Corolla, and tell me if you think you're likely to
| win the case.
|
| I drove my upset and blindsided friend to her first
| meeting with her new divorce attorney after her husband
| left her. We were early so were sitting outside the Palo
| Alto firm in the parking lot when a pearl-white Mercedes
| Maybach rolls in with R&B music bumping and custom plates
| "MKHMPAY"
|
| She seemed like a very good attorney, but my friend ended
| up going with another firm because that lady was too
| expensive ($1500/hr). Even the paralegal there was
| $500/hr.
|
| Ultimately, my friend told me her divorce was 2x as
| expensive as her wedding.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| >R&B music bumping
|
| One wonders what this characterization is meant to imply.
| randycupertino wrote:
| Wasn't trying to characterize with the music- mainly said
| that because the loud music is why we noticed the car
| pulling in and parking (and hence ended up seeing the
| custom plates!).
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Why not just say, "loud music," then? I'm not questioning
| the validity of your experience, just what about that
| aspect of it made it feel pertinent to communicate.
| kyleee wrote:
| It didn't make me wonder, but now I am curious about what
| you're assuming it means
| blululu wrote:
| FWIW my dad put two kids through college working as a
| consultant who would roll up in a mid-nineties Corolla.
| Modest style can be a strong selling point in a crisis.
| Hextinium wrote:
| There are other factors here though, if they have a nice
| watch and freshly pressed suit I see them as that they
| are putting their money to where they see value. A car to
| them is just a pay to get to a place.
| tashoecraft wrote:
| Feel like that has the opposite effect on me. If I
| interact with a salesmen who has lots of flashy items I
| just think about how much mark up/reverse incentives they
| have on the sale.
| tcbawo wrote:
| I have the same reaction, especially when I walk into a
| flashy store or office. My grandfather used to say, Las
| Vegas didn't pop up in the middle of the desert because
| people were winning money...
| fs111 wrote:
| Why would anybody let themselves be bullied into buying a
| car? That is seriously foobar
| NeutronStar wrote:
| A car, out of all things...
| amiga_500 wrote:
| > Warren Buffet's has a famous quote about time being the
| only valuable thing he has.
|
| he's 90 and works in finance managing money for other
| millionaires.
| codazoda wrote:
| Many companies predicate things on you keeping your mouth
| shut, such as your severance.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| How would that apply in a voluntary protest resignation
| scenario like this?
| smoe wrote:
| I wouldn't put the threshold at basic necessities. There
| are lots of people that are just barely better of than
| living from paycheck to paycheck for whom it is not easy to
| take the risk to quit a secure job.
|
| But after you can afford having savings as well as a
| desired lifestyle it always struck me as odd to still have
| money as the main factor on deciding where to work and why
| you would ever want to deal with a workplace you actively
| dislike.
| dghughes wrote:
| Time certainly is valuable.
|
| Six years ago I was cut to part-time but a year before that
| I got a raise. The raise wasn't a fortune just double
| minimum wage in my region. But after my hours were cut I
| was making essentially minimum wage with a few benefits (my
| country has socialized medical system).
|
| There I was not really financially bad I had a lot of
| savings and a job. But going from 20 hour days, shift work,
| sometimes overnight, to four hour week days it felt like
| retirement.
|
| I was loyal because I was at the company since day one. I
| ran network cable, set up equipment when the building still
| didn't have power or heat yet. But I didn't see the company
| was Theseus it was the same company but its bones were
| replaced many times over.
|
| Anyway time for yourself is great intuitively people know
| it. But until you get to experience it you don't understand
| how much you're missing.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Both you and I are speaking from anecdotal evidence and
| personal experience.
|
| I don't have a way to give you data about it. My feeling,
| based on experience and several conversations I had with
| colleagues and friends over the years, is that this is NOT
| happening often. But I don't know if this is a general rule,
| or not.
| alexandercrohde wrote:
| Eh, I know several of engineers who wouldn't interview at
| either facebook or amazon, because of their reputations.
| Maybe not a lot of people quit in disgust on the spot, but
| I have a hard time believing that the "name value" and
| "resume value" of amazon doesn't go down a LOT after this.
| Suddenly it's not something to brag about anymore, but to
| apologize for.
| kidintech wrote:
| Sorry for not contributing to the discussion, just want to
| note that this is a very nicely worded reply. I usually
| stare in disbelief and am rude when confronted with this
| exact situation, so hats off to you.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Not GP, but want to mention:
|
| I've found it _invaluable_ to copy comments I like in to
| my quotes.txt and use them as inspiration / paraphrased
| / cited when I want to say something similar myself.
|
| We model our behaviour on those we like.
| MiroF wrote:
| I also don't have more than anecdotes, but just to add to
| the collection - my top tier school has lots of people who
| boycott companies like Palantir and I, personally, declined
| an Amazon offer due to their business practices. (why did I
| interview? I wanted salary leverage while negotiating)
|
| Really, the main reason you don't see stuff like this is
| because those people wouldn't work for Amazon to begin
| with.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| That's a good point.
| pbourke wrote:
| As far as I know, Tim Bray is the first person of his level
| (VP/DE) to walk away from Amazon for ethical reasons, and
| talk about it publicly.
| awinder wrote:
| VPs don't normally quit companies over personnel decisions on
| line employees outside of their reporting chain. Especially
| Fortune 500 companies. Let's give some credit where credit is
| due.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| khazhoux wrote:
| > On the contrary, bucketloads of people do this all the time
|
| Anecdotally, I would say it's extremely rare for people to
| voice disagreement with their company's management by
| leaving. The most common way to "stand up" to leadership
| seems to be to grouse about it with co-workers at lunch.
| euix wrote:
| and many do not advertise it.
| Naracion wrote:
| As cowpig has mentioned in another comment, I also doubt Tim
| would have trouble finding other opportunities if he wants to.
| However, as Tim says:
|
| "The victims weren't abstract entities but real people; here
| are some of their names: Courtney Bowden, Gerald Bryson, Maren
| Costa, Emily Cunningham, Bashir Mohammed, and Chris Smalls."
|
| What about these people that were fired? When people get fired
| for whistle blowing, what does that mean for their future job
| prospects? Does it severely hurt your chances at a faang?
|
| As a PhD student of color guided by a moral compass who has to
| make employment decisions soon, this is an important question
| for me.
| efa wrote:
| I'm not sure why he includes: "I'm sure it's a coincidence
| that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or
| both. Right?"
|
| Is race as issue here? I thought they were fired for whistle
| blowing? Is he saying a white whistle blower wouldn't have
| been fired?
| [deleted]
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Seriously great move by Tim. He has power and celebrity (of a
| sort), so he's likely insulated from any real blowback here,
| but it definitely makes Amazon looks very, very shitty.
|
| Well, shittier.
|
| Anyway, this is what a principled tech leader looks like.
| reitzensteinm wrote:
| I think you can trust that it's the real reason, because either
| way it's going to make him radioactive for the next gig like
| this.
|
| No large company keeps its hands completely clean. Defense
| contracts, Chinese censorship, exploiting addiction,
| anticompetitive behaviour, sexism, the list goes on.
|
| Having a public figure at your company that's willing to martyr
| themselves to push the knife in just a little deeper when you
| have a scandal is a dumb idea.
| cstross wrote:
| He may not be planning on a "next gig" -- he's 64, so edging
| close to retirement. I'm assuming as a corporate VP at that
| age he's probably got his pension sorted: he probably feels
| able to make a principled stand in a way that, say, a 34 year
| old (or a 44 year old) couldn't.
|
| Even so, good on him for speaking out.
| GateCrasher wrote:
| I just checked his Wikipedia entry. He will have to try a
| bit harder to become "radio-active" for potential
| employers...
| lopis wrote:
| > he's 64
|
| That definitely puts things in a different perspective. It
| can't really damage his career much when his career is 20+
| years old. At this point, if he doesn't have his own side
| gig, lots of companies, big and small, would still want
| him.
| phatfish wrote:
| It also shows how brave those who were younger and ended
| up getting fired rather than resigning were.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Unless there's a company that is actually decent, and
| prides itself on having an exec that would quit on the
| first sign of a misdeed.
|
| "See? You can trust us, otherwise Tim Bray wouldn't still
| be working here."
| ignoramous wrote:
| I don't think a single trivial misdeed but really a
| culmination of things leading up to it and the scale of
| it all that broke the camel's back.
| stefs wrote:
| it goes both ways though: another company might hire tbray
| not only for his skills, but also to signal potential
| employees they're taking the health and safety of their
| workforce seriously. at least i hope this might be the case.
| flurdy wrote:
| > it's going to make him radioactive for the next gig
|
| No. A couple of more questionable companies may choose to
| stay away, but the majority of companies would love to have
| Tim on board. Even if just for a few years or part-time.
|
| Most employees and owners think of themselves and their
| company as good so will not be concerned with having a man of
| moral as their employee. Not that they all are 100% "good"
| but most think they are.
|
| Also, Tim Bray is well respected and most companies know they
| can gain a lot by him helping out, and they know that.
| forgotmylogin2 wrote:
| This assumes many employers will consider him a "man of
| moral" for doing this. I don't think that's cut and dry.
|
| The business owners I know frequently complain about how
| difficult it is to fire underperforming employees. Trying
| to ensure they're legally protected from lawsuits requires
| keeping the inadequate employee on payroll for months in
| order to collect documentation that shows the employee is
| not fulfilling their contract. My guess is most business
| owners would be loathe to hire anybody with a history of
| making this process even more difficult for their employer.
|
| Merely quitting would be one thing, but when you publicly
| excoriate your former employer like this (including
| allegations of racism and sexism without evidence), you
| become a massive liability to future employers. Quite
| frankly, I would never hire this man if I were a business
| owner. And the fact that the leadership of a left-leaning
| company like Amazon also seems to disagree with him makes
| me think I'm probably not alone.
| adamc wrote:
| Wouldn't there be a potential opposite effect? Hiring someone
| like that helps establish (to techies, anyhow) that you are
| one of the "good guys"?
|
| There are bound to be employers who would like to be seen
| that way.
| asah wrote:
| No, and not just because he's famous: the tech business is
| very big and had insatiable demand for talented people.
| wegs wrote:
| He's also 64. That's near retirement age, and I imagine he
| can afford to retire early.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| I wouldn't dismiss how hard it can be to quit a job you
| love, just because you're 64. I know people that love doing
| what they do well in their late 70s, and job satisfaction
| for them is way more important than any monetary aspect.
| Symbiote wrote:
| There might be charities, non-profits or other
| organizations that would appreciate his skills.
|
| I remember my dad spent all of about two weeks "retired"
| (resigned in protest in similar circumstances, but from a
| staff of maybe 100) before finding a part-time job at a
| local charity he liked.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| Its funny that 64 is now considered retiring early.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| It's because most of us won't get to retire, so much as
| will have some event cause us to no longer be working.
| labster wrote:
| He has a few reasons to retire -- and a few reasons not to
| retire. And he laid them out for us about a year and a half
| ago: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2018/10/25/On-
| Retire...
|
| > Progressive friends, people whose opinions I respect,
| give me shit about working for Amazon. I claim that the
| problem is capitalism, flaccid labor laws, and lame
| antitrust enforcement, not any particular company; maybe
| I'm right.
|
| And now he's basically admitting he was wrong. Impressive.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Both his friends and him could be right. If you attempt
| to survive in a caustic environment, you will become
| caustic yourself.
|
| Show me one corporation that doesn't have some scandal in
| it. Or even better a multinational corporation.
|
| If you play by the "rules" and don't anger anyone, you're
| going to lose to everyone not playing by them.
| granshaw wrote:
| Never underestimate how quickly you will become like the
| environment you spend 8+ hours every weekday in
| Ygg2 wrote:
| I meant on a more global scale. Each corporation through
| competition or acquisition of people became evil.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _And now he 's basically admitting he was wrong.
| Impressive._
|
| From today's post:
|
| > _Firing whistleblowers isn't just a side-effect of
| macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function
| of free markets. It's evidence of a vein of toxicity
| running through the company culture. I choose neither to
| serve nor drink that poison._
|
| In Ontario, Canada, which has a lot of auto plants,
| there's actually a controlled experiment of sorts that is
| going on: the unions are in the GM, Ford, and Chrysler
| plants since forever. Meanwhile they've been trying to
| get into the Toyota/Lexus plant for a long time and the
| workers always vote 'no'.
|
| Same industry, same geographic area and culture,
| different results.
|
| Turns out that if you respect your employees they often
| respect you back.
| tsco77 wrote:
| Could you expand on that example?
| hmk99 wrote:
| Yes it's true. But Toyota has a very unique culture in
| which management are more like coaches, and every single
| employee on the line is expected to continuously
| introduce improvements in the assembly line. In such an
| environment, the employees are highly empowered. So it is
| natural that they would resist any attempt to prevent
| direct communication between them and management. When a
| union takes charge it is legally not permissible for
| workers to directly talk to management and vice-versa;
| they have to go through the union.
| jeromegv wrote:
| If the employees were unsatisfied with that arrangement,
| they would bring the union in. That's the point.
| philjohn wrote:
| Yes, but he's Tim Bray and has an amazing track record behind
| him, I'm sure he'll have people beating down his door to make
| offers to come onboard.
|
| He's also 64, not far from retirement age, he may not want to
| work again and instead devote himself to passion projects and
| being with friends and family, and who could blame him?
| skc wrote:
| re, Bray being radioactive, on the contrary his appointment
| would be a PR coup for a large enough Amazon competitor. I'm
| thinking Microsoft or even Google (again)
| chinathrow wrote:
| > Having a public figure at your company that's willing to
| martyr themselves to push the knife in just a little deeper
| when you have a scandal is a dumb idea.
|
| Having a toxic work culture in warehouses seems a dumb idea
| too.
| stuaxo wrote:
| To me, toxic work culture is having a boss that's an
| arsehole - it doesn't begin to cover the amazon warehouses
| where people are pissing in bottles to maintain the targets
| they need to keep their jobs.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > it's going to make him radioactive for the next gig like
| this.
|
| I'd gladly be radioactive for companies that fire
| whistleblowers and worker rights activists.
| underdeserver wrote:
| I'm not sure he's radioactive. He probably saw some grey-area
| stuff being done, everyone who's had a position of
| responsibility in such a large organization for any serious
| amount of time has.
|
| He didn't quit over those. He quit over what seems to me to
| be flagrant disrespect for basic human rights.
|
| I want to hope most companies who can make use of a person of
| Tim's skills - and those are few and far between - do not
| condone that kind of behavior and would appreciate him for
| it, not pass him over.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| Mega-corp executives aren't known for such subtle,
| sophisticated thinking.
| readwind wrote:
| He's not by far radioactive, and he's got tons of friend,
| including Tom Waits, and etc, he's got tons of contacts,
| and ephemerality my dudes, he can get jobs.
|
| You know. But this was a f good post. Yeah. He's friends
| with Tom Waits, dudes, and tons of other people, he'll get
| jobs like hell.
|
| Brave move though. I love you Tim Bray been reading the
| blog for ages it seems. Tim things up. Good luck onwards.
| philipov wrote:
| Tom Waits the musician?
| readwind wrote:
| As far as I've picked up, yes, but, not that matters in
| the direct software industries. Tim's got tons of
| connections though so I doubt he will starve. Tom Waits
| while Tim Brays.
|
| Check out your email signature Tim Bray. Good luck
| onwards
|
| EDIT: I might be totally wrong but I read somewhere he's
| friends with yes that guy.
| zeveb wrote:
| > No large company keeps its hands completely clean. Defense
| contracts, Chinese censorship, exploiting addiction,
| anticompetitive behaviour, sexism, the list goes on.
|
| One of these is not like the others. What in the world is
| dirty about working on national defence? It's a positive
| thing, IMHO.
| zentiggr wrote:
| Having served, I can say pretty solidly that a huge chunk
| of the defense budget is pocket lining, contract padding,
| the DoD version of pork barreling, you name it.
|
| The careful planning to ensure that every possible
| Congressional district gets a subcontract under the F-35
| program is a blatant signal as to how this all operates.
|
| The part of the DoD that actually gets things done despite
| the red tape, obstructionists, career ass sitters, grifters
| and outright thieves, has my eternal respect.
|
| That our military manages to project power even though
| there are ten thousand competing agendas is a miracle of
| the modern day.
|
| former FT2(SS)
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| Sounds like someone needs to do a little research as to the
| military industrial complex. A lot of respected people, to
| include Eisenhower, or a Marine General who won 2 x Medals
| of Honor, have cautioned against trusting the defense
| industry.
|
| Start with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
| michaelt wrote:
| Well, a lot of engineers - those making bridges and
| passenger airliners and cars and phones - are taught that
| it's bad if their products kill people.
|
| Engineers at companies that sell missiles to Saudi Arabia
| have to take a more nuanced view, or a more laid-back view.
| As these are not universal, they have to be selected for at
| hiring time.
| netsharc wrote:
| I've heard of his name, after reading this essay I looked him
| up on Wikipedia; impressive resume (TL;DR: specced XML, ATOM,
| JSON). But Wikipedia also mentions him being arrested
| protesting an oil pipeline. It seems to me he's always been a
| man who's looking out for the environment, and for the
| community. Not just to maximise his individual dollar amount
| "ROI" in prestigious jobs.
| throwaway49872 wrote:
| > specced XML, ATOM, JSON
|
| Urgh. Not exactly excellent engineering.
|
| Downvote me all you want but that's a pretty low bar.
| [deleted]
| netsharc wrote:
| I'm guessing he has other things in resume that got him
| hired at Sun, Google, and Amazon (as VP of Engineering
| and Distinguished Engineer)...
| stevespang wrote:
| well said.
| donquichotte wrote:
| A company that hires him signals that it has nothing to hide,
| so I think this might just work out fine for him.
| reitzensteinm wrote:
| That signal reaches a few industry insiders paying close
| attention. This will probably make the NY Times. They're
| many orders of magnitude apart in terms of impact.
|
| I believe Tim is making a real sacrifice here, which is why
| it's so rare and impressive.
| pas wrote:
| I think you're underestimating the "wokeness" of
| industry. Especially how much a token good guy is worth,
| when they are scarce. And overestimating his sacrifice.
| His net worth is at least 9M USD. That's already enough
| so he doesn't need to work a minute more in his life and
| do almost everything he could think of.
| xchaotic wrote:
| Even if that is true, contrast that with Bezos who
| doesn't want to sacrifice 1% of his worth to protect
| health of workers.
| krig wrote:
| What an utter disaster this society is if having a conscience
| makes you "radioactive" to employers. I can only aspire to be
| as radioactive as possible, then.
| marvindanig wrote:
| > What an utter disaster this society is if having a
| conscience makes you "radioactive" to employers...
|
| Exactly what this whole conversation made me feel.
| YayamiOmate wrote:
| Well, this is interesting because, subset of people
| deciding one is "radioactive" is very small compared to
| whole society, but in general the society is selforganized.
| There is no oppression. People have money and power because
| other people give it to them.
|
| I guess people collecitvely want to have black characters
| in power to do the dirty, making their live easier overall.
| I don't see other reason "western" societies don't change
| people in power when they actually can.
| throwaway49872 wrote:
| > There is no oppression
|
| Please tell me you are being sarcastic.
|
| > people collecitvely want to have black characters in
| power to do the dirty, making their live easier overall.
|
| As if the appointment of people in power was decided
| democratically.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| For anyone wondering why this viewpoint is wrong, recall
| Nash equilibrium. Society, made of many people, is often
| stuck in suboptimal Nash equilibrium despite no one
| actually wanting the global state of things.
|
| The only way out is collective social or legal action
| (often seeded or inspired by martyrs).
| scruffups wrote:
| << society is selforganized. There is no oppression.>>
|
| Self-oppression? Sure. But it does not mean that
| oppression doesn't exist. It's just that it is self
| caused, and self here refers to society as a whole.
| Oppression exists whether it's self-inflicted or
| inflicted by one/many upon another/others.
| rmrfstar wrote:
| It's tough to call it self-oppression when our governance
| mechanisms are literally unresponsive to 90% of the
| public.
|
| See [1] pdf page 10.
|
| [1] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgi
| lens/fi...
| scruffups wrote:
| I understand. But a significant percentage of people keep
| voting for stooges and corporatists. What do you call
| that? Maybe not your self but the collective self is
| responsible, no?
| thundergolfer wrote:
| Speaks volumes doesn't it.
| [deleted]
| IAmEveryone wrote:
| The real disaster is that people are cynical enough to
| believe and continue to popularise this myth.
|
| Most people think of themselves as fundamentally _good_.
| Considering someone who has made decisions based on (well-
| argued) ethical beliefs to be dangerous would contradict
| their image of self. And if there 's one thing people
| abhor, it's being inconsistent in their believes about
| themselves. Ergo: nobody not working for Uber or Facebook
| is going to have a problem with a do-gooder.
|
| If you don't believe me, consider this: Do you believe this
| guy, Tim Bray, had both the power as well as the mindset to
| hire someone who had made a similar stand at a previous
| job?
|
| Or consider the overwhelming majority in this thread
| seemingly supportive of this action, and registering
| disagreement with the idea of not hiring such people. Do
| you believe they all change their opinion if they are ever
| promoted into management? Would you?
|
| There is also a vast universe of companies that just aren't
| in a position to generate the sort of ethical controversies
| Amazon invites, either by being small or by selling
| innocuous products.
|
| As a cultural phenomenon, this idea is similar to believing
| that corporations never do anything that isn't in direct
| pursuit of shareholder value (they frequently do, sometimes
| even quietly where it doesn't even generate positive PR).
|
| In a certain sense, these are examples of _Keynesian Beauty
| Contests_ , where everyone considers the girl-next-door
| type to be pretties, but bets on the blonde playmate with
| fake breasts to be chosen by the majority.
| montecarl wrote:
| > Most people think of themselves as fundamentally good.
|
| Everybody thinks they are the hero of their own story. In
| fact, its almost required that individuals view
| themselves in this way. If you think you are evil and
| cannot justify your actions, it is really hard to get out
| of bed in the morning.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I think at least part of the hiring problem for the next
| employer has to do with the amount of effort involved to
| get the whole story. I've been with two organizations
| that hired a "radioactive" whistleblower with two very
| different conclusions.
|
| In the first case the President put in quite a lot of
| effort and determined the person probably acted ethically
| before extending the offer. The individual (later proven
| correct) was exceedingly grateful and has since been
| incredibly loyal to the organization. He absolutely could
| have been recruited away a thousand times since but he
| hasn't left because they gave him a chance when no one
| else would. His hiring has been, without a doubt, an
| excellent investment.
|
| The second case was more or less the complete opposite.
| The CEO hired a friend who had been a "whistleblower".
| His claims against his prior employer weren't entirely
| without merit but it later became clear they were...
| tenuous. And it turned out he was a giant headache. He
| was difficult to work with, made mountains out of
| molehills, and didn't last long at the company. The
| company lost quite a bit of money getting rid of him, the
| CEO lost a lot of respect internally, and he lost a
| friend. I think it's unlikely the CEO would ever consider
| hiring a whistleblower again.
|
| I don't think companies or hiring managers see a
| whistleblower and are immediately turned off by the
| prospect of hiring someone with morals. It's more that
| there are two sides to every story and they often don't
| think it's worth the effort to get the information
| necessary to make the decision: is this person a problem-
| solver or a problem-starter? If there's another candidate
| with 90% of the qualifications that doesn't require
| similar vetting it's just easier and less risky to hire
| that person instead.
|
| That being said, I've seen first hand that if you're
| willing to do a little due diligence a recent
| whistleblower can be a really fantastic hire.
| scruffups wrote:
| Count me in.
| Aunche wrote:
| We live in a society where everything is interconnected, so
| everyone is going to get tangled up in something ethically
| questionable indirectly no matter what. If everyone is as
| radioactive as possible, we would have anarchy. As a
| result, people only selectively exercise their conscience.
| If AWS were its own company and sold their products to
| smaller companies with worse working conditions than Amazon
| but dodge media attention, I'm sure Tim would happily work
| for them.
| [deleted]
| rdsubhas wrote:
| > At the end of the day, it's all about power balances. The
| warehouse workers are weak and getting weaker
|
| More and more victims of trickle down economics.
| adreamingsoul wrote:
| I'm still feeling blue from leaving AWS back in mid-2019. I
| worked with a talented team, had an amazing manager, and overall
| miss everyone all the way up to the VP of the org.
|
| Articulating why I left has not been easy, but Mr. Bray touches
| on some of the issues that resonate with me.
| [deleted]
| gowld wrote:
| Is he donating all the excess money Amazon paid him to the
| workers or unions?
| afshin wrote:
| Would publicizing such a donation help him or would you then
| want to know why he published the details of his donation?
|
| Your question is one where both possible outcomes result in
| attacking the messenger instead of considering his message.
| _pmf_ wrote:
| Impressive.
| techntoke wrote:
| Will Jeff Barr do the right thing too?
| cmurf wrote:
| It's way past time for an Amazon boycott. This blog post makes
| the case without saying the word. But even here on HN there's a
| long history of complaints about fraud on Amazon: fake reviews,
| fake products, and little to no action by Amazon. And they show
| they have the power to take corrective action when something
| happens they don't actually like, while standing idly by when
| they don't care. The actions, and lack thereof, are what matter.
| gadders wrote:
| As the saying goes "A principle isn't a principle unless it costs
| you money."
|
| Fair play to him for standing up for what he believes.
| gowld wrote:
| Hehe 64 and very rich. It cost his grandchildren money (if he
| has any), not him.
| flavmartins wrote:
| While I don't disagree with the decision to step down from the
| organization, I'm always concerned that in the long run, if
| committed, principled individuals just leave the organization,
| who will be left to stand up for those who don't have that
| option.
|
| The Amazon warehouse workers certainly don't have the power in
| the organization. And they don't have the representation at the
| highest management levels of the organization. So if the ones
| that do in the VP and Director roles leave, who will standup for
| them?
| tinyhouse wrote:
| |"May 1st was my last day as a VP and Distinguished Engineer at
| Amazon Web Services, after FIVE years and five months of
| rewarding fun"
|
| 5.5 years means more than fully vested and probably time for a
| change anyway...
| arduinomancer wrote:
| I doubt DE salaries work the exact same as regular SDEs...
|
| They probably get refreshers along the way too
| DVassallo wrote:
| You're never fully vested. I $650K of unvested AMZN stock when
| I left after 8.5 years.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| By fully vested I meant the initial 4 years, which is the
| package you usually get when joining a tech company. Given
| his caliber I bet it was a fat one. Add to that the run the
| stock had in the last 5 years. At his age and with his
| wealth, it's not unlikely he has been considering leaving
| regardless.
| dandare wrote:
| > Only that's not just Amazon, it's how 21st-century capitalism
| is done.
|
| I am really tired of all these off-hand attacks on capitalism.
| Capitalism is an economic system. It is characterized by private
| ownership of the means of production and their operation for
| profit. If you prefer a centralized or shared economy, that is
| fine, although I was born in a communist country and I bet you
| have no idea what you wish for.
|
| Capitalism is not responsible for some local injustice,
| corruption, or mistreatment of workers. If you think there is no
| corruption in a dictatorship or that communism is a worker
| paradise you are grossly misinformed. Europe runs on capitalism
| too, but Europe also has strong worker protections and ethical
| norms.
| azernik wrote:
| "21st-century capitalism" is a system - it is characterized by
| low worker negotiating leverage, a fragile social safety net,
| and low or nonexistent effective taxes on businesses. He may
| have been better served by qualifying it as "21st-century
| American capitalism", but in context that is quite clear.
|
| There were specific kinds of corruption and abuses that the
| Soviet system encouraged and abetted; there are specific kinds
| of corruption and abuses that the current American system
| encourages and abets. The system is indeed responsible for
| those abuses, just like any other system.
| jacamera wrote:
| It's incredibly frustrating that "21st-century capitalism" has
| become a shorthand for the anti-free market clusterfuck of a
| system that we've ended up with. The ignorance displayed by so
| many people blaming "capitalism" makes me feel like things are
| going to get a lot worse before they get better.
| qqssccfftt wrote:
| Did capitalism itself write this comment or something?
| unreal37 wrote:
| Also, there's an argument to be made that America is not
| actually truly capitalist.
|
| The government intervenes in the market all the time,
| especially now. Nothing big is allowed to fail. $Trillions to
| keep the party going.
|
| That's not capitalism.
|
| Even Buffett is sitting this "recovery" out because he can see
| the lack of a free market.
| james-mcelwain wrote:
| Isn't this the same rhetorical move that
| communists/socialists get accused of all the time? How can
| you claim that the most ideologically capitalist country on
| the planet isn't actually capitalist?
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| "No True Scotsman"
| red_admiral wrote:
| This is what being a capital-A Ally looks like. I take my hat off
| to you, sir.
| 2ion wrote:
| He's just somebody with FY money in the bank so he can do
| whatever he wants in a larger scope than others. I'll keep my
| hat on; this is nothing special in his position.
| kharak wrote:
| Excuse me? How many people with FY money do what he did? What
| he did IS the exception and henceforth noteworthy.
| red_admiral wrote:
| @scollet [below]: he does a prety good job of linking to
| ground floor worker's narratives in his post - using his
| increased exposure and prestige to "signal boost" them, as
| a millenial would say. Or am I reading that wrong?
| scollet wrote:
| I think it's worth mentioning that this blog was shared and
| lauded on HN instead of a ground floor worker's narrative.
| So yes, it's not really attempting an impact on this
| audience.
| Lammy wrote:
| Do you think he would feel safe speaking up about this (or
| any) injustice if he weren't financially secure? That's sort
| of his entire point, imo, since the people Amazon fired
| certainly don't have that luxury.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| No, I don't think so. This is why you don't see others
| doing what he did. He said it will cost him "a million pre
| tax dollars".
|
| He worked there 5 years, I'd imagine he already made one or
| more millions.
| chippy wrote:
| with the emphasis on Capital (his millions)
|
| The joke being "ally" is a term used by those fighting against
| the injustices of capitalism, and this dude has millions from
| literally being the Boss and accrued from exploitation. Of
| course that doesn't matter as he's now a good guy speaking up
| for the oppressed. It's quite amusing if you believe in anti-
| capitalism.
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. It often takes a
| while for us to internalize and accept how some hard things
| and maybe he spent years trying to make sense of this problem
| and finally reached a breaking point.
| chippy wrote:
| I really don't see Tim Bray as coming out as an anti
| capitalist here. That's why this is amusing.
|
| To clarify, it's not bad what he did, he is the good guy
| now. To put him up as an example of anti capitalism in its
| own right (even discounting the fact that the warehouse
| workers who were sacked are not) is hilarious.
|
| Edits - As most comments in the thread suggest, most people
| are not seeing this as a form of anti-capitalism at all.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Upvoted as I don't see why you deserve the downvotes. We
| might not agree, but you made a defensible and coherent
| point.
| blueline wrote:
| literally in the article, in his own words:
|
| >At the end of the day, the big problem isn't the
| specifics of Covid-19 response," ... "It's that Amazon
| treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of
| pick-and-pack potential. Only that's not just Amazon,
| it's how 21st-century capitalism is done.
|
| how is it "hilarious" to take this sentiment as anti-
| capitalist? how could this be interpreted another way?
| scollet wrote:
| Not "us".
| akerro wrote:
| Let's not forget to link the FACE of Amazon
| https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/
| [deleted]
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I think a lot of the reason people hate on Amazon is just bad PR.
| Plenty of other companies are just as bad, or worse. Walmart has
| been a shit hole long before Amazon even existed and its worse
| than amazon. But Amazon steadfastly refuse to pretend they care.
| Bezos isn't constantly paying people to lie and pretend Amazon is
| a family and its workers are deeply valued.
|
| Perversely, I actually think that's more honest and more likely
| to bring about changes to actually help workers...
| thanksforfish wrote:
| > Any plausible solution has to start with increasing their
| collective strength.
|
| Legislation or unionization. Any other routes?
| TimJRobinson wrote:
| A UBI would go a long way to give power to the lowest paid
| workers. Without the threat of starvation companies will find
| it much harder to exploit them.
| afshin wrote:
| A basic income that truly covers the basic needs of modern
| life (food, shelter, electricity, running water, heat,
| healthcare, broadband, education, etc.) would give the lowest
| paid workers bargaining power.
|
| A basic income that doesn't cover those things might instead
| just make it easier to pay workers even less.
|
| Think of what some restaurants do when their employees get
| tips: they pay less than the legal minimum wage because they
| expect tips to "top off" worker earnings until they meet
| minimum wage requirements, so they explicitly pass that tip
| from customers into the business's revenue stream, skipping
| the intended tip recipient altogether. If we don't protect
| recipients of UBI, their employers can do the same thing.
| pgrote wrote:
| >unionization
|
| I am confused why there weren't wholesale strikes in the
| grocery, retail, warehouse, gig workforces during the
| shutdowns. Workers had complete power to force change.
| thanksforfish wrote:
| How many of those employees have alternate work they can take
| if fired or have enough money saved up to make ends meet if
| they don't get a paycheck for a while? Many people live
| paycheck to paycheck and theres a huge batch of people newly
| unemployed to compete with for jobs. I don't think that's a
| lot of power. Without a union, theres also challenges in
| organizing such an event.
| azernik wrote:
| Because of active union-busting efforts, which have made it
| hard for these workers to organize collective action.
|
| Walmart:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/how-
| wal...
|
| Whole Foods (post-acquisition):
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/27/amazon-
| whol...
|
| Uber: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/22/uber-
| lyft-ip...
|
| Amazon: https://gizmodo.com/amazons-aggressive-anti-union-
| tactics-re...
|
| This is not a new problem; low-wage workers have _always_ had
| the collective power to force change, and businesses and
| business-friendly have always worked tirelessly to disrupt
| that collective action.
| elwell wrote:
| Site fails to load. Hosted by AWS? _puts on tin foil hat_
| telaelit wrote:
| Finally someone who actually cares about his workers. I wish more
| higher ups cared this much about us
| alex_young wrote:
| I really wish there was a stand-alone cloud provider to work
| with.
|
| AWS is a part of this unethical beast, GCP is a side project of a
| huge advertising company, Azure is under the wing of a major
| monopolist.
|
| I guess there is Linode, but their services are more of a
| traditional VPS than a cloud host.
|
| It's kind of crazy that most of the net income of Amazon comes
| from this business, but we've accepted that a stand alone cloud
| business won't work for some reason.
| [deleted]
| praveenperera wrote:
| DigitalOcean is quickly becoming just that.
| alex_young wrote:
| Thanks! I hadn't followed up on DO in a while, it looks like
| their service offerings are a lot more robust these days.
| SamWhited wrote:
| I've been sad and wishing for something new ever since Joyent
| shut down Triton (which was absolutely fantastic, so much
| easier to use than the alternatives). Now that DigitalOcean has
| VPCs it might be considered an alternative, but I haven't had
| the best experience with their portal or customer support in
| the past, but maybe I should give them another shot. Other
| suggestions would be welcome.
| cek wrote:
| tbray.org has been /.'d (is that still a thing?).
|
| Either that, or the strongly worded anti-defamation language
| found in Amazon's employment agreement has come into play,
| forcing it to be shutdown.
| uoaei wrote:
| Big props to Tim Bray. I think I speak for everyone when I say
| I'm not sure I would have been able to make the same step if I
| were in that position. Really impressed by the fortitude of his
| psyche and ethical framework. It doesn't sound like this decision
| was taken lightly.
| miked85 wrote:
| > I'm sure it's a coincidence that every one of them is a person
| of color, a woman, or both. Right?
|
| Including this bit is interesting. So he is accusing Amazon of
| being both sexist and racist in addition to treating workers
| poorly.
| ealexhudson wrote:
| I think it's an important point. The warehouse staff get
| treated worse than the AWS staff because they're fungible;
| easily replaced and cost little. But they're also over-
| represented by women and people of colour, so the net effect is
| sexist and racist.
|
| The decision making might not be explictly sexist/racist, but
| that feels like hiding behind an excuse. It is exactly a power
| dynamic.
| sanity31415 wrote:
| That's not what "sexist" and "racist" means unless you have
| evidence that sex and race are the _cause_ of their
| overrepresentation.
|
| If not, this is just race/gender baiting and it detracts from
| the broader issue of worker treatment.
| Miner49er wrote:
| No, that's not really the case. It doesn't matter if
| something is done on the basis of race or sex. If the end
| result hurts those groups disproportionately it's
| racist/sexist.
|
| I guess this just may be a difference in definitions, but I
| think when most people are talking about racism/sexism on a
| macro level, they are using this definition.
|
| You're right, the broader issue is worker's rights, but
| it's definitely worth pointing out that among workers with
| the least rights, minorities are overrepresented at Amazon.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| No, that is absurd. That is not what sexism and racism
| means.
| WilliamEdward wrote:
| Who cares? If a sex and a race are disproportionately
| negatively affected, it doesn't matter whether this is
| definitionally prejudiced or not.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think it does matter if you want to address the root
| cause of the problem.
|
| If the problem in this case is a lack of warehouse worker
| bargaining power vs profit motive, then solutions to a
| prejudice problem will not be helpful to the workers.
| qppo wrote:
| You're basically identifying the difference between
| institutionalized racism and individual racists.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Getting pedantic here. Folks can 'see' race and not be
| racist. The Census taker for instance. Or the
| affirmative-action recruiter.
|
| To be meaningful, conventional racism has to include
| damage. Its an old debate technique for racists to
| complain that affirmative action is 'reverse racism'.
| Because, you see, it sees race and takes action.
| alkibiades wrote:
| it is. you guys just keep contorting the definition to
| avoid any critiques
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I guess there must be some agreement to talk
| meaningfully.
|
| "you guys"?
| mrkurt wrote:
| That's exactly what _systemic_ sexism and racism mean.
| sitkack wrote:
| Racism positions the fulcrum, you still have to push the
| lever yourself. And thus still participate in its effects.
| draw_down wrote:
| He is right to.
| bigiain wrote:
| Right at the end he says:
|
| "Spot a pattern? * At the end of the day, it's all about power
| balances. The warehouse workers are weak and getting weaker,
| what with mass unemployment and (in the US) job-linked health
| insurance. So they're gonna get treated like crap, because
| capitalism. Any plausible solution has to start with increasing
| their collective strength."
|
| Pretty clear where the bottom of the power balance is... Sadly,
| sexism and racism is an inevitable fallout of that in
| contemporary American culture...
| Simon_says wrote:
| That was my read -- that he's accusing Amazon of being biased
| against hiring white men. But that kind of accusation needs a
| little bit more evidence behind it, and probably another
| standalone post.
| detaro wrote:
| How do you get that from the article?!
| chippy wrote:
| With a bit of satirical imagination you could easily read
| that from the article.
|
| > I'm sure it's a coincidence that every one of them is a
| person of color, a woman, or both. Right?"
|
| "hmm, seems like most people who work in the warehouses
| must also share the same proportions of race and gender as
| those fired, meaning there are no white men working there"
|
| To explain the joke a bit further: it's satirical and
| absurd as it's clear that the intended message is that
| those working the warehouse are diverse and that there are
| white men working there too in large numbers and who are
| also unhappy and that the employer fired them because of
| racism and sexism. To flip it and say, yes the employer was
| racist and sexist because theres obviously no white men
| being employed and therefore sacked is funny because it's
| absurd.
| bigiain wrote:
| I don't think that's a particularly valid or accurate "read".
|
| Here's what I understood:
|
| Tim had just just written about 8,700 signatures on an open
| letter, and 3,000 tech workers participating in the climate
| strike. Then said "Fast-forward to the Covid-19 era." and
| "Instead, they just fired the activists."
|
| Then he make the statement under discussion: "I'm sure it's a
| coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a
| woman, or both. Right?"
|
| Then further down that post, he talks about a 9 hour long
| youtube video-chat, with workers from three different
| countries as wel as multiple locations in the US.
|
| It's obvious (to me anyway) that this statement has nothing
| at all to do with "biased against white men", in fact he's
| pointing out exactly the opposite. Zero white men got fired
| for being part of any activism discussed here. 100% of the
| people who got fired were POC and/or women. He is making it
| clear that Amazon's worker intimidation policies result in
| sexist and racist outcomes. Because as he concludes at the
| end "At the end of the day, it's all about power balances."
|
| I'm really super curious - what thought process or line of
| reasoning led you to conclude he was accusing them of "being
| biased against hiring white men"?
| princekolt wrote:
| Wow that is the biggest leap in logic I've seen in a long
| while. You should try pole vaulting.
| moduspol wrote:
| I'm sure they're working as fast as they can to automate these
| folks out of jobs so that someone else can be blamed for being
| sexist and racist by employing them.
|
| And then the new employer can be the "villain of the month" on
| HN.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Employing someone is not a gold star that entitles you to
| treat workers however you'd like. One cannot excuse
| terrible/racist/sexist treatment of workers with, "at least
| they were employed."
| moduspol wrote:
| Nobody is excusing that.
|
| I'm pointing out the irony of the most probable outcome
| after all the moralizing and hand-wringing here by
| (primarily) well-paid, privileged, white collar tech
| workers. The jobs will be automated away, Amazon will be no
| more morally virtuous than they were the day before, yet
| the outrage will simply shift to the next employer.
|
| A fair assessment of Amazon's worker treatment would
| involve comparison to the workers' treatment if Amazon were
| not employing them. Presumably nearly all would be employed
| elsewhere. How would they fare at other employers? Better?
| Worse? More or less the same?
|
| If the answer is, "more or less the same," then it hardly
| seems like Amazon is the problem. Perhaps they're just a
| more convenient target.
| WilliamEdward wrote:
| I understand the disease-symptom dichotomy, but if amazon
| is only a symptom then it is one of the biggest ones out
| there. This makes tackling amazon more important than
| tackling a mom and pop shop who treats their workers
| poorly, even if they're both symptoms of a bigger working
| class oppression disease.
| clevergadget wrote:
| you are really doing the good work of trying to find a
| compromise pov here and I respect it :D A+ discourse
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The amount of effort and time it would take to automate
| away warehouse work makes this whole question ludicrously
| moot, even concern-trolling. It's akin to saying "at
| least Uber is employing its drivers because otherwise
| self-driving cars will automate them away."
|
| And Amazon is indeed a more convenient target because you
| would expect a company with its resources and power to
| have a higher standard of treatment of its employees.
| They can certainly afford to.
| lazyjones wrote:
| Seems so, but it also shows he's particularly concerned with
| such issues and might have let emotions and peer pressure
| overwhelm him.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Yeah man. He let those emotions overwhelm him. Not like us:
| perfectly rational actors free of emotion.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| The way they treated Chris Smalls in the news was clearly a
| veiled attempt to label him as the "Stupid black man".
| gjs278 wrote:
| maybe minorities are the only ones protesting
| soulofmischief wrote:
| That is quite a bold statement. Perhaps he meant management is
| generally discriminatory against those with a minority
| representation within the company, which is a less aggressive
| framing.
| bigiain wrote:
| I suspect Tim chose his words extremely carefully there, it's
| bold because he intended it to be bold.
| spurgu wrote:
| This is my hunch as well.
| simonhfrost wrote:
| In my opinion it was more from the perspective that minorities
| may have a more empathetic view on problems, after likely
| experiencing dealing with problems other more privileged people
| don't have to.
|
| In this case: one of the biggest benefits of hiring
| minorities... ending up being the reason you fire them.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| Counterpoint: Since many companies are under (public?)
| pressure to fill in some minority quota, they with end with
| relatively incompetent people from the minority group.
|
| Also my personal observation: an incompetent person from a
| minority group is likely to see a failed transaction through
| their own colored 'minority' lens. Eg. a woman who has been
| turned down for a job will attribute it to her being a woman
| and no other reason. For a white guy who has been turned down
| - it's life as usual.
| peterwwillis wrote:
| Well first of all, literally everyone in the world sees
| everything through their own colored lens. It's called
| personal bias, and we all have it. It's part of why
| minorities get turned down for jobs for reasons other than
| their technical experience. Or why they get turned down _in
| spite_ of their technical experience.
|
| Second, it's my personal observation that 'many companies'
| don't end up with 'incompetent minorities', because,
| anecdotally, I and everyone I know who has worked with
| 'minorities' at multiple jobs has found them as competent
| or more so than their 'majority' peers. But a 'colored
| lens' is what takes your personal experience and turns it
| into whatever you _want_ to see, not necessarily what is
| actually there. So who knows if either of us is right if
| all we 're doing is looking with our personal biases?
| noelsusman wrote:
| I've seen plenty of white guys blame minority quotas and
| nothing else after being turned down for a job. There is
| also little evidence that companies are hiring hoards of
| incompetent people to fill minority quotas. If they were,
| then why does every tech company still struggle with a lack
| of diversity in the workplace? It would be easy to just
| hire whoever can tick a diversity box and fix those
| numbers, but they're not actually doing that because that
| would be stupid.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| Diversity quotas are absolutely real, and publicly
| documented all over the place. Activist shareholders are
| filing resolutions and threatening companies with
| lawsuits and bad PR. I was involved in hiring at some
| large tech companies and we had very specific targets to
| meet, _"or else"_. I don't know how anyone can still deny
| that this is happening.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Re-read again, OP did not deny that minority quota
| exists. OP refuted the somewhat popular opinion that
| incompetent people are being hired BECAUSE of minority
| quotas.
| sanity31415 wrote:
| > In my opinion it was more from the perspective that
| minorities may have a more empathetic view on problems, after
| likely experiencing dealing with problems other more
| privileged people don't have to.
|
| It's best to avoid making generalizations about people based
| on the color of their skin - even when you think it's a
| compliment.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I think he may have meant what I said in my sister comment
| but I think you're probably right about that being a factor.
| I googled "are minorities more likely to speak against
| injustice" hoping to find some threads of discourse or
| studies, but everything was coronavirus related... perhaps
| another time when search engines aren't trying to decide what
| I need to see.
| [deleted]
| paganel wrote:
| The right thing to do.
|
| I've never met Tim and I will probably never meet him, I only
| know that he was one of first programmers/computer people whose
| blog I started reading back when I got into programming (more
| than 15 years ago, closer to 20) and as such one could say that I
| looked up to him. I'm glad that I chose the right person to "look
| up to".
| acdha wrote:
| Kudos to Tim for not being blinded by the money. A whole lot of
| people are going to wish they'd had his courage when the history
| of this era is being written and our descendants are wondering
| why more people didn't act.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Looking forward to what tbray is on to next. He has co-authored
| W3C's original XML spec and the RFC spec for JSON while at
| Google. Now leaving AWS on matters of principle, he could just be
| the kind of person who can turn things around and being trusted
| by enough people to get behind new "digital humanism" initiatives
| in a post-cloud era, like cross-cloud computing/service
| standards, and digital media/privacy/advertising rights and
| standards in an increasingly monopolistic market.
| futureproofd wrote:
| Site is down, here's the image: http://archive.md/XcnJv
| dilandau wrote:
| I am surprised to see a high-profile software engineer take this
| step. It seems from the post that his motivation was mostly in
| protest to the company's efforts to shut-down any form of worker
| organization.
|
| It's these strange ways that COVID is changing our economy that
| make me very bearish long-term on the economy. Businesses around
| here can reopen legally but many are choosing to stay closed. The
| customers aren't back yet and they can't pay their regular staff.
| If they reopen, the staff can also no longer collect the massive
| unemployment benefits.
|
| It's a fucking shitstorm and it's hitting the highly-paid as
| well, I guess.
|
| Good luck to OP.
| kerng wrote:
| Bezos in front of congress just got a lot more interesting. This
| is something that they will likely spend a lot of time on.
| caleb-allen wrote:
| I'm having issues with this url, here is a link from archive.org:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200504093003/https://www.tbray...
| bawana wrote:
| Is amazon evil because it's big or because they compete with more
| evil abroad?
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| tbray.org does not resolve from within amazon's work vpn.
| pbourke wrote:
| seriously?
| jsnell wrote:
| Does anyone know what the "laughable justifications" for the
| firings were?
| gadders wrote:
| One was explained in the linked article:
|
| "Amazon fired the warehouse worker Smalls on Monday, after he
| led a walkout of a number of employees at a Staten Island
| distribution warehouse. Amazon says he was fired for violating
| a company-imposed 14-day quarantine after he came into contact
| with an employee who tested positive for the coronavirus.
|
| Smalls says the employee who tested positive came into contact
| with many other workers for longer periods of time before her
| test came back. He claims he was singled out after pleading
| with management to sanitize the warehouse and be more
| transparent about the number of workers who were sick."
| morelisp wrote:
| In one case, an organizer was fired for refusing to not come to
| work after being put on "quarantine", three weeks after he was
| initially exposed and not given any leave, and no one else
| involved in the exposure was quarantined.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/31/amazon-strik...
|
| The specific incidents Bray discussed seemed to be on a private
| internal list, and specifically related to AECJ so probably not
| this issue - I doubt anyone will leak it as unless there's
| something especially egregious (not just specious
| justification, but something like a racial or sexist slur) it
| doesn't really benefit either side.
| schnischna wrote:
| Nevertheless, he was quarantined and came to work. Why?
| morelisp wrote:
| I mean, he's absolutely explicit why: Smalls felt, by all
| evidence reasonably, that Amazon's working conditions were
| unsafe and unfair and wanted to advocate for better
| conditions for himself and his fellow workers.
|
| Why do you feel the need to ask this question? What
| ridiculous conspiracy theory are you concocting that
| somehow gives an ulterior motive to this situation?
| schnischna wrote:
| Because he was fired for refusing to comply to the orders
| of his employer. Whether they seemed reasonable or not.
|
| And he seems to have switched from worrying about his
| safety to campaigning against Amazon. Why should anybody
| be forced to employ somebody who has made it their job to
| damage their employers reputation?
| josefx wrote:
| > Whether they seemed reasonable or not.
|
| Isn't following unreasonable orders by definition you
| know unreasonable? I mean if your boss told you to jump
| of a bridge that seems unreasonable right? And you would
| still do it? After all he is your boss and you don't want
| to get fired, right?
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| Being ordered to quarantine does not put you at risk.
| Jumping off a bridge puts your life in danger. Have no
| idea how those are at all comparable.
| josefx wrote:
| > Have no idea how those are at all comparable.
|
| He was in the middle of organizing a movement for covid
| related safety improvements after multiple cases of
| exposure. Dropping that for two weeks would put him back
| at zero and he would return to the same risk he tried to
| have resolved. The order itself doesn't cause the risk,
| but it prevents an existing risk from being resolved.
|
| Its closer to working on an active train track knowing
| that the train might come any time. Of course he could
| have taken two weeks vacation, but he would just be back
| on the same train track with the same uncertainty of when
| it would be his turn to be hit by the covid train.
| icebraining wrote:
| The quarantine seems to be complete BS:
|
| "According to the company's previous statements, the
| infected co-worker in question last reported for work on 11
| March. (...) Smalls said Amazon did not send him home until
| 28 March, three weeks after the exposure."
| schnischna wrote:
| Nevertheless, he contradicted the orders of his
| employers, which seems a good reason for being fired.
|
| (Edit, in response to the answer below: I doubt sending
| somebody home to be quarantined violates any laws).
| morelisp wrote:
| Unless those orders contradicted employment law, in which
| case it seems like a good reason for Amazon to be shut
| down.
| herostratus101 wrote:
| Good for Amazon for not caving to activist pressure. Google's
| past fecklessness in this domain has come to haunt it.
| simonhfrost wrote:
| > It's that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as
| fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that's not just
| Amazon, it's how 21st-century capitalism is done.
|
| Stung me the most. Capitalism seems to have such an increasingly
| firm grip on the world that I'm starting to think the only way
| out is from some drastic worldwide event (Corona?).
| schnischna wrote:
| What is so bad about treating somebody as someone who can pick
| and pack your parcels? It's just a job?
|
| And what does it have to do with Capitalism. You think under
| Socialism they would care about your individuality? No they
| wouldn't - Socialism is a Collectivist ideology, after all.
|
| The way to strengthen workers is to increase demand for their
| work, or find ways to make their (limited) skills more useful,
| or give them new skills. Those are all compatible with
| Capitalism.
| cameronbrown wrote:
| Alarming number of downvotes you're being hit with, when
| you're providing a real solution that isn't socialism.
| ludocode wrote:
| There are 149 comments so far in this thread. Absolutely
| zero of them have suggested socialism.
|
| Workers' rights are not socialism. Unions are not
| socialism. Minimum wage is not socialism.
| schnischna wrote:
| All those things are partially socialism. Simply
| instating minimum wage laws doesn't make a country fully
| socialist, but it is a puzzle piece. It means the wage is
| not set by the market anymore, but by a committee.
| awild wrote:
| Because the way these people are treated relies entirely on
| the fact that their social status and education is so bad
| that they cannot effectively put demands on their working
| conditions, it's not like if they quit there is magically a
| different job on offer they can get to; none of them are
| doing it out of authentic volition. You're also completely
| disregarding the fact that people working in amazon
| warehouses are tracked the entire time, put under a lot of
| unnecessary stress and denied basic needs.
| asah wrote:
| 21st century? 20th century? 19th?
|
| Seems to me, this is the story of the industrial revolution and
| arguably all civilization pre-IR, when serfs were fungible
| labor units to the landed gentry. Standardize the design and
| production of something, then bring in labor to produce mass
| quantities to a certain level of quality.
|
| Coronavirus won't change this: with 8B people on the planet,
| we've come to depend on industrial production for food,
| medicine and more.
| awild wrote:
| Industrial production and capitalism are not the same thing.
| I don't know about the ethics nor the day-to-day, but
| Mondragon is a largecorporation and worker owned.
| bigiain wrote:
| > 21st century? 20th century? 19th?
|
| Does it matter? We can't change the 19th or 20th centuries.
| Perhaps we can change the 21st...
| throwawayfortb wrote:
| Tim is a really nice and likable person. That said, I'm really
| disappointed in his one sided take here. Amazon did not fire
| these people without cause. They fired them because they violated
| company policies. These employees were using company time and
| resources to push personal political agendas that have no place
| at work. They were rightfully fired, and a huge number of Amazon
| employees are thankful they are gone. There is a big silent
| majority, probably at all major tech companies, that is left
| voiceless because the progressive left is vocal and aggressively
| shouts down anyone who is even slightly to the right of their own
| views. At Amazon, most of us seek a professional workplace where
| employees are working towards the common goal of helping
| customers. These employees that Tim is standing up for were the
| opposite of that, distracting everyone with loud activism and
| probably not focusing on their own jobs either.
|
| To provide a counter to Tim's account: Chris Smalls was told to
| quarantine himself and not come to the work site because he was
| in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19
| (https://thehill.com/regulation/labor/490805-fired-amazon-
| str...). He came to the site anyways to protest. Why wouldn't he
| get fired for putting others at risk? People who think this
| firing was malicious are speculating. If this was a topic that
| Hacker News readers had a different group perspective on, they
| would call it a conspiracy theory. Someone would surely be
| quoting Hanlon's Razor by now.
|
| Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham were the most visible
| ringleaders of activists pretending to be employees. They clearly
| were not doing their job as well as they could, because they had
| time enough to engage in lengthy political discussions on mailing
| lists during the workday. They were also repeatedly disrupting
| everyone else's work. They, and others from their group, would
| spam hundreds of company mailing lists repeatedly. They would
| send long political rants, links to activist events, and even
| solicit employee information. It was very over the top, and pleas
| from list moderators to stop spamming were ignored or met with
| baseless accusations of racism (or another -ism). That reaction,
| to shout down opposing views with absurd justifications, is the
| mental gymnastics of intersectionality at work. It's the
| unfortunate culture of intolerance that this aggressive flavor of
| progressive activism has taken on in workplaces like Google,
| Facebook, and Amazon.
|
| I'm also dismayed at the public reaction to these events. For
| some reason, the general public simply craves stories attacking
| winners, and the same is true for Amazon. If you want to balance
| out the info you've been exposed to, check out Amazon's official
| blog on the large number of changes they've made in response to
| COVID-19, at https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazons-
| actions-to.... Were you aware that Amazon set up a nonprofit
| COVID-19 supply store for healthcare and government organizations
| (https://business.amazon.com/en/work-with-
| us/healthcare/covid...)? What about Jeff Bezos's statement on the
| expenses relating to COVID-19
| (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazons-ceo-tells-
| investor...)?
|
| Tim Bray quitting is his personal choice. I respect that he has
| the right to make this choice. But he's not a hero, and the HN
| crowd would do well not to immediately put him on a pedestal or
| to take all his opinions and claims at face value. When it comes
| to those fired employees he is standing up for, Tim is willfully
| overlooking their clear abuse of Amazon's employee rules, company
| resources, and other employees. I don't think it's an accident
| that he's leaving all those details out. He may be calling Amazon
| a 'chickenshit', but I actually think he's the coward in this
| instance.
| khawkins wrote:
| Dragging the company into a slew of political activism creates
| a toxic work environment. When people take up the mantle of
| speaking for all of the employees when they, in fact, don't,
| they end up silencing and intimidating people who disagree with
| them because they want to get along with their coworkers.
|
| If you think climate change is a ticking time-bomb and needs
| drastic action, great, go to a climate rally in your free time
| and protest for more environmental laws. Some of your coworkers
| disagree with you, they just don't say anything because they
| want a good working relationship with you.
| amai wrote:
| You created an account 2 hours ago just to write this single
| comment on HN?
| deanCommie wrote:
| I'm curious what do you think about the fact that the Chris
| Smalls timeline doesn't add up?
| lmilcin wrote:
| I don't think many people take it into account, but many
| companies look up to tech giants and replicate their actions.
|
| When company the size of Amazon can get away with this kind of
| heavy handed employee treatment, the results are affecting many,
| many more people that it might seem on the surface.
| seph-reed wrote:
| A site that lists alternatives for Amazon in all of its
| subcategories:
|
| https://threshold.us/c/cancelprime/amazon-alternatives
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Come on, Tim. You lost me at, "cost me a million dollars".
|
| Congrats that you did the right thing, but no one should care how
| much it cost you to be ethical.
| btown wrote:
| > no one should care how much it cost you to be ethical
|
| Well, sure, no one _should_ care, but from a purely pragmatic
| perspective, privileged people tend to hold in higher regard
| the actions of other privileged people. Sad, but it 's how
| systematized injustice self-sustains. And if Tim including that
| detail makes even one other highly compensated executive,
| somewhere in the world, treat with just a tiny bit more respect
| the concept of walking away from golden handcuffs to push for
| ethical change... it's worth Tim treating that detail with
| gravitas.
| arkanciscan wrote:
| I don't see how quitting helps the workers he claims to care
| about. Many of them would probably love to have the amount of
| influence that a VP has. Seems disingenuous to claim that as a
| reason for quitting.
| hourislate wrote:
| Completely anecdotal.
|
| It's possible some Amazon Warehouses are run better than others.
| A friend who recently got a job (5 weeks ago) at one of Amazons
| warehouses (NJ/NYC area) has only praise for the way things are
| run. They take his temperature 3 times a day, provide a mask,
| constantly monitor social distancing, clean washrooms every hour,
| enforce social distancing in any break rooms, work areas, etc. He
| says it's never an issue with breaks, lunch, etc. He has
| mentioned that they encourage him to keep an eye out for other
| positions he might have an interest in since he is eligible
| (after 30 days)to apply (he has some skills that can be more
| useful to Amazon).
|
| I was always under the assumption from what I have read that
| Amazon was a sweat shop. It seems that at least his facility is
| run very well.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Bray acknowledged that much.
|
| > _On the other hand, Amazon's messaging has been urgent that
| they are prioritizing this issue and putting massive efforts
| into warehouse safety. I actually believe this: I have heard
| detailed descriptions from people I trust of the intense work
| and huge investments. Good for them; and let's grant that you
| don't turn a supertanker on a dime._
|
| > _But I believe the worker testimony too. And at the end of
| the day, the big problem isn't the specifics of Covid-19
| response. It's that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses
| as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential._
|
| He concluded the piece with:
|
| > _...it's all about power balances. The warehouse workers are
| weak and getting weaker, what with mass unemployment and (in
| the US) job-linked health insurance. So they're gonna get
| treated like crap, because capitalism. Any plausible solution
| has to start with increasing their collective strength._
| pwinnski wrote:
| Bray didn't quit over the conditions in the warehouses, he quit
| over Amazon's brazen and dishonest firings of organizers.
|
| It's possible that if _every_ Amazon warehouse were run as
| well, those organizers would not have arisen, but it 's Amazon
| nastiness toward them that's most alarming.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| Have you considered the possibility that Amazon actually
| treats their workers okay and that it's the organizers are
| dishonest? Why does the presumption of evil only go in one
| direction?
| DriveReduction wrote:
| > Have you considered the possibility that Amazon actually
| treats their workers okay and that it's the organizers are
| dishonest? Why does the presumption of evil only go in one
| direction?
|
| Yes.
|
| As an example:
|
| > We're already seeing devastating climate impacts:
| unprecedented flooding in India and Mozambique, dry water
| wells in Africa, coastal displacement in Asia, wildfires
| and floods in North America, and crop failure in Latin
| America
|
| That is so far removed from a company that provides web
| hosting and handles shipping logistics.
|
| What does transporting a cardboard box have anything to do
| with flooding in Mozambique?
|
| While it's unfortunate catastrophes happen. Let's be
| generous and assume those events are due to lax
| environmental regulations (0.001% to 90%).
|
| Amazon is just 1% of whatever that is. So, if these
| activists wish came true - and ultimately a drop in the
| bucket.
|
| A competitor without the hindrance could likely make up for
| any pollution they don't create.
|
| If you want to shape ecology, you do it through regulations
| (statutes). And all countries need to be on board with it.
|
| I'm going to have to go with management on this one - the
| exaggeration of Amazon's impact on the issue really hurts
| their credibility. Nothing wrong with climate change - but
| really against disrupting organizations needlessly.
| jzoch wrote:
| 1% is huge. You do the world a disservice by ignoring
| incremental change. If I tasked you wish improving the
| speed of a processor and you came back with "This 1%
| improvement is a drop in the bucket so i deleted it" you
| would not last long. It can start with Amazon and end
| with more.
| DriveReduction wrote:
| Nothing wrong with incremental change. But there's no
| justification it'd work in this context, and be worth the
| disruption.
|
| And the burden of proof rests on the organizers to prove
| why this is worthy of prioritization above other
| problems.
|
| While I like the sentiment and aesthetic of being
| courteous, I don't see anything demonstrating a binding
| rule or contract could come out of it. And what's the
| benefit again? If Amazon followed through, would the
| flooding and droughts cited in the original post stop?
|
| The problem is - it just seems contradictory to me. I
| can't put my finger on why. I think supporter's heart is
| in the right place. But people are struggling a lot in
| life and this world in various ways, is this really the
| most optimal way to alleviate suffering?
|
| Why not save the pay check and put it into lobbying, or
| NGO type stuff to advocate the cause? Or maybe even into
| studies or stuff more urgent that climate. For climate
| stuff to work, people in society have to have more
| harmony / generosity / collectivism universally.
|
| Until people start getting along and addressing universal
| human needs and fixing those, it's really hard to do
| cooperative endeavors like this at scale. Just my
| opinion! :)
| wpietri wrote:
| > What does transporting a cardboard box have anything to
| do with flooding in Mozambique?
|
| 25% of the US's carbon emissions are from transportation.
|
| > Amazon is just 1% of whatever that is.
|
| Everybody works somewhere. Workers have more power over
| their own companies than they do over others. It's great
| that Amazon workers are trying to use that power for
| good.
|
| > If you want to shape ecology, you do it through
| regulations (statutes).
|
| That's one place to push. And you know who'd be good at
| pushing for regulatory change? Organized workers. Large
| companies that have decided to minimize ecological
| impact. Industry organizations made up of those
| companies.
|
| But that's not the only way change happens. It's a big
| problem with many fronts. If you think you can best use
| _your_ time and money by calling up your reps, go to it.
| However, these people have decided differently. I 'm
| willing to trust that they know best how to achieve their
| goals.
| untog wrote:
| What would the organisers have to gain from lying about bad
| conditions in their warehouses? It's very obvious what
| Amazon gains in the reverse. The organisers are putting
| their livelihoods on the line, you'd have to imagine they
| have a good reason for doing so.
| 60secz wrote:
| * cough *
|
| _It goes on to give tips to managers for spotting union
| activity._ _"Make it a point to regularly talk to
| associates in the break room. This will help protect you
| from accusations that you were only in the break room to
| spy on pro union associates," the video says._
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/22/how-amazon-is-fighting-
| back-...
|
| _On internal company email lists and chat groups on
| Thursday and Friday that Recode viewed, Amazon white-collar
| workers expressed dismay over a report from Vice News that
| the company's top lawyer had referred to a recently fired
| warehouse worker as "not smart, or articulate" and implied
| that executives should use that to help squelch worker
| unionization efforts._
|
| https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/4/5/21206385/amazon-fired-
| wa...
| eanzenberg wrote:
| There is no faster way to stagnate an industry and
| destroy innovation than by workers unionizing. Enjoy more
| outsourcing of jobs than before.
| komali2 wrote:
| I've watched you comment similarly around here - what if
| salaries in the US matched the EU? What if quality of
| life equalized across the globe?
|
| Well, so what? Would we outsource jobs if the entire
| world was unionized? Doesn't it make sense to promote
| worker's rights for everyone? If I was a blue collar
| American worker adopting your position, here is the most
| rational actions I should take to support it:
|
| > As a blue collar American worker, my not unionizing
| ensures my company doesn't have to worry about
| diminishing their massively outsized bargaining position
| in my labor conditions. The better the labor conditions
| of my competition, that being laborers in China and
| India, the less likely my job will be outsourced to those
| countries. I should either take actions that increase the
| labor conditions of laborers in other countries, or, take
| actions to decrease my labor conditions so they stay
| below those of laborers in other countries.
|
| Do you see how nonsensical, illogical, and perhaps insane
| that position is?
| iso947 wrote:
| Maybe it would increase warehouse costs and thus increase
| automation. That's good.
| jshevek wrote:
| That outcome would be good for most of society, but not
| for the very workers who are the subject of the concerns
| expressed in this thread.
| amphibian87 wrote:
| This is a classist argument. Labor, blue collar, lower
| middle class people have just of much right to better
| wages, conditions, treatment, as a tech worker or anyone
| else. In fact bargaining power is the only way employees
| can have somewhat of a say in any sort of negotiation
| with their employers, without it it's a completely one
| sided relationship.
|
| Other than getting packages faster, what innovations are
| working class warehouse employees producing? The
| innovation of putting boxes together at blazing speed
| with no bathroom breaks in a poorly climate controlled
| environment?
|
| How could outsourcing a horizontally consolidated
| logistics empire be cheaper than upping conditions by a
| bit? Unions on average only cost about 10% more than a
| non-organized operation. That cost could be sent to the
| consumer or taken from revenue, by selling shares,
| whatever.
|
| Anything that goes against the status quo of unfettered
| greed, cold profit is all that matters attitude makes
| sense for the business. But part of why Americans enjoy
| such labor safety, higher pay, employer health care, etc
| is because of organized labor. Class consolidation is the
| best outcome for the most people and there are laws that
| facilitate it being broken by Amazon, in firing
| organizers.
|
| It's not just their warehouse workers they treat like
| garbage either, they steal successful products on their
| page and drop the original company from their listings
| and showing up in search. They charge a kickback just to
| rank in the search, etc, etc.
|
| Bezos is a very clever successful sociopath in my
| opinion.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| > In fact bargaining power is the only way employees can
| have somewhat of a say in any sort of negotiation with
| their employers, without it it's a completely one sided
| relationship.
|
| I truly don't understand this position. Unless we're
| talking about a company town, every single employee has
| the option of going to work somewhere else. That they
| don't means that they find value in the relationship with
| their employer.
|
| > It's not just their warehouse workers they treat like
| garbage either, they steal successful products on their
| page and drop the original company from their listings
| and showing up in search. They charge a kickback just to
| rank in the search, etc, etc.
|
| None of this is unethical. Not in the least. Nobody has a
| right to have their products sold on Amazon.com. Amazon
| is not the government. Other private parties have no
| inherent claim to be involved in anything Amazon does.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _Amazon is not the government._
|
| Any sufficiently-dominant corporation is
| indistinguishable from a government. Amazon's not there
| yet, but it's certainly where they want to be. I buy
| stuff from them, but I don't hold any illusions about
| them.
|
| Their practice of forcing warehouse workers to submit to
| searches without compensating them for their time spent
| in line does bother me, for example, but not quite enough
| to get me to shop somewhere else. (And yes, as a matter
| of fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that this _does_
| make me a bad person.)
| arez wrote:
| the entire german country would like to have a word with
| you
| jcims wrote:
| If my two late model Audis are any testament, German
| engineering and standards of quality are headed straight
| for the shitter.
|
| Get your extended warranties people lol
| product50 wrote:
| Stop quoting Vox as if they are a reliable news source.
| They are the ones who mocked tech workers initially for
| taking COVID seriously: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2
| /13/21128209/coronavirus-fe...
| zaphod4prez wrote:
| Well Amazon has a history of mistreating workers. So, why
| do we think they are likely mistreating workers? It's
| because they have a long & well-document track record of
| doing so.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-
| warehouse...
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/11/amaz
| o...
|
| https://time.com/5629233/amazon-warehouse-employee-
| treatment...
|
| And the wikipedia page:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon
| tyre wrote:
| Why would the workers organize and risk their careers
| without just cause?
|
| He mentions petitions with thousands of signatures. Are all
| of those people just...I mean, what?
|
| If they were lying, then Amazon could easily come out and
| say, "They're asking for regular breaks every four hours
| and we literally give them that. They ask for PPE and every
| employee is given X, Y, Z. They want us to reduce our
| carbon footprint by 10%, here is an independent audit
| showing 12% reduction." (etc.)
|
| In situations of extreme power imbalance, it's not
| unreasonable to default trust the person not in power who
| is taking far greater risk.
|
| Sometimes you'll be wrong! But the burden of proof is on
| people in power.
| twomoretime wrote:
| >why would the workers organize and risk their careers
| without just cause
|
| Warehouse stocking is not a career. Most of these people
| are hourly workers with little to lose. You can't apply
| the same standards to white, blue, and no collar workers
| because the nature of both the work, the people, and the
| culture are totally different.
|
| If that statement shocks or offends you, I encourage you
| to take a temporary job at a place like Walmart or visit
| an oil rig and experience the differences yourself.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| Everyone deserves a safe (as possible) job with a living
| wage, that is not something only white collar workers who
| went to university are entitled to.
| paypalcust83 wrote:
| Meat packing and agriculture jobs in the US are presently
| incredibly dangerous, under-regulated (wink-wink
| regulated large corporations who have immense political
| power through lobbyists and trade PACs), and often done
| by undocumented persons who cannot get compensation if
| they are maimed or killed. Interestingly, these
| industries often advertise wages in Central and South
| American countries' newspaper to encourage migration,
| legal and otherwise.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Nobody just deserve it, everyone has to find one and keep
| it. You never get anything in life because "you deserve
| it and the Universe has to give it to you", not in this
| Universe.
| wpietri wrote:
| It's true that nobody gets something from the universe
| just because they deserve it. Which is why for several
| thousand years humans have grouped up into civilized
| societies where we can construct environments that better
| match how we think things should work. So that people can
| get what they deserve.
|
| Since we're not talking about somebody adrift in
| interstellar space, your argument makes less sense.
| Instead you have to argue some variant on a) not
| everybody deserves a reasonably safe job, or b) people do
| deserve that but we as a society can't afford it.
|
| (I don't think either of those is true, but at least
| they'd make sense.)
| zwaps wrote:
| The universe no. The universe is a cold, hard mf.
|
| But would it not be nice if it were society, us humans,
| who would provide the right to a safe job and dignified
| life?
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| "The society" is a generic term to hide behind; the
| society does not provide jobs, businesses do (or self-
| employment). Nobody provides a "dignified life", that is
| another vague and non-measurable term to hide behind.
| wk_end wrote:
| How on Earth can you think that low-skill hourly workers
| in America have "little to lose" by jeopardizing their
| livelihoods? That's precisely what ensures that they have
| so much to lose. Maybe you or I can lose our jobs,
| survive on savings for a good while, and easily find
| another role; they can't.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| ? Under the CARES act, low-wage workers "earn" more on
| unemployment than from working.
| ZekeSulastin wrote:
| That depends on whether or not their individual state is
| effectively processing both regular unemployment and the
| federal side effectively and whether or not the state
| side is being contested. Also, that ends in July
| currently whereas there have been complaints about Amazon
| warehouses (and other jobs) well before the pandemic.
| uoaei wrote:
| You've been reading too much Breitbart
| jethro_tell wrote:
| As I understand it, the 8000 people that signed the
| petition of support to organize were not hourly workers
| but corporate white collar workers with high pay that
| have issues with climate response and worker protections
| for blue collar workers. Like Tim, the guy who wrote this
| essay.
| yters wrote:
| Very interesting. Hard data on all this would be much
| more valuable than anecdotes and presumption that those
| with power are always the evil ones.
|
| Corporations are at least some kind of good. Otherwise,
| we would need to all form our own little businesses, and
| have everyone redo a whole lot of common tasks.
| Corporations are the economy's approach to DRY.
| rrix2 wrote:
| > Very interesting. Hard data on all this would be much
| more valuable than anecdotes and presumption that those
| with power are always the evil ones.
|
| The signatory names and titles are available publicly:
| https://medium.com/@amazonemployeesclimatejustice/public-
| let...
| saagarjha wrote:
| What hard data do you need? The petition is public, and
| the number of people who signed it is as hard as you're
| going to get!
| abofh wrote:
| It's also possible that bezos likes to snuggle and is
| amazing at it. But I have yet to read a story telling me
| that
| pietrovismara wrote:
| Just compare the incentives for both parts to be dishonest
| and you have your answer. What would workers gain from
| being dishonest except the risk of being fired or
| retaliated upon?
|
| And why, if organizers are lying, can't Amazon just
| disprove them by showing to the public their perfect
| working conditions?
|
| Finally, isn't it a natural instinct to side with the
| weaker element in a fight?
|
| Does Amazon really need your support, or are the workers
| one paycheck away from homelessness in need of it?
| product50 wrote:
| Stop ordering from Amazon if you really feel so strongly
| about this. No point making all this grand-stands while
| on the other hand, you will just goto Amazon for your
| needs. That is the real way to hurt them.
| zwaps wrote:
| Many people do this, especially since ordering anything
| remotely non-trash on Amazon is a lottery nowadays.
| pietrovismara wrote:
| True, but alone I can't make a difference. We must unite,
| in the workplace and as consumers. That's why it's as
| important to be vocal about it and convince other people
| to stop ordering from Amazon.
| product50 wrote:
| You can stop doing it and still be vocal about it.
| pathseeker wrote:
| > Just compare the incentives for both parts to be
| dishonest and you have your answer. What would workers
| gain from being dishonest except the risk of being fired
| or retaliated upon?
|
| Pay raises, more time off, better benefits. A newly hired
| employee has very little to lose by supporting
| unionization.
|
| >And why, if organizers are lying, can't Amazon just
| disprove them by showing to the public their perfect
| working conditions?
|
| Because when Amazon shows good conditions, everyone says
| that it's a manufactured scenario or just an anecdote.
|
| >Finally, isn't it a natural instinct to side with the
| weaker element in a fight?
|
| Which is precisely what organizers want to exploit with
| publicity that could very easily be taking things out of
| context. A union organizer has almost nothing to lose by
| massively exaggerating.
|
| >Does Amazon really need your support, or are the workers
| one paycheck away from homelessness in need of it?
|
| Depends on whether or not you care about being
| manipulated into supporting something that could be a
| lie. It's not even "support" of Amazon, it's just
| questioning of the accounting of one side of a debate.
| snotrockets wrote:
| > Pay raises, more time off, better benefits.
|
| And those are bad because?
|
| > A newly hired employee has very little to lose by
| supporting unionization.
|
| And yet, most don't. The mind boggles.
| stretchwithme wrote:
| Only bad for the party they are being extorted from.
| Which is essentially what happens when a monopoly over
| your labor supply is in place.
| pde3 wrote:
| Many workers experience monopsony for their labor for
| reasons that might not make sense to you (switching
| costs, rational risk aversion, fallible human
| psychology). A union on their side just levels the
| playing field. Empirically, societies that support
| monopoly bargaining by unions (and structurally encourage
| creative thinking and incentive alignment between unions
| and employers) have become much better places for their
| worst-off cohorts. Possibly not better if you're a smart
| and talented entrepreneur or highly skilled technologist;
| parts of the US are clearly great for that. But you may
| have to step over homeless people to get to work.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| > Many workers experience monopsony for their labor for
| reasons that might not make sense to you (switching
| costs, rational risk aversion, fallible human psychology)
|
| Both sides face similar issues related to terminating
| their _mutually agreed to_ relationship.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| > > Pay raises, more time off, better benefits.
|
| > And those are bad because?
|
| They're not bad. But them being good for workers is not
| an argument for why workers should receive them.
| nearbuy wrote:
| > And those are bad because?
|
| I'm not against these things for warehouse workers at
| all, but just to answer your question, potential
| downsides include:
|
| 1. The money has to come from somewhere. Since Amazon
| keeps fairly small profit, this would likely come from
| passing costs on to consumers, and reducing Amazon's
| investment in future growth, which ultimately costs their
| future consumers. This increases cost of living for non-
| Amazon workers, and since Amazon is a good source of
| cheap items, it may disproportionately burden poorer
| people.
|
| 2. Where I am, Indeed.com says Amazon warehouse workers
| are paid slightly above average ($16/hour). If they were
| paid significantly above average, it can make it hard for
| small businesses to keep their workers.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > What would workers gain from being dishonest
|
| Union representation and improved compensation and
| employment benefits.
|
| Not to say either party is being honest or being
| dishonest. But it's clear there's plenty to gain on both
| sides by, on the one hand, painting organizers ad bad
| employees, and on the other hand, painting working
| conditions as worse than they are.
| pietrovismara wrote:
| And why would they do it then, had they already good
| working conditions?
| paypalcust83 wrote:
| Peeing in Coke bottles because of a lack of bathrooms and
| allowances for biological needs might be a sign.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| What?!? Now I'm canceling that case of Coca Cola I just
| ordered on Amazon Prime.
| klyrs wrote:
| > > What would workers gain from being dishonest
|
| > Union representation and improved compensation and
| employment benefits.
|
| Getting union representation requires, in jurisdictions
| I'm familiar with, at least a 50% buy-in from other
| employees. You're not going to get that by lying to them
| about their own working conditions. This kind of
| dishonesty can attract some fist-shakers on the internet,
| but they don't get a vote.
| product50 wrote:
| No one at Hacker News will consider this.
|
| Here people will criticize big corporations (by
| generalizing few anecdotal examples) and demand higher pay
| while sitting inside their million dollar houses (and
| stopping new housing construction near them) ordering stuff
| from Amazon.
| jamil7 wrote:
| You're poking holes in people's comments in this thread
| for generalizing while making wild generalizations
| yourself about HN membership? Why pick this hill to die
| on?
| efuquen wrote:
| OK boomer
| dang wrote:
| Not here, please.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| It speaks volumes that you think that actually deserves any
| sort of praise. Wow, they aren't running sweatshops in America?
| Hand them a fucking medal.
|
| Tim Bray quit over the way Amazon treats labour organizers, not
| the fact that they protect the health of their workers during a
| pandemic.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Parent is spewing anecdotal lies paid for by Amazon. Anyone in
| NYC has heard the accusations over and over:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/10/21216172/amazon-coronavir...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/30/amazon-wo...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/nyregion/coronavirus-nyc-...
|
| https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/4/14/21220899/amazon-fired-a...
| xendo wrote:
| Amazon has hundreds of thousands employees. Please, before
| calling someone a liar, just consider the possibility that
| anecdotes on both sides are correct.
| merpnderp wrote:
| Same with the St. Louis facility, it is a marvel of working in
| the age of COVID. Trainees kept breaking the 6' mark so they
| installed physical barriers. Automated systems track social
| distancing and warn people. I have family at that facility and
| it sounds like an incredible place to work - especially in the
| age of COVID.
| grawprog wrote:
| But as a corporation, every poorly run warehouse reflects on
| Amazon. It doesn't matter if some of them are good, Amazon is
| allowing the sweat shop level ones to exist and continue to be
| run that way. This implies they're ok with this or at the very
| least don't give a shit about how their warehouses are run or
| whether their employees are treated properly.
| o10449366 wrote:
| Which warehouses are "sweat shop" level?
| dessant wrote:
| I think all of them, given that workers are severely
| underpaid compared to the value they provide, and have no
| means to influence the future of the company, other than to
| speak up and be fired.
|
| Though it's possible that the parent was referring to
| Amazon warehouses where workers had to pee in a bottle to
| keep their productivity points above the cutoff level.
| 0xy wrote:
| They're paid at the level they will accept for the job
| they provide. Amazon couldn't hire 100,000 people in a
| month if they were underpaying anyone.
|
| Also, why should they have means to influence the future
| of the company? They're hired voluntarily to do one job,
| not to lead the company.
| klyrs wrote:
| Hiring 100k people a month is only half the picture.
| Their turnover rate is absurd, and folks wouldn't be
| quitting in droves if they were paying adequately to
| compensate for the working conditions.
|
| Why should they have means to influence the future of the
| company? That's been repeatedly proven in court and
| enshrined in law.
| dessant wrote:
| They accept the job because they need it to survive, but
| that does not mean they are happy with what they're paid,
| see all the crushed unionization attempts. Nor does it
| mean that the company cannot afford to pay them more and
| still make a nice profit, just because they'd also work
| for less.
|
| Yes, workers should be able to influence the future of a
| company they invest their lives in, the same way citizens
| can influence the future of their countries. The
| incentives of workers and shareholders can be aligned,
| when greed is kept in check.
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/14/politics/bernie-
| sanders-w...
| 0xy wrote:
| Why should a worker who voluntarily accepts a contract be
| allowed to renege on that contract and suddenly have
| control of other people's property?
| wins32767 wrote:
| Because contracts aren't the highest form of value, they
| are just a construct we agree to follow as a tool to help
| create a society that aligns to our values? If contracts
| are creating results that are not aligned with our values
| as a society, we should be willing to modify them or do
| away with the concept of a contract entirely if that
| allows us to get to a better outcome that we collectively
| agree upon.
| 0xy wrote:
| Seems to me like this ideology was soundly rejected twice
| by an extremely large margin in Sanders' losses in 2016
| and 2020. I don't think the country wants to eliminate
| the idea of a voluntary contract as you suggest.
| wins32767 wrote:
| It's not an ideology that I'm expressing, it's the
| opposite. We shouldn't be bound by ideology in trying to
| find solutions to social problems, but be willing propose
| major changes to fix badly broken systems. A big part of
| the problem the US has is that it's become a norm to view
| any proposal through the lens of ones own ideologies or
| the assumed ideologies of ones interlocutor and
| dismissing it on the basis of improper ideology rather
| than proposing an alternate solution.
| 0xy wrote:
| It's a solution to a non-existent problem. Nobody in the
| country wants to end voluntary contracts as you suggest.
|
| You want people to be able to renege on contracts they
| explicitly agreed to under no duress. This position is
| not supported by the country and has been rejected
| countless times. Even unionism as a whole has been
| rejected. I would not join a union even if it was free,
| absolutely never.
| SamWhited wrote:
| The ones that have been in the news for years for being
| sweat shop level. The ones that 60 Minutes did an
| exposition on, and that activists have been trying to draw
| attention to. I don't understand what you want by asking
| this question, an address?
| three_seagrass wrote:
| https://nypost.com/2019/11/30/amazon-warehouses-are-cult-
| lik...
|
| >I soon learned that only difference between an Amazon
| warehouse and a third-world sweatshop were the robots. At
| Amazon, you were surrounded by bots, and they were treated
| better than the humans.
| o10449366 wrote:
| Are there 3rd world sweatshops that pay $16 USD/hour and
| provide benefits? I'd wager there are a few more
| differences than just the robots.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| This is a _No-True Scotsman_. You asked for examples of
| Amazon sweatshop conditions, and once given, you 're now
| redefining the semantics of 'true' sweatshops to being
| both in the third world and making less than $16/hour.
| pathseeker wrote:
| No it's not. The very definition of sweatshop implies
| very low wages and long hours.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| According to Wikipedia, a sweatshop is semantically a
| workplace with very poor, socially unacceptable or
| illegal working conditions. The work may be difficult,
| dangerous, climatically challenging or underpaid. It's
| true that workers in sweatshops may work long hours with
| low pay, but it's not limited to that.
|
| If you read the article with the example that was asked
| for, you'd see the examples of how it's sweatshop
| conditions.
| adamweld wrote:
| I read through the article, I don't really see how it
| fits that definition.
|
| Long shifts on your feet, physical labor, short breaks
| and no cell phones. Precise tracking of performance. Does
| it sound like fun? Hell no. But it seems like decent pay
| for unskilled physical labor, and I haven't read anything
| that sounds like sweatshop conditions.
| memonkey wrote:
| The idea that physical labor being unskilled work has
| been perpetuated for thousands of years in class based
| systems despite the fact that any kind of work can
| involve both physical and intellectual skill. If you've
| ever worked in a warehouse, you would know that there are
| plenty of skills to learn and refine.
| uoaei wrote:
| $16/hr is decent pay in those conditions?
|
| They risk bringing the coronavirus home every day to
| their families. Their bodies are chewed up over the
| course of months until they start falling apart from the
| stress and wear. "short breaks" usually means something
| like "you're only allowed to go to the bathroom twice"
| which is technically illegal but Amazon spent a lot of
| money asking consultants and lawyers how to circumvent
| that.
|
| Not to mention they don't get paid while they're standing
| in line for 20+ minutes to get frisked before they leave.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| 12 hour shifts on your feet with no access to chairs,
| consistent 150 F work conditions, 30 minute lunch breaks
| that take 30 minutes to get to, no paid bathroom breaks,
| etc. are a few of the examples from this one article
| alone that are in line with the semantics of sweatshop
| conditions.
| 300bps wrote:
| _consistent 150 F work conditions_
|
| If she told you there were sharks with lasers on their
| heads would you have believed that too? The article is
| literally unbelievable.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| No, but if multiple workers at multiple locations said
| the same thing, then it is more believable:
|
| >"I was really upset and I said, 'All you people care
| about is the rates, not the well-being of the people,' "
| she said. "I've never worked for an employer that had
| paramedics waiting outside for people to drop because of
| the extreme heat."
|
| There were so many reports of workers overheating that
| OSHA had to get involved:
| https://www.mcall.com/news/watchdog/mc-allentown-amazon-
| comp...
|
| That, along with other conditions reported, make it a
| literal sweatshop.
| amiga_500 wrote:
| Rent is different in different countries. You cannot just
| quote $$
| mkolodny wrote:
| Here are a few examples of "sweatshop" conditions in the
| Amazon factory from the article:
|
| - No chairs for a 12-hour shift
|
| - Time spent going to the bathroom gets removed from your
| break time
|
| - 30-minute lunch includes a 30-minute round trip to get
| to the lunch room
| 300bps wrote:
| Everyone looks at it through their own lens. To an
| employee that goes to the bathroom twice per day at work,
| monitoring bathroom break time sounds ludicrous. But what
| should Amazon do with people who want to take 20 ten
| minute bathroom breaks per day? The answer is you set a
| policy that everyone is equal under and stock to it.
|
| Other things seemed like unrealistic exaggerations. Like
| a 15 minute walk to the lunch room and barely having
| enough time to eat a sandwich, drink a soda and smoke a
| cigarette during the 30 minute break. Doesn't add up.
|
| And stating it felt like 150 degrees and no fans were
| allowed because "robots don't like the cold". What robot
| works better in 150 degrees than 70 degrees?
|
| The stories don't ring true to me and the pictures
| through the article from labor organizers tell me at
| least why the stories are being told.
| grawprog wrote:
| I'm not sure about Amazon exactly but 30 minute lunches
| with barely enough time to eat is pretty realistic.
| There's many places where lunches are from buzzer to
| buzzer period, whether you've eaten or not. If these
| places are large enough, and it seems they're pretty
| large, then yeah, every minute you've got to walk to your
| food is a minute taken off your lunch break.
| [deleted]
| aabeshou wrote:
| maybe the conditions vary from one warehouse to another, but
| the fact remains that Amazon smeared and retaliated against
| whistleblowers at warehouses with terrible conditions
| birdlover wrote:
| I view this as an "8 hour workday" deal.
|
| It would be like it is now, if it hadn't been workers
| organizing and speaking out.
| myle wrote:
| Completely anecdotal.
| jhwang5 wrote:
| By definition, so are the incidents that are reported by
| NYTimes. Amazon has hundreds of fulfillment centers around
| the world, and it's possible that the sufferings of some
| workers are exceptions, not the norm.
| uselesstech wrote:
| If that were the case, you would think that Amazon would
| address the issues raised my employees instead of firing
| them.
|
| By firing them, they discourage others from coming forward
| so it's not really possible to get a good picture of the
| situation.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| Yep, it's the Streisand effect that Tim Bray talks about
| in the article.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| Perhaps there's more to the story and we on the outside
| are in a really poor position to actually know what's
| going on?
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| So we are supposed to sit here and act like Amazon
| doesn't have a notorious rep in the street for how it
| treats it's employees, even it's software devs? And we
| are supposed to act like the US in general doesn't have a
| strong anti-labor tilt since Reagan in the 80s?
|
| You are begging the reader to throw out any knowledge of
| the company and the country it's in so that they can
| arrive to a conclusion of "We don't have all the
| facts!!!!". That's not going to be very effective.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| A default position against Amazon ignores some important
| considerations, in my opinion:
|
| 1. News outlets have a huge incentive to report on anti-
| Amazon facts, but little to no incentive to report on
| pro-Amazon facts. "Megacorp is imperfect, but mostly
| okay" is not a headline that generates clicks.
|
| 2. Amazon has a huge incentive to ensure that they comply
| with the law. Every labor lawyer in the country wants to
| take them to court and extract a settlement. And there
| are plenty of politicians that would love to make their
| career by bringing Amazon to heel.
| klyrs wrote:
| I dunno about you but my "default position" on Amazon
| fled circa y2k. Since then I've met numerous amazon
| employees and heard their stories, I've observed
| amazon/bezos's behavior in the public sphere, etc. Now my
| opinion on amazon is not "default" but "informed."
|
| Your implication that the media is an anti-amazon
| conspiracy is absurd. The truth about bad actors is not
| kind to them. That doesn't turn truthtelling into a
| conspiracy. I seem to remember some positive reporting on
| Amazon recently, when they promised higher wages and more
| PPE for warehouse employees -- how does that fit into a
| conspiracy?
| uoaei wrote:
| > News outlets have a huge incentive to report on anti-
| Amazon facts
|
| You are aware that Bezos owns one of the world's most
| influential news organizations, right?
|
| Also, no, they don't. There's more money in sponsored
| puff pieces about how Amazon is tackling this or that
| recent controversy.
| uoaei wrote:
| We don't have all the context but it's safe to say we
| have about 80% of it.
|
| End this solipsistic tripe. Or else drive down to your
| nearest fulfillment center and start interviewing folks.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| By that logic, wouldn't Vice President Tim Bray then be
| positioned to know more of that hypothetically hidden
| story?
| jhwang5 wrote:
| He worked at AWS, not retail
| three_seagrass wrote:
| Seems like he is privy to more than just AWS as a vice
| president, no? FTA:
|
| >At that point I snapped. VPs shouldn't go publicly
| rogue, so I escalated through the proper channels and by
| the book. I'm not at liberty to disclose those
| discussions, but I made many of the arguments appearing
| in this essay. I think I made them to the appropriate
| people.
| ssalazar wrote:
| Whats completely anecdotal-- your counterargument here?
| telaelit wrote:
| This seems like a pretty obviously planted pro-Amazon, anti-
| worker, propaganda
| dang wrote:
| You can't post like this to HN without evidence, because the
| vast majority of such accusations are pure imagination. I
| know that because I've spent countless hours over many years
| poring over the data on this. There is lots of previous
| explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20astrot
| urf&sort=byDat... for anyone who wants it.
|
| HN has millions of users on all sides of every major
| ideological divide. When a community is that large and
| divided, the appearance of a comment you don't like is
| evidence of nothing more than that the topic is divisive. If
| you want to go beyond that in terms of accusing or suspecting
| others, you need something more to go on, and if you have
| that, you should be sending it to us at hn@ycombinator.com so
| we can investigate. Certainly you should not be tossing
| internet dross like these one-liners into the threads.
|
| Generally speaking (not picking on you personally), when it
| comes to internet tropes about things like astroturfing,
| "pretty obviously" can be translated as "entirely in my
| imagination", since if the users who post such accusations
| actually had anything to go on, they would be the first to
| mention it.
|
| All this has been in the site guidelines for quite a while.
| Could you please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the rules when posting here? Note this one: _Please don 't
| post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading,
| foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is
| usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and
| we'll look at the data._
|
| Notes for the troubled: (1) I'm not posting this because I
| love Amazon, hate warehouse workers, or for any ideological
| reason; it is routine HN moderation and the other side gets
| it just as well; (2) I'm not saying astroturfing doesn't
| exist--I'm saying we have to look at it with facts, not just
| loyalties. Running into comments that offend our loyalties is
| something we all experience on the internet, especially on a
| non-siloed (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&pref
| ix=true&que...) site like HN, where people can't self-isolate
| among the like-minded. The strong tendency is to defend
| ourselves against the painful experience of encountering
| something offensive by accusing the other party of being an
| abuser, a manipulator, a foreign agent. All sides do this,
| but it's fatal to the curious conversation that HN exists
| for, so we all need to coax ourselves out of it.
| netcan wrote:
| >> from what I have read that Amazon was a sweat shop.
|
| It depends where you read. HN, and a lot of places that might
| be reporting/commenting on amazon normally comment on tech
| companies. Amazon runs warehouses alongside a tech shop.
| Comparatively, a warehouse _is_ a tech shop. It 's the clash of
| worlds driving the notoriety.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| > 5 weeks ago
|
| Still in the honeymoon period, give it time.
| jzer0cool wrote:
| > That done, remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect,
| signing off on actions I despised. So I resigned.
|
| You are courageous and have taken tremendous sacrifice. Although
| it is not much a condolence, it makes me happy to hear there are
| people to stand their ground for well being of others. I do not
| know the whole situation, but, I can hear it was against your own
| moral / core values. And I feel you are a great leader for what I
| believe, you are protecting, those around you. And your leaders
| have failed which resulted in this outcome.
|
| I wonder how many people have been in similar situation and
| decided to leave a job (or an excuse, for one). Reminds me of
| Nasa's launch when there were safety concerns (e.g. "On January
| 28, 1986, as the Space Shuttle Challenger broke up over the
| Atlantic Ocean 73 seconds into its flight, Allan McDonald looked
| on in shock -- despite the fact that the night before, he had
| refused to sign the launch recommendation over safety concern
| ..." ) -- as well other situations which may rise from privacy
| concerns, security concerns, etc, and with pushbacks with "Do you
| have proof? Have data to support? Is it reproducible? ...).
| Today, I wonder with COVID-19 if there are pressures to release
| Test Kits / vaccines to market before it is ready or skipping of
| any processes necessarily as another example.
| paulintrognon wrote:
| cached:
| https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wi2hPn...
| sumfoni wrote:
| I don't get it.
|
| What does he win doing that? One publicity stunt. Thats it
|
| He could have done much more inside Amazon and get fired later.
| tsegratis wrote:
| Can we also do something ourselves?
|
| AWS spending and consumers turning a blind eye enables such
| issues to arise
|
| These things are fueled not just by desire for profit, but also
| our own materialistic focus. If we buy into the latest and
| greatest products, rather than where they came from, then to some
| extent isn't it we who have enabled these rights abuses in
| various countries and companies, to support our own appetites?
| treve wrote:
| Nice to see someone standing up. I have a hard time understanding
| how developers with options to move to different companies
| ethically justify working for companies like Amazon, Facebook,
| Oracle or Walmart.
| abvdasker wrote:
| I personally have a list of tech and finance companies I've
| resolved to never work for, and anecdotally I know other
| engineers with similar lists.
|
| Amazon is near the top of mine for its harmful business
| practices and open contempt for its workers. The former Amazon
| employees I know tend to describe the experience of being an
| engineer there in less than favorable terms (and as engineers
| their experience is obviously going to be much better than a
| warehouse worker's).
|
| Maybe if companies like Amazon which treat their workers poorly
| were to face a kind of engineering labor boycott, they could be
| forced to behave more ethically.
| Maakuth wrote:
| His page seems to be melting under HN effect (was: Slashdot
| effect), luckily IA seems to have a copy:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200504111506/https://www.tbray...
| Jaruzel wrote:
| HN 'Hug-of-death' is what we call it around here.
| greenyoda wrote:
| Bray's blog post was linked to by a story on CNBC, which has
| much more traffic than HN:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/04/amazon-engineer-resigns-
| over...
| rantwasp wrote:
| i would expect his blog to be able to withstand the traffic.
| something about scalability and how he should know better
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Splitting AWS off from Amazon Markets is one split-up I would
| support the government doing. Without the cash-cow, it might
| reduce Amazon Markets domination, and allow more competitive
| alternatives.
| synecdoche wrote:
| How does resigning better serve the cause than conscientious
| refusal to take part in despisable activities and get fired
| instead?
| lazugod wrote:
| He wasn't directly involved with the response to the
| whistleblowers, people higher up at Amazon were (it sounds like
| he wasn't VP of the entire company but of the web services
| section specifically).
| icebraining wrote:
| Not of all the web services. Amazon has a lot of VPs.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| mmaunder wrote:
| Very difficult to put emotion aside when thinking about these
| things. I expect to be crucified for even asking this question
| because the audience here has a bias towards supporting activism.
| But oh well here goes:
|
| If Amazon condone and even enable employee activism, what bad
| things could that enable? I don't mean unions. I mean a group of
| say 20 employees trying to bring about a change they truly
| believe in.
|
| Amazon has over 500,000 employees. Think of the number of edge
| cases. You agree with these good folks that were fired. But what
| about carrying guns to work? Conservative or liberal issues if
| you're the other side of the table?
|
| That employee base is a small city. Is every warehouse a town
| square with freedom to assemble? Every office?
|
| Fighting the good fight is often necessary. But it's also a
| seductive idea until it's not your fight and disrupting your day
| - or worse, something you vehemently disagree with and is causing
| you distress.
|
| Is there another side to this argument?
|
| (Edit for spelling)
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Labor unions exist, in part, to negotiate on exactly the kinds
| of things you're alluding to. If you and your coworkers wish to
| propose something like bringing guns into the office, you need
| to get your union representative to negotiate for that. This
| isn't a terribly new concept
| italicbold wrote:
| These issues arise when the culture the company portrays to
| employees and public doesnt align with actual culture. For
| companies that align their portrayed culture to employees with
| actual culture its not really an issue as quiting over a non
| missalignment is quiting for personal reasons. That said there
| is still behaviour public wont like even if it aligns with
| company culture (Uber). Quiting over that would still have
| affect in the court of public opinnion (vindictive behaviour,
| sexual abuse etc).
|
| For local hot button issues the best a company can do is act
| locally on those issues and in line with local law and
| legislation. But what really matters to a global company is
| what its global potential client base thinks and this will
| trump local issues if they cant be accomadated.
| jzoch wrote:
| There is nothing wrong with allowing employees to protest
| (voice their opinions). This would be like protesting that you
| want to bring a gun to work - not bringing your gun to work.
| Amazon is not allowing the conversation to even happen - and
| even then, there is no collective bargaining power given to
| these employees. They have no way to ensure that their voices
| _are_ heard.
|
| The only downside to this approach can be that democracy has
| its faults and a simple majority-rules approach can prove
| problematic (see elections going wonky these past few years
| while ignoring all the shady stuff going on). Its worth it.
| hank_z wrote:
| Personally, I believe democracy is a lie unless people are
| well educated. People are so easy to be manipulated by media
| nowadays. Education can teach people how to think, how to
| question things, how to justify themselves.
| toper-centage wrote:
| Very valid points. But your example of bringing guns to the
| workplace is just the worst. Thst benefits no one, and maybe
| satisfies a few. There's literally no one that would straight
| out reject better work conditions.
| rrmm wrote:
| Part of running a company is keeping employees marginally happy
| enough to keep working. Whether that's through money, benefits,
| feelings of solidarity, shared goals, whatever. So annoying
| high-level employees enough to quit is a failure on one level
| or another.
| komali2 wrote:
| I understand where you're going for, but imo that's never been
| a valid argument against self-determination.
|
| I think your argument can be made simpler: why should we trust
| people to be allowed to decide for themselves? Won't they
| decide to do stupid and harmful things? Won't they decide to
| hurt eachother? Won't they decide to steal from eachother, and
| murder eachother?
|
| No, is the answer, because laws were created somehow, right? We
| don't trust the government to babysit us - we _created_ the
| government so we wouldn 't have to babysit eachother.
|
| We don't need the board to tell us what we can and can't do -
| we can figure that well enough on our own. What we _don 't_
| need is a board that assumes it knows best. It doesn't, it
| can't possibly, in fact it is existentially unable to do
| anything but raise shareholder value. So, the more employee
| self-determination, the better.
|
| I think it's _very_ unlikely that employees will decide they
| want to have guns at work instead of, say, a security system,
| or maybe offices in places with low crime, etc. I think it 's
| very unlikely that employees will decide, I dunno, that they
| want the right to shit on eachother's desk, or whatever other
| fairly-objectively-negative thing you can think up. The right
| to paste racial slurs all over the office, maybe? Bigotry,
| bullying, and hatred are swiftly becoming a minority, and a
| fair system almost universally causes those minority viewpoints
| to lose power. They only maintain it in imbalanced systems...
|
| And worse case scenario, if Amazon turns into the kind of
| office where you have to shoot your way in just to get to your
| desk, we can have the government intervene and shut the place
| down (with our labor laws), and maybe someone can set up a
| better business where you don't have to shoot your way to your
| desk.
| aeroevan wrote:
| > I think it's very unlikely that employees will decide they
| want to have guns at work instead of, say, a security system,
| or maybe offices in places with low crime, etc. I think it's
| very unlikely that employees will decide, I dunno, that they
| want the right to shit on eachother's desk, or whatever other
| fairly-objectively-negative thing you can think up.
|
| I think his point is that carrying guns to work is not a
| fairly-objectively-negative thing for the 1/3 of America that
| owns guns.
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| Good point. There's a bit of apples and oranges here when you
| get down to the specifics.
|
| Specifically, Tim is pissed because Amazon fired some
| whistleblowers. Not just once, and it sounds like it has
| happened over a period of time. In other words, there were
| workplace violations happening, people tried to go through
| proper channels, and then reported it when that didn't work,
| and then they got fired.
| dhagz wrote:
| I'm sure there are terms in the employment contract that Amazon
| can use to justify firing these employees. And I do agree that
| the circumstances of condoning activism at Amazon can lead to
| some very bad places. I also think that there most certainly
| are actions taken by the employees who were fired that may make
| the terminations look more justified. Basically - there are
| parts of the story we are not seeing, context missing.
|
| HOWEVER, that still does not make Amazon right in this. Sure,
| they followed corporate bylaws and did the things to legally
| cover their asses, but that doesn't mean they're wearing a
| white dress here. There are certainly systemic problems within
| Amazon the lower down the payscale you go, and Amazon trying to
| silence attempts to bring attention to that is more damning
| than the problems themselves in my mind.
| tayo42 wrote:
| I think your argument is based off of a slippery slope. Your
| assuming future groups of people aren't being realistic or wont
| ask for things that are moral.
| netsharc wrote:
| > If Amazon condone and even enable employee activism
|
| Is this (what the whistleblowers did, and Mr. Bray is
| implicitly supporting by quitting) even activism? They were
| afraid of the well-being of the Amazon employees.
|
| Is it comparable to complaining that the wooden stairs to go
| into the office is rotten and may fall at any moment? That's
| not activism, it's just basic workspace safety.
| TLightful wrote:
| _f.u_ c!3k y(o.!u.
| mcantelon wrote:
| Reports of shitty working conditions aren't exactly a new thing
| in Amazon warehouses.
| alexpetralia wrote:
| This article now hit the front page of the Financial Times:
| https://www.ft.com/content/ea6946d8-532e-4724-ada7-eebb887c8...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| http://archive.md/D2qjy
| apexkid wrote:
| Amazon is every other on fire in media for poor working
| conditions but they don't care because stock buyers of Amazon
| don't care. They will continue to invest as long as their wealth
| grows. This is what true capitalism is.
| dcgudeman wrote:
| How many "Amazon VP"s are there, 1000? Whenever I see stories
| like this the majority of the time the position of the individual
| is embellished to make the act seem more dramatic.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| If that's the case, perhaps it's also newsworthy that _only_
| one VP stepped down from Amazon for these public reasons? And
| doesn 't that make him newsworthy anyway for being one out of a
| thousand?
| stepbeek wrote:
| iirc there are very few distinguished engineers at Amazon. Tim
| Bray is high flying from a technical standpoint.
| patentfox wrote:
| Amazon is not a bank where VP position is like a senior
| engineer. VPs are very few and wield a lot of power and
| influence.
| jrockway wrote:
| "Distinguished Engineer" is kind of a big deal, title-wise.
| It's not something that is just handed out.
| new2628 wrote:
| As Napoleon said, a soldier will fight long and hard for a
| piece of colored ribbon.
| sgt wrote:
| And yet, some soldiers will let it go again in order to
| maintain their honor.
| Havoc wrote:
| >humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack
| potential. Only that's not just Amazon, it's how 21st-century
| capitalism is done.
|
| That's the part that scares me - it's not just Amazon. Automation
| hasn't even kicked off properly and we've already got humans
| being replaceable at best
| fastball wrote:
| I'm not sure what else you can expect in a world where jobs
| that require effectively 0 skill exist.
|
| I'd prefer the "full automation" route, as I think it would be
| better for humans to not need to perform these jobs. But until
| then, isn't it a good thing that jobs which require no skills
| exist? Since there seem to be many people with little-to-no
| skills?
| mtrower wrote:
| This is the fear. Increased automation will come whether we
| resist it or not; what hardships will the breaking point
| bring?
| Havoc wrote:
| >I think it would be better for humans to not need to perform
| these jobs.
|
| Depends on how this plays out. Either some sort of UBI
| future...or potentially dramatically increased inequality and
| much suffering by a big chunk of humanity that can no longer
| economically compete at all. Could go either way I think.
| lftherios wrote:
| We need more Tims in the tech world.
|
| From a place for renegades, the valley has quickly become a safe
| place for "yes men", that all they do is to obey to their
| corporate overlords.
| scarface74 wrote:
| It's easy to take a moral stand when you have millions and are
| close to retirement.
| lftherios wrote:
| agreed. still very few do it.
| Lammy wrote:
| s/easy/possible/
| sbussard wrote:
| > Only that's not just Amazon, it's how 21st-century capitalism
| is done
|
| This type of business practice is a big threat to capitalism.
| Bottom-line thinking is over-optimization w.r.t. to revenue that
| doesn't even consider those who generate the revenue. It's a
| local maximum that makes crummy business people look smarter than
| they are. Conscientious capitalism is not a socialist concept,
| it's a human concept. If the leaders have no empathy, people will
| leave, revenue will go down.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _What with big-tech salaries and share vestings, this will
| probably cost me over a million (pre-tax) dollars_
|
| ...
|
| > _The average pay_ [in his group, AWS] _is very high, and anyone
| who's unhappy can walk across the street and get another job
| paying the same or better._
|
| Not sure how to square these two statements. Is the lost money
| all in stock vesting? If so, why bother mentioning the salary? If
| not, how does that fit with his claim about AWSers being so
| readily employable?
| bitcurious wrote:
| He's an executive, most employees are not.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I considered that, but it also means that his blog post gets
| lots of publicity (case in point: top of HN). Even if he
| doesn't land another job immediately, this creates goodwill
| among certain folks which could increase his future earnings
| or put him on the speaker circuit.
|
| Not saying he isn't losing money here, just that it's a
| little odd to make those two contradictory statements without
| any explanation.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Last I hard, Amazon had a 4 year 5/15/40/40 vesting schedule.
| In my experience, stock compensation exceeds salary for most
| executives. If 50% of compensation was in stock, they would be
| walking away from 2.2 years salary worth of grants, which would
| have appreciated since the grant date. Amazon stock is also up
| >4x in the last 4 years.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It's a wake up call, or at least an attempt at that, for the
| likes of Amazon that if they are looking to have reputable
| people, like Tim Bray, associate themselves and their name with
| you, there are certain standards that have to be met.
|
| Amazon, MS, Google, Apple, etc. rank among the most wealthy
| companies in the world and they've each had to deal with internal
| pressures where their employees voiced concerns about certain
| things or where there was some kind of whistle blower situation.
| And they each dealt with it in their own ways.
|
| IMHO firing whistle blowers is the kind of action that should be
| called out as very negative and not something to be apologetic
| about.
|
| So, I admire what Tim Bray is doing here and fully understand
| that he's having a hard time justifying working for what he's
| diplomatically not quite calling out as a __holes; though the
| undertone is quite clear.
|
| Of course as he is pointing out, he's in a position where he can
| afford to do so financially. But then, being able to and actually
| doing are two things and he's showing some back bone here by 1)
| walking away and taking a hit financially, and 2) writing about
| it in the hope that leadership steps up and acts to correct the
| situation: compensate individuals affected, offer to rehire them,
| and discipline executives involved in pushing this through.
| Unlikely to happen, but one can hope for someone with a backbone
| stepping up. It would be the right thing to do. At the minimum,
| they've just been exposed for what they are and that might have
| consequences elsewhere for them.
| quotemstr wrote:
| I don't think Amazon is going to have any trouble at all
| filling open headcount with talented people on account of
| maintaining a politics-free workplace.
|
| It's become fashionable in tech among a certain crowd to
| bombard coworkers with divisive messaging about controversial
| social issues, to leak confidential information to sympathetic
| external press, and to demonize anyone who objects. This
| practice must end, and I admire Bezos for having the guts to
| end it. Companies have every right to ask employees to focus on
| work at work.
|
| If being one of these "reputable people" you mention requires
| me to be a cheerleader for this kind of strident and obnoxious
| internal activism, I don't want to be "reputable".
| uoaei wrote:
| It sounds like you think that the concern about Amazon is
| primarily about working conditions in the cushy office jobs.
| But that's not what anyone is talking about here. They're
| talking about frontline "essential" workers like those in the
| warehouses and delivery trucks.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| > IMHO firing whistle blowers is the kind of action that should
| be called out as very negative and not something to be
| apologetic about.
|
| Agree 100%. Daylight is the best disinfectant, especially in
| publicly traded companies. Every CEO, CMO, etc loves white-
| knighting ("We care about the environment/our employees!")
| until the shareholders start calling. Then they're the first to
| start covering up problems.
|
| That's not to say that you can't have your cake and eat it too
| - the first place to start is that these corporations have to
| be honest with themselves and their shareholders about social
| commitments and financial returns.
| aguyfromnb wrote:
| > _It 's a wake up call, or at least an attempt at that, for
| the likes of Amazon that if they are looking to have reputable
| people, like Tim Bray, associate themselves and their name with
| you, there are certain standards that have to be met._
|
| Prominent VCs are calling for people to get back to work every
| day on Twitter. The rest of the world is waking up to these
| people, but we have a long way to go before Silicon Valley
| cares.
| [deleted]
| freshhawk wrote:
| Is it a wake up call?
|
| You can clearly see from the comments that many people here are
| still very much on the "but they're employees ... why would
| they have any rights? if they complain just crush them into
| paste to oil the machines" camp.
|
| The occasional high profile person quitting one of the big tech
| companies because of their constant illegal
| employee/whistleblower abuse happens regularly at this point.
| Is Tim Bray's particularly different in some way I'm not
| seeing?
| uoaei wrote:
| I think the next big revolution in political thinking will be
| the debate over the question of whether money is amoral. If I
| spend a dollar by giving it to someone, what does that enable
| them to do? What behaviors does that encourage and reinforce?
|
| I think a lot of people would say that at some level money is
| moral (don't pay terrorist organizations or render services
| for them) but that distinction blurs as we get closer to
| mundane, real-life concerns like spending money at Amazon,
| Wal-Mart, or Whole Foods. I think it gets blurry because of
| desensitization and the need for folks to feel like they're
| not screwing over others during the normal course of their
| life. But the fact is that capital enables behaviors in a
| capitalist economic system, so allocating the capital you
| have control over is necessarily a moral act.
| carti wrote:
| "There's no such thing as ethical consumption under
| capitalism" comes to mind. Even if some folks are in a
| position to spend all of their money in ways that align
| with their values (which seems impossible given the extent
| of global supply chains), it's out of reach for the vast
| majority until systemic change is realized.
| uoaei wrote:
| Very true. But it's necessary to make the first point
| explicit so that we can make the jump from "citizens,
| vote with your wallet" to "citizens, ensure that the
| government only deploys capital in ways you agree with".
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _...discipline executives_
|
| Reminds of the classic and very public Amazon exec feud, Kivin
| Varghese v Munira Rahemtulla:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8600716
| taurath wrote:
| > Of course as he is pointing out, he's in a position where he
| can afford to do so financially
|
| I'd just want to point out that the workers who are in the
| middle are the ones who can afford to do so financially and
| have the power to make management change things. If you're a
| programmer and make decent money, consider not putting yourself
| in a position where you must compromise your morals, such as
| accepting the company you work for firing whistleblowers over
| poor work conditions. $100k in the bank makes it a hell of a
| lot easier to decide to organize.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Also why a FAANG anticompetitive stranglehold on tech is so
| horrifying. If you speak out against Amazon, will another
| tech giant hire you? Probably not...
| jdkee wrote:
| The DoJ needs to bring it's antitrust division to bear on
| Amazon.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/atr
| [deleted]
| luckylion wrote:
| There are alternatives though. You tend to get paid a lot
| if the work is very dangerous, soul-devouring, only very
| few people can do it, or you're expected to look the other
| way.
|
| When you pass on working on the new team that uses ML to
| predict the likelihood of workers knowing their rights
| based on resume and application cover letter, you may not
| make the $400k total comp next year, but it's not like
| you'll be unemployed either. There's plenty of work at
| pretty normal companies to be done. They won't pay as good,
| it may not sounds as impressive and you may have to explain
| at family dinners what your company does, but it's an
| option.
| appleflaxen wrote:
| > IMHO firing whistle blowers is the kind of action that should
| be called out as very negative and not something to be
| apologetic about.
|
| do you mean "and something to be apologetic about"? the two
| clauses in this line seem to be contradictory the way I'm
| reading it.
| Kye wrote:
| My read sees an implied "apologies are not enough."
| onion2k wrote:
| "making apologies for", or to be "an apologist", in this
| context is someone who defends a controversial idea.
| https://www.dictionary.com/browse/apologist
| aabeshou wrote:
| not sure, but maybe they mean apologetic in the sense of
| being an apologist?
| sneak wrote:
| > _What about AWS? * Amazon Web Services (the "Cloud Computing"
| arm of the company), where I worked, is a different story. It
| treats its workers humanely, strives for work /life balance,
| struggles to move the diversity needle (and mostly fails, but so
| does everyone else), and is by and large an ethical
| organization._
|
| I find it very difficult to reconcile this statement with the
| fact that AWS provides services to the US military to help them
| perpetrate mass murder more effectively and directly vends to the
| suborganization inside the US government that operates
| concentration camps for children. It's fallen out of the news
| cycle, but this is still happening today, and AWS is still
| accepting money to help them carry out their crimes.
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/training-the-warfi...
|
| https://www.govexec.com/sponsor-content/enabling-the-warfigh...
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/10/22/139639/amazon-is...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/us/immigrant-children-sex...
|
| These are the people AWS collaborates with. That's not ethical
| under any framework of ethics I've ever heard of.
|
| It's not even like they just happen to serve the military along
| with all comers: they voluntarily built a special set of
| datacenters with racist hiring policies just to court government
| work:
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/
|
| It's almost as if people have a gigantic ethical blind spot just
| so long as it's the state doing the mass killings and torture of
| children.
| herdodoodo wrote:
| So. Much. This.
|
| Google. Microsoft. Apple. Facebook.
|
| All have had contract supplying the U.S. military, an
| organization who's "greatest achievement" is mass murder of
| Iraqi children.
|
| I believe some of these companies also directly offer services
| to ICE, who are currently comitting a Holocaust against
| undocumented children.
|
| One day, maybe, when a sensible president holds office, she
| will break up these companies, or even better, nationalize
| them.
| sneak wrote:
| I think it is a mistake to equate Microsoft and Amazon's
| behavior (active collaboration and voluntary engagement in
| provision of dedicated/custom services or even one-off entire
| lines of business) and Apple's behavior (we sell the same
| hardware, unmodified, to everyone who wants to buy it) in
| this instance.
|
| Addendum (EDIT): Bad phrasing on my part attempting to
| characterize the behavior. I am not affiliated with Apple in
| any way.
| herdodoodo wrote:
| >we
|
| I hope you can recognize the conflict of interest here. You
| appear to work at Apple, and that might just make you less
| likely to acknowledge the overwhelming number of unethical
| practices Apple partakes in.
|
| EDIT: Sorry, you can ignore ^this^ paragraph - just saw
| your edit. My apologies for making accusations.
|
| I find it especially interesting you attack Amazon over
| their disastrous warehouse workplace policies (you are 100%
| right to do so), and conveniently ignore the even worse
| manufacturing plant conditions that overseas Apple
| employees/contractors have to endure.
|
| I should also add, Microsoft and Apple are the two cash-
| richest companies on the planet. They can afford to drop
| all DoD contracts indefinitely. They won't, and bad things
| will continue to happen to PoC outside of the US because of
| it. I hope, at the very least, you can acknowledge this.
| sneak wrote:
| I don't like it when anyone productive and resourceful
| collaborates with violent people for any reason. We're on
| the same page.
|
| You'll note that I did not attack Amazon for their
| warehouse conditions.
|
| No one is forced to work in an Amazon warehouse and
| neither is Amazon the only employer in any city in which
| they operate; if they are there working it's because they
| themselves decided that it was the best job option
| available to them, and it must be equal to or greater
| than their other job options, making Amazon's offer of
| employment a net benefit to them, or, in the worst case,
| equivalent to the second best job available. Until very
| recently unemployment in the US was at record lows, and
| there were many other jobs available and looking for
| staff.
|
| It might be difficult to accept, but every single person
| who works at Amazon is there because they _want to work
| there_. If someone has decided that that 's the best
| option for them, it's not my place to second-guess them
| (aside from the moral issues of supporting a company with
| the AI-drone-war inclinations of Amazon).
|
| The same goes for the people who work at Foxconn. The
| plant where they put up the suicide jumper netting had a
| lower suicide rate, per capita, than the province in
| which it sat (even before the nets).
| xendo wrote:
| You are basically calling US Military and Government terrorist
| organizations. If you start with that assumption you can easily
| get to the point where no US company is ethical and you can't
| work anywhere.
| sneak wrote:
| Both of your statements seem to be objectively false.
| 0xy wrote:
| Which AWS service "helps to perpetrate mass murder"? I must've
| missed that on the AWS website.
| sneak wrote:
| Please click either or both of the first two links I
| provided. From AWS' own copy:
|
| > _With the agility, reliability, and speed of the cloud,
| teams can quickly build, experiment, and launch new services
| to provide immediate value to the warfighter._
| 0xy wrote:
| You claimed AWS was helping them perpetuate mass murder, a
| claim you're going to have to back up. A sales pitch like
| that isn't even in the ballpark.
| pleddy wrote:
| I worked there in 2004. Fired for insubordination. My team was
| harassed by the VP of QA, he was soon also fired, just to prove
| that I was indeed onto something in my whistleblowing. Larry
| something, can't remember. One of those super two-faced
| goofballs.
|
| Amazon culture then? It was sad. Workers are pawns. The dreams of
| the Internet startup culture dashed and dying. I was on the team
| w the first Infosys flood.
|
| Amazon is a place to make money. That's it. It's a strict
| military hierarchy like all US corporations. No real culture of
| betterment for humanity. Quite the opposite. Yes, those that got
| and kept their options possibly doing very well. Yes, if tech is
| what you live for, yippee! A better future for all of humanity:
| strong "no!". Stormtroopers and low flying helicoptors for any
| that dare organize.
|
| Didn't you see the HR video where a plastic Jeff spews all the
| corporate lies and BS? Made me sick back when. I was an idealist.
| You were probably spared the worst and protected, given the
| humanist version on the surface.
|
| There's a culture of trying to get rid of people after a few
| years. Not many make it over the 3-5 years mark, right? Policy of
| "fire the bottom 10%" thing every year, so trump up some lies to
| have excuses.
|
| Anyways, better you got out before the rot set into your heart.
| No idealists there. The top guy is obviously quite extraordinary.
| Thanks for making a statement. Maybe something will break one
| day.
|
| Whistleblowing needs to be kept alive. It's our only hope.
| treebornfrog wrote:
| Completely anecdotal.
|
| I went on an amazon warehouse tour in Tilbury, UK. (1).
|
| It was a tour of everything they do, at one stage they asked the
| guy stowing to do a demo and he flat out refused because he had
| to hit his targets.
|
| (1) Amazon UK Services Ltd. Tilbury - LCY2
|
| London Distribution Park, Windrush Rd, Tilbury RM18 7AN
| https://g.co/kgs/8E4bgd
| yalogin wrote:
| Am curious, what happens if an engineer quit like this after
| writing a blog about the company, does it have a negative impact
| on their hirability? Do other companies not want him or does it
| not matter?
| alkibiades wrote:
| i'd think it would make you unemployable at another big
| company.
|
| but startups might still be interested
| sulam wrote:
| Tim Bray? Won't matter to his employability at all. May even
| help it, and low pass filter places he wouldn't want to work
| anyway.
| msoad wrote:
| Tim is not "an engineer". He is not gonna look for jobs.
| yalogin wrote:
| I should have clarified, the question was about a general
| engineer, not Tim.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| [Applause!]
| ksec wrote:
| I am going to ask a slightly different question relating to the
| problem.
|
| How do you get another job?
|
| Do you tell your potential employer you quit because of (your)
| principle? That you fundamentally disagree with your previous
| company? How will the new company judge you?
|
| Now of coz if you are in the market that is chasing for talent (
| like programming and tech ) this wouldn't be a much of a problem.
| What if you were the Amazon Warehouse Manager? Which is probably
| 100x more replaceable than say a software engineer?
|
| Most business seems to operate with talent are everywhere,
| opportunities are scarce mentality. They would much rather they
| hire a class B employees than a class A activist.
| rantwasp wrote:
| OP does not have this issue. He is a highly visible/highly
| respected for his technical skills. I'm willing to bet you
| money that he is being flooded as we type with offers. Not all
| people have this position but the act of quitting out of
| principle is still something that takes a huge amount of
| courage.
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