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Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#241

Post by [deleted] »

madamelic wrote: post #222
totalZero wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem politically smart to me for Amazon to so blatantly open itself up to state and federal investigation, at a time when the president of the United States hates their leadership's guts and the Democratic Party is on a massive pro-workers kick. Amazon has spent billions trying to replace the human component of its distribution. It would utterly fall apart if warehouse workers stop working. What's wrong wi…

>reducing the throughput a little bit so that people don't have to work in close proximity to each other? The funny part is they already are, for non-essential items.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#242

Post by ianleeclark »

ghshephard wrote: post #76
sfkdjf9j3j wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've reread this comment a few times and I'm still not sure what to make of it. It's obviously true, but why post something with such a smug and gloating tone? Are you happy about how Amazon warehouse workers are treated and pleased to see people speaking out being fired in the midst of a pandemic?

Not to engage in ageism, but speaking from the benefit of having the benefit of being younger, and older, I can say that when I was younger, I was blissfully unaware of the huge list of things that would result in a person's employment ending, that I thought was absolutely reasonable for one to do. And maybe it was reasonable for one to do. But it also ended one's employment. I think the GP was mostly just trying to…

This is a really tragic tale: a young person is bludgeoned into accepting a status quo as inherent, rather than something they could ever change.

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#243

Post by 0x262d »

A sharp reminder that “free speech” under capitalism effectually doesn’t apply to your job, ie the thing that you spend nearly half your waking hours on and your primary way of contributing to the functioning of society. Some employers might be more lenient but Amazon is big and successful because it is ruthless in this and all other things. This is yet another reason I think we desperately need to democratically plan our economy; which is another way of saying we need to extend democracy into the workplace and the sphere of production.

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#244

Post by filoleg »

evgen wrote: post #143
birdyrooster wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally anyone at Uber, Palantir, or Facebook has got to be on their short list of people to recruit.

Sorry to break it to you, but anyone who is still at Facebook at this point thinks they are at the top of the heap and a lateral move to maybe Google, Apple, or Microsoft would be worth considering if it included a bump in grade. Amazon is a place Facebook recruits from, it does not go in the other direction. [FB and Amazon have the same moral issues if you work there but the environment at FB is an order of magnitud…

Can confirm, Amazon in Seattle is literally just a testing ground for people who couldn't get into Google/Apple/FB/Microsoft/etc. on the first try.

Amazon becomes their best available option, and once they work there for a year or two, improve their skills, get some experience, and get tired of dealing with hell that is working at Amazon, they get hired at all those companies they couldn't initially get into. No one says Amazon is incompetent at tech, quite the opposite. There is a lot people can learn while working there, and all those other competing tech giants know it.

I've heard of very few moves the other way around, and in every single such scenario I personally witnessed, there was a lot of very specific circumstances for the person that lead them to that point.

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#245

Post by S_A_P »

lnsru wrote: post #226
alexandercrohde wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh great... yeah just walk right into the CEO's office and tell them what's wrong... 0% chance of that coming back to affect your career....

Did exactly this! Just it wasn’t CEO, only a Vice President. I mentioned bugs and lack of testing in a polite way, also offered how test system could be designed to automate testing. There was a committee created to do inspection of my code and to analyze, why I do so many bugs. I’ll never tell anybody, how to operate better after this “incident”. The months were hell and I am pretty sure, I’ll be fired during next d…

First, good on you for trying to make a difference. Second, without painting with too broad of a brush here I would say that depending on the size of your organization this is the exact wrong layer to complain to. The VPs can be in the spot where they want to be perceived as running the show so the C levels can take care of the vision. If there was a CTO at your company that may have been the better move.

Either way, Im sorry to hear that things went south after complaining and it sounds like it just got bruised egos involved.

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#246

Post by 0x262d »

rw2 wrote: post #127

The UX designers never worked in a warehouse, they had no first hand experience. I would find the complaint more valuable from an actual Amazon warehouse workers. The UX designer probably work in a cushy Amazon corporate office with free snacks and drinks, but amazon warehouse roles are probably under more spartan and strict conditions. How does Amazon warehouse work conditions compare to other warehouse work conditi…

> The best way to protest an employer is to not work for them.

Sorry but this is totally ineffectual compared to speaking out and organizing people on the job. Also quitting in protest doesn’t exactly make it easy to get the next job.

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#247

Post by ardy42 »

Noughmad wrote: post #47
alexandercrohde wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people are outraged not because it's illegal, but because it's unconscionable. I think the general understanding is people shouldn't have outside-work activities be held against them, maybe it's time for the law to catch up. It's pretty easy to come up with a lot of absurd and "legal" at-will policies (e.g. we'll fire anybody who watches porn)

In that case, people should make it illegal. Like they did in most other countries. The US is full of outrage about companies doing unethical things but nobody wants to make unethical things illegal.

> The US is full of outrage about companies doing unethical things but nobody wants to make unethical things illegal.

That's patently false. Plenty of people want to make those unethical things illegal, it's just that the people who engage in those unethical things have had the political power to thwart many of those efforts so far.

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#249

Post by oblio »

S_A_P wrote: post #245
lnsru wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did exactly this! Just it wasn’t CEO, only a Vice President. I mentioned bugs and lack of testing in a polite way, also offered how test system could be designed to automate testing. There was a committee created to do inspection of my code and to analyze, why I do so many bugs. I’ll never tell anybody, how to operate better after this “incident”. The months were hell and I am pretty sure, I’ll be fired during next d…

First, good on you for trying to make a difference. Second, without painting with too broad of a brush here I would say that depending on the size of your organization this is the exact wrong layer to complain to. The VPs can be in the spot where they want to be perceived as running the show so the C levels can take care of the vision. If there was a CTO at your company that may have been the better move. Either way,…

It's almost never the right move. The CTO doesn't know you, but he does know the people who report to him.

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#250

Post by jhayward »

cirno wrote: post #156

> “We support every employee’s right to criticize their employer’s working conditions,” a spokesperson said, “but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies.” What a strange statement. "We support their right to criticize their working conditions, only actually we don't at all"

"Sovereign is he who decides the exception"[1]. It's a classic authoritarian/totalitarian posture.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schmitt#Political_Theolog...

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