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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

#261

Post by seanmcdirmid »

WalterBright wrote: post #168
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon recruiters are extremely spotty: they seem to be winging it most of the time and some aren't very good at listening to candidates (you are looking for a job in compilers? Hey, join the Alexa team!). Amazon is also known as the more questionable FAANG in terms of employee treatment, but then again I know many Amazonians that say they are actually treated very well. There isn't a shortage of tech talent looking…

> you are looking for a job in compilers? Hey, join the Alexa team! Many, many projects could use someone who is good at compilers. Just look at all the terrible code that processes command lines, for example :-/ Or all those miserable config file formats. Or really, any sort of text processing. Compiler guys also tend to be good at writing fast code, for the simple reasons that compilers have to be fast, and compile…

While you aren’t wrong, I was thinking more from the perspective of “is this a job I would be interested in” rather than “is this a job where I would be useful.” Honestly, some of the recruiters I talked to were more interested in me knowing C# than any of my actual skills.

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

#262

Post by greedo »

bavell wrote: post #213
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....

With a good CEO, your career might actually get a bump if you give them honest and helpful feedback.

If the company is larger than 500 people, the CEO doesn't have the bandwidth for this type of feedback. He'll either figure out that his reports (CTO or lower) are not doing their jobs, or that you're a troublemaker. Odds are he has hired the CTO and had significant influence on hiring those below the CTO. So he's invested in that CTO. You, you're some rando coming up talking about stuff that makes you look incompetent.

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

#263

Post by kelnos »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #94
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find "inversely proportional" to be techno babble, but then I'm a techie who studied lots of math. You'd be surprised how many techies (especially the younger ones) don't see the above advice as being obvious.

> You'd be surprised how many techies (especially the younger ones) don't see the above advice as being obvious. It's only obvious if you've accepted the status quo ("at will employment", no worker protections). Many other developed countries have substantial worker protections [1], and I see questioning this as work towards progress in having those same worker protections in the US. Young folks haven't been ground d…

> It's only obvious if you've accepted the status quo ("at will employment", no worker protections).

If you live in the US, and you haven't accepted that, then you live in a fantasy world.

It's great to know what the other possibilities are, and work to make them a reality, but acting as if the current reality isn't in force... well, that's just foolish, and these two Amazon UX designers are receiving a harsh lesson in reality.

Being idealistic is genuinely awesome, and I wish more people would aspire for better in our society. But behaving as if your ideals are reality is usually not going to go well for you, and people would do well to remember that. These former employees have possibly put their (and their families') financial security in jeopardy because they didn't.

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

#264

Post by throwaway_USD »

rochester46 wrote: post #72
throwaway_USD wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but in US most of the employment is at will. In practical terms, they can fire you for any or no reason at all. Yes, employment at-will allows both the employer and employee to terminate employment at anytime without cause. However, it seems pretty clear Amazon did not terminate these employees without cause...you can argue the termination was for violation of a company policy all you want (Amazon certainly will), b…

There are no constitutionally protected rights to disparage, or even just talk negatively about, anyone you want. The constitution has nothing to do with this case at all.

>There are no constitutionally protected rights to disparage, or even just talk negatively about, anyone you want.

Yes, you certainly do have that right so long as what you say is true.

But lets assume your misunderstanding of the law were true, or these statements were in violation of some otherwise unknown confidential settlement agreement...who is to say the employee statements were disparaging? Amazon? No whether a statement is disparaging or otherwise violates the terms of an agreement is an issue of fact for a fact finder (i.e. jury or more rarely a judge) to determine.

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

#265

Post by greedo »

save_ferris wrote: post #240
bavell wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a good CEO, your career might actually get a bump if you give them honest and helpful feedback.

good CEOs create situations that allow people to provide feedback in a safe and supportive way, through things like town halls, anonymous feedback messaging, etc. so employees aren't forced into high-stakes interactions like marching into their office.

A Townhall meeting is in no way a safe and supportive place to provide feedback. Only anodyne questions are asked as people generally know better than to tell the Emperor he has no clothes...

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

#266

Post by katmannthree »

burrows wrote: post #231
katmannthree wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your argument has shifted from "if people want something they should negotiate for it instead of involving the government" to "even though the vast majority of people can't actually participate in meaningful negotiations the government still shouldn't intervene?" You're essentially arguing that only the few people at the top should be able to do well. Just because anyone can rise to the top of their class and do w…

“meaningful negotiation” doesn’t mean anything to me. Either men with guns coerce the market participant or they don’t. Freemen should rationally allocate free time, family time and work time. A man isn’t guaranteed everything he wants, only the opportunity to rationally pursue his interests.

>“meaningful negotiation” doesn’t mean anything to me.

You've already defined it with "The employee should negotiate “fireable offenses” into his contract." I don't know of a single employer that would be interested in hiring someone who insisted on including a list of nonfirable offenses which included making public statements which paint the company in a bad light. That specific item we're talking about is completely unviable for most employees to negotiate, i.e. they have no meaningful/material/real/significant ability to negotiate it.

>Either men with guns coerce the market participant or they don’t.

There are many more forms of coercion than just "men with guns," and if coercion specifically by men with guns is worth acting on then why shouldn't other forms be?

In this case there technically _is_ coercion by men with guns, albeit a degree or two removed. People need money to keep a roof over their head, and they need jobs to receive that money. If they're not able to work then your men with guns will come and remove them from their living space, and once on the street they'll likely have many more unpleasant encounters with more men with guns.

>Freemen should rationally allocate free time, family time and work time. A man isn’t guaranteed everything he wants, only the opportunity to rationally pursue his interests.

Nothing I've argued goes against that. My point here is that there are certain things which the invisible hand of the free market is unable to touch due to the dynamics of the market. That is, in my and many other people's opinion, where the government needs to step in and force the market to make decisions it would be otherwise unwilling to do. This has already been necessary many times before in American history, such as with the ending of slavery, child labor, and the introduction of minimum wage laws. In all of these cases government intervention was necessary to reduce human suffering and raise people's quality of life. Yes, some "market value" was lost in the process but to people with empathy that was a completely worthwhile trade.

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

#267

Post by ozim »

shawnz wrote: post #204
ozim wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anything wrong about that... Because that is if you don't agree with company policy or whatever company is doing, you should not work there. They should lose all employees and go bust. In practice I understand one would like to disagree and things should change to better. But life is not that simple, so if you can afford quitting please do so (if you are wealthy enough even in their face saying what they…

What if you actually believe in the company and what they do? Does that mean you must support each and every policy that the company instates?

That is a good counter question... I don't have to name people who believed their company was doing the right thing but was in reality setting death camps.

But in reality they (bad guys) were using line workers who could not really make right or wrong because they were not educated on the front line doing atrocities. Fuck you is about people who are educated enough that they could spot slimy stuff (though they were enough removed from bad stuff to not "spot" the bad stuff) but still stick to their comfortable life.

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

#268

Post by burrows »

a1369209993 wrote: post #233
AdrianB1 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are in confusion, there is no free speech issue; the First Amendment protects the free speech from the government, nothing else. Just to be very clear: I am in no way agreeing with Amazon, just correcting a confusion about the applicability of the US Constitution and amendments.

That sort of conflation is defensible when someone actually says "First Amendment", but the parent was clearly talking about the fundumental human right to free speech that that first amendment imperfectly protects, not about a particular legal establishment of it.

Amazon isn’t threatening the men with guns, so their natural right to free speech isn’t violated.

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

#269

Post by tyingq »

kube-system wrote: post #254
tyingq wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By firing them, they are reinforcing the idea they they don't care about working conditions. A reprimand likely wouldn't have made the news. I assume they want less buzz about work conditions.

The Streisand effect is when someone actively takes actions to hide information, but it backfires. I haven't seen any evidence of them taking actions to hide any information. >I assume they want less buzz about work conditions. I don't think this is the case. They have been public about responding to the media and have been posting daily updates through their own site. The link to their blog discussing workers' condi…

Firing outspoken employees counts as an attempt to suppress information to me. The firing itself becoming news is the backfire. They essentially gave the warehouse conditions an extra news cycle.

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

#270

Post by _bxg1 »

mav3rick wrote: post #228
aj_g wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Props to you. I am incredibly far away from the world of SV/FAANG, so tell me, is FB really becoming a less desirable place to work? It seems to me like it's a pretty small minority of people that would refuse a $1XX,000 paycheck on grounds of being a ethically dubious snowflake in the avalanche that is Facebook.

Don't gauge the real.world based on Hacker News. 99% of keyboard warriors will sign 250k USD+ total comp offers in a jiffy.

The way I see it, in the right city somebody with our skillset can step outside and trip over an offer with a very comfortable salary. In that context, I don't think there's much excuse for going out and choosing to make the world a worse place, even if you'd get paid 2x that very comfortable salary.
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