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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

#271

Post by Traubenfuchs »

sfkdjf9j3j wrote: post #60
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #26

In general, trash talking one's employer in public is usually inversely proportional to the longevity of one's employment with said employer.

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?

One could interpret that pissing at ones employers leg expecting no repercussions shows a certain detachment from real life that comes across as obnoxiously arrogant.

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

#272

Post by greedo »

tyingq wrote: post #209
kube-system wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) said on Tuesday it terminated two employees, who criticized the working conditions It doesn't sound like Amazon is attempting to hide anything here.

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 power imbalance makes it easy for Amazon to act like this. Even if they get sued and lose, they have billions. It's like when Google got fined by the EU, and it was just a day's profit. Amazon is a shredder; so large that it just wipes out swaths of businesses, leaving broken employees in its wake.

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

#273

Post by filoleg »

SaxonRobber wrote: post #159
jshevek wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is legal, but, I believe, completely unacceptable to just about everyone. This is not true in my experience. Many people on the left, particularly under 35, earnestly believe that their political opponents are by definition racist and evil. In a manner similar to how I would not want a literal neo-nazi on my company's payroll, they do not want a registered Republican on the company's payroll. Edit: In other word…

It is my experience that everyone who self identifies as a republican or democrat is brainwashed at this point. The worst offenders are those who are so delusional that they mock anyone who avoids political discourse or abstains from voting. They are so high on political fumes that they can’t imagine that there are things more important than our cancerous political process.

From my observations (total anecdata, I am aware), those pro-specific-party people also usually don't tend to participate in politics on more local levels at all (county, state, etc.), despite the fact that those are imo way more impactful and can lead to changes "trickling up" all the way to the national level. Most of the people I personally know who vote in county/state elections can be best described as independents.

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

#274

Post by fmajid »

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"

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 protects employees rights, and Google had to settle with the NLRB on precisely this issue. There is one little difference, I am not a lawyer so I don't know if it is crucial for Amazon or not: in this case the fired employees were protesting other employees' working conditions, not their own.

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

#275

Post by outworlder »

oblio wrote: post #249
S_A_P wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

And they will come down on those people HARD! "Why is your employee complaining to me? Why aren't you doing your job?"

And down the line it comes crashing down. And meteor lands on your face.

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

#276

Post by wilg »

SaxonRobber wrote: post #159
jshevek wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is legal, but, I believe, completely unacceptable to just about everyone. This is not true in my experience. Many people on the left, particularly under 35, earnestly believe that their political opponents are by definition racist and evil. In a manner similar to how I would not want a literal neo-nazi on my company's payroll, they do not want a registered Republican on the company's payroll. Edit: In other word…

It is my experience that everyone who self identifies as a republican or democrat is brainwashed at this point. The worst offenders are those who are so delusional that they mock anyone who avoids political discourse or abstains from voting. They are so high on political fumes that they can’t imagine that there are things more important than our cancerous political process.

Sounds a lot like you're brainwashed!

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

#277

Post by kelnos »

danaris wrote: post #195
WalterBright wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few people want to associate with others who trash talk them.

Let's look at this from a very slightly different perspective: Few people who are doing things that will, with a high degree of certainty, result in harm to others for their own profit want others to be publicly pointing those things out. Painting this as "trash-talking Amazon", however the fired workers' words are phrased, is hugely disingenuous. We're not talking about someone going out there and saying, "Man, Amaz…

Is that actually the law, though? If so, I'd be happy to see Amazon get slapped hard for this. If it's not, then this is just an unsurprising consequence of airing your employer's dirty laundry in public.

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

#278

Post by kube-system »

tyingq wrote: post #269
kube-system wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We may be missing information here, but I am not sure these employees even had any first-hand information to suppress. I went to their twitter pages and couldn't find any myself.

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

#279

Post by filoleg »

qppo wrote: post #144
brewdad wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a company the size of Amazon, the decision to fire probably didn't come from Jane Doe. She gets stuck delivering the message though. Should we just say Jeff Bezos fired these employees? We don't know if he played a role here but surely he could have prevented their firing if he so desired.

In a company the size of Amazon, no one gets fired without paperwork, and termination has a process. Someone initiated that process and made the decision to follow a policy. I don't know what the policy is explicitly or if it's justified, but there should be visibility into that kind of decision making from the outside. It's in the lack of visibility that we see bad shit happen with hiring and firing.

It is a bit more tricky than that. Here is a simple hypothetical situation I just thought of.

Imagine you are an engineering manager running a team of 10. You got an email from your boss that the project revenue is way lower than projected, so the funding is getting cut and you need to get rid of one of your worst performers, but you have to pick who it is yourself, as your boss probably doesn't even know the actual people on your team. You have to fire them, even though you personally don't want to, because they are performing fine, just worse than all your other engineers.

Whose fault is this? Is it your boss' fault? They don't even pick the person and neither do they know any of them. Is it your fault? You've made the decision to fire that person, even though you don't want to fire them.

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

#280

Post by tracker1 »

If you plan to speak out publicly regarding your employer, I would suggest you try to stay anonymous.

1. get a burner phone 2. get a cheap laptop and put linux on it 3. setup a non-domestic vpn on the device 4. don't use this equipment with any accounts tied to use 5. use the burner phone via vpn in order to establish social media accounts. 6. use these social media accounts over vpn to make your statements...

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