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How does resigning better serve the cause than conscientious refusal to take part in despisable activities and get fired instead?
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).
> 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 t…
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…
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.
How does resigning better serve the cause than conscientious refusal to take part in despisable activities and get fired instead?
> 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... V…
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 yo…
I'd gladly be radioactive for companies that fire whistleblowers and worker rights activists.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's also 64. That's near retirement age, and I imagine he can afford to retire early.
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.…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 yo…
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 yo…
He's also 64. That's near retirement age, and I imagine he can afford to retire early.
> 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... V…
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.