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Bye, Amazon

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141–150 of 1001 posts

Re: Bye, Amazon

#141
post #37

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). S…

I hear he's 64, so this might not be a big deal for him going forward.

Yeah, his blog has previously indicated he’s been considering retiring.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#142
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.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#143
post #121

> 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…

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 Frida…

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.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

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.

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.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> specced XML, ATOM, JSON Urgh. Not exactly excellent engineering. Downvote me all you want but that's a pretty low bar.

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)...

Re: Bye, Amazon

#146
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Tom Waits the musician?

Re: Bye, Amazon

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

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.

How are these questions in bad faith?

Re: Bye, Amazon

#150
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.

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