Amazon VP Resigns, Calls Company ‘Chickenshit’ for Firing Protesting Workers • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon VP Resigns, Calls Company ‘Chickenshit’ for Firing Protesting Workers

#131

Post by busterarm » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:01 PM UTC

gassius wrote: post #110

ethanwillis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race." Ted Kaczynski would roughly say that Big becomes evil because Big means standardization. If you have a large corporation you need to standardize processes in order to be efficient enough to justify your existence. This is directly at odds with individual dignity and autonomy. Specifically see 111. onwards of Industrial Society a…

Not to fail in an ad hominem but I kinda give low value to the thinking of the Unabomber

He had a BA from Harvard and a PhD in Mathematics.

He was the victim of 200 hours of brutal psychological experimentation by Henry Murray. It turns out you can torture people past their breaking point and they may not recover.

It also turns out that doing this to people with greater-than-average intelligence can have proportionally greater-than-average consequences.

Re: Amazon VP Resigns, Calls Company ‘Chickenshit’ for Firing Protesting Workers

#132

Post by mysticmode » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

throwlaplace wrote: post #100

toomuchtodo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.” -- Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison

i think a lot about this (more than i think about my research). i wholeheartedly agree not because i feel obligated but simply because i'm able to - my life is not precarious (it used to be) and others' lives are. i've argued it from many perspectives (pragmatism, morals, etc) but the simple truth is i'm pained by the fact that other people are living hopeless and miserable lives. so i help and give and sacrifice bec…

The fact that you are acknowledging what you are feeling about others when they are in a miserable situation and the empathy that you show to them is a gift.

You don't need to research about this more! Just try to do what you can do to others :)

If you help others' you help yourself.

Re: Amazon VP Resigns, Calls Company ‘Chickenshit’ for Firing Protesting Workers

#133

Post by MaxBarraclough » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

rickpmg wrote: post #86

I think it would have been more effective if he just 'called in sick' (if that was possible for him) or staged an extended walkout of engineers. I have all my infrastructure on AWS and the prospect that it could all come to a halt immediately and unexpectedly makes me think of other providers or at least spreading my workoad to azure, google, etc.. and that should get Amazon's attention. I really don't think a single…

I doubt AWS would immediately fall over if some engineers walked out for a few days. Might still send a message though.

Re: Amazon VP Resigns, Calls Company ‘Chickenshit’ for Firing Protesting Workers

#134

Post by imglorp » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

mellosouls wrote: post #84

anon102010 wrote: post #61

Was this the guy that brought us XML?

Yes he was involved, so this gets him some forgiveness.

Hey we love to hate on XML now, but not only did a framework of markup and schema make sense at the time, markup as an interchange concept was a pretty new thing in 1986. We had some scattered formatter precursors like TeX and troff but not a general purpose framework like this.

Look at everything SGML begat or enabled: Docbook, HTML, XML, SOAP, WSDL/SOA, and ecosystems around transformations like DTDs and XSLT.

I think the biggest failure of XML was the pesky humans who kept trying to poke it by hand instead of working with abstractions so they never saw it.

Re: Amazon VP Resigns, Calls Company ‘Chickenshit’ for Firing Protesting Workers

#135

Post by Pfhreak » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

Udik wrote: post #81

Pfhreak wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the firings disproportionately or systemically impact races or genders, the firings can be racist/sexist -- even if race or gender is not involved in the firing decision. Racism and discrimination are related but separate concepts.

> the firings can be racist/sexist -- even if race or gender is not involved in the firing decision Uh? Can you elaborate?

Racism is the systemic discrimination against a race -- ie, there may be systems in place that cause a particular race to be disadvantaged, even if those systems aren't consciously put there by anyone.

For example, post redlining, many cities still have economically depressed areas that correlate with race. The policies that caused the issue are largely gone, but the systems created by them remain. (Systems, in this context can mean both formalized systems, e.g. welfare systems, and de facto systems, e.g. wealth inequality, incarceration rates, and prejudice).

Applied to employment decisions, there may be any number of factors that were not directly discussed as reasons to fire someone, but still impacted the firing decision. People may be unconsciously biased, there may be fundamental attribution errors applied because the person is in an outgroup, etc.

Re: Amazon VP Resigns, Calls Company ‘Chickenshit’ for Firing Protesting Workers

#136

Post by tompccs » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

Amazon needs to stop internally framing labour dispute problems as PR problems. Huge respect to Tim Bray for walking the walk in defence of his values, something I've only rarely seen from high-earning people with left-wing sentiments.

My own sense of the situation (and I could well be wrong) is that Amazon is not a particularly bad place to work as a warehouse worker (they after all employ hundreds of thousands of low-skilled people at $15/hr, no mean feat), but that they have a justifiably high exposure to the press for their workplace practices due to their scale.

I think that this is why some middle-management jobsworths think it best to fire activist workers rather than address their issues. It's those managers who should be out of a job now, not Tim Bray. I feel Tim's railings against 21st century capitalism and praise for France for their bare-faced protectionism are misplaced, but understandable under the circumstances.

Re: Amazon VP Resigns, Calls Company ‘Chickenshit’ for Firing Protesting Workers

#137

Post by rexpop » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #118

toomuchtodo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.” -- Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison

Most people are busy trying to free their children, spouse, and immediate family, even if it means sacrificing others’ freedom to do it.

This is a nice cover-story because it's endlessly plausible. We don't know the circumstances of your life. If you say you're struggling just to get by with your family, we have no choice but to believe you.

And yet, in this industry–and especially in this forum–I know many are following an ideology that values success only at another's expense, and not in collaboration with others. In a game theoretical sense, defectors.

There's more than one way to feed your family.

Re: Amazon VP Resigns, Calls Company ‘Chickenshit’ for Firing Protesting Workers

#138

Post by Udik » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

itsdrewmiller wrote: post #120

Udik wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the firings can be racist/sexist -- even if race or gender is not involved in the firing decision Uh? Can you elaborate?

This link might help explain things: https://www.scarsdaleschools.k12.ny.us/cms/lib5/NY01001205/C... I think "racist/sexist" may be muddying the waters a little bit since they are not narrowly defined and probably have more implication of motive, but de facto discrimination is a well recognized concept and it is illegal.

"De facto" as opposed to "de jure" means something happening without being mandated by law. This doesn't seem to have much to do with the GP's statement:

>> If the firings disproportionately or systemically impact races or genders, the firings can be racist/sexist -- even if race or gender is not involved in the firing decision.

If race or gender are not involved in the firing decisions, it means that the decision is based on other factors. If some male workers declare an illegal strike because they think they're discriminated, and they are fired as a consequence, this has nothing to do with their gender, but with the illegal strike. If people imprisoned for religious terrorism are all religious, this doesn't mean religious people are discriminated, but that terrorists are imprisoned. Etc.

Re: Amazon VP Resigns, Calls Company ‘Chickenshit’ for Firing Protesting Workers

#139

Post by Pfhreak » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #106

Pfhreak wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the firings disproportionately or systemically impact races or genders, the firings can be racist/sexist -- even if race or gender is not involved in the firing decision. Racism and discrimination are related but separate concepts.

This doesn't follow at all though. Racism and discrimination require intent. If race and sex have noting to do with the firing decision then it's not racist or sexist. It doesn't matter what the outcomes are. You can obviously make the case that if the stats are too biased to one side that there is racism/sexism involved in the decision, but that's a different matter. If you shut down a factory in China because it do…

> This doesn't follow at all though. Racism and discrimination require intent

Racism doesn't require intent. "I didn't know" or "I didn't intend to" isn't a defense against racist behavior. There are plenty of examples in history of people who believed their behavior was perfectly reasonable (and even equitable) but were absolutely racist.

Re: Amazon VP Resigns, Calls Company ‘Chickenshit’ for Firing Protesting Workers

#140

Post by runawaybottle » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

ethanwillis wrote: post #71

Waterluvian wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's that capitalism is incompatible with morality and the government isn't doing it's job to force behaviors that are necessary, but not aligned with capitalism.

It's not just capitalism. It's actually any society that is wholly reliant on subjugating individuals to produce goods and services for society.

People often gloss over the overwhelming theme in human history of work being extracted with ruthless optimization.

The pyramids got built for free, so did America, that whole Serf system, kids used to work, Colonization, and I think there’s people half way across the world making things for a few cents an hour as we speak.

If you want to know what’s happening, then just look at what already happened. War, technological advancement, and worker bondage are pocket aces you must to bet on when it comes to humanity.