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Bye, Amazon

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Re: Bye, Amazon

#531

Post by ignoramous »

StavrosK wrote: post #407
cstross wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He may not be planning on a "next gig" — he's 64, so edging close to retirement. I'm assuming as a corporate VP at that age he's probably got his pension sorted: he probably feels able to make a principled stand in a way that, say, a 34 year old (or a 44 year old) couldn't. Even so, good on him for speaking out.

Unless there's a company that is actually decent, and prides itself on having an exec that would quit on the first sign of a misdeed. "See? You can trust us, otherwise Tim Bray wouldn't still be working here."

I don't think a single trivial misdeed but really a culmination of things leading up to it and the scale of it all that broke the camel's back.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#532

Post by xrd »

I've read a few comments here that Tim Bray would be better off staying at Amazon to make change from within.

This morning I attempted to renew a domain at a GoDaddy subsidiary, and as I scrolled down to look for the contact information I saw that GoDaddy appears to be registered in the Cayman Islands.

I'm genuinely curious (I mean that) to ask if the same question is asked of companies that go offshore. Isn't this all about tax evasion? And, shouldn't they be asked to fight for change from within in the same way?

I honestly think many people on HN would support overhauling our tax code alongside a corporation with deep pockets. So why not?

Re: Bye, Amazon

#533

Post by pwinnski »

esoterica wrote: post #481
hysan wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the example replies to this I’ve seen so far are where the power imbalance between business owner and worker is huge. So I’ll give my anecdote which is from the other side. I grew up watching, and often helping, my parents as they ran their own business. We were at best lower middle class. The economic gap between us and those we hired was far smaller than any of the examples given here. My parents treated the wo…

No one who runs a business that hires multiple employees can reasonably call themselves lower middle class. Showing my work: > My parents treated the workers well, paid them fairly[1] >His salary was lower than my mom’s. Not lower than the workers. Let X be a fair wage, Y be your dad's wage and Z be your mom's wage. Then Z>Y>X, so Z+Y>2X. Any household that makes more than twice a "fair wage" is not lower middle clas…

$50k/year where? And where did you get that number? I know someone who made $23k last year, less than any of their several employees. If not for his partner's job, he'd be flat-out poor.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#534

Post by hysan »

esoterica wrote: post #481
hysan wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the example replies to this I’ve seen so far are where the power imbalance between business owner and worker is huge. So I’ll give my anecdote which is from the other side. I grew up watching, and often helping, my parents as they ran their own business. We were at best lower middle class. The economic gap between us and those we hired was far smaller than any of the examples given here. My parents treated the wo…

No one who runs a business that hires multiple employees can reasonably call themselves lower middle class. Showing my work: > My parents treated the workers well, paid them fairly[1] >His salary was lower than my mom’s. Not lower than the workers. Let X be a fair wage, Y be your dad's wage and Z be your mom's wage. Then Z>Y>X, so Z+Y>2X. Any household that makes more than twice a "fair wage" is not lower middle clas…

I guess it depends on where you live. I'm going by the definition based on the income ranges in the city/state where we grew up where "middle class" is significantly higher than the rest of the US. If you prefer to average across the entire US, then sure, I'll be happy to edit that to say "middle class". However, I don't see how this is anything but a nitpick without addressing any of the content I wrote in my comment.

Also, others have pointed out many examples where it's possible to hire many workers but still not be in a high income bracket.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#535

Post by chirau »

esoterica wrote: post #481
hysan wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the example replies to this I’ve seen so far are where the power imbalance between business owner and worker is huge. So I’ll give my anecdote which is from the other side. I grew up watching, and often helping, my parents as they ran their own business. We were at best lower middle class. The economic gap between us and those we hired was far smaller than any of the examples given here. My parents treated the wo…

No one who runs a business that hires multiple employees can reasonably call themselves lower middle class. Showing my work: > My parents treated the workers well, paid them fairly[1] >His salary was lower than my mom’s. Not lower than the workers. Let X be a fair wage, Y be your dad's wage and Z be your mom's wage. Then Z>Y>X, so Z+Y>2X. Any household that makes more than twice a "fair wage" is not lower middle clas…

Lower middle class in America is 30 to 50k.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#536

Post by raven105x »

stupidcar wrote: post #20

> 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…

> This gets to the heart of the idea of "privilege", and why it can be so difficult to see yourself as privileged. Because it often involves nothing more than being given a basic level of trust and respect that, once you have them, can seem like a bare minimum, not something that you would need to fight for.

I've wondered since coming to this country how such a large collective delusion continues to persist. The part of the world where I grew up, it is not unheard of for people to get stabbed for having a fresh loaf of bread or a big bag of potatoes. Don't get me wrong, it is a great ideal and I support it ...but it is not realistic. The very concept of the weak simply ASKING to be granted the same power / privileges is outlandish - how do 400M adults collectively delude themselves into believing this is true? Based on my observations, SJWs are the modern day gestapo. They do not get their whims catered to because they are weak and we are idealistic, but because they will witch hunt individuals and businesses into oblivion within the public eye and they are therefore dangerous, for example.

What is privilege? Is it even inherently immoral? How about inequality (of outcome, not of opportunity)?

Most importantly, how do we still not have a clear set of goals for when we know we "reached" it?

Repeated sweeping, collective laws and actions based on something so vague are truly vexing.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#537

Post by lostcolony »

esoterica wrote: post #516
vageli wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've owned a cafe and was able to pay myself and the head cook roughly $1000/week (each) when things were great. If that's not middle class, I'm not sure what is.

$1000/week is higher than the median American personal income. That's by definition not lower middle class.

Depends on the area. The national median doesn't really give you insight into whether someone is middle class or not.

I'd also point out it's 15% higher than the median. How small do you feel the middle class is? You mentioned "lower middle class"; I only see them mention "middle class".

But even for the lower middle class, it rather depends on how you choose to count it, no? I've seen some economists define middle class as the middle 60%. Given that range (~$46k - $140k), they're in the lower end, if you want to hold them to that statement (that they never made).

Re: Bye, Amazon

#538

Post by jorblumesea »

oppositelock wrote: post #485
supergeek133 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a two way street. If you've never been involved at a management or ownership level of a business that has "low pay" labor (e.g., food service, warehouse, retail sales). For every 2-3 decent workers there is one that just takes pure advantage of the environment (e.g., stealing product, stealing time, etc). Sometimes this occurs at great cost for a period of time before it is discovered. EDIT: This was…

I can confirm this, having first hand experience with it. We hired many low-skill workers at a big tech company that you've heard of about ten years ago. These workers received a couple of weeks of training, and then were set to do a rather simple, menial, repetitive job. These workers didn't sell products, but did very low level tech work, but the entire operation was mired in drama. For example, we had a strict no…

Honestly just sounds like lower middle class in America and nothing to do with the job. We don't do a great job taking care of people. Drug user, violence, psychological issues and domestic problems are rampant.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#539

Post by ssklash »

I'm shocked that so many bright, talented engineers go to work for Companies like Google and Amazon and Facebook. While I'm glad some see the light about the real mission of these companies (it's not about "connecting people", "providing delightful customer experiences", "doing no evil" or any of that BS) and ultimately quit, but what concerns me is how so many clearly incredibly bright and talented people are able to ignore so many red flags and go to work for these companies. Google and Facebook are about acquiring personal data to sell ads, that's it! You're not adding value, no matter what interesting, complicated, bleeding edge, world-class problems you're solving. The world is worse off for all of it, and you're helping.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#540

Post by abvdasker »

treve wrote: post #473

Nice to see someone standing up. I have a hard time understanding how developers with options to move to different companies ethically justify working for companies like Amazon, Facebook, Oracle or Walmart.

I personally have a list of tech and finance companies I've resolved to never work for, and anecdotally I know other engineers with similar lists.

Amazon is near the top of mine for its harmful business practices and open contempt for its workers. The former Amazon employees I know tend to describe the experience of being an engineer there in less than favorable terms (and as engineers their experience is obviously going to be much better than a warehouse worker's).

Maybe if companies like Amazon which treat their workers poorly were to face a kind of engineering labor boycott, they could be forced to behave more ethically.

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