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Bye, Amazon

tbray.org

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Re: Bye, Amazon

#851

Post by rantwasp »

ksec wrote: post #589

I am going to ask a slightly different question relating to the problem. How do you get another job? Do you tell your potential employer you quit because of (your) principle? That you fundamentally disagree with your previous company? How will the new company judge you? Now of coz if you are in the market that is chasing for talent ( like programming and tech ) this wouldn't be a much of a problem. What if you were t…

OP does not have this issue. He is a highly visible/highly respected for his technical skills. I’m willing to bet you money that he is being flooded as we type with offers. Not all people have this position but the act of quitting out of principle is still something that takes a huge amount of courage.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#852

Post by phillipcarter »

mmaunder wrote: post #822

Very difficult to put emotion aside when thinking about these things. I expect to be crucified for even asking this question because the audience here has a bias towards supporting activism. But oh well here goes: If Amazon condone and even enable employee activism, what bad things could that enable? I don’t mean unions. I mean a group of say 20 employees trying to bring about a change they truly believe in. Amazon h…

Labor unions exist, in part, to negotiate on exactly the kinds of things you're alluding to. If you and your coworkers wish to propose something like bringing guns into the office, you need to get your union representative to negotiate for that. This isn't a terribly new concept

Re: Bye, Amazon

#853

Post by komali2 »

eanzenberg wrote: post #812
60secz wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* cough * It goes on to give tips to managers for spotting union activity. “Make it a point to regularly talk to associates in the break room. This will help protect you from accusations that you were only in the break room to spy on pro union associates,” the video says. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/22/how-amazon-is-fighting-back-... On internal company email lists and chat groups on Thursday and Friday that Recode…

There is no faster way to stagnate an industry and destroy innovation than by workers unionizing. Enjoy more outsourcing of jobs than before.

I've watched you comment similarly around here - what if salaries in the US matched the EU? What if quality of life equalized across the globe?

Well, so what? Would we outsource jobs if the entire world was unionized? Doesn't it make sense to promote worker's rights for everyone? If I was a blue collar American worker adopting your position, here is the most rational actions I should take to support it:

> As a blue collar American worker, my not unionizing ensures my company doesn't have to worry about diminishing their massively outsized bargaining position in my labor conditions. The better the labor conditions of my competition, that being laborers in China and India, the less likely my job will be outsourced to those countries. I should either take actions that increase the labor conditions of laborers in other countries, or, take actions to decrease my labor conditions so they stay below those of laborers in other countries.

Do you see how nonsensical, illogical, and perhaps insane that position is?

Re: Bye, Amazon

#854

Post by rantwasp »

Maakuth wrote: post #152

His page seems to be melting under HN effect (was: Slashdot effect), luckily IA seems to have a copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20200504111506/https://www.tbray...

i would expect his blog to be able to withstand the traffic. something about scalability and how he should know better

Re: Bye, Amazon

#855

Post by onion2k »

appleflaxen wrote: post #551
jillesvangurp wrote: post #122

It's a wake up call, or at least an attempt at that, for the likes of Amazon that if they are looking to have reputable people, like Tim Bray, associate themselves and their name with you, there are certain standards that have to be met. Amazon, MS, Google, Apple, etc. rank among the most wealthy companies in the world and they've each had to deal with internal pressures where their employees voiced concerns about ce…

> IMHO firing whistle blowers is the kind of action that should be called out as very negative and not something to be apologetic about. do you mean "and something to be apologetic about"? the two clauses in this line seem to be contradictory the way I'm reading it.

"making apologies for", or to be "an apologist", in this context is someone who defends a controversial idea. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/apologist

Re: Bye, Amazon

#856

Post by italicbold »

mmaunder wrote: post #822

Very difficult to put emotion aside when thinking about these things. I expect to be crucified for even asking this question because the audience here has a bias towards supporting activism. But oh well here goes: If Amazon condone and even enable employee activism, what bad things could that enable? I don’t mean unions. I mean a group of say 20 employees trying to bring about a change they truly believe in. Amazon h…

These issues arise when the culture the company portrays to employees and public doesnt align with actual culture. For companies that align their portrayed culture to employees with actual culture its not really an issue as quiting over a non missalignment is quiting for personal reasons. That said there is still behaviour public wont like even if it aligns with company culture (Uber). Quiting over that would still have affect in the court of public opinnion (vindictive behaviour, sexual abuse etc).

For local hot button issues the best a company can do is act locally on those issues and in line with local law and legislation. But what really matters to a global company is what its global potential client base thinks and this will trump local issues if they cant be accomadated.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#857

Post by dang »

efuquen wrote: post #847
toasterlovin wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered the possibility that Amazon actually treats their workers okay and that it's the organizers are dishonest? Why does the presumption of evil only go in one direction?

[flagged]

Not here, please.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#858

Post by hank_z »

jzoch wrote: post #830
mmaunder wrote: post #822

Very difficult to put emotion aside when thinking about these things. I expect to be crucified for even asking this question because the audience here has a bias towards supporting activism. But oh well here goes: If Amazon condone and even enable employee activism, what bad things could that enable? I don’t mean unions. I mean a group of say 20 employees trying to bring about a change they truly believe in. Amazon h…

There is nothing wrong with allowing employees to protest (voice their opinions). This would be like protesting that you want to bring a gun to work - not bringing your gun to work. Amazon is not allowing the conversation to even happen - and even then, there is no collective bargaining power given to these employees. They have no way to ensure that their voices are heard. The only downside to this approach can be th…

Personally, I believe democracy is a lie unless people are well educated. People are so easy to be manipulated by media nowadays. Education can teach people how to think, how to question things, how to justify themselves.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#859

Post by dang »

telaelit wrote: post #798
hourislate wrote: post #615

Completely anecdotal. It's possible some Amazon Warehouses are run better than others. A friend who recently got a job (5 weeks ago) at one of Amazons warehouses (NJ/NYC area) has only praise for the way things are run. They take his temperature 3 times a day, provide a mask, constantly monitor social distancing, clean washrooms every hour, enforce social distancing in any break rooms, work areas, etc. He says it's n…

This seems like a pretty obviously planted pro-Amazon, anti-worker, propaganda

You can't post like this to HN without evidence, because the vast majority of such accusations are pure imagination. I know that because I've spent countless hours over many years poring over data on this. There is lots of previous explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for anyone who wants it.

HN has millions of users on all sides of every major ideological divide. When a community is that large and divided, the appearance of a comment you don't like is evidence of nothing more than that the topic is divisive. To go beyond that in terms of accusing or suspecting others, you need something more to go on, and if you have that, you should be sending it to hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate. You should not be tossing internet dross like these one-liners into the threads.

Generally speaking (not picking on you personally), when it comes to internet tropes about things like astroturfing, "pretty obviously" macroexpands to "entirely in my imagination", since if the users who post such accusations actually had anything to go on, they would be the first to mention it.

All this has been in the site guidelines for quite a while. Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here? Note this one: Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.

Notes for the troubled: (1) I'm not posting this because I love Amazon, hate warehouse workers, or for any ideological reason; it is routine HN moderation and the other side gets it just as well; (2) I'm not saying astroturfing doesn't exist—I'm saying we have to look at it with facts, not just loyalties. Running into comments that offend our loyalties is something we all experience on the internet, especially on a non-siloed (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) site like HN, where people can't self-isolate among the like-minded. There's a strong tendency to defend ourselves against the painful experience of the offensive by accusing the other party of being an abuser, a manipulator, a foreign agent. All sides do this, but it's fatal to the curious conversation that HN exists for, so we all need to coax ourselves out of it.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#860

Post by freshhawk »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #122

It's a wake up call, or at least an attempt at that, for the likes of Amazon that if they are looking to have reputable people, like Tim Bray, associate themselves and their name with you, there are certain standards that have to be met. Amazon, MS, Google, Apple, etc. rank among the most wealthy companies in the world and they've each had to deal with internal pressures where their employees voiced concerns about ce…

Is it a wake up call?

You can clearly see from the comments that many people here are still very much on the "but they're employees ... why would they have any rights? if they complain just crush them into paste to oil the machines" camp.

The occasional high profile person quitting one of the big tech companies because of their constant illegal employee/whistleblower abuse happens regularly at this point. Is Tim Bray's particularly different in some way I'm not seeing?

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