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Bye, Amazon

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Re: Bye, Amazon

#931

Post by brisance »

toasterlovin wrote: post #653
pwinnski wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bray didn't quit over the conditions in the warehouses, he quit over Amazon's brazen and dishonest firings of organizers. It's possible that if every Amazon warehouse were run as well, those organizers would not have arisen, but it's Amazon nastiness toward them that's most alarming.

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?

Read the article, please. Author said nice things about his workplace & its leadership (AWS). But he could not bear to see unfair treatment and so he quit.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#932

Post by brodouevencode »

mrslave wrote: post #911
brodouevencode wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMHO firing whistle blowers is the kind of action that should be called out as very negative and not something to be apologetic about. Agree 100%. Daylight is the best disinfectant, especially in publicly traded companies. Every CEO, CMO, etc loves white-knighting ("We care about the environment/our employees!") until the shareholders start calling. Then they're the first to start covering up problems. That's not t…

> Daylight is the best disinfectant Shame about all the deplatforming then

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Unfortunately this exists. And before I get downvoted (for obvious political reasons) I acknowledge that it happens on both sides.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#933

Post by gnicholas »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #712
gnicholas wrote: post #679

> What with big-tech salaries and share vestings, this will probably cost me over a million (pre-tax) dollars ... > The average pay [in his group, AWS] is very high, and anyone who’s unhappy can walk across the street and get another job paying the same or better. Not sure how to square these two statements. Is the lost money all in stock vesting? If so, why bother mentioning the salary? If not, how does that fit wit…

Last I hard, Amazon had a 4 year 5/15/40/40 vesting schedule. In my experience, stock compensation exceeds salary for most executives. If 50% of compensation was in stock, they would be walking away from 2.2 years salary worth of grants, which would have appreciated since the grant date. Amazon stock is also up >4x in the last 4 years.

I've heard the same; that would mean that AWS employees in general would stand to lose a decent amount of equity, depending on where they are in their cycle.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#935

Post by fataliss »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #901
fataliss wrote: post #887

I wish there was of some sort of association or union for people in the Software industry. While we are typically much better treated than basically every single other type of worker out there, we lack the assurance of protection when it comes to challenging our employers. In a country where your healthcare, your retirement and possibly your immigration status are tied to your employment, how can one feel confident t…

Unions are primarily useful for workers who don't have the ability to negotiate their salary before accepting a job. By banding together, they're able to negotiate wages that more closely align with the value of their work. Knowledge workers are expected to do this for themselves on an individual basis as they're not really interchangeable. I do wish people pushed for more democratic decision-making in their places o…

Yeah, I am more interested in union in it's power to uphold moral values. If you ever were to be sued for whistle blowing something despicable or wrongly fired for defending a coworker's right and other behaviors we see at the likes of Amazon. There is power in unity beyond money.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#936

Post by elihu »

uoaei wrote: post #886
freshhawk wrote: post #860

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the next big revolution in political thinking will be the debate over the question of whether money is amoral. If I spend a dollar by giving it to someone, what does that enable them to do? What behaviors does that encourage and reinforce? I think a lot of people would say that at some level money is moral (don't pay terrorist organizations or render services for them) but that distinction blurs as we get clo…

Spending dollars is one thing but I think it's doubly-true for investing. The usual advice about investing if you're not an expert is to invest in index funds like VTI, which I think is sensible as far as prudent investment goes, but on the other hand I feel bad knowing my money is being used to "maximize shareholder value" without regard to the moral choices made by those companies.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#937

Post by raihansaputra »

BurningFrog wrote: post #641
NullInvictus wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been involved in both working in services and in the management level of a restaurant business. It is still my opinion that the pay, disposability, lack of dignity, lack of future, lack of community, and disrespect are the primary drivers for bad workplace behavior. Treat people like animals, and they will act like animals. It's just exploitation, and I work my current job with fear of having to go back to tha…

> This is maybe a radical argument, but I make it in good faith; if your business can only exist by paying workers at or below poverty wages, and/or enacting dehumanizing controls, it probably shouldn't exist. The problem is that once you close the business and fire the underpaid employees, they don't disappear. Now they're unemployed and make $0/hour. This blind spot fascinates me. The best explanation I've seen is…

Thanks for the link. I have some thoughts after reading it, mainly entangling with scale of the solutions, optics, and higher-order effects, but I think it's still an incomplete thought. It does drive people crazy to think about the things we can do for people who need help, the optics of how to help and how much can we help. Do you have any more books/articles related to this?

Re: Bye, Amazon

#938

Post by la6471 »

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…

I don't think many people in amazon agree with Tim Bray. The pragmatic ones know that these kind of stories have a heavy political overtone , but more importantly amazon probably have better conditions than all other retailers in the world. Granted it is not perfect but a more meaningful way to change the condition of minimum wage or low wage laborers is through legislative changes or basic income schemes.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#939

Post by dzonga »

derefr wrote: post #650
esoterica wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The names of the classes are not economic; they're political†. They have to do with one's ability to influence politics. The "middle class", i.e., the borgeoisie, are the class of business owners (and/or people who have the ability to start a business, i.e. who have a professional skill that could be sold freelance or with a one-person company "wrapped" around it.) What do you call a lowest-income-bracket-for-busines…

well said. well said. boss, you seem like the only one who understands the dynamics of capitalism in this thread. political power is determined by money. & political power also determines money. seems a lot of people miss the historical context with these issues etc.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#940

Post by jrochkind1 »

la6471 wrote: post #938
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…

I don't think many people in amazon agree with Tim Bray. The pragmatic ones know that these kind of stories have a heavy political overtone , but more importantly amazon probably have better conditions than all other retailers in the world. Granted it is not perfect but a more meaningful way to change the condition of minimum wage or low wage laborers is through legislative changes or basic income schemes.

By "many people in amazon", you don't mean those "minimum wage or low wage laborers" in the warehouses, right?

I suspect most of them who know about it appreciate Tim Bray standing up for them and consider it a "meaningful way".

I don't understand what you are saying is a "more meaningful way" than what. You are saying keeping your mouth shut at work and just calling your legislator is a "more meaningful way to change the conditions"?

That's a nice story to tell yourself when you want to preserve your good salary and safe working conditions that the workers in the warehouse don't have. I couldn't really say if most well-paid employees at Amazon agree or not, I'm not familiar with enough of them.

But if we can't learn to protect each other, we've got nothing. This is not a test.

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