111–120 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think they're saying IT/computers are a root cause, but rather that they might be modern enablers of these power hierarchies.
I think "allowed the creation" rather implies it is the root cause.
> I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers Assuming this is the real true reason (I would trust Tim, but you never know, so just being explicit here), it takes huge balls to do something like this. The economic loss has to be somewhat taken in relation to your total wealth (e.g. if you lose $1M by quitting but you already have $10M+ in the bank, it's not as hard as if you had zero in the bank), but still... V…
I think you can trust that it's the real reason, because either way it's going to make him radioactive for the next gig like this. No large company keeps its hands completely clean. Defense contracts, Chinese censorship, exploiting addiction, anticompetitive behaviour, sexism, the list goes on. Having a public figure at your company that's willing to martyr themselves to push the knife in just a little deeper when yo…
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…
“perhaps it makes it possible to give people jobs who don't deserve automatic trust. Such people exist, unfortunately.” They may exist, but I doubt there are enough of them, even in Amazon’s warehouses, to warrant the draconian rules for all employees. I also think people more behave that way then that they are that way. The way you treat your personnel will affect whether they behave like that.
Maybe you'll hire a bad sheep every 20, but you'll be so scarred that you'll make a rule making 19 lives miserable, just to avoid the lone asshole taking advantage. In the same way as we think children shouldn't be left out on their own (because we read about some pedophile at the other end of the country), we then assume employees are assholes until proven otherwise. It's shitty for everyone involved, really.
So if I get this right, now a VP will be hired that will approve of these things? I wonder if there'd have been utility to attempt to change the system from the inside out. I guess there wouldn't be. Then this would be the only option left.
Reading through his post, it doesn't sound like the goal was to change things - he just didn't want to be co-responsible for them. That said, it doesn't sound like there was much more he could've done to change things from the inside-out; and even though it might not be the intention, this public statement does sound like it might contribute to changing it anyway.
I think he did everything he could think of to change things:
"At that point I snapped. VPs shouldn’t go publicly rogue, so I escalated through the proper channels and by the book. I’m not at liberty to disclose those discussions, but I made many of the arguments appearing in this essay. I think I made them to the appropriate people."
with no result, and no evident likelyhood of positive change.
Which is why he had to quit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you can trust that it's the real reason, because either way it's going to make him radioactive for the next gig like this. No large company keeps its hands completely clean. Defense contracts, Chinese censorship, exploiting addiction, anticompetitive behaviour, sexism, the list goes on. Having a public figure at your company that's willing to martyr themselves to push the knife in just a little deeper when yo…
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.
Urgh. Not exactly excellent engineering.
Downvote me all you want but that's a pretty low bar.
> It’s that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st-century capitalism is done. Stung me the most. Capitalism seems to have such an increasingly firm grip on the world that I'm starting to think the only way out is from some drastic worldwide event (Corona?).
21st century? 20th century? 19th? Seems to me, this is the story of the industrial revolution and arguably all civilization pre-IR, when serfs were fungible labor units to the landed gentry. Standardize the design and production of something, then bring in labor to produce mass quantities to a certain level of quality. Coronavirus won't change this: with 8B people on the planet, we've come to depend on industrial pro…
Does it matter? We can't change the 19th or 20th centuries. Perhaps we can change the 21st...
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> ranking virtue signalling over monetary gain I'll cop to not being completely au fait with current right-wing rhetoric, but I thought a core part of "virtue signalling" (insofar as it might actually exist beyond "position I disagree with", which your post suggests it might not) was that it was low-effort / low-cost. In other words, no action where the alternative is non-trivial monetary gain could be virtue signall…
In pretty much every case, "virtue signalling" is code for "this person is being virtuous, and I don't like it".
How many "Amazon VP"s are there, 1000? Whenever I see stories like this the majority of the time the position of the individual is embellished to make the act seem more dramatic.
"Distinguished Engineer" is kind of a big deal, title-wise. It's not something that is just handed out.
> 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…
> There seems to be a consistent theme of employees being treated with suspicion, condescension and outright hostility. I'd suggest working with or managing a place with low-skilled people. They of course aren't all like that but it seems it attracts low-motivation, low-effort, or low-caring. I can only provide 2 anecdotes, but I can see why people get treated this way after time. I highly doubt there are many people…
Pay low wage, get low motivation. No one's going to bust their ass over a mcgriddle for minimum wage.
> 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…
That's because, unfortunately, a lot of them do need their hands holding. Many of these people have very low IQ and will always avoid work if they can. You can't compare them with the people in the offices you work in who have top 10% IQs. I know it should be like this, and should be like that, but if you would actually expose yourself to the kinds of people who work in these places you will see why these seemingly hostile rules are put in place. But think of it like this: these people get a safe working environment, comfortable lives which no high levels of responsibility, and they get to reap the benefits of living in a modern society. If they were left to their own devices they'd be in poverty.