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What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

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Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#201

Post by FussyZeus »

TravelTechGuy wrote: post #167
rhino369 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should privacy really cover what someone else (in this case Amazon) thinks about you? These aren't medical records or other protected information.

Several points on this privacy angle: 1. Many of the facts in your HR files are based on heresay - what your colleagues/managers/HR personnel think about you. These are highly subjective facts, very domain and company specific. Airing those out without context is a breach of privacy and can cause great damage to the employee down the line. 2. These files belong to the employer - he can alter them to show whatever he…

1. I agree, kind of. The documents if released publicly should be made available in whole so context can be seen.

2. This pushes into the conspiracy area though, you'd have to have an entire chain of staff (at least in a company the size of Amazon) that couldn't not know this had occurred, and somehow convince them all to be silent. Not impossible, just unlikely.

3. If the company is releasing info about whatever occurred, an NDA would no longer apply. Why would it? The information is now public knowledge.

This I definitely agree with, when employees are found to be stealing it should be handled like any other matter; call the cops and let the process handle itself. Again I think we'd have a much less corrupt corporate culture in our society if we started treating these criminals like criminals.

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#202

Post by Spooky23 »

et2o wrote: post #53
boxy310 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a lot of ways Amazon reminds me of Wal-mart, both from the market space they occupy and how terribly they treat employees. I think this is really a byproduct of chasing after low costs without other substantial service improvements. At least with Uber you get a legitimately better hailing and payment experience, not just being cheaper.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Amazon offers pretty substantial service improvement from just about any other online retailer. $50/year for unlimited 1-day shipping?

Not really, at least with higher tier retailers.. Amazon is charging more for product, and with Prime you're really paying for prioritization.

Amazon builds warehouses all over the place to avoid air shipping, but optimizes it's internal fulfillment to the prioritized customers. So you either buy Prime (ie. the online version of a warehouse club) or wait 3-5 days for Amazon to sit on your order, pre-sort it and send it out UPS Ground or Parcel Post, just like they do with prime.

I live in New York. If I order from Newegg or WalMart, they typically ship from New Jersey or Philadelphia. That's a 1-2 day UPS Ground shipping zone. Sometimes I pay some nominal amount for shipping, but the product typically costs substantially less from Newegg or Walmart than Amazon.

Amazon is superior to smaller ecommerce operations. My wife orders swimsuits from a vendor in Texas without a distribution network. So she pays about 50% of retail UPS ground charges, and waits a day for the retailer to pick the product, then 3-5 business days for her suit to take a train to Chicago, another train to Syracuse, and then a truck to our home in Albany.

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#203

Post by timmytokyo »

russelluresti wrote: post #178

I love how the start of this article reads like something out of Character Assassination 101. Step 1: start by bringing up something negative about a person that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the issue at hand. Okay, so the guy resigned because he did something bad. How does that make what he experienced while there not true? Oh, that's right, it doesn't. And the admission of fraud isn't a "crucial piece of conte…

Can you guess who wrote this?

"Attackers are simply ... a propaganda agency so far as we are concerned. They have proven they want no facts and will only lie no matter what they discover. So BANISH all ideas that any fair hearing is intended and start our attack with their first breath. Never wait. Never talk about us - only them. Use their blood, sex, crime to get headlines. Don't use us."

That was L. Ron Hubbard. Amazing how Carney's tactics so closely match those of scientology.

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#204

Post by ceejayoz »

Spooky23 wrote: post #188
dekhn wrote: post #4

There are several shockingly inappropriate things in this article. In particular, the PR person at Amazon is saying that they would have shared employee's personal records (including evaluations) as well as other employee's termination conditions (which I consider unrelated to their quotes). Amazon: what Carney just posted was very inappropriate. I am completely amazed you did this (assuming it was done with approval…

Employee reviews or reasons behind a termination for cause are not legally protected information. They are work product, owned by Amazon, subject to the contract with Amazon.

The comment you're replying to called it inappropriate, not illegal.

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#205

Post by mangeletti »

aschearer wrote: post #196

"Give me six words of an innocent man, and I will find something in them with which to hang him" How should companies interact with the press today in order to avoid an outcome like the original NYT article?

It's "six lines", not "six words". I think Cardinal Richelieu would be hard pressed to find six words to be as incriminating, unless they were, "I have just committed high treason".

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#206

Post by AnimalMuppet »

cognivore wrote: post #179

"Here’s what the story didn’t tell you about Mr. Olson: his brief tenure at Amazon ended after an investigation revealed he had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately." It doesn't matter. If the devil tells the truth, it's still the truth.

But if it's the devil talking, you have fair grounds for increasing your suspicion that what's said isn't the truth.

And in this case, if Mr. Olsen did in fact get caught by such an investigation, he may be significantly biased against Amazon. That does not automatically make what he says untrue, but it does increase suspicion that it may not be the straight story.

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#207

Post by dswalter »

GCA10 wrote: post #76

Anyone else remember that sly piece by BusinessInsider in September, saying that Medium could make a lot of money by becoming the modern-day version of PR Newswire -- where companies pay to get their stories out to the public? It sounded like a nutty comparison at the time. But after looking at Jay Carney's post, I'm thinking that that BI's Biz Carson might have nailed it. Even if the premium pay channel doesn't exis…

You bring up a really good point. Medium's default layout scheme highlights content over authorship, so you don't get smacked in the face by the fact that this is written by Jay Carney.

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#208

Post by vidarh »

Nadya wrote: post #130
swehner wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling the NYT left-wing is pretty amusing.

Thinking the NYT isn't left-wing shows more how far left you must stand. Even the NYT calls itself liberal/left. Even after 11 years - and as an independent - I see the NYT as decidedly left. >“Of course it is....These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you’ve been reading the paper wi…

Maybe if you specified it being by "US standards". A lot of us live in places where NYT would be seen as quite right wing.

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#209

Post by jessriedel »

cjbprime wrote: post #128
jessriedel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume both Amazon and Carney are evil. Do you think it was acceptable for the Times to not disclose the context of Olson's dismissal?

That's a good question. Let me see the original article: > Bo Olson was one of them. He lasted less than two years in a book marketing role and said that his enduring image was watching people weep in the office, a sight other workers described as well. If other workers described the same sight, I don't think his input's important enough to require personal credibility, so I'm not too concerned. But the use of "laste…

I've heard comments from a dozen ex-Amazon employees on HN, in this thread and in the one back on the original NY Times article. The large majority of them said the anecdotes described by the article were unrepresentative of their time at Amazon.

Re: What The New York Times Didn’t Say About Amazon

#210

Post by Nadya »

benten10 wrote: post #186
Nadya wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking the NYT isn't left-wing shows more how far left you must stand. Even the NYT calls itself liberal/left. Even after 11 years - and as an independent - I see the NYT as decidedly left. >“Of course it is....These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you’ve been reading the paper wi…

>So I'm being downvoted for pointing out that a liberal newspaper calls itself liberal? Next thing I know I'll be getting downvoted for calling Trump a right-wing presidential candidate. I can't downvote, but I assume you're being downvoted for calling a relatively centrist paper left-wing. Perhaps if you'd said 'liberal'/'left-leaning', the downvotes would have been lesser? Who, in your opinion, is a centrist-ish pa…

A paper that calls itself liberal is not centrist unless they are not allowed to define themselves. When an editor goes as far as saying "If you think we're playing it down the middle you're reading with your eyes closed" that's the exact opposite of an unbiased centrist paper. That's openly stating their liberal slant in an "you're an idiot if you don't think we're liberal" sort of way. This isn't my opinion this isn't some random Joe's opinion this is an editor of the paper itself making the claim.

>Who, in your opinion, is a centrist-ish paper in the US?

Doesn't exist in-so-far of my reading. It's a majority left, minority right split with MSM being largely left to various degrees.

It is my opinion that the general public has shifted so far to the left in the past 10-15 years that everything appears to be right-leaning. http://i.imgur.com/03Qpa94.png

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