221–230 of 1001 posts
> I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right? Including this bit is interesting. So he is accusing Amazon of being both sexist and racist in addition to treating workers poorly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Very few people would have the courage to walk away from big sums of money purely on principle. On the contrary, bucketloads of people do this all the time. The world would be a better place if more people did.
Both you and I are speaking from anecdotal evidence and personal experience. I don't have a way to give you data about it. My feeling, based on experience and several conversations I had with colleagues and friends over the years, is that this is NOT happening often. But I don't know if this is a general rule, or not.
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…
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.
Somewhat understandable reaction, but wise? As a VP you should have some influence at Amazon. Even if not, you'd still do more good by speaking out about it internally instead of resigning, thereby harming mostly yourself and apart from HN drama having little effect on the problem. Unless the real problem is that there is no actual reasonable argument against Amazon's actions because the danger is exaggerated and all…
Then you start getting bad reviews. Colleagues speak of you as being "difficult." You are passed over for involvement in important initiatives.
You quit in disgust, but now they leak that you are a poor performer who is no longer relevant, and your speaking out about worker conditions is just a poor performer trying to distract everyone from their inability to get things done.
It is very, very difficult to win some battles from the inside. Toxic cultures are ruthless when defending themselves from change.
Ask any woman about challenging inappropriate sexual behaviour. I believe we'll hear the same thing.
> 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…
> Very few people would have the courage to walk away from big sums of money purely on principle. On the contrary, bucketloads of people do this all the time. The world would be a better place if more people did.
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…
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.
That definitely puts things in a different perspective. It can't really damage his career much when his career is 20+ years old. At this point, if he doesn't have his own side gig, lots of companies, big and small, would still want him.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I briefly worked on a timekeeping system (the one that records work hours). When I started running it against real data, I hit some bugs. The system was reporting that people had worked a few hours rather than a full shift. I had no idea how this could happen. When I started digging into the data, it became obvious. People were punching in at 08:00 on Monday, and wouldn't punch out until something like 12:00 on Frida…
If you think clocking will make people more productive, you are terribly wrong. I've seen companies where this happens, and people have Friday afternoons off because they already did their hours that week. They have 0 loyalty to the company. Relationships work in 2 directions. If the company treats you like lazy scum, you will treat the company as an oppressive thing you want to avoid. If the company trusts you, you…
The scale of the employee's greed make it's actions seem tame at a small scale (punching false times...). They justify it by saying they are getting their dues and for once they are the ones screwing and not getting screwed.
The scale and visibility of a company's greed make it much more apparent that it's incentives and moral compass are way off (mistreating, exploiting...). They justify this behavior as helping the bottom line and making the numbers look good to investors.
Until ALL the actors, both companies and individuals start adjusting their 'morality' and integrity this will continue happening.
> Any plausible solution has to start with increasing their collective strength. Legislation or unionization. Any other routes?
> 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…
Also takes huge balls to publish an article about it publicly (rather than just resigning quietly). I'd be worried about being sued for defamation, etc.