Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 399 posts

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#301

Post by [deleted] »

filoleg wrote: post #287
aabeshou wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as long as they are factual* * make sure to use corporate-approved facts

non-factual: Amazon treats their employees poorly, they just don't care about us. factual: Amazon does this factual thing X and this factual thing Y, and it shouldn't be happening this way. First one is just an opinion piece, regardless of its truthfulness, because it cannot be evaluated objectively (how to objectively determine whether amazon cares or not? who counts as "amazon" in this scenario? what factual event…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#302

Post by Retric »

staticassertion wrote: post #111
Retric wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could be alienating vastly more people than that. However, they only need to higher a tiny fraction of the US workforce each year. So, it’s still not a significant issue.

Their pool is not the entire US workforce, it's a relatively small group of highly skilled workers in a market where those workers can make tons of money at many different companies. Alienating a fraction of that workforce will impact them, I think.

Warehouse workers are not highly skilled. But, even if you’re talking just say programmers they still employ less than 1% of us.

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#303

Post by missedthecue »

tehjoker wrote: post #175
missedthecue wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think discontinuing employment should be categorized as 'evil'. Amazon doesn't owe them a job, and if the seller of labour crossed a line that the buyer doesn't like and that has been clearly spelled out prior to the work beginning, no one should force the buyer to continue buying labour from the seller. That would be closer to evil than the former option.

It seems rather authoritarian to totally shred the relationship over mild dissent. How weak and pathetic is the Amazon leadership that they cannot tolerate criticism?

I don't think Amazon tries very hard to silence criticism. If you need proof, there are plenty of WaPo op-eds shitting on Amazon.

I don't think it is absurd not to want to employ someone who is an activist against you.

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#304

Post by missedthecue »

YokoZar wrote: post #185
missedthecue wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These workers were not discussing their working conditions or pay.

They were engaging in organizing activity with other workers at the same company, explicitly about those workers working conditions. That too is protected.

Amazon didn't fire them for organizing.

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#305

Post by burkaman »

bartread wrote: post #260
burkaman wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The resistance you're finding is not people disbelieving you, it's them trying to get you to understand that this is a Bad Thing we should want to change, even though it is true right now.

Well, hold on: do you think it's really a "Bad Thing", and by your capitalisation I'm guessing you mean universally a bad thing to experience negative consequences for publicly trash-talking about your employer? Sure, if you're whistleblowing something systemically unethical - as may well be the case here - then you should be able to do the right thing without fear of negative consequence. I.e., your employer, Amazon…

> you mean universally a bad thing to experience negative consequences for publicly trash-talking about your employer?

That is not what I mean. This conversation is about the accepted "law of nature" that if you say bad things about your employer you will probably be fired. As you point out, sometimes there are good reasons to publicly say bad things about your employer. Therefore, it is bad that firing is the accepted consequence regardless of the situation, and we should seek to change this status quo.

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#306

Post by jshevek »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #295
filoleg wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my observations (total anecdata, I am aware), those pro-specific-party people also usually don't tend to participate in politics on more local levels at all (county, state, etc.), despite the fact that those are imo way more impactful and can lead to changes "trickling up" all the way to the national level. Most of the people I personally know who vote in county/state elections can be best described as independe…

I think part of the issue is that politics appears to have become something akin to a national sport, where we elect to support team A or team B. Because it is similar to a sport, our hopes and dreams, our entire being is drawn into this particular identity. That is why if team A supports position C ( that happened to be supported by team B previously ) it becomes a valid position. I do not know how to make people di…

Sports and politics can both give people an easy feeling of belonging to something greater than themselves. Both can give you addictive neur-ochemical rushes while interweaving the experience of victory and defeat with tribal identification and othering.

I used to have a condescending attitude towards people who took sports 'way too seriously', but now I wonder if it is a net gain for society to give people a comparatively harmless outlet for these tendencies. Real harm is done when our policy discussions are dominated by the kind of tribalism, ideological intolerance, and rush-seeking engagement that seems to happen when people bring these tendencies to politics.

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#307

Post by crispyambulance »

aabeshou wrote: post #299
crispyambulance wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am suggesting that they probably knew the consequences and were OK with the possibility they'd get fired. That's not "blaming the whistleblowers". I actually admire them for taking a stand and accepting the consequences. Amazon should be protecting their warehouse workers. Taking a stand, getting fired under media spot-light for it is actually a really powerful message against Amazon.

got it, I misinterpreted your tone, my apologies

That's OK, no worries!

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#308

Post by a1369209993 »

burrows wrote: post #229
a1369209993 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My view is that free people should contract without (fear of) government or corporate [0] coercion. 0: or religeous, or familial, or any other source.

I agree, man should never coerce man. The coercer’s group affiliation and reasons are irrelevant. I define coercion as initiating physical violence against another man. * And I am suspicious of market cartels (wage collusion, price fixing, labor unions, etc), but as they are freely made contracts between private individuals I can’t in good conscience support government intervention. (I heavily edited this message)

> I define coercion as initiating physical violence against another man.

That seems oddly narrow. As a contrived example (I like stress-testing ethical intuitions) would you consider barricading the doors and windows of someone's home and waiting for them to starve to death to qualify as physical violence? (Assume for the sake of argument that noone else interferes with this, perhaps because you're in a isolated rural area.)

(I'll also perfunctorially object to terms like "man" or "human", but I doubt that's a contextually relevant distinction, given linguistic history and the lack of any other sapient species respectively.)

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#309

Post by bobongo »

lnsru wrote: post #226
alexandercrohde wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh great... yeah just walk right into the CEO's office and tell them what's wrong... 0% chance of that coming back to affect your career....

Did exactly this! Just it wasn’t CEO, only a Vice President. I mentioned bugs and lack of testing in a polite way, also offered how test system could be designed to automate testing. There was a committee created to do inspection of my code and to analyze, why I do so many bugs. I’ll never tell anybody, how to operate better after this “incident”. The months were hell and I am pretty sure, I’ll be fired during next d…

> I mentioned bugs and lack of testing in a polite way, also offered how test system could be designed to automate testing.

Did the same a while ago, with my CEO. Instantly removed from overseeing the biggest project we have in the works. Also removed from all communications about the project and privileges to view project-related documents revoked.

Re: Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions

#310

Post by notJim »

aj_g wrote: post #225
_bxg1 wrote: post #193

A few months ago I was in the job market and got a call from a recruiter at Amazon. I flatly told them that I wasn't interested in working for Amazon on ethical grounds. At the time it was purely out of principle, but apparently it was a good decision for my self-interest as well. I wonder how long they can keep this stuff up before they start seriously damaging their desirability as a workplace, the way Facebook has…

Props to you. I am incredibly far away from the world of SV/FAANG, so tell me, is FB really becoming a less desirable place to work? It seems to me like it's a pretty small minority of people that would refuse a $1XX,000 paycheck on grounds of being a ethically dubious snowflake in the avalanche that is Facebook.

It's more like a $2xx,000–$4xx,000 paycheck…
Post reply on HN