Amazon staffers took bribes, manipulated marketplace, leaked search algorithms • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon staffers took bribes, manipulated marketplace, leaked search algorithms

#41

Post by dalbasal » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

rtx wrote: post #20

dalbasal wrote: post #5

Note the scale here: Conspirators paid $100k in bribes. "Products and merchants earned in excess of $100 million in sales revenue." I haven't heard the job titles of the amazon employees yet, but presumably these are not very senior people. In terms of corruption dynamics, Amazon is now like a planning authority where a friendly official can rubber stamp a large fortune into a real estate developer's pocket. Also not…

>They are expected to bring inside knowledge and contacts to the table. This is not always unethical, we exclusively hire former AdWords account mangers for our sem team. This primarily done for branding and reducing the recruitment cost.

Ethical is a broad term. It's not illegal, or in violation of any industry ethics standards that I know of.

That said, it's not illegal (in the US) for politicians to receive payments from companies for consulting, giving lectures or such. It's not illegal (in most countries) to hire former staffers for a politician you wish to lobby as lobbyists, compliance officers or such. I would say that most people do consider some of these ethically questionable.

IMO, the issue is one of nuance and scale. The more subjective, arbitrary or ilegible decisions these employees can make, the larger the risk of corruption. The more employees can make these decisions, the larger the risk. The larger the economic impact of these decisions, the larger the risk.

This case, demonstrates a dangerous nexus. The marketplace has a lot of moderation (or whatever amzn call it). Subjective decision making. Culprits removed suspensions on sellers and products in exchange for naked bribes. For adwords, that might be ad copy approval, adsense categorization. IDK if an adwords account managers can affect quality score, but that would be a big one. I suspect they can. A lot of amazon and google employees make these decisions, another scale for the nexus. These decisions are worth a fortune. In this case, $100m in sales.

Subjective decisions made by many people affecting very large sums.

Once you are at Google or amazon scale, this is big money corruption. $100m in sales. There are whole industries where whoever wins at amazon marketplace, facebook ad market or adwords wins a major market.

In terms of ethics... Ethics either works against some sort of professional or societal standard (eg legal or medical ethics) or you have to examine it from a "who is harmed and is that fair" perspective. Here amazon itself was harmed, so it's straight crime. In other cases, it might be unfair to competitors or consumers. If you are outperforming your competitors on adwords because you hired the most well connected former account manager... I can see where competitors would consider this unfair.

Re: Amazon staffers took bribes, manipulated marketplace, leaked search algorithms

#42

Post by lucaspm98 » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 3:29 PM UTC

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #36

wegs wrote: post #26

I think one of the problems Amazon suffers -- and this is not a condemnation of the company as a whole -- is that it treats employees like garbage and runs a sweatshop. There is zero loyalty among Amazon employees I know. Some are very highly-compensated sweatshop workers, but sweatshop workers nonetheless (a lot of fintech and quant work the same way, and even more extreme -- you get a lot of money, but you have no…

> Why is this not a condemnation of Amazon? this is a feature unique to capitalism not just Amazon.

Capitalists can value the long term advantages of having a fairly compensated and happy workforce. A company might be able to gain a short term benefit by mistreating or underpaying workers, but in a properly regulated capitalist system this will lead to public backlash, regulatory attention, corruption, and ultimately employees leaving for competitors.

Re: Amazon staffers took bribes, manipulated marketplace, leaked search algorithms

#43

Post by dogma1138 » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 3:32 PM UTC

Jsharm wrote: post #7

dalbasal wrote: post #5

Note the scale here: Conspirators paid $100k in bribes. "Products and merchants earned in excess of $100 million in sales revenue." I haven't heard the job titles of the amazon employees yet, but presumably these are not very senior people. In terms of corruption dynamics, Amazon is now like a planning authority where a friendly official can rubber stamp a large fortune into a real estate developer's pocket. Also not…

I was thinking this, $100k for taking on that level of risk?

$100K for a staffer that reviews merchants and product listings is probably more than their yearly salary, in fact it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s not even about double.

This aren’t people on high comp packages the bulk of Amazon’s workforce even if you discount the warehouses isn’t paid SV salaries.

Re: Amazon staffers took bribes, manipulated marketplace, leaked search algorithms

#44

Post by dalbasal » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 3:35 PM UTC

sofargone00 wrote: post #9

dalbasal wrote: post #5

Note the scale here: Conspirators paid $100k in bribes. "Products and merchants earned in excess of $100 million in sales revenue." I haven't heard the job titles of the amazon employees yet, but presumably these are not very senior people. In terms of corruption dynamics, Amazon is now like a planning authority where a friendly official can rubber stamp a large fortune into a real estate developer's pocket. Also not…

I am assuming that these 100 million in revenue bought in wasn't overnight... and I can guarantee that these reps were paid on a continuity basis.

You might equally assume that the 100 million of revenue uncovered in this case was not the only $100 million dollars earned this way on amazon.

In any case, it's hard to know quite what these numbers represent specifically. You also don't really know exactly what a real estate developer "earned" by bribing a city planner to approve his building.

Take it as an approximation, an estimate of the scale. The $trn market caps and >$100bn revenues of modern tech monopolies can dwarf everything else.

Make no mistake though, $100m in sales is entry level industry-scale. That is, there are industries where $100m of sales due to outright bribery of market officials (what amzn employees are) is enough to make the industry a corrupt industry.

Re: Amazon staffers took bribes, manipulated marketplace, leaked search algorithms

#45

Post by dalbasal » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 3:42 PM UTC

Jsharm wrote: post #7

dalbasal wrote: post #5

Note the scale here: Conspirators paid $100k in bribes. "Products and merchants earned in excess of $100 million in sales revenue." I haven't heard the job titles of the amazon employees yet, but presumably these are not very senior people. In terms of corruption dynamics, Amazon is now like a planning authority where a friendly official can rubber stamp a large fortune into a real estate developer's pocket. Also not…

I was thinking this, $100k for taking on that level of risk?

Corruption cases are often like this. You look at the case itself and think "this money for that much risk?"

Ehud Olmert was removed from office as Israel's Prime Minister for taking bribes (in exchange for rezoning) years earlier as mayor of Jerusalem. The amounts seem very petty. About $25k IIRCC. We actually went from Prime Ministership to jail over it.

I suspect the reason these bribes always seem petty is that only a fraction are uncovered. These people take bribes regularly, sometimes for decades. They get busted for one or two.

Re: Amazon staffers took bribes, manipulated marketplace, leaked search algorithms

#46

Post by shakezula » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 3:44 PM UTC

lucaspm98 wrote: post #42

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is this not a condemnation of Amazon? this is a feature unique to capitalism not just Amazon.

Capitalists can value the long term advantages of having a fairly compensated and happy workforce. A company might be able to gain a short term benefit by mistreating or underpaying workers, but in a properly regulated capitalist system this will lead to public backlash, regulatory attention, corruption, and ultimately employees leaving for competitors.

They could, but they don’t because the short term usually works out just fine for them.

Re: Amazon staffers took bribes, manipulated marketplace, leaked search algorithms

#47

Post by dalbasal » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 3:45 PM UTC

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #18

snovv_crash wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing what a disgruntled employee will do, and how little it takes to make them do it.

A survey says the you can compromise most employees for $500. I wanted to do a website called "Ransom Rewards" allowing you to sign up to ransomware your own employer and you could set your own price to pick up data for a research paper but it was considered unethical to even imply you could get paid to fuck over your employer :(

Maybe you should start by surveying the ethics board, and then just pay them $500 to find it ethical. Bootstrapping.

Re: Amazon staffers took bribes, manipulated marketplace, leaked search algorithms

#48

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 3:58 PM UTC

sidlls wrote: post #33

lotsofpulp wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon already has many competitors for their retail business. Costco, Target, Home Depot, Lowes, Bed Bath Beyond, Walmart, eBay, Overstock, Wayfair, Aliexpress, etc. The barrier to entry for retail is very low, and reflected in the low profit margins.

Let’s compare like to like, though. In theory anyone could start a site to provide a marketplace for sellers for $5/month in hosting and maybe a few hundred bucks in upwork costs for standing up a php e-commerce platform. In practice the cost to compete with Amazon is much higher.

Competition with any larger entity is more difficult in metrics that are improved by scaling.

My point was that Amazon has many capable competitors.

Re: Amazon staffers took bribes, manipulated marketplace, leaked search algorithms

#49

Post by dalbasal » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 4:01 PM UTC

dlgeek wrote: post #23

Previous Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24520462

re: dupe.

FWIW, this does contain some new/different information. IDK what the dividing line is for dupes, but would like to see new information as it's released.

Re: Amazon staffers took bribes, manipulated marketplace, leaked search algorithms

#50

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

shiftpgdn wrote: post #19

BoorishBears wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of me wants to believe this comment is satire, but the better part of me knows this is HN, so conceivably someone would call the barrier to entry for competing with Amazon's retail unit "very low"

It IS very low because anyone with a few hours can put together a shopify or woocomerece store and instantly start selling whatever their heart desires. Competing against Amazon's scale is tough as it would be a huge challenge to be able to offer next day shipping for free anywhere in the US, but you can add value other places.

Amazon doesn’t offer free shipping, it’s simply included the price of the product.

It’s also not next day many times in my experience, and other companies online ordering experience and shipping times are comparable.

What’s not comparable is that Amazon doesn’t stand behind stuff purchased from their flea market of a store, whereas I can have more trust in the supply chain at pretty much any other retailer.