Bye, Amazon

Tim is a really nice and likable person. That said, I'm really disappointed in his one sided take here. Amazon did not fire these people without cause. They fired them because they violated company policies. These employees were using company time and resources to push personal political agendas that have no place at work. They were rightfully fired, and a huge number of Amazon employees are thankful they are gone. There is a big silent majority, probably at all major tech companies, that is left voiceless because the progressive left is vocal and aggressively shouts down anyone who is even slightly to the right of their own views. At Amazon, most of us seek a professional workplace where employees are working towards the common goal of helping customers. These employees that Tim is standing up for were the opposite of that, distracting everyone with loud activism and probably not focusing on their own jobs either.

To provide a counter to Tim's account: Chris Smalls was told to quarantine himself and not come to the work site because he was in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19 (https://thehill.com/regulation/labor/490805-fired-amazon-str...). He came to the site anyways to protest. Why wouldn't he get fired for putting others at risk? People who think this firing was malicious are speculating. If this was a topic that Hacker News readers had a different group perspective on, they would call it a conspiracy theory. Someone would surely be quoting Hanlon's Razor by now.

Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham were the most visible ringleaders of activists pretending to be employees. They clearly were not doing their job as well as they could, because they had time enough to engage in lengthy political discussions on mailing lists during the workday. They were also repeatedly disrupting everyone else's work. They, and others from their group, would spam hundreds of company mailing lists repeatedly. They would send long political rants, links to activist events, and even solicit employee information. It was very over the top, and pleas from list moderators to stop spamming were ignored or met with baseless accusations of racism (or another -ism). That reaction, to shout down opposing views with absurd justifications, is the mental gymnastics of intersectionality at work. It's the unfortunate culture of intolerance that this aggressive flavor of progressive activism has taken on in workplaces like Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

I'm also dismayed at the public reaction to these events. For some reason, the general public simply craves stories attacking winners, and the same is true for Amazon. If you want to balance out the info you've been exposed to, check out Amazon's official blog on the large number of changes they've made in response to COVID-19, at https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazons-actions-to.... Were you aware that Amazon set up a nonprofit COVID-19 supply store for healthcare and government organizations (https://business.amazon.com/en/work-with-us/healthcare/covid...)? What about Jeff Bezos's statement on the expenses relating to COVID-19 (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazons-ceo-tells-investor...)?

Tim Bray quitting is his personal choice. I respect that he has the right to make this choice. But he's not a hero, and the HN crowd would do well not to immediately put him on a pedestal or to take all his opinions and claims at face value. When it comes to those fired employees he is standing up for, Tim is willfully overlooking their clear abuse of Amazon's employee rules, company resources, and other employees. I don't think it's an accident that he's leaving all those details out. He may be calling Amazon a 'chickenshit', but I actually think he's the coward in this instance.

Social Justice Warriors. I don't know how to "accurately" explain the definition, seems to mean something different to everyone. To me, it means anyone who wants to achieve equality of outcome ...typically people of no merit (yes, this is harsh to say). Anyone who meaningfully furthers equality of opportunity I think is doing a good and reasonable thing - if it's even apparent which is which.

The best recent example I can think of is the law requiring % of Fortune 500 board member presence based on gender - it is blatantly sexist, and is a complete "equality of outcome" blanket with no counter-equivalent. Where's the law requiring 40% of undesirable positions, like trash collectors and electricians be a certain gender? More than anything, I would just like to see consistency and it is simply not there. My biggest issue with this is "equality" matters in high income prestigious positions, but for the other ones it is somehow not an issue. How can people even use the word "equality"?

If you ever talk to a male nurse, good example. They're likely the only guy there, and the work environment for them is not good - but the answer there is: deal with it or get out. A counter-example this board would be very familiar with: what it's like to be the only woman on an engineering team. It sucks just as much, but the answer is very different. Alas, this contradiction is often just ignored.

Personally the sad irony in this is that "privilege" is a real thing, I'm not contesting this - but the insane overreach is hurting the goal of providing equality of opportunity.

My guess is that if equality of opportunity was objectively proven, and the outcome was not equal, people would still be upset ...and as a society, that's dangerous.

Keep in mind I wrote the above with the assumption that equality of opportunity is the goal. Based on what I observe daily, it is very hard to actually believe that.

I agree with this. It's not about business owners needing to be more moral (although at the top of the economy maybe that would help a little). The problem is the economic system is based on competition, which means that in the workplace, anything that is good for ordinary people is ground down forever in the name of efficiency. If the boot is ever taken off when there are viable competitors present, the company will be destroyed and the competitor will buy its equipment and hire its staff at rock bottom prices.

This is why structuring the economy based on competition is brutal and inhumane.

It means Social Justice Warriors.

I'd like to say I'm one as I do stand up and fight for people who are less privileged than me, but the term is deeply tainted by people who pretend to care about others but are really just out to play the game of politics and use a weaker/minority group or individual to further tjeor own selfish cause.

Don't use the word as I guess there are at least two subgroups of HNers ready to downvote and/or flag you for it ;-)

> Because it often involves nothing more than being given a basic level of trust and respect that, once you have them, can seem like a bare minimum, not something that you would need to fight for.

To add: from an European perspective, much of US-Reddit/HN and their stories are frankly unbelievable. "Hire at will", bankruptcies because of cancer or people not calling an ambulance even if they are heavily injured because they fear thousands-of-dollars bills, MLMs, robocall terrorism, companies firing people for unionizing - basically unheard of, because there are laws that prevent this reasonably good, and transgressors will mostly be held accountable by courts and public opinion.