Bye, Amazon - grey-area https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-Amazon <comment><USER2> It's a wake up call, or at least an attempt at that, for the likes of Amazon that if they are looking to have reputable people, like Tim Bray, associate themselves and their name with you, there are certain standards that have to be met.

Amazon, MS, Google, Apple, etc. rank among the most wealthy companies in the world and they've each had to deal with internal pressures where their employees voiced concerns about certain things or where there was some kind of whistle blower situation. And they each dealt with it in their own ways.

IMHO firing whistle blowers is the kind of action that should be called out as very negative and not something to be apologetic about.

So, I admire what Tim Bray is doing here and fully understand that he's having a hard time justifying working for what he's diplomatically not quite calling out as a __holes; though the undertone is quite clear.

Of course as he is pointing out, he's in a position where he can afford to do so financially. But then, being able to and actually doing are two things and he's showing some back bone here by 1) walking away and taking a hit financially, and 2) writing about it in the hope that leadership steps up and acts to correct the situation: compensate individuals affected, offer to rehire them, and discipline executives involved in pushing this through. Unlikely to happen, but one can hope for someone with a backbone stepping up. It would be the right thing to do. At the minimum, they've just been exposed for what they are and that might have consequences elsewhere for them.

<comment><USER3> I don't think many people in amazon agree with Tim Bray. The pragmatic ones know that these kind of stories have a heavy political overtone , but more importantly amazon probably have better conditions than all other retailers in the world. Granted it is not perfect but a more meaningful way to change the condition of minimum wage or low wage laborers is through legislative changes or basic income schemes.

<comment><USER4> > more importantly amazon probably have better conditions than all other > retailers in the world

That's not possible, the US has the worst worker protection laws in the world, it's really quite an undeveloped country in that regard.

<comment><USER5> Source needed on that first claim. I've spent a decent amount of time in some developing countries and I came out with no confidence that these types of labor laws are ordinarily enforced, if they even exist. I think you grossly overestimate these protections for relatively low-skilled labor outside of the developed world.

I'm not taking the claim you replied to at face value (it's exceedingly extreme to even be plausibly true) but they at least included a "probably" to allow for some doubt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My personal snapping point as a consumer occurred several years ago, over something that's definitely not anecdotal:

When Amazon employees are frisked at the end of their shift (which is a practice that applies to at least some warehouses), they are not paid for the time they spend waiting in line to be frisked. This is not an anecdote; indeed Amazon fought and won a court case insisting that it has the right to not compensate employees for this time. (See [https://www.reuters.com/article/us- usa-court-amazon-com/u-s-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court- amazon-com/u-s-supreme-court-rejects-amazon-warehouse-worker-wage-appeal- idUSKBN1WM1FI))

<comment><USER7> Yes for me too. The fact that Amazon is so cheap that they want employees to sit around for 20-30 minutes after their shift unpaid to get searched to make sure they aren't stealing blew me away. It is one thing if Amazon wants to do this and pay their employees, but to not pay is wrong.

And they felt so strongly about this they appealed a case all the way to the Supreme Court... That was the snapping point for me too and I have not ordered from them in a long time.

<comment><USER8> Where do you draw the line? Should people be compensated for their commute? It's an interesting debate that has emerged in airports as well: [https://www.talbottlawfirm.com/does-an-employer-have-to- pay-...](https://www.talbottlawfirm.com/does-an-employer-have-to-pay- employees-for-time-spent-in-security-screenings-u-s-supreme-court-to-decide- this-issue/)

<comment><USER9> Commute is partially under the control of the worker, where I decide to live has a huge impact on how long my commute is. I can freely decide to trade commute for money, making it my responsibility.

Waiting in line to be frisked is something mandated by the employer. They control whether or not I have to do it, and how long the lines are. Since it's under their control, it's their financial responsibility.

<comment><USER10> That's a bit disingenuous when short commutes are literally not affordable to some of the people we're talking about.

<comment><USER11> But no employer would force you to have long commutes.

It may be impossible in some cases to have short commutes, but if, even by chance, you managed to move in the same building as your office no one would force you to go through the metro.

Commutes are clearly a grey area, waiting times to be let "free" are less so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Completely anecdotal.

It's possible some Amazon Warehouses are run better than others. A friend who recently got a job (5 weeks ago) at one of Amazons warehouses (NJ/NYC area) has only praise for the way things are run. They take his temperature 3 times a day, provide a mask, constantly monitor social distancing, clean washrooms every hour, enforce social distancing in any break rooms, work areas, etc. He says it's never an issue with breaks, lunch, etc. He has mentioned that they encourage him to keep an eye out for other positions he might have an interest in since he is eligible (after 30 days)to apply (he has some skills that can be more useful to Amazon).

I was always under the assumption from what I have read that Amazon was a sweat shop. It seems that at least his facility is run very well.

<comment><USER13> Bray didn't quit over the conditions in the warehouses, he quit over Amazon's brazen and dishonest firings of organizers.

It's possible that if _every_ Amazon warehouse were run as well, those organizers would not have arisen, but it's Amazon nastiness toward them that's most alarming.

<comment><USER14> Have you considered the possibility that Amazon actually treats their workers okay and that it's the organizers are dishonest? Why does the presumption of evil only go in one direction?

<comment><USER15> Just compare the incentives for both parts to be dishonest and you have your answer. What would workers gain from being dishonest except the risk of being fired or retaliated upon?

And why, if organizers are lying, can't Amazon just disprove them by showing to the public their perfect working conditions?

Finally, isn't it a natural instinct to side with the weaker element in a fight?

Does Amazon really need your support, or are the workers one paycheck away from homelessness in need of it?

<comment><USER16> > What would workers gain from being dishonest

Union representation and improved compensation and employment benefits.

Not to say either party is being honest or being dishonest. But it's clear there's plenty to gain on both sides by, on the one hand, painting organizers ad bad employees, and on the other hand, painting working conditions as worse than they are.

<comment><USER17> Peeing in Coke bottles because of a lack of bathrooms and allowances for biological needs might be a sign.

<comment><USER18> What?!? Now I'm canceling that case of Coca Cola I just ordered on Amazon Prime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > At the end of the day, it's all about power balances. The warehouse workers > are weak and getting weaker...

Whenever I speak to someone working in a "low-skilled" job, I'm always astonished and embarrassed by how different their work environment sounds to the kind of offices I work in. There seems to be a consistent theme of employees being treated with suspicion, condescension and outright hostility.

This gets to the heart of the idea of "privilege", and why it can be so difficult to see yourself as privileged. 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.

<comment><USER20> I think this is a two way street. If you've never been involved at a management or ownership level of a business that has "low pay" labor (e.g., food service, warehouse, retail sales).

For every 2-3 decent workers there is one that just takes pure advantage of the environment (e.g., stealing product, stealing time, etc). Sometimes this occurs at great cost for a period of time before it is discovered. EDIT: This was meant to be illustrative, not an exact ratio.

This makes companies take extreme policy measures for the few instances of this that impact everyone, because the financial impact is so disproportionate.

Now, the argument can (and is) made that pay is a factor. "If you pay me more I won't act like this". But depending on the business (e.g., a local pizza place) there is no affording that.

<comment><USER21> I can confirm this, having first hand experience with it. We hired many low- skill workers at a big tech company that you've heard of about ten years ago. These workers received a couple of weeks of training, and then were set to do a rather simple, menial, repetitive job.

These workers didn't sell products, but did very low level tech work, but the entire operation was mired in drama. For example, we had a strict no drugs policy, and no weapons policy on campus, zero tolerance. So, say that one of your employees comes up crying that she is getting fired because she did heroin during work hours, and she needs to money for her unborn child (this happened!), or a guy gets angry at being fired because he was pulling out his new .45 from his waistband to show his cubicle neighbors. We had a LOT of this stuff, and as a result, many zero tolerance policies.

It's difficult to understand how many hard living, disadvantaged people there are in this country, even in wealthy areas like the Bay Area of CA, who bring their rough living to work with them. What do you do as an employer? Do you tolerate this to be friendlier to the employees, and someone gets killed, making you liable? Do you come down like a hardass and dehumanize them even more, but cover your butt? Neither choice is good, but it's the latter that usually happens.

<comment><USER22> Maybe you can work on your hiring practices? Even for low-skill jobs, you can hire for soft skills.

edit: I am being downvoted and don't know why. Can you please explain what's wrong with this idea? I think the parent paints a false dichotomy.

For example - another option is to deal with problematic individuals on an individual basis. You don't have to ruin the entire company culture.

<comment><USER21> For some really annoying grunt jobs, you're not going to hire the most disciplined, most educated people with a good work ethic. People willing to do tedious, crappy work have no other options usually, and you also can't be too picky, or you won't hire anyone. These jobs typically have low value as well, so if you tried to pay more, the whole project may not be cost effective and won't happen.

You definitely need to treat people with as much respect as possible, but in some jobs, you have to have all these rules in place knowing you'll get people who aren't model citizens. I was never in the HR org chart here, never saw finances, but I suspect the people that I mentioned were paid near minimum wage. Few stuck around more than six months, and those who did, moved onto better jobs. It was all very structured and regimented. I would never fire anyone for trying to make their workplace better, assuming they did it in a non-disruptive way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > 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... Very few people would have the courage to walk away from big sums of money purely on principle.

Again, assuming this is all true, I admire Tim for this move, and plaude him. I had my issues with Amazon when I was there (2008-2014), some of them made me uncomfortable, but I would have never had the courage to walk away.

It also potentially damages Tim's ability to get hired in the future, as some other large organization might not like his behavior with Amazon and be reluctant to bring him on board. At the same time, hopefully there are smaller startups that want exactly this type of courage and rectitude and will hire him for his talents.

Good luck, Tim.

<comment><USER24> 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 you have a scandal is a dumb idea.

<comment><USER25> What an utter disaster this society is if having a conscience makes you "radioactive" to employers. I can only aspire to be as radioactive as possible, then.

<comment><USER26> Well, this is interesting because, subset of people deciding one is "radioactive" is very small compared to whole society, but in general the society is selforganized. There is no oppression. People have money and power because other people give it to them.

I guess people collecitvely want to have black characters in power to do the dirty, making their live easier overall. I don't see other reason "western" societies don't change people in power when they actually can.

<comment><USER27> << society is selforganized. There is no oppression.>>

Self-oppression? Sure. But it does not mean that oppression doesn't exist. It's just that it is self caused, and self here refers to society as a whole. Oppression exists whether it's self-inflicted or inflicted by one/many upon another/others.

<comment><USER28> It's tough to call it self-oppression when our governance mechanisms are literally unresponsive to 90% of the public.

See [1] pdf page 10.

[1] [https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...](https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf)

<comment><USER27> I understand. But a significant percentage of people keep voting for stooges and corporatists. What do you call that? Maybe not your self but the collective self is responsible, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The right thing to do.

I've never met Tim and I will probably never meet him, I only know that he was one of first programmers/computer people whose blog I started reading back when I got into programming (more than 15 years ago, closer to 20) and as such one could say that I looked up to him. I'm glad that I chose the right person to "look up to".

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm shocked that so many bright, talented engineers go to work for Companies like Google and Amazon and Facebook. While I'm glad some see the light about the real mission of these companies (it's not about "connecting people", "providing delightful customer experiences", "doing no evil" or any of that BS) and ultimately quit, but what concerns me is how so many clearly incredibly bright and talented people are able to ignore so many red flags and go to work for these companies. Google and Facebook are about acquiring personal data to sell ads, that's it! You're not adding value, no matter what interesting, complicated, bleeding edge, world-class problems you're solving. The world is worse off for all of it, and you're helping.

<comment><USER31> Back when I was in university, I feel like they really brainwashed me to think these tech companies were making the world a better place. I was too naive. I think a lot of young software engineers started out like me.

There's also the fact that these companies are so big, they have a lot of variation inside them. For example at Amazon Music, there really isn't a lot of evilness there, it's just getting people to pay up for music streaming. Still some unfairness in the music industry for smaller artists, but that's often the labels stepping on them.

A lot of us at Amazon knows this company is kinda evil now. I was thinking about resigning over these recent firings, but another activist convinced me to stay so we can continue pushing the company to be less evil.

Essentially if we are willing to resign from a job, we have nothing to lose so we can take bigger activism risks.

<comment><USER32> Same. When I was in college, all my peers talked about FAANG's in glowing terms. Doesn't help that these companies often recruit heavily from Universities, so you have alum networks that talk about how great the companies are etc. Its quite an evil genius. When people finally do get a job, they often realize its not always the cool shit that they heard about; most often than not its some uncool shit that brings in a ton of money.

This isn't to discount the amazing engineering work that these orgs tend to do. But look at their workforce numbers and tell me with a straight face that all their engineers are working on solving tough engineering problems and not just a cog in the optimization machine.

<comment><USER8> That's just because 5+ years ago Amazon/Facebook/Google weren't "giant evil shit-lords" so-to-speak. They were cool even among industry folks. It wasn't long ago that having Google on your resume meant something was special about you.

Facebook/Google/Amazon aren't really cool in colleges anymore either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Amazon is a great evil.

It will not be remembered as a company that has had been a positive influence on the world but as a company that has treated its employees (both hourly and salaried) with contempt, driven independent stores out of business and refused to play on a level playing field both through its shady business practices or its refusal to pay tax.

Well done to Tim Bray for acting according to his conscience. Hopefully this sets an example to other Amazon employees and other tech workers working in similarly morally compromised organisations.

<comment><USER34> Which is the mythical company treating their low-skill workers far better than Amazon? Does the rest of big tech even employ their non professionals directly? Which of big tech directly employ their janitors and treat them much better than Amazon warehouse workers? Which of big non tech company does this?

>its refusal to pay tax.

What do you even mean by this? Companies can't refuse to pay tax. They have to pay tax as per law. If you mean they are using legal mechanisms to not pay their maximum possible tax, how is that different from Apple or other big tech keeping money in tax heavens.

> driven independent stores out of business

And which big/successful comapny doesn't drive out competitors out of business? Google/FB have driven local newspapers out of business by sucking away all the ad money. MSFT squashed all the competition by extremely evil business practices.

> It will not be remembered as a company that has had been a positive > influence on the world

Again, which is the mythical company you are using as a benchmark here?

<comment><USER33> Ignoring the bad faith questioning, I dont have to provide a gold standard in order to criticise Amazon. Everything I've said is extremely well documented.

<comment><USER34> Off course, you don't have to provide any standard to criticize whatever you deem fit. The point of my comment is not to ask you to provide a benchmark, but more to point out the flaw in your arguments to future readers. I admit I could have done this in a better way. But my point is without a relative benchmark, one can criticize anything and everything, even though the criticism encodes very less information. To brand something evil, it has to be compared to it's peers in it's time frame. Or else I can brand every single company and human being on the planet evil for n number of reasons, e.g, for not paying their lowest paid workers enough, or for not doing enough to combat climate change. These will apply to every single company for some definition of "enough", and if I don't have to provide a benchmark, I can set enough at any point.

<comment><USER35> This is one of the largest company in the world, it is normal that they get criticized more than smaller companies. They have more resources and abilities to make changes than most companies. And I disagree, we can criticize a company regardless if we provide the example of a better company or not. When it comes to workers abuse in the middle of a pandemic, "everyone else is bad" is not a good answer, i'm sorry. That's just a recipe for never changing anything. One can hope for better worker treatment regardless, this is how progress is made.

<comment><USER36> Does AMZN in fact have more resources to make changes?

I would generally argue that your ability to change your org is somewhat limited by your profit margins. It is hard to pay warehouse workers more, for instance, if your margins are razor thin. While AMZN's profit margin is not quite the 0 it used to be, it is certainly not stellar by any means. And it is certainly not as good as many, many other companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm still feeling blue from leaving AWS back in mid-2019. I worked with a talented team, had an amazing manager, and overall miss everyone all the way up to the VP of the org.

Articulating why I left has not been easy, but Mr. Bray touches on some of the issues that resonate with me.

</comment><comment><USER38> > 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.

<comment><USER39> In my opinion it was more from the perspective that minorities may have a more empathetic view on problems, after likely experiencing dealing with problems other more privileged people don't have to.

In this case: one of the biggest benefits of hiring minorities... ending up being the reason you fire them.

<comment><USER40> Counterpoint: Since many companies are under (public?) pressure to fill in some minority quota, they with end with relatively incompetent people from the minority group.

Also my personal observation: an incompetent person from a minority group is likely to see a failed transaction through their own colored 'minority' lens. Eg. a woman who has been turned down for a job will attribute it to her being a woman and no other reason. For a white guy who has been turned down - it's life as usual.

<comment><USER41> I've seen plenty of white guys blame minority quotas and nothing else after being turned down for a job. There is also little evidence that companies are hiring hoards of incompetent people to fill minority quotas. If they were, then why does every tech company still struggle with a lack of diversity in the workplace? It would be easy to just hire whoever can tick a diversity box and fix those numbers, but they're not actually doing that because that would be stupid.

<comment><USER42> Diversity quotas are absolutely real, and publicly documented all over the place. Activist shareholders are filing resolutions and threatening companies with lawsuits and bad PR. I was involved in hiring at some large tech companies and we had very specific targets to meet, _"or else"_. I don't know how anyone can still deny that this is happening.

<comment><USER35> Re-read again, OP did not deny that minority quota exists. OP refuted the somewhat popular opinion that incompetent people are being hired BECAUSE of minority quotas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I also quit tech, so I don't really respect the people who get job at these companies, they are basically modern day enabler for bad things that happen at these companies. Companies aren't nothing without their employees helping them do the things and that unfortunately includes the bad things.

I now run my own business and pay everyone fairly and treat everyone well.

<comment><USER44> Is your business non-tech related? I've had ideas to leave, myself, but with the times we're in with small businesses getting hit hard it seems it'll take extra courage to do so.

<comment><USER43> It's small scale manufacturing for communities, I am doing this work in India where it can help quality of life of people who are not aware about mechanism/machines which can improve their productivity and safety.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I don't think many people take it into account, but many companies look up to tech giants and replicate their actions.

When company the size of Amazon can get away with this kind of heavy handed employee treatment, the results are affecting many, many more people that it might seem on the surface.

</comment><comment><USER46> Very difficult to put emotion aside when thinking about these things. I expect to be crucified for even asking this question because the audience here has a bias towards supporting activism. But oh well here goes:

If Amazon condone and even enable employee activism, what bad things could that enable? I don't mean unions. I mean a group of say 20 employees trying to bring about a change they truly believe in.

Amazon has over 500,000 employees. Think of the number of edge cases. You agree with these good folks that were fired. But what about carrying guns to work? Conservative or liberal issues if you're the other side of the table?

That employee base is a small city. Is every warehouse a town square with freedom to assemble? Every office?

Fighting the good fight is often necessary. But it's also a seductive idea until it's not your fight and disrupting your day - or worse, something you vehemently disagree with and is causing you distress.

Is there another side to this argument?

(Edit for spelling)

<comment><USER47> I understand where you're going for, but imo that's never been a valid argument against self-determination.

I think your argument can be made simpler: why should we trust people to be allowed to decide for themselves? Won't they decide to do stupid and harmful things? Won't they decide to hurt eachother? Won't they decide to steal from eachother, and murder eachother?

No, is the answer, because laws were created somehow, right? We don't trust the government to babysit us - we _created_ the government so we wouldn't have to babysit eachother.

We don't need the board to tell us what we can and can't do - we can figure that well enough on our own. What we _don 't_ need is a board that assumes it knows best. It doesn't, it can't possibly, in fact it is existentially unable to do anything but raise shareholder value. So, the more employee self- determination, the better.

I think it's _very_ unlikely that employees will decide they want to have guns at work instead of, say, a security system, or maybe offices in places with low crime, etc. I think it's very unlikely that employees will decide, I dunno, that they want the right to shit on eachother's desk, or whatever other fairly-objectively-negative thing you can think up. The right to paste racial slurs all over the office, maybe? Bigotry, bullying, and hatred are swiftly becoming a minority, and a fair system almost universally causes those minority viewpoints to lose power. They only maintain it in imbalanced systems...

And worse case scenario, if Amazon turns into the kind of office where you have to shoot your way in just to get to your desk, we can have the government intervene and shut the place down (with our labor laws), and maybe someone can set up a better business where you don't have to shoot your way to your desk.

<comment><USER48> > I think it's very unlikely that employees will decide they want to have guns > at work instead of, say, a security system, or maybe offices in places with > low crime, etc. I think it's very unlikely that employees will decide, I > dunno, that they want the right to shit on eachother's desk, or whatever > other fairly-objectively-negative thing you can think up.

I think his point is that carrying guns to work is not a fairly-objectively- negative thing for the 1/3 of America that owns guns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> "That done, remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised. So I resigned."

Hope to see more individuals in tech standing up for what they believe to be right, willing to make sacrifices or even walk away if needed, and ultimately tell their story publicly. This is how you do it!

</comment><comment><USER50> We need more Tims in the tech world.

From a place for renegades, the valley has quickly become a safe place for "yes men", that all they do is to obey to their corporate overlords.

<comment><USER51> It's easy to take a moral stand when you have millions and are close to retirement.

<comment><USER52> s/easy/possible/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> This article now hit the front page of the Financial Times: [https://www.ft.com/content/ea6946d8-532e-4724-ada7-eebb887c8...](https://www.ft.com/content/ea6946d8-532e-4724-ada7-eebb887c8c43)

<comment><USER54> [http://archive.md/D2qjy](http://archive.md/D2qjy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> > Any plausible solution has to start with increasing their collective > strength.

Legislation or unionization. Any other routes?

<comment><USER56> >unionization

I am confused why there weren't wholesale strikes in the grocery, retail, warehouse, gig workforces during the shutdowns. Workers had complete power to force change.

<comment><USER57> Because of active union-busting efforts, which have made it hard for these workers to organize collective action.

Walmart: [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/how- wal...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/how-walmart- convinces-its-employees-not-to-unionize/395051/)

Whole Foods (post-acquisition): [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/27/amazon- whol...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/27/amazon-whole-foods- training-video-union-busting-efforts-staff)

Uber: [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/22/uber-lyft- ip...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/22/uber-lyft-ipo-drivers- unionize-low-pay-expenses)

Amazon: [https://gizmodo.com/amazons-aggressive-anti-union-tactics- re...](https://gizmodo.com/amazons-aggressive-anti-union-tactics-revealed-in- leake-1829305201)

This is not a new problem; low-wage workers have _always_ had the collective power to force change, and businesses and business-friendly have always worked tirelessly to disrupt that collective action.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> This is what being a capital-A Ally looks like. I take my hat off to you, sir.

<comment><USER59> He's just somebody with FY money in the bank so he can do whatever he wants in a larger scope than others. I'll keep my hat on; this is nothing special in his position.

<comment><USER60> Excuse me? How many people with FY money do what he did? What he did IS the exception and henceforth noteworthy.

<comment><USER58> @scollet [below]: he does a prety good job of linking to ground floor worker's narratives in his post - using his increased exposure and prestige to "signal boost" them, as a millenial would say. Or am I reading that wrong?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Completely anecdotal.

I went on an amazon warehouse tour in Tilbury, UK. (1).

It was a tour of everything they do, at one stage they asked the guy stowing to do a demo and he flat out refused because he had to hit his targets.

(1) Amazon UK Services Ltd. Tilbury - <AUTHOR>

London Distribution Park, Windrush Rd, Tilbury RM18 7AN [https://g.co/kgs/8E4bgd](https://g.co/kgs/8E4bgd)

</comment><comment><USER62> Bezos in front of congress just got a lot more interesting. This is something that they will likely spend a lot of time on.

</comment><comment><USER63> His page seems to be melting under HN effect (was: Slashdot effect), luckily IA seems to have a copy: [https://web.archive.org/web/20200504111506/https://www.tbray...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200504111506/https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving- Amazon)

<comment><USER64> HN 'Hug-of-death' is what we call it around here.

<comment><USER65> Bray's blog post was linked to by a story on CNBC, which has much more traffic than HN: [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/04/amazon-engineer-resigns- over...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/04/amazon-engineer-resigns-over- companys-treatment-of-workers.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wi2hPnT...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wi2hPnTXhhoJ:https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving- Amazon&hl=en&gl=pt&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

</comment><comment><USER67> I don't mean to rag specifically on Tim here, but most posts like this one probably should not be taken entirely at face value. My guess is that he left Amazon mostly for other more mundane reasons, and he used the well-known issues with how Amazon treat their workers as a means to exit in a blaze of righteous glory.

<comment><USER68> Do you have any evidence of these more mundane reasons? Otherwise, you're just speculating. And since Bray did a very good job of linking to sources for his stated reasons, I'm inclined to take his claims seriously at least until other evidence indicates otherwise.

(On the other hand, I highly suspect that you yourself have "other" reasons to cast doubt on Bray's claims. I have as much reason to doubt your motives as you do to doubt Bray's, right?)

<comment><USER67> Is it not clear that I was speculating from language like "my guess is", and is it not clear that I'm not trying to cast aspersions on Tim's specific motives from language like "I don't mean to rag specifically on Tim"?

<comment><USER68> All of your uses of "he" were referring to Bray himself. That's how pronouns work.

And you can say "guess" all you want. There was nothing in his post, or any other article I know of, that indicates Bray's motives were anything other than what he said (and backed up with extensive supporting evidence). So your motivation to "guess" doesn't come from the article itself, nor from any competing evidence (which I doubt exists since you would've already posted it).

"I don't mean to specifically call out kjgkjhfkjf, but my guess is that he feels compelled to downplay legitimate criticisms of Amazon, and he used the well-known techniques of ad-hominem and FUD as a means to defend Amazon without actual compelling counterarguments." <\- I assume you agree with that sentence, since it uses all of your same rhetorical techniques.

<comment><USER67> No, you have misunderstood me. My point was that grandstanding posts from people who have recently left desirable positions should generally not be taken at face value. I was not arguing that his claims about Amazon's policies are questionable. This should be evident from my use of the language "well- known issues" in my original comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I am going to ask a slightly different question relating to the problem.

How do you get another job?

Do you tell your potential employer you quit because of (your) principle? That you fundamentally disagree with your previous company? How will the new company judge you?

Now of coz if you are in the market that is chasing for talent ( like programming and tech ) this wouldn't be a much of a problem. What if you were the Amazon Warehouse Manager? Which is probably 100x more replaceable than say a software engineer?

Most business seems to operate with talent are everywhere, opportunities are scarce mentality. They would much rather they hire a class B employees than a class A activist.

<comment><USER70> OP does not have this issue. He is a highly visible/highly respected for his technical skills. I'm willing to bet you money that he is being flooded as we type with offers. Not all people have this position but the act of quitting out of principle is still something that takes a huge amount of courage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Does anyone know what the "laughable justifications" for the firings were?

<comment><USER72> In one case, an organizer was fired for refusing to not come to work after being put on "quarantine", three weeks after he was initially exposed and not given any leave, and no one else involved in the exposure was quarantined.

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/31/amazon- strik...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/31/amazon-strike- worker-fired-organizing-walkout-chris-smallls)

The specific incidents Bray discussed seemed to be on a private internal list, and specifically related to AECJ so probably not this issue - I doubt anyone will leak it as unless there's something especially egregious (not just specious justification, but something like a racial or sexist slur) it doesn't really benefit either side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> I think a lot of the reason people hate on Amazon is just bad PR. Plenty of other companies are just as bad, or worse. Walmart has been a shit hole long before Amazon even existed and its worse than amazon. But Amazon steadfastly refuse to pretend they care. Bezos isn't constantly paying people to lie and pretend Amazon is a family and its workers are deeply valued.

Perversely, I actually think that's more honest and more likely to bring about changes to actually help workers...

</comment><comment><USER74> I applaud this move from Tim. It takes gumption to walk away from a VP-level FAANG salary for anything, especially personal morals. I have only one small thing to add as an ex-Amazon employee:

>Amazon Web Services (the "Cloud Computing" arm of the company), where I worked, is a different story. It treats its workers humanely, strives for work/life balance, struggles to move the diversity needle (and mostly fails, but so does everyone else), and is by and large an ethical organization. I genuinely admire its leadership.

This was not and (as far as I keep in contact with old coworkers) is not the case for people working in the data centers operations department. I imagine that area shares similarities with the average warehouse environment. There is a quick turnover (a year on average), a dependence on contracted workers, demanding physical labor, untrustworthy managers, and most of all, the dehumanizing metrics. I remember most of us had dreams to transition to cloud support and get away from the lonely and stressful life as a data center tech.

I think the only people feeling okay at Amazon are corporate and/or AWS software engineers. The rest are feeling the full effects of Amazon's corporate culture. Which is to say, the full rod of Bezos' sadistic corporate philosophy.

</comment><comment><USER75> > What about AWS? · Amazon Web Services (the "Cloud Computing" arm of the > company), where I worked, is a different story. It treats its workers > humanely, strives for work/life balance, struggles to move the diversity > needle (and mostly fails, but so does everyone else), and is by and large an > ethical organization.

As a former employee of AWS, I can vouch for this. AWS and Amazon.com should be looked at two totally different entities in terms of employee experience.

<comment><USER76> I feel like the only people who are surprised by the difference are those who have only ever held white collar jobs.

They're totally different cultures. Weren't talking about two different classes of people. And unfortunately you can't expect the same standards and rules to be appropriate for both groups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> It's interesting that Mr. Bray is declining to post comments on his site that are even slightly constructively critical of some of the things he's advocating for in this post. (Can anyone find a non-congratulatory or even slightly critical comment below his post on his site? Did I miss one?)

He has every right to filter negative comments, but it makes me not want to read his site further if all he does is post non-contrary opinions.

</comment><comment><USER78> Amazon deserves this criticism but I think there is nothing to single them out. Most for-profit companies would behave in a similar fashion unless there is a competition for these workers that will force Amazon to treat them better. Since Amazon is operating in virtual monopoly here, there is no incentive for them to behave differently unless there are stronger laws such as minimum wage etc..

<comment><USER79> On the contrary, Amazon's success is precedent setting and it is such a strong company that singling them out can cause the rest of the industry to shift.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Can we also do something ourselves?

AWS spending and consumers turning a blind eye enables such issues to arise

These things are fueled not just by desire for profit, but also our own materialistic focus. If we buy into the latest and greatest products, rather than where they came from, then to some extent isn't it we who have enabled these rights abuses in various countries and companies, to support our own appetites?

</comment><comment> caleb-allen I'm having issues with this url, here is a link from archive.org:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200504093003/https://www.tbray...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200504093003/https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving- Amazon)

</comment><comment><USER81> As the saying goes "A principle isn't a principle unless it costs you money."

Fair play to him for standing up for what he believes.

<comment><USER82> Hehe 64 and very rich. It cost his grandchildren money (if he has any), not him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I wish there was of some sort of association or union for people in the Software industry. While we are typically much better treated than basically every single other type of worker out there, we lack the assurance of protection when it comes to challenging our employers. In a country where your healthcare, your retirement and possibly your immigration status are tied to your employment, how can one feel confident that sticking to their convictions like you did will not cost them and their family a cost so great that they cannot bear it. I would like for Software and more generally tech workers of all trade to be able to say NO or ENOUGH, when working for a company that steals tips, coerces workers into unfavorable situation or plainly disrespects human rights. I dream of a world where workers can rely on something having their back when making the right decision.

<comment><USER84> Unions are primarily useful for workers who don't have the ability to negotiate their salary before accepting a job. By banding together, they're able to negotiate wages that more closely align with the value of their work. Knowledge workers are expected to do this for themselves on an individual basis as they're not really interchangeable.

I do wish people pushed for more democratic decision-making in their places of work, though. I've read that in Google's early days people were mainly promoted by peer-evaluations, and there was a mechanism to remove a manager from power if they lost the confidence of most of their subordinates.

<comment><USER83> Yeah, I am more interested in union in it's power to uphold moral values. If you ever were to be sued for whistle blowing something despicable or wrongly fired for defending a coworker's right and other behaviors we see at the likes of Amazon. There is power in unity beyond money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> I often have this discussion with a friend about how to figure out your place in a company.

It is very important to figure out what class you belong to in a company. Some try to boil this down to 'cost-centers', but it isn't always that simple.

Warehouse workers are second class citizens at Amazon. This can be true for a developer in certain environments, it can be true for designers, etc.

I've worked at places where developers are second class citizens compared to Project/Product management, and then I've seen where designers are second class citizens to developers. It can be even more granular where frontend is second class to backend, or vice versa.

However you figure it out, if you find out you are a second class citizen there, you have to move on, as your potential is capped by the business priorities/culture/structure. It's never a good fit.

</comment><comment><USER86> > I'm sure it's a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a > woman, or both. Right?

This part of the article jumped at me -- If this is true, then I'd have to say "yes, coincidence". No company (let alone one as large as Amazon) would be _that_ stupid in 2020.

<comment><USER87> if anything i'd expect them to go out of their way to fire some white men to avoid lawsuits

<comment><USER88> Yep, not diverse enough without white men.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> People who need to job to make ends meet usually have a lot more to lose. This very quickly creates an environment where there are real imbalances. The perception of these real imbalances can be even greater if there's a breakdown in trust / communication.

</comment><comment><USER90> I've read a few comments here that Tim Bray would be better off staying at Amazon to make change from within.

This morning I attempted to renew a domain at a GoDaddy subsidiary, and as I scrolled down to look for the contact information I saw that GoDaddy appears to be registered in the Cayman Islands.

I'm genuinely curious (I mean that) to ask if the same question is asked of companies that go offshore. Isn't this all about tax evasion? And, shouldn't they be asked to fight for change from within in the same way?

I honestly think many people on HN would support overhauling our tax code alongside a corporation with deep pockets. So why not?

</comment><comment><USER91> As an Amazon customer, I've gone from admiring the company to distrusting them. I can't trust products I buy from them; this lack of care is a problem with the very fabric of the organization.

One nit to pick: "Climate Change" groups, and the like should keep their focus narrow. I have trouble getting behind many groups because they seem to need to have a position on every "progressive" issue. The Climate Change group should have stuck to climate change, and another employee action group created to make sure the needs of all the Amazon employees across the company are being taken seriously.

</comment><comment><USER92> |"May 1st was my last day as a VP and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon Web Services, after FIVE years and five months of rewarding fun"

5.5 years means more than fully vested and probably time for a change anyway...

<comment><USER93> You're never fully vested. I $650K of unvested AMZN stock when I left after 8.5 years.

<comment><USER92> By fully vested I meant the initial 4 years, which is the package you usually get when joining a tech company. Given his caliber I bet it was a fat one. Add to that the run the stock had in the last 5 years. At his age and with his wealth, it's not unlikely he has been considering leaving regardless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> Nice to see someone standing up. I have a hard time understanding how developers with options to move to different companies ethically justify working for companies like Amazon, Facebook, Oracle or Walmart.

<comment><USER95> I personally have a list of tech and finance companies I've resolved to never work for, and anecdotally I know other engineers with similar lists.

Amazon is near the top of mine for its harmful business practices and open contempt for its workers. The former Amazon employees I know tend to describe the experience of being an engineer there in less than favorable terms (and as engineers their experience is obviously going to be much better than a warehouse worker's).

Maybe if companies like Amazon which treat their workers poorly were to face a kind of engineering labor boycott, they could be forced to behave more ethically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Am curious, what happens if an engineer quit like this after writing a blog about the company, does it have a negative impact on their hirability? Do other companies not want him or does it not matter?

<comment><USER97> Tim is not "an engineer". He is not gonna look for jobs.

<comment><USER96> I should have clarified, the question was about a general engineer, not Tim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> Splitting AWS off from Amazon Markets is one split-up I would support the government doing. Without the cash-cow, it might reduce Amazon Markets domination, and allow more competitive alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER99> > _What about AWS? · Amazon Web Services (the "Cloud Computing" arm of the > company), where I worked, is a different story. It treats its workers > humanely, strives for work /life balance, struggles to move the diversity > needle (and mostly fails, but so does everyone else), and is by and large an > ethical organization._

I find it very difficult to reconcile this statement with the fact that AWS provides services to the US military to help them perpetrate mass murder more effectively and directly vends to the suborganization inside the US government that operates concentration camps for children. It's fallen out of the news cycle, but this is still happening today, and AWS is still accepting money to help them carry out their crimes.

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/training-the- warfi...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/training-the-warfighter- on-the-cloud/)

[https://www.govexec.com/sponsor-content/enabling-the- warfigh...](https://www.govexec.com/sponsor-content/enabling-the-warfighter/)

[https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/10/22/139639/amazon- is...](https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/10/22/139639/amazon-is-the- invisible-backbone-behind-ices-immigration-crackdown/)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/us/immigrant-children- sex...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/us/immigrant-children-sexual- abuse.html)

These are the people AWS collaborates with. That's not ethical under any framework of ethics I've ever heard of.

It's not even like they just happen to serve the military along with all comers: they voluntarily built a special set of datacenters with racist hiring policies just to court government work:

[https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/](https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/)

It's almost as if people have a gigantic ethical blind spot just so long as it's the state doing the mass killings and torture of children.

<comment><USER100> You are basically calling US Military and Government terrorist organizations. If you start with that assumption you can easily get to the point where no US company is ethical and you can't work anywhere.

<comment><USER99> Both of your statements seem to be objectively false.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> Is there any irony to be found in the fact that, reading the linked article ([https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dm8bx/leaked-amazon- memo...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dm8bx/leaked-amazon-memo-details- plan-to-smear-fired-warehouse-organizer-hes-not-smart-or-articulate)), I'm seeing 4 copies of the ad for the Audible original "Escape from Virtual Island"?

</comment><comment><USER102> It's way past time for an Amazon boycott. This blog post makes the case without saying the word. But even here on HN there's a long history of complaints about fraud on Amazon: fake reviews, fake products, and little to no action by Amazon. And they show they have the power to take corrective action when something happens they don't actually like, while standing idly by when they don't care. The actions, and lack thereof, are what matter.

</comment><comment><USER103> This is something I deeply respect. To often it feels like proper are trying to burn the world down from the inside. Such as with some of the struggling media companies.

And while I won't speak to the two that the author cites as their impetus for action, I absolutely respect someone who quits over a moral stance, and writes an exit statement.

Not everyone needs to quit and leave to speak out. There's a lot of gray. If just prefer to see sane actions and reactions in general.

</comment><comment><USER104> > _What with big-tech salaries and share vestings, this will probably cost me > over a million (pre-tax) dollars_

...

> _The average pay_ [in his group, AWS] _is very high, and anyone who's > unhappy can walk across the street and get another job paying the same or > better._

Not sure how to square these two statements. Is the lost money all in stock vesting? If so, why bother mentioning the salary? If not, how does that fit with his claim about AWSers being so readily employable?

<comment><USER105> Last I hard, Amazon had a 4 year 5/15/40/40 vesting schedule. In my experience, stock compensation exceeds salary for most executives. If 50% of compensation was in stock, they would be walking away from 2.2 years salary worth of grants, which would have appreciated since the grant date. Amazon stock is also up >4x in the last 4 years.

<comment><USER104> I've heard the same; that would mean that AWS employees in general would stand to lose a decent amount of equity, depending on where they are in their cycle.

<comment><USER105> That's the trick. There are new stock grants every year, so you continually stand to lose a substantial sum by leaving. Hence the name: long term incentives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> I really wish there was a stand-alone cloud provider to work with.

AWS is a part of this unethical beast, GCP is a side project of a huge advertising company, Azure is under the wing of a major monopolist.

I guess there is Linode, but their services are more of a traditional VPS than a cloud host.

It's kind of crazy that most of the net income of Amazon comes from this business, but we've accepted that a stand alone cloud business won't work for some reason.

<comment><USER107> DigitalOcean is quickly becoming just that.

<comment><USER106> Thanks! I hadn't followed up on DO in a while, it looks like their service offerings are a lot more robust these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> [http://web.archive.org/web/20200409045004/https://www.oann.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20200409045004/https://www.oann.com/tag/david- zapolsky/)

CNBC interview with Smalls

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HUGc7R8hw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HUGc7R8hw)

</comment><comment><USER109> Site is down, here's the image: [http://archive.md/XcnJv](http://archive.md/XcnJv)

</comment><comment><USER110> Looking forward to what tbray is on to next. He has co-authored W3C's original XML spec and the RFC spec for JSON while at Google. Now leaving AWS on matters of principle, he could just be the kind of person who can turn things around and being trusted by enough people to get behind new "digital humanism" initiatives in a post-cloud era, like cross-cloud computing/service standards, and digital media/privacy/advertising rights and standards in an increasingly monopolistic market.

</comment><comment><USER111> Big props to Tim Bray. I think I speak for everyone when I say I'm not sure I would have been able to make the same step if I were in that position. Really impressed by the fortitude of his psyche and ethical framework. It doesn't sound like this decision was taken lightly.

</comment><comment><USER112> Perhaps a little off topic but I notice that despite the huge number of upvotes, this thread is ranked below other stories with far fewer points from around the same time.

Are people flagging this story? It would be interesting to be able to see the number of flags a thread attracts on Hacker News.

<comment><USER113> I think I read somewhere that the algorithm de-emphasizes controversial stories.

</comment></comment><comment> seph-reed A site that lists alternatives for Amazon in all of its subcategories:

[https://threshold.us/c/cancelprime/amazon- alternatives](https://threshold.us/c/cancelprime/amazon-alternatives)

</comment><comment><USER114> big ass respect for this person, of course its anecdotal, thats all the evidence you will ever get. you want a professional investigation done on these guys you are dreaming. this person saw evil, no matter how much, and took their side.

</comment><comment><USER115> Genuinely inspiring. Made me realise how long it's been since someone high up in tech actually took a stand and a risk and defended their principles publically. Thank you and know that your actions are meaningful and appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER116> Let's not forget to link the FACE of Amazon [https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/)

</comment><comment><USER117> Kudos to Tim for not being blinded by the money. A whole lot of people are going to wish they'd had his courage when the history of this era is being written and our descendants are wondering why more people didn't act.

</comment><comment><USER118> You would think the (ex)VP from amazon could get a decent website together that is legible on a mobile device... He must have been the one keeping the archaic layout on the amazon website from the early 2000s.

</comment><comment><USER119> So if I get this right, now a VP will be hired that will approve of these things?

I wonder if there'd have been utility to attempt to change the system from the inside out.

I guess there wouldn't be. Then this would be the only option left.

<comment><USER120> Reading through his post, it doesn't sound like the goal was to change things - he just didn't want to be co-responsible for them.

That said, it doesn't sound like there was much more he could've done to change things from the inside-out; and even though it might not be the intention, this public statement does sound like it might contribute to changing it anyway.

<comment><USER121> > Reading through his post, it doesn't sound like the goal was to change > things

I think he did everything he could think of to change things:

"At that point I snapped. VPs shouldn't go publicly rogue, so I escalated through the proper channels and by the book. I'm not at liberty to disclose those discussions, but I made many of the arguments appearing in this essay. I think I made them to the appropriate people."

with no result, and no evident likelyhood of positive change.

Which is why he had to quit.

<comment><USER120> Yeah that's what I meant: it doesn't sound like the goal was to change things _by resigning_. Rather, it was admission that since he could not change things, and he also didn't want to be part of them, the only option was to resign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER122> [https://techgig1.blogspot.com/2020/05/bye-amazon-tm- bray.htm...](https://techgig1.blogspot.com/2020/05/bye-amazon-tm-bray.html)

link to original article

</comment><comment><USER123> This is one of the most up-voted posts on this site, and the post itself is a mere 20hrs old. Yet it's been bounced from the front page. The bias of the HN mods really showing itself today.

</comment><comment><USER124> tbray.org does not resolve from within amazon's work vpn.

<comment><USER125> seriously?

</comment></comment><comment><USER126> 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 precautions have been taken, in which case the doubts could have been resolved internally as well... But, his money, his consciousness, his emotions, his decision.

<comment><USER127> You make good point, but it can be extraordinarily difficult to change a company's toxic management culture from the inside. You speak out, you lead by example, you ask tough questions...

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.

<comment><USER126> > 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.

I'm not sure this is worse than quitting in disgust and then publishing drama and negative opinions about your past employer. At least the poor performance claim can be countered with actual past reviews.

> It is very, very difficult to win some battles from the inside

It's even more difficult if you don't even try and when everyone who wants to and could do it just leaves.

<comment><USER128> I suspect Tim has a pretty good understanding of his ability to influence Amazon's corporate culture:

> At that point I snapped. VPs shouldn't go publicly rogue, so I escalated > through the proper channels and by the book. I'm not at liberty to disclose > those discussions, but I made many of the arguments appearing in this essay. > I think I made them to the appropriate people.

And it seems that failed. What's left to do at that point? You can "sabotage" \- in the sense of refusing to do your job. You can participate in a system you think is heading in the wrong direction (and with the knowledge you can't really change it). Or you can quit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER129> cached: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wi2hPn...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wi2hPnTXhhoJ:https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving- Amazon+&cd=1&hl=fr&ct=clnk&gl=fr&client=firefox-b-d)

</comment><comment><USER130> While I don't disagree with the decision to step down from the organization, I'm always concerned that in the long run, if committed, principled individuals just leave the organization, who will be left to stand up for those who don't have that option.

The Amazon warehouse workers certainly don't have the power in the organization. And they don't have the representation at the highest management levels of the organization. So if the ones that do in the VP and Director roles leave, who will standup for them?

</comment><comment><USER131> How does resigning better serve the cause than conscientious refusal to take part in despisable activities and get fired instead?

<comment><USER132> He wasn't directly involved with the response to the whistleblowers, people higher up at Amazon were (it sounds like he wasn't VP of the entire company but of the web services section specifically).

<comment><USER133> Not of all the web services. Amazon has a lot of VPs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER134> Made money, now is the ideal time to quit :-) Similar to the google engineers who quit after working for 10 to 15 years.

</comment><comment><USER135> [https://youtu.be/Y666duJMDnQ](https://youtu.be/Y666duJMDnQ)

</comment><comment><USER136> > That done, remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off > on actions I despised. So I resigned.

You are courageous and have taken tremendous sacrifice. Although it is not much a condolence, it makes me happy to hear there are people to stand their ground for well being of others. I do not know the whole situation, but, I can hear it was against your own moral / core values. And I feel you are a great leader for what I believe, you are protecting, those around you. And your leaders have failed which resulted in this outcome.

I wonder how many people have been in similar situation and decided to leave a job (or an excuse, for one). Reminds me of Nasa's launch when there were safety concerns (e.g. "On January 28, 1986, as the Space Shuttle Challenger broke up over the Atlantic Ocean 73 seconds into its flight, Allan McDonald looked on in shock -- despite the fact that the night before, he had refused to sign the launch recommendation over safety concern ..." ) -- as well other situations which may rise from privacy concerns, security concerns, etc, and with pushbacks with "Do you have proof? Have data to support? Is it reproducible? ...). Today, I wonder with COVID-19 if there are pressures to release Test Kits / vaccines to market before it is ready or skipping of any processes necessarily as another example.

</comment><comment><USER137> looks like it hit the mainstream media: [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/business/amazon-tim- bray-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/business/amazon-tim-bray- resigns.html)

</comment><comment><USER138> Finally someone who actually cares about his workers. I wish more higher ups cared this much about us

</comment><comment><USER139> "From: James Gosling (May 04 2020, at 10:36)

Great letter. I struggle with the contradictions every day."

</comment><comment><USER140> Reports of shitty working conditions aren't exactly a new thing in Amazon warehouses.

</comment><comment><USER141> Is amazon evil because it's big or because they compete with more evil abroad?

</comment><comment><USER142> tbray.org has been /.'d (is that still a thing?).

Either that, or the strongly worded anti-defamation language found in Amazon's employment agreement has come into play, forcing it to be shutdown.

</comment><comment><USER143> Mad respect for this guy.

</comment><comment><USER144> You're a good human!

</comment><comment><USER145> Site fails to load. Hosted by AWS? _puts on tin foil hat_

</comment><comment><USER146> I don't see how quitting helps the workers he claims to care about. Many of them would probably love to have the amount of influence that a VP has. Seems disingenuous to claim that as a reason for quitting.

</comment><comment><USER147> I appreciate the candid statement he has made about one of the things that ails Amazon's leadership.

> Only that's not just Amazon, it's how 21st-century capitalism is done.

I wonder if there's any future opportunity for him in the existing set of well known names or large enough companies. I can't think of any widely known tech company that doesn't do "21st-century capitalism" (treating people as disposable cogs). Seems like getting into some non-profit that also has a decent track record may be the way to go for him.

<comment><USER148> I hear he's 64, so this might not be a big deal for him going forward.

<comment><USER117> I'm with OP on the non-profit route: if you're a relatively healthy retiree who's concerned about the future your children are going to live in (a recurring theme of his blog posts) there are a lot of activist organizations which can use serious talent which they can't pay market rates for and he'd have the luxury of picking the one whose views most closely align.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER149> 'Poor people are being treated poorly, I'm rich and can get a job by walking across the street. Capitalism is bad blah blah blah.'

Quality content.

People born with a silver spoon in their mouth are so predictably 'shocked' by how the rest of the world functions. People are mistreated? People are fired? There is injustice in the world? Oh my, I'm going to blog about it!

Have you heard of Buddha? You're in that stage of discovering old age, sickness and death by wandering outside your golden palace walls out into the streets.

</comment><comment><USER150> Will Jeff Barr do the right thing too?

</comment><comment><USER151> > Only that's not just Amazon, it's how 21st-century capitalism is done

This type of business practice is a big threat to capitalism. Bottom-line thinking is over-optimization w.r.t. to revenue that doesn't even consider those who generate the revenue. It's a local maximum that makes crummy business people look smarter than they are. Conscientious capitalism is not a socialist concept, it's a human concept. If the leaders have no empathy, people will leave, revenue will go down.

</comment><comment><USER152> 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...](https://thehill.com/regulation/labor/490805-fired-amazon-striker- demands-bezos-protect-workers-in-open-letter)). 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...](https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazons-actions-to- help-employees-communities-and-customers-affected-by-covid-19). 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...](https://business.amazon.com/en/work-with- us/healthcare/covid-19-supplies))? What about Jeff Bezos's statement on the expenses relating to COVID-19 ([https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazons-ceo- tells-investor...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazons-ceo-tells- investors-if-youre-shareowner-you-may-want-to-take-a-seat-as-he-explains-why- the-company-will-spend-entirety-of-4-billion-profit-2020-04-30))?

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.

<comment><USER153> Dragging the company into a slew of political activism creates a toxic work environment. When people take up the mantle of speaking for all of the employees when they, in fact, don't, they end up silencing and intimidating people who disagree with them because they want to get along with their coworkers.

If you think climate change is a ticking time-bomb and needs drastic action, great, go to a climate rally in your free time and protest for more environmental laws. Some of your coworkers disagree with you, they just don't say anything because they want a good working relationship with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER154> >humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that's not just Amazon, it's how 21st-century capitalism is done.

That's the part that scares me - it's not just Amazon. Automation hasn't even kicked off properly and we've already got humans being replaceable at best

<comment><USER36> I'm not sure what else you can expect in a world where jobs that require effectively 0 skill exist.

I'd prefer the "full automation" route, as I think it would be better for humans to not need to perform these jobs. But until then, isn't it a good thing that jobs which require no skills exist? Since there seem to be many people with little-to-no skills?

<comment><USER154> >I think it would be better for humans to not need to perform these jobs.

Depends on how this plays out. Either some sort of UBI future...or potentially dramatically increased inequality and much suffering by a big chunk of humanity that can no longer economically compete at all. Could go either way I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER155> Amazon is every other on fire in media for poor working conditions but they don't care because stock buyers of Amazon don't care. They will continue to invest as long as their wealth grows. This is what true capitalism is.

</comment><comment><USER156> > Fast-forward to the Covid-19 era. Stories surfaced of unrest in Amazon > warehouses, workers raising alarms about being uninformed, unprotected, and > frightened. Official statements claimed every possible safety precaution was > being taken. Then a worker organizing for better safety conditions was > fired, and brutally insensitive remarks appeared in leaked executive meeting > notes where the focus was on defending Amazon "talking points".

Sorry, but none of this is new in "the Covid-19 era". There is a long Wikipedia page dedicated to criticism of Amazon detailing _decades_ of criticism of how Amazon treats its workers: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon)

Better of Tim to exit late than never, but let's not pretend that until recent firings and this blog post we all thought that Amazon was a nice and cuddly company. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Bray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Bray) says he started there in December 2014. He must have known at that point what he was getting into. For reference, here's the state of the criticism page at that time: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Criticism_of_Amaz...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Criticism_of_Amazon&oldid=634843846)

<comment><USER157> The fear of death due to infection by a pandemic is new. The need for PPE and lack thereof is new. Firing whitleblowers in the face of a pandemic and meeting to smear them (with public proof thanks to a leak) is new.

We didn't think Amazon was nice and cuddly - but this is a good point for Tim to exit.

Jumping on someone doing a principled thing at personal cost for "not doing it sooner" is so cynical. I think we can criticize Amazon's long history of being repressive without shaming someone who publicly did the right thing.

<comment><USER158> Sure, but at the same time, it is our civic responsibility as skilled programmers to deliberately starve Amazon of the labor needed to build their oppressive systems. It is not wrong to remind ourselves of that greater responsibility, especially in the context of Amazon being vulnerable to organized labor action today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER159> > At the end of the day, it's all about power balances. The warehouse workers > are weak and getting weaker

More and more victims of trickle down economics.

</comment><comment><USER160> Just want to point out this:

>Amazon Web Services (the "Cloud Computing" arm of the company), where I worked, is a different story. It treats its workers humanely, strives for work/life balance, struggles to move the diversity needle (and mostly fails, but so does everyone else), and is by and large an ethical organization. I genuinely admire its leadership.

Having worked there, I 100% agree with this statement. I'd go so far as to say that the blame for this toxic and intolerable atmosphere lies with a single person who is not Jeff Bezos. His name is Dave Clark.

When I was in his org, I regularly interacted with FC General Managers, Ops Managers, and Area Managers. There was a humorous nickname that quite a few called him behind his back, and I think it fits him perfectly. It was Dave Mussolini. Not so much a nazi in his evil, but rather someone who desired and cultivated and enforced a pure cult of personality for his own personal ego gratification and career advancement. Amazon's "Disagree And Commit" leadership principle gets thrown out in his org and becomes "Disagree amongst yourselves if you want, but _never ever_ disagree with me, never do anything that I do not approve of, and kiss my ass any time you are around me". Subsequently, all of his subordinates adopt the same attitude, and becomes a culture of complete subservience to your master, no questions asked.

I have personally witnessed people get fired within 10 minutes of sending out an email making a suggested path that Dave Clark had already decided. The email came out, Dave Clark walked into his managers office with an HR rep, and literally within 10 minutes they were packing their things and saying goodbye.

I have been in an elevator which opened up to him and his EA, and instead of getting in and going to his floor, he told us we needed to step out of the elevator and get a different elevator because he needed to talk confidentially. He couldn't wait to get to his office, he had to make one of his lemmings take the long way to accommodate 10 seconds of his time.

The Kiva acquisition was something he pushed for extensively. They weren't even Kiva customers at the time, he just jumped the gun and bought the company. It turned out that Kiva's productivity improvements didn't scale very well at Amazon's level. They really worked well for much smaller companies, but in large FCs, their optimization and routing algorithms hit NP Complete complexity bottlenecks, resulting in much lower productivity than had been advertised to them. But instead of taking the blame for his lack of due diligence, he created a hellfire and damnation environment, regularly storming into their offices and throwing Steve Jobs level temper tantrums. He made the entire place so toxic that half (not exaggerating) of the Kiva engineers that were acquired had left the company before their very lucrative aquisition stock grants could vest. We're talking hundreds of engineers who would rather give up hundreds of thousands of dollars than deal with Dave Clark (Mussolini) for one more minute.

Dave Clark is a toxic asset. He is failing at his job. Fulfillment costs are skyrocketing, inventory turns are tanking, and profitability of the retail division is at an all time low, despite all time high revenues. He has burned through staffing so heavily that they have had to abandon entire fulfillment centers because there aren't enough people in these small blue collar towns that are eligible to work for Amazon anymore _because they 've all been fired_. He is a constant PR nightmare for the company. I have no fucking clue why Jeff Bezos hasn't fired him yet.

<comment><USER161> An article about this guy collected some interesting comments on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21818233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21818233)

<comment><USER160> Wow, I have never seen this article. I wouldn't be surprised if he was the one who pushed for this article to be written.

<comment><USER162> Not super relevant to this thread, but you came up in conversation today: [https://twitter.com/shortjared/status/1257863398433468416?s=...](https://twitter.com/shortjared/status/1257863398433468416?s=21)

<comment><USER160> That's extremely embarrassing. I would like to apologize, but I do not have a twitter account.

FWIW (not much, there isn't an excuse), I was going through an extremely rough time in my life. I had recently been disowned by my family for leaving their religion, and I had just begun to work for the guy I was talking about in this thread. I was generally a miserable prick back then, and while I can't say that I have eliminated that tendency entirely, it is something I have been consciously working on with the help of a therapist for about 4 years now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER163> I am surprised to see a high-profile software engineer take this step. It seems from the post that his motivation was mostly in protest to the company's efforts to shut-down any form of worker organization.

It's these strange ways that COVID is changing our economy that make me very bearish long-term on the economy. Businesses around here can reopen legally but many are choosing to stay closed. The customers aren't back yet and they can't pay their regular staff. If they reopen, the staff can also no longer collect the massive unemployment benefits.

It's a fucking shitstorm and it's hitting the highly-paid as well, I guess.

Good luck to OP.

</comment><comment><USER164> It's crazy how stuff like this keeps coming out, but Amazon's stock just keeps going up..

<comment><USER165> It's almost like people with morals and people investing in Amazon are two completely separate groups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> if he's so against capitalism he should donate his considerable net worth to amazon workers instead of pointless virtue signaling.

but somehow think that won't happen :)

<comment><USER166> having money means you aren't allowed to critique capitalism? what kind of logic is that?

<comment><USER87> if you made your money off the thing you're criticizing seems a tad hypocritical. he should try socialism and redistribute his wealth

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER167> Impressive.

</comment><comment><USER168> [Applause!]

</comment><comment><USER39> > It's that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of > pick-and-pack potential. Only that's not just Amazon, it's how 21st-century > capitalism is done.

Stung me the most. Capitalism seems to have such an increasingly firm grip on the world that I'm starting to think the only way out is from some drastic worldwide event (Corona?).

<comment><USER169> 21st century? 20th century? 19th?

Seems to me, this is the story of the industrial revolution and arguably all civilization pre-IR, when serfs were fungible labor units to the landed gentry. Standardize the design and production of something, then bring in labor to produce mass quantities to a certain level of quality.

Coronavirus won't change this: with 8B people on the planet, we've come to depend on industrial production for food, medicine and more.

<comment><USER121> > 21st century? 20th century? 19th?

Does it matter? We can't change the 19th or 20th centuries. Perhaps we can change the 21st...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER170> > Only that's not just Amazon, it's how 21st-century capitalism is done.

I am really tired of all these off-hand attacks on capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system. It is characterized by private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. If you prefer a centralized or shared economy, that is fine, although I was born in a communist country and I bet you have no idea what you wish for.

Capitalism is not responsible for some local injustice, corruption, or mistreatment of workers. If you think there is no corruption in a dictatorship or that communism is a worker paradise you are grossly misinformed. Europe runs on capitalism too, but Europe also has strong worker protections and ethical norms.

<comment><USER171> Also, there's an argument to be made that America is not actually truly capitalist.

The government intervenes in the market all the time, especially now. Nothing big is allowed to fail. $Trillions to keep the party going.

That's not capitalism.

Even Buffett is sitting this "recovery" out because he can see the lack of a free market.

<comment><USER172> "No True Scotsman"

<comment><USER170> That is not how you use the No True Scotsman fallacy. US is not the world economy, US economy is not defining characteristics of capitalism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Is he donating all the excess money Amazon paid him to the workers or unions?

<comment><USER173> Would publicizing such a donation help him or would you then want to know why he published the details of his donation?

Your question is one where both possible outcomes result in attacking the messenger instead of considering his message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER135> I worked there in 2004. Fired for insubordination. My team was harassed by the VP of QA, he was soon also fired, just to prove that I was indeed onto something in my whistleblowing. Larry something, can't remember. One of those super two-faced goofballs.

Amazon culture then? It was sad. Workers are pawns. The dreams of the Internet startup culture dashed and dying. I was on the team w the first Infosys flood.

Amazon is a place to make money. That's it. It's a strict military hierarchy like all US corporations. No real culture of betterment for humanity. Quite the opposite. Yes, those that got and kept their options possibly doing very well. Yes, if tech is what you live for, yippee! A better future for all of humanity: strong "no!". Stormtroopers and low flying helicoptors for any that dare organize.

Didn't you see the HR video where a plastic Jeff spews all the corporate lies and BS? Made me sick back when. I was an idealist. You were probably spared the worst and protected, given the humanist version on the surface.

There's a culture of trying to get rid of people after a few years. Not many make it over the 3-5 years mark, right? Policy of "fire the bottom 10%" thing every year, so trump up some lies to have excuses.

Anyways, better you got out before the rot set into your heart. No idealists there. The top guy is obviously quite extraordinary. Thanks for making a statement. Maybe something will break one day.

Whistleblowing needs to be kept alive. It's our only hope.

</comment><comment><USER174> Good for Amazon for not caving to activist pressure. Google's past fecklessness in this domain has come to haunt it.

</comment><comment><USER175> I don't get it.

What does he win doing that? One publicity stunt. Thats it

He could have done much more inside Amazon and get fired later.

</comment><comment><USER176> Come on, Tim. You lost me at, "cost me a million dollars".

Congrats that you did the right thing, but no one should care how much it cost you to be ethical.

<comment><USER177> > no one should care how much it cost you to be ethical

Well, sure, no one _should_ care, but from a purely pragmatic perspective, privileged people tend to hold in higher regard the actions of other privileged people. Sad, but it's how systematized injustice self-sustains. And if Tim including that detail makes even one other highly compensated executive, somewhere in the world, treat with just a tiny bit more respect the concept of walking away from golden handcuffs to push for ethical change... it's worth Tim treating that detail with gravitas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER178> > The victims weren't abstract entities but real people; here are some of > their names: CB, GB, MC, EC, BM, and CS.

> I'm sure it's a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a > woman, or both. Right?

I hope this guy got permission from these people to post their names on a public forum. Also, there's really nothing in those names to tell if someone is a PoC or not. At least one of those names is both a male and female name.

</comment><comment><USER179> >I'm sure it's a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right?

And at that point the author lost my respect. Sad, since otherwise he's making good points with a lot of merit, but if he's making that "argument" I don't even want to know what more vocal "activists" were saying.

This comes down purely to cost and slow moving rock on the Amazon side.

<comment><USER180> I stopped at the mention of Naomi Klein.

</comment></comment><comment><USER181> How many "Amazon VP"s are there, 1000? Whenever I see stories like this the majority of the time the position of the individual is embellished to make the act seem more dramatic.

<comment><USER182> "Distinguished Engineer" is kind of a big deal, title-wise. It's not something that is just handed out.

<comment><USER183> As Napoleon said, a soldier will fight long and hard for a piece of colored ribbon.

<comment><USER184> And yet, some soldiers will let it go again in order to maintain their honor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER185> If conscientious people leave Amazon it will result in Amazon being less conscientious, but it will probably not result in Amazon being any less powerful or dominant.

I also think Amazon a right to expect its employees to abide by its rules. Individuals have a right to organize and to protest, even when they're supposed to be at work, but companies have a right to want to discontinue their business relationship, that is fire, their employees, especially if they're not working when they're supposed to.

Ultimately the employees made the mistake of organizing and being loud before they had the critical mass to have the leverage needed, and they outed their organization leadership.

<comment><USER186> AFAIK in the US it's illegal to fire somebody due to union organizing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_busting#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_busting#United_States)

Therefore, the employees made no mistake if Amazon breaks the law by firing unionizing employees.

<comment><USER185> I am not convinced that the protests were attempts to unionize or that the law is clear that on if these firings at Amazon were illegal.</comment></comment></comment>