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Comment by ziszis | Hacker News Reader

Of the five largest tech companies in the world, the CEOs of four of them have come out against the Executive Order targeting specific immigrants: GOOG/MSFT/FB/AAPL.

AMZN and Jeff Bezos have strangely been absent even though he was the most critical pre-election.

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>AMZN and Jeff Bezos have strangely been absent even though he was the most critical pre-election.

Trump on Bezos:

"Amazon is getting away with murder, tax-wise. "[Bezos has] got a huge antitrust problem because he's controlling so much. Amazon is controlling so much of what they're doing," Trump said, describing Amazon as a "monopoly" and complaining that "the whole system's rigged."

"Believe me, if I become president, oh, do they have problems. They're going to have such problems."

http://fortune.com/2016/05/13/trump-attacks-amazon-ceo-jeff-...

https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/703296870521528320?ref_sr...

Seems like he's trying to keep his head down to avoid retribution.

Oh yeah, he's done a great job keeping his Washington Post quiet about Trump.

Trump is targeting him specifically for this to silence WaPo and force it to "change its tunes" singing his praise turning into another Breitbart clone but I don't think that this is happening anytime soon.

This is exactly right. Trump and his White House know it's important to control the media.

Bezos bought WaPo and that has been his anti-Trump mouthpiece for the past months. Doesn't need to make a separate statement.

Do you have any evidence Bezos is influencing the editorial direction of the WaPo? All statements I have seen of people working for or having worked for the WaPo say that there is a clear separation between Bezos and the editorial board.

I can't remember which ex-newspaper editor said this, but it was in regard to a Murdoch paper and it was a discussion about the influence of newspaper owners and editorial boards, his commment was along the lines of: If the Editor can't figure out the editorial line that the owner wants without talking to the owner, he would never have become the Editor in the first place.

Not to mention the man Bezos regards as his father, Miguel Bezos, was an immigrant from Cuba. Bezos is a pretty quiet individual in general, he always has been (but if you do some digging, he and his wife are active politically behind the scenes, giving money etc to causes they support). If you compared his public activities around interviews, it's a small fraction of that of other CEOs over his tenure. I'm not surprised he isn't saying much yet, but I'd bet on them issuing a statement at some point, once they sort out the political risks (also Bezos with Blue Origin, which is dependent on Trump and the Republicans now in various ways).

And? All these companies care about is their H-1 Visas being trampled on. They're worried about importing cheap labor, and being able to lock that talent in at below-market wages with their employees being physically unable to change jobs for fear of being deported.

Until we have reasonably well-connected people advocating against the ban, without having any ulterior motive, these PR stunts we're seeing are quite sad.

I don't understand anyone who sees tech CEOs as being central to this kind of debate, as if they have any pull with the general population. Their only followers are us geeks. They don't hold any major weight with the population at large. Sadly, you need "popular" politicians and Hollywood actors on one's side to make any kind of dent.

Right, those evil tech CEOs with their underpaid, poor immigrants. /s

http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Google - Median salary: $127,000

http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Microsoft - Median salary: $119,000

http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=facebook - Median salary: $138,000

http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=apple - Median salary: $120,000

Most of the people in America make a quarter of that. For a family of three or four. Compare the above to:

http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=infosys - $76,000

http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=tata - $66,000

And median salary is only part of the equation at these large companies. After ~3 years at Google, 30-40% on top of this with yearly bonus + stock is fairly common. I doubt the situation is the same at Infosys and Tata.

Now show us how un-stagnant wages are in STEM

Americans need to become more appreciative. The reality is that these companies are free to hire anywhere in the world.

Though I understand the need for discussion about the effects of technology over the workforce.

https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

Any thoughts on why Bezos abstained from comment?

Just wondering: Do you work in finance?

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