Response to Tim Bray's Departure

Even better is scrolling down to the comments section and seeing all the managers comment about how great they are. It's like an Amazon version of VC's congratulating themselves.

This one paragraph bugged me quite a bit.

"You can allow time off and leaves of absence. You can commit to taking care of employees if they do get sick, regardless of where they caught the virus. These are all things Amazon did almost immediately. But you can’t entirely eliminate the fear and concerns that we all share. ".

You could try not firing people when they raise real concerns about dieing for the cause of raising Amazon's market cap. That'd be a good start. Next Amazon should recognize the power dynamic they've created with this firing and work to destroy it.

It's too bad we can't see the memos Tim talked about with the disgusting comments about the workers. That would put the nail in the coffin as the 'distinguished engineers' of Amazon duke it out.

Lastly, props to Tim for not stroking his ego when he wrote his post. Boo to Brad for stroking his ego when talking about respecting low-skilled workers as humans.

As if the depth of your offense should matter. We've all read the stories, and I won't belabor them here. If this is true, then pay them well, and respect them. That's how you prove that what Tim said about how you treat workers couldn't be further from the truth, not by grandstanding about your personal offense.

Companies expect to buy our loyalty with platitudes. I don't understand how the best and brightest, sitting at the top of some of the largest organizations in the world, don't see how that rankles a lot of people, when they could easily SPEND THE MONEY to make a difference, instead of just paying lip service to "caring."

Never a word about unfair firings, poor warehouse conditions, or all the other ongoing stories.

Somebody drank too much kool-aid, and can't see the reality at the lowest paid levels anymore.

The lack of empathy or recognition of the terrible conditions warehouse workers have complained of (and have been well documented by journalists) is pretty striking.

He says "If we want people to choose to work for Amazon helping deliver packages to customers, job number one is to convince those valuable employees that you are doing everything you can every day to keep them safe. ", which sounds right - but is it appropriate to fire people for Amazon's failure in this regard?

I mean, sure, you're "deeply offended" by the allegations. But you have no real response.

What about all those reports about work conditions? You just ignore them. What about the despicable libel or slander (I can never remember which is which) Amazon heaped upon the recently fired employee?

But sure, you wrote AI software to protect workers. That makes everything right.

If they speak up and are right, you thank them and correct the problem.

If they speak up and are not right, you provide proofs or ignore it altogether if it is going to be obvious.

The only reason to fire is if you know they are right but you have no intention to correct it.

Scaring your employees into silence is going to be difficult to defend.

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 activist left is vocal and aggressively shouts down anyone who is even slightly to the right of their own views. At Amazon, most of us seek a professional workplace where employees are working towards the common goal of helping customers. These employees that Tim is standing up for were the opposite of that, distracting everyone with loud activism and probably not focusing on their own jobs either.

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

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

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

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