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Comment by xibalba | Hacker News Reader

It's funny, this was the pull quote for me too. Or at least this part:

> the cruelty is the point.

However, my reaction is quite different. It became hard to take this article seriously at all after they drew that conclusion. It is flagrantly false. To wit, they don't produce any documentation (whereas elsewhere the article is awash) to support this claim. No email threads where a sinister VP says, "Back to drawing board gang, this proposal isn't cruel enough."

Very clearly, the point is performance.

The author's fantastical conclusion ("cruelty is the point") reeks to high heaven of the sort of leaps in logic and interpretation that seems to be undermining the credibility of some of the West's most hallowed institutions.

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>Very clearly, the point is performance.

Yeah from my understanding from former Amazon folks it is hyper performance oriented. The outcome (as far as treating people) might suck, but the motivation seems to genuinely be performance.

It's a distinction without a difference.

I think motivation and the intent of the policy is relevant.

The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does[1]. It doesn't really matter what the motivation or intent was. If the outcome is cruelty, then it is a cruel policy. If the people who make the policy don't intend for the outcome to be cruel, it is within their power to change it.

EDIT: If the outcome is also a high performing workforce, then the policy can be both cruel and performance enhancing. I'm just arguing that a policy that ends up being $X is an $X policy, regardless of whether the policy makers intended it to be $X, for whatever value of X you choose.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

If the outcome is performance?

What absolute nonsense. You could just as easily say "since Amazon performs well, the purpose of Amazon is performance".

Anyway, intent and motivation are clearly relevant when we think about moral issues (such as cruelty). To suggest otherwise is absurd.

Intent and motivation are describing human thought process. We can apply this metaphorically to corporations to illustrate a point, but corporations can't literally have motivations. Systems theory (and thus the above heuristic) describes entities like Amazon.

So corporations can't literally have intent or motivation but they can be cruel. Or maybe we're talking about metaphorical cruelty?

Cruelty is an outcome. It can be the result of an intent or motivation, but doesn't have to.

Cruelty is a moral justment.

Made by an observer, or the victim(s).

So if a person walks under a cliff and a rock falls on them, would an observer be right to deduce that the rock/cliff is cruel, or perhaps that the entire Earth is cruel to its inhabitants?

You should think about the phrase "the way to hell is paved with good intentions" a little sometime.

Intents and motivations are irrelevant when you look at their effect (which cruelty is). Heck even the worst dictator in known history had wanted to make the world a "better place" in his own, twisted way. Some things just aren't worth their price.

Wow I didn't expect a reductio ad hitlerum in this thread.

What is the "effect of Amazon" anyway? Surely Amazon has done a lot of good. It has created jobs, it has changed how people buy things. It has also done a lot of bad. It has made it harder for small indepdendent businesses, it has engaged in anticompetitive practices. How am I supposed to "sum up" Amazon's "overall effect"?

Truthfully, I have no idea if Amazon is "good" or "bad" or "cruel" and neither does anyone else. The people making these claims confidently are posers.

So you believe that performance and cruelty are not different?

If performance is subjective (# of tickets, "impact", cut of your jib, etc) and at times applied arbitrarily by a manager, would applying such a flawed assessment to the detriment of someone's career, livelihood, and personal happiness, not also be cruel?

If you honestly believe these rating systems are objective, consistent, and applied fairly, sure performance measurements are not cruel. But I argue most of the time they are at the discretion of management - and will reflect the worst qualities of that manager.

>If performance is subjective (# of tickets, "impact", cut of your jib, etc) and at times applied arbitrarily by a manager, would applying such a flawed assessment to the detriment of someone's career, livelihood, and personal happiness, not also be cruel?

Through this lens, everything in life is cruel.

My statement was not that abstract. Those who have the power to inflict punitive damage on others should be really careful about when they apply that power. The premise of my argument is that tech org management is sometimes so careless with the way that they hire and fire that sometimes it is cruel.

Yeah turnover may be cruel but it has a point. It's the business equivalent of mass movements' continuous revolution.

I agree, the author's application of "the cruelty is the point" misuses the phrase.

The article coining that term [1] (accurately) describes the collective joy Trump fans experience at his rallies when he promises to have American troops commit war crimes [2] or have police physically abuse people convicted of no crime [3]. Trumpists believe in using the state to hurt, even physically, anyone they don't like. To them, Trump's cruelty is literally the point.

I don't think that applies to Amazon. It sounds like Amazon just wants labor, as cheaply as possible, and does not care to invest back in its hourly workforce. To simplify, the labor is the point.

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelt...

[2]: https://www.vox.com/2016/1/25/10828770/trump-terrorist-famil...

[3]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/07/2...

I think this slightly misses the point of the original phrase (which I agree is unnecessarily unclear) and by extension how it applies to Amazon.

The point of cruelty at the border was clearly to discourage migrants from coming to the United States. The cruelty was the method chosen to accomplish that goal. But the phrase, "the cruelty is the point" functions really to point out that the cruelty isn't incidental to the thing being accomplished. If it were, then when someone pointed out to you -- as progressives did during the Trump admin -- that you were being unnecessarily cruel, then maybe you'd want to try to stop. But "the cruelty is the point" suggests that the cruelty is core to the strategy.

"The cruelty is the point" would more accurately be formulated as, "the cruelty is intentional."

I disagree with both elements of this premise: 1) that Amazon is cruel, and 2) that the objectives are achievable by other means.

Performance, as I say above, is the point. Amazon pushes very hard for performance. Achieving high performance is difficult and uncomfortable. But to classify the activities which yield high performance as "cruel" is an interpretation. This article and the NYT articles it cites bend over backwards to paint Amazon in a negative light in this respect. But here's' the thing, Amazon is very transparent about both their aims and means. Amazon encourages and incentives workers to quit bc Bezos (quite correctly, in my opinion) recognizes the "march to mediocrity" as a basic reality of large orgs. Amazon offers training which will help employees find different jobs and pays quit bonuses. Flat out: that's not cruelty. It is actually a fairly humane and "progressive" approach to a difficult and uncomfortable challenge.

Implicit in these claims is of course (the fairly absurd, in my opinion) belief that there are some more effective means of achieving sustained and very high performance that are more comfortable for employees. This, to me, is the root flaw in the "cruelty" interpretation. It basically requires us to be believe that Amazon is run by sadistic people that are aware of better means by which to achieve sustained high performance, but that they choose more uncomfortable, "less humane" options instead. If I'm wrong, I simply ask that the people on the other side of the argument point to proven methods (that they interpret as not cruel) which yield the kind of sustained high performance that Amazon has achieved.

It’s fairly well known that Amazon can only hire “mediocre” tech talent precisely due to their hostile work environment and relatively low pay. Top people go elsewhere.

That's interesting - at least from what I've seen they've been able to lowball folks (relatively) and still get hires in.

Given that they can only hire mediocre tech talent, this speaks to perhaps the success of the HR management that they were able to build what looks like a market leading offering in AWS (the scale of which is absolutely huge - all built by these mediocre engineer!)

Structural barriers to entry will mask all manner of incompetence (c.f. Microsoft in the 90s). It’s important for our industry to recognize what actually leads to success instead of cargo culting horrible managerial practices that only succeed because the practitioners have first mover advantage, regulatory capture, network effects…

Seems like a pretty dubious claim. I'd love to seem some sources to support it.

Since inception, Amazon has achieved nearly unprecedented growth of revenue, profits, employee head count, customer base, product offerings, and just about any other business metric.

You believe all of this was achieved with mediocre talent? I doubt it, but maybe you're right. Either way, so what? If Jeff Bezos has figured out how to create an innovative, world leading, ultra high performance business with mediocre talent, his accomplishments (vis-à-vis Amazon) are even more admirable.

By this definition, there are no cruel companies in a capitalist society. It's a nice world to live in, but it doesn't really conform to experience.

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