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Comment by MrWiffles | Hacker News Reader

No way in hell. The way they treat their warehouse workers should tell you everything you need to know about the character of the organization in general. You can tell a lot about a society, organization, etc. by how they treat the lowest among them.

That's not all, though. It's only a matter of time (how long? that's up for debate) until antitrust - be it real action, or merely the rumored specter thereof - results in some degree of upheaval internally. While I admit this is purely theoretical at the moment, it's certainly not outside the realm of reason to have concerns that said equity may wind up severely reduced in value if you get screwed by the timing of getting that equity vs. antitrust related events.

If I were in your shoes, unless I had no job at all and was desperate for the very first thing that came along, I'd give Amazon a hard pass for every possible role, bar none.

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Have you ever worked in the Amazon warehouse? I've been both L1 (Sortation associate in the warehouse) on the floor, and now L4 (entry level SDE). I'm not going to refute your claims - it just seems most people screaming "Think of the warehouse workers!" have never actually worked in any warehouse, let alone an amazon one.

This is a strange comment: you take no issue with what they're saying, but seem to imply they can't have an opinion on anything they haven't personally experienced.

Not in an Amazon warehouse, but yes I have worked in a shipping warehouse in my early adulthood (19). It was hard work, sure, and my boss was an asshole who later got committed to the funny farm (seriously!). But I never had to take a shit while driving, I was never worked like a slave, and nobody ever implied something bad might happen to my family's jobs if I talked to a union rep either.

There's degrees here, and Amazon treats vulnerable people with a very high degree of hostility and abuse. That fact alone tells me everything I need to know about the people running that organization. They're not about mutual benefit - the real reason for capitalism - they're about exploitation, and they'll do it to anyone and everyone they can as long as they can get away with it.

Then, unfortunately, the CS job market is very restricted for you. At the very end, the parts of the computer you are using were produced in a third world country with employees working under very bad/sad conditions.

That's a pretty narrow minded view, considering I didn't pay that factory, I paid Apple. Or Dell. Or whomever. I have zero control with my vote as an American relating to working conditions in India, China, Malaysia, Pakistan or the like, and I refuse to be held morally accountable for something entirely beyond my control, especially when it's not even theoretically possible whatsoever. But I can at least vote in the US for whatever candidate(s) seem most likely to affect positive labor market changes, and hopefully those candidates will be able to leverage their office for geopolitical influence in a positive direction, ultimately contributing to positive changes in that country at some point in the future. That is at least theoretically possible, unlike your flawed notion that I have to reject all technology entirely because it was sold by people who abused vulnerable populations to create it, even though I have absolutely no control whatsoever even in theory over that.

Besides, you ever bought computer part, chip, etc. that was made entirely ethically in a first-world country paying good wages to skilled labor with rights, benefits, pensions, healthcare and so on, where the company and all its officers were entirely free of moral flaws? No you haven't, you know why? Because there aren't any and there never have been.

So compounding your error in logic here is the inescapable fact that no alternatives exist, which just further demonstrates the impotence of your combative argument and intent.

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