Former Amazonian here. When i was there, they made us take this antitrust training course that had things like "don't use terms like 'market share' in internal communications", but all along there were people doing this? I mean...
Sounds like the training was teaching you how to avoid leaving an audit trail rather than how to prevent illegal activity.
it is because humans use terms colloquially rather than with the utmost precision, and then it gets held up as if the person meant the exact precise legal concept. This is true always, which is why the advice this person got is also commonly given in lots of forms. For example, doctors are often trained in being careful in what they write down for the same reason.
The audit trail is always there no matter what, and this wouldn't change that
Alternative take: it is indeed for the same reason - to avoid incriminating yourself. You carry assumption that the behavior is not incriminating.
Doctors do commit in malpractice. Companies do engage in monopolistic behavior.
If such training were strictly to avoid illegal behavior, wouldn't it be better to train people in what the precise legal concept is, so that they can comply with the law? Or is behaving within the law a secondary concern.
In this case Amazon quite literally got caught by the AG of Washington state for breaking the exact laws their training tells them they shouldn't talk about. Why are you defending this?
I worked for a fortune 100 company. We are humans, and our customers are humans. We absolutely have morals - at an individual level, and those morals influence how we work
That often includes stuff that you would classify under 'morals'.
They also train people to not commit insider trading. It still happens. Does that mean the training exists simply to help them figure out how to not get caught insider trading, or to avoid an evidence trail?
You aren’t going to successfully train people en masse in something like antitrust law in the course of a few hours. That’s why law school isn’t a single day.
I’m not defending any illegal behavior here, I’m defending the training that says "please be careful with what you say" does not exist mainly to try to hide some useful evidence trail, which was the claim.
The level of cynicism in all this is impressively high, and the level of knowledge about antitrust is very low
Say that you are part of the executive team of Amazon, and want to take some illegal behavior like price fixing. Things that actually happened. You know it is illegal and want to avoid getting caught, so your communications only happen in person, and there's not really a paper trail.
Okay, great, you've set that up now. Now it's the day to day business at your company, and all different departments need to do their basic jobs to support that. You're still doing something illegal, and now it's spread across hundreds of people to support your illegal activity. The last thing you want to do is to have them writing e-mails about price fixing and kickbacks etc. How do you avoid this? Train your people not to mention certain words.
And guess what, that's exactly what they do.
Amazon literally committed a crime requiring many people to conspire. How is it cynicism to say that Amazon can conspire to commit crimes?
Your optimism is impressively high.
> Amazon: commits crimes
> OP: lol when I was at Amazon they told us not to talk about crimes
> You: These are completley unrelated! Let's stop this trope!
You cannot. As you've seen the frequency of antitrust judgements is very low, you're really unlikely to harm your company by saying anything. Don't worry about companies being “thrown under the bus”, their are fine, thank you.
No it's not.
https://www.justice.gov/atr/antitrust-case-filings
The only reason it appears to be low is because newsworthy antitrust filings against big tech are few and far between. You can still be a target of the DOJ even if you're not working FAANG.
0. In addition to also being legit training sometimes.
Run a very in depth training program on how "not" to do antitrust.
Secretly, it's just a training course in antitrust.
Gotta respect the level of commitment to evil.
Whether any particular thing actually is an antitrust violation is for the lawyers to decide. I guess they decided wrong?
Those specifically tell you what not to do to limit the legal liability of the company.
Nowhere in any sexual harassment training video have I ever seen anything saying that if you have the urge to sexually harass people to seek a support group or find another, less socially harmful outlet for your energies, not anything.
It's strictly about treating the symptoms and not the disease.
Although, now that I've thought about it, I guess this is more like, "use these methods to prevent yourself from observing sexual harassment so that you can't legally report it" so... yeah.
Maybe there are bad people in the class but you can’t assume that.
But I have been in training where they give basic dating advice, like if someone makes an excuse that’s as good as a “no.” If they are interested they’ll find a way to reschedule.
If sexual harassment training was just obvious stuff that needs counseling to fix (e.g. harassing people after having advances declined), then corporations likely wouldn’t need sexual harassment training at all.
It’s mandatory precisely because it’s a bunch of behavior that is completely normal outside of work. Suggesting people get counseling if they feel the urge to ask someone at work out on a date is ridiculous.
[Citation Needed]
I'm pretty sure don't take the team out to a strip club as a work outing is always on the training because people keep taking the team out to a strip club.
The training is “please don’t do these things at work so we can limit our liability to claims” and not “these are completely unacceptable behaviours so please stop doing them”.
https://content.next.westlaw.com/Document/I0f9fbe84ef0811e28...
Yes. I've seen that tactic before, and it is very easy to counter with the pre-message and a post-summary message with CC and BCC. The fun part is dropping in statutory and case law citations. Nobody expects actual well formed legal research, and it makes it more difficult for legal to try to wiggle out of or deflect the awkward questions if litigation ever eventually comes up. This baking in of accountability is a valuable tool to ensure people stay on their best behavior.
Annoying your bosses too much doesn't sound like it would help your career.
(And if you want to be a whistleblower, I'd recommend being a bit sneakier, so that you can collect more information.)
>If you don't want to keep your job, you can just quit, you know?
Nope. I want to work in an ethical marketplace where the biggest scumbags don't set the rules for everyone else. I can also only be in one place at a time; so as a manager and delegator of work, I'm doing my part to be as shining an example to my employees of the level of professionalism I expect them to aspire to in the doing of the work I delegate to them, as I can expect no more from them than I live up to myself. The important part is holding the bar high. If my boss doesn't like the way I do things, that's cool. I regularly loop them in on roadmap, and let them know what I'm up to so they can leverage their right to modify, halt, or start a discussion on an exit; but they have no right to be left unburdened with the eventual consequences and legal compliance risks of their own decision making as allocators of capital. Heavy is the head, as it were, and when it isn't is when things start going to hell real quick.
This is called managing/delegating up, and maintaining your own integrity. Part of this is also being open and plain with superiors about what you're going to do up front, and following through with it to the letter.
Source: have played word games to maintain standing in society
It's also partially about being able to show that you had the opportunity to learn. So if you act contrarily to the training, you can be fired and/or claimed a rogue actor.
Somewhat generalized, they also care about the court of public opinion.
Both kinds of courts rely heavily on interpretation and on words. They don't ascertain objective truths.
Things revealed in proceedings in a court of law can often be used against you in the court of public opinion, too.
I've worked at a couple "big corps" as an internal developer. JPMC, BestBuy, Experian, etc. Never encountered it.
I suspect it's only for those companies in danger (or with a history of being charged with) breeching anti-trust.
The guilty individuals are long gone, but everyone after them has to take a mandatory ethics/antitrust/anticorruption/sensitivity class each year.
But the point of the argument is still valid -- it is present often enough and not only for nefarious purposes.
Both had antitrust training for all corporate employees not just leadership. I believe —but have no data—that this is common among publicly listed companies.
There's antitrust training and there's ANY training that says "never use these words", which are wildly different.
As I stated I've never seen it, in the context of anti-trust. If your company has to have that in literature, they are already skirting and it's just a matter of time.
It's disingenuous to continue to move the goalpost out to a more general scenario than what birthed the thread. Re-read the specific issue at hand. You can go to the companies mentioned and there is no anti-trust training, for developers (of any level) that covers what phrases or words you can say. Whatever "generalized training" you are handwaving about does not contradict that fact. GL with whatever.
I just checked and it's in the JPMC code of conduct on page 4,
https://www.jpmorganchase.com/content/dam/jpmc/jpmorgan-chas...
This is just the corporate equivalent of "if you're not guilty, you have nothing to hide". You damn well do have something to hide even if you're not guilty, and that's why companies train their employees this way.
Corporations as a legal fiction have no expectation of privacy and as such all business records are free game.
Like it or not; if you're playing these word games out of necessity, it's time for a reckoning.
This is why these emails get highlighted in press releases mainly. In court, it would have to be email from someone who matters. Look at the level of exec in the emails in the Microsoft case.
Those kinds of execs are often getting regular advice from legal counsel, so usually the lawyers think whatever they are doing is okay. That's also why you also end up with emails from them later. If you have been advised you aren't doing anything wrong, there is no reason to act like you are doing something wrong. They will happily email as a result.
The Judiciary is completely free to "interpret statute however it wants in the presence of a reasonable and convincing explanation of why previous case law doesn't fit the bill". This is why even a lawyer's take should be taken with a grain of salt.
Training is a part of a robust process to ensure that your company only does legal things at all levels. It is a given in any large company that somebody will do something immoral/illegal. The real question is it one person and so the company can fire the bad person and be done, or is it the whole company and firing one person is just making a scapegoat.