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Comment by jansommer | Hacker News Reader

What kind of developer is writing the sort of software that enables Amazon to do this? I can't help but feel these people are total garbage. We have so many opportunities. There's no excuse for writing software that tortures people the way they do at Amazon. Even if the developers didn't know that was the purpose for the software - then quit, stop maintaining it once you figure it out.

If you make this software for Amazon, then I hope you'll end up on the floor in the warehouse yourself. You deserve it.

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The ones who are getting promotions. This is what Amazon does. Amazon is a great big dark machine that drains the life essence and squeezes money out of retailers, workers, employees, and even mother nature herself so it can pass along the savings to consumers. How else would a credit card with 5% cash back be possible?

Credit card cash back is orthogonal to your first point. What supports 5% cash back is likely induced brand loyalty/stickiness plus financial surveillance data mining.

I don't know about schools in the US, but my computer science curriculum had a mandatory class called Computational Ethics or something along those lines, where the entire point was to teach people not to build shit like this and that we'd be morally responsible for the things our software does to society.

Should we be blaming the developer or the guy who just bought his second >$500 million super-yacht ?

Let’s put it in context. McDonald’s offers 20 minutes. At Amazon you get 30 minutes. Calling it torture is extreme. These articles are written for people who have never worked these kinds of jobs.

Just because other people suffer even worse doesn't mean we can't acknowledge the suffering of these people and see it as a bad thing.

Call it what you want, if a developer knowingly writes software that causes people to pee in bottles at work then that person is garbage, period.

When I worked at McDs, I never had to go through security to get to the bathrooms. At Amazon, all the bathrooms are outside the security perimeter. And US courts have ruled that time wasted waiting in line to go through security screening does not have to be paid for by employers.

Isn't the issue the size of the warehouses meaning that 30 minutes is used just to walk to the toilet?

> We have so many opportunities.

Speak for yourself.

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