When I set pay, I'm strongly committed to rewarding people based on the work they do and how well they do it, not how resistant they are to me screwing around with them in negotiations.
It was reasonable to ask for the raise; it could be that the boss (or some other part of Amazon) had made a mistake. By asking, the guy discovered that the boss had no interest in being fair to his employees. That's certainly something worth quitting over.
Given he was about to quit anyway if he wasn't offered a raise, there was no harm to asking.
There's a difference between a bad boss and making a bad salary negotiation when you take a new job.
Nice post anyway, but it's a little bit like "I've seen it in the tea leaves".
Edit: typo
And finally, you have to ask for things to get them. If he just quit without asking, he'd never know if he could have gotten that raise instead. Now, he knows. At a different company, he might actually have gotten it.
I think he made exactly the right decision at each step, given the knowledge he had at that point.
Personally, I probably would have chosen to stick it out at that company until I found that second job, instead of quitting on the spot, but that's me. But the end result wouldn't be that different.
I don't want union work. When I hear people whine and bitch because they think they're worth as much as other employees...I don't know but it really makes me dislike them. I despise that mentality. Someone else negotiated better than you -- suck it up, crybaby.
The piece is at its core a whiny complaint, complaining of grievous injustice. That you try to explain it away as simple market forces is truly laughable. Yes, the attitude expressed in the piece is the foundation of unionization.
Anyway, it seems he is negotiating a better salary. The boss refused to deal so he walked. Good.