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enraged_camel posted:My interpretation is not positive or negative. There is no value judgment; I'm simply stating that what Bezos said in that shareholder letter is categorically correct. Amazon was a fledgling e-commerce site back then, and Bezos was simply pointing out that one cannot become complacent in competitive markets. You're begging the question that fear is a motivator or that the work it might produce is valuable. Neither of those assumptions are a given. Even if they were, where does one stop? I bet owning the workers outright, company scrip and or whips would also be a "value judgement-less evaluation of how to increase productivity" A far more realistic motivator is self worth, job security, and co ownership of the fruits of one's labor. poopinmymouth fucked around with this message at 12:48 on Sep 2, 2018 |
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Sep 2, 2018 11:31
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poopinmymouth posted:You're begging the question that fear is a motivator or that the work it might produce is valuable. Neither of those assumptions are a given. Even if they were, where does one stop? I bet owning the workers outright, company scrip and or whips would also be a "value judgement-less evaluation of how to increase productivity" Exactly. The "fear" of falling behind should be borne by management and ownership -- the people who have the power to actually make meaningful changes, either good or bad. Rank-and-file employees should not be in fear, and making sure they are happy and therefore productive should be the ultimate result of management's "fear," since problems with the workforce on a large scale are one of the things that could easily kneecap Amazon given enough time.
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Sep 2, 2018 14:05
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yeah you guys are being morons it's a pretty basic concept he's getting at: past success is no guarantee of future success and you need to stay on top of your game. at a time that amazon wasn't any sort of behemoth and it was in the middle of the dot-com boom. the company then nearly died and mostly survived thanks to very fortuitous timing on raising more money. complain all you want about amazon now that it's a monopoly with monopolistic labor practices, but whining about a basic truism of business or really anything competitive is dumb. 199 poopinmymouth posted:You're begging the question that fear is a motivator or that the work it might produce is valuable. Neither of those assumptions are a given. Even if they were, where does one stop? I bet owning the workers outright, company scrip and or whips would also be a "value judgement-less evaluation of how to increase productivity" amazon was a dot-com boom company, it was handing out stock options like candy because at the time stock options were not a cost on your balance sheet. the "fear" he's referencing is not "i'm going to fire you" its "our company will collapse if we lose our edge and we are all out of our jobs and our stock options will be worthless"
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Sep 2, 2018 14:17
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Congrats you found the edge case scenario wherein "fear" can be construed in a minor way to be a good thing. The context of the rest of Bezo's career shows it not to be true in any other case, and if you weren't tripping over your dicks to defend a billionaire you'd understand that.
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Sep 2, 2018 15:20
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ryonguy posted:Congrats you found the edge case scenario wherein "fear" can be construed in a minor way to be a good thing. you were wrong, you're being a whiny poo poo about it, and you should stop yes, bezos is doing lots of bad things, if you want to make that point perhaps you should discuss them or the bad things he says instead of getting really mad at people who point out that the bad example you picked is transparently bad and blaming them for it. we are doing you a favor, because when you rely on bad examples to support a correct point, you are going to convince people the other way. understanding that you are wrong here is a good thing, literally nobody will care after fifteen minutes that you were wrong on the internet once, and you will have learned something. its much better than doubling down repeatedly on an incorrect point which will not get any more correct and will make it so people remember you being wrong as much as a whole few hours later instead.
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Sep 2, 2018 16:01
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fishmech log off evilweasels account
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Sep 2, 2018 16:56
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mandatory lesbian posted:fishmech log off evilweasels account Checks out.
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Sep 2, 2018 17:07
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You know who'd be really terrified of losing their productive edge? Slaves Hire me Bezos
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Sep 2, 2018 17:49
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Jeff Bezos is always wrong, apparently.
Accretionist fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Sep 2, 2018 |
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Sep 2, 2018 17:56
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Jeff Bezos routinely used the fear of job loss through routine firing and uncomfortable working conditions well past the point Amazon became a safe market leader; so while it may be stretching it to say he was explicitly referencing that in this particular quote, it is absolutely not a stretch to say it was implicitly part of a theme of fear that translated into tangible and routine actions.
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Sep 2, 2018 18:31
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tbh I’m surprised that there are people saying there’s a time and context where it’s ok to inflict non-stop fear and terror on your employees. As if working in a constant high-stress working environment like that isn’t a recipe for destroying workers, or that it’s ok to treat workers that way ever.
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Sep 2, 2018 18:51
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Condiv posted:tbh I’m surprised that there are people saying there’s a time and context where it’s ok to inflict non-stop fear and terror on your employees. As if working in a constant high-stress working environment like that isn’t a recipe for destroying workers, or that it’s ok to treat workers that way ever. If they aren't constantly afraid of losing their jobs, how else would you get them to work 12 hour days and weekends without overtime pay???
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Sep 2, 2018 19:02
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GrandpaPants posted:If they aren't constantly afraid of losing their jobs, how else would you get them to work 12 hour days and weekends without overtime pay??? Stop pretending you know anything at all about Amazon and Jeff Bezos. You are so hilariously wrong, he just cares about shareholder value because he knows at anytime the whole company could fold. This is why I willingly and gladly worked 14 hour weekdays and ONLY came in on Saturday. I had all of Sunday to sleep.
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Sep 2, 2018 19:10
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Condiv posted:tbh I’m surprised that there are people saying there’s a time and context where it’s ok to inflict non-stop fear and terror on your employees. As if working in a constant high-stress working environment like that isn’t a recipe for destroying workers, or that it’s ok to treat workers that way ever. If the workers want better working conditions they should organize. The only levers of action that can affect the decisions of capitalists are the "reduce profits" lever and the "guillotines rolling to their house" lever, so workers should try pushing one or both of those levers to achieve the change they want.
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Sep 2, 2018 19:15
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The workers were asking for it.
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Sep 2, 2018 19:28
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qkkl posted:If the workers want better working conditions they should organize. The only levers of action that can affect the decisions of capitalists are the "reduce profits" lever and the "guillotines rolling to their house" lever, so workers should try pushing one or both of those levers to achieve the change they want. On the other hand I'm exhausted from working 14 hours a day and I'm hungry. Capital is very good at swatting my hands away from these levers.
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Sep 2, 2018 20:01
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HootTheOwl posted:On the other hand I'm exhausted from working 14 hours a day and I'm hungry. I have been told from the moment I was born that work is moral, and long work hours, suffering, are my duty, a sign of righteousness. I have been told from the moment that I was born that unions are bad, that they steal money from the workers for themselves; that bad workers are rewarded at the expense of good workers; that unions protect incompetent workers from punishment for their actions; that workers are happier and make more money in places with no unions. I have been told from the moment I was born that meritocracy is real and ideal; that all I must do is work harder and be better than my peers, and then I will be justly recognized and rewarded. So clearly it is all my fault for not organizing labor.
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Sep 2, 2018 20:55
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There does seem to be something insidious afoot, since Amazon has a healthy profit margin that can be easily exploited by union-forming capitalists. The fact that no such union has been formed seems to indicate either a gentleman's agreement between capitalists to not capitalize on each other, or a more nefarious, most likely illegal coercive action on the part of Amazon to dissuade would-be union profiteers from trying to get a piece of Amazon's pie.
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Sep 3, 2018 00:19
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qkkl posted:There does seem to be something insidious afoot, since Amazon has a healthy profit margin that can be easily exploited by union-forming capitalists. The fact that no such union has been formed seems to indicate either a gentleman's agreement between capitalists to not capitalize on each other, or a more nefarious, most likely illegal coercive action on the part of Amazon to dissuade would-be union profiteers from trying to get a piece of Amazon's pie. You’re thinking way too hard about this- Americans hate unions now. That’s it
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Sep 3, 2018 00:22
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Time posted:You’re thinking way too hard about this- Americans hate unions now. That’s it If they do, how come so many new unions are forming and unions are managing to strike and get results? SV may have not gotten hit as hard by this wave, but it's coming.
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Sep 3, 2018 00:24
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Absurd Alhazred posted:If they do, how come so many new unions are forming and unions are managing to strike and get results? SV may have not gotten hit as hard by this wave, but it's coming. I hope so, but they were ridiculously unpopular for a while and still mostly are. That’s the main reason most places still aren’t. I would like to see that change too 
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Sep 3, 2018 00:26
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qkkl posted:There does seem to be something insidious afoot, since Amazon has a healthy profit margin that can be easily exploited by union-forming capitalists. The fact that no such union has been formed seems to indicate either a gentleman's agreement between capitalists to not capitalize on each other, or a more nefarious, most likely illegal coercive action on the part of Amazon to dissuade would-be union profiteers from trying to get a piece of Amazon's pie. in my state its perfectly legal to just fire anyone who even thinks unions are good 
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Sep 3, 2018 00:55
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https://twitter.com/libbycwatson/status/1036443479583408128?s=21
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Sep 3, 2018 03:40
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qkkl posted:There does seem to be something insidious afoot, since Amazon has a healthy profit margin that can be easily exploited by union-forming capitalists.
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Sep 3, 2018 09:20
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In my experience in tech, the Bezos thing is insanely common. Tech CEOs have this huge blind spot where they assume that everyone should be as motivated as they are to work long hours, and give up all notion of a life outside of the company, usually justified by saying that everyone will be rich off stock options when the eventual glorious IPO happens. The thing is, employee stock options are so irrelevant and so prone to manipulation and losing their value compared to a founders that they're practically a scam. I've had CEOs try to get me to do the "we're going to be rich" song and dance to try and motivate my employees into long hours when the CEO has over 10 million shares of the company and the employees have 5,000. Even in the event of an IPO where the CEO gets $100 million (which would be an almost unrealistically perfect outcome), the average employee gets $50,000 - certainly not nothing, but also not anything worth wasting your life over. And that's before stock preferences, early exits by executives, actually paying for your options depending on your strike price, taxes, etc. makes even that not a sure thing and far more likely to be worth $0 than the CEOs stock.
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Sep 3, 2018 10:36
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Somebody hacked his Prius to run on the San Francisco MUNI power lines. He's as insufferable as you'd think:quote:I was excited to get a closer look at the car, but when I got to Jon’s building, there was a conspicuous lack of power cables and the car was nowhere to be found. He buzzed me up to his apartment and greeted me at the top of the stairs. He was a calmer, more stoic version of the wild-eyed character I met before, and after a minute or two of the standard first meeting chitchat, I asked where his car was.
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Sep 3, 2018 13:42
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enki42 posted:In my experience in tech, the Bezos thing is insanely common. Tech CEOs have this huge blind spot where they assume that everyone should be as motivated as they are to work long hours, and give up all notion of a life outside of the company, usually justified by saying that everyone will be rich off stock options when the eventual glorious IPO happens. There were a few incidences during the dot-com boom where some companies paid janitors and kitchen workers with stock who ended up making out like bandits, and it seriously offended the SV types who hate the idea of untermensch becoming rich through no real effort. evilweasel posted:you were wrong, you're being a whiny poo poo about it, and you should stop "uh bluh heh I got you on this cherrypicked example of a single outlier" lol shut up
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Sep 3, 2018 14:36
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ryonguy posted:
Congratulations on discovering the premise to "InfoSec"
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Sep 3, 2018 14:52
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Somebody hacked his Prius to run on the San Francisco MUNI power lines. He's as insufferable as you'd think: The article is from 4 years ago, as far as I can tell. Aside from that though, that's a pretty cool hack.
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Sep 3, 2018 15:39
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enraged_camel posted:The article is from 4 years ago, as far as I can tell. Wow, how'd you solve that one?
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Sep 3, 2018 16:38
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Absurd Alhazred posted:If they do, how come so many new unions are forming and unions are managing to strike and get results? SV may have not gotten hit as hard by this wave, but it's coming.  Sadly, no. Unions have been very successfully demonized and undermined in the US. There are far too many temporarily embarrassed millionaires who think they have more in common with upper management than with their peers.
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Sep 3, 2018 16:45
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Last Chance posted:Wow, how'd you solve that one? I'm actually not sure because the only visible timestamp seems to belong to something else that is linked above the actual headline.  Medium sucks.
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Sep 3, 2018 16:50
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Somebody hacked his Prius to run on the San Francisco MUNI power lines. He's as insufferable as you'd think: That's an April Fool's joke.
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Sep 3, 2018 16:52
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http://twitter.com/Techmeme/status/1036608313558032385quote:Some current and former employees say Mr. Dorsey’s philosophical, arm’s-length leadership style has at times complicated decision-making. Mr. Dorsey is also CEO of the payments company Square Inc. and splits his days between the two offices. He generally delegates to his subordinates, but at times projects stall because either no one knows what he thinks or he doesn’t pull the trigger, according to people familiar with the matter
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Sep 3, 2018 16:57
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i read the comments 
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Sep 3, 2018 17:03
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Blut posted:
It cuts off at 2010. I think the range 2008-2018 might paint a different picture, although I don't have the time to dig into it. Remind me to gather up from here. Evil Robot posted:That's an April Fool's joke. Shows up as March 31st to me:  but I'm not seeing any other references to it, so I'll believe it.  Edit: rather, I'll believe that it's a hoax. Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Sep 3, 2018 |
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Sep 3, 2018 17:34
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Absurd Alhazred posted:It cuts off at 2010. I think the range 2008-2018 might paint a different picture, although I don't have the time to dig into it. Remind me to gather up from here. Nope. That chart provided a better long term picture, so I went with it. But there are plenty that focus on a shorter, more recent window:  Still hemorrhaging memberships.
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Sep 3, 2018 17:59
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@jack is a Nazi, news at 11
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Sep 3, 2018 18:12
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Shows up as March 31st to me:
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Sep 3, 2018 19:12
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 Get hosed. I know I'm old now because I see cutesy gimmicky poo poo like this everywhere and wonder why they can't just provide content and leave it at that.
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