
Public Letter to Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Board of Directors - aaronbrethorst
https://medium.com/@amazonemployeesclimatejustice/public-letter-to-jeff-bezos-and-the-amazon-board-of-directors-82a8405f5e38
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throwawaysea
I hope Amazon's leaders show more backbone than Google's leaders, and do not
cave to demands from a small, vocal minority of activists. This is only 3000
of over 600,000 employees - less than 0.5% of the company.

Employee activism is absurd and entitled. How can rank-and-file employees have
the visibility, knowledge, or experience to make highly-complex business
decisions that leadership has to deal with? They can't. And they don't get to
demand either visibility or involvement in all those discussions/decisions,
just like a random employee doesn't get to get involved in some other random
employee's day-to-day work.

Amazon needs to avoid the fate Google has suffered, of becoming a hostile
workplace where voices are dominated by one cohort with certain political
leanings. This is especially crucial because most dissenting or indifferent
voices are not in a position to speak freely, and face a severe lack of
psychological safety at the workplace when they go against the grain in cities
like Seattle or San Francisco.

~~~
_proofs
what a short-sighted, absurdly entitled criticism, that fails to see the
forest for the trees, because all it cares to see, and know, is its own trunk
-- the irony here is too real.

to immediately address your gate-keeping, i'll leave this as a response: (John
Cleese on Creativity in Management - SFW)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g)

~~~
throwawaysea
I don't view this as "gate-keeping". Complex organizations (or society at
large) can't operate by involving everyone in every decision. That would
require massive time investment and sharing of otherwise-confidential
information. Ultimately the resources (time/labor/money/etc) diverted to
pursuing that degree of inclusivity will reduce competitiveness and progress.

Companies make effective decisions by trusting talented people to own those
decisions (through the act of hiring them and assigning responsibility). They
might be trusted due to their expertise in a field or experience in an
industry or whatever else - but they are the ones who are tasked with taking
into consideration multiple competing concerns, determine what serves their
customers well, and decide what to do.

What I see here in this letter, and with other examples of employee activism,
is that a few employees who don't have visibility into those various complex
facets/concerns of a business decision are spinning up the Internet outrage
machine based on a single-dimension: that the thing they care about is the
only thing that matters, to the exclusion of everything else and everyone
else.

~~~
_proofs
i mean, my initial snarky-ness aside, i do understand where you're coming
from, and i definitely think you have a point. there is a reason we use
abstractions and delegation to reduce complexity and burden of responsibility,
absolutely, because it helps us (in my own words):

make things easier to reason about and helps stream-line informed decision
making processes, so we are not weighed down by too many, sometimes irrelevant
details, which as you have already mentioned, permits us to focus on what
matters -- the business logic, etc.. that's the idea, anyway.

but your shortsighted-ness fails to acknowledge the people vocalizing their
concerns probably understand this. most in the ‘professional’ world understand
this, i think. it's not rocket science nor some hidden gem of understanding,
because they experience it every day at their domain -- it’s just par for the
every-day course. however, just because we set ourselves up to ignore
std::static_cast<people>(details), doesn't mean we always should. Cleese
argues the practice is a major flaw in many business models, especially when
it comes to forming new or strengthening existing direction, which as a
process involves a lot of creativity and speculation and insights. he doesn’t
say that current models or existing models are failing, or are not successful
-- obviously there is proof to the contrary -- but he does argue they are
fundamentally lacking qualities that can make them better to the benefit of
not only the business, but everyone involved.

i am inclined to agree. the current practices, such as the one outlined in
your description, are closed loops, only letting in knowledge ‘deemed’ worthy
or relevant by some authority, thus limiting possibility -- actually, your
view almost describes a caste system in which people should always know their
place and never speak "above" their class level. and those that do should be
reminded of their place and be told they are not entitled to having such a
voice (i hope that is more me reading between the lines because if not, that's
an insanely small worldview i fundamentally do not share in the context of
what fosters growth, business or humane).

but you are not saying that. you are only kind of saying that. what you are
really saying is, by using a bunch of business logic and jargon to dress-up a
message:

people are "not entitled" to a perspective because they do not know any
better, or could not know any better (ie: lack the capacity to reason about
‘complex’ business matters, which you more or less said yourself), and that
the authorities that do know better, that are capable, should simply, and
always, ignore said people and not ‘cave’ to such
uninformed/uneducated/whatever voices (as if some of the say, engineers,
managers, researchers, scientists, product developers, salesmen and women, and
other ‘boots on the ground’ could never have any insights into direction,
customer satisfaction, product development etc. etc. etc.).

this is gate-keeping. specifically, a power-move steeped in ego and an
(overly) inflated sense of one’s self. it’s also more dismissive than it is
understanding and implies you believe the perspective is not worth having, or
worth sharing, which is just a marginalization of the vocal demographic. hell,
i'd even go so far as to say it also demonstrates a total lack of respect for
your fellows and what they can potentially offer you and your business, hence
my reason(s) for linking the above video -- you’ve created so many barriers
between you and your employees, for the sake of your business, you’ve totally
lost touch.

it also seems as though you never bothered actually going through the list of
people who are 'speaking' and their roles, which is fine. you are entitled to
do whatever you want. but if you did, then you are being disingenuous at
worse, and (i repeat) short-sighted at best.

