
If Workers Slack Off, the Wristband Will Know - Futurebot
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/technology/amazon-wristband-tracking-privacy.html
======
biesnecker
The problem with this isn’t the tracking, as many have pointed out this isn’t
_that_ much different than human supervisors, but rather the hugely limited
scope of the tracking. There’s a lot more to what makes a human a valuable
employee than can be tracked by a wristband, and while you can say all you
want that this won’t cause humans to be treated like robots, if you entirely
disincentivize the things that humans do well, then you already _are_ treating
them like robots.

~~~
sli
A similar argument is commonly used with red light cameras: they remove the
discretion of the officer, and can remove important context. Especially if
they only capture a single frame.

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yawgmoth
As companies develop more ways to ensure consistency of behavior and
performance of their human assets, humans need to develop more ways to
collectively bargain for their welfare against companies.

~~~
minikites
You can only abuse people so much before they snap and out come the
guillotines.

Source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_rebellion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_rebellion)

~~~
simonsarris
Historically almost all slave rebellions end poorly.

> guillotines

I just want to remind everybody that the French revolution was _started by the
professional class_ of the third estate: landlords, lawyers, magistrates, and
professional tradesmen, who felt they were being taxed too onerously by the
gov/king. It was _not_ in any sense started by the peasants.

Peasants are maybe good for harnessing when you need to break stuff, they are
not very good at actually organizing or starting successful rebellions.

As far as I know no successful revolution, except Haiti's slave revolution,
has occurred without support from an elite class, though sometimes that elite
class support is from the outside (like the French support in the American
Revolution).

------
ericthor
They already have scanners with countdown timers that track and enforce an
average time to scan. [http://amazonemancipatory.com/time-to-pick-countdown-
timer](http://amazonemancipatory.com/time-to-pick-countdown-timer)

This tracks pretty well with the beginning bit from the Manna short fiction.
[http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

Next up Alexa headsets with an AI to direct and fire workers.

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alphonsegaston
I often see debates here about how tech workers should or shouldn’t organize
because they’re too highly paid, etc. But what if they organized to protect
something more simple, like warehouse workers fundamental humanity?

I understand that people have had different experiences working on the tech
side of Amazon, some great, some terrible. And yet I would hope that we can
all look at this and say “this isn’t something I’d want for myself, my family,
or my friends. This isn’t how you should treat people.”

Amazon is more likely to respond to people on the AWS team pushing pack in a
concerted fashion than the warehouse workers they’ve already shown themselves
to see as disposable

~~~
logfromblammo
Organizing to protect someone other than yourselves sounds more like a
political party.

That would be a reason to join the Democrats, Greens, Socialists, lefty
Libertarians, or Communists, and a reason to avoid the righty Libertarians,
Republicans, and Constitutionalists.

~~~
gaius
_That would be a reason to join the Democrats_

Silly Valley is staunch Dem, and who do you think makes this kind of tech? It
would have been different if they hadn’t stabbed Bernie in the back.

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booleandilemma
According to a quick Google search, this story is being run by The New York
Times, The Daily News, The Guardian, Fox, The Verge, Gizmodo, Engadget, and
Cnet, among others.

I can’t help but notice it’s not on The Washington Post.

Has anyone done an analysis of the post to see if the number of anti-amazon
stories they publish went down after Bezos bought it?

~~~
Clubber
I haven't done an analysis, but I noticed they do an Amazon critical article
now and then to show they aren't biased.

------
gaius
Fellow engineers, is this really the world we should be building?

~~~
falcolas
No, but it only takes a few people to create this world. And a lot of people
care more about money and their life than a possible future for someone else.

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a_bevin
Is it just me or does this sound like they're using the wristbands as a way to
build up a better dataset to further optimize their warehouse robots?

Externalities notwithstanding, these jobs surely won't exist in the very near
future, right?

~~~
crdoconnor
I noticed a flurry of Foxconn propaganda, reported in all the usual western
media, that tried to make this argument about 7 years ago. They said that they
had robots that would shortly render something like 800,000 factory workers
obsolete.

It coincided with a period of worker unrest in their factories.

They didn't though. They now employ something like 400,000 more people than
they did.

It was just a ploy to terrify Shenzhen factory workers.

The apparent _abysmal_ failure of their "project" to replace all those people
seems to have gone 100% unnoticed in the business press. Foxconn just forgot
to issue that press release I guess.

I think back to that story and subsequent non-story every time I read the
latest news article about "the robot takeover of our jobs that's _just_ around
the corner".

------
segmondy
If Amazon can watch a grocery store with cameras and figure who bought what,
I'm sure they can apply the same tech to figure out which worker is working
without wristbands.

------
JoeAltmaier
They call this dystopian, but I don't get it. Why keep a slacker around when
you have limited slots for workers? Why not measure and retain good workers?

Somebody please try a little to see beyond the linkbait title of the OP. Knee-
jerk anti-the-man comments aren't very helpful in digging into why this is a
good or bad idea.

~~~
Clubber
Because people aren't robots. That's not how the brain works. People can't
concentrate 100% for 8-12 hours a day every day consistently.

>What if your supervisor could identify every time you paused to scratch or
fidget, and for how long you took a bathroom break?

I certainly wouldn't want to work under those conditions.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
So the best workers will be people too. No worries; folks won't be judged or
measured as robots. Not an issue.

~~~
Clubber
My point being even the best workers will need a moment now and then.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
But really... will they?

If this technology was used to find the bottom 10% of workers and correct
their behavior or fire them, it would probably be fine.

But there are people who ARE able to maintain almost perfect efficiency for
huge lengths of time. Everyone will be measured and everyone will be expected
to preform. People in the "normal" range will be made to feel inadequate.
Everyone will be getting prescriptions for ADHD meds to compete with the top
performers. The top performers will then feel pressured to get the same
medications in order to maintain their advantage.

This technology could put a lot of pressure on the system. And it could lead
to people eliminating small breaks that might be necessary to maintain their
mental health. I guess time will tell. I'm hoping companies use the idea
responsibly and think about the long term incentives they create. But that
doesn't seem likely.

~~~
ZenoArrow
This isn't just a way to find the slowest employees, this is a way to optimise
the performance of all workers.

Consider if we have three employees. Person X is the fastest, Person Z is the
slowest, and Person Y is somewhere in the middle. Consider how management will
treat Person Y. For example, both of these sentiments are likely to be used by
management to motivate/control Person Y:

"Person X is performing at a quicker rate than you, what can we do to close
the gap"

"Don't be like Person Z or you're at risk of losing your job"

If you think that a company like Amazon will do nothing about mediocre
performance, you're almost certainly mistaken.

To be honest, if these wristbands are introduced at Amazon, I will attempt to
completely boycott Amazon until they're removed. I don't work at Amazon (nor
do I ever intend to), but in my opinion the wristbands would be a step too far
in reducing working conditions, and set a damaging precedent.

