FWIW, there are lots of comments here calling you a sucker (or saying words to that effect without the name calling), and I'm here to say the opposite.
I think it's good that you have an independent sense of what's 'right' and 'wrong' for you to do, and you follow your internal moral compass on big decisions in your life. Your personal integrity should not depend on the integrity of who/whatever it is you're dealing with.
I'm really torn here. It feels like a good thing for society if everyone has that attitude of "do the right thing".
But I also feel that it's important not to be naive: the sad/harsh reality is that there are people and bodies and organisations out there who will exploit others, and will use their gains to further carry on exploiting.
Now obviously, "exploiting" here is paying huge salaries, shiny offices etc. but I think HN is generally in agreement that Amazon is one of those organisations that regularly oversteps the mark with employee rights/respect.
If we accept that, then I have a really hard time shaking the idea that responding to them making employees lives hard by continuing to perform above average is no different to appeasing an alligator.
What if employers exploit employees because they know there will always be employees who respond to it like this? It kind of makes sense. If we accept that, then all of a sudden "I'm doing the right thing of working hard for my own moral compass" becomes "I'm helping the bad guys because, because it makes me feel better".
Again, I'm aware that thinking about this in terms of "exploitation" and "suckers" is a little extreme, but thinking about it in terms of incentives: isn't this person letting their moral compass incentivise a behaviour they object so much to that they're looking to leave?
edit: for clarity, I do hugely respect working hard for personal motivation of "doing the right thing", and I have taken this approach before. But when I got older, and reflected, I concluded I let my own ego enable things which make the world a worse place, which is a bigger no-no for me personally. It does need to be balanced off against falling into an almost paranoia of "is this person/group just trying to exploit me".
Agreed. The game "tit for tat" requires you actually tit if you get a tat. The tit and tat can last a "long time" for the human mind which is not relevant to the game structure. The mind may also "feel bad" about the tit.
> The game "tit for tat" requires you actually tit if you get a tat.
My understanding is that in iterated prisoner's dilemma, "tit for two tats" will often outperform "tit for tat", so in its original setting that's not really the case.
Here in reality, of course, "tit for two tats" can be better exploited if it can be (easily enough) identified and there are more potential ways of doing that.
> Your personal integrity should not depend on the integrity of who/whatever it is you're dealing with
I disagree, because sometimes your integrity might justify their behavior. People do bad things because they think they're good, and they think they're good because people tell them via their actions.
Being a good employee tells amazon their employment policies are fair, and they should continue them. Therefore, IMO, you not only should be a bad employee - you have a duty to be a bad employee.
100% agree. Never compromise on what is part of your character build. It's not about them, it's all about you, your mental health, and your career trajectory.
Personal integrity should not ever be in play when you’re talking about amoral objects like Amazon.
When I command my computer to remove a file, I don’t think about the morality of destroying things. I issue the command and it does it. And I know my computer doesn’t care about personal integrity as it churns through its instructions. Amazon works the same way.
These companies are all lawn mowers, just like Oracle. A lawn mower just cuts grass and does not deserve or respond to things like integrity and personal honor.
While it may be comforting to think you're just sticking it to "Amazon", if you look at almost anything you're doing, you're going to see other people who are really at the other end of this apathy. Whether it's co-workers you're blocking or giving half-effort to, customers being ignored, or the new engineer that is neglected.
Is there some purely "amoral object like Amazon" stuff that's part of it too? Sure. But at least in my experience, folks who are just phoning it in cause real stress for coworkers and others, and that definitely relates to personal integrity.
Man, all of that sounds awful for those coworkers and customers. But it isn't GPs problem. It isn't their company. He doesn't employ them. He isn't responsible for their experience. Put the blame on their poor experience squarely where it belongs: management. Why is shitty management letting some underperformer ruin things? Super convenient to claim personal integrity and shift the blame to the underperformer when management is clearly not demonstrating personal integrity and protecting their team and customers.
That's a good point: demotivating people and making them leave, having all those side effects on bystanders... it's all coming from the management decision.
And this is Amazon, they are normally so careful about mental suffering of coworkers... ...
They are small in a sense and vast in a sense. You may know some people personally but never interact with them at work even though in theory your systems are adjacent.
A company doesn’t physically exist, the reality is people interacting with each others. People are not responsible for others whole experience, but certainly for their actions. You can’t hide behind non-existent things, you are having a real interaction in the real world and impacting real people. Otherwise it leads to systemic evil.
I think the prior commenter’s point might be more clearly stated as “why hold rank and file employees responsible for overall conditions within the company, rather than those actually responsible for overall conditions within the company [management].”
A person doesn’t physically exist. It’s just a bunch of cells interacting with each other. Likewise a cell doesn’t really exist, it’s just a bunch of proteins and lipids, but likewise those are just a bunch of atoms, which are just a bunch of subatomic particles!
Anyhow, corporations exist just as much as any other collective entity and have their own behavioral norms.
> A juridical person is a legal person that is not a natural person but an organization recognized by law as a *fictitious* person such as a corporation, government agency, non-governmental organisation, or international organization (such as the European Union).
Also limited liability companies did not really exist until the 19th century. It's just useful abstractions above people interacting with each other. I get it's easier to live not being conscious of the bare metal, too bad people lose their humanity in the process.
A persons conduct says more about their character in situations when they don't need to be nice, when there won't even be any consequence for not being nice.
One could prompt their local LLM with some psychopathic verbal abuse-- "Do it or I drill a hole in your skull!!!" -- you don't need to be nice to the LLM, it doesn't have feelings or memory, etc. The LLM doesn't deserve your kindness or benefit from it. But if you do this often can you really be sure that it will have no effect on how you treat people, or how you think of yourself?
And corporations are a lot more human than some LLM-- they're made of people, they pay people, they buy from people, they're owned by people. Abusing them can harm people, though, sure it doesn't always. You can't always tell when it will harm people, and your reasoning may not be the most unbiased when your own personal benefit is on the other side of the equation.
But even if it didn't matter, that no humans would be hurt. Do you want to push yourself towards the kind of person who will behave in an exploitive way when they can get away with it? Or do you want to be the kind of person who is confident enough in their own merit that they can play life on a slightly harder mode and walk past 'opportunities' that are less obviously upstanding?
People constantly set goals for themselves that go above and beyond what is required of them because it helps develop their skill, their character, or because their wiliness to face the challenge forms part of their identity.
In any case, I'm not judging anyone here-- just offering a different perspective.
Be slightly nicer to people and social constructs than they are to you. If both play by the rules, this results in both being nice to each other. But being nice to someone or something that's consistently mean to you is being a doormat in an abusive relationship. Either get used to treating it how it treats you, or terminate the relationship.
However it's not a boolean choice, since OP has a third option: change workplace. Which is exactly what they are seeking to do and demonstrates their integrity.
> When theres money on the table you don't have any friends.
That's taking it way too far.
I think the important factor is the kind of relationship involved, specifically how does a modern corporation like Amazon view its relationship with you. I'd argue that it's fundamentally sociopathic and exploitative, so it doesn't deserve anything better than what it gives.
Individuals and different kinds of organizations can be deserving of your integrity.
Integrity is about moral vision. Either your moral vision will become moral reality or it will become moral wishfulness. Reality is how you hold your morality accountable as something more than a story you tell yourself.
"What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has seen that complexity for my entire life, it's very hard to get used to that idea. It's like, 'surely this is more complicated!' but it's like: Wow, this is really simple! This company is very straightforward, in its defense.
This company is about one man, his alter-ego, and what he wants to inflict upon humanity -- that's it! ...Ship mediocrity, inflict misery, lie our asses off, screw our customers, and make a whole shitload of money.
Yeah... you talk to Oracle, it's like, 'no, we don't fucking make dreams happen -- we make money!'
...You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle."
OP is more like Schindler, who was part of the system but didn't actually produce shells. Schindler was a net negative for the system and most likely a net positive for humanity.
Your computer physically exists, just as your lawn mower. Amazon and Oracle on the other end just exist in our minds. Physically it’s just people interacting with each other. So for me personal integrity depends on each specific interaction.
My hard drive is just magnetic domains, but I still interact with files. Constructs can be interacted with. I can also bang my head on the car door, even though both are actually just atoms.
Car door and head are just labels on group of atoms, when you banged your head the collision was real. Try banging your head against Amazon or Oracle. Where do you start? The hard drive holding the contracts? The buildings? The web servers? The receptionist?
Maybe. Later than if he quits, and maybe not if they reverse their position like they've done a few times already. If he quits right away he's guaranteeing he doesn't have that job.
Seems ironic to be working for a company without integrity, drawing a salary ie your livelihood from such an organization while believing somehow your personal integrity is not already impacted by doing so. The two seem incompatible to an outside observer.
employment is just a business transaction, i don't believe people should tie their sense of integrity to how they interact with an organization that would fire you with zero notice and not even tell you why
Integrity doesn't vary based on the actions of other people.
A better move would be to use the networking opportunity to find other high-performance people who don't like the BS, and form a productish-consultingish worker-owned co-op to replace the soulless, erratic corporation with a more stable, humane environment.
