zlacker

>>claude+(OP)
> “We support every employee’s right to criticize their employer’s working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies,” Herdener said.

> Amazon’s external communications policy prohibits employees from commenting publicly on its business without corporate justification and approval from executives. Herdener previously said the policy did not allow employees to “publicly disparage or misrepresent the company.”

Amazon is straight up firing these people for expressing their personal opinions. Amazon isn't even claiming they lied, or pretend to speak officially, or any other reason.

>>advise+ce
Uhh, I don't want to be Amazon defender, but in US most of the employment is at will. In practical terms, they can fire you for any or no reason at all. There are practicalities that come into play that have to do with unemployment insurance and whatnot, but company policy violation is a defensible 'cause' for firing.

I am not a lawyer nor am I condoning this, but them is the facts.

edit: added play

>>A4ET8a+kf
I think people are outraged not because it's illegal, but because it's unconscionable. I think the general understanding is people shouldn't have outside-work activities be held against them, maybe it's time for the law to catch up.

It's pretty easy to come up with a lot of absurd and "legal" at-will policies (e.g. we'll fire anybody who watches porn)

>>alexan+Ej
In that case, people should make it illegal. Like they did in most other countries.

The US is full of outrage about companies doing unethical things but nobody wants to make unethical things illegal.

>>Noughm+xk
Without getting into all of the hazards about legislating morality it's impractical in our current climate. I don't think this should be illegal, personally.

I do think that it would be helpful to make the decision making public though. Limited legal liability isn't limited moral liability. Rather than saying "amazon fired" someone they should tell us "Jane Doe a manager at Amazon made the decision to fire."

People shouldn't hide behind the company logo when they do shitty things to other people. And if you want to rationalize it, cool, do it with your name attached so your pastor, spouse, friends, and kids know the things you'll do for a paycheck and you can justify it all you want to your community.

>>qppo+Hn
In a company the size of Amazon, the decision to fire probably didn't come from Jane Doe. She gets stuck delivering the message though. Should we just say Jeff Bezos fired these employees? We don't know if he played a role here but surely he could have prevented their firing if he so desired.

>>brewda+wt
In a company the size of Amazon, no one gets fired without paperwork, and termination has a process. Someone initiated that process and made the decision to follow a policy.

I don't know what the policy is explicitly or if it's justified, but there should be visibility into that kind of decision making from the outside. It's in the lack of visibility that we see bad shit happen with hiring and firing.

>>qppo+Ow
It is a bit more tricky than that. Here is a simple hypothetical situation I just thought of.

Imagine you are an engineering manager running a team of 10. You got an email from your boss that the project revenue is way lower than projected, so the funding is getting cut and you need to get rid of one of your worst performers, but you have to pick who it is yourself, as your boss probably doesn't even know the actual people on your team. You have to fire them, even though you personally don't want to, because they are performing fine, just worse than all your other engineers.

Whose fault is this? Is it your boss' fault? They don't even pick the person and neither do they know any of them. Is it your fault? You've made the decision to fire that person, even though you don't want to fire them.