Translated material
The vice president left Amazon due to illegal dismissals of workers. It will cost him $1 million
What's happened
Amazon Vice President and one of the lead engineers of Amazon Web Services, Tim Bray, has decided to leave Amazon after five years of work, as he said in his blog. He cited the dismissal of warehouse employees who reported a shortage of protective equipment and the general atmosphere of fear in the company as the reason for his resignation.
With salary and shares due to him, the decision will cost Bray a million pre-tax dollars, he estimates, not counting the fact that he will have to say goodbye to "the best job of his life." But Bray is unlikely to live in misery: in his own words, he has already received offers from Google, Huawei and Comcast.
Why did Bray decide to leave?
It all started a year ago when Amazon's technology team wrote an open letter to its largest shareholders demanding decisive action to combat global climate change. More than 8 thousand people signed it, but nothing happened. A few months later, Amazon employees took part in a global climate strike, and only then Amazon announced that it would join the fight against the problem. At the same time, the leaders of the protest were threatened with dismissals.
The company has maintained the same approach in the "coronavirus era": Amazon successively fired a warehouse employee who asked management for more protections, and then the authors of a petition demanding extended sick leave and the creators of a conference call with other disgruntled employees. "Coincidentally" they were all either women or non-white men.
Bray writes that he denounced to the "relevant people" why he considers this unacceptable, after which he quit. The dismissal of those who talk about problems is proof that a toxic and poisonous atmosphere reigns in the company. Bray decided "not to drink or pour this poison".
Newsweek said that the company's practice is constant overtime and such tight KPIs that employees "have no time to go to the toilet - and they are forced to urinate in a bottle."