An Amazon vice president says he is quitting in solidarity with worried warehouse workers fired for seeking improved safety measures during the pandemic. In a blog post, Tim Bray described the company's actions as "chickenshit" and "designed to create a climate of fear." Bray, a prominent software engineer who had been at Amazon for more than five years, says he "snapped" after the company's April 16 firing of two workers who started a petition and organized a virtual event for employees to discuss their concerns. "VPs shouldn’t go publicly rogue, so I escalated through the proper channels and by the book," he says. "That done, remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised. So I resigned." More:
- A "vein of toxicity." Bray says Amazon is excellent at spotting business opportunities, but has a " corresponding lack of vision about the human costs of the relentless growth and accumulation of wealth and power." The firings, he says, are " evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison."