Tim Bray, a well known senior engineer and VP at Amazon, resigns after nearly six years, criticizing the company on his blog for firing protesting workers
’ says Google, Comcast, and Huawei got in touch Kelly Earley / Silicon Republic : Amazon exec quits after company fires employee activists Chris Mills Rodrigo / The Hill : Amazon VP resigns after firings of activist workers Fortune : Amazon executive quits to protest recent warehouse firings Wire / WRAL TechWire : Amazon exec quits over firing of whistleblowers Thomas Kika / International Business Times : Amazon Exec ‘Snapped,’ Quit Company After Workers Were Fired For Demanding Coronavirus Protections, Social Media Reacts The Bread Line : Amazon VP calls company “chickenshit,” Trump vs. Fox, and leftist Super PACs. Jefferson Graham / USA Today : Amazon VP quits in protest over warehouse employee firings Rafia Shaikh / Wccftech : Amazon VP Quits Over Company Firing Warehouse Workers - “Victims Weren't Abstract Entities but Real People” Kevin Raposo / KnowTechie : Tech Hangover: Amazon is “Chickenshit” for firing protesting workers Monica Nickelsburg / GeekWire : Amazon VP quits over employee firings, saying they were ‘designed to create a climate of fear’ Brian Heater / TechCrunch : AWS engineer Tim Bray resigns from Amazon following worker firings Tweets: Tim Bray / @timbray : Friday was my last day at Amazon: https://www.tbray.org/... [Server's running a little hot but give it time, it'll come through.] Emily Cunningham / @emahlee : Amazon VP, @timbray resigns over #covid firings of me, @marencosta and others. Says Amazon “firing whistleblowers” is “evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.” Thank you, Tim. https://www.tbray.org/... Jason Del Rey / @delrey : A VP at Amazon is not your normal middle-management title like in much of corporate America. It's a big deal. And whether an Amazon VP manages zero people or hundreds, you don't see them speaking out like @timbray just did after he resigned in protest: https://www.vox.com/... https://twitter.com/... @wajahatali : Your friendly reminder that Bezos is not one of the good guys: “An Amazon Vice President Quit Over Firings of Employees Who Protested” https://www.nytimes.com/... Lisa Bloom / @lisabloom : We are deluged with calls from workers fired after COVID safety complaints, and fighting for as many as we can. Thank you, Amazon VP for speaking out on this essential issue. https://www.nytimes.com/... Tim Bray / @timbray : A voice I respect told me that one section of the piece was mean-spirited, so I took I took the list-of-nasty-adjectives out. Don't think it loses anything except a little color. https://twitter.com/... @nytimestech : Tim Bray, a prominent engineer and a vice president at Amazon, said he quit over the recent firing of workers who protested about safety conditions. Firing them was “evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture,” he said. https://www.nytimes.com/... Brian Merchant / @bcmerchant : This is remarkable commentary on Amazon from Tim Bray, the VP at AWS who just “quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers” Read his entire statement—it may be the most astute + cutting document I've seen from a tech exec on the state of the industry https://www.tbray.org/... https://twitter.com/... Heidi N. Moore / @moorehn : Cleansing the timeline with some reminder of what it looks like to behave with principle and integrity: https://twitter.com/... Roy E. Bahat / @roybahat : When distinguished engineers resign over company behaviors (in this case, Amazon's treatment of Covid-19 whistleblowers), do the tables start to turn? https://twitter.com/... Kainaz Amaria / @kainazamaria : Tim Bray, a veteran technologist and top engineer in Amazon's AWS division, referred to the firing of activist insiders — which include multiple warehouses workers and white-collar employees — as “chickenshit” and “designed to create a climate of fear.” https://www.vox.com/... https://twitter.com/... Casey Newton / @caseynewton : Right now a PR team at Amazon is angrily drafting a press release noting that Tim Bray was rarely seen crying at work and never finished season 2 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel @harryhalpin : The father of XML just left Amazon in solidarity with warehouse workers who were fired for organizing. Right on @timbray - we need more cross-class solidarity between programmers and the rest of the world! https://twitter.com/... Imogen / @sailoremo : Read this. “Amazon is [...] well-managed and has demonstrated great skill at spotting opportunities and building repeatable processes for exploiting them. It has a corresponding lack of vision about the human costs of the relentless growth and accumulation of wealth and power.” https://twitter.com/... Bridget Phetasy / @bridgetphetasy : This statement from former Amazon VP Tim Bray is damning. For all the talk about James Damore, people getting fired for speaking out about workplace conditions during a pandemic seems like it deserves just as much attention. https://www.tbray.org/... Alex Kantrowitz / @kantrowitz : This all stems from Amazon worker protests over safety conditions. When employees spoke out, it fired them instead of listening. The company's lack of empathy in this regard was never going to fly. Now its actions are coming back to bite it. https://twitter.com/... David Sloan Wilson / @david_s_wilson : When will the leviathan organizations realize that they must act as solid citizens and role models in the construction of a global cooperative community? Until then, they will be the problem and not the solution. @timoreilly @ABiglan https://twitter.com/... N. K. Jemisin / @nkjemisin : Amazon VP Tim Bray has quit, over the cruel & illegal firing of whistleblowers. “Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that's not just Amazon, it's how 21st-century capitalism is done.” https://www.tbray.org/... Dave Lee / @daveleeft : Will Tim Bray's blog be a Susan Fowler moment for Amazon? @voxdotcom : An Amazon VP resigned in protest over the firing of activist insiders https://www.vox.com/... Ezra Klein / @ezraklein : “Remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised.” An Amazon VP has resigned over the firing of workers protesting conditions inside Amazon's warehouses: https://www.vox.com/... Olivia Solon / @oliviasolon : One of the most striking things about this Amazon VP quitting is the hefty financial sacrifice he is making during an economic crisis. https://twitter.com/... Daisuke Wakabayashi / @daiwaka : Not sure how I missed this, but wow. Here's an AWS VP resigning over the working conditions at Amazon warehouses. Never seen a goodbye memo like this from an Amazon person. https://www.tbray.org/... Naomi Klein / @naomiaklein : This is a really big deal. An @amazon VP has resigned over the firing of whistleblowers and mistreatment of warehouse workers. And he is going public with the whole story. This kind of courage is what we need right now, in every workplace and walk of life. Thank you @timbray https://twitter.com/... Cindy Gallop / @cindygallop : 'The victims weren't abstract entities but real people: Courtney Bowden, Gerald Bryson, Maren Costa, Emily Cunningham, Bashir Mohammed, Chris Smalls. I'm sure it's a coincidence every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right?' @timbray https://www.tbray.org/... @doctorow : Now, @timbray - co-inventor of XML, Amazon VP and Distinguished Engineer - has resigned from the company in protest, walking away from $1m in unvested stock. https://www.tbray.org/... 2/ Cindy Gallop / @cindygallop : ‘May 1 was my last day as VP and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon Web Services, after 5 years and 5 months of rewarding fun. I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19.’ @timbray https://www.tbray.org/... Cindy Gallop / @cindygallop : 'What with big-tech salaries and share vestings, this will probably cost me over a million (pre-tax) dollars, not to mention the best job I've ever had, working with awfully good people. So I'm pretty blue.' @timbray https://www.tbray.org/... Ashley Feinberg / @ashleyfeinberg : jay carney you're up, my guy https://www.vice.com/... Ali Breland / @alibreland : from tim's departing letter: “I'm sure it's a coincidence that every [fired Amazon whistleblower] is a person of color, a woman, or both.” last fall, google only fired trans and lgbt staff when it fired union organizers. i wonder who these companies think is expendable https://twitter.com/... Rob Pegoraro / @robpegoraro : “The warehouse workers are weak and getting weaker, what with mass unemployment and (in the US) job-linked health insurance,” @timbray writes of quitting his VP job at Amazon Web Services in protest. “We need to put legal guardrails in place.” https://twitter.com/... Liz Fong-Jones / @lizthegrey : Welcome to the million dollar forfeit in solidarity club, @timbray! https://twitter.com/... Martin Fowler / @martinfowler : I admire the action @timbray has taken - resigning from Amazon to support covid whistleblowers https://www.tbray.org/... Joseph Cox / @josephfcox : Bray said he went through the proper channels and by the book to voice his concerns first, before then resigning very publicly like this. On firing whistleblowers + toxicity: “I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.” https://www.vice.com/... https://twitter.com/... April Glaser / @aprilaser : A Vice President at Amazon resigned over the company's firing of tech and warehouse workers organizing for better working conditions at fulfillment centers during the pandemic. With this resignation he's forgoing over a million dollars in stock https://www.tbray.org/... Cole Stangler / @colestangler : Scathing letter from Amazon VP Tim Bray resigning over what he calls “firing whistleblowers.” https://www.tbray.org/... https://twitter.com/... Celeste Ng / @pronounced_ing : “At the end of the day, the big problem isn't the specifics of Covid-19 response. It's that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that's not just Amazon, it's how 21st-century capitalism is done.” https://www.tbray.org/... See also Mediagazer