Daily Archives: June 23, 2021

A bipartisan effort in the U.S. House of Representatives seeks to check the power of four tech giants: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. That check of power could happen with a bill called the Ending Platform Monopolies Act. If it passes, it has the potential to break up Amazon.

Seattle Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal is the vice-chair of the House antitrust Subcommittee. She told KUOWs Kim Malcolm why she sponsored the bill.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Kim Malcolm: What is the problem that this bill is trying to solve?

Rep. Jayapal: It's really a structural solution to a structural problem. It says that you can't have conflicts of interest that arise if you own a platform and if you then have multiple lines of business that engage on that platform. It would be sort of like being the referee on a field and at the same time playing for one of the teams.

This says you can't do that anymore. These dominant platforms have monopoly power and have this almost irresistible urge to compete with the very businesses that are on their platform trying to also make it. This is ultimately saying that it would make it unlawful to both be a platform and then also compete on that same platform.

So when it comes to a company like Amazon owning a marketplace, and then selling their own products on that marketplace, that is an unfair advantage for them?

That's right. And we have to understand that this is also about all of the data that's collected from those third-party sellers that are on the Amazon platform. It isn't just like going into a grocery store and you see the Safeway Select brand, but you also then have other competitors. They don't have the ability to collect data in the way that Amazon does, and they don't also have the ability to set the price for those products in the way that Amazon does.

They don't have, for example, the ability to say you're going to buy this product because it is in the buy box. That's something that Amazon does. And of course, the most important thing, this is not just about Amazon, right? This is really about all monopolies in the tech sector that hurt small businesses, hurt consumers, and hurt competition.

Amazon has been pushing back on this, saying that this kind of regulation would hurt the third-party sellers on its platform, and that independent sellers benefit from being there, even as Amazon sells its own products at the same time. What do you say to that?

These are similar arguments to what was said at the time that Ma Bell was broken up into the Baby Bells, or even initially when the antitrust lawsuits were filed against Microsoft. I think what we've seen in all these situations is that preserving antitrust regulations strongly, and not allowing dominant companies to have this ability to abuse their dominant power, is actually what allows other businesses to thrive.

There are many small businesses who have come and testified to us, and I think some that were quoted in The Seattle Times the other day as saying, 'Look, we're between a rock and a hard place because this is such a dominant platform that we have to sell on the platform if we want to even make it, but the terms of our selling are completely unfair to us as small businesses.' That reflects what we've heard over and over again.

At the end of the day, we actually believe that strong antitrust legislation like these bills that we're putting forward are what are going to save small businesses, save competition, and it's what we found in the past when fears were put out about the Baby Bells. That's not what happened in the telephone industry. It's not what happened when Microsoft had to regulate its activity through the lawsuit.

In fact, what we've heard from Microsoft is that that change in its business model is actually part of what allowed many of these companies, Amazon, Facebook, others, to grow and thrive. We will have that opportunity for small businesses across the board.

Congresswoman, you've also argued that your bill touches on the future of journalism and a free press here in the United States when it comes to platforms like Google. Can you explain that for us?

Yes. This is a really important issue because we have seen the death of so many independent newspapers across the country. We are fortunate in Seattle to have one of the larger independent newspapers with The Seattle Times. But we have seen the effects of this when we see Google both running the marketplace while also acting on the buy-side and the sell-side all at the same time for advertising revenue, which is so critical to the functioning of independent newspapers.

It's an issue that is very close to home because The Seattle Times and other independent newspapers simply can't survive if they have to cope with a platform like Google controlling everything and taking away the revenue that is so necessary for these independent newspapers to survive.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.

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Reigning in tech giants could happen with Jayapal-sponsored antitrust bill - KUOW News and Information

A CCTV security camera is seen in front of the Alibaba Group headquarters on April 10, 2021, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province of China.

Long Wei | Visual China Group | Getty Images

BEIJING The Chinese government's crackdown on big technology companies will likely last for a few years, which means those stocks aren't a buy for now, a BlackRock portfolio manager said Wednesday.

Since autumn, regulators have ramped up scrutiny on the country's tech giants such as Alibaba and Tencent. After years of relatively unrestrained rapid growth, becoming some of the biggest companies in the world, the corporations now face fines and new rules aimed at curbing monopolistic practices.

"This regulatory cycle is long-lasting compared to 2018," Lucy Liu, portfolio manager for global emerging markets equities at BlackRock, said during a mid-year Asia investment outlook event.

In contrast with that period of increased scrutiny, which ran for about six months to a year, she said that this time, "we think it's going to be a multi-year cycle."

BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, is neutral on Chinese stocks overall, and only recommends buying specific sectors or stocks.

In tech, Liu said the big companies' earnings are affected not just by regulation but also competition. She noted new trends in e-commerce have prompted companies to invest more in infrastructure, which has a lower initial return on investment.

As a result, BlackRock plans to "stay a little bit away from the large, dominant platforms for a little bit longer," Liu said.

Chinese tech stocks have generally traded lower over the last several months. Some of the stocks briefly rose in April after news that Meituan and some other tech companies had issued pledges to comply with anti-monopoly rules.

Instead, Liu said the firm prefers small and mid-sized internet companies since they have less exposure to regulatory risks and could still see significant user growth.

She particularly likes companies operating in areas such as short video and livestreaming. Liu did not name specific stocks in her presentation.

One of the few publicly listed Chinese short video companies is Kuaishou, up about 70% since its IPO in February but down roughly 25% over the last 60 trading days.

The stocks of Chinese tech giants are among the largest publicly traded companies in the world.

For example, Tencent is the largest stock listed in Hong Kong by market capitalization, worth roughly the equivalent of $716.63 billion. Its shares are up about 3% so far this year.

The U.S.-listed shares of Alibaba are down about 9% during that time.

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China's crackdown on big tech will last for a while, BlackRock says. Here's what they're buying instead - CNBC

The internet has dramatically improved life for millions of Americans over the last quarter-century, but it has also brought new challenges. One major problem is that a handful of massive tech companies controls what we can say, read, buy or view online. These companies have consistently shown that they are politically biased, with many of their actions targeting conservative speech and shutting down important debates.

For example, until recently, Facebook was restricting content that suggested COVID-19 may have originated in a lab a theory that more and more observers now believe to be true. Facebook has also announced that former President Donald Trump who is already banned from Twitter will be suspended from Facebook for two years, making it harder for him to communicate with the public. In March, Amazon delisted a bestselling book called When Harry Became Sally, which has helped many Americans think more critically about transgender ideology. And last fall, Twitter suppressed until after Election Day a New York Post story that included damaging allegations about Joe Biden and his son Hunter. These are just a few examples of Big Tech using its enormous power to silence voices and information they do not like.

Free speech marks a free people

Our nation has always celebrated the free exchange of ideas. We have always understood that free and open debate allows the best ideas to emerge and carry the day. Our tradition of free speech is what gave rise to the movement to abolish slavery, the cause of womens suffrage, civil rights and most recently, the pro-life movement. In the past, our civil discourse took place mostly in person and through a multitude of local newspapers, television stations and community associations. Yet today, much of this activity occurs online through platforms that are policed by people with an obvious political bias. I fear our culture of free speech will erode unless Big Tech companies are held accountable for their actions.

Forcing big tech to respect

Tech companies are private organizations and have wide discretion to set their own policies, but they should not get to discriminate against users while continuing to enjoy special privileges under the law. Currently, federal law considers tech companies like Facebook and Twitter to be neutral platforms, giving them protection from being sued over content posted on their platforms. My feeling is that if these companies ever faced the possibility of such lawsuits, they would likely abandon their left-wing bias and start providing more balance in viewpoints.

Recently I introduced legislation that would put pressure on tech companies to treat their users in a neutral manner. This legislation, called the PRO-SPEECH Act, would bar platforms from discriminating against users based on their ideology and would require them to be transparent in how they manage or censor content. It would also require the Federal Trade Commission to investigate claims of viewpoint discrimination by social media companies, giving users a means of recourse when they have been wrongly censored for their views.

This legislation strikes a good balance between respecting the rights of private companies and protecting free speech. Fundamentally, it would force tech companies to think twice before censoring conservatives or silencing alternative narratives under the guise of fake news. It is unfortunate that Big Techs iron grip on our public discourse has forced Congress to step in and defend the rights of users, but I am committed to doing what is needed to preserve our great tradition of free speech in the digital age.

ROGER WICKER is a U.S. Senator from Mississippi. Readers can contact him at 330 W. Jefferson St., Tupelo, MS 38803 or call (662) 844-5010.

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ROGER WICKER: Tech giants continue to silence conservative voices - Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal

Policy, Guns and Money: Australias submarines, mapping Chinas tech giants and post-Covid nation-building

Arguably the biggest submarine program in the Western world outside of the United States, Australias submarine development continues to raise concerns about cost. ASPIs Michael Shoebridge and Marcus Hellyer examine the outcomes of the recent Senate estimates hearings in relation to the underwater program, and what the life-of-type upgrades mean for the submarines future.

ASPIs Mapping Chinas Tech Giants project provides an overview of the global impact of Chinese technology companies. Tom Uren is joined by Fergus Ryan and Daria Impiombato for a discussion on how US sanctions have impacted the growth of these organisations, and how the Chinese Communist Partys political influence creates privacy concerns.

In a conversation on nation-building, ASPIs John Coyne and Gill Savage discuss how Australia can rethink its approach to infrastructure in a post-Covid-19 environment. Using the Port of Townsville as an example, they discuss how greater cooperation between regional, state and national governments can achieve economic, social and environmental prosperity.

Author

Presented byOlivia Nelson with analysis from Michael Shoebridge, Marcus Hellyer, Tom Uren, Fergus Ryan, Daria Impiombato, John Coyne and Gill Savage. Image: Department of Defence.

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Policy, Guns and Money: Australia's submarines, mapping China's tech giants and post-Covid nation-building - The Strategist

GameStop stock has had an impressive year, gaining almost 1,200% year-to-date and kicking off what has become a movement among retail investors. The stock has also reached a significant milestone that could qualify it to trade in the same index as some technology behemoths including Apple, Amazon, Facebook and even Tesla the Russell 1000.

GameStop needed to have a market cap of USD 5.2 billion as of May 7 to be eligible, a standard that it passed with flying colors. On that date, its value was roughly USD 12 billion. The Russell 1000 index is reportedly set to be reorganized on June 25. To be fair, GameStops weighting would likely be small in comparison to the tech giants.

Still, should GameStop gain entry into this popular index, it could provide some long-term stability to the stock price. That is because index funds are a popular choice in retirement accounts via ETFs or mutual funds. As a result, GME could become part of the portfolio of many future retirees who might otherwise not hopped on the meme-stock bandwagon.

When Tesla joined the Russell 1000 more than a decade ago, the stock was trading at less than USD 5 per share. Today the stock is trading at more than USD 616 per share. Thats not to say that the stocks bull run has been a function of its membership in the Russell index. But it is a good sign and an indication of how beneficial it can be to be part of the index club.

In addition, Tesla recently joined the S&P 500 index on Dec. 21, 2020. To join the S&P 500, a stock must boast a market cap of at least USD 11.8 billion as one of the criteria. GameStop meets that criteria with a market cap of more than USD 16 billion. Perhaps it wont be long before the market is talking about GME not only joining another Russell index (it currently trades in the smaller-cap Russell 2000) but also the benchmark U.S. stock market index, the S&P 500.

Meme stocks have proven to be some of the best bets of the year. Stocks like GameStop and AMC Entertainment have gone parabolic and gained comparisons to cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. On the commodities front, lumber has shed more than 40% of its value since hitting a multi-year high in early May. The gold price has managed to rise a modest 1.6% since then.

Story continues

GameStop shares are tacking on more than 1% today on the index chatter.

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

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GameStop Poised to Trade With Tech Giants in Russell 1000 - Yahoo Finance

Child safety campaigner Ian Russell has warned that children should not have to pay the price for technology companies failure to make the necessary changes to protect them from harmful content.

Mr Russells 14-year old daughter Mollytook her own life in November 2017after viewing suicide and self-harm content on Instagram, leading him to say the app had helped kill my daughter.

He branded tech companies a disgrace for what he sees as a repeated failure to take action to protect children from damaging content.

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Its not the kids fault that this content is there and its not kids that should have to pay the price for it, Mr Russell told i.

As the years tick past the more that belief seems to be confirmed, sadly, that there is a reluctance for big platforms to change simply because they used to doing things a certain way.

Maybe thats not a surprise, but when it so profoundly and detrimentally affects young peoples lives as digital technology can I dont think its really ever intended to, but it does and theyre powerful and rich and they dont take sufficient steps quickly enough to deal with it, then I think its just a disgrace.

Mr Russell, who founded suicide prevention charity the Molly Rose Foundation, is working with child online safety group 5Rights Foundation on new campaign Twisted Toys to highlight the stark differences between what is not accepted offline and what is allowed to happen online.

The campaign includes parody videos including surveillance camera-equipped teddy bear Share Bear that collects childrens data and the Stalkie Talkie, a walkie talkie that connects children to random adults to demonstrate how unacceptable online dangers would be in a physical toy.

Mr Russell recalled the horrible dawning he experienced in the weeks following Mollys death about the dangers of the online world, compared to the comparative protections in place in their offline lives.

When we discovered what Molly had been seeing and liking and viewing online, despite being the youngest of three daughters, growing up in a house when we talked about e-safety and all those things that people do to protect their children, we were shocked and horrified, he said.

I dont think we were naive enough to suspect the internet didnt contain such horrors, but we didnt realise they were so widely and easily available. We didnt realise that the platforms were pushing them algorithmically to children, and even sending emails to connect Molly to other harmful content.

We didnt think that those companies could behave like that because its just so illegal and immoral, and yet theres nothing to stop them. And they did, and in some case, still do behave like that.

Research conducted by 5Rights found that 90 per cent of 982 parents surveyed said they thought the internet could be harmful to children, while 80 per cent said they did not trust tech companies to protect young people online.

An additional 71 per cent said they thought the Government could be doing more to ensure child safety on the internet.

Technology and social media companies should adopt a mandatory safety-by-design approach when building or running anything that could affect a child, Baroness Beeban Kidron, crossbench peer in the UK House of Lords and chair of the 5Rights Foundation.

I think we are at a last resort, she said. This should have been the last resort a decade ago. This shouldnt be happening to children and we must not allow or accept it.

The work of Baroness Kidron and her peers, including the development of the Age Appropriate Design Code, informs the expansive work we do every day to protect the safety and privacy of young people using our apps, a Facebook spokesperson said.

Thousands of parents work at Facebook, and we feel a collective responsibility to make sure that young people can enjoy all the benefits of our apps while protecting them from harm.

While Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, made changes to its community guidelines after details of Mollys death were made public in 2019, includingbanning graphic self-harming images and videoand adding sensitivity screens to blur images, Mr Russell has previouslt said there is still too much harmful content available on the platform.

Some of the platforms have made attempts to remove harmful content, but its still there and still too easy to find. I accept its a very difficult task, but Im sure there must be something more that could be done, he told i in March.

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Molly Russells father warns children paying the price as tech giants fail to prevent harmful content - iNews

Last year, Taiwan was held up as a model example of how to control the pandemic. Now, with a rising case-count threatening the countrys vital tech industry in the middle of a global semiconductor shortage, its government is letting its powerful corporations buy COVID-19 vaccines on its behalf. Its an unusual workaround, but one that makes sense given Taiwans complaints that China scuppered earlier deals.

As reported by Nikkei Asia and Reuters, the Taiwanese government said on Friday that it would allow chipmaker TSMC and Terry Gou, billionaire founder of tech assembly giant Foxconn, to negotiate on its behalf with vaccine makers. Both TSMC and Gou (who will be working through his Yonglin Education Foundation) said they hope to buy around 5 million vaccines each from Germanys BioNTech and donate them to the government.

Whether or not this approach will succeed is unclear. The government thinks that it may be easier for companies to reach out to vaccine makers or distributors to lower the geopolitical interference, one source told Nikkei Asia.

But Taiwans cabinet spokesman Lo Ping-cheng was more cautious, telling reporters: Even if Mr. Gou can discuss this with the original manufacturer or an agent, can he get them to sell sufficient vaccines? Honestly, nobody knows.

TSMC and Foxconn are lynchpins of both global tech supply chains and Taiwans economy. Together, the firms account for more 30 percent of islands stock exchange by market capitalization, according to Nikkei. The global pandemic has created a worldwide shortage in chip supplies, leading to rising prices and missing stock for everything from PS5s to Teslas. Such problems could worsen if cases spike among Taiwans workers, forcing factory shutdowns.

Taiwan has a population of around 23 million, but only around six percent of the islands inhabitants have received even a single dose of coronavirus vaccine, reports Reuters. The work of vaccinating the island has been complicated by geopolitical tensions. China considers the democratically-governed Taiwan to be a breakaway province that it wishes to exert full political control over. The US is one of the biggest obstacles to this integration.

Taiwans own government and sympathetic US senators say China has interfered with the islands attempts to secure vaccines. In response, the US has promised to donate 750,000 shots to Taiwan in very short order while Japan has already exceeded this promise, donating 1.24 million doses of AstraZenecas vaccine earlier this month.

With cases of coronavirus rising, though, it seems Taiwans government is unwilling to simply wait on the largesse of its geopolitical allies. Instead, its hoping that its own corporations can assist in purchasing the much-needed shots.

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Taiwans government is letting its tech giants TSMC and Foxconn buy COVID-19 vaccines on its behalf - The Verge

Image source: Getty Images

While the Australian tech sector is home to some high quality companies, it still pales in comparison to the US tech sector.

Luckily for investors, the emergence of exchange traded funds (ETFs) in recent years means it is incredibly easy now to gain exposure to tech stocks on Wall Street.

For example, the two ETFs listed below allow investors to buy a slice of some of the largest and highest quality tech companies in the world. Heres what you need to know about them:

The first ETF to consider is the BetaShares Global Cybersecurity ETF. This fund gives investors exposure to a total of 40 cybersecurity companies. This includes industry giants and emerging players in the rapidly growing sector.

Among the companies youll be owning a slice of are Accenture, Cisco, Cloudflare, Crowdstrike, Fortinet, Okta, Proofpoint, Splunk, and Zscaler.

The index the fund tracks has generated an average annual return of 20.1% over the last five years. This would have turned a $10,000 investment into ~$25,000. And given how demand for cybersecurity services continues to grow, the next five years look very positive for the companies in the fund.

Another ETF from BetaShares to consider is theBetasharesNasdaq 100 ETF.This extremely popular ETF gives investors access to 100 of the largest (non-financial)companieson the famous Nasdaq stock exchange.

This means youll be getting exposure to tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft,Netflix,Nvidia, Tesla, and Google parent Alphabet.

As with the BetaShares Global Cybersecurity ETF, the BetasharesNasdaq 100 ETF has been generating strong returns for investors in recent years. Since this time in 2016, the ETF has provided investors with a return of 23.6% per annum. This would have turned a $10,000 investment into ~$28,850.

As a comparison, over the last five years theS&P/ASX 200 Index(ASX: XJO) has generated a total average return of 10% per annum.

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These ASX ETFs give investors access to global tech giants - The Motley Fool Australia

Workers in an Amazon distribution center. (Amazon Photo)

Amazons direct workforce rose by 500,000 people in 2020 thats half a million people to nearly 1.3 million employees. The extraordinary hiring, supporting the rapid expansion of Amazons warehouse and delivery operations, raised the natural question: what would be the consequences of all that growth?

An eight-month New York Times investigation, published this week, provides much of the answer, telling the stories of warehouse workers caught up in an unforgiving, error-prone system that struggled to keep pace with Amazons growth, the unique challenges of the pandemic, and unprecedented customer demand.

The piece reveals the limitations of Amazons automated HR technology, but it also demonstrates the impact of policy decisions by Amazon executives, including founder Jeff Bezos and operations-leader-turned-consumer chief Dave Clark.

Among them, according to the story: a conscious decision to encourage turnover and limit upward mobility among hourly warehouse workers.

Karen Weise, the Seattle-based New York Times tech reporter who reported the story with her colleagues, Jodi Kantor and Grace Ashford, speaks with us about their key findings on this episode of Day 2, GeekWires podcast about everything Amazon.

Listen above, and keep reading for highlights, edited for brevity and clarity.

Todd Bishop: How would you describe what you found in terms of the practical realities of these systems, the impact of all this growth, and the policies that enacted these systems in the first place?

Karen Weise: We were really trying take a step back and look, overall, at Amazons employment model. Theres been a lot of reporting about safety issues at Amazon and things like that, and the company has begun to really address those. But we wanted to look at how is it as an employer broadly.

We found that a lot of the things that it developed when it was smaller could be more closely managed. But as you scale as fast and as much as it has, they really have been under strain. Its moved to a very technologically driven work environment. So you have that in everything from the productivity monitoring software to the HR systems. When youre moving as fast as they are, and growing as fast as they are, its really become harder to implement that with precision and care.

One example is Amazons productivity tracking. Theres this mythology that you cant go to the bathroom in the warehouse, and thats because of this idea of called time off task, which means Amazon tracks every moment youre not actively producing, essentially, youre not scanning a product, for example. You can go to the bathroom. But this is a mythology that is developed from a real fear, though, of people feeling constantly monitored.

Time off task was designed to identify operational impediments, to say, OK, if this machine keeps breaking down, and creates all this time off task, lets fix the machine or move this product here, or whatever it may be. But the way it has become translated to employees at this point, at this scale, with all these managers implementing it, is that its this surveillance technique.

Very, very few people actually get fired for time off task less than 1%. But it has this overarching effect on the stress in the work environment, because youre now translating it through so many people.

And then you also have people who are hired now by machine, functionally. They dont interview warehouse workers; [prospective hires] fill out a learning assessment. The kind of engagement that you might get with someone when youre actually interviewing you not only learn about the prospective employee, but the employee learns about the work environment you miss that human connection.

One of the overall takeaways from the story is that its a numbers game at this point. You have this incredibly high churn; you have 150% turnover a year, roughly. When youre moving through that many people, it just creates a lot of chaos and unevenness.

TB: It seemed like a lot of this was just unintended consequences. But then you went into the executive ranks. One of the most interesting things about this piece, I think, was that you talked with a couple of highly placed former human resources and technology leaders, and identified them by name, not unnamed sources. And they detailed the fact, for example, that Amazon purposely limited upward mobility among its warehouse workers, which is notable in part because of the racial makeup of the workforce, largely people of color. This, to me was one of the key takeaways.

There was also a story that came out earlier this week from Recode that simultaneously detailed additional problems with diversity, equity, and inclusion in Amazons workforce. How would you describe the intentionality of these systems? Did you largely see things in your reporting that were the direct and purposeful result of decisions made by management? Or were they inadvertent things that just happened randomly?

Weise: Theres both. We have an example of a woman who was fired for a single bad day because she had too much time off task. She was a top performer. But it wasnt an erroneous firing. That was the policy at the time, that you could be fired for what happens on a single day. Amazon just announced changes to that specific policy about a week ago. We have been asking about that example and this topic for months. They claim the change has been in the works for months.

We also found that Jeff Bezos had this idea, this belief, that a disgruntled workforce was a threat to Amazon, not necessarily because of unionization. Unionization was an indicator of problems, not the problem. According to David Niekerk, the long-serving vice president who built the HR operations for the warehouses, Jeff Bezos thinks that people are essentially inherently lazy. The phrase that he would say is, essentially, people would expend the least amount of energy necessary to do what they want or need. That is a core idea, actually, of all of Amazon, when you think about it: the whole reason we click is because its easier than schlepping to the market or going to four stores to find the dongle for the computer.

Jeff Bezos felt that basically Amazon wanted people who would go above and beyond. This is not just in the warehouse. You see this in the whole bar-raising approach in the corporate environment. But he felt that people would become disengaged over time and wouldnt go that extra mile, and it would become a march to mediocrity. Thats why, instead of giving people pay raises over longer periods of time, they stop after three years. Career Choice is a program to get people to essentially leave Amazon. Theres something called the offer, which is paying people thousands of dollars to leave.

Its an interesting decision. You could say, Im going to invest my resources and say, how do we prevent that three-year cliff? How do we make people feel extra engaged when theyre here longer? as opposed to saying, OK, theyre disengaged, lets get them out and get a new batch of people in.

So in some sense, you have a philosophical push for it. But in another sense, we did just find straight-up errors and mistakes. We had a guy who was on an approved leave, who was fired and wrote these pleading emails into this HR void, saying, please know this, I would really like to keep my job. So thats why we used the word inadvertent firing. It wasnt the intent. But it was still there; it still happened.

TB: Amazon, in its response to you, on a variety of fronts, said that many of the issues were outliers, that they were the exceptions to the rule. I recognize that youre being very factual in this story. Can you give me a sense, without giving a qualitative opinion on Amazons statement, for whether what you saw were outliers?

Weise: There are some sentiments that were very common. For example, Im in these employee Facebook groups, these associate Facebook groups, and I dont use them to look for individual examples. I look to see, what do people talk about a lot? What comes up regularly? We had issues that we even brought to fact-checking with Amazon as we went through this process, and then we decided, you know what, that is too one-off; we dont hear that complaint that frequently. And so we took them out of the story. Yes, the specific examples are singular. But we tried to pick themes that we heard consistent problems with. Thematically, the issues were common.

TB: We have seen, in recent weeks and in recent months, steps by Amazon to address these things. You mentioned the change in the time-off-task protocol, which is going to be looking at a longer timeframe. Somebody who has a bad day is not going to be punished with termination because of their time-off-task metric. You also have Jeff Bezos saying in his final shareholder letter as CEO that he wants Amazon to become Earths best employer. Whats your sense of the ability or the willingness inside Amazon at this point to make real change on these issues?

Weise: People externally dont understand why Jeff saying he wants to make Amazon Earths best employer is a big deal, because it sounds like a PR statement. But you look at these shareholder letters, and theyre prescient about what the company cares about. Since then, weve learned more about Amazons safety response in the warehouses.

But its not clear what he means by Earths best employer. They have announced some pay raises, but thats the tool that theyve used in the past to improve employment, or the most prominent or public tool theyve used. And its also a labor-market response.

At the same time, you have Andy Jassy stepping up as CEO, who while part of the senior leadership team was in a totally different part of Amazons business. So how he approaches this and thinks about it, I have no idea, frankly. Hes been running Amazon Web Services, which as you know, is Amazonian, but its really its own operation, in many ways. And Dave Clark, who has been essentially the architect of Amazons operations, is now the CEO of the consumer business. So does he have a reckoning in some form? I dont know.

I think one of the major factors that could create a change is the labor market and Amazons growth needs. One of the fascinating things I found in reporting this is that people kept describing to me, essentially, a palpable fear of running out of workers, that this is an existential problem. That not only is the growth demand so big, but the turnover means you need this endless stream. I definitely hear from workers who leave and come back and leave and come back, theres no doubt about that. But you need so many fresh bodies still to feed this turnover machine.

We see it now: hiring bonuses, pay increase, not screening for marijuana. Theyre making changes to their policies to bring more people in, and you can only tweak on the edges so much without addressing the core of the job and getting people, frankly, to stay longer.

Theres actually an interesting debate right now. Since weve reported this, there have been these various takes on the piece. Clearly this model has worked for Amazon so far as a company. The question is, will it work going forward? And some people say yes, and some people are saying no. The fact that I was hearing so much from people internally expressing concern about it tells me that there is pressure to change, but what form that takes, I dont know, because it is such a metrics-heavy company.

The productivity approach which is, again, not the singular reason people leave, but is a dominant part of the work experience that has incredible allure at Amazon. And the demand for that is even greater the faster you promise shipping, the more precise you get for delivery estimates. They need to know exactly how a building is producing at every moment. It needs to be consistent, and predictable. And that creates even more productivity pressure. So you have all these countervailing forces of the labor market pushing one way, and the business model pushing another way. And the idea of being Earths best employer being co-equal to Earths most customer-centric company, thats going to be tested.

TB: There was the landmark piece about Amazons bruising workplace several years ago by the New York Times that drove the conversation about Amazon for weeks, and one of your colleagues on this piece, Jodi Kantor, wrote that past piece with David Streitfeld, another New York Times colleague of yours. I was struck, reading this new piece, having paid a lot of attention to that prior piece: it felt like the three of you on this piece went out of your way, took great pains, to present all sides. There are sections of the piece where its clear: this is a great place for some of these folks to work. Did you approach this piece and the reporting of it with lessons from that past piece in mind, as an institution?

Weise: I didnt work on that one. I can say, I have been talking with Amazon about this story since, I think, early fall, somewhere in there. There was a multi-month effort to try to get more executives on the record, more people on the record, and to push for interviews. In the end, we landed somewhere in the middle. We got this tour of the Staten Island warehouse that we focused on from the general manager, which was very helpful, to get the tour from her and to see the warehouse through her eyes, as well as to have an interview with her.

Then we spoke with the pretty new vice president of HR for the warehouses on the record, as well. I was so grateful for those. I wish we had more, frankly. An hour with someone, Ill take it, I will always take it. But its not the same as having an open-ended, ongoing conversation with someone and with the most senior leadership of the company. We put in a request for everyone and anyone. I dont mean that loosely, but we put in specific requests for Jeff Bezos, Dave Clark, [Amazon HR chief] Beth Galetti, all these people.

I was asking people who would be good, who else should I talk to? And there were some really interesting suggestions of people who had risen through the warehouses into leadership roles, not the tippy top, but a pretty unique perspective. Same thing on the HR side.

We had then an extensive, I would say almost borderline epic, fact-checking process with Amazon, over many, many weeks, to try to make sure we were accurate and precise, and if there was any context from them that we should include.

So we worked hard to do that, because I think most things in life are not cut-and-dried. And we knew that, and so we wanted to include as much as we could get. I am grateful for that fact-checking process because it definitely elicited more information, more context for the story that I think really serves everyone and most importantly our readers, to really understand, and they can make their own decisions about what they think about things. People are human, they live in the world, and they can they have their own judgment.

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Amazons turnover machine: Inside the NYTs investigation into the tech giants HR practices - GeekWire

One year after protests against police brutality shook much of the corporate world awake to the problems of racial equity in the workplace, Fast Company took a hard look at whats changedand what hasntwithin the biggest technology companies in the country.

A cornerstone of the Black in Tech projectcreated in collaboration with The Plug, a publication covering the Black innovation economywas a survey that went out to 42 of the largest and most important U.S.-based technology companies with over 1,000 employees that Fast Company covers. These companies market capitalizations, as of May 6 of this year, range from $2.8 billion (Yelp) to $2.1 trillion (Apple); our financial data is current as of June 14.

Thirty-seven technology giants responded to our queries and agreed to participate in the project. Stripe and Roku declined to participate, and Tesla, SpaceX, and Coinbase did not respond to repeated requests. For companies that did not participate, we searched for any public information about commitments or policy changes, and included those findings in the final project.

Pieces of this data set, which encapsulates the public financial commitments made by these companies, as well as the changes made to their policies and procedures in the last year, are highlighted in data visualizations, which you can see here. But its worth unpacking this data more.

One of the biggest trends in tech over the last year is financial commitments to improving racial equity both within individual tech companies walls, as well as across the country at large. While some companies have made commitments to racial justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) before, it has never happened collectively on the same scale it did in 2020. Notably, after police killed Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson in 2014, no major tech companies made any statements or donations (though Twitters Jack Dorsey, who was executive chairman at the time, did tweet about it and attended the protests in person).

Cumulatively, the tech giants we surveyed have committed a total of $3.8 billion toward DEI in 2020 and 2021, in various forms. The largest chunk of these funds$2.9 billion, or 75%have gone toward initiatives that support Black-owned businesses. That includes venture capital funding deployed specifically toward Black founders, as well as funds earmarked for Black-owned suppliers.

Eleven percent of the commitments, a total of $422.5 million, is going toward racial justice organizations, often taking the form of direct donations to nonprofits. About 10% of the commitments, $375.1 million, were committed to educational initiatives. These sorts of commitments are sometimes framed as an effort to solve the pipeline problemthe often-contestedclaim that techs diversity woes are due to a lack of qualified Black people to hire. The remaining money has been allocated to undesignated or internal commitments; very few companies shared their internal DEI spend. In addition, a few companies, including Microsoft, Netflix, and Yelp, included loans and deposits into Black-owned banks as part of their commitments.

While these numbers seem substantial, its important to compare companies commitments to their operating income. We took a look at companies which answered our survey that had an operating income of over $100 million in 2020, and analyzed how many days it would take for their profits to surpass their total commitments to racial equity. The results were stark.

Apple, which committed $100 million, will make that money in profit in less than a day. But even the largest tech companies that committed substantially morelike Microsoft ($772.5 million), Alphabet/Google ($418 million), and Facebook ($347 million)make their commitments back in profit in between three and six days.

There are some standouts on the list. PayPal, which made $3.3 billion in operating income in 2020, would take almost two months of profit to pay for its substantial $535 million commitment. In addition, Salesforce, which made $422 million in operating income in 2020, has committed the vast majority of it$402.2 millionto various diversity and equity initiatives.

These comparisons reveal how companies financial commitments are best understood in the context of how much money they make; even some of the largest dollar amounts begin to look small in this context. As surveillance expert Chris Gilliard puts it, its not even couch-cushion money to them.

Along with asking companies about their financial commitments to equity, we also asked them a range of questions about their policies that can indicate a company is attempting to improve its DEI. (Its important to note that not all policy changes are equal. Critics have suggested that some moves, like making Juneteenth a holiday, dont result in a systemic change to company culture).

One movement thats taken place is a push to bring more Black people on to boards of directors, and we found this reflected in the data. While 71% of companies surveyed currently have a Black board member, 37% of those companies appointed their first Black board member in 2020 or 2021. Twenty-nine percent of companies surveyed do not currently have a Black board member.

We found that tech companies are split on requiring anti-bias or anti-racism training. According to our survey, 48% of companies require it for all employees. Thirty-one percent made it mandatory for all employees starting in 2020 or 2021. It is not mandatory for all employees at 35% of companies. Included in this bucket are companies that have made the decision to make it mandatory for all managers, or all hiring managers, but not for all employees. For instance, an Uber spokesperson told us it has mandatory training on unconscious bias and microaggressions for leaders and has a training program focused on anti-bias for new employee and manager onboarding, but doesnt require that training for all employees because research suggests it doesnt have the desired impact.

One noteworthy shift thats just starting to take place is who a companys DEI head reports to; for the vast majority of the companies who responded to our survey, the DEI head reports to the chief people officer, or equivalent. A small handfulincluding Facebook, Pinterest, Peloton, and Etsyhave their head of DEI reporting to either the CEO or the head of operations. These changes were made in 2020 or 2021, after the racial justice protests. Only one companyYelphad this kind of reporting structure in place before the protests. Its head of DEI has reported to the COO since 2016.

Giving employees Juneteenth as a paid company holiday is another change thats occurred in the last year. About half of companies surveyed now close their offices for Juneteenth, starting in 2020. No company had offered Juneteenth as a holiday previously.

Overall, we found that about two-thirds of companies had made some kind of DEI policy change after the summer 2020 protests. It should be noted that several companies already had the policies we asked about in place before 2020.

A year isnt a long time to create systemic change, and its still unclear if any of the changes weve catalogued will end techs long track record of undervaluing and exploiting Black employees. Based on the interviews featured in the Black in Tech project, workers just want to be paid and treated fairly; if companies cant meet those basic requirements, having a Black board member, giving everyone a paid holiday, or donating millions certainly wont solve the problem.

We are publishing and analyzing this data to hold these companies accountable for their promises, since without transparency change will be even further out of reach. Fast Company will continue to follow how these commitments impact tech workers and users in the years to come.

Experience the full Black in Tech project here.

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What we learned when tech companies shared DEI initiatives - Fast Company