2k14 what's the worst enormous tech company?

list needs SAP, Oracle

evil b2b giants are their own group

fair enough

although I think you mean erp and crm and other evils over b2b

we argued about that in the last thread too, Oracle more worst than any of these now and forever

uh huh whatever mr. corporate overlords :)

looking elsewhere tbh

nice campaign by google but a late header by facebook gives it to them i think

http://valleywag.gawker.com/police-google-exec-murdered-by-heroin-dosing-prostitut-1602425957

the rich, they aren't like you and me

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/08/lets_nationalize_amazon_and_google_publicly_funded_technology_built_big_tech/

postmaster bezos

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Utility companies are way worse than these.

Write in vote: NSA

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Damn straight.

despite having voted for amazon, i kinda feel like it's just the logical result of our politics and culture, which are irreparably ruined by this point. blaming amazon itself isn't particularly helpful

i do think north america was a better place before mobile electronics. i don't necessarily blame sony or whomever for exploring its possibilities, but apple has been at the forefront of making modern society Suck Ass imo

even ahead of Antonin Scalia? I'd really take mobile electronics over Scalia.

antonin is more paragraph 1. also he is not an enormous tech company, at least until he incorporates himself in a manner sufficiently closely held as to nullify federal law

wait isn't nullifying federal law, like, his favorite thing to do?

open a no cellphones allowed coffee shop and have fun with your crazy local friends

mookie noooo

Gonna put a write-in vote for Comcast. I had them for a year and the service was constantly horrible. But what could I do they had a monopoly where I lived. Anyways I moved last month and the new place does not have them, it has DSL from someone else instead, which is a great relief. I cancel my old internet and they send me a UPS box to mail back the modem. I pay my remaining balance and send that off. Fast forward to a month later and I get a bill saying I owe them $100 for un-returned equipment. I call them up and end up talking to someone who can see the tracking number of the modem I returned. Then they say "Hold on, I'm going to find out if we have received this..." and I wait by the phone for a few minutes until they say "Oh yes, we got the modem back". "So I don't owe you any money, right?" "Ahh.....yes sir, you are good to go."

They're so effing evil they just ASSUMED I owed them $100, not even take the time to verify that I had mailed back the equipment, I mean why bother, it's easier to just charge me an extra $100 and make me jump through a bunch of hoops on the phone on the off chance that I'll just pay them. This pervading sense of corporate entitlement is just gross.

but now you have DSL and your connection is bottle necked by terrible twisted copper pair phone lines.

Terrible phone lines have never once dropped my internet signal, also costs 1/3rd the price.

can you stream video?

Yeah np

them some good phone lines in your area. carry on.

I had Verizon DSL until a year ago when they notified me they'd no longer provide DSL service unless I also paid extra for a home phone line (like I need one in 2014) or upgraded to fiber-optic at extra cost. I ditched Verizon for Comcast which I also hate (and is unreliable) but at least they don't make me pay $15/mo for a home phone I'll never use.

comcast is awful

http://www.theawl.com/2014/07/sympathy-for-the-comcast-rep-from-hell

Update: You! Under the bus, now.

We are very embarrassed by the way our employee spoke with Mr. Block and are contacting him to personally apologize. The way in which our representative communicated with him is unacceptable and not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives. We are investigating this situation and will take quick action. While the overwhelming majority of our employees work very hard to do the right thing every day, we are using this very unfortunate experience to reinforce how important it is to always treat our customers with the utmost respect.

Ha, they're barely even trying not to sound pure evil.

My dealings with Comcast were really that bad, like something out of a skit.

these results are otm tho google def went fastest from "cool" to "repulsive"

everyone already knows that it pays to be shit if you're a utility

also mookieproof otm

Comcast support chat is one of my favorite things to do. Often hilarious.

i envy you, as having to speak to or communicate with my isp in any way fills me with unspeakable dread.

I've posted this before, but one of my all-time great chats:

Taby(Fri Jul 16 17:15:01 CDT 2010)>Jeffery I want to apologize for the delay; our systems are currently undergoing maintenance. This may cause my response time to be longer than normal. Let me assure you that I am here, actively working to place your order, if you have any questions while I am completing your order, please do not hesitate to ask me.

Guest_(Fri Jul 16 16:15:13 CDT 2010)>ok

Guest_(Fri Jul 16 16:15:51 CDT 2010)>odd time to be undergoing maintenance. of course you have nothing to do with IT operations though.

Taby(Fri Jul 16 17:18:43 CDT 2010)>Jerry your Internet installation fee is $99. I am trying to give you a good discount, I do value your time and understand how tiring is to be waiting.

Guest_(Fri Jul 16 16:18:59 CDT 2010)>My name isn't jerry.

Taby(Fri Jul 16 17:19:55 CDT 2010)>I really apologize for the mistake. Your name is Jeffery.

Guest_(Fri Jul 16 16:19:58 CDT 2010)>But OK, discount is good.

Guest_(Fri Jul 16 16:20:16 CDT 2010)>no problem!

Guest_(Fri Jul 16 16:21:45 CDT 2010)>There really shouldn't be an installation fee since we are continuing service.

Taby(Fri Jul 16 17:24:14 CDT 2010)>Yes Jeffery, I understand. The amount is for cover all the process that the Technician has to follow up in order to connect your services.

Guest_(Fri Jul 16 16:24:37 CDT 2010)>I can buy the technician a beer if that would help

Guest_(Fri Jul 16 16:25:06 CDT 2010)>Probably a bad idea

Taby(Fri Jul 16 17:26:54 CDT 2010)>Maybe the Technician will be agree with that idea Jerry.

Taby(Fri Jul 16 17:26:57 CDT 2010)>I will give you the intallation fee for $50. will that be okay for you?

Guest_(Fri Jul 16 16:27:31 CDT 2010)>Sure Caby.

Taby(Fri Jul 16 17:28:24 CDT 2010)>Great Jeffery. I really apologize again for the mistake.

Guest_(Fri Jul 16 16:28:32 CDT 2010)>no problem!

Guest_(Fri Jul 16 16:28:51 CDT 2010)>Thanks for the discount

lol 'sure caby'

I thought I was coming out ahead by pretending to be into xbox games to justify my large downloads to the customer rep who was totes into gaming, but Jeff has taken the cake

it's not fair to lump comcast in w/ these guys, comcast is actually the most hated company in america, whereas google and amazon are among the most loved

Not sure why the hate for Amazon, I've never had problems using it in years and years of buying and selling. Ebay is way worse.

Maybe it's the Amazon drones.

Fuck Facebook though, way to turn everyone on Earth into their own informer.

Amazon warehouse employees are treated terribly. Also they seem to get away with a casual disregard for all competition laws.

adam: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor

Seems tough but not entirely unreasonable an experience. Had the author ever worked for a temp agency before this? Or in a warehouse? Or in retail at the start of the Christmas season? This article seems like it was written by someone who hasn't done any of these and went into this job looking for things to whine about.

Ok, they had worked in a warehouse before. It's just, the tone of this is so surprised at stuff that should be common sense (background checks? quotas? bosses aren't cool with crying?) it doesn't seem like it.

Apple products are made in factories where the workers commit suicide. The warehouse this writer writes about only provides 1 (rather than 2) Thanksgiving dinners to workers.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/inside-amazons-very-hot-warehouse/

In a lengthy and heavily reported article, The Call said a warehouse employee contacted the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on June 2 to report that the heat index in the warehouse had reached 102 degrees, and that 15 workers had collapsed. The employee also said workers who were sent home because of the heat received disciplinary points. [...] So many ambulances responded to medical assistance calls at the warehouse during a heat wave in May, the paper said, that the retailer paid Cetronia Ambulance Corps to have paramedics and ambulances stationed outside the warehouse during several days of excess heat over the summer.

xpost

And junior buys his grammie an ipad for Christmas, but grammie commits suicide because the snow made her late for her Thanksgiving Amazon warehouse shift and she won't be able to buy junior an ipad.

"Never say that you can't do it," the first workamper emphasizes. "When they ask you why you aren't reaching your goals—"

"Say, 'It's because they're totally unreasonable'?" I suggest.

"Say you'll do better, even if you know you can't," she continues, ignoring me.

You really feel for the workers who had to put up with the writer.

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_sick_brutality_and_secret_history_of_ruthlessly_intimidating_workers/

http://gawker.com/amazon-deserves-all-of-its-bad-pr-1582631709

Ok the 100+ degree warehouses, that is horrible stuff. But the "time theft" stuff is pretty par-for-the-course for blue collar work.

i think part of the point of pointing it out in the case of amazon was that they have built an enormous amount of customer goodwill by appearing to be utterly frictionless but that comes at the price of the customer's near-total ignorance of how e.g. the $5 iced tea pitcher i bought last week showed up on my doorstep two days later, because there is utterly zero opportunity for customers ever to have knowledge of that process at all

rme @ trying to characterize the author of that mother jones piece as a shiftless intellectual whiner who's never done a day's worth of honest work when she writes at the beginning of the article that she's reported on warehouse conditions before and spent a lot of time working in warehouses, also rme @ dismissing shitty labor practices as "par-for-the-course" as if that excuses them (actually, part of the problem with amazon is that since it's a powerful industry leader it's a major cause of bad labor practices becoming endemic to the US shipping industry as a whole)

if you're trying to argue that apple should've ended up higher in the poll the way to go about it is not to try to minimize amazon's problems

Could you point to any particularly egregious labor practices in that piece?

You say there are "shitty labor practices" detailed in that MJ piece, please elaborate on which ones they are.

I'm sorry, if you go into a new job worrying that they'll be mean to you, that you will lose your pride, won't be able to bring your personal life into work, won't be able to cry at work, etc. maybe you should not work in a labor-intensive environment. It's telling that rather than give a two-weeks notice she just walks off the site without telling anyone.

even putting the labor stuff aside, amazon's market power (see: hachette right now) and effect on local retail are scarier issues

I mean amazon is gonna replace the workers w/ robots anyway

being mean to workers and destroying their pride, just par for the course really. suck it up pussy, get another of the plentiful jobs available

if you think treating people like livestock is a practice to be encouraged, then carry on. asshole

*also treating entire industries as livestock

future dystopia overlords Beezid

Ah, yes. Free your mind, sheeple.

She even talks to multiple workers who take pride in their jobs there. Did they not get the memo that their work is demeaning? How come they didn't walk away without giving notice, leaving a bunch of extra work for their coworkers?

when you say 'free your mind sheeple' are you trying to suggest sufjan would say that, because it actually also fits pretty well w/ the rest of your comments

It was mocking "treating people like livestock", no idea what Sufjan is on about.

nobody uses sheeple to talk about people who are actually performing livestock-esque labor

How come they didn't walk away without giving notice, leaving a bunch of extra work for their coworkers?

Because starvation and eviction are not really optimal choices even given the world's shittiest job?

Are you really this dumb?

It was mocking "treating people like livestock", no idea what Sufjan is on about.

― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, July 16, 2014 8:47 AM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm talkin' bout Beezid, man

i mean, sure, we all love the innovative products that Beezid provides right now. but how long before Beezid goes too far?

http://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2014/july/matt-rutledge-woot-has-a-new-deal-mediocre-corporation?single=1

At length, after a bit of business talk that maybe resembled a cousin of an actual breakfast meeting, Rutledge blurted out a question that had been troubling him: “Why did you buy Woot?”

[...]

So there sat Bezos at the breakfast table, faced with a question for which he was apparently unprepared. Many painful seconds passed without an answer. Rutledge let the pause lengthen as long as he could bear it and was just about to tell his host to forget it, when Bezos finally spoke.

He looked down at his plate. Bezos had ordered a dish called Tom’s Big Breakfast, a preparation of Mediterranean octopus that includes potatoes, bacon, green garlic yogurt, and a poached egg. “You’re the octopus that I’m having for breakfast,” Rutledge remembers Bezos saying. “When I look at the menu, you’re the thing I don’t understand, the thing I’ve never had. I must have the breakfast octopus.”

not rly an important or relevant article, i just havent been able to get that quote out of my head

http://media.bizj.us/view/img/813861/jeff-bezos-01*300.jpg

if you don't think hiring desperate people as contractors, increasing their quotas until they're impossible to meet, then firing them is a shitty labor practice i'm not sure what to say to you? and many people take pride in their work even when they work in demeaning conditions and it's not unusual or dumb b/c being able to take pride in what you do is a normal thing that most humans desire

Ok the 100+ degree warehouses, that is horrible stuff. But the "time theft" stuff is pretty par-for-the-course for blue collar work.

100+ degree warehouses is almost the least offensive stuff - there's relatively little you can do to cool a giant uninsulated building in a hot environment. You can, as a company, however, not engage in time theft and ritual abuse of employees.

Apple products are made in factories where the workers commit suicide. The warehouse this writer writes about only provides 1 (rather than 2) Thanksgiving dinners to workers.

not rly an important or relevant article, i just havent been able to get that quote out of my head

― r|t|c, Wednesday, July 16, 2014 12:38 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it is an amazing quote. breakfast octopus is such a great metaphor.

when they make the citizen kane / social network based on amazon there's no way they'll forget to use that line

bezos single-minded ambition + i eat yr octopus maps better to 'there will be blood'

First off I have 15 years experience working temp/contract jobs, including warehouse work. I feel like I am being realistic about things. I am not saying exploiting workers is good, only that it is widespread. To lay the blame at Amazon's feet is to pretend none of these employment issues were serious problems before 1995.

Also please do not assume low wage/warehouse/temp workers are all desperate individuals oblivious to their demeaning existence. That is some classist concern trolling. At the temp jobs I had many of my co-workers (including me) were working as well as going to school, and the flexibility offered by temporary employment made that possible. I had spent the previous 6 months interviewing for real jobs and whenever I brought up that I would be going to school in the fall, it seemed to be a dealbreaker for the employers. Without temporary employment I would not have finished school.

Of course I was desperate for that job, I was out of work. When you are out of work you are desperate for a job!

Corporate jingoism is bullshit, quotas suck, middle managers suck, Big Business's centuries-long hold on a 3 branches of the US gov't sucks, and the way society is structured so that everyone is pressured to surrender YEARS OF THEIR LIVES doing machine-like work for unfeeling companies sucks. Me saying this stuff is "par for the course" is not me giving it a big thumbs up. If you want to have a conversation about the larger implications of capitalism vs. the human spirit, I'm ready to go, and we will probably find we agree with each other all over the place.

Also, since we are discussing exploitation, it is ironic that in every article on Mother Jones about this stuff there are banner ads to the Kindle edition on....you guessed it, Amazon.com. So the workers are being exploited twice over (at least)!

20 years ago people probably said things like "Walmart can't be any worse than Sears or K-Mart." They were, and so is Amazon. I have 25 years of shitty jobs, so I know.

god what the fuck is wrong with you xp

every one if your posts is worthless. i hope you keep working temp jobs for the rest of your life. you deserve it.

though honestly you sound like the kind of asshole who has family to fall back on in dire straits so whatever

ok i'm over the top. anyway, this kind of investigative journalism of shitty labor practices has real effects. it may seem like plugging holes in the dam. there are people out there who use it as an excuse to feel good/ok and do nothing. but if you want to get all challops about it and throw your hands up in the air about capitalism, you're being self-indulgent and a reactionary. but iirc you're christian so i shouldn't exactly be surprised. still, why do you post here? so much and so often? with so many contrary opinions? you aren't doing anybody any good. you aren't provoking thought. it has to take up a lot of your time. you sound too self-righteous to be simply bored. are you just a giant narcissist? i was sounding a little unhinged there with "i hope you keep working temp jobs for the rest of your life," as that's just plain illogical and malicious. and not what i really hope. i actually hope for your own good and the good of people around you you stop being such a self-serving jackass. please! at least on here. maybe you're different irl, i don't know.

That's the third personal attack thrown at me today. Some real valuable discussion going on here. I say something, back it up with facts, someone comes in and calls me an asshole, asks me if I'm dumb, then someone else calls me an asshole, says everything I say is worthless. Fuck you guys, I never said a single thing about you personally.

My opinions are valuable to me, and I would respect yours if you just presented them rather than saying "Oh this guy sucks, fuck you LOL". You realize there is more than one way to look at an issue?

you aren't doing anybody any good. you aren't provoking thought

You're right, I'm provoking bullying. Peace out :-/

good fucking riddance!

good fucking riddance!

― mattresslessness, Wednesday, July 16, 2014 4:30 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

go find another forum to pull this bs on

who even gets that mad about something online?

all kinds of ppl tbh

for the record, adam, i recalled that you were plenty familiar with working shit jobs, so i did find it curious that you were so dismissive of the story about the amazon warehouse workers, but i figured you were coming from a place more or less like 'work is work, and yes it's shit but it's doable, principle is a different thing'.

i don't see the need for all the excitement

not rly an important or relevant article, i just havent been able to get that quote out of my head

― r|t|c, Wednesday, July 16, 2014 12:38 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

I saw this very well done still life photograph the other day and I felt ashamed because

http://i.imgur.com/NFDnFgZ.jpg

the only thing I could think of was "I must have the breakfast octopus"

good fucking riddance!

― mattresslessness, Wednesday, July 16, 2014 4:30 PM

go find another forum to pull this bs on

― Forks I'd Clove to Fu (silby), Wednesday, July 16, 2014 4:47 PM

this month's harper's has a cover story on amazon "workampers" btw—subscribers only, unfortunately. been putting off reading b/c it is sure to be depressing as hell: http://harpers.org/archive/2014/08/the-end-of-retirement/

agree or gtfo such a refreshing attitude on nunuilx i find

gtf

― blap setter (darraghmac), Tuesday, 15 July 2014 10:46 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

gtf != gtf in gtfo fyi

this month's harper's has a cover story on amazon "workampers" btw—subscribers only, unfortunately. been putting off reading b/c it is sure to be depressing as hell:

Search around on "amazon campforce" and you'll come up with lots of hits - investigations, video bloggers, diaries from workers, etc. Some good, some bad - my gut reaction all a vague "so it's come to this." Worried about the long-term effects of cheap crap distribution being staffed by New Economy serfs/RV gypsies serving a giant Amazon warehouse in the great nowhere.

FWIW, I like McClelland writing. Her series of articles on PTSD are harrowing.

http://amazonfulfillmentcareers.com/opportunities/camper-force/ fwiw

http://depts.washington.edu/depress/images/hoovervilles/Hooverville_June10-1937_Lee399.jpg

http://andrewhickey.info/ :

Amazon have announced a new feature, Kindle Unlimited. This feature allows Kindle owners (so far only in the US) to download as many books as they want, one at a time, for a $9.99 per month flat fee — it’s a “Spotify for books”. Authors get paid as soon as the Kindle owner reads more than 10% of their book.

This is, in theory, a great thing, but in practice it’s evil. That sounds harsh, but I think it’s fair. And there are two main reasons it’s evil.

The first is that it requires participation in “KDP Select”, Amazon’s exclusivity programme. If you sign up for this, you can’t have your books available digitally anywhere else. I’d have to pull my books from Smashwords, iBooks, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and the rest, take down the PDF versions on Lulu, and remove the blog posts they were based on from here.

This would not be too terrible for me financially — I sell barely anything through any of those bookshops, and because I’m not good at sorting out tax stuff I haven’t even collected the money I’m owed for most of the sales (it’s all accruing in my Smashwords account, and I’ll get it eventually).

But it would mean that anyone with a non-Kindle e-reader would be unable to buy my books, making it bad for other readers like me (I have a Nook, and mostly buy from the Kobo shop and smaller ebook stores owned by publishers like Obverse or Baen).

It would also be one more tiny step towards Amazon being the only ebook retailer around, which would be bad both for readers (because monopolies are very bad for consumers) and for writers (because monopsonies are even worse for suppliers).

So I would consider it immoral to be involved — in the sense that the most moral action is the one which, should everyone take it, would improve the world the most, not in the sense of judging authors who decide differently. But that’s not actually the worst thing.

The worst thing is that, as with the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (which also requires participation in the KDP Select programme), there is not a flat fee paid to the author for each book read, but instead there’s a pot of money chosen by Amazon (at the moment $2million, as a promotional thing — normally closer to $1million, but offered at their discretion; they could make it ten cents if they wanted) which is split between all the authors according to the proportions in which their books are borrowed.

This is what makes it evil rather than just normal nasty corporate capitalism, because it turns what should be a positive-sum game into a zero-sum one.

If they made payments by number of books borrowed, say a dollar a book, that would be great. I could encourage you to read my book, and I’d get a dollar, and also encourage you to read, say, Andrew Rilstone’s latest book, and he’d get a dollar too.

But with the system where you’re paid by proportion of books borrowed, if I encourage you to read Rilstone’s book, then that means I’m getting a smaller share, so the incentive is for me to discourage you from reading any books by anyone other than myself. It’s a neat and nasty way of breaking any sense of community for authors (and one which would incidentally make collective action much more difficult should Amazon’s terms become more onerous).

This is not only classic divide-and-rule, pitting suppliers against each other, the worst kind of monopoly capitalism, but it’s also a catastrophic thing for readers. One of the most important ways people find new books is when authors reference or acknowledge each other’s work. But if you’re signed up to KDP Select, then you can’t tell readers about those other authors, who might make your share of the pie smaller.

And look at what that pie is. $2,000,000 . Sounds a lot, doesn’t it? But how many subscribers are they going to get at $10 a month? I’d guess quite a lot more than 200,000.

But more importantly, the number of books in the programme is “over 600,000″. Break that down, and that means that the mean payment per book — in this special promotional period where they’re paying more — is $3 per month. Obviously some will get more, but only because others will get even less.

The worst thing imaginable would be if this was a success, undercutting actual ebook sales to the point that it was the only way writers could actually make any money. And I can see that happening if something isn’t done about Amazon’s monopolistic practices (of which this is just one of many).

Thankfully the Big 5 publishers are staying out of this evil, and so long as they are, people will still buy books.

Because I don’t know exactly what the price for my soul is, but I do know it’s more than $3.

bump

http://images.pcworld.com/images/article/2012/02/google_evil-11211499.jpg

Amazon vs. Hachette: The Astroturfing

http://www.quartzcity.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/facebook_toughtimes-789x1024.png

worst enormous tech asshole retires on top http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-18/larry-ellison-steps-down-as-oracles-ceo

wow amazon is really downplaying the existence and availability of books on its new frontpage redesign

huh, you're right, but the truth is, i don't think i'd seen amazon's front page in like 5 years, who goes to amazon except via links to a product?

http://cdn.mhpbooks.com/uploads/2014/11/B1spUCKCQAEuVKV-572x649.jpg