Amazon Workers Made Up Almost Half of All Warehouse Injuries Last Year

Amazon workers only make up a third of US warehouse employees, but in 2021, they suffered 49 percent of the injuries for the entire warehouse industry, according to a report by advocacy group Strategic Organizing Center (or SOC). The Verge reports: After analyzing data from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the union coalition found that Amazon workers are twice as likely to be seriously injured than people who work in warehouses for other companies. The report considers “serious injuries” to be ones where workers either have to take time off to recover or have their workloads reduced, following OSHA’s report classification (pdf) of “cases with days away from work” and “cases with job transfer or restriction.” The data shows that, over time, the company has been shifting more toward putting people on light duty, rather than having them take time off. The report authors also note that Amazon workers take longer to recover from injuries than employees at other companies: around 62 days on average, versus 44 across the industry.

Amazon employees have said it’s not the work itself that’s particularly dangerous but rather the grueling pace the company’s automated systems demand. Amazon actually had workers go slower in 2020 to help combat COVID-19, which accounts for the notably lower injury rates that year. But, as the report notes, the injuries increased by around 20 percent between 2020 and 2021 as the company resumed its usual pace — though the injury rates for 2021 were still lower than they were in 2019. […] Unfortunately, this study’s results tell the same story we’ve been hearing for years. Even with its reduced injury rates in 2020, Amazon workers were still hurt twice as often as other warehouse workers, according to SOC. Further reading: Amazon Workers At 100 More Facilities Want To Unionize (Yahoo Finance)

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Bigger Sound In Smaller Packages, As Sonos Buys Mayht For $100 Million

Sonos has acquired Dutch startup Mayht for approximately $100 million in a cash-only deal. “Mayht created a new type of speaker technology that makes it possible to pack a lot more oomph into much smaller spaces, with power savings as a nifty side-effect,” reports TechCrunch. “Specifically, it created a new type of transducer — the foundational element within speakers that create sound. Mayht has re-engineered them to enable smaller and lighter form factors without compromising on quality.” From the report: Interestingly, outside of some reference speakers, the Mayht team was never planning to put its own products out to market, clearly flirting with existing speaker giants for an acquisition. Sonos liked what it saw and decided to put a $100 million ring on it to consummate the relationship, acquiring the startup. The acquisition was formally announced today.

“Mayht’s breakthrough in transducer technology will enable Sonos to take another leap forward in our product portfolio,” said Patrick Spence, CEO of Sonos. “This strategic acquisition gives us more incredible people, technology and intellectual property that will further distinguish the Sonos experience, enhance our competitive advantage, and accelerate our future roadmap.” The Mayht team, in turn, was also pretty psyched to find a corporate partner to bring its tech to market. “We are very excited and proud to become a part of Sonos,” said Scheek. “Our dream has always been to set a new standard in the audio industry. The integration of our technology into Sonos products will further revolutionize high quality sound.”

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‘We Probably Pissed Away $200 Million,’ Better.com CEO Told Employees In Layoffs Meeting

When Better.com CEO Vishal Garg laid off 900 employees, or about 9% of the company’s staff, in early December, the startup world was shocked with his callous delivery. Now a video of Garg and CFO Kevin Ryan addressing the remaining employees right after the chief executive performed those layoffs has emerged, confirming many reports of his brash style and harsh words about those affected. TechCrunch reports: In a video obtained by TechCrunch, Garg is seen addressing the layoffs and in the process, admitting to making a number of mistakes. We chose not to publish the video in an effort to protect the identity of the source, but we’ve picked out the most relevant bits based on a transcription of the 12-minute meeting. About two minutes into the meeting, Garg says: “Make no mistake we did also eliminate redundant roles — who might be strong performers but were in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong task, and weren’t mission critical.”

After about four minutes, Garg also acknowledged that the company was continuing to hire, including some interns, in the midst of the layoffs, while at the time making a thinly veiled threat: “…It’s because we expect those people to be super productive and add value, and if they don’t we will exit them too.” He added: “We are going to be leaner, meaner and hungrier going forward. We will not be spending time trying to raise capital. We will not be spending time focused on what investors think. We will be spending time grinding this business forward in what will likely be a bloodbath in the mortgage industry in the next year or two.”

In the video at around the 8-minute mark, Garg admits to not being disciplined in managing the company’s cash and in its hiring strategy, which helps explain the company’s second mass layoff of over 3,000 people just three months later. It also helps support multiple sources’ claims that the company is currently “losing $50 million per month.” “Today we acknowledge that we overhired, and hired the wrong people. And in doing that we failed. I failed. I was not disciplined over the past 18 months. We made $250 million last year, and you know what, we probably pissed away $200 million. We probably could have made more money last year and been leaner, meaner and hungrier.” He also explicitly says that the company lost $100 million in the previous quarter, saying it was his “mistake” for not laying off staff earlier.

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Google Offers Employees Free Electric Scooters To Get Them Back To the Office

Google is preparing to bring its employees back to the office this week, and as an added bonus, it’ll be offering them free electric scooters to help ease the transition. The Verge reports: The tech giant is teaming up with e-scooter maker Unagi to launch a new program called “Ride Scoot,” in which most of Google’s US-based workers can get reimbursed for the full cost of a monthly subscription to Unagi’s stylish Model One scooter. The Model One, which retails for $990, is a lightweight dual-motor scooter with a top speed of 20mph and a range of 15.5 miles. Unagi founder and CEO David Hyman said the idea was to help Google employees get to work — or even just to the closest bus stop. (Google famously provides free shuttle bus service to its employees in Silicon Valley.) “They know there’s apprehension amongst employees,” Hyman said. “People got really accustomed to working from home. And they’re just trying to do everything they can to improve the experience of coming back.”

Unagi won’t just be handing out free scooters to every Google employee, though. Unagi plans on setting up booths at various Google offices to sign up employees for a monthly scooter subscription at the discounted rate of $44.10 per month, plus the $50 enrollment fee — the total of which will be fully reimbursable by Google. Scooter subscriptions will also be added as a transportation option to Google’s internal employee portal. And Google and Unagi will host demo days for employees to try out the Model One at various office locations.

Employees must also use the scooter for at least nine commutes per month to get fully reimbursed for their monthly subscription. (Google plans on using the honor system and won’t be tracking employees’ scooter usage.) In addition to Google’s main headquarters in Mountain View, other eligible locations include Seattle, Kirkland, Irvine, Sunnyvale, Playa Vista, Austin, and New York City.

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Russia Internet Giant Risks Running Out of Vital Tech in a Year

Russia’s omnipresent tech company, which created products ranging from the country’s dominant search engine to its biggest ride-hail service, is facing a looming shortage of hardware as U.S. sanctions punish President Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine. From a report: Yandex NV may run short of the semiconductors needed for the servers it uses to power its business within a year to 18 months because of import restrictions, two people with direct knowledge of the issue said, asking not to be identified in order to speak candidly. Sanctions on dual-use technology, which have both military and commercial uses, have hit its self-driving vehicle unit particularly hard, they said. Yandex has plunged into crisis since Putin began the war Feb. 24, caught between the Kremlin’s increasingly harsh internet censorship and a backlash in its key foreign markets. The company’s international partnerships are crumbling, two board members resigned, and its number two executive, Tigran Khudaverdyan, was forced to step down after being sanctioned by the European Union. The company’s market value has slumped from a record $31 billion in November to $6.8 billion after the invasion began.

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1 Million Fitbit Ionic Smartwatches Recalled Over Reports of Overheating Batteries and More than 100 Burn Injuries

“Fitbit has announced a voluntary recall of its Ionic Smartwatch,” reports Newsweek, “amid more than 170 reports that the battery has overheated, causing more than 100 reports of burn injuries….”

The Ionic smartwatch was first introduced in 2017 and the company stopped producing it in 2020. When worn, the smartwatch tracks activity, heart rate, and sleep. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), one million of the watches were sold in the U.S. while a further 693,000 were sold internationally.

The company has received 115 reports in the U.S. and 59 reports internationally of the watch’s lithium-ion battery overheating, leading to 78 reports of burn injuries in the U.S. and 40 reports of burn injuries internationally, the CPSC added. Some burns were particularly severe, with four reports of second-degree burns and two reports of third-degree burns. Third-degree burns, in which multiple layers of skin are destroyed, are the most harmful of the two….

In a statement published on its website yesterday, the company said it would offer a $299 refund to Fitbit Ionic customers and “the health and safety of Fitbit users is our highest priority.”

“If you own a Fitbit Ionic, please stop using your device,” the company added.

Fitbit said the Ionic can be identified via the model number FB503 on the back of the watch under the “CE” mark, while those with a Fitbit account can check if an Ionic is connected to their account by clicking on the Today tab, then their profile picture, and then the Account page.

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How ByteDance Became the World’s Most Valuable Startup

Roger Chen and Rui Max from Harvard Business Review explain how ByteDance became the world’s most valuable startup. What’s the secret? According to the editors, it’s the company’s shared-service platform, or SSP, which it uses to power innovation. From the report: Bytedance uses its SSP platform differently from most companies. The company’s product teams or units don’t control their own operating resources. Instead, many common business, technology, and operating functions (among them HR and legal) are centralized and organized into corresponding teams. The teams are highly specialized, so that the right people can be found and flexibly deployed as needed to each new venture. Cloud and shared operational tools, some of which have been developed in house, allow ByteDance to maintain this seemingly complex organizational setup. Product and related teams still focus on serving customer needs, but they rely on different SSP teams to accelerate development and growth. For example, when ByteDance tasks a new venture team with investigating user needs and market opportunities, the team can go to the user-research specialists at the SSP for data support, saving time on market analysis. In other companies, these tasks are undertaken by the product team, which is rarely best equipped for such information gathering. Subsequently, when a use case has been identified that justifies developing a new app or product feature, the product team is paired with engineers at the SSP level to develop the new product or feature.

In some cases, product teams customize existing technologies that have already been developed by the SSP. Algorithms are a case in point. Product teams at ByteDance work with SSP algorithm engineers to fine-tune their enormously powerful recommendation engines. The SSP has also brought together other important teams: user-growth teams, which help identify and acquire desired users; content teams, which establish partnerships to acquire new content; analytics teams, which help to develop deeper user insights; and sales teams, which drive monetization. As expected, because so many capabilities have been centralized into this large SSP, the actual product teams tend to be small and focused, especially in the exploration stage. Douyin, for example, began with just a handful of employees, and the education team began with just two. Importantly, the relationship between the SSP and market-facing teams is symbiotic and mutually beneficial. It’s this virtuous loop of continued discovery and improvement that has enabled ByteDance’s success.

Relying on its SSP, ByteDance has developed unique innovation and growth strategies. These strategies have five main characteristics: [broad exploration, rapid iteration, selective focus, maximum-capability cross-pollination, and productizing platform services]. […] ByteDance’s SSP strategy — accelerate new projects by providing instant access to best in class technology and operations — has been so successful that one would expect many other companies to have embraced it. Yet few companies have managed to replicate ByteDance’s success with the strategy. Why? Because they have not put in the organizational enablers that helped ByteDance overcome fiefdom mindsets, which inhibit collaboration. Three of these organizational enablers are particularly important: [OKR system, explicitly flattened hierarchy, and data-driven culture]. […]

ByteDance’s SSP-based innovation strategy has clearly played a key role in its first decade of explosive growth. It has allowed the company to incubate rapidly and broadly and to scale efficiently, by using centralized but flexibly deployed technical and operational stacks. This strategy has served the company well in part because of the similarity among its various algorithm-driven products. ByteDance is now exploring other product categories and is refining its strategy to be more suitable for its evolving organizational model and processes, but no matter how the company evolves, its SSP-based innovation strategy is sure to play an important role.

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ACM, Ethics, and Corporate Behavior

theodp writes: In the just-published March 2022 issue Communications of the ACM, former CACM Editor-in-Chief Moshe Y. Vardi takes tech companies — and their officers and technical leaders — to task over the societal risk posed by surveillance capitalism in “ACM, Ethics, and Corporate Behavior.” Vardi writes: “Surveillance capitalism is perfectly legal, and enormously profitable, but it is unethical, many people believe, including me. After all, the ACM Code of Professional Ethics starts with ‘Computing professionals’ actions change the world. To act responsibly, they should reflect upon the wider impacts of their work, consistently supporting the public good.’ It would be extremely difficult to argue that surveillance capitalism supports the public good.” “The biggest problem that computing faces today is not that AI technology is unethical — though machine bias is a serious issue — but that AI technology is used by large and powerful corporations to support a business model that is, arguably, unethical. Yet, with the exception of FAccT, I have seen practically no serious discussion in the ACM community of its relationship with surveillance-capitalism corporations. For example, the ACM Turing Award, ACM’s highest award, is now accompanied by a prize of $1 million, supported by Google.”

“Furthermore, the issue is not just ACM’s relationship with tech companies. We must also consider how we view officers and technical leaders in these companies. Seriously holding members of our community accountable for the decisions of the institutions they lead raises important questions. How do we apply the standard of ‘have not committed any action that violates the ACM Code of Ethics and ACM’s Core Values’ to such people? It is time for us to have difficult and nuanced conversations on responsible computing, ethics, corporate behavior, and professional responsibility.”

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Inside ‘Project Tinman’: Peloton’s Plan To Conceal Rust In Its Exercise Bikes

Dubbed internally as “Project Tinman,” executives at Peloton worked to conceal a build-up of rust on some exercise machines (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) that were sent to customers instead of returned to the manufacturer. “The project was first revealed in FT Magazine last week but eight current and former Peloton employees across four US states have provided further details on the operation,” reports the Financial Times. Here’s an excerpt from the report: They described the plan as a nationwide effort to avoid yet another costly recall just months after the company’s most tragic episode — the death of a child due to the design of its treadmill. Internal documents seen by the FT showed that Tinman’s “standard operating procedures” were for corrosion to be dealt with using a chemical solution called “rust converter,” which conceals corrosion by reacting “with the rust to form a black layer.” Employees said the scheme was called Tinman to avoid terms such as “rust” that executives decided were out of step with Peloton’s quality brand.

Insiders were also angered about enacting a plan that they argued cut across Peloton’s supposed focus on its users, who are called “members” to evoke a sense that buyers are more than customers and part of a broader community. Tinman also put a spotlight on the company’s quality control process versus meeting aggressive sales targets in the search for growth. Peloton said the issue affected at least 6,000 bikes and that 120 staff had undertaken “rigorous testing” on the devices to conclude the rust — which it described as “cosmetic oxidation” — had “no impact on a bike’s performance, quality, durability, reliability, or the overall member experience.”

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Akamai To Acquire Linode

“Akamai, which announced quarterly earnings today, also announced that they plan to acquire longtime Linux VPS host Linode for $900 million,” writes Slashdot reader virtig01. From a press release announcing the acquisition: Akamai Technologies, the world’s most trusted solution to power and protect digital experiences, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Linode, one of the easiest-to-use and most trusted infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform providers. […] Under terms of the agreement, Akamai has agreed to acquire all of the outstanding equity of Linode Limited Liability Company for approximately $900 million, after customary purchase price adjustments. As a result of structuring the transaction as an asset purchase, Akamai expects to achieve cash income tax savings over the next 15 years that have an estimated net present value of approximately $120 million. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022 and is subject to customary closing conditions.

Christopher Aker, founder and chief executive officer, Linode, added, “We started Linode 19 years ago to make the power of the cloud easier and more accessible. Along the way, we built a cloud computing platform trusted by developers and businesses around the world. Today, those customers face new challenges as cloud services become all-encompassing, including compute, storage, security and delivery from core to edge. Solving those challenges requires tremendous integration and scale which Akamai and Linode plan to bring together under one roof. This marks an exciting new chapter for Linode and a major step forward for our current and future customers.”

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