> “One day I’m working extra hard and the supervisor just stopped me after I took a quick break and kept saying, ‘Smith, go back to work, go back to work,’” Smith said. “I’m thinking, I’m over here, hot, about to faint, working extra hard.”
Imagine behaving this way. How do you look in the mirror and feel anything but revulsion? Happy that this guy's shitty behavior and Amazon's toxic culture is being put on blast like this. Hope Daequan gets a massive settlement.
I was already under so much stress from work that I had part of my intestines bind up for a week, the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me so they decided to give me predinsone... I felt sick so I went home on a Saturday, after 'only' hitting 50 hours for the week. My boss called to yell at me and tell me to come back to work, the next thing I clearly remember was being in a hospital.
I still had to work for that POS for 2 years after that happened. For a long time I blamed myself, until a year and half later when my mother was within an inch of life in the hospital and I wanted to leave early and see her, he said "Didn't I already give you a day off for that?"
As for what kind of person that is? Narccists. And they can be very damaging to their employees if they aren't rooted out from management quickly.
I worked for several people like this in high school. In fact all of the people I worked for in high school were like this. One example being having to clean hot outdoor bathrooms in mid July heat with a mean case of mono and a temperature of 103. Never mind being “allowed” to call in sick. It took many, many years to realize that work wasn’t supposed to be this way.
After being what I consider a very talented member of our industry for 15 years and having no career advancement whatsoever, I’ve been asking myself over the past couple years whether these experiences are to blame. Getting reamed out all the time seems to have had a lasting impact on my ability to take ownership, do the kinds of things you need to do to get ahead, etc.
> Getting reamed out all the time seems to have had a lasting impact on my ability to take ownership, do the kinds of things you need to do to get ahead, etc.
My work experiences during these years were about following strict orders and getting reamed at / yelled it for deviating, trying to improve things, etc.
"And they can be very damaging to their employees if they aren't rooted out from management quickly."
But they can be very useful to burn through people to get shit done and raise profits short term. A timemachine would be interesting, to compare different times and see whether narcism is deep rooted in our genetics, or if it is our culture that promotes them .
A deliberate strategy of employee burnout and high turnover isn't necessarily only viable in the short term, especially if the work is menial such that there's little time invested in onboarding.
I had a fairly similar physical reaction to overwork, interestingly. Thankfully an ER tech took a bit of extra time to ask me if my stress levels had changed recently. This led to rapid re-evaluation of my life choices, and me quitting shortly afterwards.
> Imagine behaving this way. How do you look in the mirror and feel anything but revulsion? Happy that this guy's shitty behavior and Amazon's toxic culture is being put on blast like this. Hope Daequan gets a massive settlement.
Because from their perspective, things don't look like that. From their point of view, it probably goes something like this: "The worker is supposed to work extra hard, but now they are resting, AGAIN! Now I'm gonna say something so they finally start working again" without considering any other perspective about situations.
It's really hard to read people without speaking to them, and most middle-managers just try to read people even though most people are honestly pretty shit at doing that, so they misread situations all the time.
In this particular scenario, notice it says "I'm thinking..." instead of "I said...". Not sure why they didn't tell their supervisor "I'm hot and about to faint", but knowing the average supervisor at Amazon, I do understand why you wouldn't talk about it.
As an SRE it's my job to make sure the computers I'm responsible for are working properly, and to actively pay attention and gather information about whether that's true. If there's too much load on the site for our current set of servers to handle, even if it's not my job to actually order more, it's certainly my job to say something to the people who can. If we're okay now but we won't be in a month, that's also my job. And if a disk fills up on a server and it stops working, "Oh, I wasn't monitoring disk space, and the program never logged anything" is no excuse. Nor is it an excuse that I'm not good at guessing what problems are likely to happen; that, also, is my job and why they look for people with experience doing this job successfully.
Isn't there all the more reason that someone whose job is looking after people and not computers should figure out if they're overworked or about to be overworked and if they're in comfortable, humane conditions?
And if the manager is competent and actually does this, then he probably will end up managing something more important than Amazon warehouses. Don’t underestimate the mediocrity and pettiness of the people who end up in charge of petty things.
From their point of view, it probably goes something like this: "The worker is supposed to work extra hard, but now they are resting, AGAIN! Now I'm gonna say something so they finally start working again" without considering any other perspective about situations.
"Because Amazon never trained me in the basics of my job as a supervisor. Which is to understand obvious the fact in order for our workers to be sustainably productive, they need to take healthy rest breaks now and then -- especially during crunch time. Otherwise Amazon will lose. And because whatever natural sense of intuition I may have had about these issues was thoroughly beaten out of me by the time I got through all that Core Values training they made us do."
I'm not at all surprised that an overworked employee wouldn't talk back to their unreasonable boss. They need their next paycheck to eat and pay rent, and they don't want to risk getting immediately fired for "insubordination", or whatever other bullshit a power hungry sociopath might pull out of their ass in retaliation.
Sometimes what those kind of managers need is a complete unnegotiable refusal. They behave abusive because they think it’s worth their time, to challenge reality by fighting your perception. Make that worth less than nothing. CYA can be problematic though.
I once lead a team through a massive layoff during the pandemic, fought with leadership to save their jobs (and succeeded), and focused on making sure their work was balanced enough to keep them distracted from what was going on but not a source of stress. My top priority was to ensure that they did not suffer undue stress during the incredibly difficult period of early pandemic coupled with layoffs, focused on making their work as meaningful as possible for them. We still posted some record revenue months.
I was fired for this, ultimately because I was not aggressive enough with the team.
You get toxic managers like this in toxic companies because it is the only way to not only get promoted but to survive. I recognized early in the pandemic that I could either be the person I wanted to be, the leader I wanted to be, or have a job in 6 months. I chose the former, but don't blame people who are forced to choose the latter.
edit: I should clarify that I do mean forced to choose the latter in that last sentence. There is a difference between a 30k/year worker being moved to a 45k/year manager role and needing to keep that job to survive and a 200k/year software engineer choosing to behave this way for a 250k/year job.
I do blame them. Until we have stronger labor movement in this country we'll be at the mercy of this stuff, no matter how "special" or irreplaceable you think you are.
I currently work with someone in a professional job who does an amazing job of dodging work.
“Did you get that document signed off last week?” - “Oh, I had to take my cat to the vet as it wasn’t drinking water” - “ok, but this week?” - “definitely”.
Rinse and repeated for a couple months. Every week is a new excuse.
If you asked her she’s say “I’m working extra hard hard” and “management should understand”. But no, she’s just great at dodging work and coming up with excuses. She can play the system well.
I’m not saying this person wasn’t illegally fired and Amazon is wrong, but it would be odd to not hear Amazon’s side.
Is criminal court the only meaningful evidentiary standard? Even then there's appeals, so something cannot be known until the Supreme Court rules on it? But even then, they can change their minds later...
Arbitration and mediation is a far more common way to deal with disagreements in civil society, and that's what the board has done here.
The NLRB is not structured or mandated anything like a prosector's office. They're an administrative board which does arbitration; their relationship to a legal court is essentially that of a lower court to a higher court. A prosecutor's office has a mandate to prosecute; the NLRB has a mandate to evaluate evidence on all sides of a labor-centric legal issue and offer a non-legally-binding judgment.
True, but it needs the courts to enforce any decision - that's the arbitration of guilt or innocence, not just the NRLB saying violations occurred. An NRLB finding is more like a grand jury deciding to indict - a level of evidence has been met, but the bar is pretty low.
If a violation is believed to exist, the region will take the case before an Administrative Law Judge who will conduct a hearing. The decision of the Administrative Law Judge may be reviewed by the five member Board. Board decisions are reviewable by United States Courts of Appeals. The Board's decisions are not self-executing: it must seek court enforcement in order to force a recalcitrant party to comply with its orders.
I'm guessing you have some specialised skill and are difficult to replace? For someone unskilled, that's a one way ticket to never getting a shift again.
No, i just do my work, whatever it is, starting from summer work in collective farm fields after 6th grade back in the 1985, construction in 1987, Navy yards in 1988, construction during University summers 90-92, and various programming gigs starting 90. At any place, including very good paying job in Western company in 1999 in Russia with the crisis around, any attempts by the management to arbitrarily tighten the screws - i'd visibly and prominently challenge and object to it, and few times it would be i'd really be ready to leave. The management would always back down. We are all pretty much aware what things are reasonable and what aren't, and taking unreasonable position is what makes you already half-lose whatever side you're on.
Thanks, i'm in Bay Area :) Australia is great, and it has been popular with Russian/Ukranian/etc immigrants too. I read some are trying to start a space port there.
It always amazes me, in situations like this, that people just end up suffering even though the machine is "working on their behalf." Like, I used to have this idea – I have no idea where it came from – that if a crime happened to you, the government would step in and help you. Like, if your family member is murdered in your home, they'd come in and clean it up and help you fix the door since you'll be inconsolable. Or, if you get fired for something like this that the government would help you get back on your feet and make sure you have a place to stay and pay your bills. How utterly childish and naive that was.
This country has no safety net and that's terrifying.
It's not childish. It's a totally reasonable expectation of how the world should work. Don't pass that off as childish, instead ask why the government is failing to meet its most basic obligations.
It's only naive because the government has totally failed the people. There's no reason (other than a system designed to protect the interests of the wealthy instead of the needy) that it works this way. We should forge a world where such expectations aren't naive.
> . Like, if your family member is murdered in your home, they'd come in and clean it up and help you fix the door since you'll be inconsolable.
Seriously, the number of people who have had to mop up their kid's blood or pick chunks of their dead loved one's brains out of carpeting is depressing to think about. If you've got money there are people who will come and do it for you, but those services aren't cheap.
The property damages are bad enough, but they also don't do anything for the mental trauma they cause when they force you to stand handcuffed and naked in the middle of the room while a team of cops swarm around taking video and destroying your things, or they make your kids sit right next to the corpse of the family dog they murdered after busting in. It's beyond unacceptable how little help people get from the government even after they were directly abused by it.
Even the lawsuits which may or may not get you anything at all are expensive, time consuming, and stressful yet you somehow have to manage it while processing everything that happened to you.
Many people have a pretty strong safety net in their family and friends. I've been there for family members in tough spots and take a lot of comfort in knowing my immediate family would be there for me if I was in dire straights.
It is terrifying and unfortunate for those who do not have that luxury though, and strong local communities can help there. We need to do a more. But I think in all cases where I have the option I'd prefer to rely on those close to me than the government.
But it also emphasizes how much impact one can have just helping those in need directly instead of complaining about how crappy the government is.
I wouldn't call it childish to have such a conception, but rather an indicator of ignorance. Please note that I do not mean that in the insulting tone, but in the literal one. When we do not know something, we are ignorant of it. I would simply say that you were ignorant to that fact.
The government's role is not that of a protector of people, but instead a protector of its own autonomy. That is, government carries out a means of control (law, tax, policy, decree, etc.), and protects its ability to control from threats local and foreign. That is completely independent to the wealfare of its citizens.
The ideal of a government having a role in the safety, welfare, health, or interest of the citizens it controls is bizarre. It's a view that presumes goodness in group, where there is no indication of that ever being the case at any point in human history. It is, in a more disturbing and worrying light, a view that reassigns the government as a kind of parental figure, when it should be abundantly clear that nothing of the sort is the case. It would be like a newborn chick, presuming the snake in its nest a protector, instead of a looming threat. The issue is, leaders are paid to lie and assure citizens of the opposite. Without a great amount of personal investment - or first hand experience - some may even start to believe such tawdry, grasping hisses as fact. The actions of such a cabal is apparent once it is measured.
Ignorance to that does not make you stupid, or childish, or any other number of things. It simply means that you did not know, what you later learned. From the sounds of it, this is a thing that has bothered you, and I am sorry to hear that it has weighed heavily on you. Just keep in mind that you are not alone in this sadness. It is a thing that may pass. Just keep in mind the facts of the situation you are in, and that anyone - ANYONE - who claims to do whatever "needs doing" to be in "the public interest" is most certainly one who moves about on their stomach.
On a related note: It may be beneficial to point out that, in a similar vein, police officer have no legal responsibility to protect citizens or their property - their role is not of protection, as some sort of "public utility bodyguard", but instead one of law enforcement. This is a slightly more nebulous point, as the so-called motto of law enforcement (in America, at least) is "To protect and serve". The fact of the matter is that it has been affirmed in SCOTUS that no law enforcement officer will be held responsible for failing to act to protect a citizen, even to the point of grevious harm or death. Laws are far more telling of the reality of the thing, than any non-binding, hopeful motto. A motto is merely a desire of public perception.
Do these complaints have any kind of teeth? I feel bad for the workers, especially the one mentioned. It’s of little comfort to a homeless person to have their complaints upheld if it doesn’t result in a change in their material circumstances.
They can force compliance with an order, but no power for punitive awards, fines, etc. So basically they can force giving the job back with back pay.
If I were this particular worker, knowing the NLRB will force at least that, I would ask for something much higher to settle. Though I suppose if you're homeless, you may not have that option to wait.
They have some teeth, yeah. Not enough that Amazon won't do similar things again though, I'm sure.
Back pay and reinstatement are possible outcomes (in general for complaints, tbh I have no idea for this one), so it could have a real effect on the wronged.
I get that employees have the right to organize, but this guy was recently out of prison, living in a shelter, and his last job was a transitional job cleaning up trash by the freeway. You have to understand that when you organize, you're painting a target on your back. The guy just finished a prison sentence for robbery. Shut up and keep your head down. Let the middle class kids without police records do the organizing. Not saying this is OK or right, but it's the reality of the situation.
Are you hoping that he'll read this and somehow see the light or are you trying to paint the picture that he has fewer rights than someone without a beat up past?
He has the same rights on paper, but that's not how it works. Say "it's not fair" all you want, but if you screw over society, society isn't going to trust you the same way as someone with a clear record, and you're going to have to prove yourself. I obviously know he's not going to read this, but he doesn't strike me as a reliable source of information either, so I'm just not too concerned with what happened.
I understand that people sometimes look at situations like this and say, "this is the reality of the world." And truthfully, you're correct that people have fewer safety nets to take advantage of their rights sometimes, and that is reality.
But I think the pushback comes from the response/followup to that statement. We're on a forum of relatively privileged tech people, and I think it's good for us to talk about the fact that others don't always get to take advantage of the rights they have on paper, and it's good for us to advocate that they should be able to.
There's pushback to these kinds of comments in the same exact way that there's pushback to comments that, for example, say that Google is tracking everything, and people just need to understand that. Okay, you've identified something about the current world that people don't like, but that is still happening. Now what?
The average privileged person in tech doesn't need to learn how to keep their head down, they need to learn how to get very angry when underprivileged people's rights are taken away, and they need to learn how to make a bigger, more public fuss about vindictive social policies towards people with criminal records. It's one thing to acknowledge that society is cruel towards people with a criminal record, but the followup should always be, "and that is unjust and we should change it".
There is some value in recognizing reality, but there is also value in being outraged over outrageous things even in situations where they are common.
I'll even go a step further and say that if you've made a number of objectively bad major decisions in your life, I think it's worth spending a long while reflecting on your decision making process, rather than just keep taking swings like this guy seems to be doing.
What have all those other good decision makers done to improve this man’s lot? What exactly should he be waiting for?
Reasonable people acting reasonably is how we got to where we are, and there are a lot of people who aren’t happy with the results. I’m sure you would like those people to remain calm, but I don’t know that it’s wise to expect that they will continue doing so forever.
I don’t want anyone to remain calm or wait, I’ve read MLK too much to think that’s a good idea, but I do I want this specific convicted felon to reflect on his decision making for a while before continuing to react as he does, because he’s clearly not getting the outcomes he wants for himself.
It's really hard to say because the article limited it to this:
> During his second week at Amazon, Smith was approached by workers involved in organizing the Amazon Labor Union. Although Smith loved his job, he thought there were things that could be improved. In particular, he said, he was concerned about the warehouse’s extremely rapid pace of work and lack of breaks.
Not many others from him on his issues with work conditions (there were others from other people about Amazon). He actually contradicts himself. This is him describing alleged intimidation after he because active in the union (emphasis added):
> Everyone else working around me was working at their own pace and he was just on me sending me more carts to sort and telling me to work faster
One reason he gave for joining the union was "the warehouse’s extremely rapid pace of work."
Yes, exactly, People need to know their place in society. Who knows what would happen if we give everyone a voice and allow all these freedoms to roam around. This guy should be kissing Bezos's feet for giving him the OPPORTUNITY to work. Tired of reading about all these 'bad major decisions' people getting involved in activism. Please let me know when the lacoste prep school bros organize, none of this deplorables bullshit.
> Nowhere did I say this was a major bad decision in his life
Wait, are you saying he should take a step back and make fewer good decisions? You don't think this was a major bad decision, but you also don't think he should have made it?
I'm trying to follow the line of logic that says that people who make mistakes should stop doing anything else even if they're not making a new mistake. I mean, that sounds a lot like saying that he made a bad choice and therefore he just shouldn't participate in society now regardless of the role or appropriateness of his actions, even after serving his sentence. And if that's the implication, I'd push back against that sentiment pretty hard.
It sounds like he was stuck between a rock and a hard place on some level. Choosing not to try and organize or improve working conditions is also a decision; it would be a decision to stay where he was, even though there was a focused effort from multiple people to improve working conditions that he could take part in.
"Wait and see" is very tricky advice to give to someone who was working at Amazon out of a homeless shelter. How confident are you that staying homeless and not taking steps to try and improve his working conditions would have had a better outcome for him?
I am skeptical that "this had costs" is a good enough reason to say that this was a bad decision. A big part of coming out of rock bottom for people is the active decision not to stay at rock bottom, so if you don't think it was a major bad decision and you're just pointing out that it was risky... that's not a good enough criticism for me to be sympathetic to. From what I can tell, pretty much every life decision is risky when you're homeless.
There's also something of a chicken and egg problem here. Bad jobs are sustainable because they hire desperate people. If you're advocating that people who have made mistakes and ended up in desperate places shouldn't do bold things or make major life changes, then that is essentially saying that they should stay in those positions (even though I know that's not what you mean to imply). Who is going to challenge the status quo around desperate jobs if we say that the people working those jobs aren't supposed to advocate for themselves?
I guess I need to study Google Finance some more. All I did was, I added in a comparison to the S&P, and Costco jumped to 54,628% and Amazon to 164,805%. I'm sure there's some logical explanation for this.
Anyhow, I don't know anyone who works for Costco. Do you?
I'd call it a value stock. I invested a while ago specifically after having realized how good the foundations of that company are. How happy the customers are, how happy are the employees and how great PR they have.
The most surprising is how Kirkland clothing had been picked-up by the street wear communities. From my observation, this only really happens to "good" companies that we, the older generation, would thought of boring.
Does anyone else find scant/zero information in this article about what exactly the circumstances of this worker's case is?
The story goes on and on about the general topic on other Amazon-related labor recent news, but I find that the total information about this specific case in this article is approximately 1 sentence.
What did the worker do, what did Amazon do? 0 information. Not a lot of journalistic content for a "Bloomberg Equality" desk.
My grandfather was a plant superintendent in a union meat packing shop. His take on unions was interesting: Unions happen when an employer mistreats employees. A company that mistreats employees deserves the union.
This is why I don't understand companies who argue that unions just make it harder for people to improve their conditions by making it impossible for employees to communicate directly to management. If the problems employees have could be fixed without unions they would have been fixed already.
> This is why I don't understand companies who argue that unions just make it harder for people to improve their conditions by making it impossible for employees to communicate directly to management.
In a well functioning company where managers and employees are well-treated, the Union is at best an extra step, and it does actually prevent direct interaction in some cases. That said, it a badly run company that exploits its employees, talking to management is dangerous for workers.
Thanks. Any idea why sometimes these links just put me on a reCaptcha loop? It's not me failing the reCaptcha. I get accepted as a human and then get the same "One more step" page again.
I have no idea here but, as an example, I’d expect the behaviour you describe if someone tried to mix Recaptcha V2 and Recaptcha V3. They might get a score from V3 and, if that score is low, they challenge with V2 as an “escape hatch” to prove you’re not a bot. But then they might have messed it up and redirect you back to a V3 check which still gets a low score. Cycle repeats.
In fact, they may well be testing an upgrade from V2 to V3 which could behave the same if they test both at once instead of A/B test.
This is pure speculation. Probably 100 other ways they can mess it up.
I've had these problems when I have uBlock Origin + a news paywall bypass plugin enabled. I'm guessing something to do with cookies being wiped or scripts being blocked is the issue.
Let's hope the complaint is sustained. It's bad enough that this tactic is even tried. The right to unionize is meaningless if organizers can be silenced this easily.
It's difficult to balance at-will employment, the right to fire people for cause, and the protection of union leaders and members. But there have been far too many cases like this in the last few months alone to believe these are all justified by individuals' behavior and not attempts to stop unionization.
> But there have been far too many cases like this in the last few months alone to believe these are all justified by individuals' behavior and not attempts to stop unionization.
To play devil's advocate, a sociopath could recognize the PR problems it creates for a company to fire someone working toward unionization, and therefore start agitating when it becomes clear they're about to be fired, or just before they do something they know would otherwise be over the line.
That doesn't mean everyone working toward unionization is a sociopath, but the population of people fired "while unionizing" will contain both sets of people, and therefore be larger than you might expect.
That's not "devil's advocate", that's just an example of the meaning of "difficult to balance".
There's this idea in the tech crowd that laws governing circumstances that aren't quantifiable or boolean with zero doubt or error are either entirely impossible or tantamount to just anything-goes subjectivity of judges.
But the entire purpose of a system of laws and the courts is to match the ambiguity of the rules to the complexity of life.
Because, as it turns out, it's the cases that can be captured by a fixed set of algorithms that are almost non-existent. Which is sort-of the problem "smart contracts" ran into, and that motivated them to create the useless simulation of real-world ownership that is NFTs.
> That's not "devil's advocate", that's just an example of the meaning of "difficult to balance".
You expressed skepticism that this many people could be fired for legitimate reasons while promoting unions.
That makes sense if you assume that misconduct and union organizing are independent variables. But since individuals engaged in misconduct have the incentive to become union organizers to make it more expensive for the company to punish them, that isn't true, and the observed result would be expected either way.
Your original argument was that the uncertainty was resolved.
> But the entire purpose of a system of laws and the courts is to match the ambiguity of the rules to the complexity of life.
The entire purpose of a system of laws and the courts is to let what the law actually says happen unless the balance of political power strongly favors something else happening, in which case the other thing happens and a justification gets retconned by the judge.
We all know how big corporations work. They have a big book of rules that nobody reads and therefore everybody violates continuously. Then if anybody screws up or becomes disfavored, management opens up the book to see which rule(s) they violated so they can be punished or fired for cause. It's the same thing that happens with laws and prosecutors.
It works the same way whether the reason they're getting fired was the same as the rule they violated or not. It's that way on purpose because it makes it easy for management to fire someone for things they're not allowed to prohibit, by finding something the target did which they are allowed to prohibit.
But that still doesn't tell you which thing it was in a particular case, and a judge doesn't have any good way of knowing that either. Probably the best you could do is look at whether there were a lot of other people breaking the rules, but everybody else has the incentive to conceal that because anybody who admits to breaking the rules would be subject to firing as well, which the company would have the incentive to do both to show that they're being consistent and to punish anyone who admits that breaking the rules is common.
The ambiguity was created on purpose, but that doesn't make it easy to resolve.
I don't understand, did you read the article? The ambiguity was resolved. The board ruled against Amazon. It's just you left arguing some absurd "what if", no part of which makes any sense; Amazon has the funds to pay all the infinitesimally many "bad worker that joins the union drive to avoid being fired" people till the end of the millennia, an obviously better strategy than firing them on bad excuses only to have them publically reinstated with back pay.
The labor board isn't actually part of the government, and it's decisions aren't binding. It's decisions are routinely overturned by later lawsuits. The mere fact that the board made a ruling hardly solves any ambiguity.
The National Labor Relations Board is a federal agency created by an act of Congress. No, they are not the Supreme Court. The acts of every federal agency are subject to judicial appeal. Generally speaking, you cannot file suit in federal court against the government until all administrative appeals are exhausted. Congress created the NLRB to administer federal law in this area and they are the only avenue available, barring some state law perhaps.
There's a process in the justice system called mediation. Basically, it's a session where the plaintiff and defendant get together and have a discussion about how to resolve the conflict. It cannot, however, make binding judgements. Only a real court can do that. If the two parties disagree then it proceeds to a lawsuit.
The NRLB processes mediation for labor disputes. Its decisions aren't binding, and it's common to proceed to a lawsuit or arbitration even after the NRLB rejects someone complaint.
All: please don't perpetuate flamewars. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. When it starts happening, the most important thing is not to feed it. All this is in the site guidelines:
A short term, high dose prednisone treatment restored enough kidney function for my sister that she is no longer looking at a transplant or dialysis.
Bi-weekly, 5mg doses of prednisone to treat chronic pancreatitis have extended the life of one of my cats going on 5 years now, and greatly increased her quality of life in her senior age. The same dose occasionally treats another cats intermittent IBD that otherwise, before treatment, would eventually progress to triaditis and hospitalization.
Yes, it has side effects, and patients should be made aware of that. But acting like it's something that should never be given is ignorant at best. It is cheap, widely available, and is a first-line treatment for a number of conditions.
OK, I'll accept there are legit uses for it. I will not accept that a patient (or pet owner) should just blindly accede to everything the doctor specifies.
Medical history is replete with drugs and treatments that every doctor prescribed all day every day, until they didn't. If you had a stomach ulcer in 1990, the approved "treatment" certainly would have included a bland diet. Now they know it's caused by a bacteria.
Sinus rinsing is something else that's been covered here. It is NOT disapproved by doctors, at least, but I don't think it would be the first recommendation most of them would give you.
(We might blame that one on patients who want a drug for everything, or else they're not getting their money's worth.)
Yeah, it's a damn useful drug, that also has horrible side effects. I've been literally saved by prednisone more than once but I've also suffered from some of those side effects. I even had a doctor who had me on way too much for way too long (he'd already lost his license by the time I found that out) and even after knowing that I had to continue on it a bit longer because you have to be slowly taken off the drug.
The sad truth is that you always have to look out for yourself. You need to take care to read up on your conditions and your prescribed treatments, but don't let that fool you into thinking you've got a medical degree or that doctors are out to get you, or that science isn't trustworthy. Most doctors are doing the best they can to make you feel better using the best understanding of medicine and biology we currently have. You may look at medical history as a series of errors and mistakes, but it really just shows the progress of our understanding.
Things like sinus rinsing have their uses. It may not be the first thing doctors recommend to people, but there are likely several reasons for that beyond people demanding pills. The main reason being a lack of strong evidence that supports it being more effective than current recommendations which may be easier for people to do and/or carry fewer risks. As soon as the data overwhelmingly supports recommending sinus rinsing over current treatments, doctor's recommendations will start to slowly change.
My point is, watch our for yourself and be careful, but don't let bad experiences or bad actors cause you to lose faith in the process itself.
This is a fantastic post. And if you have doubts ask another doctor. Second opinions are absolutely a good way to check if the doctor you have is giving bad advice, and they may also have other ideas to add.
Doctors are not out to get you, but they aren't perfect either.
I avoided back surgery and regained the ability to stand without pain after 2 prednisone epidurals. There certainly were some unpleasant side effects, but I was warned about the potential for them and they were far more mild than the condition that was relieved.
Are you a doctor? Are you a veterinarian? If no, how likely do you believe it is that you are better informed than a trained professional after a web search for side effects?
Prednisone is on the WHO's list of essential medicines. It a vital drug for, among other things, cases where immune activity needs to be modified. The fact that it can be dangerous when misused is not in any way evidence that it should never be used.
Put simply, your stance is anti-science. I hope that you will reconsider it. Whether or not you do, I hope that no one reading your comment puts any weight on your opinion, which is not grounded in fact or knowledge.
When you suspect sockpuppet abuse on HN, I've found it highly effective to email dang directly (hn@ycombinator.com) rather than engaging further with the suspected bad actor (though I admire and commend your diligence and steadfastness ;).
Your comment here crossed into attack, which is one reason this thread turned into a flamewar—and you perpetuated the flamewar badly downthread. Please don't do those things on this site, regardless of how strongly you feel about science.
HN is an internet watercooler—not an academic journal. The goal is to have curious conversation. Conversation involves anecdotes and it involves people being wrong about things, including important things, much of the time. If someone happens to be wrong, or you feel they are, piling on and shaming them is definitely not helpful. It is only going to evoke worse reactions from themselves and from others, and throw the thread off balance.
Fortunately, we don't have to look far for examples of how to get this kind of thing right. These other users all responded to the same comment in a conversational way:
They made much the same point that you did, but they did it respectfully and in keeping with the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you'd please review the guidelines and use HN that way too from now on, we'd be grateful. Of course it's not always possible—we all have our triggers and we all get into states where the internal reaction overflows. But in those cases, it's important not to post.
Since, for some reason there's no Reply button under your second answer, I'm replying to it here.
> I am not judging or insulting you
I believe you are the wrong one to evaluate that. Not after you abstract-ify this into "conspiracy theory" and all sorts of things I didn't say.
I didn't "obliquely claim that doctors do not get training on prescribing prednisone." Of course they do. I'm not anti-vax, either.
I'm sure this vet did "get training" but I cut her some slack: it's the 27th most prescribed drug in the formulary, and she sees hundreds of pets per week, and probably most of the ones she gives it to, get well. Yet: another vet at the same clinic had no issues with my objection, and gave me a different drug instead. The dog's not licking his paws constantly and has no other symptoms, so I count that a successful objection.
So find some other outlet for your passions today.
Jesus Christ. I don't necessarily disagree with you but maybe you should tone it down a little pal. If you truly believe you're on the right side of this argument then argue with rationality and civility. This behavior does nothing to further rational discussion.
I assure you this account is not a sockpuppet. I don't know about the rest. I'm not sure what it is you find suspicious about this handle, except perhaps that I occasionally express the "wrong" opinion?
See my response to a sibling comment of yours. Your initial claim had absolutely nothing to do with "broad side effects." You claimed that prednisone is almost never the right treatment. That is false, and runs counter to evidence and fact---hence, it is anti-science, precisely as I have claimed.
Your appeal to other hot-button topics here is an attempt at distracting from the content of the argument. Those topics are non sequitur, and it is clear you are arguing in bad faith.
Please, re-examine your beliefs. You are on a dark path.
Attacking another user like this will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Please don't post like this to HN, and please don't fuel any more flamewars.
This "anti-science" phrase is pure cancer. Most of the people who use it aren't pro-science. They're pro-authority. The science for them is whatever the authorities have greenlighted for them to believe.
>how likely do you believe it is that you are better informed than a trained professional after a web search for side effects
How much "training" do you think doctors get with respect to the thousands of drugs that they may prescribe? Doctors are almost all specialists, and read the same side effects labels (or google them these days) that you do. You are not required to rely exclusively on your doctor's risk/benefit analysis for a given prescription. Furthermore, as the commenter pointed out in his example, often times doctors simply do not know what is causing a problem and will throw drugs at it - a lot of medicine is guesswork.
>Prednisone is on the WHO's list of essential medicines
Which says nothing about its side effect profile
>The fact that it can be dangerous when misused is not in any way evidence that it should never be used.
Drugs have side effects even when not misused.
>Put simply, your stance is anti-science. I hope that you will reconsider it. Whether or not you do, I hope that no one reading your comment puts any weight on your opinion, which is not grounded in fact or knowledge.
Not treating a doctor's word as gospel truth is hardly "anti-science" - on the contrary, blind faith is anti-science. And what is researching a drug's side effect profile if not grounding oneself in "fact or knowledge"?
Doctors make mistakes. Not proactively sanity checking their treatments is irresponsible when you have the same resources that they do.
There are multiple possible explanations. People sometimes get confused about which account they're posting from, which is not the same thing as intentionally using a sockpuppet. Alternatively, people in the same household sometimes both post to HN, and same-household would readily explain same-dog. Either way, it seems unlikely that there was any attempt to deceive here.
OP said: "there is almost no condition for which the right treatment is prednisone."
I said: "prednisone is on the WHO's list of essential medicines," which is very strong evidence that the claim is incorrect.
Your response obliquely claims that doctors do not get training on prescribing prednisone, by making reference to thousands of drugs that a doctor might prescribe. This is not an argument, it is an insinuation. You have no idea how much training doctors get, nor apparently are you aware that in 2019 prednisone was the 27th most prescribed drug in the United States [1]. It also has well known and possibly severe side effects. If, as you obliquely claim, doctors are not trained in its correct use, then it must also be the case that medical schools are astonishingly incompetent.
I will note at this point that I am referring to your oblique claim because I suspect it was intentionally stated vaguely so that you could attempt to slip out of any counterargument merely by saying that you meant something else.
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Stepping back: the belief espoused in this thread is nothing short of a conspiracy theory, and you are engaging in classic conspiratorial thinking in order to support it.
I encourage you, and anyone else reading this thread, to read "The Conspiracy Theory Handbook" by Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook [2].
Let's go through the ways in which your argument maps directly to several of the hallmarks that are listed on pages 6 and 7 of the above pamphlet. I'm certain that if we continued this conversation (which I will not) we would see even more examples of such thinking.
- Contradictory: you believe that doctors are specialists, and yet you appear not to believe that the specialist doctors at the WHO who decide which drugs are essential are qualified to balance the benefits and the side effects.
- Overriding suspicion: if, as you claim, doctors throw drugs at problems with such frequency that one should almost never take a doctor's advice to take prednisone---in spite of the fact that it was prescribed nearly 23 million times in 2019---it must be the case that doctors are almost uniformly some heady mix of incompetent and malicious.
- Immune to evidence: your response to my argument makes clear that you are not interested in reconsidering your position on prednisone---your belief system is a closed epistemological loop. The WHO's listing prednisone as an essential drug makes not a dent on your claims about its side effects---never mind that it is completely outlandish and unreasonable to believe that a cost-benefit analysis would not be considered when selecting a drug "with due regard to disease prevalence and public health relevance, evidence of efficacy and safety and comparative cost-effectiveness" [3].
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I am not judging or insulting you. It is easy to fall into a pattern of beliefs that is not supported by facts, and to begin to identify with the beliefs themselves rather than the evidence that backs them up. I implore you, examine your beliefs and take seriously the possibility that you have fallen victim to conspiratorial thinking. The pamphlet I have linked above is a short and very worthwhile read, and I am confident that if you take its contents seriously you will gain valuable perspective.
Imagine behaving this way. How do you look in the mirror and feel anything but revulsion? Happy that this guy's shitty behavior and Amazon's toxic culture is being put on blast like this. Hope Daequan gets a massive settlement.