Duh? He was simply defending the company against potential HR lawsuits. You can't really expect him to say, "yes I know we treat people like shit, and the criticisms are valid, but..."
Or
"even if its all false, lets take a step to change such perception of Amazon if it exists.."
It was clear in what context I have written my comment. Your argument can be qualified as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
once you step outside of your little bubble and look how hard it is for real people out there to earn their crappy salaries, come back and we can talk like adults.
Luckily almost nobody outside of weird extremist libertarian communities on the internet that you find odd pockets of on HN and such believe this.
No, sorry. Nothing requires Amazon to behave this way, and it is foolish besides - if you burn through people you are are basically training people up who then walk away and work for your competition. By having them work 80+ hours you are getting less actual work out of them then 40 hours. You are spending more on health care because this sort of environment causes stress. Etc.
We ain't going to shut up and take it just because there are worse things out there.
So which is it?
Until they get the job, realize that pain is everywhere, and pray their children won't have to go through the same thing.
Destroying your employees doesn't suddenly become a sustainable way of running the human race just because you're destroying them in front of a computer screen instead of in a rice field.
if anything SDE are underpaid compared to the skills/competency they give in return..
We don't tell other professionals to take a pay cut cause a whole bunch of people are doing it tough...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/world/outlaw-ocean-thailan...