Way to Respond to that Tap Christopher!

Chapter 13 in my ongoing story about workplace surveillance

Oct 09, 2022

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“Good morning and welcome to Day One at Amazon!” said the enthusiastic host of the group onboarding call. “I know you’ve heard that it’s always Day One at Amazon, and that’s true, but for you, today really is day one.”

Christopher would have typically rolled his eyes—he didn’t like this kind of happy talk—but it WAS day one, and he was on a Zoom call with what looked like 60 other new hires from across various other divisions within Amazon, so he just smiled and gave a thumbs up. The hiring process that brought him to his new job as a product manager at Amazon—technically, at AWS, the cloud services side of Amazon—had dragged on for weeks, and he was eager to get going.

He had asked his hiring manager if he could take some of the required training in advance of his start day, the better to get a head start on really doing the work, but he was repeatedly cautioned to be patient. “We’re excited to have you coming on board Christopher, but it will take several weeks to get through training and learn enough about the tools to really start to make a contribution.” Christopher had spent the last seven years at a small company called Wizards of WBT, and he was burning to work somewhere that moved faster and built cool stuff. But he supposed that he could live through a couple weeks of required onboarding before he got to the real work.

He was pleasantly surprised, then, when his chipper onboarding host announced that they were a very special group of new Amazonians. “As you know, we’re always innovating here at Amazon—innovation is built right into our leadership principles. And that’s why we’re reinventing our onboarding process, starting today. That’s right, starting today all new employees are taking part in a new onboarding methodology that’s been carefully created by our Human Dynamics team. To explain what it’s all about, I’d like to introduce you to the head of the Human Dynamics team: Mitch Cascade. Mitch, it’s all yours.”

“Hello Amazonians,” Mitch beamed into the camera, his bright, straight teeth notable even in the muted environment of a Zoom call. “I am so thrilled to be here to greet you, because my team has been building up to this day for months. You are about to experience a new way of getting started at Amazon, a way of starting that is totally aligned with our leadership principles. The cool thing is,” he gushed, “it’s also aligned with what we know about you: that you’re smart, you want to succeed, and you’re impatient to get going. Well, get ready, because you’re about to experience the future!”

Christopher had watched a bunch of videos of Jeff Bezos and other Amazon execs talking about their vision for the company, and Mitch Cascade fit right in: he had a gleam of messianic intensity in his eyes, and he spoke with the conviction of a true believer. Guys like this triggered Christopher’s inherent skepticism … he called it his built-in bullshit detector. But he knew that it took leaders like this to build a company of Amazon’s size and, hell, greatness, and that was part of why he was here. He wanted to be part of that. So he had to swallow a little messianic bullshit along the way? What could it hurt?

“We’re not going to ask you to take hours and hours of compliance training,” boasted Cascade. “What do you all think of that?” Christopher’s cohort of newbies stuck their thumbs up in front of the camera or punched their “thumbs up” emoji. “I know if we were all in a room together there’d be a great cheer,” continued Cascade, “because most training is stuff you know already, right? You know about cybersecurity and not taking bribes and being inclusive … I mean, we hired you because you’re the best and the brightest! Why would we force you to relearn things you already know?” Cascade was thrilled by this stuff.

Cascade explained that the Human Dynamics team had identified all of the core knowledge and skills people needed to succeed at Amazon, and were continually working to identify ways to see those knowledge and skills demonstrated in daily work. “All you have to do is go about your work, using the great tools we’ve provided, and the Human Dynamics team would take care of the rest,” said Cascade. “We’ll reward you when we see you doing the right thing, especially when you’re living up to the leadership principles. And yes, we’ll remind you if and when you go off track.”

Cascade got serious for a moment: “We don’t expect you to be perfect. We know that sometimes you’ll click on a link that you shouldn’t click, or you’ll delay making a decision that you have the authority to make. But we’re not going to punish you when you’re not perfect. No, we’re just going to give you a slight nudge back in the right direction. We call these ‘taps,’ like a tap on the shoulder from a friend. We’ll tap you if we notice that you’re doing something wrong … well, not wrong so much as not Amazonian,” he beamed into the camera. “And eventually, you’ll find yourself just perfectly aligned with your coworkers, your manager, and the whole company.”

“I’m going to leave you now with these words: it’s Day One at Amazon, and you are going to be part of inventing the future! Let’s focus on the customer, deliver results, and think big! I can’t wait to see what you’ll create!”

And with that his screen disappeared and the Human Dynamics team came back on to tell us what to expect and how to get started.

Christopher got his first tap on his second day. He’d successfully started up and tried some of the tools that Amazon had invented to make their work seamless, including Chime, the Zoom “replacement” that his manager used to host his team’s daily stand-up. Day two and he was already in a stand-up, he thought! This was awesome.

Now he was in CommsCentral, or CeeCee, as they called it, which was Amazon’s answer to an integrated e-mail, calendar, and instant messaging solution. “You’re gonna love it,” his manager Alan had told him, “it’s so helpful at keeping you on track. Sometimes it feels like CeeCee is reading your mind, but you’ll never be late for a meeting.”

Christopher liked CeeCee well enough: it was fast and the interface was clean and basic, pretty much the standard Amazon design aesthetic. Even on his second day, there were 15 new messages to attend to, but it was one from the Seattle Public Schools that caught his eye. “Parent Information Bulletin,” said the header. His oldest had just started kindergarten, and he figured maybe this was something he needed to look into. Sure enough: “Click here for an important announcement from your principal.” And so he did. Christopher clicked.

“Oops,” said the pop-up window that centered itself on Christopher's screen. “That seemed like an email that you should pay attention to, but it was just a test. Remember: Amazon asks that all employees activate ‘personal mode’ when looking into non-work issues on work time. All you have to do is press the ‘Me Time’ button from any screen and you’ll enter a space where you can handle any personal issues.”

“Shit, that’s right,” muttered Christopher. He had learned about that first thing this morning. Didn’t seem so hard—he had just forgotten. But then his screen flashed again.

“Do you have any questions about ‘Me Time’ Christopher?” asked someone named Huddy in the chat window.

“No, just forgot,” he typed.

“No problem Christopher—after all it’s just your second day. My name is Huddy—I’m your friend from the Human Dynamics team and I’ll tap you like this if you need a reminder on something,” replied Huddy.

“Oh, you’re a real person?” typed Christopher, who was a little perplexed.

“No, I’m a chat bot, but I’ll switch you over to a human Huddy if it seems like you need it,” the bot replied instantly.

“Ah, I got it. I guess this was my first tap,” wrote Christopher, adding a smiley emoticon at the end.

“That’s right! I bet you won’t get many more,” typed Huddy, adding a winking face emoji. “Bye for now.” The screen closed and Christoper was back into his email—and the one from the “school” had disappeared.

The next day Christopher saw an email with the subject line “Urgent: Password Reset Required” come into his email and reflexively he double-clicked to open it—and no sooner had he done so then his screen froze and Huddy appeared:

“It’s me again Christopher; it looks like you forgot about our no password policy.”

“I didn’t forget, I just figured maybe I had done something wrong,” Christopher replied.

“We wouldn’t have let you continue if you’d done something wrong,” said Huddy. “Our IT systems protect you from error so you can focus on the customer.”

Christopher didn’t know what to say in return, so he tried to close the window and get back to work … but it wouldn’t close.

“Would you like me to provide you with a short video about our login policies, Christopher? Or do you think you’ll remember what we told you when you set up your authentication?”

“I’m good, I’ll remember,” replied Christopher.

“Great, take care!,” replied Huddy, and Christopher got back to work. Over the course of the day he spotted and promptly deleted two simulated phishing emails—this was something he was pretty good at, and a little smiley face popped up on his notification bar saying “Good job.” But clearly he’d have to pay closer attention to the little nuances of life at Amazon. At least he didn’t have to sit through a ton of training!

Christopher learned more about what it meant to be Amazonian over the next several weeks, and not just from taps. It appeared that there were “controls” in place that would actively keep him from doing things that he shouldn’t, but they didn’t all generate a tap—the little visit from Huddy he had gotten the first couple days.

On the first day he sent some information about a new product offering over to a vendor they were working with. There was a slight pause when he clicked send and a message popped up on his screen: “I see you’re sending some information outside of Amazon—would you like to review our data sharing practices first?” There was a Yes button and a No Thanks button. Christopher thought he knew about data sharing—but he pressed Yes anyway, and what he read confirmed that he was on safe ground. So he clicked the button to send the email and held his breath. No problem; he went on his way.

The vendor soon wrote back, asking for more data on product adoption rates, so Christopher prepped the email and pressed Send. Again, the pop-up asking him if we wanted to review Amazon’s data sharing practices.

Christopher paused. Would he have to do this every time he sent an email? Or was this just something they did for new people? Should he click Yes again, just to be sure? Or should he trust himself and click No Thanks? Dammit! He wasn’t sure.

Huddy popped up on his screen.

“It seems like you’re not sure what to do Christopher,” they said. (The fun joke was that Huddy used they/them pronouns.)

“I should probably click Yes, just to be safe,” said Christopher. “But I think I know this stuff.”

“Trust yourself Christopher. Remember, Amazonians are right, a lot,” they said, quoting what Christopher considered to be the most vexing of the leadership principles.

“It’s hard to feel right a lot when you get fucking pop-ups the moment you take a second to think,” muttered Christopher, and then instantly regretted it.

“Remember, I respond to voice or text inputs Christopher. And it’s okay to feel frustrated. We know there’s a lot to learn.”

“I’m sorry,” Christopher said—hardly believing that he was apologizing to a chatbot.

“It’s okay, I understand. And I bet the next time you get this prompt, you will click No Thanks. It seems like you understand data sharing policies pretty well.”

“Ha ha, thanks,” voiced Christopher. He clicked No Thanks, sent the email, and went on about his day. He must have gotten it right. Either that or Huddy was worried that they were pushing him too far.

In the meantime, Huddy recorded the interaction in Christopher’s Pulse file, a record of all of Christopher’s interactions with Human Dynamics.

“So, in conclusion,” chirped Diana after she had presented her 2-pager to the entire team, “I think you’ll all agree this idea is so solid that even if you don’t personally love it, you’ll have backbone and disagree and commit.”

“That’s Amazonian for ‘I don’t care if you don’t like it, do it anyway,’” muttered Christopher—but not before he made damn sure that he was muted on the Chime call. “Why can’t we all agree that ‘Deliver Results’ means we don’t accept self-promotional bullshit?” Christopher really hated Diana’s idea.

Christopher’s Apple Watch flashed to life and the voice of Huddy said, “That’s not nice.”

“What the ...” said Christopher out loud. He checked his computer again: not only was he muted, but he so completely expected that he wouldn’t say anything on this call that he had disabled his sound card, just to be sure he wouldn’t be overheard. He’d never gotten a tap on his watch before.

Huddy piped up again: “You know, Christopher, disagree and commit is one of our most important principles. It doesn’t work if you say you agree but act like you don’t.”

“But I can’t say I don’t agree—I’ll get shouted down!” countered Christopher, by now all too used to having conversations with the voices inside the machine.

“You can make your voice heard in respectful ways, but if leadership chooses a direction after that, you have to disagree and commit.”

“I’ll never take any public action that shows I’m not on board, I swear,” said Christopher.

“Remember, it’s not just your words, Christopher, it’s also your facial expressions and your subtle indications of checking out, like turning off your sound card. We need your commitment to be real.”

“You need me to be an Amazonian heart and soul,” said Christopher, very carefully shaping his words to convey conviction, not skepticism or the questioning that he couldn’t seem to chase from his mind, no matter how hard he tried. Did it work? There was a long pause and the swirling A on his phone glimmered, showing that the watch was processing.

“Sorry, could you say that again?” replied Huddy.

“I said, you want me to be an Amazonian heart and soul,” he repeated, even more plausibly this time.

“That’s what we hope Christopher. But what do you want?”

“I want to be an Amazonian heart and soul!” he replied.

“Great!,” replied Huddy. “Now, could you please restore your audio settings so you can join your next meeting?”

“Sure, sorry,” said Christopher. “I’ll be right there.”

A few days later, Christopher was working away.

“Oh shit, what now?” sighed Christopher as the now-familiar HD icon pulsed on his screen. He knew he’d have 15 seconds to click the icon before it would pop up and lock him out of his other work. But he wasn’t quite sure what he had done. Could it really have been that last email he had sent?

“Way to respond to that tap Christopher! That shows a bias for action,” said Huddy in the chat box that had popped up.

“Thx,” typed Christopher.

“Bias for action is important Christopher. It helps us bring value to our customers and that earns trust.” Standard HD bot talk, thought Christopher: it was never just one leadership principle they were hectoring me about, but some combination of them. So which was it this time?

Christopher: “Agreed.”

Huddy: “In that last email, you missed a chance to show bias for action. You asked for Bob’s ‘buy-in’ even though he clearly told you yesterday in your 4:00 that he was fine.”

Christopher: “I don’t think that’s what he said.”

Huddy: “I disagree Christopher. Would you like me to replay it for you?”

Christopher: “No.”

Huddy: “I’m glad. Remember, your fellow Amazonians will tell you if they disagree. You have to trust that you are right, a lot, and then show a bias for action.” There it was, “Are Right, A Lot,” the LP he found so vexing. He felt like he was right a lot, but everytime he turned around there was Huddy, telling him he wasn’t. But there was no use arguing about it.

Christopher: “Thanks Huddy.”

The bot replied: “You’re welcome Christopher—now let's get back to Day One! :)”

Christopher hit the thumbs up emoji and closed the window. He always wondered if sometimes they put a real person on the other end of these conversations, but he doubted it. “Ah well,” he muttered. “Back to work.”

But he couldn’t help but wonder, was it like this for everyone? Did all of his co-workers get near daily visits from Huddy, with a reminder that this comment or that email or this weekly report didn’t meet expectations?

It’s not like he was failing at this job. In fact, his manager told him just the other day that he was “kicking ass.” His main driver was product releases, and he’d been leading his team on both new features and feature updates. But he was starting to feel like Huddy was getting in his head, second-guessing him every time he turned around. It was starting to piss him off.

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Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I’ve made up the story and the characters in it. While certain businesses, places, and events are used to orient the reader in the real world, the characters and actions described are wholly imaginary and any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.