Vancouver’s Tim Bray, a Vice President and distinguished engineer at Amazon Web Services has quit, citing the company’s firing of employees he said voiced concerns over work conditions amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a blog post on his personal website, Bray, who has worked at the company since 2014, denounced the firings and said the company’s actions were “evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture.”
Friday was my last day at Amazon: https://t.co/kXYDPdNbs7
[Server’s running a little hot but give it time, it’ll come through.]— Tim Bray (@timbray) May 4, 2020
Amazon recently fired six workers – Courtney Bowden, Gerald Bryson, Maren Costa, Emily Cunningham, Bashir Mohammed, and Chris Smalls – after they raised concerns about safety in Amazon warehouses during the coronavirus pandemic. Amazon had previously defended the firings, saying each of the fired employees violated different internal protocols.
In his blog post, Bray scolded Amazon’s leaders over the terminations, calling the move “chickenshit” and intended to deter other Amazon employees from speaking out.
Bray is the highest-level Amazon employee to speak out about the company’s workplace culture and treatment of its workers. His last day at Amazon was on was Friday, May 1st.