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Let’s give a simplified precis answer that leaves out the toxic Back ’n’ Forth over the merits and demerits of the ACA … aka ObamacareLook at the History of Current Single Payor:Europe: Let us remember that unlike the US, Europe suffered the brunt of WWII. Folks…it was LEVELED. London, England was Rubble. Paris, France was a mortared, shot-up Ruin. Virtually every major city in Germany was reduced to scorched, bombed out craters. Italy, Spain…point and name every other major European nation… if you could look back thru time you would find people in rags, staggering thru bombed out cities, trying to put civilization back on its tracks.Governments at that time were faced with the harrowing task of providing for their citizens. And one of those paramount tasks, especially in the aftermath of War, is the prevention and containment of widespread health problems. Governments in those circumstances had literally ENTIRE POPULATIONS who needed basic Health Needs attended to. Doctors and hospitals were present…but people no longer had money or Jobs. That was not the time, for Doctor’s and Hospitals to tell the wounded and the maimed— “Sorry, No Money, No Treatment…”In essence, we can imagine that the Medical Profession was basically ‘Drafted’ into Service as a matter of National Need.In England— we see the NHS—1948NHS establishedThe NHS is born on July 5 1948 out of a long-held ideal that good healthcare should be available to all, regardless of wealth.When Health Secretary Aneurin Bevan opens Park Hospital in Manchester it is the climax of a hugely ambitious plan to bring good healthcare to all. For the first time hospitals, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, opticians and dentists are brought together under one umbrella organisation that is free for all at the point of delivery. The central principles are clear: the health service will be available to all and financed entirely from taxation, which means that people pay into it according to their means.NHS Choices - History of NHSNOTE THE YEAR: 1948.The year is Not a Coincidence. Britain was still digging its way out of the the end of WWII. Remember— They are still digging up unexploded shells even today. The Nation had a populace in dire need of Healthcare, with the focus NOT on Individual Health, but on Population health: Disease & Epidemics.So, in essence, what began as an informal voluntary commitment on the part of the Medical Community to General Health … got codified into Law in 1948.The Rest of Europe Followed suit…all due to the same devastation.Canada, Australia and others followed suit because they were part of the British Commonwealth.Now Look at the USA:Note, this time, the LACK of direct devastation from WWII. Life continued as usual. What we had at that time was the same Medical Care System that used to exist prior to WWII. It was a very simple system: Fee for Service. People who needed or wanted care had to PAY for that care.If they could not pay for needed care, they could or might find Charity Hospitals, usually run by Religious Faiths like the Catholic Church.If a person could not gain medical care by either of the above … they died.At this time, Funeral Homes and Morticians were very good Business. The Local Funeral Director was usually the wealthiest resident in the town. And their business occupied both ends of the age spectrum, both the Elderly, and Children. Caskets came in all sizes…and prices.Health Insurance Plans existed…but a lot of them were singular, Hospital Based prepayment plans, or more commonly, Accident-Based Insurance Plans…Thus the Phrase: ‘Getting hit by a Mack Truck’ (Yes, anecdotal, but I’ll run with it.) They were also variegated by State Laws and Jurisdictions. And then there was the development when they became underwritten by UNIONS. A Teacher’s Union was the source of early Blue Cross Coverage for it’s members back in 1929. We now know it as Empire Blue Cross & Blue Shield.Over time, outside of Federal politics, other Insurance Companies crafted their own Health Insurance policy offerings thru the growing number of Unions and Large Businesses. And it can be said that in the USA’s case, the Free Market of Health Insurance offered most Americans adequate options at a reasonable cost.There was one side-effect of this growth…Politics. At the State and Local Levels and upwards, Insurance Companies carried their clout and their Financial Interests into Representative’s Offices at all levels of Government, just as Companies and Corporations do.So from their standpoint, now in the 21st Century, having been major, long-term players in the field of Healthcare, UNIMPEDED by War, since the 20’s … the notion/idea of a Single Payor Plan that could wipe entire rosters of premium paying customers from their books becomes a definite FINANCIAL point of argument Against the enactment of a Single Payor scheme.Likewise, Hospitals and Doctors who have a long, comfortable understanding of the current Insurance Contracting System would have negative reactions to a Single Payor system that might infringe on their current ability to directly contract for specific Fees for Services at Payment amounts they deem acceptable. And just like the Insurance Company, Doctors and Hospitals, via their Medical Associations and Lobbying groups ALSO are able to bring their clout and their Financial Interests into Representative’s Offices at all levels of Government.Then comes the question of How Much TAXATION would be necessary to provide HOW MUCH Care for Each and Every Citizen?When the British enacted the NHS over half a century ago … Healthcare was simpler and more basic: Prevention of Mass epidemics down to basic care for injuries. To attempt the same implementation of Universal Healthcare today, with the ever expanding plethora of Medical and Diagnostic Technology … the Ledger Numbers of Cost Containment would be Daunting Revenue-wise. And on the Politics side, the cold discussion of Who can get What Treatment? (ie: Death Panels) can be territory too hot to enter.That is the point where the US and other nations, such as those in South America and Asia, are currently at:The Political accommodation of established Financial Medical Insurance Interests against the creation of a Single Payor schemeThe Political & Revenue/Budget accommodations of how much taxation can be levied to cover just a BASIC level of Universal Health Care for every citizenThe Political discussion and agreement on what is exactly ENTAILED by the Term BASIC Universal Health Care (Pediatrics, Adult, Eldercare, Chronic Disability) … Including the Question of “How Much Care is Sufficient?”The US Polity has to deal with these main points first before we can even get to the point of considering the possibility of Universal Healthcare.Europe & Canada are muddling through the details now…but they are doing it from within a Framework that was already in Place.A Framework put in place because of the direct, devastating aftermath of WWII.A Framework that they deemed necessary at that time.

I have few friends in Amazon at Seattle WA and few in AWS at Dallas TX & Herndon VA.This answer is based on their experience as most of them don’t want to come forward and answer it(managers look at the social media activity of their team members). It’s been widely covered in the news media also about the overall working conditions at Amazon. Amazon’s culture is well known to outside world now, thanks to article like thisOutside world experience is not valued.Amazon as such doesn’t care about your outside experience. For example in AWS, they only care about AWS and nothing else. Managers just believe in numbers, they want you to do the certification - even AWS cloud practitioner. Some folks have 4–5 certifications but good for nothing. If any real customer problem do occur, these certification folks who just mugged the contents can’t help at all.Why not AWS Solutions Architect - Professional certification has some phases? Like first one just objective type questions, then some real life assignment to be done without referencing anything and then interview? It’s not real certifications.If AWS Solutions Architect - Professional certification is so good then why don’t these folks are ready to work in AWS Professional services?Squeezing the employees. Real long working hours. Amazon pays well but will extract almost 150%-200% for that salary.Let the team has infighting. Coworkers bitch about each other. Managers use coworkers against each other. Coworkers are encouraged to provide feedback about each other to the managers. Even in the departments which are doing highly technical work - hierarchy of manager is kept. These managers love that coworkers are having issues with each other so that their role is relevant.No place for old men. Amazon wants only younger employees. Average age of employee is 31 years. They look for ways to kick out older workers. Amazon is always monitoring the employees when they are at work and also outside of work. You will be shocked to hear that every employee’s insurance is also monitored. It won’t be a mere coincidence that employee’s who have very high insurance expenses are booted out as Amazon want to keep it’s contribution to employee health insurance the minimum. Employees who take more vacations are also prone.No place for injured or disabled or sick employees. Amazon is a fine weather friend. The moment somebody is injured due to work place injury there is every possible effort to deny the worker’s compensation and then lay off the employee for any other reasons. Only on paper amazon states that we accommodate employee’s work restrictions. Don’t believe what i am saying then refer this Nicholas Stover, Fired Amazon Worker With Crohn's Disease, Files Suit Over Bathroom BreaksRather than firing make them leave. Amazon doesn’t fire but believe in constructive discharge. Amazon top management(supervisor) with the help of HRBP will make your life miserable so that you leave that place.Benefits as bad as policies. Worst benefits. For very first year - only 2 weeks of vacation and 1 week of personal days. In Texas, they dropped the Worker’s compensation and got Amazon TXCare - which is the worst workers compensation. Texas state allows employers not to offer workers compensation or offer a worker’s compensation plan which is not following Texas Department of Insurance. Amazon read this rule very well and introduced Amazon TXCare which is funded and administrated by Amazon only in order to save money(and to make Jeff Bezos even richer). The rules are all made for Amazon. When employees sees that this kind of policies are there, they would prefer to leave. Amazon TXCare has limited number of providers - only triage based diagnosis at urgent care center. No specialist. Aim is to say no to the employee’s work injury. There is no real appeal process. Now way employees can reach out to Texas Department of Insurance and can get an attorney. This makes it easy for Amazon in Texas and that’s why due to these kind of policies they are growing at Texas. No Amazon Prime for employees. Only $100 discount for the first $1000 shopping for the items sold by amazon.com(not 3rd party). Medical, Dental, Vision plans are not at all in line with Microsoft or Google etc.. Heard that during vacation also employees are working.Diversity numbers sucks. Lack of diversity. Apart from lack of diversity, there are often discrimination and unfair treatment by supervisors to employees. HRBP, Employee relations, SVP Beth, CEO doesn’t listen or come for the rescue of the employees. Overall treatment for a non white non American origin employee is bad. Employee relations investigations are good for nothing - mere cover up to collect data to avoid lawsuit in future.Lack of diversity. Either too many white men or Asian Indians. Other races and national origin are almost missing.Long working hours. Too much working hours. Almost 11–15 hours of work per day is very normal in Amazon.Don’t count on stocks. Stock options are given in such a way that very first year - 5%, 2nd year - 15%, then every 6 months 20% vesting. 401K vesting is 3 years. Amazon just contributes 2% to the employee’s contribution. One can understand that Amazon is using AWS Sagemaker or Forecast to observe that most of the employees leave before 1 year so the rules are made this way only. Only shareholders and Jeff Bezos is becoming rich and everybody else is getting poorer. Will Amazon be okay if sellers just pay for any item they buy from Shopping Resources and Information. and only pay 5% price in first year, then 15% in next year and then 20% for every 6 months? So how the stock vesting is justified then? You can compare the stock vesting of Apple, Google, Salesforce and others…they vest 25% stocks every year. They want employees to stay and don’t punish the employees who are leaving early. Amazon on the other hand knows very well that due to bad policies and bad treatments - more than 50% employees will leave in the very first year so cap the stock vesting to only 5%. And worst thing, if anybody goes for parental leave or short term disability or long term disability then the stock vesting and 401K vesting stops. So there is no empathy for any sick employee or employee taking care of sick.Why first year only 5% stock vesting? As amazon knows very well most of the employees(around 55%) will leave in the very first year. Other companies like google, apple etc….has 25% stock vesting every year not like 5% in first year then 15% in 2nd year and then 20% each 6 months.Leadership principals. Amazon has leadership principals like frugality(being cheap), disagree and commit etc…but they don’t have any leadership principals which talks about ethics, morals, integrity, honesty etc…Poor quality hires. In AWS I heard that good number of US Masters degree Asian Indians has joined the company. All these folks were not good when they did undergraduate in India(from private engineering colleges as their parents bought that degree for them and even after that they were unemployed) so came to USA for 2nd chance. Amazon took them even if they were doing MS from mediocre schools. You won’t find bright folks in AWS Enterprise support. It’s very political organization. Employees who are honest and outspoken are simply kicked out of the organization. There is a great culture to boot lick the manager in AWS Enterprise support.Connections surveys are monitoring the individual employees. There are connections survey every day. In this survey manager is getting feedback from the team and team get the overall feedback. It’s about checking the pulse of the 2 pizza size team. None of my friends has ever heard of the bad ass manager being terminated due to this connections survey. In fact connections survey knows which team member answered what option and records the IP/MAC address. Team members are constantly watched based on their responses and other activity. It’s very much prison kind of situation.Large number of lawsuits against Amazon. Amazon is sued multiple times by employees, vendors, customers, partner every day. Though amazon talks about customer obsession. Jeff Bezos simply forgot that if you take care of employees then employees will take care of the customers. Some EEOC lawsuits against Amazon are:Amazon Class Action Says Company 'Thins the Herd' with Age Bias | Top Class ActionsThree Amazon workers allege discrimination at Shakopee warehouseAmazon Sued for Employment DiscriminationNicholas Stover, Fired Amazon Worker With Crohn's Disease, Files Suit Over Bathroom BreaksOne of the current lawsuits Fired Amazon worker sues over pandemic working conditionsManager is always right. Rather than doing any action against the bad manager, it’s always the employee which is beaten up and asked to leave. Hardworking employee can find a job elsewhere and he/she receives few months of severance. In the end Amazon is slowly and slowly increasing number of it’s enemies.More than 50% employees leave during the very first year. At an average more than 50% employees leave amazon within the very first year. They don’t care about the stocks or the reminder of the year sign on bonus.In Amazon it’s not important what you know but whom you know is very important.Raise the bar. During the interview process, Amazonians always tries to find someone who is better than 50% of the existing work force. They call it as “raise the bar”. As per the guidelines, interviewers should treat everyone respectfully as some way or the other, everybody is the customer. But that’s not the case. During my AWS TAM position interview, I got questions only on networking. I have rated myself 2/10 on networking and rated 6 or 8 in other areas. Then why can’t they have the right interviewer for me? Later when i asked my friends who are already working they stated that almost 80% AWS TAMs are from networking, hardware, infrastructure, System Administration or DevOps background(not from Software OR Product development) and that is the reason why the interview process is so screwed up. I can witness the same in all the AWS certifications - one need to have broad level knowledge not in-depth of anything. I was not told about my interview results even after 6 months. Moreover if you are hiring better than reminder of the 50% - then why these folks leave or asked to leave within the very first 1 yr?Amazon is very centralized. More than 600K employees world wide. They should divide the company in more meaningful entities. But they are not doing it. Some reasons - Jeff Bezos want to have control. Even after his divorce, he kept the voting rights with him. Other reasons - to gain benefits in taxes, still be called H-1B independent employer in USA (less than 15% workforce on H-1B - it’s false as AWS has more than 15% workforce on H-1B visa) etc… It’s the real problem like USSR in late 70’s - too big to manage.Too much dictatorship from top management-every effort to suppress worker unions. Jeff Bezos never let Amazon employees form a union. Every attempt is done by management to suppress unions. Managers are tyrant. Employees should feel lucky if they are having good manager. There is no appeal process for any bad treatment by managers. Ethicspoint is a total joke - it’s just a way for the company to collect data from the employee so that company can prepare itself for future lawsuit. Bad managers are rewarded. Now when Joe Biden is going to be the president - there are high chances of worker unions as in the case of google - where Tech workers formed the union. Now think of forming a union in IT department of Amazon or AWS -where employer/managers encourages in fighting among the employees - they want employees to rip each other out. When amazon warehouse workers initiated union process in USA, amazon is creating obstacles like in-person voting during COVID-19 to some how delay the entire process. And to suppress Alabama unionizing efforts - they are influencing workers to vote against the unions. Influencing workers to vote against the union. Even before a single vote was cast, the union push had garnered national attention and support from figures ranging from Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to a group of 50 Congresspeople who sent a letter Friday urging Amazon's outgoing CEO, Jeff Bezos, to "treat your employees as the critical asset they are, not as a threat to be neutralized or a cost to be minimized."Amazon want to do things at very fast rate but with lots of flaws. Just 3 months back AWS datawarehouse offering Redshift has some major bugs. Google about Redshift bugs. AWS is too much hype - they tell everything in the world about a particular offering even when it’s not ready. Sagemaker is right now having a demo project of fraud detection which was done by every onPrem Hadoop vendor 4 years back. Result of this quick and dirty work - too much support work that requires lot of co-ordination and documentation. Engineers don’t like this kind of environment and thus leave.AWS never tells about profit margin - no transparency. Every AWS Enterprise Support customer pays at least $15K per month to get the support from AWS(very junior support engineers from South Africa, India and other geographies are working for them). AWS is never willing to share the profit margins with any enterprise customer about the AWS enterprise Support. Unnecessary organization hierarchy is being created on the AWS enterprise support due to this high margins. This unnecessary organization hierarchy rather than helping or supporting the engineers sometimes misuse their authority to satisfy their king size ego. The top level managers travel a lot for their airlines mileage points while not ready to provide basic amenities to the engineers. As good number of these engineers are on OPT or H-1B visa, they are stuck at AWS otherwise the attrition may be even higher. Does AWS ever provides their customers - what is the profit margin? All the enterprise support cases are handled by CSE or even by CSA(without any monitoring of CSEs)Silent Layoffs More than half dozen TAMs/Sr. TAMs are being laid off from AWS Austin TX during year 2019. Why? Because supervisor was not liking their personality. Rather than laying off 6+ TAMs/Sr. TAMs why not lay off the culprit supervisor? Amazon says that we don’t fire or layoff the workers but ask them to leave. Asking them to leave is worse than laying off and firing the employees as such a bad situation is created so that employee can’t even survive in the company.Supervisor and HR has own interpretation of Employee policies Employee Handbook/Policies are ever changing and everybody has their own interpretation. HR and Supervisors keep on using these words about policies and guidelines “it depends”, “it will be dealt case by case basis” etc…When somebody questions then Supervisors will quote the Leadership principal “disagree and commit”.Good for nothing ERC. Any benefit related issues, it’s ERC(Employee Resource Center) which is dealing with that. ERC is all outsourced work force in India. They start working from your 11 pm EST time and have no objectives at all. ERC hires worst quality of resources in India who has no knowledge of Global laws and definitely no ownership or accountability.Wrong doing but not admitting. When a supervisor is against the employee and want to do the constructive discharge. That supervisor uses all the might to get help from HR, Employee relations, top management etc…All these folks keep on telling lies but they believe that if “1000 people tells a lie it becomes truth”. This is how any dissent or dissatisfaction among the employees is dealt with. Result employees leave for ever. They tell others and anybody still joins Amazon, they are only interested in making money, get the tag and then leave.Overall quality of work is very bad. Please refer AWS samples and AWS Labs. Only on paper everything is working. Tryout any solutions from them which were released just a month back. Most of the times, it won’t work. Refer to # of issues and pull requests, there is no action for them. Only to get name and fame, some of the folks publish these repositories with no ownership after that.Amazon growth but in negative direction. How many folks are aware that Amazon tried to launch a search engine as well as Smart phone. Both are major flops. Now CEO is trying to compete with Elan Musk’s SpaceX and going to waste all the money. Why not the same money is being used to make better conditions for warehouse and other workers who are toiling so hard?HR cannot be trusted. One of the my friend who left Amazon told me that never ever trust HRBP and Human Resources Employee relations in Amazon. These folks are agents of evil supervisors.Very less vacations. Amazon Corporate has only 6 holidays. They provide 6 personal days and advertise it a lot. Essentially it’s just 2 personal days(10–6 = 4 national holidays). During the very first year there are only 2 weeks of holidays.Is it day one or year one? Jeff keeps on stating it’s day one culture. But essentially it’s year one culture. Most of the rules in Amazon are kept such a way that any employee who left in the first year is a total loser. He/she gets only 5% stock vesting, no 401K vesting, not the bigger vacation chunk. Remember Amazon doesn’t pay you for personal days(if not used) when you are terminated. All the policies are made in favor of the employer and Amazon know very well more than 50% people are not going to stay beyond 1st year.Very bad treatment after termination. How good or bad a company is, it depends a lot how they treat you on the last day/week? Trust me not even a single Amazon employee I have come across was treated fairly - no matter the employee was good or bad? Employees are human beings and not some items in the shopping cart that Amazon is comparing one line item with another and removing/adding into the cart.Wages not being paid, employees has to earn it via lawsuits. Somebody posted in one of my questions that Amazon and it’s subsidiaries doesn’t even pay their employees. Look at various state department of labor websites. Somebody who complained stated that rather than paying the back wages for the employee, AWS hired private attorney who might be paid 5X or 10X times of the actual back wages amount. Just to save false ego, Amazon can go to any extent.More than 79% amazon employees don’t like the HR. And this is the official survey about Amazon’s HR. Yes, Connections results are conducted every day but it’s not to take action against the bad supervisors and bad policies but to finger point the employees who are providing real feedback(to boot them out). Every connection survey records the MAC ID and other details which can help to identify which employee stated what?Leadership principals are interpreted by supervisors and HR in their own way. If “disagree but commit” is a valid leadership principal then why terminate the employees and put them into pivot? Manager and HR should commit for long term relationship of employee and employer even when they disagree(that employee is not perceived to be doing good which is not true in most of the cases). Internal reports states that once somebody is put on performance improvement plan or pivot - more than 99% cases they are booted out. There is no appeal process.Forcing workers to work even during the COVID-19 crisis just for profitabilityExtreme retaliation against the workers who raises their voice. Chris Smalls and several others.First discrimination followed by retaliation. It’s very common in Amazon and it’s subsidiaries that first the company would like to discriminate for whatever reasons. Expectation from the employee is to tolerate it. But if the employee speaks up then retaliation will start. Many such cases like thisKilling the competition. And this is how Amazon kills the competition. When Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more Inc.’s venture-capital fund invested in DefinedCrowd Corp., it gained access to the technology startup’s finances and other confidential information. Nearly four years later, in April, Amazon’s cloud-computing unit launched an artificial-intelligence product that does almost exactly what DefinedCrowd does, said DefinedCrowd founder and Chief Executive Daniela Braga. So literally they are following the HBO’s silicon valley serial where some crooked company steals the secret from others while asking for the presentation.Stack Ranking, Pivot, the Dev List, Performance Improvement plans, forced attrition, and being managed out. These are the real reasons. I’ve personally heard horror stories from top employees who have had their managers create document-able lies about their performance, force them into unattainable performance reviews, and essentially create a hostile work environment which forces them to quit. This is 100% illegal. Amazon knows it and settles these cases all the time. Hiring managers and talent scouts need to be more up front about the risks associated with working with Amazon. Employees are pitted against each other. Employees vent out on each other on the daily basis. Refer this about the devlist. Employees are not even aware that they are on devlist. Generally managers deliberately put the employees on devlist whom they believe could leave the group. This way manager blocks the employee to get into some other group. Then this manager squeezes this employee(on devlist) like anything. This is called modern day slavery.Mediocre Employees being hired. In fact if you go thru all the profiles of folks working in AWS. You will find a pattern:Majority of them in USA are Asian Indians with Masters. These folks were kids of rich parents who bought them Engineering degrees from mediocre private engineering colleges on payment seats. Later these folks did MS only for 20K H-1B quota. They were not interested in Masters or Advanced degree but just eyeing for H-1B visa.As they are on H-1B, they will stay as Amazon is the largest Green card sponsor company in USA now. They don’t like Amazon but they will stay here just for their green card processing.All these folks had a very short term tenure in their prior jobs like not even a single company where they had worked for 2, 3, 4 or 5 years. But in AWS they are sticking for more time. What one can derive from this?and it’s a vicious cycle - first H1B visa(1st year), then Green card processing(2nd year) and then wait till the 4th year for stock vesting. See what Ronil Hira testified in front of the senate committee about H-1B visa and L-1 visa displacing US workers. It’s multi generation Asian Indian talking about how H-1B and L-1 are systematically replacing US workers and companies save millions of $$$. Needless to say AWS is on the brink of “H-1B dependent employer” as they have 12% of their work force which is H-1B visa.they are not here for any Amazon’s leadership principal like customer obsession or working backwards but simply for their own personal gains.Hearty welcome when you come in and we will show you our colors when you want to go out. When employees get in - they are made to realize that you are lucky to get a job out here. But when the employees are kicked out - they receive the worst possible treatment. Same is the case how Amazon and AWS behaves when dealing with others. For example it’s very difficult to get out of amazon prime membership and return the items once you bought from amazon.com . Similarly AWS is very nice when you are bringing your workload and data to them but when you want to go out of AWS - they will rip you off.Amazon management keeps an eye on the workers always. Do you know that if you are using Kindle(device or app on Windows or Android or IoS platform) Kindle collects all the data and send it amazon? why? Well Amazon has the answer - we are collecting data for some statistics. Same with Alexa in your home. And you wonder if Amazon is trying to keep an eye over the consumers - well they were doing this for decades in the work environment also. Just to suppress unionizing and other efforts, amazon had surveillance.Even after leaving Amzon - the company will haunt you. Read this. AWS/Amazon constantly harassed him. It’s employment at will in USA and amazon often uses this to fire employees. But employee leaves them they have an issue. Amazon truly believe in modern day slavery. Shit always flows from top. This is what Mr. Jeff Bezos did once he was caught cheating with his wife.Opposing unionization at all cost. Just to oppose unions, Amazon made sure that there are in-person voting for Alabama union election even during COVID-19/pandemic era. Management in fact reached out to the workers to stay out of union by voting against it.Stealing wages from the workers. FTC recently found Amazon intentionally took money from drivers paycheck and then fined Amazon regarding the same.Fighting with others - all over the world. In India(2nd biggest market after China), Amazon is using all it’s war machine to defeat Reliance by hook and crookAmazon fight with almost all the state/federal agencies even when most of the time they are wrong. For instance in case of US Alabama warehouse workers, amazon deliberately insisted on in-person voting during COVID-19. At one side Amazon writes to new president elect Joe Biden to have Vaccines their employees and distribute the vaccines which may look at the external world and their ignorant employees that they do care about the employees but it’s just the opposite. If Amazon really cares about the employees why they are so dogmatic in terms of in-person voting for Alabama warehouse workers and which was finally refused by NLRB. Is Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy going in-person to their office? Then why ask the warehouse workers for in-person voting? NLRB understood these dirty tricks of Amazon’s management and realized that it’s nothing but to thwart unionization of the workers and allowed mail in votes by workers during COVID-19.That’s show the overall double standards of Amazon.New York Attorney General sues Amazon, alleging 'deficient' Covid-19 response. How well Amazon handled spread of COVID-19 in Amazon? Even New Attorney General’s office has to sue amazon for that. These kind of agencies generally try to avoid suing others.Amazon can go down to any extent to suppress worker’s dissent. In order to suppress Unionization in Alabama, Amazon changed traffic light timing during union drive As part of its ongoing fight over an Alabama warehouse’s efforts to unionize, Amazon reportedly changed the timing of a traffic light outside the warehouse, according to reporting by More Perfect Union. Union organizers at the site had previously accused the company of altering the timing so that pro-union workers would not be able to canvass workers while stopped at the light. Until recently, the altered timing on the traffic light outside the factory had been dismissed as a rumor. But More Perfect Union confirmed with Jefferson County officials that last year, Amazon notified the county of traffic delays during shift changes and asked for the light to be changed. On December 15th, the county increased the green light duration in an effort to clear workers off the worksite faster. There’s no indication that the county was aware of the ongoing organizing drive or any effect the traffic light changes might have on the effort.Who is worse - President Trump or Amazon? Look at the article at nytimes . Just the way President Trump tried to undermine voting in the 2020 elections, same is the approach of Amazon regarding union elections in Alabama.Amazon going to any extent to stop the unionization effort. Refer to this article which talks about why unions are necessary in large employers like amazon which does everything to exploit the workers. Amazon is running a website to sabotage the unionization efforts.Amazon is putting cameras in its delivery vans and some drivers aren't happy. Delivery driver's work environment is set to change as Amazon announced this month that it has begun to roll out cameras inside its delivery vehicles that monitor both the road, and its drivers."If one thing messes up, I'm going to freak out," Elizabeth told CNN Business. "That's my job, it's over. They're going to see it on camera." Amazon is going further and embracing cameras consistently pointed at drivers, which rely on artificial intelligence to voice real-time feedback. Drivers will get real-time warnings if they run a stop sign, tailgate, or are distracted.Amazon drivers say negative experiences with the company's existing driver monitoring system contribute to their concerns.Victor Fuentes, an Amazon driver in California, has said on YouTube that he hates the cameras, as he sometimes needs to bend or break rules to get his work done quickly. For more, refer this. The decision sparked some backlash, and one driver told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the policy change had driven him to quit, calling it an invasion of privacy. In the report about a driver quitting as a result of this new system, the former employee saw the system as a "sort of coercion." Amazon has faced controversy over claims of surveillance in the past. In January of this year, more than 200 workers signed a petition sent to the CEO Jeff Bezos asking for an end to what the employees called "labor surveillance" ahead of unionization efforts.Amazon Executive Fired After Upgrading Flight. It's very common for any long hours flight(if it is more than 8 hours duration) to fly in business class or something more than a bare minimum economy class. But Amazon fired it's executive, Marc Sadeghi(Global head of visual effects for Amazon Studios) when he upgraded his 14 hours long flight to New Zealand. After return from his trip, HR told him that his assistant had made complaint against him for something that he is not even aware of(of course HR in Amazon is really good in making up the things) and fired him. Just think of this company Amazon, if they can fire Global head level executive, how they are treating other low level workers who have no voice or recourse or access to legal system. Amazon Executive sued amazon after this. Recording some other employee in Amazon is not allowed as per the policy but here HR used the recording from the assistant to make a case against this executive. Every terms and conditions are twisted by Amazon in it’s own favor.AMZN’s work culture is atrocious. Boys club, PIPs out the wazoo, and general penny pinching. If Bezos could treat the VPs and Engineers the way he treats warehouse workers without mass quitting, he would.The NYT article from a few years ago is accurate and nothing has changed.Not good for Blacks or African American communities. More than a dozen current or former employees at Amazon's corporate headquarters say they witnessed systematic disadvantages for Black and underrepresented workers, according to Recode. The tech news website quoted an Amazon diversity manager, who said: "We struggle to bring [Black] folks in because there's not a whole lot of desire, in my opinion, to go outside of our normal practices." Once inside the company, those employees sometimes had difficulty advancing, the manager told the outlet. For more information, please refer thisAmazon hit with federal suit alleging race and gender discrimination. The suit was filed by Charlotte Newman, a Black woman who joined Amazon four years ago as a public policy manager and currently works as head of underrepresented founder startup business development at Amazon Web Services.The suit says Newman originally applied for a higher-level job but was hired on as public policy manager.“Within months of starting at the company, she in fact was assigned and doing the work of a senior manager-level employee while still being paid at and having the title of the manager level. To make matters worse, and in defiance of the anti discrimination laws, Ms. Newman was paid significantly less than her white coworkers, particularly in valuable Amazon stock," says the suit. For more info, refer thisFinally Jeff Bezos will be paying some income taxes but look at the overall income disparity in Amazon. Jeff Bezos would owe $5.7 billion in taxes for 2020 under the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act proposed by a group of Senate and House Democrats and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Sanders, I-Vt., and others unveiled their proposed wealth tax, saying it would raise trillions in much-needed revenue and help reduce a wealth divide that has only grown wider during the pandemic. The tax would be a 2% annual levy on wealth over $50 million and 3% on wealth over $1 billion. Think how much Jeff Bezos is earning compared to what average Amazon worker earns(less than $15 per hour). Now Mr. Bezos will use his ditty tricks department to somehow not to pay this tax.Richest man but still the greediest. Now look at what happened to this lawsuit. Obviously anybody who is going to sue Jeff Bezos won’t be having this much money what Jeff Bezos is having. This greedy CEO asked for too much in damages. Even the Judge found that it’s unreasonable. Jeff Bezos wanted $1.7 million in legal fees from his girlfriend’s brother for successfully fighting off his defamation lawsuit. He got much less. A Los Angeles judge awarded the world’s richest man $218,385, saying Amazon’s founder needlessly put too many lawyers on the case. Even though the defamation fight was more complicated than usual, more than 2,070 hours billed in the case were “not reasonable,”Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge John Doyle said in a ruling on Friday.“This was not a matter that required seven partners and 11 associates,” Doyle said. Read hereAmazon expands gamification program that encourages warehouse employees to work harder. Amazon is expanding an existing program that gamifies warehouse work to encourage its fulfillment center employees to improve their efficiency and compete against others for digital rewards like virtual pets, according to a new report from The Information. The program is called FC Games, and it includes as many as six arcade-style mini-games that can be played only by completing warehouse tasks in the workplace. It’s been known since at least 2019 that Amazon uses gamification in the form of workstation games to try to incentivize employees to improve productivity, but The Information reports that Amazon is now expanding those methods to warehouses in at least 20 states throughout the country. Many of the games tend to be simple virtual representations of how fast the worker is completing a task. One, called MissionRacer, moves a car around a track while a picking employee sorts products into appropriate boxes, as reported by The Washington Post at the time. But how dare they trick their employees into having fun?Amazon employee testifying in US Senate to speak the truth about the working conditions at Amazon. An Amazon warehouse employee testified before the Senate Budget Committee on Wednesday about the "grueling" working conditions that led her and others to organize the milestone union election currently underway in Bessemer, Alabama. "Amazon brags it pays workers above the minimum wage. What they don't tell you is what those jobs are really like," said Jennifer Bates in her testimony. "We have to keep up with the pace. My workday feels like a nine-hour intense workout every day. And they track our every move -- if your computer isn't scanning, you get charged with being time-off-task," said Bates, a learning ambassador who helps train other workers at the facility and who has been a vocal organizer behind the union push. "From the onset, I learned that if I worked too slow or had too much time-off-task I could be disciplined or even fired." Amazon spokesperson denied Ms. Bates comments as usual. Mr. Jeff Bezos was also invited but he prefer to run away—he is bigger than Almighty God it seems.Black employees are paid less and have to wait more for promotion, another AWS employee sued Amazon. An Amazon employee filed a lawsuit Monday accusing the tech giant of deliberately paying her and other Black employees less than their White counterparts, becoming the latest on a growing list of current and former Amazon workers to accuse the company of systemic racism. In her complaint, Charlotte Newman, a 38-year-old Black woman who lives in Washington DC, said Amazon Web Services hired her four years ago to work as a public policy manager even though she had applied for and said she was qualified to work as a higher-level senior manager, a practice Newman suggests is routine."Many of Ms. Newman's colleagues observed a consistent practice of paying Black employees less than similarly situated White employees, and a near-total lack of Black representation in and very few women in the upper echelons of the group's leadership," Newman's attorneys wrote in the complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, DC.The complaint also accuses the company of "de-leveling" Black employees when they are hired — "dropping them a level below the job they applied and were qualified for or will be performing." This high profile case is right now in Federal court with jury trial.Another black employee left Amazon due to sad state of affairs. When Chanin Kelly-Rae started working at Amazon in 2019 as a global manager of diversity in the company’s cloud computing division, she had big ambitions for her new job. She had nearly two decades of experience leading diversity and inclusion efforts inside important institutions, like Washington state’s governor’s office, but she’d never worked at an influential global business leader like Amazon.But less than a year later, Kelly-Rae quit. Her tenure inside the company convinced her that Amazon’s corporate workplace has deep, systemic issues that disadvantage Black employees and workers from other underrepresented backgrounds. And she was dismayed by her perception that Amazon leadership was unwilling to listen to internal experts about how to identify and fix these problems. “Amazon was not doing things in a way that represents best practices that would advance diversity and inclusion in any way that is meaningful and thoughtful,” she told Recode. “Let me add: Amazon appeared to be taking steps backward instead of forward.”Amazon workers go on strike in Italy over labor conditions Amazon warehouse and delivery workers in Italy have gone on a 24-hour strike to call on the company to make changes to workloads, shifts and benefits. Trade unions FILT-CGIL, FIT-CISL and Uiltrasporti said it’s the first strike to affect Amazon’s entire logistics operations in Italy.The strike comes as tensions have grown between Amazon and its front-line workforce in Europe and the U.S. amid the coronavirus pandemic. Warehouse workers in Italy and other parts of Europe went on strike last year to call on Amazon to implement greater coronavirus safety measures. Workers across the U.S. also participated in walkouts and protests last year to highlight similar concerns.Amazon delivery drivers have to consent to AI surveillance in their vans or lose their jobs. But after installing machine learning-powered surveillance cameras in its delivery vans earlier this year, the company is now telling employees: agree to be surveilled by AI or lose your job. As first reported by Vice, Amazon delivery drivers in the US now have to sign “biometric consent” forms to continue working for the retailing giant. Exactly what information is being collected seems to vary based on what surveillance equipment has been installed in any given van, but Amazon’s privacy policy (embedded below) covers a wide range of data.The data that drivers must consent to be collected includes photographs used to verify their identity; vehicle location and movements (including “miles driven, speed, acceleration, braking, turns, following distance”); “potential traffic violations” (like speeding, failure to stop at stop signs, and undone seatbelts); and “potentially risky driver behavior, such as distracted driving or drowsy driving.”Amazon removes workers from an internal directory as part of union busting. The new controversy centers on Amazon deleting the profiles of hundreds of thousands of entry-level warehouse employees.Last week, Amazon made changes to its internal online staff directory, deleting hundreds of thousands of entry-level warehouse workers’ profiles from a tool that allows any company employee to view the full names and photos of other employees.The employee directory in question is known as the Amazon Phone Tool, which allows employees of all levels to do things like search for other employees anywhere in the company, see where they work, and view the hierarchy of managers all the way up to Jeff Bezos. The tool also allows employees to create or accumulate virtual awards and icons for everything from making it through the peak holiday shopping season to acing a quiz about the company’s leadership principles. Previously, all entry-level warehouse workers — known as Tier 1 associates in Amazon parlance — had profiles in this directory and would turn up in search results. But as of last week, Amazon removed them.In Trumpian move, Jeff Bezos reportedly orders Amazon chiefs to hit back at critics and they are hitting back at elected representative like Senators also.The behavior of the Amazon News corporate account and of executive Dave Clark on Twitter over the past week, lashing out at prominent critics in an uncharacteristically spiteful and petty manner, calls that seemingly obvious proposition into question. Turns out there may be a good explanation for that. The boss may have taken matters into his own hands. As reported by Recode, Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, with enough money to do anything he could ever imagine besides this, appears to be behind the change in tone. And it’s not just the pugnacious style of the tweets that have a distinctly Trumpian echo, it’s also the motivation behind them: he doesn’t think the company is punching back hard enough at its critics.German union calls four-day strike at Amazon sites ahead of Easter. The trade union Verdi has called for workers at six Amazon sites in Germany to go on strike from Sunday evening for four days in the latest attempt to try to force the U.S. e-commerce group to recognize collective bargaining agreements.Amazon’s aggressive PR campaign ahead of union vote shows how worried it is, labor and antitrust experts say. Amazon is playing an aggressive defense against its critics as it stares down a historic union vote at one of its warehouses in Alabama. In recent days, Amazon has sparred with a handful of high-profile lawmakers on Twitter over its working conditions, tax policies and threats to break up Big Tech. The jabs came from Amazon’s official social media account, which counts close to 175,000 followers, and Dave Clark, the company’s consumer boss.Amazon Recruited Twitter Army to Defend Company and CEO Jeff Bezos, Leaked Document Reveals A leaked document reveals how Amazon recruited a number of ambassadors to defend the online reputation of the company and its CEO, Jeff Bezos. The Intercept published the internal document uncovering the secret project, which Amazon allegedly conceived in 2018 under the codename "Veritas." The 10-page dossier shares details of how the company handpicked employees, specifically those with a "clean HR record" and "great sense of humor," and then trained them to confront critics on social media and online forums in a "polite, blunt way.""To address speculation and false assertions in social media and online forums about the quality of the FC [Fulfillment Center] associate experience, we are creating a new social team staffed with active, tenured FC employees, who will be empowered to respond in a polite—but blunt—way to every untruth," reads the program summary. "FC Ambassadors ('FCA') will respond to all posts and comments from customers, influencers (including policymakers), and media questioning the FC associate experience." So much money to waste on army of attorneys and liars, why not amazon looks for ways to treat employees well and compensate them for their hard work?Amazon finally acknowledges delivery driver bathroom problem. Amazon acknowledged Friday that it has a looming problem.The web giant fessed up that its delivery drivers have limited access to bathrooms, meaning that accusations of them urinating in bottles or elsewhere in public are likely to be true.“We know that drivers can and do have trouble finding restrooms because of traffic or sometimes rural routes,” the online retail giant posted on its AboutAmazon portal. “And this has been especially the case during Covid when many public restrooms have been closed.” The admission comes following a Twitter spat with Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.) last month in which the congressman accused Amazon of being a union-busting operation that will “make workers urinate in water bottles.” So even now when Amazon acknowledged the issue but Amazon is still blaming COVID-19 which made Amazon and Jeff Bezos ultra rich.

I’m not sure if I learned these 26 lessons too late in life, as I was probably cognizant of many of these fairly young. But some did come later. In any case, here they are. The younger someone is when reading them, th more the potential benefit:1) Decisions in life matter. Perhaps this is THE most important life principle to share; others flow from this one. Decisions matter a lot more than you think, and with farther-reaching effects than you think, and affect more people than you think. That is why, when you are faced with a major decision, you cannot be careful enough in considering all the possible consequences – and how will you feel not only an hour or a day later, but also a year and a decade later. This is especially true early in life. Do not trade short-term pleasure for long-term pain. Life has a way of rewarding those who can delay gratification. A good rule of thumb is when you have evaluated a potential decision at least three times and are absolutely sure it is a good one, evaluate it a fourth time. Be open-minded, avoid confirmation bias, and expand the range of options you are considering in a decision.2) The law of entropy is alive and well in the universe. Putting it another way, things tend to disorder and chaos; a house that takes months to build can be burned down to the ground in mere minutes. Applying that lesson to life, it is very easy for bad events – whether your fault or not – to move you downward in life and ruin its quality, and this happens a lot more quickly and easily than moving upward. Therefore, it’s a good idea in life to build in as many protections as possible, and to spend as much effort avoiding bad outcomes as pursuing good ones. Life is inherently fragile.3) A corollary to point #1 above is that life decisions are especially important – and have the most impact – early in life. Bad decisions, especially in your teens and early 20s– such as drugs, alcohol, legal troubles, dropping out of school, and having children without the proper support and finances in place – can really wreck your life for the long haul, producing negative consequences over decades, often in ways that cannot be easily foreseen. Many people struggling in their 40s and 50s – surprisingly late in life – are in reality doing so because of bad decisions they made decades earlier. This is a rather harsh part of life, because young people are often the least emotionally equipped to understand the “time compounding” of good and bad decisions almost as if they were long-term financial investments. Yet life requires this understanding, and exacts steep penalties for those who ignore it.4) Money isn’t everything, but it’s often about 97 or 98% of it. If you want to understand and predict people’s behavior, it’s a good idea to know all the financial incentives involved. As for the rest of what drives people’s behavior – sadly – much of it has to do with envy and the need to protect ego.5) A corollary to #4 above – life is a numbers game, and good decisions in life often come down to understanding statistics, base rates, probabilities, and other inherent math principles that underlie life. Ignore these at your own peril. It’s not necessary to know advanced math, but basic math is critical to living. Nowhere is this truer than with finances. A deep understanding of money – which ultimately comes down to math – will not guarantee happiness but will definitely make life much easier. Those without this understanding will be subject to a life of hardship and lost opportunities, and one problem will quickly spiral into another. So study money and financial principles. Understand taxes and how they work, because this will probably be your biggest expense. Also, do not have children unless you are sure you can provide for them well, you understand the huge long-term costs involved, and you have the right family support and employment stability to manage it.6) Protect your health. By itself, it’s a form of wealth and is one of the few assets that cannot be simply bought with money. Take care of yourself and eat healthy foods rich in antioxidants. If you choose to be sexually active, take the needed precautions. At every stage of life, avoid smoking, alcohol, drugs, and other things that produce long-term health detriment. Engaging in these things is trading short-term pleasure for long-term pain and cost, and it’s definitely not worth it. You could boil this down to a financial analogy, similar to many other decisions. Some health issues, obviously, happen regardless of decisions or fault. But you should still try to stack the odds in your favor. Stay away from situations where you place yourself at high risk for injuries. Always drive carefully. Ask yourself if that high-risk adventure activity you want to do is really worth the risk. Also, do you really need to place your family at risk by having a gun in the house, or having a gun hobby? Accidents and bad injuries are hellish, and their consequences can ruin the quality of your life for decades….and serve as an example of life’s fragility that you will never forget. Also, keep in mind that medical costs for injuries can be devastating, whether with insurance or not.7) A corollary to #6 above – invest in your appearance, and don’t do things that negatively impact it for the long haul. Protect yourself from the sun, get proper hydration and nutrition, and avoid smoking. If you are a woman, invest the needed money in good grooming and a nice hairstyle. For both genders, have good attire. It may be unfair and even cruel, but life is easier for those who are attractive….and the employment, financial and dating worlds absolutely do bias themselves in that direction, no matter how much they deny it. This is true regardless of gender or age.8) Do not allow your life to become a version of what your parents, family, or other superiors what it to become, as if you are a puppet controlled by strings. Go for what you really want in life. Never choose a career that will stress you excessively or make you unhappy, regardless of how much you will earn or what your family wants you to do. You, not they, will have to bear the long-term consequences of a bad career decision – like the stomach churning feeling of stress as you drive into work at 8:00 on Monday morning. Pursue something you will enjoy and be good at – but also keep in mind that it needs to be something that is financially viable and that there is a market for. Becoming yet another struggling artist, travel blogger, or musician is only trading one problem for another. A harsh fact of life is that the world doesn’t pay people for doing things that are easy or fun. They pay for what is hard. Therefore, career decisions need to balance what you will enjoy and be good at, with what the market will regard as viable. See point #1 above.9) Develop good writing and communication skills – this will carry you far in life. Consider keeping a personal journal, so that you have a deeply reflective record of your past and you can use it to guide good decisions in the present. In business communications, write succinctly, and use as many simple verbs as possible to carry your sentences, and avoid unnecessarily complex grammatical structures. After writing an important document, proofread it by imagining paying yourself $100 for removing every unneeded word.10) This is really a corollary to #5, but avoid debt as much as possible. Do not take out loans for pricey cars. Never, ever, ever borrow for vacations or consumables that have no long-term monetary value. Only take out student loans if there is absolutely no alternative, and again, do the math– ask yourself if $100K in loans is really worth it for a career that pays $35K /year. You may find that the numbers just don’t work. Do not lend money to friends or relatives unless you are prepared to quickly reclassify it as a gift and never see the money again (and if you can truly afford to do that, then fine).11) It never hurts to have a deep understanding of psychology and the forces that drive people’s behavior. This will help you navigate life and predict people’s behavior. Things like the halo effect, anchoring, confirmation bias, endowment effect, and so on. Get a book and read about these things, and understand them. A lot of life failures can be traced to an improper understanding of the psychology involved. It’s often a good idea to trust your gut instincts, especially in unusual or dangerous situations. However, a good knowledge of psychology takes it a step farther by showing you how your gut feelings can sometimes mislead.12) People’s personalities and proclivities don’t change very much through life. Some psychologists tell us that the core aspects of our personality are set by the time we are seven years old. I am not sure if I believe that, but I’d be willing to believe age 18 or 20. The practical meaning for life: what you see is very often what you get, for the long haul. Enter into all your interactions with this in mind. Of course some change is possible. But in your workplace, a bad manager now will likely be a bad manager in the future, regardless of any efforts to “retrain” them. Similarly for compassion, greed, stubbornness/, impulsivity, and so on. Do not marry someone with the belief that you can “change” them, or that any bad tendencies will change over time. They most likely won’t. A corollary for our current politically charged, hyper-partisan world: tendencies toward conservative or liberal don’t change much either. If they do it’s only slowly.13) Evaluate all life activities with an eye toward the time they take and the opportunity costs involved. The reason is that time is a valuable, limited and non-renewable resource. That low-budget movie or trashy TV show you want to watch might be fun, but it will take 2 hours out of your day, hours that you could have spent exercising, reading a life coaching book, spending quality time with family or investing in your career. Is it really worth it?14) Travel sometimes; it will give you an amazing life perspective and will change how you see your own life, in ways you cannot foresee. This is especially helpful when young, but it is true at all ages. However, like most other things, be judicious about how you do this. Don’t travel as a way of running from life or avoiding building your career. Also….realize that life happens not only at home, but when you travel too, and invariably it is harder to deal with hardships in foreign countries than when you are at home. Things like accidents or illnesses, lost money or passports, or being victimized by crime will very quickly make you wish you were back at home – and that feeling will be among the most intense you’ve ever had. Perhaps the worst would be unknowingly running afoul of foreign laws, and then being jailed for months or years without trial, in an environment where you don’t speak the language, by a harsh or cruel legal system that does not provide the protections you are used to. Yes this is rare, but it has happened to travelers. Therefore, I’m not saying don’t travel, but….protect yourself, and be careful about where you go. Buy travel insurance, but realize that it has limits as to what it can protect you from. If you are from the US, and you can vacation in your own country or in culturally similar places with reasonable safety and protections in place (Canada, UK, Ireland, New Zealand), and have just as much fun, why not consider doing that?15) Think twice before accepting any job position with an extensive personnel management role. People are complex and hard to manage, and invariably bring their own personal baggage into the job, which affects their performance and your ability to guide them. The levels of management above you will often not fully appreciate the difficulty of your role, and might not give you the needed resources to do your job right. In general, middle manager roles are often underappreciated, and yield too much risk for blame (deserved or not) and not enough credit for things done right. I’m willing to change my opinion on this issue if it can be shown that middle management roles have become more appreciated and supported.16) Have medical treatment, including surgery, when you absolutely have to – but be aware that doctors are fallible and human, and their mistakes can be devastating. They will often be well-protected by hospitals, insurance policies, and consent forms, while you will have the privilege of dealing with the consequences of their mistakes for a lifetime. Some level of risk is perhaps unavoidable, but try to move the odds in your favor. Choose doctors and hospitals carefully, and make sure before you let them operate on you that they have had enough sleep. Maybe even consider having your surgery in the morning rather than the afternoon, when your doctor will be less tired.17) Always be honest in your dealings with people, except in the very rare and bizarre situations where you must lie to save your life or protect yourself from injury. Do not cheat or steal. Besides the legal consequences, it is not ever worth it. Trust is hard to earn, and once it is lost, can never really be regained. Two wrongs do not make a right. Anger-filled revenge is usually not worth it. But it is perfectly okay and right to hold people to the consequences of their bad decisions, and demand that people take responsibility for their actions.18) Religion is an incredibly personal, complex and touchy subject, and I will have relatively little to say about it. But do not misuse religion, or use it to justify hurting people, acting without compassion, or ostracizing family members. Also….despite decades of thinking about it (and being aware of what most Western religions have to say on the subject), I truly, honestly have no idea if there is life after death. But I am 100% sure there is life before death, i.e. this one. Therefore we should all live this life as much as possible, and hold people accountable that detract from the quality of our lives, whether in the name of religion or anything else.19) Friends and work colleagues come and go, but your family is/are the only people who truly care about you and who will (or at least should) stick with you and support you during the hardest of times. Therefore, keep your family close, and love them and do not reject or ostracize them no matter what the circumstances. Never reject them based on political differences, homophobia, or religious issues. This is a horrible mistake and you will pay an enormous emotional cost over time, all for the temporary gratification of proving that you are “right” about something.20) If you are ever in a situation where you can live without a car (inner city living, can walk to your job and all key amenities or take mass transit), rejoice and grab the opportunity. Most of us are not that lucky and need a car to manage life. In that event, manage car-related expenses carefully and drive defensively. Cars are safer now than say in the 1950s or 1960s, but accidents are still a major source of pain, injury and permanent disability. You don’t want to be in a car accident under any circumstances. Drivers, take special caution with pedestrians and bikers and always expect the unexpected. Pedestrians and bikers, give drivers lots of caution and a wide berth, and don’t take reckless liberties with drivers assuming that they can always see you and will be able to stop in time.21) Always be kind to people, and try to give them the benefit of the doubt. Remember that someday, life will happen to you, and you will be in need of that same compassion. However, don’t trust people who have unequivocally violated your trust before. Do not ever engage in bullying, or tolerate bullying by others….ever. Be humble – this is hard in moments of great success, but it is important. Life is fragile and can change quickly. Be compassionate, especially to people who cannot pay you back. How you treat such people is a big marker of character. Be on time for your commitments – being late for everything sends the message that you don’t value the other person’s time, whether you intend to or not.22) This follows from #6 above, but seek opportunities to challenge your body physically and develop strength and stamina. This will be one of the most rewarding things you can do.23) Seek ways to be creative – whether in art, music, writing, or something else. There are few other things more rewarding than creating your own art, music, essay, or short story. It is the ultimate in self-expression and it reflects deeply on what it means to be human. But do these things as hobbies….don’t rely on them as a way to earn a living. That works, but for only a few people.24) Bits and pieces of this have appeared in other points, but….get enough sleep. That is when your body’s immune system does its best work. Do not drive or engage in demanding or risky work if you haven’t had enough sleep, and do not let others do so. Think twice before accepting jobs where your sleep will be compromised, or where you will be on an unusual schedule such as a night shift. Your body’s natural cycles exist for a reason.25) This may be the most controversial point, but do not restrict your life or put it on hold because of fears of climate change (aka “climate emergency” in the recent media). Yes we have heard a lot about this lately, and I’m not saying to avoid the news or be totally unconcerned. But for all their faults and weakneses (some of which have been listed in other points here), human beings are remarkably good at ingenuity and creativity, and banding together to solve huge problems that represent a grave societal risk (an example would be how the Western world came together to create a wartime economy and win WW2 in the face of huge global threats to freedom). The climate situation is solvable. The reason it hasn’t been solved is that at least so far, there hasn’t been enough incentives provided to do so. Once they are, humans will solve it, even if the “how” is not apparent today. Much of the difficulty stems from the insistence that we must simply reduce fossil fuel use (and thus hurt our economies) rather than find technologies to remove carbon out of the air, and develop better alternative energy sources. Another is the need for good electric cars. Politicians want me to buy an electric car, and I indeed want to….but I need them to be less expensive, more practical, and less of a “niche” product. Politicians take note – people care about climate change but in a pinch, they will always choose commuting to their jobs and feeding their families first.26) If you want to, consider having a pet. They will provide a level of companionship and unconditional love that you rarely will get from people. But….similar to the situation with kids, make sure you can afford your pet and have the time to spend with them. If you don’t, it’s not fair to them or to you.