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It looks like I am heading into the eye of this storm. When started my job with Rackspace a little over a year ago it represented a return to the ranks of the industrial proletariat which I left more than 30 years ago when I worked as a Motor Inspector (electrician) at Bethlehem Steel and an experimental machine electrician at Honeywell. Working as a Linux Sysadm in San the Antonio HQ for 3 months was an eye opener, 4000 workers in a half-million sq. ft. of converted mall space in a depressed area of town and aptly named "the Castle." I hadn't worked at a place this big since Bethlehem's Vernon works in the late 1870's. This experience was very different, yet strangely, the same. Now I'm a work-from-home racker, but still part of the team of several thousand sysadms, dcops, netsec, dbas and infrastructure techs collectively called "the engine room" in the company. All this stuff we do on the Internet requires an engine room to maintain it and I work in it 40hrs. a week - today is an ETO day. So what does this have to do with Amazon, by now you are probably wondering? I'm getting there, but first on background: Rackspace grew up as an open source software company in San Antonio, has contributed to the OSS community, particularly in supporting the open stack OSS cloud software and Linux. I has also been influenced by Linux community values, which is why it located in a depressed community, partnered with local schools to build the cloud academy, has long been on Forbes' best places to work list, and would hire someone like me. So how it had grown up to a 6K employee company with facilities from London to Hong Kong and still maintain the kind of work environment I've generally only seen at small shops. But even as I started, the winds of change were blowing, and not a good wind. As I was coming in the door, the founding ceo was headed out and the new ceo was away fighting takeover bids from some of the bigger players in cloud. Wolves were beaten back but management said Rackspace would have to become more productive to survive. Capitalist pressures will Trump the best of intentions. Rackspace is the leader in managed cloud. Amazon in biggest player in cloud. Already there was an article from the NYT or WSJ about working for Amazon in the tech area that was making the rounds in the engine room as a cautionary tale emphasizing what we'd already heard from the Amazon refugees in our ranks, when management announced a new partnership with Amazon. It seems we are going to be managing part of their cloud for them. So that's where things stand now going into 2016. We are to be trained on the Amazon cloud, and with it, the Amazon methods? grumble-grumble. Already last year they introduced this new thing they call "metrics." This year looks to be a "clash of civilizations." Everybody welcomes the Amazon business but nobody wants to find themselves working for Amazon or like Amazonians. I got this job so I could continue my political work but for a Marxist, this is a situation that is pregnant with possibilities. Organize! Clay Clay Claiborne, Director Vietnam: American Holocaust <http://VietnamAmericanHolocaust.com> Linux Beach Productions Venice, CA 90291 (310) 581-1536 Read my blogs at the Linux Beach <http://claysbeach.blogspot.com/> <http://wlcentral.org/user/2965/track> On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 7:08 PM, Andrew Pollack via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > Excellent piece. More proof that Amazon is objective socialization on > steroids - and therefore ripe for the plucking once workers' struggles, > especially by Amazon workers, pose the question of putting its technical > and organizational advances in our hands. > > On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 8:14 PM, Philip Ferguson via Marxism < > marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > > > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > > ***************************************************************** > > > > Amazon - the global digital East India Company of the 21st Century?: > > > > > https://rdln.wordpress.com/2014/10/18/amazon-the-global-digital-east-india-company-of-the-21st-century/ > > _________________________________________________________ > > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > > Set your options at: > > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/acpollack2%40gmail.com > > > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/clayclai%40gmail.com > _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
