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My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

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Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#91

Post by x5n1 »

lordnacho wrote: post #6

Looking at this story (the wider Amazon story) it seems to me a lot of the value is getting extracted from employees in a sort of creeping way. So you might go to an interview where the manager says there's pager duty now and again, but it's not too intense. You get on the job, and it's a whole lot more intense than expected. You can't leave because you've just turned down a bunch of other offers and moved towns. You…

Solution, don't think about working for Amazon or any such company. Warn your family and friends and co-workers. Company will get the message and change its policies hopefully after losing a few billion.

Alternatively unionize Amazon.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#92

Post by trhway »

happywolf wrote: post #89
trhway wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I do believe there must be something wrong at a significant enough scale to warrant NYT's attention. it may be "wrong" from the POV of NYT or other tech outsiders. What i've over the years understood from various friends/acquaintances is that it is not "something wrong", it is just the "normal" mode of how whole AMZN operates. People going there know it (and if they don't - not checking Glassdoor is theirs fault, no…

Your argument sounds like it is not something wrong to commit crime in a crime-ridden neighborhood, and it is the victim's fault since that person didn't read news or does their due diligence. Interesting :)

there is a difference between crime and contract. You enter contract at will in exchange for something, and not doing due diligence is your fault. You may also look at the notion of exempt employee - some actions would be illegal if done to non-exempt employees while ok to be done to exempt.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#93

Post by barking »

pjc50 wrote: post #82
mattmanser wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's happening across the world at the moment isn't it? Doesn't seem to be linked to the demise of unions. Admittedly, there needs to be a new version of unions, the next evolution. We need the next Marx to bring the pendulum back.

demise of unions The demise of unions is also a general phenomenon across the western world. It's not helped by the migration of lots of factory industries to parts of the world without strong unions and with plenty of hungry workers. Ultimately unions have only one effective negotiating tool: the strike. And if it's easy to replace striking workers, it's not an effective tool. It's also very disruptive (in the bad s…

As I'm sure you know, it wasn't just globalisation, Margaret Thatcher's intention was to spancel the unions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_labour_law_in_the_U...

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#94

Post by dimman »

pjc50 wrote: post #17
bechampion wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree , also , Us as employees we need to learn when to say stop , i know we all work hard and we want to be the an important asset. But remember going the extra mile and getting recognition for it will only last until the next downtime/problem which could be tomorrow.

Us as employees we need to learn when to say stop There's a word for this, beginning with "U", that a lot of people don't like.

Yep, it's as simple as that; almost. There's good ways to do it and there's bad ways to do it.

1) Figure out what's wrong at an early stage, why it's wrong and come up with a proposal of how it could be improved. Find solutions.

2) Always fix things despite the unreasonable amount of work or pressure. You wait until you'r almost broken and then say you can't take this anymore, it's too much. Problem needs to be fixed right away or you'll lose it.

We very much create our own situations too unfortunately.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#95

Post by vacri »

wobbleblob wrote: post #44

Somewhat off topic perhaps, but what exactly does therapy do? Has anyone here had therapy? If so, can they explain how talking to a psychologist cures a medical condition? Is it significantly different from talking to a priest or a faith healer?

When you scrape your knee as a kid and your mother or father put a band-aid on it, you've just had a medical condition treated by a person with zero qualifications.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#96

Post by eitally »

lordnacho wrote: post #6

Looking at this story (the wider Amazon story) it seems to me a lot of the value is getting extracted from employees in a sort of creeping way. So you might go to an interview where the manager says there's pager duty now and again, but it's not too intense. You get on the job, and it's a whole lot more intense than expected. You can't leave because you've just turned down a bunch of other offers and moved towns. You…

I just turned down an offer because of something like this. I went through a bunch of interviews and things seemed pretty peachy, until I interviewed with a guy (who'd have been a peer) who was probably way more candid than management would've liked. He said things like "I haven't gotten a raise in five years so make sure you negotiate hard when you come in", "I got an apartment close to the office so I can be here quick when the shit hits the fan", "50hrs/wk is probably a good baseline, but you already knew that", and "yeah, your group has rotating weekly pager duty and even if they call it an 'engineering' team it's really support."

I felt like I'd been completely mislead by everyone else, and even if this guy had a chip on his shoulder and was intentionally lying to me -- which I doubt -- that in itself would have been a red flag.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#97

Post by eitally »

72deluxe wrote: post #37
bechampion wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree , also , Us as employees we need to learn when to say stop , i know we all work hard and we want to be the an important asset. But remember going the extra mile and getting recognition for it will only last until the next downtime/problem which could be tomorrow.

Without sounding too cynical, loyalty to a company (working out of hours) is not always returned as loyalty from the company. They wouldn't be pleased you turning up a few hours late every day to compensate for your extra time outside work. Of course, time off in lieu may be arranged.

To be fair, it depends on the company and often the individual manager. I gave people comp time almost all the time they were forced into some extraordinary work.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#98

Post by lordnacho »

venomsnake wrote: post #76
lordnacho wrote: post #6

Looking at this story (the wider Amazon story) it seems to me a lot of the value is getting extracted from employees in a sort of creeping way. So you might go to an interview where the manager says there's pager duty now and again, but it's not too intense. You get on the job, and it's a whole lot more intense than expected. You can't leave because you've just turned down a bunch of other offers and moved towns. You…

Well - you deliver 40 for the week and be gone. Not that hard. At 1800 you leave office. There is nothing your boss can tell you.

When they decide to fire you, the real reason is never said. They'll just think of some BS and you'll be out the door.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#99

Post by eitally »

davedx wrote: post #70
ErrantX wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am currently the head of a two person ops team, so we effectively share on-call all the time. In reality as the buck stops with me I am on call constantly. It's a drag and I really wish I hadn't been backed into this corner (partly my fault, partly the company). With that said; my Fiancee is a trainee nurse. She works three thirteen hour shifts a week. Which totally destroys your sleep pattern. Working two thirteen…

Yeah, I am constantly amazed and terrified of the kinds of shifts doctors and nurses do. I really do not understand how they manage to not make mistakes in such an environment. In Grey's Anatomy, you often see people taking a couple of hours sleep mid shift; is this generally accurate?

My wife is a nurse, too, and it definitely takes a special kind of person to do this work. She moved into pharma about a dozen years ago to escape the crazy and irregular hours/shifts and has been much happier & less stressed ever since, and much higher pay.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#100

Post by vacri »

zzleeper wrote: post #42
madaxe_again wrote: post #30

On call once every three weeks? Oh fucking noes! Out of hours support sucks, but yes, the reality is that you get paged, and you have to deal with things within SLA. It's hard, it's wearing, but one week out of every four is hardly intense. I was on call for five years. It nearly broke me - but this article is just whining . Why take such a role if it's such a problem? It sounds more like his wife bashing him every t…

It depends how often you get the pager, no? If your calls were often at 4am and you had to work a normal schedule, it certainly does no good. Also, you are saying that nearly broke you, as if it's a badge of pride or something good...

I did on-call for a sleep medicine company. My calls were specifically during sleep hours (when the equipment is in use is when it has problems). The calls were rarely short, and I had no direct link to the equipment to run my own tests - it was always trying to troubleshoot via a usually non-techinical enduser. It was a great night if you received zero calls. I have my on-call battle-scars.

So this being said, I agree with the GP - on-call sucks, but one week in four is not that bad. One week in five and it's fairly breezy. One week in three or less and it's pretty bad - you basically stop having an external life altogether. Like the GP, I also thought the article was a bit whiny. Yes, there were some truths in it, but whines like "omg, there is crunch time" make the author sound pretty self-entitled. Another whine was "not working for the same boss that hired him"... after six years in the company. Who could take such a complaint seriously? One of the more valid problems listed is the shifting of priorities every two weeks. That stuff is a killer - to morale, to progress, to development, to pretty much everything.

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