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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

#121

Post by wowoc »

mattmanser wrote: post #75
barking wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And (in the UK at least) the demise of unions has seen the earnings ratio of company bosses to employees rise to levels not seen since the 19th or early 20th century

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.

Speaking of which: http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Pi...

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#122

Post by enraged_camel »

orm wrote: post #115

Some things about this article bother me. It starts by describing what is objectively a problem ascribable to Amazon itself ( letting on-call rotations reach the 3 week mark is terrible ), and then descends to pure appeal to emotion. Here's what I mean: the only thing that seemed an actual problem, to judge from the article, is that the on-call rotations became once every three weeks. Perhaps the length of the on-cal…

Did we read the same article? They went on a weekend trip in the summer, had to cancel their hotel and come back a day early, and the guy still got an earful from his manager the next day about how he isn't delivering. I don't see how this is "pure appeal to emotion".

Also, a 15-minute max window for responding to pagers? Fucking hilarious. If these people were doctors getting called to the ER, I would understand. But this is a fucking online retail business! Furthermore, what the fuck happened to the concept of having backups on call so that if one person can't respond (i.e. they are driving), someone else can? This is a business decision by Amazon, and also isn't "pure appeal to emotion".

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#123

Post by adekok »

orm wrote: post #115

Some things about this article bother me. It starts by describing what is objectively a problem ascribable to Amazon itself ( letting on-call rotations reach the 3 week mark is terrible ), and then descends to pure appeal to emotion. Here's what I mean: the only thing that seemed an actual problem, to judge from the article, is that the on-call rotations became once every three weeks. Perhaps the length of the on-cal…

> On-call in general (24/7 availability for some period of time), is not exclusively an Amazon thing. I'm surprised the writer tried to portray it so.

I don't think the writer did.

The problem I see being described is not so much being on call, as instead being called. Lots. Because there seems to be no on-duty staff who are capable of doing the work.

In this article, "on call" really means "on duty during non-work hours... a lot".

It's a tactic to avoid paying on-duty people. Just make all employees work 24/7!

Why didn't I think of that. That's a great business model.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#124

Post by pawelkomarnicki »

Amazon delivers lots of value to customers, and there're only two ways to do that: 1) spend shitload of money on processes and people, or 2) squeeze employees as much as possible. Sadly the 2nd option is much cheaper and "people are expendable anyway" these days.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#126

Post by enraged_camel »

apexkid wrote: post #31

The email from Jeff to his employees was impeccably unsatisfactory. It was a sheer display of ignorance and rejection towards everything quoted and said. However, no matter how much Jeff sticks to that attitude, it wouldn't change the reality that Amazon is the most customer centric company on earth and the most employee apathetic company on earth as well. It reflects in major workplace elements like health schemes,…

>>The email from Jeff to his employees was impeccably unsatisfactory. It was a sheer display of ignorance and rejection towards everything quoted and said.

Duh? He was simply defending the company against potential HR lawsuits. You can't really expect him to say, "yes I know we treat people like shit, and the criticisms are valid, but..."

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#127

Post by rmc »

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…

> 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.

And this is the biggest problem with tech hiring. The prospective employee can't know how bad it really is. So changing jobs is risky. Companies wanting to hire need to compensate for that risk with a definited benefit. Salary is the obvious and easy one.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#128

Post by orm2 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #122
orm wrote: post #115

Some things about this article bother me. It starts by describing what is objectively a problem ascribable to Amazon itself ( letting on-call rotations reach the 3 week mark is terrible ), and then descends to pure appeal to emotion. Here's what I mean: the only thing that seemed an actual problem, to judge from the article, is that the on-call rotations became once every three weeks. Perhaps the length of the on-cal…

Did we read the same article? They went on a weekend trip in the summer, had to cancel their hotel and come back a day early, and the guy still got an earful from his manager the next day about how he isn't delivering. I don't see how this is "pure appeal to emotion". Also, a 15-minute max window for responding to pagers? Fucking hilarious. If these people were doctors getting called to the ER, I would understand. Bu…

(same as orm), just my settings don't allow me to reply.

"Did we read the same article? They went on a weekend trip in the summer, had to cancel their hotel and come back a day early, and the guy still got an earful from his manager the next day about how he isn't delivering. I don't see how this is "pure appeal to emotion"."

She says: A happended. The next day B happened. She puts the two sentences together to imply cause and effect. But she she does not explicitly say 'A caused B', and I believe this is for a reason. All she does is to suggest it. To me, as an engineer, the fact she only suggests it is one of those things about the writing that bothers me. She did not explain what had been happening leading up to this nor the reasons the management gave.

Note, I worked for Amazon for a couple of years. While I have to admit my team was really on the lucky side in terms of on-call while I was there. I am familiar with some of these policies. The 15 minute rule is just the time it takes for you to say 'I'm awake and I'm looking at the ticket'. You don't have to solve it. They use this deadline as a way to see if they should reach-out to a secondary on-call, as a backup.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#129

Post by [deleted] »

rmc wrote: post #127
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…

> 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. And this is the biggest problem with tech hiring. The prospective employee can't know how bad it really is. So changing jobs is risky. Companies wanting to hire need to compensate for that risk with a definited benefit. Salary is the…

[deleted]

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#130

Post by apexkid »

neals wrote: post #36
apexkid wrote: post #31

The email from Jeff to his employees was impeccably unsatisfactory. It was a sheer display of ignorance and rejection towards everything quoted and said. However, no matter how much Jeff sticks to that attitude, it wouldn't change the reality that Amazon is the most customer centric company on earth and the most employee apathetic company on earth as well. It reflects in major workplace elements like health schemes,…

> the most employee apathetic company on earth Ever been abroad? Bangladesh and China are lovely this time of the year.

Thanks for not saying that its better than a brothel of Bangladesh and China.

It was clear in what context I have written my comment. Your argument can be qualified as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

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