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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

#131

Post by apexkid »

enraged_camel wrote: post #126
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..."

I expected a more positive re-enforcement in form of something like "we shall investigate the mentioned cases by NYtimes and try to reach out to those people..."

Or

"even if its all false, lets take a step to change such perception of Amazon if it exists.."

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#132

Post by intended »

tajen wrote: post #49
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 always wonder whether the stock of Amazon should decrease after the HR-gate. I would expect the company to eventually start an HR policy and lose money on that. It seems the stock price didn't move, but I'm not a finance expert and there must be other events this month. https://www.google.fr/search?q=amzn&oq=amzn&aqs=chrome..69i5...

The stock should not move at all.

HR gate is a relatively localized phenomenon - almost entirely considered fluff by the markets.

Data: "A company is making its workers work hard. They have bad press."

Questions: "Has anyone been fired/resigned? is there a new policy change which increases wages and reduces money to shareholders?"

Answers: "as of no, no one significant. No policy change, and no significant damage to brand.

Questions: "Is hiring/firing within normal ranges? How long will people remember this?"

Answers: "mostly normal. No impact to EBITDA. People will forget in a month, unless there is a significant miss step. Insufficient support for a policy or legal bill to be raised."

Conclusions: Has happened before, will happen again, with near 0 impact to cash flow. If something happens theres many ways to mitigate damage to shareholders.

In all honesty, this has near nil impact on the market.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#133

Post by peterfirefly »

krzyk wrote: post #117
yummyfajitas wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India is a better bet. 10.5 hours away means they are nearly on the opposite schedule, price is better (wages only marginally, but Europe has lots of other costs) and you aren't stuck dealing with insane euro labor laws.

What labor laws do you find insane?

My guess would be the Mediterranean ones...

(+ some de facto laws in other countries within certain sectors dominated by strong unions tightly connected with Socialist parties.)

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#134

Post by teddyuk »

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…

For me it is really simple, if you don't like the way you are treated then leave.

If you don't have any employable skills, get some. If you have genuinely no chance of being employed somewhere start your own business and graft graft graft until you are employable.

Life is too short to spend 6 years in a job that affects you and your whole family.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#135

Post by yummyfajitas »

krzyk wrote: post #117
yummyfajitas wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India is a better bet. 10.5 hours away means they are nearly on the opposite schedule, price is better (wages only marginally, but Europe has lots of other costs) and you aren't stuck dealing with insane euro labor laws.

What labor laws do you find insane?

I heard the daily complaints from a person attempting to handle restructuring at a major UK bank. Let me emphasize that the restructuring was ordered by parliament, who also happened to own most of the bank. Various difficulties:

- Work councils get input in whether you can lay someone off - it's a far cry from at-will employment.

- Pretty insane laws surrounding pregnancy - you have give a pregnant woman the option (with no obligation on her part) to return to work a year later. I'm told the best way to survive a restructuring is strategic pregnancy.

All told, it was vastly more difficult than the US (where she had come from). I know in France you can only fire for cause.

In contrast India is pretty easy. It's a simple trade of money for labour, provided you stay out of the communist states. (Which of course you will if you are hiring devs.) The cost difference is actually only a minor reason to hire here - European devs are highly underpaid, and Indian devs are very much not.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#136

Post by rmc »

ErrantX wrote: post #57
byuu wrote: post #40

I have a four-week rotation on-call where I work. Pretty much the same workload as discussed in the article with it. Calls and text messages at 3am, can't be more than 15 minutes away from an internet connection (remote desktop software on Android is a godsend.) While it doesn't feel unbearable, and pays fairly well (at least for the area I'm in), it definitely has completely destroyed my sleep schedule. I no longer…

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…

I suspect they only make the trainee nurses and doctors do that. Once you get higher up the pecking order, you don't have to do it anymore (many in my family are nurses/doctors).

Less so with tech.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#137

Post by HarryHirsch »

cmdkeen wrote: post #23
bechampion wrote: post #4

There's so many thing I feel when i read this: 1st: We're all in IT have been on call at some given time , and it sucks , we all know this (since I'm not on my 20s anymore i always ask in job interviews if i have to be on call.) 2nd: Man that sucks ... i don't know how this person has given it more than 6 months of his life , just move on and get a different job if you dislike it. 3rd: Amazon is like any other big co…

> just move on and get a different job if you dislike it Because they tie you in with money - your signing bonus and relocation expenses have to be partially repaid if you leave within the first two years. An interesting question on the "what if there was a war and no-one came?" is what would happen if Amazon could no longer hire the monstrous number of high calibre new entrants it needs every year. Stories like this…

An interesting question on the "what if there was a war and no-one came?" is what would happen if Amazon could no longer hire the monstrous number of high calibre new entrants it needs every year.

It's the wrong question to ask, I think. Those joining Amazon or any other top company do so through internship track or personal network. Anyone who complains about burnout and getting worked to death really has no reason to complain. They did get to see the insides of Amazon while working there as an intern, and if they didn't see it their friends did.

The question is really: why do people keep thinking they can outrun the bear even though everyone else they can see cannot?

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#138

Post by HarryHirsch »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #104
xyzzyz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be so much more humane to just have two people on-call each week, each covering a 12-hour window, with 8-hours overlapped by their own work schedules. Just another reason why opening an office in Europe is great for a company at some stage of its growth.

India is a better bet. 10.5 hours away means they are nearly on the opposite schedule, price is better (wages only marginally, but Europe has lots of other costs) and you aren't stuck dealing with insane euro labor laws.

In a thread about employer abuse this comes across as remarkably tone-deaf. Note to self: do not go to work for Mr Stucchio.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#139

Post by s3nnyy »

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…

Many people are fooled by prestige. PG's elaboration on it changed my life: "Your opinions about what's admirable are always going to be slightly influenced by prestige, so if two options seem equal to you, you probably have more genuine admiration for the less prestigious one. [...] If you admire two kinds of work equally, but one is more prestigious, you should probably choose the other." (http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html)

I went to a no-name company, I love the freedom that I have in a small team, and I leave work around 4-5 p.m., if I want. Also, I have still enough energy to do side-projects. That is something people working at more prestigious places probably lack. (I am based in Zurich and I love it; here a blogpost about living & working here: https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t...)

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#140

Post by serge2k »

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.

I really think a union at Amazon would probably fix a lot of issues, but would cost most of the things about the culture that are actually good.

I do think the FC workers should be in a union. Absolutely.

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