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I worked at Amazon to see if anything's changed

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Re: I worked at Amazon to see if anything's changed

#151

Post by eropple »

marknutter wrote: post #147
rdtsc wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is accused here. Let's not get too excited. Privilege is a loaded word so I should have used another one perhaps. Privilege is strategic position of advantage. You have or have access to time, money, wealth, power, super-power etc that other don't have. And it is relative. I'd say tech people have that power compared to workers in an Amazon warehouse. We can work from home, can demand our own salaries, jump to…

> And my point is, looking back those people will say "I am here because I worked hard and everyone one else who is complaining is kind of lazy and should have worked hard as That's a ridiculous straw man. I don't think anyone in this thread would agree with that statement. > Those are good to describe how they got to the position of privilege. Which often has a mix of things like luck, hard work, and others. That is…

As a male, I do not fear being date-raped, I do not fear being accosted walking alone at night, I do not worry that I am paid less because of my gender, I do not fear that my career path will be harmed because an employer is afraid to hire or promote me because I may choose to have children. And a white person in the United States, I am likely to get more callbacks on a resume for a job. I can walk down the street, and not have a very tangible fear fill the pit of my stomach that I may hassled by a passing cop. If a cop does wish to speak to me, I do not have to adopt a subservient posture out of fear of being harmed by an official of the state because of the color of my skin.

They don't need to know you to point out that the hand you are dealt becomes the hand you play--and that, statistically and sociologically speaking, the hand of a white man is overwhelmingly superior, almost without exception, to that of a black woman in the United States. It is not, to borrow a phrase, about you. It's about systems, and it is largely accepted that the rush to personalize situations is done by people in a position of relative privilege. Because you want it to be about you, so you diminish that privilege. It's a natural reaction; I've done it too. But it's wrong, and you are punching downward at people who have it worse than you, and you should stop.

Re: I worked at Amazon to see if anything's changed

#152

Post by djtriptych »

s73v3r wrote: post #115
djtriptych wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to soften this viewpoint a bit. I had similarly bungled experiences with both Facebook and Google (eventually got offers from both, accepted at Google). Missed phone calls, mistaken identity, inter-office communication problems and more. It's not a fair reflection of the company at large; recruiting is very often a shit show for all kinds of reasons.

I think it very much is a reflection of the company, in that it shows they don't take it seriously.

I should add that I've also had fairly positive recruiting experiences at companies I ended up not liking at all. I'm saying there may be not be much correlation between the HR/talent departments and eng.

Re: I worked at Amazon to see if anything's changed

#153

Post by harry8 »

darkerside wrote: post #19
roymurdock wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also note that the article is written by a guy in the UK who is hired for seasonal warehouse work. Not a middle manager/higher salaried employee as was the case in the NYT article that sparked the outrage.

Also, at least part of the outrage needs to be directed at the hiring recruiting agency, not at Amazon itself.

Not really. The hiring recruiting agency is acting as an agent for amazon and amazon are completely and totally responsible for the actions of their agent.

There is no "not us, our contractor" defence for this kind of thing.

Re: I worked at Amazon to see if anything's changed

#154

Post by adam419 »

Twirrim wrote: post #145
bane wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on the East Coast, and I've interviewed with a fair number of East Coast and West Coast companies and the West Coast ones were by far the worst. Google and Amazon have been fair to middling, but there's been some that were probably so inept it has to fall under some kind of criminal law somewhere.

Friend of mine got interviewed by a well known company down in the Bellevue area of Washington, for a role managing storage stuff, shortly after moving to the area. They got him in 5 times over a month for interviews with various people, and eventually about 3-4 weeks after the final interview they offered him the job. They seemed very surprised when he laughed and told them they were too late, he'd got work elsewher…

Ebay?

I'm curious to know the company if you're willing to share because I grew up in Bellevue and worked at a software company downtown there as well.

Re: I worked at Amazon to see if anything's changed

#156

Post by ohyes »

marknutter wrote: post #122
OldSchoolJohnny wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's not a matter of privilege, it's a matter of ability." Oh, you must be very young! :)

34, and I grew up poor but in a moderately wealthy suburb. I had to pay most of my way through college, and when I couldn't find a job with my degree (Physics) I learned how to program and have been making a living off that ever since. I didn't get what I have today because of privilege but you would probably see it differently.

I'm sure you didn't get what you had solely because of privilege. You worked hard. But that entire discussion is irrelevant. I hate it when people quote "privilege" as a way to shut someone up. It has become such a dirty word.

The point for me is recognizing that yes, I have been fortunate in my circumstances (solely by being born in a first world country in this century I was ahead of the majority of people born ever).

Having free time to pursue your interests is a luxury.

If I could extend that same privilege to others I would in a heartbeat because I think it would be both morally right and for the greater good.

If I don't recognize my already good place in the world I am disrespecting the people who worked hard to put me in the advantaged position that I am in.

Re: I worked at Amazon to see if anything's changed

#157

Post by xiaoma »

afarrell wrote: post #101
mentat wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need the time to teach yourself. There are hard limits on the amount of physical and mental work a person can do, especially if the mental work requires significant concentration. I don't see you taking account of that at all.

To emphasize mentat's point, you need focused time where your mind is rested and alert. This requires good, regularly-scheduled sleep. This requires nutritionally complete food (though soylent has made this much easier). This probably requires that you not be stressed out by fear of violence or eviction. Also, don't underestimate the value of an educational environment. You can spend a lot of time banging your head a…

I mostly lived off of cornflakes, coconut water, occasional fruits and a weekly chicken binge (or other food from a Chinese butcher shop) when I was becoming a programmer. It took very little time and cost less than a third of what Soylent does.

I used a book called Learn to program, by Chris Pine. There's a free version online. After that, I did some stuff on code school.

Re: I worked at Amazon to see if anything's changed

#158

Post by xiaoma »

rdtsc wrote: post #132
chroma wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were a demon from Hell, tasked by Satan himself to ruin discourse about opportunity and egalitarianism, I could scarcely do better than calling people "privileged". Think about it from the accused's point of view. Yes they were lucky in many ways, but they also worked hard to get to where they are. Then someone belittles their efforts, claiming it's simply because they are privileged. Privileged? Even an average…

Nobody is accused here. Let's not get too excited. Privilege is a loaded word so I should have used another one perhaps. Privilege is strategic position of advantage. You have or have access to time, money, wealth, power, super-power etc that other don't have. And it is relative. I'd say tech people have that power compared to workers in an Amazon warehouse. We can work from home, can demand our own salaries, jump to…

It does seem like you've somewhat oddly-defined the word. Would you also apply it to a chess player who has even material and two passed pawns 35 moves into a game? That would be a strategic position of advantage.

Or how about a Roman general picking apart less nimble Greek phalanxes with a manipular legion? Would you apply the word there?

Re: I worked at Amazon to see if anything's changed

#159

Post by xiaoma »

moron4hire wrote: post #50
marknutter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's a window to employment conditions that techies would never accept. I absolutely would accept those employment conditions if I didn't have any other options and needed to make money to survive. I would also spend my free time learning a skill so I could get a better job at some point in the future. > It's a good reminder of privilege. It's not a matter of privilege, it's a matter of ability. In tech more than a…

Hear, hear. I have worked in a warehouse before (part of paying my own way through college). It wasn't that bad, in the grand scheme of things. Hell, I've been treated less as a person at some of my software development jobs.

>part of paying my own way through college

That's getting a lot harder to do in the US these days.

Re: I worked at Amazon to see if anything's changed

#160

Post by marknutter »

eropple wrote: post #110
afarrell wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's jargon but many people try to wedge it as a normal word Yes, this is a problem. If you push back on it, some people will say "this is Social Justice 101", completely missing the fact that an intro course spends a lot of its time teaching jargon. > Which literally nobody does ... > A lot of what defensive people see as "shut up" when the concept of privilege is invoked is really Well, having been in many of the…

Trying to maybe teach a few people a few things is most of why I hang out around here--it's not good for my sanity to go "oh hey, that thread's going to have a bunch of people shitting on poor people/black people/immigrants", but maybe once in a while some sense can work its way into somebody . And there are definitely assholes who use the concept as a bat--one can be an asshole and still be on the right side of hist…

> "Literally nobody does" was referring to the strange bugbear of "you are privileged and thus deserve nothing you have earned,"

Except that I have met many people who hold exactly this belief.

> And there are definitely assholes who use the concept as a bat--one can be an asshole and still be on the right side of history, of course.

How can they be on the right side of history if they hurt the cause they claim to fight for by being an asshole? If you've moved the needle in the wrong direction, you're worse than the people who sit idly by and do nothing, IMO.

> Trying to maybe teach a few people a few things is most of why I hang out around here

Ugh.. gross. You're here for the wrong reasons.

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