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Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

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Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#71

Post by netsharc »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #47

My fear is that the future of work for most people is not unemployment, but shitty jobs like this. My feeling is that in order to avoid this and prosper, the people need to own the robots that do all the work (Marxism heyy). If robots provide huge productivity gains, then they will provide those gains for their owners. If it’s the big corporations that own them, they will see the gains. But as long as people are trea…

Shitty jobs is already spreading. Uber driver, Deliveroo biker, and their hundreds of copycats, all of them where "you're not an employee, you're a contractor".

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#72

Post by aqme28 »

kelukelugames wrote: post #7
notheguyouthink wrote: post #2

Are Amazon's margins razor thin? I'm trying to understand what compels them to be so toxic in their work environment. Especially compared to the people I know who work at Costco, I struggle to understand why Costco treats employees so well, and Amazon treats their employees so poorly. It's really sad, regardless.

Bezos. Jeff Bezos is the reason why Amazon treats workers they way they do. Compared to other tech giants, Amazon is incredibly anti-employee. Look at how their stocks vest. I worked at Microsoft during Balmer's reign. The founder/CEO's attitude dictates the work culture. And causes harm if it's bad. I live in Seattle and often hear this joke: Being an Amazon customer is the best. An investor is great. An employee no…

How does their stock vest?

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#73

Post by losteric »

kelukelugames wrote: post #7
notheguyouthink wrote: post #2

Are Amazon's margins razor thin? I'm trying to understand what compels them to be so toxic in their work environment. Especially compared to the people I know who work at Costco, I struggle to understand why Costco treats employees so well, and Amazon treats their employees so poorly. It's really sad, regardless.

Bezos. Jeff Bezos is the reason why Amazon treats workers they way they do. Compared to other tech giants, Amazon is incredibly anti-employee. Look at how their stocks vest. I worked at Microsoft during Balmer's reign. The founder/CEO's attitude dictates the work culture. And causes harm if it's bad. I live in Seattle and often hear this joke: Being an Amazon customer is the best. An investor is great. An employee no…

FWIW: I think Amazon's stock vesting schedule for ICs is reasonable considering the sizable hiring bonus (iirc ~$20k for new graduates). Stock grants are intended to reflect an employee's ownership in the company, and rapidly increase with tenure.

That said... Amazon is definitely not human-oriented. Leadership within established business units is brutally efficient, with far too much faith in their metric goals. Ask any engineer about HR's survey tool, I think that's a prime example of cultural decay within Amazon.

Amazon used to be "customer obsessed" with a strong engineering culture... these days the cultural values are "maximize revenue, minimize costs".

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#74

Post by geodel »

notheguyouthink wrote: post #2

Are Amazon's margins razor thin? I'm trying to understand what compels them to be so toxic in their work environment. Especially compared to the people I know who work at Costco, I struggle to understand why Costco treats employees so well, and Amazon treats their employees so poorly. It's really sad, regardless.

So I need a replacement for broken GPS cradle mount. Can I get at Costco?, no, but I can buy a new GPS for a couple hundred. At Amazon I can buy this 6 dollar item and bundled with few more low price items I can get it delivered for free.

Costco has far fewer SKUs and sell in bulk only high quality and price items. So they can afford to pay well because they only entertain customers which are spending far more for fewer high selling items and not few dollar obscure replacement parts.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#75

Post by isostatic »

kelukelugames wrote: post #46
gorbot wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all employees are treated poorly. Yeah, the stock vest is back loaded, but they typically give cash upfront, which you could just turn around and buy stocks with..

That's a poor argument. I've gotten offers from many tech giants. They all included a sign-on cash bonus. Often much bigger than Amazon's. Amazon's total offer was usually about 100k lower. Sometimes more. Amazon SWEs still earn hundreds of thousands of dollars. So being treated poorly and paid less is relative. In Amazon's defense, I have friends who enjoy working there. The MBAs especially love it. Again, it's not…

White collar jobs are somewhat different than. We have choice, we have power.

The best bet for amazon warehouse employees, and delivery drivers, would be to unionise. This would lead to either 1) More investment in robotics, taking away menial jobs 2) Better conditions for shelf-stackers.

Both are good -- as a society we should not be making people work when the work could be done by robots.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#77

Post by staticassertion »

knuththetruth wrote: post #36
kelukelugames wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bezos. Jeff Bezos is the reason why Amazon treats workers they way they do. Compared to other tech giants, Amazon is incredibly anti-employee. Look at how their stocks vest. I worked at Microsoft during Balmer's reign. The founder/CEO's attitude dictates the work culture. And causes harm if it's bad. I live in Seattle and often hear this joke: Being an Amazon customer is the best. An investor is great. An employee no…

Well, him and the people higher up the food chain that enable him. Tech workers at Amazon could organize to prevent this kind of mistreatment of warehouse employeees. If the AWS team alone walked off the job in protest, the resulting panic and media coverage would squeeze Amazon to improve.

Sad to see this post downvoted when it seems obvious.

If you work for Amazon as a developer make this issue known. Few people have as much power to impact the company as a group of developers - we all know what a pain in the ass it is to hire.

I'd never work at Amazon knowing how it treats its workers. Given the market we're in I don't get why others would - if you work for Amazon you should be able to jump ship for another good company.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#78

Post by toomuchtodo »

dingo_bat wrote: post #61
aylmao wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're going to be replaced by robots soon, isn't that a good reason to not fear spending on them, since they are a short-term cost?

Why spend more if you can spend less?

Because there is value in being a decent human being?

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#79

Post by gist »

notheguyouthink wrote: post #2

Are Amazon's margins razor thin? I'm trying to understand what compels them to be so toxic in their work environment. Especially compared to the people I know who work at Costco, I struggle to understand why Costco treats employees so well, and Amazon treats their employees so poorly. It's really sad, regardless.

Why is the assumption when articles like this are published that this is representative of what it's like working in an Amazon warehouse?

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#80

Post by marsrover »

atrexler wrote: post #49
jrochkind1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait, you're sure there are many industries, white and blue collar, where workers routinely pee in bottles as a job requirement? Really? In the U.S.? You're pretty sure about this, eh? Many industries? I'd be curious to hear an example of one industry where "white collar" workers routinely pee in bottles as a job requirement, official or unofficial.

Sure, I can't tell you about white collar folks pissing in bottles, I may have exaggerated there. But in healthcare (for nurses, therapists, aides) its quite prevalent that people don't drink/eat enough at work nor do they take proscribed breaks because productivity standards are so high. Look I'm not saying its right or fair or good. I'm simply pointing out that its not unique to Amazon.

Not eating or drinking enough is a whole different ballgame than pissing in a bottle.
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