Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by leggomylibro » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 6:22 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #311

leggomylibro wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but education on those topics has also never been cheaper or more accessible. And these days, you could use something like MakeCode to automate simple tasks without ever touching a programming environment. There still aren't many people muddling through the introductory online courses on those topics, but there could be. Encouraging participation in learning about useful subjects seems like another good goal wh…

These people are working in very stressful environments, often for 10-12 hours/day, and making a pittance (which also adds to overall stress). Add a kid, and the idea of having time and mental energy for learning programming starts to sound a bit far-fetched.

Fine, but what can anyone do to reach someone in that situation? Could we maybe start with people who work 8-10 hours/day, make enough for beer money, and can leave their children with friends or family to make room for maybe 4-8 hours out of a month?

Or should we just look at the situation, throw up our hands, and

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

#382

Post by FilterSweep » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 6:22 PM UTC

kajumix wrote: post #282

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…

Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there, given the market for software engineers. Amazon is a highly successful company with significant anticipate growth still to come. All that success doesn't come without talent. So maybe not stupid, maybe just irrational? Tech companies in general, and Amazon in particular, are high…

> Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there

This is sparing the employer at the expense of the employee. Employee's employment status is.....far more sticky.

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

#383

Post by dtech » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 6:22 PM UTC

gimmeDatCheddar wrote: post #306

CamTin wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find a way that $500 per month adds up to "multi-million dollar net worth". Even at a very optimistic 10% return rate, it comes to just over 1.1 million over thirty years. What assumptions are you making in your calculation to come up with 2million+ at retirement from $500 per month of savings?

$500 a month is $6000 a year. $6000 a year invested from 26 to 66 at 10% interest per year is $2,921,110.87. At 12% it's $5,154,854.34. Keep in mind this is just from a single decision the average person is making.

Not many places offering 10% ROI to people who can invest $500 a month.

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

#384

Post by nlowell » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

kajumix wrote: post #282

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…

Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there, given the market for software engineers. Amazon is a highly successful company with significant anticipate growth still to come. All that success doesn't come without talent. So maybe not stupid, maybe just irrational? Tech companies in general, and Amazon in particular, are high…

The people in my recent college graduating class who were planning on going to Amazon for software engineering were going there with a plan to burnout after 2-3 years and take their experience elsewhere. It was seen as worth it for the money + resume, even knowing those years would suck.

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

#385

Post by Domenic_S » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 6:24 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #180

piracykills wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so, reading real statistics on this kind of thing instead of alarmist and politically slanted headlines paints a very different picture of how the world is doing. https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

As global average quality of life trends upward, the American lower and middle class are dying quietly in the streets. https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/o... https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/12/21/5720803...

The whole lower and middle classes? What do you mean by this? What does "quietly" mean -- there's been a ton of activity on the opioid crisis in Washington lately?

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

#386

Post by amyjess » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 6:25 PM UTC

cafard wrote: post #86

atrexler wrote: post #23

Long-haul truckers have been doing this for decades for the same reason-- they don't have time to pull over and use the restroom-- and no one is upset about that. I'm sure there are many industries, white and blue collar, where similar norms are expressed. Edit to add: I'm not endorsing the practice in any industry at all, just pointing out that its not a unique problem to Amazon. My comment would have been better ph…

Actually, long-haul truckers are required to keep logs showing that they are taking adequate rest: the public doesn't want people stoned on lack of sleep to be driving big rigs. Do a lot of long-haul truckers falsify their logs? So I understand. But I suspect they get more slack.

> Do a lot of long-haul truckers falsify their logs? So I understand.

Companies have been moving to electronic logs to try and stop this. I don't know how successful this has been.

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

#387

Post by ythn » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 6:26 PM UTC

aisengard wrote: post #195

ythn wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AKA have no rights or security as an employee ever anywhere. I get what you are saying, but somehow this attitude also rubs me the wrong way sometimes. It's like "Hey, I'll pay anyone a nickle per piece of trash they pick up in the local forests" Soon: "NiceNature is the worst company ever! They exploit their workers to pick up garbage without proper protection, the employees have no rights or securities and are fo…

That's not a good analogy to something like Uber, because there's no profit motive. What you described is essentially a government works program, which is a great idea! But that's not what anyone seems to be talking about.

You're right, the analogy is not good. I was more thinking about making an app for fun that solves some problem, makes you and your users a little money on the side, mostly intended for teenagers/college students, etc., but then the masses move into to squeeze every last cent out of it and I get demonized and accused of exploiting workers, etc, when it was never meant to be a life-sustaining employment opportunity to begin with.

I.e. "biting the hand that feeds you" syndrome. Can't we just make cool things that don't require you to give 401k matching to everyone who touches your cool thing?

Again, maybe this doesn't apply to Uber and they totally could be giving full benefits to all drivers, etc., but I'm just saying in general

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

#388

Post by delecti » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 6:26 PM UTC

kajumix wrote: post #282

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…

Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there, given the market for software engineers. Amazon is a highly successful company with significant anticipate growth still to come. All that success doesn't come without talent. So maybe not stupid, maybe just irrational? Tech companies in general, and Amazon in particular, are high…

I think it largely comes down to a few factors: Amazon does a lot of hiring, changing jobs is a hassle that many people won't do just because of momentum, and we naturally only hear about the very worst of what it's like to work at Amazon. If you keep hiring enough developers, enough of them will stick it out thanks to momentum (through possibly sub-optimal but not necessarily tortuous conditions) for long enough to have a large number of developers at any given time.

I worked at Amazon for ~5.5 years, and it was fine. I wasn't in bliss, but it wasn't awful, it was fine. I eventually left not because conditions worsened but because my team's responsibilities eventually shifted to work I disliked enough to overcome the momentum (web ads), and I found out they have a very generous severance program if you know what to ask about.

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

#389

Post by learc83 » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 6:29 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #145

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…

I think this misunderstands economics. The day robots are in the market the value of what they produce will drop to nothing, much like most things done in high scale by machines today. The value of things are proportional to the human labor expended to make them, if robots do free shipping and all of that, their cost will tend to drop to the cost of making the robots. The public narrative that robots should be taxes…

>The value of things are proportional to the human labor expended to make them

That's one theory of value--there are many others.

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

#390

Post by delecti » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

nlowell wrote: post #384

kajumix wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there, given the market for software engineers. Amazon is a highly successful company with significant anticipate growth still to come. All that success doesn't come without talent. So maybe not stupid, maybe just irrational? Tech companies in general, and Amazon in particular, are high…

The people in my recent college graduating class who were planning on going to Amazon for software engineering were going there with a plan to burnout after 2-3 years and take their experience elsewhere. It was seen as worth it for the money + resume, even knowing those years would suck.

My Amazon RSUs more than knocked out my significant student loans, so I have to say that's a reasonable strategy.