We can have both. Amazon isn't going to implode if they pay some extra pennies for reasonable working conditions.
I don't think we can, companies like Amazon can't stop thinking about costs, it's in their DNA, it's what they live and breath. Distribution is all about margins, if you can't keep costs low then you are toast, they are always utterly miserable places to work.
You can force them to give provide conditions, or else they have to pay monumental fines / managers go to prison, etc. They will get the point.
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…
> Amazon is incredibly anti-employee They prefer calling it 'customer-centric' > Amazon, Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company
> They prefer calling it 'customer-centric'
If they'd like to be actually customer-centric, they can start by implementing a search that doesn't rank counterfeit products with a single 5-star review over real ones with 5000 reviews and an average rating of 4.9.
I feel like Amazon's reputation for being "customer-centric" doesn't actually reflect their current practices, but instead it leans heavily on past reputation (when their competitors were worse) and a convenient return policy that papers over problems.
Is this worth it? Is this worth having the ability to pick between 10,000 different toasters via internet and have them delivered to your doorstep in 2 days? Sometimes I look at society as a complete organ, with a hypothetical ability to make cohesive decisions for itself. And I think, it is making extremely self-destructive choices. All for the sake of satisfying the urge to buy more, at lower prices, with more conv…
Worth it for me, so I continue to buy stuff on Amazon.
If the workers don't like it they can work elsewhere or start their own Amazon.
Well, Marx and Engels did accurately identify that a large reserve of under-employed workers, or people who didn't previously participate in the labor force, is what enables the most exploitative jobs. All necessities in life cost money: food, housing, childcare, healthcare; and those in the most precarious social positions are the people most willing to accept abusive employment for reasons directly tied to their su…
It's interesting because Marx was writing in a time where automation was considered to even more imminent than it is today. Most intellectuals of the time were of the opinion that work weeks would reduce to 20 hours in a few decades, and people would live in leisure. One thing Marx got right was this: He said that as long as Capitalism is the dominant system, there will always be full-time employment for the masses.…
Yup, ideologically, liberals are the enemy of leftists unfortunately. And much closer to neo-cons. It’s why you’ll never see an actual Marxist anti-Imperialist on the masthead of so-called left-leaning (by some) pubs like NYT, WaPo, the Atlantic, etc. But they’ll happily hire tons of right wingers in the name of “ideological diversity” (see Kevin Williamson, Bari Weiss, plus the ones that have actually stayed on)
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…
>> I found out they have a very generous severance program if you know what to ask about.
What do you mean? Are you referring to the severance you get if you leave on a PIP?
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…
This is why it is important for the robots to be open-source & open-hardware, to drive down the cost so that everyone can own their own robots. Imagine everyone having their own solar-powered FarmBot.
What we don't want is a society where the governments/corporations exclusively own all the robots, such that we have to go through them.
Well, Marx and Engels did accurately identify that a large reserve of under-employed workers, or people who didn't previously participate in the labor force, is what enables the most exploitative jobs. All necessities in life cost money: food, housing, childcare, healthcare; and those in the most precarious social positions are the people most willing to accept abusive employment for reasons directly tied to their su…
I believe it is technically possible to construct machines that produce most of life’s basic necessities at zero marginal cost. I am generally interested in finding others who want to work with me to design the first prototypes of these machines. We can build any system we’d like.
We can have both. Amazon isn't going to implode if they pay some extra pennies for reasonable working conditions.
Why would Amazon pay one more penny than they have to? To win a nice guys award? To get a warm, squishy feeling inside? There is precisely one solution to this problem, and it is us electing leaders who change the rules in favor of the working masses, and enforce those rules mercilessly against exploitative employers.
It's easier to throw the rainbow homo propaganda flag and call it a day.
I don't think we can, companies like Amazon can't stop thinking about costs, it's in their DNA, it's what they live and breath. Distribution is all about margins, if you can't keep costs low then you are toast, they are always utterly miserable places to work.
You can force them to give provide conditions, or else they have to pay monumental fines / managers go to prison, etc. They will get the point.
Is the point to use robots? Because I'm pretty sure they already know that.