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What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

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Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#171

Post by detaro »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #158
detaro wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Convincingly wiping out those "isolated incidents" would be a good start. Making sure those can be safely reported, and systemic reasons encouraging them are removed. Low pay is one thing, bad working conditions another, the latter being a lot harder to justify.

Completely agreed about trying to ensure there are as few systemic issues as possible. But on the issue of 'isolated incidents', you have to be realistic. Amazon's size alone would put it as the 31st largest city in the US. And they, like ever more companies, have massive turnover at all levels. Expectation of no isolated incidents is equivalent to expectation of never hiring bad apples -- and that's just impossible.…

Sure, Amazon is also under special scrutiny here, but also has to my knowledge never made a strong public statement admitting any of this ever happened and how it has been corrected. They certainly look like they don't particularly care.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#172

Post by vkou »

_zachs wrote: post #166

I'm not an Amazon shill, look at my post history. I don't understand all of this press. If you don't like your job working at Amazon, quit. If the conditions are terrible, release proof to the public, so other people don't even start working there. Wash, rinse, repeat, and Amazon will either change the supposed working conditions or hopefully fail. Why do we need so much press on both sides for such a non-issue?

Because the job of the press is disseminating this proof to the public. Shouting into a void doesn't actually get you anywhere.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#173

Post by benplant »

nerdponx wrote: post #133
jakeogh wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vote with my money, constantly. So Amazon was out long ago. Plenty of people I know pay attention to who owns what. To us, it's irrelevant how much they sockpuppet.

Where do you buy used books? I like the local bookstore as mch as the next guy, but I don't know of any reliable source for used books other than Amazon.

I’ve used https://www.betterworldbooks.com, they are a B Corp and donate a book for each book purchased.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#174

Post by mrguyorama »

nasredin wrote: post #135
krapp wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Shit, if I was an Amazon warehouse worker and had the chance to get paid the same except SOME of my workload was sitting down and shilling for Amazon on twitter, I would jump (well, sit) at the chance. They probably wouldn't let you sit down, unless you were shilling on your lunch break. Amazon has a policy against their warehouse workers sitting down while on the job, not even HR is allowed to sit when they're staf…

>>>Seiza is the Japanese term for one of the traditional formal ways of sitting in Japan I am surprised there's no workplace shootings in Amazon warehouses a la USPS.

There's not enough time

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#175

Post by pinewurst »

ams6110 wrote: post #160
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The side of Amazon that works in offices and makes good money also has a reputation as a bad place to work, compared to other major tech companies. See the "Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk" article from the NYT a few years back. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-... Anecdotally, as you say, that does seem to depend a lot on your department--good local management ca…

Microsoft in the past had a pretty notorious employee performance system called "stack ranking" where basically no matter how well you did your job you could get classified as a "bottom performer" because a certain percentage had to be ranked lowest. It was a contributor to poor morale and employee stress. Many sales-oriented companies (Oracle?) will have similar performance metrics, e.g. next-to-impossible sales goa…

As a Seattle-ite, I know people at Amazon and at Microsoft.

The Amazon stories are pretty consistent in their awfulness. The people doing more clerical/support stuff seem to have a better time than especially engineers. People usually bail in less than a year, even those who are indentured for moving expenses. There was an especially sad case where a new Amazon employee moved in next door after relocating his family from another part of the country - initially enthused, but it all went to hell and they fled.

Microsoft is much more a hodgepodge. Certainly from the top down it's become so much better post-Ballmer. Actual experiences depend on your group even more so than Amazon, but at least the top is pretty benevolent. I know creative people who truly love their Microsoft lives (and I'm envious), but I've had the occasional interviews with them, all dysfunctional in unpleasant ways (e.g. having someone blow cigarette smoke in your face while making a personally dismissive statement). I keep trying because they are in fact a decent employer in the greater scheme of things.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#176

Post by brynjolf »

_zachs wrote: post #166

I'm not an Amazon shill, look at my post history. I don't understand all of this press. If you don't like your job working at Amazon, quit. If the conditions are terrible, release proof to the public, so other people don't even start working there. Wash, rinse, repeat, and Amazon will either change the supposed working conditions or hopefully fail. Why do we need so much press on both sides for such a non-issue?

It shows you are a product of the valley. Some people. Can't just quit their job, if they do their lives implode and does so fast.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#177

Post by wool_gather »

ams6110 wrote: post #145
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, worker's compensation benefits are paid by an insurance company, not by the employer.

It is, but the cost of worker's comp insurance coverage for an employer is very closely tied to claims experience. If an employer has a track record of a lot of claims, their worker's comp insurance is going to be very expensive. So there's still an incentive for the employer to operate safely and minimize employee injuries.

Good points both, thanks for adding those details!

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#178

Post by cookiecaper »

brtknr wrote: post #74
eksemplar wrote: post #68

Had anyone ever done a piece of investigative journalism on the actual conditions at Amazon? A company that big will have some terrible managers, and the fact that it’s not discovering those easily, is problematic, but that doesn’t mean the entire company is rotten. I’m a manager in a Scandinavian municipality, and because I work with lean and efficiency I get to see all sides of our operation. I’ve seen departments…

Yup, google BBC documentary on Amazon warehouse workers too, it reveals the terrible working conditions, albeit it’s a couple of years old. Edit: in fact, it’s available here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/UQATFbLvIHk

Don't overlook that these filmmakers are heavily incentivized to create a dramatic story. No one will watch a film that says "Yep, it's a pretty normal warehouse, and they even pay a little more than their peers", and the filmmakers certainly won't win respect or accolades for putting out such a piece. This is a well-known problem with any "reality-based" programming; the incentives of the documentarians are primarily to provide an exhilarating narrative.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#179

Post by ergothus »

Y_Y wrote: post #126
nickthemagicman wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a gish gallop. No one has time/energy to verify it all and they're not providing any proof.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop I wish I had a debating technique named after me.

In school I was interested in debate until I learned some of the rules, then I lost all interest. I expected to find a contest to effectively communicate and apply facts, but I found the opposite - a contest to be better at twisting, denying, or just ignoring facts. An effective debater is more likely to deceive me, not educate me.

I've not looked into it since high school, so I sometimes wonder if I misjudged, but links like that wikipedia one make me think I correctly avoided it.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#180

Post by saudioger »

Applejinx wrote: post #114

Shit, if I was an Amazon warehouse worker and had the chance to get paid the same except SOME of my workload was sitting down and shilling for Amazon on twitter, I would jump (well, sit) at the chance. It's a different kind of demanding, more like being a commercial writer, probably more open to people who are damn good commercial writers and happen to be working as a picker in an Amazon warehouse. It'd be like getti…

There's no way they're actually writing this stuff. At best they're real employees allowing a company to tweet on their behalf.
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