What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work? • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by krapp » Fri, Aug 24, 2018, 8:10 PM UTC

Moodles wrote: post #155

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about what you're doing. I am asking for specific ideas and numbers, and you're responding with homily. This is what I mean. You can't just critique and moralize without offering specific workable solutions. The system we have is not great. Who wouldn't want a world where everybody could just have more or less whatever they want, live extremely comfortably, and for it to all be completely sustainable? But that'…

Indeed some would argue that a minimum wage can be quite damaging: for those in society who are unproductive so as not to be worth $x an hour, a minimum wage of >= $x actually definitely excludes them from the workforce. They’re even more damned than before. Now I’m not sure either way if a minimum wage of 0 or $x is a good idea, but I would generally go with whatever the evidence suggestions (and I havn’t looked int…

> for those in society who are unproductive so as not to be worth $x an hour, a minimum wage of >= $x actually definitely excludes them from the workforce

Wages are not objectively determined on the basis of worker productivity. If that were the case, wages would rise with productivity, but they tend not to. Wages are a cost that employers want to keep as low as possible in all cases - indeed, lower in cases of higher productivity, for a greater return on investment.

A stower at Amazon can make their monthly salary for the company in minutes by stowing a couple of XBoxes, yet they'll make the same 12.00/hr over a ten hour shift regardless. The value that an employee brings to a company is always less than their compensation. Never more, and certainly never equal.

I'm not certain the actual workforce bears out the premise that a minimum wage definitely prices workers out, since if it did, one would expect none of those jobs to be filled, since no employer should want to pay a minimum wage to fill them.

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

#192

Post by chriselles » Fri, Aug 24, 2018, 8:12 PM UTC

forapurpose wrote: post #35

chriselles wrote: post #28

In Amazon’s early days(pre Twitter obviously) there were plenty of warehouse workers who could have written far better tweets that sound less Borg Collective-y

What do you mean? Are you saying that Amazon warehouse employees were treated better back then? What makes you say that?

It was pretty hard(physically) back then, even before simple tilt tray sortation equipment.

Everything was manual.

And zero air conditioning in the first early generation distribution(now fulfilment) centres.

Hiring, even in distribution(fulfilment) operations, had quite a high hiring bar.

This was done to help develop the near future Human Resources capacity of the company.

So we had an inordinately high % of Amazon Associate stock pickers with undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Quite an eclectic and quirky bunch of quite over educated folks doing a lot of manual labor trying to get the orders out the door and not drown in them.

It was a much much smaller company back then.

We were just trying to survive the never ending need to get customer orders out te door and “average up” with each new hire.

Intellectual capacity per person was quite high, but our operational execution would be far lower than what is achieved today.

We were failing/learning as we were going.

More exploration, less exploitation(in the process sense).

Exploitation as an employee wasn’t a problem in the early days from my perspective.

We all knew what we were getting into. 100% commitment and acting like an owner.

As headcount exploded, individual understanding of Amazon’s mission, ethos, etc declined as it become more job-like, and less purposeful.

Growth rate compelled hiring more specialists and less multi-purpose generalists....who could write non Borg Collective like Tweets.

I guess what I’m saying is the culture in the early days was more like a pirate ship full of idiosyncratic individualist buccaneers than Borg.

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

#193

Post by shady-lady » Fri, Aug 24, 2018, 11:18 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #178

brtknr wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 primaril…

> This is a well-known problem with any "reality-based" programming

Panorama isn't a "reality-based" programme. It's an undercover investigative programme.

The problem with "reality-based" programming is that some scenes are completely falsified or exaggerated (with the knowing assistance of the show 'participants'). Most of them even have to put a disclaimer at the end of the show saying as much.

Notwithstanding that every produced show is going to have some slant to a point, to classify the linked video as "reality-based" is completely and utterly disingenuous.

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

#194

Post by xg15 » Fri, Aug 24, 2018, 11:29 PM UTC

jakobegger wrote: post #61

agwa wrote: post #43

Let's say you're a company with a serious PR problem about the working conditions in your warehouses. You set up 15 Twitter accounts claiming to be employees of your warehouses. You make sure the accounts are laughably bad at concealing the fact that they are shills, with cookie-cutter bios and responses that are obviously canned talking points. This ensures that the accounts are discovered and written up by various…

It's amazing how well this works despite being obvious propaganda. I felt my own opinion on Amazon Fullfilment Centers change as I read the article. One thing that makes propaganda like this so effective is that journalists generally do not bother to verify any propaganda claims (eg. does Amazon really pay 30% more?), so even if they write articles making fun of you they still repeat your message.

I feel this particular mind trick may be restricted to members of the HN community - who might already be very willing to give Amazon the benefit of doubt in the first place.

Note that, as you say, the information may be completely fabricated (or it may be "technically true", but attached to a lot of catches and conditions that the "ambassadors" conveniently didn't mention)

Also, while the article didn't research the claims, it did put them next to the (vastly better verified) claims of the ex-workers who reported absolutely undesirable working conditions. Even if they beat the pay for industry average, would that matter so much if they in turn offer vastly below-average working conditions?

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

#195

Post by brennebeck » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 4:11 AM UTC

wool_gather wrote: post #136

FC_Associate wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not exactly sure how much better Amazon pays, if at all better, here in SoCal starting pay is around $12-$14 per hour for L1 associates, but anecdotally I feel like this is on the higher end when compared to similar jobs, at least compared to the jobs I've held. I can't speak to the insurance coverage provided since I'm a part time worker but from what I've heard, while pay isn't great, the insurance seems to be…

> He was being paid worker's comp during this time. This certainly made a good impression on me. Just to be clear here: this is required by law, not something that the company is doing out of the goodness of its heart. It's also a fraction of what one's normal wages would be, which I would say is a more likely explanation for the injured person's eagerness to return than that "he missed his coworkers". > they wanted…

Actually, is it? Isn’t that a state by state thing? For the record I’m not positive but coming from an at-will State like FL that is also heavily favored to corporations, I am not certain.

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

#196

Post by wool_gather » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 1:44 PM UTC

brennebeck wrote: post #195

wool_gather wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He was being paid worker's comp during this time. This certainly made a good impression on me. Just to be clear here: this is required by law, not something that the company is doing out of the goodness of its heart. It's also a fraction of what one's normal wages would be, which I would say is a more likely explanation for the injured person's eagerness to return than that "he missed his coworkers". > they wanted…

Actually, is it? Isn’t that a state by state thing? For the record I’m not positive but coming from an at-will State like FL that is also heavily favored to corporations, I am not certain.

Yes, I'm sure it varies from state to state, but the story specified CA, which does indeed have a legal requirement.

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

#197

Post by TangoTrotFox » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #191

Moodles wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed some would argue that a minimum wage can be quite damaging: for those in society who are unproductive so as not to be worth $x an hour, a minimum wage of >= $x actually definitely excludes them from the workforce. They’re even more damned than before. Now I’m not sure either way if a minimum wage of 0 or $x is a good idea, but I would generally go with whatever the evidence suggestions (and I havn’t looked int…

> for those in society who are unproductive so as not to be worth $x an hour, a minimum wage of >= $x actually definitely excludes them from the workforce Wages are not objectively determined on the basis of worker productivity. If that were the case, wages would rise with productivity, but they tend not to. Wages are a cost that employers want to keep as low as possible in all cases - indeed, lower in cases of highe…

I think your post is a clear example of why people seem to rage completely inappropriately. I'm sure your example was rhetorical, but do you realize how rhetorical it was? People seem to vastly overestimate how much companies make per item. Amazon's profit margin is currently at record breaking levels -- of 4.79%. It historically averages around 2%. That means on e.g. $300 of product (as a game console costs), they would show an average profit of $6-$14. They need to move hundreds of thousands of dollars of product to pay the yearly salary for a single blue-collar worker. A box mover is making nowhere near his monthly compensation for moving a couple of XBoxes, even we ignore the vast number of other expenses that go into the process and pretend that 100% of the profit from those boxes can go straight to him.

As for minimum wage, businesses aren't identical -- even when they are. For instance a McDonald's franchise in one area of a mostly homogenous part of town can end up having a substantially different overall performance than one in a different area in our mostly homogenous town. There's a large number of variables that can be difficult to account for. And of course reality is different businesses operating in different areas in heterogeneous towns. So you don't eliminate all jobs of a given wage level - you just reduce the demand for them by removing all companies that can't afford to pay those wages.

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

#198

Post by Moodles » Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 6:07 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #191

Moodles wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed some would argue that a minimum wage can be quite damaging: for those in society who are unproductive so as not to be worth $x an hour, a minimum wage of >= $x actually definitely excludes them from the workforce. They’re even more damned than before. Now I’m not sure either way if a minimum wage of 0 or $x is a good idea, but I would generally go with whatever the evidence suggestions (and I havn’t looked int…

> for those in society who are unproductive so as not to be worth $x an hour, a minimum wage of >= $x actually definitely excludes them from the workforce Wages are not objectively determined on the basis of worker productivity. If that were the case, wages would rise with productivity, but they tend not to. Wages are a cost that employers want to keep as low as possible in all cases - indeed, lower in cases of highe…

I read your post several times and I still don't know what statement of mine you're contesting.

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

#199

Post by parrellel » Sun, Aug 26, 2018, 4:27 AM UTC

dbliss wrote: post #149

parrellel wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things like AbeBooks and Book Mooch exist. They just aren't as immediately convenient, so, the question is - as is often the case on the internet - convenience or morality.

FYI - Abebooks is owned by Amazon.

... and for a few years too, damn. Welp, guess I'll never use them again. Thank you!

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

#200

Post by ggm » Sun, Aug 26, 2018, 6:42 AM UTC

1) did Amazon Australia use an intermediate labour hire agency or directly employ it's new warehouse workers. And, how does this compare to ICT staff.

2) does or does not bezos oppose collective bargaining and unions?

3) is it true that German and possibly Italian state and federal labour laws were successfully used to secure improved working conditions including the right to collective bargaining?

4) has Amazon at any time, including the present used "fire the bottom two" forms of ranked performance management?