Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 113 posts

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#51

Post by random314 »

throwaway98121 wrote: post #39
grardb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could you possibly come to that conclusion? > The military is known for being a bastion of sexism, but I had a worse experience at Amazon. > . . . the managers do not get any sort of break or lunch. Most of us just never ate. Everyone is on their feet for 12 hours a day. > Associates got a 30-minute lunch break, two 15-minute breaks, and an additional 15 minutes of “time off tasks.” Working 12 hours per day with…

Yeah, I think this is perfectly acceptable. If you don’t, don’t work for Amazon. Easy. I worked 12 hour days with a horrible boss as a fresh grad and only made $65k a year with a CS degree. This cat made $80k with a high school qualification, yet he still complains about a job he knowingly accepted. I’m very interested to learn about Amazon tech, but instead I see an article just about everyday about how Amazon is so…

Your post is false. This guy had an MBA. And he is not complaining about his salary.

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#52

Post by Retric »

Spooky23 wrote: post #40
chickenfries wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty well agreed on HN that you get what you pay for, and anyone who complains about being unable to hire good developers simply just isn't compensating well enough. Why on earth would you not want to pay a better qualified teacher more? You must think that teaching is easy because the math is not complicated, yet most of the people who say this would loathe the idea of teaching for a living.

Compensation once adequate doesn’t yield directly in performance for higher level tasks. Teachers apply knowledge, experience and work in a way that magically makes you smarter and informed. Their effectiveness is a measure of their skill and the students. The argument against the unions is bunk — paying a premium for a math PhD to teach high school is probably pretty dumb... experience makes you effective at teachin…

Pay is not just about increasing performance it also increases retention. Retaining your best performers is harder than the people doing the minimum. Once you get to the point where the people with 10+ years are the unmotivated people not putting in the effort to find a better job you slowly enter a death spiral.

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#53

Post by tomjakubowski »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #10
krapp wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>More seriously though: the caterwauling over Amazon's cruel and unusual work conditions is getting a little long in the tooth. I had more sympathy when it's peeing in bottles and passing out from heat exhaustion, but if the above is extent of the complaints now...get over it? Just because the article doesn't explicitly mention peeing in bottles or passing out from heat exhaustion doesn't mean those problems no longe…

I'm commenting on the article that was posted, which describes the "human cost" of Black Friday. I'm asserting that the complaints presented in the article don't sound like some excruciating human cost, it just sounds like...a job. That the source was tangentially involved in the military makes it even more comical. A job that requires its workers to be screamed at, put through torturous physical conditioning and pos…

I don't get it. Why the sarcasm? That the person who has worked through ostensibly "torturous" military working conditions, is now complaining about their private sector job, only strengthens their complaints in my eyes.

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#54

Post by random314 »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #12
neuronflux wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> after I finished serving in the Air Force Reserves in 2014, but then decided to go to graduate school for business administration > My salary was $80,000, which is on the higher end. They gave me more because I said I wouldn’t accept anything less, since I had a master’s.

I don't the your part you've quoted undercuts the point at all. If I have a PhD in the area of algebraic topology, I do not expect to get out of band comp for teaching middle school math. If the job only requires a high school diploma, then that's a great salary in most areas.

Where did you find information that specifies that the area manager job at the Amazon warehouse only requires a high school diploma? Please be as specific as possible with your citation.

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#55

Post by random314 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #47
basic1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism has failed.

Can you point to many examples of non-capitalist societies where conditions are better for most people than in the United States? From my perspective, capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system in history. By what metric has it “failed” ? Because the bottom few percent live in shitty conditions? Before capitalism, the bottom 90% of people were illiterate subsistence farmers.

Cuba vs Haiti

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#56

Post by n4r9 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #44
n4r9 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure the issue is when employees don't feel like they can leave, because they can't afford a period of unemployment and don't have the time/energy to seek new employment whilst working 12 hour shifts and potentially supporting a family.

How is that Amazon’s fault or problem? Is your issue with Amazon, or with the system of capitalism in general? If the latter, why are people criticizing Amazon specifically?

It's a general criticism of the system. Highlighting Amazon's particular behaviour is useful as a demonstration of how/where the system fails, and may produce short term wins if it incentivises amazon to stop being inhumane.

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#57

Post by sergiosgc »

Alex63 wrote: post #35
hedvig wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that its specific to Amazon but more generally comes from a core ideology of abiding by concepts of free market rules to the exclusion of concepts of humanity.

Just to be clear, in this case "free market rules" include: 1. Most customers choose to buy from the seller with the lowest price. 2. Employees are free to leave their employment if they find the conditions intolerable. Which of these rules do you want to change?

I'd like to indirectly change:

> 1. Most customers choose to buy from the seller with the lowest price.

By setting a floor for the lowest operational cost, defining such basic concepts as:

1. Maximum work schedule (12h/day mandatory is not acceptable);

2. Minimum wage.

If every seller must abide by the same rules, the market is fair. Costs won't be absurd and no worker will work under medieval conditions. I know costs won't be absurd because I live in Europe, where these rules are in place, and we can still buy gadgets and books.

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#58

Post by rchaud »

"Amazon never trained us in how to communicate with associates. We weren’t trained to be understanding of their struggles or communicate with them. It was all about mechanics."

I wonder if part of the reason a military vet was hired for the floor manager's job was the expectation that they'd act like drill sergeants towards the employees, while the tracking systems acted as a real-time sword of Damocles-type apparatus.

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#59

Post by jhbadger »

School-Cotton wrote: post #47
basic1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism has failed.

Can you point to many examples of non-capitalist societies where conditions are better for most people than in the United States? From my perspective, capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system in history. By what metric has it “failed” ? Because the bottom few percent live in shitty conditions? Before capitalism, the bottom 90% of people were illiterate subsistence farmers.

The problem lies in the definition of "capitalist". Certainly there are numerous countries that by a variety of metrics have a better quality of life than the US (longer life expectancy, fewer percentage impoverished, smaller degree of economic inequality, and so on). The Scandinavian countries are the classic example, but most of Western Europe, Australia, Japan, are as well. Capitalism vs socialism is a continuum, and it looks like the best place is somewhere in the middle.
Post reply on HN