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Public protest against Amazon

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Re: Public protest against Amazon

#101

Post by socceroos »

dpcan wrote: post #68

This may seem mean, and feel free to argue with me and prove my statement below wrong. Well, which was it? Was he taking his daughter to therapy or working from home? If his daughter requires additional care, he needs to care for his daughter, but that can't interfere with work. If your kids are not disabled, they may not be interfering with your work, and therefore, when you are working from home - you are, in fact,…

Yeah, I can see how one could make an amoral, pedantic argument around the definition of working from home. But to do that you have to 1) remove the argument from it's surrounding context, which is flawed reasoning and 2) successfully prove that there is a significant difference in the practical outworking of the definition of working from home between the subject and their workmates. The latter is immediately and significantly relevant to the definition and, unfortunately for the oppressor, drags context back into play.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#102

Post by tomatotomato37 »

taurath wrote: post #83
Scramblejams wrote: post #61

Amazon employee here, though I do not speak for the company. At any big company, your management chain is the #1 influence on the quality of your culture. My experience at Amazon has been extremely positive, but then my org head is a great guy, so it's all been in line with my expectations. I've also left critical feedback through the Amazon Connect survey for my immediate manager and not suffered for it. That manage…

That's always been the argument to people who are on the fence about Amazon: "I've heard some bad things, but haven't seen it in my department". Amazon, and the people that work on the "good" teams never seem to be terribly concerned about horrific reports, and I frequently wonder why that is. In companies I've worked for, had I heard about people crying at their desk and being forced to choose between their child's…

That's because the people who have bad experiences are the ones who actually have something to say. No one is going to write a medium blog post about how their last year was completely average, their boss had pros and cons, and that the most controversial event of the year was when the company switched kuerig cup brands.

Edit: Also don't forget that Amazon is a fucking huge company; they literally have more employees than the population of Wyoming. We aren't surprised when someone in Wyoming has a crappy job experience, so we really shouldn't be surprised when someone in Amazon has one either.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#103

Post by ownagefool »

bitL wrote: post #25
ownagefool wrote: post #14

I had a manager that took over from a previous person when I was working remote. There were a few issues, but the one that stands out is they flew me down to London for a week, set me up in a hotel, and had me take taxis back and fourth to the office and expense food etc. After returning home, he rejected my expenses because of variance of costs of the taxis, despite me pointing out that I was using the stipulated ve…

So mission accomplished from his point of view: "This person is weak, let's just add some adversities to their life, they would quit; my cousin can't wait to join us."

Well yeah, but who cares? I went on to much bigger and better things and he's probably still just a twat. :)

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#104

Post by maximente »

alecco wrote: post #69
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #29

Workers need unions, plain and simple. The addition of an impartial arbitrator at any step along this process could’ve helped so much.

I used to believe that. But I saw very close how an IT union was taken over by old school, corrupt fat union guys. And they just pander to the lowest common denominator. They go against meritocracy. I'd rather pay attention and vote with my feet.

"divided we fall" is a cliche but may have some merit here, especially if this will be filled by another starry eyed immigrant visa holder who can be treated as such. the information asymmetry gap is just too high imo.

there's other opportunities for organizing labor that don't include old-school unions. screen actors' guild is one example that, e.g., mandates various "newer" members get roles on films and seems to be really well regarded. a guild could serve techies as well.

read up on some of michael o church's old blog about his ideas about organized labor in tech, but be careful espousing the same views as it very well might get you into irredeemable trouble.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#106

Post by ISO-morphism »

napo wrote: post #76
mothsonasloth wrote: post #52

I used to think big tech companies like Amazon and Google would be different, however now I see they are just becoming like any older traditional corporation with a HR department functioning like the stasi and the ability to oppress through mass policies and hiring contracts. We are lucky as developers to have a fairly easy way of life but I still follow my Grandpa's advice from years working in the shipyards of Glas…

"* When things are good, think about leaving" => Wait what? So what do you do when things are bad?

Leave.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#107

Post by whoisjuan »

ardit33 wrote: post #78

Former Amazon employee here (worked at Lab126, on the original Kindle devices). While I didn't have a bad manager there (my managers were actually nice people), it is Amazon's corporate culture that turns the place into a 'dog eat dog', arse-hole driven, development. Managers have to run around and cover their arse, as in the first or second misstep, they are out. This pressure filters down to employees who are often…

I just want to contrast this with the fact that in my case Amazon was extremely diligent with my green card process.

I applied day one after joining (my manager knew that I joined with that expectation so he approved right away) and they started working on it immediately. I had some delays with the lawyers but in general it went pretty smoothly.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#109

Post by abawany »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #99
ownagefool wrote: post #14

I had a manager that took over from a previous person when I was working remote. There were a few issues, but the one that stands out is they flew me down to London for a week, set me up in a hotel, and had me take taxis back and fourth to the office and expense food etc. After returning home, he rejected my expenses because of variance of costs of the taxis, despite me pointing out that I was using the stipulated ve…

I was recently offered a job by a software company, work from home, paid monthly. I presently work in metal fabrication. Not only was their offer $30,000 below my current income, their deal was I front cash for expenses and submit claims monthly. Is this standard in the software world? Because from my perspective there’s only one possible answer to paying expenses out of pocket and having to claim them back: No.

Submitting claims monthly is fairly standard, at least in my experience. At HP, they gave us a corporate AMEX card but I was responsible for paying it while I waited for the outsourced^2 HR operations to cut me a check.
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