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Public protest against Amazon

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Re: Public protest against Amazon

#141

Post by Pfhreak »

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…

As someone who worked for Amazon for a long time, I agree with you -- most managers I worked for took anonymous negative feedback well, making changes at the team level.

Import Caveat to your last point: If you make games for Amazon, you give up your ability to make them in your spare time. Amazon has pretty aggressive game development policies around side projects.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#142

Post by matwood »

alistairSH wrote: post #132
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My employer issues corporate Visas to any employee expected to incur >$500/year in expenses. Which means most of us have cards, at least in the US. We still have to complete expense reports, but we don’t pay anything out of pocket.

This is how it has always worked for me. When I was more junior and didn't have a corporate card, I had a person who booked all my travel on the company account. At worst, I might have to cover a few incidentals like food or taxis.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#143

Post by Roboprog »

Stratoscope wrote: post #35
BucketSort wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manager: I have altered the deal, pray I do not alter it further. Basically.

(Subsequent edits to the parent comment addressed the concern I had mentioned and made my comment irrelevant.)

Apology accepted.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#144

Post by JohnFen »

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.

> They go against meritocracy.

Not necessarily. You can have union representation and maintain a meritocracy at the same time.

But I also observe that the industry is not nearly as much of a meritocracy as we like to pretend anyway.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#145

Post by rdtsc »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #33

My recommendation is to NEVER leave negative feedback on an employee survey. The BEST outcome I've seen from them is incredibly painful meetings that only seem to make the matter worse. My speculation on this is two fold. The first is that putting things in those surveys is a "permanent record" or at least "yearly review" issue for your manager. So you are (justly or not) harming them, and they will tend to respond t…

> My recommendation is to NEVER leave negative feedback on an employee survey.

Even better, game the system and give them glowing reviews.

For example I had noticed the feedback "anonymous" surveys they were sending had a location field as in employee's country, city, town, etc. Well, in a distributed team it's pretty clear who is who based on that location. So I just gave them glowing and happy reviews.

Same when leaving a company. Nice and happy feedback like "I'd love to work here more, but the tech landscape is so exciting and varied and I'd like to gain experience in other areas..."

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#146

Post by chrisco255 »

whyisthewhat wrote: post #135
taurath wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You’re talking about an organization that built market dominance on the backbreaking labor and suffering of underpaid warehouse workers. It’s just not in the corporate DNA to care. The fish rots from the head.

I'm not familiar with this. Is there some reports on workplace injuries or something of that nature or is this hyperbole?

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#147

Post by seltzered_ »

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.

Echoing the HP employee, submitting claims monthly for remote work expenses (phone/internet bills, office supplies, travel) is normal. Ive worked as an apps engineer at a couple BigCos with same policies and the process never bothered me, I submit my claims as soon as a trip ends or when I get the bills.

The thing I would press is to get paid fairly, and bi-weekly. I’ve never had a salaried job that was paid monthly.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#148

Post by taurath »

whoisjuan wrote: post #95
taurath wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Amazon doesn't work like a cohesive monolithic organization. Two teams that seat next to each other may have complete different cultures and ways of working. By design, Amazon is an aggregator of many small "startups" with different budgets, different issues, different approaches to solving problems. The connecting tissues are the leadership principles, the infrastructure, the resources, the mobility a…

This is a decent argument from an employee perspective, which is that its so silo'd that its basically different companies. While I find it pretty horrifying when awful things happen in places with the same external name as is on my resume, I could see how people could go "not me" - thats pretty close to how the workforce works outside of amazon too.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#149

Post by flavmartins »

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…

As an org head in a tech organization experiences I try to find managers/supervisors like this and actually move them out of the organization.

I know that you direct management and peers can be one of the greatest influences for good or bad for the broader team. A person like the Manager in this situation is a clearly going to create more problems for other team members in the future.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#150

Post by [deleted] »

abawany wrote: post #126
galaxyLogic wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullies are often beneficial to the person they work under. That person can delegate unpleasant bullying-work to the bully and the bully will never bully his boss.

Agreed. Have seen plenty of 'kiss up, kick down' behavior at larger tech companies. It is at times amusing and a small break from the suffering to see the person transform rapidly during interactions with the kissee or the kickee in short order.

[deleted]
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