[deleted]
Public protest against Amazon
191–200 of 525 posts
Re: Public protest against Amazon
#192Basically making an employee a single-parent, as it feels by wrath/broken promise, is heart-breaking! These managers likely do not have children...
Re: Public protest against Amazon
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same thing happened to my wife. A newly promoted VP transferred her out of a great position she loved to work on a special project he invented to make department look innovative, under promise of a promotion once complete. Instead as soon as the project was done he hired a new manager into another newly created position above my wife, only supervising her. He proceeded to have the manager take all her responsibilitie…
Yeah, it's fun :( Sociopathy seems to be the norm these days. Anyway, nothing beats that one German bank that told all employees of a branch on Friday that on Monday they are working at a location 80 miles away and are required to be there as usually.
Even in the US something like that would trigger labor law protections (generally it would be treated as a constructive layoff, triggering unemployment benefits and any contractually or legally obligated severance benefits), so this story seems more like a fable than something that actually happened. Do you have any more details about this?
EDIT: Europe generally has stronger labor laws than the US, so if something wouldn't pass muster in the US, it almost certainly wouldn't pass muster in the EU.
Re: Public protest against Amazon
#194Indian here. If your manager is from India, he probably sucks. He is insecure, has zero empathy, leadership skills or any skills. He probably memorized data structures and algo's interview questions and got a job at Amazon. He got ahead by sucking up to his boss and being political. His boss is probably an Indian too who sucks up to his boss and so on. But that is okay, as this company is stable and they just need pe…
This might be true for many Indian folks. I had an Indian manager who was the kindest soul, cared deeply for the team, to the point where he would stay late if there was a high severity issue just for morale support and to help debug, focused heavily on career development for us... he let management push him around, which he shielded the team from... he got passed on promotion opportunities and eventually left. It was a huge loss for our team, and after he left, within 3 months the entire engineering team he built parted ways.
Re: Public protest against Amazon
#195I 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 worked for a similarly horrible person many years ago. I was doing on call support for a bunch of Linux machines. Literally it was him and me left because the moment I started the other two engineers bailed. One went to work packing salad because it was a better job (big warning!) and the other one had a breakdown. So didn't get paid properly, argued mileage down to the mile, the clients and him constantly gave me…
Stories like this are important.
Because sometimes the situation is bad for your boss too, the company is in financial straits, miscommunication, {insert other extenuating circumstances}.
... but sometimes your boss really is just an asshole, liar, alcoholic, and/or a sociopath.
Never assume the later off the bat, but never completely discount the possibility either. Because it'll probably happen at least once in an average career.
Re: Public protest against Amazon
#196Indian here. If your manager is from India, he probably sucks. He is insecure, has zero empathy, leadership skills or any skills. He probably memorized data structures and algo's interview questions and got a job at Amazon. He got ahead by sucking up to his boss and being political. His boss is probably an Indian too who sucks up to his boss and so on. But that is okay, as this company is stable and they just need pe…
It's basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
Thinking about this problem as a larger systemic problem makes me incredibly frustrated and sad about human nature and society overall.
Re: Public protest against Amazon
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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 b…
> 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. But does the profession of acting strive to be meritocratic as much as software development? It appears that fame (which is probably correlated with how good of an actor someone is, but probably only weakly) has a much bigger effect in acting.
They both seem to pay a lot of lip service while the reality greatly undermines the verbiage. I’d argue that in acting the representation of women is far better than in software development. The degree to which software development is an asocial boy’s club is hard to understate, and the pet theories about intelligence and genetics don’t help, but rather reinforce the farcical nature of the self-serving “meritocracy” narrative.
Re: Public protest against Amazon
#198Indian here. If your manager is from India, he probably sucks. He is insecure, has zero empathy, leadership skills or any skills. He probably memorized data structures and algo's interview questions and got a job at Amazon. He got ahead by sucking up to his boss and being political. His boss is probably an Indian too who sucks up to his boss and so on. But that is okay, as this company is stable and they just need pe…
dude (not an indian btw), you can be racist no matter what you are. identifying as an indian does not make what you’re saying less offensive
Re: Public protest against Amazon
#199Welcome to life in practically any large US corporation. Most employees will never complain to HR, they may need some routine services that HR provides and that’s the extent of their interaction. But there are a few who do complain. If these are peer-related complaints, HR will work with the employees managers to resolve the issue. But let’s say someone has a problem with their manager. Maybe no one else has complain…
[deleted]
Re: Public protest against Amazon
#200Earlier 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.
> Is this standard in the software world? This is standard in every world. Corporate credit cards are usually reserved for senior executives or people who travel/entertain a lot (e.g. sales reps). Cash advances aren't a thing outside of small companies.
It's actually quite unusual to make employees anything except for incidental expenses (like meals) up front. Generally, making employees pay big-ticket expenses (including travel) and seek reimbursement is a legal and accounting nightmare, so it's something that a well-run business tries to avoid. (In some states, it's even illegal to require employees pay for necessary business expenses.)
The exception tends to be law and accounting firms, which issue cards to their employees for business use. The employee "pays" up front using the cards, but the card is connected to the employer's expensing system and the funds are deposited to the employee's account the payday following his submission of the expense report.