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Public protest against Amazon

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Re: Public protest against Amazon

#251

Post by nojvek »

thtthings wrote: post #187

Indian 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…

> If your manager is from India, he probably sucks. He is insecure, has zero empathy, leadership skills or any skills.

Racism! Seriously? We going there?

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#252

Post by all_blue_chucks »

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.

Software engineer pay at tech companies in the US tends to be $150k for junior engineers to $300k+ for senior engineers.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#253

Post by gotocake »

objektif wrote: post #242
gotocake wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretending that “Indian” describes a single culture composed of more than a billion people is the defintion of racism. India is an incredibly diverse place full of people who have less in common in terms of culture (not to mention language) than a Californian does with a New Yorker.

It does not describe every single person in a country. However, if you deny that certain countries have certain cultural identities you are lying to yourself.

I would argue that reducing more than a billion people who don’t even speak the same language, eat the same food, listen to the same music, worship the same gods... to a single stereotype is the sweaty face of ingorance, no matter how you try to dress it up or defend it. The fact that “arguments” such as yours always seem to be devoid of a grounding in reality and exist as appeals to emotion or common sense speaks for itself too. In short, ignorance and heuristics combine to produce bullshit every time.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#254

Post by stale2002 »

Circumnavigate wrote: post #219
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be argued the best thing to do is gang up on them, record and post your conversations with them, and tirelessly work to undermine them. Otherwise we're all complicit in allowing bad actors to get away with their behaviour.

In California you are not legally allowed to audio record someone in private without their consent. They must know that they are being recorded for it to be used as evidence in court.

The point isn't to take things to court.

The point is to take things public.

The court of public opinion is a hugely effective weapon, if you have the documented evidence to back it up.

And if they threaten you about wiretapping laws or whatever, well that just makes the company look even worse in the court of public opinion.

If you will notice, nobody at Uber was stupid enough to threaten Susan Fowler for documenting the stuff that happened to her.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#255

Post by freddie_mercury »

flatline wrote: post #124

Welcome 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…

> Welcome to life in practically any large US corporation

This is a common refrain, especially on HN. But it is a bit misplaced:

Small companies are just as bad and often worse.

All you have to do is look around at the average small company where nepotism is the default (doesn't matter how good you are, the owner's son will be the next CEO) and where many owners see staff as personal servants.

Some of the things I've seen in the past year with friends & acquaintances who work at small companies:

- An office admin being told to arrange the owner's wedding (without pay).

- A nail salon worker being told to go pick up the owner's dry cleaning since there weren't any customers in at the moment.

- The owner of a small hotel telling staff they were all working on Saturday to cater a party at her house. (If you say no, you are fired.)

- A company owner taking $40,000 out of the company bank account to pay for his family vacation to Croatia and then missing payroll that month. It ended up being two weeks late.

Many small business owners treat their business (and by extension their staff) as their personal fief and property.

Plus, the people who own and run small businesses aren't going to listen to ideas for feedback and improvement any more than big company managers. They always fall back on -- well, I've succeeded so far doing it my way.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#256

Post by [deleted] »

kokokokoko wrote: post #236
ashelmire wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://hkm.com/seattle/retaliation/ Most US states are at will; and people still win lawsuits against their employers quite often for just run of the mill toxic behavior, and not just for things as cut and dry as bigotry (although, being a visa holder, he may have a case for, especially since it was a part of these discussions - national origin and immigration status are protected classes).

From the link > Retaliation is defined as any action taken against an employee for daring to file a discrimination or harassment claim And then for harassment: https://hkm.com/seattle/hostile-work-environment/ > Harassment in the workplace is a form of employment discrimination. Unlawful harassment is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and as such is illegal. Unfortunately harassment can come in…

[deleted]

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#257

Post by dqpb »

> Khan made me single parent.

I've been downvoted here before for "victim blaming", but I'm going to say this anyway because someone has to.

It's your responsibility to be in control of your life. There is no grand order of things that will take care of you. There will always be things working against you. Entropy, competition, environmental hazards, psychopaths, etc, are everpresent.

You need to have the confidence to walk away from situations that aren't in line with what you want, and not just throw up your hands and say - I guess this is my life now.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#258

Post by jancsika »

plainOldText wrote: post #114
ams6110 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"impartial arbitrator" No such thing. They are being paid by someone.

Speaking of payments: I was actually amazed to find out how much certain union leaders make. Some of them are in the top 1%, with yearly salaries of over $400,000. [1] [1] https://laborpains.org/2018/06/04/union-president-pay-watch-...

For reference-- that's $318,160 more than Jeff Bezos' salary. That's insane.

How is a union able to pay that much to their leader on the one hand, yet completely unable to help defend this Amazon employee against an abusive manager?

If journalists focused on developer unions for even a fraction of the time they spend criticizing Amazon, I'd bet we'd have some blogs that sound just as damning as the one the author has written.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#259

Post by nojvek »

rubyfan wrote: post #75

The company employs something like 300,000 people. I’d imagine many stories of bad management just at that scale. Since it’s Amazon it always gets an unfair level attention.

IBM has a ridiculous number of employees. So does Google and Microsoft. They are all behemoths.

I have heard pretty horrible stories from x-amazonians as well.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#260

Post by SamReidHughes »

mirceal wrote: post #198
thtthings wrote: post #187

Indian 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

He's talking about a country of birth, not a race. It's better not to go around worrying about whether somebody will call you racist.

It would be nice if I could read an HN thread without people bitching about Indians though.

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