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Public protest against Amazon

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Public protest against Amazon

#451

Post by sobani »

seltzered_ wrote: post #147
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.

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.

> I’ve never had a salaried job that was paid monthly.

Interesting. I'm Dutch and I've never heard of a permanent job that was not paid monthly. If someone told me they were not paid monthly, I would assume they are a temp with variable hours.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#452

Post by setquk »

eropple wrote: post #375
Mirioron wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you have taken him to small claims court?

Court takes time. Court takes money, or at the least incurs opportunity costs. And court takes emotional reserves. People in dire straits don't necessarily have enough of any of those things, and that is why people like the described get away with shit. (Labor advocacy programs help balance the scales a little, if only because your advocate is predisposed to believe you and help you navigate the options available to…

Exactly. In this circumstance at the lowest I had £12 to buy a week of food. I had to cash advance the rent from my credit card and the £12 was what was left. I also had to maintain a perfect appearance and state of mind and hide all this from my new employer for the 4 weeks until I got paid.

Didn't have the cash or energy to start it off and after 5 years I didn't want to go back to that bit of my life and kick it all off again. Plus he folded the company after a bit so chance I'd get anything were near zero.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#453

Post by vishnugupta »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #426
amzn_throwaway7 wrote: post #335

The author of the article posted their Amazon user name, so I decided to look them up. I'll start with raw data, and then inject my own thoughts: * The author is the bottom contributor on his team by a large margin. Their few contributions are primarily configuration changes and pixel pushes. * The author hasn't made any contributions since last August, likely due to a leave of absence * The author's manager has rece…

When I had a corporate job, digging through internal data like this for personal curiosity could have gotten me fired if I were caught, even without posting it publicly on the internet.

Digging through internal data is OK with Amazon because it's available to everyone. Posting it publicly is definitely not OK though. I'm sure he's violated NDA in some form or another.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#454

Post by kurtisc »

kamaal wrote: post #397
forgotmypw3 wrote: post #13

I want to preface this comment with a statement that in no way am I trying to blame the victim here, only to point out what can be learned from this situation. This is certainly not the first time I've heard of Amazon being a shitty place to work at, and I don't see much reason to doubt the story of a vindictive boss doing everything they can to make an employee miserable after learning that the employee submitted ba…

>>Never submit negative feedback via "anonymous" or "confidential" feedback processes at work Never give feedback at work, unless positive. This includes things like code review. The dirty little secret of human relationships is every one wants to be made to feel special, error less and look good. Only thing any kind of feed back, correction or criticism leads to is rivalry/enmity, and it won't end well. The question…

>your code review feedback can wait. Nothing productive ever comes out of these processes

Then the errors get merged and I'm liable.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#455

Post by bo1024 »

adventured wrote: post #213
forgotmypw3 wrote: post #13

I want to preface this comment with a statement that in no way am I trying to blame the victim here, only to point out what can be learned from this situation. This is certainly not the first time I've heard of Amazon being a shitty place to work at, and I don't see much reason to doubt the story of a vindictive boss doing everything they can to make an employee miserable after learning that the employee submitted ba…

> If you are at your job as part of your Visa process, you are essentially a slave with a slave's rights to match, and you are better off not rocking the boat if you want to complete the process. No, you are not. That's taking the premise way too far. Slaves were owned as property. You are not property of a corporation just because your job is connected to a visa. You don't have slaves rights (almost entirely non-exi…

I partially understand your point, but I don't think "free" is necessarily a better description than "slave".

One is always free in a literal sense to choose between available options (e.g. a slave may choose to escape, an employee to quit). However, ability of a second party to attach consequences to those options (e.g. corporal punishment or death, deportation away from one's family, removal of healthcare from sick loved ones, etc.) amounts to restricting the freedom of the individual.

I don't accept that legal freedom equates to practical freedom, e.g. you have the legal right to quit your job therefore in a practical sense you are completely "free" to quit your job. If your employer can attach extremely negative consequences to quitting, then your freedom has been severely limited.

I also have trouble with arguments that the choice to immigrate was made of free will, therefore all consequences are one's own responsibility. It's not legal nor ethical to allow people to "freely choose" to sign themselves into slavery.

Anyway, this is obviously a contentious and charged issue, but I hope this helps communicate a different perspective.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#456

Post by rishav_sharan »

6nf wrote: post #354
freyir wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easier said than done you’re on an H1B visa and HR hangs you out to dry.

If you are on H1B and you have a family in the country I think you need to be very careful about how you behave at work, and if your work situation sucks you better start looking for a new H1B sponsor. You can always complain later.

Wouldn't getting a new sponsor just reset your position in the queue?

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#457

Post by kamaal »

kurtisc wrote: post #454
kamaal wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Never submit negative feedback via "anonymous" or "confidential" feedback processes at work Never give feedback at work, unless positive. This includes things like code review. The dirty little secret of human relationships is every one wants to be made to feel special, error less and look good. Only thing any kind of feed back, correction or criticism leads to is rivalry/enmity, and it won't end well. The question…

>your code review feedback can wait. Nothing productive ever comes out of these processes Then the errors get merged and I'm liable.

Of course if you are the person signing off on a piece of code, then your work is code review.

But other wise, unless some one is doing 'rm -rf /', there is no real reason to go criticize some one's work on a company wide visible text wall.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#458

Post by pjmlp »

wyclif wrote: post #275
halbritt wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pro-tip: never expect your work environment to change. The chances of a report overcoming the whims of a shitty manager are very, very small especially in the context of a company that tolerates the shitty manager in the first place. Generally speaking, the best thing to do is to smile, appear to do reasonably decent work, and begin looking elsewhere.

Trying to change things might be an acceptable strategy in other industries, but I don't think it works in technology because the accepted method of achieving worker/workplace fit is to change jobs. This goes not only for bad management but also for raises (even if you like your current job). Easiest way to improve your situation in software engineering is to just get a better job and move laterally or up.

Depends on the country.

Those that happen to enjoy IT unions can get some help there.

However don't expect the work environment to actually improve afterwards, unless the bad pieces are gone by then, as winning is only half the battle.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#460

Post by muraiki »

amzn_throwaway7 wrote: post #335

The author of the article posted their Amazon user name, so I decided to look them up. I'll start with raw data, and then inject my own thoughts: * The author is the bottom contributor on his team by a large margin. Their few contributions are primarily configuration changes and pixel pushes. * The author hasn't made any contributions since last August, likely due to a leave of absence * The author's manager has rece…

And why should we believe your throwaway account? Put your name on here if you are willing to destroy this person even further. If you really do have access to such data, I'm absolutely astonished that you would think it ok to access it and post it like this. And finally, as anyone with any experience with data should know, data doesn't always capture the full story.
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