Not to be snarky but, I think, a lot of commentators and the original poster would benefit from Gramarly subscription. The stories are compelling and make me quite sympathetic to Oleg (to the extent of helping him financially or in some other way) and everyone else, but, my God, it is very hard to read typos and grammatic errors.
Public protest against Amazon
491–500 of 525 posts
Re: Public protest against Amazon
#492Re: Public protest against Amazon
#493My experience with Amazon was extremely positive. The author of this article seems very junior / immature, and honestly feels like he's got some mental health issues going on. Airing this much dirty laundry is not likely to get you what you want, and is likely going to make it hard for him to get hired by the next company. Always talk to your boss 1:1, face to face. Never give shitty feedback over an online system. I…
What is the purpose of an online feedback system then?
Re: Public protest against Amazon
#494I 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…
I have a pretty lucky experience with amazon (Sr. SDE at AWS for 3 years) but I completely agree, I’m sure my boss won’t be vindictive if I live a bad connections feedback but I won’t take my chances, also in my previous company I was on a L1 visa which also marries you to the employer, I had bad bosses and great bosses there but I treaded like on thin ice there, trying to stay positive, avoid rocking the boat, as so…
^That profile was created a few hours ago. I've often seen this happen when people create profiles to defend this employer on social media.
Re: Public protest against Amazon
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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Re: Public protest against Amazon
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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?
Are you saying the Amazon has a developer union that could have helped defend this employee? Citation needed. AFAIK, developer unions have been advocated for, but don't actually exist (in a functional form, in the US at least).
Re: Public protest against Amazon
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 a…
I'm glad things worked out for you eventually. That super sucks to go through.
It is one of the reasons I am so very suspicious of folks who diminish the value of labor protections. Most of us end up downrange of some shady stuff at least once.
Re: Public protest against Amazon
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Never give feedback at work, unless positive. This includes things like code review. > There can be no friends at work. I think that's a bad advice. I'm sad that this is an experience someone can take from a job and that there are jobs where this applies. Unless you can't lose a job, do disagree on technical reasons and do make friends with good people. Not every place is so restrictive and full of backstabbers. An…
>>Unless you can't lose a job, do disagree on technical reasons and do make friends with good people. This really is the equivalent of marking a giant X on your back and walking in to an arena full of ace snipers. I have literally seen people being labelled as non-team players and eliminated for arguing against bad technical decisions. In most departments projects are started to gain visibility of high impact work- o…
I've been doing it for over a decade. I've only experienced a bad reaction to criticism twice. Either I'm really lucky or your experience is really bad. Either way, I know I'm not staying in a place where you can't exchange constructive criticism, because alternatives really exist. This sounds like trying to explain an abusive relationship - what you're experiencing is unhealthy, there are better places, unless you're going to go homeless, maybe you should try?
Re: Public protest against Amazon
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure there is. Maintainability in the future, non-obvious edge cases, potential security issues, etc. Either you keep each other accountable for stuff like that or end up with a monster system which you can't realistically work on. "criticize some one's work on a company wide visible text wall" is a depressing way to look at it. Try "collectively learning about better approaches on a company-wide visible text wall".…
All your arguments are valid, in ideal scenarios. In an ideal scenario any comment or feedback should be taken in the right spirit and acted upon. But in these days of stack ranking and subjective evaluations. You giving a lot of feedback can be considered of lack of ability to write good code on the part of that person(after-all if they could write good code, why would it get so much criticism?). Then the next thing…
> Which is that your CR comments being used as a proof to downrank them in the stack
Then you have a management problem, not a cr problem. Don't miss the forest for the trees... It's on management to communicate that cr is constructive, doesn't contribute to reviews, and isn't a game.
Re: Public protest against Amazon
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want corporate politics and all the worst parts of MBA culture within a hundred miles of tech, yet here we are. Solidarity is the only way that workers can negotiate on an even playing field.
>I don't want corporate politics and all the worst parts of MBA culture within a hundred miles of tech, yet here we are. If you think politics isn't an implicit reality of any organized group of human beings, I've got a bridge to sell you.
So sounds like you should be okay with the minimum amount of politics that unions have!
At any rate, it's definitely arguable that office politics in tech have gotten worse and worse in the last few decades, as more money and money-men have poured into the industry. Compare Silicon Valley now to how it was prior to the Netscape IPO, and the toxicity has definitely grown.
Politics may be inherent, but the type of politics can vary in quality and livability. Ditto for the politics in a union.