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Public protest against Amazon

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Re: Public protest against Amazon

#501

Post by yowlingcat »

dqpb wrote: post #257

> 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…

If you've been downvoted before for victim blaming, maybe there's cause for you to think before plowing ahead forward? I don't think anyone is implying that it's not your responsibility to be in control of your life. But I think it is the case that there are such things as power asymmetries, powerful institutions, and well intentioned systems that have been left wide open to abuse (H1B system).

To misattribute the failings of a broken system to a lack of personal responsibility is to fundamentally misunderstand the full entirety of the situation. For your own sake, please try to think through this situation a little bit more carefully. Remember, in America, we once used to have a system of indentured servitude that we looked back on with shame. A very large amount of Americans could find it to be a similar kind of shame if we were to re-implement a modern version of it without knowing that it was happening.

Stories like this can serve to shine a light on it. Truth be told, I don't know what happened in this particular case. However, what cannot be argued is that the incentives are ripe for abuse. It is a false equivalence to say that psychopaths are there just as entropy, competition and environmental hazards. Some of those are arguably beneficial. But I will say, at this juncture point and at this particular point in time, people seem to be increasingly unhappy with tolerating openly psychopathic behavior. Sadly, if this employee had a better handle on how American PR, optics and law operates, there's a good chance he could have dropped a nightmare of a PR bomb and be walking away with a settlement right now...

And if he did that, he'd be doing that opposite of what you're suggesting. He'd be standing up, and fighting, which is a thing you can do in this country. It's why I think you're wrong, in this case.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#502

Post by bsenftner »

bsagdiyev wrote: post #218
bsenftner wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sony Computer Entertainment does this, but then they don't pay back for 6-9 months, forcing your personal credit to be their credit cushion. One of the reasons I quit.

When/where did you work? Corporate cards are normal at SIE, even engineers on my team have them. I don't dispute your experience, just curious. Edit: As an addition, the expense isn't paid by the employee. Costs over $2000 need justification above your boss, but your immediate boss can approve up to $2000 no issues.

Worked in Santa Monica Studio, and was sent to Tokyo several times. Each trip was in the $8K range, as each trip was for weeks at a time. Their slow payback was killing me.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#503

Post by JohnFen »

barry-cotter wrote: post #346
JohnFen wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Unions are supposed to fight for each of their members equally. As such it is in their interest to eliminate performance based pay as much as possible. Increases in pay should be based on time in job (positively) and likelihood of losing job on time in job (negatively). If you have performance based pay someone who’s three times as good might get paid more, or long serving staff might be let go before the newly hired…

Unions operate according to the rules the union members agree to. There is no "one way" that unions function. A "programmer's union" would be structured according to whatever makes sense to the programmers.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#504

Post by JohnFen »

i_am_new_here wrote: post #383
JohnFen wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Welcome to life in practically any large US corporation. This. Which is why I do my best to avoid working for (or doing business with) large corporations. They're simply toxic.

Only: Small ones are even worse (see other comments). With big ones you have at least "something": Colleagues and "a lot of money blowing in at the front". HR is not your friend. OP makes a lot of mistakes. Life is hard. Big companies are a good / reasonable choice: The money. With smaller companies there is less money and more problems, usually, EXCEPT they are directly dealing with big corps (e.g.), which puts you…

> Small ones are even worse

This has not been my personal experience at all. I've worked for huge companies and tiny ones, and the only real difference I've seen is that the working conditions tend to be far superior in the tiny ones.

Compensation between the two tends to be comparable as well (ignoring startups -- I'm not talking about them here, as they're a unique beast). I don't think that large companies have an edge on that score (actually, I think the opposite is true, but not by a enough to matter much). As an example, I left a megacorporation to work at my current job, a truly tiny company. My total compensation at my current job is about $5,000/yr less than at the megacorp -- not nearly enough of a difference to matter.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#505

Post by rak00n »

BurningFrog wrote: post #399
adventured wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Came here to say this. I've been on H1B. It's not a perfect system, but making 6 digit salaries in Silicon Valley was infinitely better than picking cotton in Mississippi in 1840 where you could be murdered by your boss/owner at a whim. Try to control your self pity, people!

That's an odd analogy knowing USA went into a bloody civil war to fix that.

You're comparing a broken system with an older and even more broken system that we already fixed and trying to find merit in current broken system by that comparison. Of course it's better to be alive than being squashed by a dinosaur. But how's that relevant?

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#506

Post by BurningFrog »

rak00n wrote: post #505
BurningFrog wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to say this. I've been on H1B. It's not a perfect system, but making 6 digit salaries in Silicon Valley was infinitely better than picking cotton in Mississippi in 1840 where you could be murdered by your boss/owner at a whim. Try to control your self pity, people!

That's an odd analogy knowing USA went into a bloody civil war to fix that. You're comparing a broken system with an older and even more broken system that we already fixed and trying to find merit in current broken system by that comparison. Of course it's better to be alive than being squashed by a dinosaur. But how's that relevant?

It's relevant if someone just claimed that being alive was the same as being squashed by a dinosaur, to stick with your metaphor.

Or plainly: Someone said that H1B was the same as slavery. I called it bullshit.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#507

Post by [deleted] »

john_moscow wrote: post #336
abbracadabbra wrote: post #320

Which came first, the post or the lawsuit? Churyumov v. Amazon Corporate LLC (2:19-cv-00136) District Court, W.D. Washington https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/14528071/churyumov-v-am...

Yuck, >Self-Represented Plaintiff Oleg Churyumov. This won't end well for the guy.

[deleted]

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#508

Post by int_19h »

Cursuviam wrote: post #388
adventured wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 suppose indentured servitude is a more apt metaphor.

It's not. You're free to leave as an H1B at any time, it's just that you have to leave the country also (or find a new job really fast). It sucks for employees, and it has negative effects on the job market, so there are many good reasons to kill it with fire - but no, it's not indentured servitude, and people who choose this, choose it of their own free will, and can withdraw that decision (and be back to where they were when they made it) at any moment.

Source: was an H1B (and L1 before that).

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#509

Post by int_19h »

ethbro wrote: post #475
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because sometimes the situation is bad for your boss too, the company is in financial straits, miscommunication, {insert other extenuating circumstances}. So? That's the boss's problem to deal with. You owe the company absolutely nothing beyond your contracted hours in exchange for your contracted salary. I say this as an employer.

You owe common decency to other human beings trying to act decently. If your boss happens to be a cog in a broken machine, treating them like it's their fault isn't fair to them or you. Of course, you can always quit (and usually should). But failing to determine root cause and mis-blaming your boss is about as useful as screaming at the gate attendant when your flight gets a weather delay.

You only owe it to them so long as they do it to you.

And someone who by choice decides to be (or remains) a cog in the broken machine, specifically at the point where it requires being nasty to someone, is fully responsible for that action and its consequences.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#510

Post by int_19h »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #472
sobani wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Bi-weekly, or every 2 weeks, is norm in US as far as I know. It's easier for everyone in my opinion, except maybe employers that want to take advantage of their employees.

It's just a cultural convention, nothing more. Monthly seems to be the norm in Europe, bi-weekly in US and Canada. I've done both, and there's no practical difference.
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