171–180 of 239 posts
> Amazon said earlier this month it had hired an additional 100,000 employees Not the main point of the article, but can I just say that's huge . That's... the same size as Google's entire full-time workforce. Granted they're low-skill warehouse positions, not highly paid engineering jobs, but still. The ability of a company to hire one hundred thousand people in a month is absolutely insane.
This seems reasonable and beyond what other major employers are offering, but as is the fashion I'm sure Amazon will be convicted in the court of public interwebs shortly...
What's a few avoidable deaths between friends, after all? There are multiple active outbreaks in crowded factories and other facilities, just like an Amazon fulfillment warehouse. They do not have necessary safety equipment and procedures in place yet. Forcing people to show up to work under these conditions is murder. They could fix it, though. A starting point would be Amazon providing tests and ensuring that every…
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No, but saying look at all they're doing without addressing kind of the key part of the article does kind of miss the point, and makes your response seem more like a response from PR then a comment on the text.
I genuinely would like to make sure I'm not missing something: what's the "key part of the article" that's missing from the Amazon press release?
Also, I don't fault Amazon for limiting paid-leave if the worker isn't sick, but it's only reasonable to ask people to come in if they are given decent PPE. Temperature checks are insufficient for a virus that may have a large # of asymptomatic carriers and a lengthy pre-symptomatic period for many that get sick.
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I'm not convinced, as it creates the possibility of egregious violations of community standards being difficult for moderators to detect. Less of an issue, but still worth some thought: Just like paywalled submissions must be by-passable so that we can all share in a conversation equally, base64 threatens to create subthreads that are not equally accessible. (Trivial easy if you are on a laptop, not on mobile).
That's a fair point. Acting in good faith I had not considered abuse of the technique. I've often wondered what a forum would look like where you could make the equivalent of 'aside' comments. The way someone might, while you're speaking, say softly "hyPERbolee, not HYper-bowl" to correct you without interrupting. Perhaps a good example is StackOverflow's Q&A format w/ comments and chats. You can comment and move to…
That would either be PMs, or the forum equivalent of posting "sage" on an imageboard (which prevents the post from bumping,) neither of which HN supports.
Although given the forum's focus on quality over quantity, I think some kind of "whisper" mode might be worth looking at, to opt out of having such comments from appear on the new comments page.
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"Low skill" usually means that anyone posting here would wash out in a day or two.
No, "low skill" means that a worker who has never done the job before can be quickly brought up to speed on how to do it, and that there won't be much of a productivity gradient between a new worker and one who has maxed out. Many such jobs are incredibly hard work, and many are far more essential to the function of our society than anything I do for a living. I get that calling this "low skill" comes across as derog…
Of course readers will know that now "retarded" has the stigma, and phrases like "developmental disability" are used. But for a period of time, you might have heard someone saying, "don't call my child an idiot, they're just mentally retarded." It seems strange, but at the time it was a kinder thing to say.
The problem is that the words aren't really the issue: change the words all you want, they will tend to develop the same stigma. The problem is that lots of people think less of those facing developmental challenges, and when they want to be mean to an otherwise "normal" person, they will compare them to the challenged.
I don't think that's going to change any time soon. But until it does, I suppose coming up with a new euphemism every generation or so isn't too bad of a thing to help reduce some of the stigma, at least for a period of time.
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That's a fair point. Acting in good faith I had not considered abuse of the technique. I've often wondered what a forum would look like where you could make the equivalent of 'aside' comments. The way someone might, while you're speaking, say softly "hyPERbolee, not HYper-bowl" to correct you without interrupting. Perhaps a good example is StackOverflow's Q&A format w/ comments and chats. You can comment and move to…
>I've often wondered what a forum would look like where you could make the equivalent of 'aside' comments. The way someone might, while you're speaking, say softly "hyPERbolee, not HYper-bowl" to correct you without interrupting. That would either be PMs, or the forum equivalent of posting "sage" on an imageboard (which prevents the post from bumping,) neither of which HN supports. Although given the forum's focus on…
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What dollar figure would make you happy?
$25/hr base. That’s what I have to pay as a small employer to keep people for basic assembly and packaging during this. That’s what I felt was fair, since that’s what unemployment pays in my state. I figured I have to at least match that, so I did. I had to let a few people go and scale back, but helped them all navigate the UI claim’s process. Paid out their PTO balance to hold them over. I wouldn’t be able to sleep…
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You mean they would quit because they can afford to. In a better world no one would have to do the shitty jobs.
Most low skill jobs are not that shitty though. I mean, the pay might not be great but most of the actual work isn't that bad. There are exceptions of course and I've heard amazon warehouse jobs are awful. But, I worked a bunch of low skill jobs in high school and college and I actually enjoyed it most of the time. The teamwork and comradery are way better than any highly skilled jobs I've had.
They are shitty for a number of reasons, but that is certainly near the top of the list. Lack of agency and respect may top my personal list.
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>I've often wondered what a forum would look like where you could make the equivalent of 'aside' comments. The way someone might, while you're speaking, say softly "hyPERbolee, not HYper-bowl" to correct you without interrupting. That would either be PMs, or the forum equivalent of posting "sage" on an imageboard (which prevents the post from bumping,) neither of which HN supports. Although given the forum's focus on…
Yeah, I considered PMs but they're really not the same because the point is that everyone benefits with low attention contribution. The whisper mode is totally what I was thinking of.