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Bye, Amazon

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Re: Bye, Amazon

#171

Post by koonsolo »

sargun wrote: post #121
stupidcar wrote: post #20

> At the end of the day, it’s all about power balances. The warehouse workers are weak and getting weaker... Whenever I speak to someone working in a "low-skilled" job, I'm always astonished and embarrassed by how different their work environment sounds to the kind of offices I work in. There seems to be a consistent theme of employees being treated with suspicion, condescension and outright hostility. This gets to t…

I briefly worked on a timekeeping system (the one that records work hours). When I started running it against real data, I hit some bugs. The system was reporting that people had worked a few hours rather than a full shift. I had no idea how this could happen. When I started digging into the data, it became obvious. People were punching in at 08:00 on Monday, and wouldn't punch out until something like 12:00 on Frida…

If you think clocking will make people more productive, you are terribly wrong.

I've seen companies where this happens, and people have Friday afternoons off because they already did their hours that week. They have 0 loyalty to the company.

Relationships work in 2 directions. If the company treats you like lazy scum, you will treat the company as an oppressive thing you want to avoid.

If the company trusts you, you are less inclinded to breach that trust.

This also works for blue collar workers, just look up Ricardo Semler of Semco.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#172

Post by econcon »

I also quit tech, so I don't really respect the people who get job at these companies, they are basically modern day enabler for bad things that happen at these companies. Companies aren't nothing without their employees helping them do the things and that unfortunately includes the bad things.

I now run my own business and pay everyone fairly and treat everyone well.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#173

Post by poulsbohemian »

GrumpyNl wrote: post #99
wegs wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's also 64. That's near retirement age, and I imagine he can afford to retire early.

Its funny that 64 is now considered retiring early.

It’s because most of us won’t get to retire, so much as will have some event cause us to no longer be working.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#174

Post by bluntfang »

Someone wrote: post #92
schnischna wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why people work hard to acquire skills, to be able to work in better jobs. I have never run a warehouse, but I suspect that many of the strange seeming rules are in place because people otherwise try to exploit the system (like getting paid for smoking on the toilet for hours on end). It may seem inhumane, but perhaps it makes it possible to give people jobs who don't deserve automatic trust. Such people exist…

“perhaps it makes it possible to give people jobs who don't deserve automatic trust. Such people exist, unfortunately.” They may exist, but I doubt there are enough of them, even in Amazon’s warehouses, to warrant the draconian rules for all employees. I also think people more behave that way then that they are that way. The way you treat your personnel will affect whether they behave like that.

>The way you treat your personnel will affect whether they behave like that.

Anecdotally, I have family members that run a business that require low skilled workers. They don't really need full time workers, so they hire part-time and don't pay a living wage to them, even though it is viable to their business to do so.

So what do they get? They get unreliable people. People who steal from them. People who don't clock out. People who collude with the other employees to clock them in/out. People they can claim "make bad decisions" like buy lotto tickets or spend their paycheck on drugs and alcohol. etc.

It gives them a reason to treat them poorly. I've heard things like "if we paid them more they'd just buy more lotto tickets, so why should I?"

I often wonder how they would act and or who they could hire if they made full time roles, offering health insurance and treating their employees with dignity.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#175

Post by [deleted] »

krig wrote: post #105
reitzensteinm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can trust that it's the real reason, because either way it's going to make him radioactive for the next gig like this. No large company keeps its hands completely clean. Defense contracts, Chinese censorship, exploiting addiction, anticompetitive behaviour, sexism, the list goes on. Having a public figure at your company that's willing to martyr themselves to push the knife in just a little deeper when yo…

What an utter disaster this society is if having a conscience makes you "radioactive" to employers. I can only aspire to be as radioactive as possible, then.

[deleted]

Re: Bye, Amazon

#176

Post by zeveb »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #18
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #2

> I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers Assuming this is the real true reason (I would trust Tim, but you never know, so just being explicit here), it takes huge balls to do something like this. The economic loss has to be somewhat taken in relation to your total wealth (e.g. if you lose $1M by quitting but you already have $10M+ in the bank, it's not as hard as if you had zero in the bank), but still... V…

I think you can trust that it's the real reason, because either way it's going to make him radioactive for the next gig like this. No large company keeps its hands completely clean. Defense contracts, Chinese censorship, exploiting addiction, anticompetitive behaviour, sexism, the list goes on. Having a public figure at your company that's willing to martyr themselves to push the knife in just a little deeper when yo…

> No large company keeps its hands completely clean. Defense contracts, Chinese censorship, exploiting addiction, anticompetitive behaviour, sexism, the list goes on.

One of these is not like the others. What in the world is dirty about working on national defence? It's a positive thing, IMHO.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#177

Post by dunnevens »

ianleeclark wrote: post #133
globular-toast wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give an inch and they take a mile. You could pay a McDonalds worker all you like and he'll still just try to get away with doing less work.

It's good were on the same page: your employees will be motivated to further their work-related skills and efficiency, thus doing less work. My deployment process at work used to require a ton of work, but I spent a few afternoons to automate it and now I get to do much less work.

> Do you not see how absurd that sounds?

Not absurd at all. The people in the front lines understand the nature of their work better than anyone. When the engineers and the front line workers can actually communicate, and the workers feel like they're being heard, then great things can happen. Not only can productivity go up from making processes more efficient, but the hard-working front line people can feel a certain amount of ownership in their positions. Which will contribute to making them even better.

I've seen this in person. Once worked for a teleco's internal training department. We somehow ended up making quick access utilities for the call center desktops. When we first deployed the tool, it rarely got used. This was because we made assumptions about what they needed. So we ended up talking to the call center reps. The people stuck dealing with the front line calls all day. They had very clear ideas about what they needed and what we should do. We listened. Followed their ideas. Had them give further feedback on the betas. And it ended up probably saving the company many millions per year in terms of efficiency gains. Plus it was a huge morale boost. These people finally got someone to listen to them and helped implement changes that made their job easier. Which gave them a sense of ownership and pride. And upped employee retention.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#179

Post by hobofan »

asdf21 wrote: post #95

It's crazy how stuff like this keeps coming out, but Amazon's stock just keeps going up..

It's almost like people with morals and people investing in Amazon are two completely separate groups.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#180

Post by artsyca »

artsyca wrote: post #139
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #2

> I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers Assuming this is the real true reason (I would trust Tim, but you never know, so just being explicit here), it takes huge balls to do something like this. The economic loss has to be somewhat taken in relation to your total wealth (e.g. if you lose $1M by quitting but you already have $10M+ in the bank, it's not as hard as if you had zero in the bank), but still... V…

Somewhere between university and the present day we went from being idealistic to realistic to defeatist and the tone of this conversation stinks of pre-covid stereotypes let me guess you enjoy the free coffee and casual culture too much to walk away from a neo-fascist dictatorship with corporate characteristics or maybe you're mortgaged up to your eyeballs Edit: don't you think some liberal leaning corporate behemot…

Yea the downvotes are designed to create a climate of fear

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3bjpj/amazon-vp-tim-bray...

Look it's made the cool kid news

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