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Bye, Amazon

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Re: Bye, Amazon

#391

Post by hysan »

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…

All the example replies to this I’ve seen so far are where the power imbalance between business owner and worker is huge. So I’ll give my anecdote which is from the other side.

I grew up watching, and often helping, my parents as they ran their own business. We were at best lower middle class. The economic gap between us and those we hired was far smaller than any of the examples given here. My parents treated the workers well, paid them fairly[1], and kept the business running as long as possible even after 9/11 + the recession killed the business.

The workers in response didn’t cheat hours, they were flexible when the times got really tough, and in the end, they greatly respected my parents for running business the “right way”.

People don’t default to cheating the system. It’s action-reaction. If there is a huge imbalance, if people think they aren’t being treated fairly, if they see that it’s very much possible for the system to be improved, that’s when the thoughts of “this is unfair” begin to emerge.

[1] My dad was by title the owner while my mom was in the union the workers belonged to. His salary was lower than my mom’s. Not lower than the workers, but far lower than could have been possible had they attempted to fight the union on pay to nickel and dime them.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#392

Post by roosterdawn »

__s wrote: post #292
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…

My father works at a warehouse. I've worked in flooring These are jobs where people work together. Everyone knows who's the slacker & who gets shit done In flooring the owner would stop by for 10 minutes at smoke breaks & listen to gossip to get an idea of what's going on. He'd shuffle people's schedules around so that he could figure out who was the common denominator of trouble. For the most part there was very lit…

This is one of the few voices of sanity I've seen on this thread. Your father seems wise.

With that said, I do understand why companies try and install panoptical surveillance practices in places where it's basically overkill. Competent managers, as you said, don't need to keep people on a tight leash. They do, as you said, learn to analyze the noise and intervene when something is clearly going wrong. The panopticon is put in place beyond a certain size because manager quality cannot be guaranteed. Now, whether that's a sound reason for its existence or not can be debated (I'd tend to agree it's not), but it does seem to function efficiently.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#393

Post by yalogin »

msoad wrote: post #340
yalogin wrote: post #231

Am curious, what happens if an engineer quit like this after writing a blog about the company, does it have a negative impact on their hirability? Do other companies not want him or does it not matter?

Tim is not "an engineer". He is not gonna look for jobs.

I should have clarified, the question was about a general engineer, not Tim.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#394

Post by thih9 »

tom_mellior wrote: post #216

> Fast-forward to the Covid-19 era. Stories surfaced of unrest in Amazon warehouses, workers raising alarms about being uninformed, unprotected, and frightened. Official statements claimed every possible safety precaution was being taken. Then a worker organizing for better safety conditions was fired, and brutally insensitive remarks appeared in leaked executive meeting notes where the focus was on defending Amazon…

> Sorry, but none of this is new in "the Covid-19 era"

This seems a straw man argument. I don't think the author was saying that before Covid-19 Amazon listened to their workers.

On the contrary, one sentence before what you quoted ("Fast-forward to the Covid-19 era"), the article describes how activists were threatened with dismissal.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#396

Post by elliekelly »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #361
gilrain wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're claiming that 1/2 to 1/3 of employees are criminally stealing time or product from their workplace. I need some robust citations for that, because it's ridiculous on its face.

When I worked at Kmart, on more than one occasion they were forced to first to fire a large number of cashiers (10+) due to stealing. And the Kmart I worked in was definitely in the 'good' part of town. Now Kmart also paid literally the minimum wage, but it still shocked me the number of people who would steal when they clearly had video, and regularly fired people for doing so. And some of the people who stole got c…

Maybe if Kmart paid their employees a little more they could afford to buy themselves something to drink at work.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#397

Post by domador »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #344
CalRobert wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the challenge with large mortgages and heath care requirements taking away people's moral agency. Maybe that's the idea.

Talking to US friends about jobs is always weird because they're so afraid of quitting/being fired, because their health insurance is tied to their jobs. This whole system conspires to make people afraid and subservient. Why you guys haven't replaced it with someone that actually frees you, is always a mystery to me.

My best description for it so far is "corporate feudalism". Modern-day serfs are tied to their employer for the health protection they provide.

What's strangest to me is seeing how many of the Americans whom I'd expect to benefit from single-payer health insurance seem to be the ones most wary of it and who argue most loudly against it.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#398

Post by ljhsiung »

ex_amazon_sde wrote: post #253
paulintrognon wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one thing to refuse interviews, and another thing to quit a job you love and invested 5 years of your life and that paysvery well.

The latter it's much easier: the stocks are vested after 5 years, the unspent disposable income is saved somewhere and now and you are ready to leave. Also the turnover of engineers in Amazon is among the highest in the industry and only a few stay beyond 5 years. In comparison, refusing to work for some FAANG takes 10 times more courage for someone out of college and without saving.

Stock refreshes are relatively common at FAANGs, the quantity of which depends on your performance.

Tim, being a distinguished engineer, likely got a lot of RSUs. So while true his initial sign-on RSUs likely vested already, a sizable chunk did not fully vest yet.

So yeah I'd wager he still walked from ~1 million.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#399

Post by xchaotic »

pas wrote: post #104
reitzensteinm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That signal reaches a few industry insiders paying close attention. This will probably make the NY Times. They're many orders of magnitude apart in terms of impact. I believe Tim is making a real sacrifice here, which is why it's so rare and impressive.

I think you're underestimating the "wokeness" of industry. Especially how much a token good guy is worth, when they are scarce. And overestimating his sacrifice. His net worth is at least 9M USD. That's already enough so he doesn't need to work a minute more in his life and do almost everything he could think of.

Even if that is true, contrast that with Bezos who doesn’t want to sacrifice 1% of his worth to protect health of workers.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#400

Post by mrkurt »

sanity31415 wrote: post #271
ealexhudson wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's an important point. The warehouse staff get treated worse than the AWS staff because they're fungible; easily replaced and cost little. But they're also over-represented by women and people of colour, so the net effect is sexist and racist. The decision making might not be explictly sexist/racist, but that feels like hiding behind an excuse. It is exactly a power dynamic.

That's not what "sexist" and "racist" means unless you have evidence that sex and race are the cause of their overrepresentation. If not, this is just race/gender baiting and it detracts from the broader issue of worker treatment.

That's exactly what _systemic_ sexism and racism mean.
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