Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bye, Amazon

tbray.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 1001 posts

Re: Bye, Amazon

#491

Post by runawaybottle »

I often have this discussion with a friend about how to figure out your place in a company.

It is very important to figure out what class you belong to in a company. Some try to boil this down to ‘cost-centers’, but it isn’t always that simple.

Warehouse workers are second class citizens at Amazon. This can be true for a developer in certain environments, it can be true for designers, etc.

I’ve worked at places where developers are second class citizens compared to Project/Product management, and then I’ve seen where designers are second class citizens to developers. It can be even more granular where frontend is second class to backend, or vice versa.

However you figure it out, if you find out you are a second class citizen there, you have to move on, as your potential is capped by the business priorities/culture/structure. It’s never a good fit.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#492

Post by griffinkelly »

supergeek133 wrote: post #324
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 think this is a two way street. If you've never been involved at a management or ownership level of a business that has "low pay" labor (e.g., food service, warehouse, retail sales). For every 2-3 decent workers there is one that just takes pure advantage of the environment (e.g., stealing product, stealing time, etc). Sometimes this occurs at great cost for a period of time before it is discovered. EDIT: This was…

Purely anecdotal, but my dad has a story around this--his company wasn't doing great, and they needed to increase factory output, so one of the best ideas was to create a factory profit share amongst all the factory employees. They called a random group of employees together to run the idea by them, and after they presented, they asked them what they thought. One guy then asked, "So does this mean I have to work harder?" My dad replied something like, "Well yes, but you'll get a share of the factory's profits if you work harder." Random guy, "Well I don't want to work harder..."

I think it just puts a voice to what a lot of people think, but never say.

[edit] Sorry, to add details, they were trying to increase throughput with the same number of workers. The factory already went 24/7 under EU guidelines, so more hours were out of the question.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#493

Post by ignoramous »

hysan wrote: post #391
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 wo…

> 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...

One of my HR friends was dismayed at the treatment of warehouse workers at Amazon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21217969

Re: Bye, Amazon

#495

Post by zouhair »

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…

We live in a society where the most important and essential jobs are treated with condescension.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#496

Post by stronglikedan »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #320
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 am glad he said it so that people here can't claim it is not happening. I'm also glad he is making clear these policies come from the top at Amazon so that people can't claim that Bezos knows nothing about that and isn't involved in any of this. These are the most important things to me. People with principles are rare these days. And people here can't just spin these stories into something else now.

> people here can't claim it is not happening

> people can't claim that Bezos knows nothing about that and isn't involved in any of this.

All of this assumes that people will believe Tim. People still can claim those things simply by saying they don't believe him.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#497

Post by lotsofpulp »

ianleeclark wrote: post #119
chrisan wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There seems to be a consistent theme of employees being treated with suspicion, condescension and outright hostility. I'd suggest working with or managing a place with low-skilled people. They of course aren't all like that but it seems it attracts low-motivation, low-effort, or low-caring. I can only provide 2 anecdotes, but I can see why people get treated this way after time. I highly doubt there are many people…

> I'd suggest working with or managing a place with low-skilled people. They of course aren't all like that but it seems it attracts low-motivation, low-effort, or low-caring Pay low wage, get low motivation. No one's going to bust their ass over a mcgriddle for minimum wage.

Pay higher wages and your customers go somewhere else to save a dollar. Some businesses don’t have the luxury of customers that will pay more than the lowest prices.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#498

Post by throwaway55554 »

mtrower wrote: post #290
throwaway55554 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have never run a warehouse, You don't know... > ... 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, unfortunately. ... but you're assuming low wage worker…

> You don't know... Do you? I've worked in plenty of these "unskilled" environments. It's absolutely the reason for these rules. Is every low wage worker like this? Certainly not. I assure you I've encountered plenty who are, and the system of un-trust tends to breed untrustworthiness in those who otherwise might be trustworthy. It's not just the system, however. My grandfather ran a small construction business. He h…

> Do you?

I worked retail for a dozen or so years after HS, before, and later during, getting my eng deg. The bad apples (so to speak) were rare. People showed up, worked, went home just fine.

On the other hand, in the 15 years I've been a professional developer, I've seen people spend all their time looking for their next gig and doing the programming challenges necessary to get that gig. I've seen people skirt IT rules so they could access sites they shouldn't at work. I've seen people throw absolute 3 year old style tantrums because they were asked to fix bugs. People routinely show up late to meeting. All things low-skilled workers would get fired for but is somehow acceptable in our "bro" culture.

It isn't an issue with the skill necessary for the environment. It's the people. And it doesn't matter if they're making minimum wage or 150K.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#499

Post by ndespres »

esoterica wrote: post #481
hysan wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

No one who runs a business that hires multiple employees can reasonably call themselves lower middle class. Showing my work: > My parents treated the workers well, paid them fairly[1] >His salary was lower than my mom’s. Not lower than the workers. Let X be a fair wage, Y be your dad's wage and Z be your mom's wage. Then Z>Y>X, so Z+Y>2X. Any household that makes more than twice a "fair wage" is not lower middle clas…

Food service, maintenance, landscaping, small tetail.. plenty of possible examples come to mind.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#500

Post by acolumb »

esoterica wrote: post #481
hysan wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

No one who runs a business that hires multiple employees can reasonably call themselves lower middle class. Showing my work: > My parents treated the workers well, paid them fairly[1] >His salary was lower than my mom’s. Not lower than the workers. Let X be a fair wage, Y be your dad's wage and Z be your mom's wage. Then Z>Y>X, so Z+Y>2X. Any household that makes more than twice a "fair wage" is not lower middle clas…

I disagree. Lower middle class people can open businesses propped up on loans, in which their drive to hit their margin is even higher.
Post reply on HN