Bye, Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: Bye, Amazon

#511

Post by vageli » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

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've owned a cafe and was able to pay myself and the head cook roughly $1000/week (each) when things were great. If that's not middle class, I'm not sure what is.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#512

Post by BurningFrog » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

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…

Right. Everyone who lives in that world knows and understands this.

People who only read about the non college degree people can have some very clueless ideas.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#513

Post by jamil7 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:55 PM UTC

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…

You should speak to a few more cafe and restaurant owners if you believe that.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#514

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:55 PM UTC

g_sch wrote: post #389

vorpalhex wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of my friends who work at Amazon warehouses have college degrees. Quite a few of my friends who work in dead end jobs also have college degrees, and they have them in the things you'd expect: the fine arts, intricate degrees on languages or theory, and other non-profitable skills. A degree does not equal a job, even if your college recruiter would like to tell you differently. > And by all means, if you are cap…

I think the idea that workers need "profitable" degrees to work "profitable" jobs isn't as obvious as you think. It used to be said that a college degree was a ticket to a well-paying job. Now, a few decades later, we're told to get a STEM degree, because other degrees are worthless. Who's to say that the criteria won't get even narrower in the future? Degrees aren't a symbol of skill nearly as much as they are a way…

>It used to be said that a college degree was a ticket to a well-paying job. Now, a few decades later, we're told to get a STEM degree, because other degrees are worthless. Who's to say that the criteria won't get even narrower in the future?

A degree was never a ticket to a well paying job. Showing that you have critical thinking skills and the ability to learn and a base level of organization/discipline in your life is what a degree might have meant when they were more rigorous and scarce.

Now that there are a billion schools offering a billion bullshit degrees in exchange for money, one way to cut through that is to bet on people who can do calculus and chemistry and physics, as those are better measures of analytical skills and whatever else employers are looking for.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#515

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:55 PM UTC

gilrain wrote: post #349

supergeek133 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Bye, Amazon

#516

Post by esoterica » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:55 PM UTC

vageli wrote: post #511

esoterica wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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've owned a cafe and was able to pay myself and the head cook roughly $1000/week (each) when things were great. If that's not middle class, I'm not sure what is.

$1000/week is higher than the median American personal income. That's by definition not lower middle class.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#517

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

quii wrote: post #240

kmlx wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i worked in a warehouse carrying boxes around right after high school. the amount of brain effort to do this kind of job is close to 0. you need a bit of physical prowess, but this is easily attainable in a couple of week. since the job was basically the least complex job one can ever have, the pay was low. and it made sense back then: you want to move on to a better job/better pay/better conditions? get better quali…

Just because something isn't skilled doesn't mean it's not important or doesn't bring value. The people who do these jobs deserve a decent wage and respect, not psuedo-wage-slavery

That’s a political problem to solve with higher minimum wages/max work hours or universal basic income and universal healthcare.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#518

Post by socketnaut » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

jasondclinton wrote: post #487

generalpass wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a shocker that the upper middle-class users of HN immediately vote down a perspective on the world that they have never been exposed to. It must all be a lie, right? And even more shocking is the cowards can't even leave a comment. This is pervasive now and makes for terrible communities.

I downvoted your GP and I will tell you why: it wasn't the observations of the way that businesses are run. It was this: "there is a reason they are working entry-level positions". This is Just World Hypothesis or "people are miserable because they deserve it". I flatly reject any hypothesis that the world we are living in is fair. You can consider any number of anthropological examples of societies that are not orga…

It’s not a statement about fairness: it’s a statement about filtering / sampling bias.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#519

Post by forgotmylogin2 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

flurdy wrote: post #163

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…

> it's going to make him radioactive for the next gig No. A couple of more questionable companies may choose to stay away, but the majority of companies would love to have Tim on board. Even if just for a few years or part-time. Most employees and owners think of themselves and their company as good so will not be concerned with having a man of moral as their employee. Not that they all are 100% "good" but most think…

This assumes many employers will consider him a "man of moral" for doing this. I don't think that's cut and dry.

The business owners I know frequently complain about how difficult it is to fire underperforming employees. Trying to ensure they're legally protected from lawsuits requires keeping the inadequate employee on payroll for months in order to collect documentation that shows the employee is not fulfilling their contract. My guess is most business owners would be loathe to hire anybody with a history of making this process even more difficult for their employer.

Merely quitting would be one thing, but when you publicly excoriate your former employer like this (including allegations of racism and sexism without evidence), you become a massive liability to future employers. Quite frankly, I would never hire this man if I were a business owner. And the fact that the leadership of a left-leaning company like Amazon also seems to disagree with him makes me think I'm probably not alone.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#520

Post by cbsmith » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

oppositelock wrote: post #485

supergeek133 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can confirm this, having first hand experience with it. We hired many low-skill workers at a big tech company that you've heard of about ten years ago. These workers received a couple of weeks of training, and then were set to do a rather simple, menial, repetitive job. These workers didn't sell products, but did very low level tech work, but the entire operation was mired in drama. For example, we had a strict no…

Those stories sound nothing like the stories you hear about highly compensated employees at tech companies. You never hear stories of them ignoring strict company policies, engaging in drug abuse on the job, or displaying behaviour that makes other employees fear for their own safety.