Bye, Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: Bye, Amazon

#541

Post by tom_mellior » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

SeeTheTruth wrote: post #380

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…

The fear of death due to infection by a pandemic is new. The need for PPE and lack thereof is new. Firing whitleblowers in the face of a pandemic and meeting to smear them (with public proof thanks to a leak) is new. We didn't think Amazon was nice and cuddly - but this is a good point for Tim to exit. Jumping on someone doing a principled thing at personal cost for "not doing it sooner" is so cynical. I think we can…

> The fear of death due to infection by a pandemic is new. The need for PPE and lack thereof is new.

Very specifically, yes. A bit more generally, it's not different from a pattern of conditions like "heat so extreme it required the regular posting of ambulances to take away workers who passed out, strenuous workloads in that heat, and first-person reports of summary terminations for health conditions such as breast cancer".

> Jumping on someone doing a principled thing at personal cost for "not doing it sooner" is so cynical.

I don't agree that doing one good thing undoes bad things that went before, and that it absolves one from criticism.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#542

Post by rsynnott » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

nivenkos wrote: post #5

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…

Also takes huge balls to publish an article about it publicly (rather than just resigning quietly). I'd be worried about being sued for defamation, etc.

There don’t really seem to be any factual claims in the article which weren’t previously public?

Re: Bye, Amazon

#543

Post by jjtheblunt » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

raven105x wrote: post #536

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…

> This gets to the heart of the idea of "privilege", and why it can be so difficult to see yourself as privileged. Because it often involves nothing more than being given a basic level of trust and respect that, once you have them, can seem like a bare minimum, not something that you would need to fight for. I've wondered since coming to this country how such a large collective delusion continues to persist. The part…

What are "SJWs"? (i don't know that acronym)

Re: Bye, Amazon

#544

Post by ignoramous » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:11 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…

> 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)...

You'd think Amazon treats its "high pay" engineers on-par with other FAANGs? It is not just the warehouse workers that they are paranoid about. They're paranoid about the human nature to slack, to rest, to err, to relax, to let their guard down for a moment, to not care enough at times, to deal with life's other problems, to fail... to live.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19751016

Re: Bye, Amazon

#545

Post by jshevek » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

radlad wrote: post #510

oppositelock wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe you can work on your hiring practices? Even for low-skill jobs, you can hire for soft skills. edit: I am being downvoted and don't know why. Can you please explain what's wrong with this idea? I think the parent paints a false dichotomy. For example - another option is to deal with problematic individuals on an individual basis. You don't have to ruin the entire company culture.

>Can you please explain what's wrong with this idea?

This may have more to do with the phrasing of your first sentence, which could be interpreted as flippant, or presumptive, or maybe even victim blaming.

[After reading other comments, I think the behavior you noted is most likely to be the result of people engaged in ideological battle. If this is true, I would just keep engaging in good faith, there's little you can do.]

Separately, in the future, you might frame your follow-up inquiry as:

>edit: Can anyone please explain what's wrong with this idea? I think the parent paints a false dichotomy.

Or similar. That is, leaving off explicit mention of your motivation for asking as [discussion of this specific motivation] is frowned upon in the site guidelines.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#546

Post by pm90 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #517

quii wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well not quite. It’s an economic problem in that if you don’t pay your workers decent livable wages then they won’t be able to continue to do a decent living while working for you.

The whole idea of “this is a low paying job, anyone can do it, I’m paying you very low because you should get a better job” now that sounds like a political problem! It is all the invented justification to keep wages low. It’s also a pretty stupid argument but has weight because an entire political party makes it.

The thinking around these jobs needs to change; you can’t pay people like shit and then expect them to be moral and upstanding workers.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#547

Post by gertlex » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

esoterica wrote: post #516

vageli wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If wikipedia is any indication, the definition of middle class is nebulous.

My hunch is most people don't base it on dividing the population in to equal fractions, which is kind of how I read your comments.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#548

Post by 101404 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:13 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 are not "angrily" downvoted, you are downvoted because your statement is completely wrong.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#549

Post by livingparadox » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

jjtheblunt wrote: post #543

raven105x wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This gets to the heart of the idea of "privilege", and why it can be so difficult to see yourself as privileged. Because it often involves nothing more than being given a basic level of trust and respect that, once you have them, can seem like a bare minimum, not something that you would need to fight for. I've wondered since coming to this country how such a large collective delusion continues to persist. The part…

What are "SJWs"? (i don't know that acronym)

It stands for "Social Justice Warriors".

This originally meant someone standing up for minorities and the disadvantaged, but the term has been twisted into a derogatory insult for anyone who disagrees with conservatives on social issues.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#550

Post by kbenson » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

esoterica wrote: post #516

vageli wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

First, they said "when things were great". Considering they stated that ownership as past tense, I would assume things didn't stay great, and just because you make $1000 a week sometimes doesn't mean you make anywhere near that consistently.

Secondly, it's much more important to look at local median income and local cost of living. $1000 a week in many areas won't get you far if most of it is taken up by taxes and housing. And before someone pulls out the "well, move to somewhere cheaper", there's no guarantee that a cheaper to live location would necessarily still support $1000/week to the owner, or if there was a commute, that it wouldn't eat significantly into that income (fuel + toll + car payment which may not be required if you live locally could be well over a $1000/month).