Bye, Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: Bye, Amazon

#561

Post by notatoad » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #297

AlexandrB wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is the mythical company treating their low-skill workers far better than Amazon? That's an easy one: Costco. Do a cursory Google search and you'll generally find positive stories going back years. There's nothing "mythical" here, it's a matter of explicit policy difference between the two retailers.

I knew a few people who worked at Whole Foods before they got bought; they seemed relatively happy with how they were treated.

>before they got bought

this is the key - the bigger the organization, the further removed the workers are from the leadership. Consolidation and expansion removes a company's humanity. There's tons of examples of smaller companies that treat all their staff well. There's no examples of huge conglomerates who do.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#562

Post by oppositelock » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:21 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.

For some really annoying grunt jobs, you're not going to hire the most disciplined, most educated people with a good work ethic. People willing to do tedious, crappy work have no other options usually, and you also can't be too picky, or you won't hire anyone. These jobs typically have low value as well, so if you tried to pay more, the whole project may not be cost effective and won't happen.

You definitely need to treat people with as much respect as possible, but in some jobs, you have to have all these rules in place knowing you'll get people who aren't model citizens. I was never in the HR org chart here, never saw finances, but I suspect the people that I mentioned were paid near minimum wage. Few stuck around more than six months, and those who did, moved onto better jobs. It was all very structured and regimented. I would never fire anyone for trying to make their workplace better, assuming they did it in a non-disruptive way.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#563

Post by ApolloFortyNine » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #396

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We had water fountains in the back, you can always bring your own drinks, etc. It's hard to make an excuse for someone stealing a bottle of soda, a luxury.

It's not like anyone was stealing TVs, and that's what blew my mind about the stealing. It tended to be drinks and candy bars, stuff that not only was low value, but just simply wasn't necessary. It was stealing for the sake of stealing, because they thought they could get away with it.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#564

Post by NullInvictus » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:22 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…

I have been involved in both working in services and in the management level of a restaurant business. It is still my opinion that the pay, disposability, lack of dignity, lack of future, lack of community, and disrespect are the primary drivers for bad workplace behavior. Treat people like animals, and they will act like animals. It's just exploitation, and I work my current job with fear of having to go back to that.

> But depending on the business (e.g., a local pizza place) there is no affording that.

This is maybe a radical argument, but I make it in good faith; if your business can only exist by paying workers at or below poverty wages, and/or enacting dehumanizing controls, it probably shouldn't exist. If the demand for the product or service is sufficient, price should follow accordingly to make that business viable and profitable. Saying a business can't afford to pay workers a living wage and treat them right is equivalent to unintentionally saying 'the business can't exist without worker exploitation'. I do not believe that is a defensible position if you don't axiomatically accept worker exploitation.

Maybe any given business model doesn't have a god-given moral right to exist. It does suck if we lose that local pizzeria, but clearly we didn't want the pizza enough to pay what it cost to ethically support such a business. If you're worried about the job loss or availability of services caused by such a position, there a whole sea of political and socioeconomic thought on how to solve that. It's probably beyond the current conversation.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#565

Post by odysseus » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

bluntfang wrote: post #174

Someone wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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…

On living wages in particular:

"A 2003 Cato Institute study cites data showing job losses in places where living wage laws have been imposed. This should not be the least bit surprising. Making anything more expensive almost invariably leads to fewer purchases. That includes labor."

Also:

"People in minimum wage jobs do not stay at the minimum wage permanently. Their pay increases as they accumulate experience and develop skills. It increases an average of 30 percent in just their first year of employment, according to the Cato Institute study."

Both of these are quotes from noted economist Thomas Sowell, who has done a lot of research into many studies on actual effects of living and minimum wage law.

As for the people you describe, there are plenty of people who make higher wages and are just as unreliable and untrustworthy. And there are plenty who do honest work for low wages, and work their way up.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#566

Post by joeys7 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

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.

He is the only person resigning at Amazon over these firings. I’ve seen other emails sent to the activist email lists over people resigning due to this. But he’s the most high profile.

I have tolerated a lot of evilness from Amazon and justified it as a “different organization”. I work in Amazon Music which isn’t responsible for facial recognition or warehouse abuses.

But seeing them fire whistleblowers... that’s just heartbreaking to watch. Makes me want to quit too. The only reason I haven’t yet is to keep up the activism.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#567

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

hysan wrote: post #534

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 guess it depends on where you live. I'm going by the definition based on the income ranges in the city/state where we grew up where "middle class" is significantly higher than the rest of the US. If you prefer to average across the entire US, then sure, I'll be happy to edit that to say "middle class". However, I don't see how this is anything but a nitpick without addressing any of the content I wrote in my commen…

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Re: Bye, Amazon

#568

Post by fzingle » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

griffinkelly wrote: post #492

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…

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 hard…

Sure one way to read this story is "I don't want to work harder" and criticizing that attitude.

Here's another way. As the worker, already working full-time, maybe you have better things to do with your life than working harder. Furthermore, the worker is probably thinking:

"If they want me to work more hours, why not pay me for more hours, including time-and-a-half overtime, per the law? Why offer a profit-share? Answer, mostly likely because the profit-share costs them less, and therefore, pays me less".

In that light, unless the factory management can explain how the extra hours they want people to work is likely to work out better for them then just getting paid for more hours, why should they accept?

Re: Bye, Amazon

#569

Post by rexpop » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #493

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…

> 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

That URL to search "Ring" on r/privacy is broken. This will work, for now: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/search?q=ring&restrict_sr=1

Re: Bye, Amazon

#570

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

jshevek wrote: post #447

fastball wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are these questions in bad faith?

Internally accusing people of bad faith can be a mechanism for dealing with cognitive dissonance. Publicly accusing people of bad faith, with no evidence or justification, can be a rhetorical tactic.

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