Bye, Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: Bye, Amazon

#601

Post by pathseeker » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #523

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…

You're totally right on the action-reaction bit. And it's the same way at much bigger scales. This American Life did a story on NUMMI, a Toyota/GM joint venture. Toyota took one of GM's worst plants and made it well run and productive, in large part by treating the workers like people. It's very moving: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015 The heartbreaking part is that even when GM saw it happen, they cou…

>Manager-labor hostility was too baked in on the management side

Don't forget that it's baked in on the labor side as well. NUMMI was not a 'fix' of a GM plant. It was a new venture started where a previous GM plant had closed.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#602

Post by pathseeker » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:51 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…

Bad math. Two people making a "fair wage" in a single household does not make it suddenly unfair... unless your point is that people shouldn't be allowed to live together.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#603

Post by ryanwinchester » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:51 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 once had two employees and was definitely not in a high income bracket.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#604

Post by pathseeker » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:52 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.

It is in SFO.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#605

Post by oneepic » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

ssklash wrote: post #539

I'm shocked that so many bright, talented engineers go to work for Companies like Google and Amazon and Facebook. While I'm glad some see the light about the real mission of these companies (it's not about "connecting people", "providing delightful customer experiences", "doing no evil" or any of that BS) and ultimately quit, but what concerns me is how so many clearly incredibly bright and talented people are able t…

You can say that, but people gain a lot from working there. There are many pluses to working at these companies. Pay/benefits/relocation packages, provided on-the-job training and free access to a lot of technical courses, relatively-effective engineering practices (ethics are a separate issue), little-to-no dress code, free food, technical managers (not nontechnical ones) and a nice name on the resume when you leave, to name a few. I'm not saying they are unique to these co's, just that these co's tend to offer all of the above.

Plus, oftentimes the job app requirements are pretty general and loose, as opposed to all those shitty firms that want entry-level engineers to have graduated in the past 6 mos, and have experience with 10 different Javascript frameworks. (And then underpay them and work the hell out of them.) I know I saw a lot of those when I was leaving college in 2017/18.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#606

Post by twblalock » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

treve wrote: post #600

twblalock wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Minimum wages should be raised and nonviable businesses should adapt or go under. That's a recipe for significantly increased unemployment which would affect the most vulnerable workers the most. For most people in a low-paying job, the alternative is no job. If they were able to get higher-paying jobs they would have already done so.

Then why have a minimum wage at all?

Because, unlike what you suggested, policymakers are able to calibrate the minimum wage so it doesn't cause companies to go out of business.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#607

Post by jellicle » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:54 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…

That story describes random employees being asked to become investors, speculators, silent partners in the business. Here are the conditions:

* you do lots of work now, up front

* you have no say in the business

* you have no say in the investment returns, for example, if profits are made, management can just give themselves higher salaries that come straight out of your share of returns

* your investment isn't portable or recoupable, if you leave it's nothing

* if management is bad, it's also nothing

* you're skeptical of current management

Should you invest your time in this business?

Re: Bye, Amazon

#608

Post by Nelson69 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

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…

A while back I helped a startup that was doing managed video services, specifically internal surveillance. A very logical "service" for them was to have actual humans review and verify various incidents and so they staffed up a small team of hourly video watchers.

It was a culture shock. Things like acceptable workplace attire were issues; and there was no store-front or exposure to customers, it was just what's acceptable in a professional office. Someone quitting with no notice wasn't uncommon. I think the most shocking aspect was most lived in this sort of land of grand illusion, they had no concept that there were non-hourly jobs or workers building the system they used. All of them lived in a fairly delicate balance, a small inconvenience like some car trouble was potentially life altering for them. We did these somewhat terrible Thursday night deployments (think 4 hours most of the time) and more than a few times some of these guys wanted to "help" to get some overtime pay, they were incredulous at the idea that we didn't get paid extra for that. Everyone deserves dignity and respect but it's also easy to see how these untrusting sorts of institutions come to be.

The big difference between ordering on Amazon and walking in to a Walmart is you have to look some of those people in the eye in Walmart. Credit to Tim for shining a little light on this. I've sort of thought that we might be in for a wave of 21st century unionization, I think the floor is a lot lower than that though. It's hard to imagine what could spark a cultural shift that would unite workers in today's world.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#609

Post by logfromblammo » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

Frost1x wrote: post #527

downerending wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that those of us who worked our ways through school at menial jobs can think of many examples right off the top of our heads. In my experience, "1/2" is too much (depending on how you define stealing). But it was quite common for both employees to steal from their employer, and for employers to steal (wages) from the employees. It was also quite common for employees to simply walk off when they felt they'd…

If you consider employee and employer a resource exchange (time and abilities for money) then theft can also be tucked in as underemployment. If a task takes 10 minutes to complete an employee intentionally draws it out to 4 hours, is that theft? They were there, they were working, but didn't do it at maximum efficiency. If an employer can afford to pay an employee $20/hr and was even expecting to but was able to get…

There's a handy chart out there that plots change in worker productivity and change in purchasing power by income percentile over time that answers this in a single graphic.

If a task normally takes 10 minutes, and an employee completes it in five, is that a donation of effort?

Is it theft to titrate the productivity of your labor to fit the rate of pay you receive for it? Employees do not get paid more for effort that exceeds par.

If I get paid $7/hour, I can easily reduce my productivity until one hour of my labor produces $21 for the employer. Or maybe I work two hours to produce $160 and slack off for six.

Two consecutive generations of not being rewarded for contributing additional effort for the benefit of the company has taken its toll, culturally. Nobody is willing to uphold a string work ethic for an unethical employer.

The employers burned through all their credit with labor, and are trying to refinance by redefining all the rules. It won't work. It's time for them to pay up.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#610

Post by raven105x » Mon, May 04, 2020, 5:57 PM UTC

blueline wrote: post #587

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…

> Based on my observations, SJWs are the modern day gestapo really? are you sure? "SJWs" are comparable to the state-sponsored secret police of nazi germany, which had unilateral power to imprison (physically imprison, you know, in a real jail where they would be tortured. not on twitter) anyone without justification, and who were instrumental in the genocide of millions of people? do you mind justifying that claim i…

Sure thing. How would you say the ability to wage free, self-fueled defamation campaigns (who bored people on the internet carry out for you) or things like false harassment / even worse (touchy topic, I do not say this lightly) false rape accusations are any different from the unilateral power to imprison (physically imprison, as in yes real jail ...maybe sans the torture) - just like you said?

Better yet, in the good interest of being my own devil's advocate, what would you say is an equivalent for this on the other side of the gender coin flip? I want to be very clear about the above: shitty people will be shitty people regardless of race / gender / religion, nor do I imply this happens often. But the massive imbalance of opportunity is already there is my point.