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Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

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Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#581

Post by wpietri »

whakim wrote: post #579
wpietri wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you please cite your sources for Ford's motivations being solely pecuniary? I am not trying to set up him up as an example of an amazing do-gooder; he was in many ways awful. But I don't think his biography fits with the notion that he was only in it for the money.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/04/the-stor... I actually agree with you that as a person he wasn't "only in it for the money" - I am only arguing that his wage-setting policies were purely about the money.

That is nothing like a reliable source. It's an opinion piece from a far-right ideologue with an ax to grind. It contains not one word from Ford himself.

Ford's whole life shows that he was up to more than just maximizing profit. Look at his energetic pacifism or his vigorous paternalism toward workers. Or his antisemitism for that matter. Wealth to him was a means to a variety of ends.

If you want to argue that the the higher wage was purely profit-driven, you'll have to show it was not just profitable, but unrelated to those other motivations that drove him. I don't think that's doable. And if it were, I'm not seeing it as relevant to my point, which is that Bezos is being mean-spirited and short-sighted even in comparison to jerks like Henry Ford.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#582

Post by [deleted] »

wpietri wrote: post #578
imwillofficial wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had already read the No times article when you posted your comment. My issue with not with your point, my issue is with business insider being cited as an authority for any news.

I don't think I cited it as an authority. If you believe they misrepresented the NYT article, feel free to say so. But otherwise, maybe there are better places to ride your hobbyhorse?

[deleted]

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#583

Post by imwillofficial »

dang wrote: post #561
imwillofficial wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m genuinely curious how saying good luck gets down voted. Fuck the HN crowd for this shit.

Your GP comment was just fine, but where you went with this one and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27573815 is not cool. Please don't lash out like that in HN comments. When unfairly downvoted, remember that corrective upvotes are a thing ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... ) and misclicks are also a thing, and please just move on. Complaints like this, besides being tedious and br…

Great points. Thank you for taking the time to correct.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#584

Post by whakim »

wpietri wrote: post #581
whakim wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/04/the-stor... I actually agree with you that as a person he wasn't "only in it for the money" - I am only arguing that his wage-setting policies were purely about the money.

That is nothing like a reliable source. It's an opinion piece from a far-right ideologue with an ax to grind. It contains not one word from Ford himself. Ford's whole life shows that he was up to more than just maximizing profit. Look at his energetic pacifism or his vigorous paternalism toward workers. Or his antisemitism for that matter. Wealth to him was a means to a variety of ends. If you want to argue that the…

> That is nothing like a reliable source. It's an opinion piece from a far-right ideologue with an ax to grind. It contains not one word from Ford himself.

I simply picked it as one of the many long list of sites that you'll find if you simply search "Henry Ford $5 wage". They all tie the increased wages to turnover issues and financial motivations. If you disagree with what appears to be the prevailing wisdom, then please feel free to cite sources to refute it.

> Ford's whole life shows that he was up to more than just maximizing profit. Look at his energetic pacifism or his vigorous paternalism toward workers. Or his antisemitism for that matter. Wealth to him was a means to a variety of ends.

You'll see I said that 'I actually agree with you that as a person he wasn't "only in it for the money" - I am only arguing that his wage-setting policies were purely about the money.' You'll need to back up the last statement with sources.

> If you want to argue that the the higher wage was purely profit-driven, you'll have to show it was not just profitable, but unrelated to those other motivations that drove him. I don't think that's doable. And if it were, I'm not seeing it as relevant to my point, which is that Bezos is being mean-spirited and short-sighted even in comparison to jerks like Henry Ford.

The onus is on you to disprove what most people have to say about the issue. It's also not even clear that Bezos would earn more money even if he raised wages; Amazon already pays a $15 minimum wage which is much higher than the competition (and much higher than the $7ish federal minimum wage), so I think it's pretty clear that both Henry Ford and Jeff Bezos paid/are paying enough in order to avoid extremely high turnover while asking their workers to do laborious jobs.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#585

Post by mncolinlee »

Former Amazon (retail division) mobile engineer here.

A lot of the comments in the OP are true, but possibly a bit overstated.

They definitely expect a lot of engineers to leave after one year with only 5% options. In fact, they'll refuse to give raises if your stock price hikes put your pay "above band," but then they won't make up the missing raise if the stock price tanks.

They do PIP a fixed percentage of the workforce every year, even if they're talented at their jobs-- but it was about 15% when I was there-- and half got to keep their jobs if they ran the gauntlet of hard tasks without a complete mental breakdown.

There's no question Amazon is a difficult employer. But the exact details vary from division to division. It can also be a place where you meet a few very talented engineers and learn a lot. But the good ones rarely stick around. I found that the best managers got quickly hired away for better positions at other companies. I personally had four managers within the span of one year.

They also seemed to have a ridiculous legal policy that drastically limited speaking at conferences, blogging, or personal open source projects. It was far easier to moonlight and get the okay from legal than it was to give a talk at your local Meetup or contribute to Open Source outside of work. I stopped asking for permission or telling anyone.

I also noticed that the corporation seemed to encourage taking on unpaid extra work as a bar raiser or security reviewer, but your division might take no interest in anything you did to help the wider company when performance review time happens. There's a lot of politics and jealousy at play. If your team is working 60, 70+ hours, they won't care that you're producing just as much quality work in 40-50. Managers routinely sacrifice their employees as pawns to gain favor for themselves.

One of the most troubling things wasn't the long hours, busy on-call periods, stack ranking, or PIP policy, but their complete disinterest in firing execs who used abusive behavior. There was one in particular who would scream at our managers and cause some to cry in meetings, but rather than disciplining him and making him change his ways, he was able to transfer to another division where he continued his abuse.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#586

Post by 1123581321 »

andreilys wrote: post #498
dan-robertson wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it easy to believe that Amazon is a shit place to work (as a SWE) and that Amazon is a massive company with different bits being different. But I also find it easy to believe that a meme could just be wrong. It’s also a meme that Google has the best engineering and that their products get shut down after a year and that it sucks to be their customer. If everyone at Google is convinced at orientation that Googl…

It’s also a meme that Google has the best engineering and that their products get shut down after a year and that it sucks to be their customer To be fair there is a website dedicated to all the things killed by Google - https://killedbygoogle.com No other tech co has a website like that, partly because it's incredibly difficult to get promoted at Google so you get a bunch of competing products that get spun up.

You have the cause and effect backwards. Memes motivate people to make websites. Also, other large tech companies have shutdown websites as the meme has spread from Google.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#587

Post by wpietri »

whakim wrote: post #584
wpietri wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is nothing like a reliable source. It's an opinion piece from a far-right ideologue with an ax to grind. It contains not one word from Ford himself. Ford's whole life shows that he was up to more than just maximizing profit. Look at his energetic pacifism or his vigorous paternalism toward workers. Or his antisemitism for that matter. Wealth to him was a means to a variety of ends. If you want to argue that the…

> That is nothing like a reliable source. It's an opinion piece from a far-right ideologue with an ax to grind. It contains not one word from Ford himself. I simply picked it as one of the many long list of sites that you'll find if you simply search "Henry Ford $5 wage". They all tie the increased wages to turnover issues and financial motivations. If you disagree with what appears to be the prevailing wisdom, then…

If your approach to understanding this is to randomly Google things and pick the first link that looks like it agrees with you, I'm not seeing a lot of utility in further discussing this. You clearly have an opinion on Ford. From my perspective, you're welcome to keep being wrong about the topic.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#588

Post by whakim »

wpietri wrote: post #587
whakim wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is nothing like a reliable source. It's an opinion piece from a far-right ideologue with an ax to grind. It contains not one word from Ford himself. I simply picked it as one of the many long list of sites that you'll find if you simply search "Henry Ford $5 wage". They all tie the increased wages to turnover issues and financial motivations. If you disagree with what appears to be the prevailing wisdom, then…

If your approach to understanding this is to randomly Google things and pick the first link that looks like it agrees with you, I'm not seeing a lot of utility in further discussing this. You clearly have an opinion on Ford. From my perspective, you're welcome to keep being wrong about the topic.

> randomly Google things and pick the first link that looks like it agrees with you

The entire first page of Google agrees with me, which seems a reasonable proxy for the prevailing wisdom.

I don't have a particularly strongly-held opinion on the matter to be honest, but what you're saying isn't what the internet writ large appears to be saying, so I would love to see the sources which support your point of view.

Re: Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?

#589

Post by wpietri »

whakim wrote: post #588
wpietri wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your approach to understanding this is to randomly Google things and pick the first link that looks like it agrees with you, I'm not seeing a lot of utility in further discussing this. You clearly have an opinion on Ford. From my perspective, you're welcome to keep being wrong about the topic.

> randomly Google things and pick the first link that looks like it agrees with you The entire first page of Google agrees with me, which seems a reasonable proxy for the prevailing wisdom. I don't have a particularly strongly-held opinion on the matter to be honest, but what you're saying isn't what the internet writ large appears to be saying, so I would love to see the sources which support your point of view.

> The entire first page of Google agrees with me, which seems a reasonable proxy for the prevailing wisdom.

I appreciate you clearing up that talking with you about this is definitely a waste of my time.

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