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I lasted three minutes at Amazon

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Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#41

Post by Bostonian »

Waterluvian wrote: post #22

I don’t mean to be rude to those who are seeking a living, but let’s call this what it is. It’s not a hiring process. There is no interview. They aren’t interested in working with you to figure out if you’re a good fit for each other. They’re trawling the ocean and filtering the catch through drug and background tests. They process countless people every day, constantly replacing others who have broken down or reache…

I think the last sentence is unrealistic. People work at Amazon or any other company because that's the best job they can find. A large fraction of the population does not have the brains for high-end white-collar work.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#42

Post by throwawaylinux »

version_five wrote: post #14

I clicked feeling like it would be impossible to give them a fair chance in 3 minutes, but reading it I definitely am on the workers side and he gave them way more than 3 min. This is a Kafka level story, having long dealings with an obviously incompetent and labyrinthine organization, only to be immediately penalized for the slightest miss on his own part. Especially the "if you're not at your workstation in one min…

What is your feeling on the state of labor?

The state of Amazon's blue collar working conditions are widely considered to be crap of course, and there are a lot of complaints about labor laws, unions, outsourcing and immigration, etc. I didn't quite see how he connected the issues in the post though. I mean beyond state of labor = not good (and maybe that's all you were saying too).

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#44

Post by Waterluvian »

beaconstudios wrote: post #31
Waterluvian wrote: post #22

I don’t mean to be rude to those who are seeking a living, but let’s call this what it is. It’s not a hiring process. There is no interview. They aren’t interested in working with you to figure out if you’re a good fit for each other. They’re trawling the ocean and filtering the catch through drug and background tests. They process countless people every day, constantly replacing others who have broken down or reache…

and in the meantime, we need to counterbalance the power of such corporations with workers' rights and union representation. I'm all on board for fully automated luxury c̶o̶m̶m̶u̶n̶i̶s̶m̶ democracy, but we still need to get through the next 500 years before that happens.

Strongly support this. There’s a long way between here and fully replacing all these meaningless drone jobs.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#45

Post by nexuist »

ushakov wrote: post #27
Waterluvian wrote: post #22

I don’t mean to be rude to those who are seeking a living, but let’s call this what it is. It’s not a hiring process. There is no interview. They aren’t interested in working with you to figure out if you’re a good fit for each other. They’re trawling the ocean and filtering the catch through drug and background tests. They process countless people every day, constantly replacing others who have broken down or reache…

isn't this the same with tech jobs though? you are just as replaceable and the interview process is only there to filter out the bad candidates it's only more intense because the cost/risk ratio is magnitudes higher

We don't earn better pay and benefits because we are special, brilliant people. We are given these benefits because there is a perpetual labor shortage of people who have enough tech experience to do their employers' bidding and nobody will show up if they don't doll these out. In other words, we are a fluke, and we'll lose these benefits once they figure out how to commoditize software development.

Which is a pretty strong argument for a tech workers union (as well as a warehouse workers union), if not now, a few more years down the line when salaries go down as a result of saturation.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#46

Post by Waterluvian »

Bostonian wrote: post #41
Waterluvian wrote: post #22

I don’t mean to be rude to those who are seeking a living, but let’s call this what it is. It’s not a hiring process. There is no interview. They aren’t interested in working with you to figure out if you’re a good fit for each other. They’re trawling the ocean and filtering the catch through drug and background tests. They process countless people every day, constantly replacing others who have broken down or reache…

I think the last sentence is unrealistic. People work at Amazon or any other company because that's the best job they can find. A large fraction of the population does not have the brains for high-end white-collar work.

Yep. Which makes the entire thing absolutely ridiculous when the argument becomes “we need jobs for people to do jobs.”

UBI and whatnot is inevitable.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#47

Post by dekhn »

preetamjinka wrote: post #8
dekhn wrote: post #5

I had to read carefully into the article before I understood this is probably a fulfillment center job, not an AWS SWE.

Same. Do SWE/SDE roles also involve drug tests and orientations?

Sure (to orientations). Here's how a pre-COVID SWE orientation at Google (for folks in professional jobs in Mountain View, not data center contractors in The Dalles): there is a dedicated lobby and theater with multiple people staffing the area welcoming you in. You're handed a laptop, configure your credentials, log in, access benefits, etc, then sit down for a couple motivating videos/speeches and some details on your benefits. At this point you're ready to go to your team's work area (many details could be different outside the mothership).

The second time around it was even more polished than the first time, but contained much less useful information and more cheerleading, so I left once I had my axe and saw that it was sharp.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#48

Post by nitwit005 »

mherdeg wrote: post #17

Hmm this is an interesting anecdote to compare against the view ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29459245 ) that: > In the Earnings Call in July of this year, they said they now employe 950,000 warehouse workers. They're probably over the 1 MM mark right now due to the holidays. Yes, there are plenty of people working there that are overqualified, but that is the beauty of what Amazon is doing. Their onboarding…

I doubt it's as low as 1%. If you hire half a million people in a year, it's pretty much guaranteed a lot of the people involved won't know what they're doing. Many of the HR and recruiting people will be new too.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#49

Post by ushakov »

nexuist wrote: post #45
ushakov wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn't this the same with tech jobs though? you are just as replaceable and the interview process is only there to filter out the bad candidates it's only more intense because the cost/risk ratio is magnitudes higher

We don't earn better pay and benefits because we are special, brilliant people. We are given these benefits because there is a perpetual labor shortage of people who have enough tech experience to do their employers' bidding and nobody will show up if they don't doll these out. In other words, we are a fluke, and we'll lose these benefits once they figure out how to commoditize software development. Which is a pretty…

yes and i don't disagree with that

yet, have you seen how many bootcamps and hype there is about tech industry?

anyone wants to be in, anyone wants the perks

the companies will do anything to trivialise our job and race wages to the bottom, so they could justify spending less money on "human resources"

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#50

Post by 999900000999 »

Johnny555 wrote: post #30
dekhn wrote: post #5

I had to read carefully into the article before I understood this is probably a fulfillment center job, not an AWS SWE.

I figured that out in the second paragraph when he said "drug test" - I think they'd have an awful hard time hiring engineers if they required drug testing. I don't do drugs (not even marijuana even though it's legal here), but I'd refuse to take a drug test just on principle - they are paying for my performance at work, not for what I do on my own time. The only time I worked at a job that required drug tests, was a…

The last time I took a drug test the company itself was absolutely horrible.

Only place where my manager expected me to work multiple nights per week. This was as a software engineer!

At this point drug tests are just a filter. Let's me know the company culture will suck.

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