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I lasted three minutes at Amazon
71–80 of 192 posts
Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon
#72I highly mistrust anything on /r/antiwork. So many of the posts are the “and everyone clapped” variety but get hundreds or thousands of upvotes, I’m pretty sure it’s at least half a troll karma farm.
Content from that subreddit has gotten a ton of play on social media in recent months. It does seem the most viral stories from the subreddit are embellished, but I can't pinpoint why they seem that way.
They feel like the fake LinkedIn stories about "someone showed up for an interview and they were late and had zero relevant skills and experience but I hired them anyway and they turned out to be the best employee I ever had", except with the polarity reversed.
Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
So long as you are filtering out all companies with government contracts as "a company culture that sucks," that's true. https://www.samhsa.gov/workplace/legal/federal-laws/contract... requires any organization receiving a federal contract of over $100,000 or a federal grant of any size to do so. Tied to that is a page of HHS-certified labs for drug testing and federally regulated industries.
It's pretty silly but it seems to be a common thread.
Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon
#74Earlier 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…
> Which is a pretty strong argument for a tech workers union
Wrong approach.
Push for real engineering certifications instead. Keeps the free market (no promotions based on seniority) but weeds out the "6 month bootcamp fullstack engineer" disaster from your codebase.
Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon
#75Why haven't they replaced their onboarding team with an app? Watch videos, take tests in a proctored environment, sign papers.. show up to work.
Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
I was broadly agreeing with the poster that it's worth crying over. Without writing an essay, automation (and I mean mainly business process automation) has sucked the humanity out of work (maybe its always been that way), and people are treated at "resources". This happens at all levels but is worst, to the point of being potentially inhumane, in low skill jobs.
Oh yeah I agree with you there.
What's really grating is that these people and "low skill" jobs that form the backbone of our functional society have been abandoned by the political movement they bled to create (which is obviously now hijacked and totally perverted by the ruling class).
It makes me cringe every time I hear a "left" wing voter or politician boast about how much the uneducateds dislike them, and gloat about how worthless those people must be to be concerned about immigration policies affecting their jobs. It's no surprise their lot is not improving. I only hope they can band together and affect real change again before the ruling class is able to irrevocably divide people against one another. Maybe it's already too late :(
Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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"
Well, yes. As an engineer, you are a very expensive resource, probably working in a department that's considered a cost center.
"Rightsizing" those is great for the bonus.
Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What's nutty to me though is that we don't have enough of any kind of skilled tradespeople either. Electricians, plumbers, carpenters, cabinet makers, roofers - and I know it isn't just isolated to my geographic area. I've got a friend who is in the middle of building a luxury home to sell - he's basically doing all the work himself because he can't find guys who will just show up , stay off drugs on the job (hazardo…
If people aren't doing it, then the money isn't reasonable.
Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
I was broadly agreeing with the poster that it's worth crying over. Without writing an essay, automation (and I mean mainly business process automation) has sucked the humanity out of work (maybe its always been that way), and people are treated at "resources". This happens at all levels but is worst, to the point of being potentially inhumane, in low skill jobs.
>automation (and I mean mainly business process automation) has sucked the humanity out of work
What's interesting though is I don't hear a lot of people on HN complaining about CI/CD, which IMO is part of an overall approach that treats devs like cogs in an automated process.
In some ways, I think we even celebrate it because, as devs, we are the automators. But increasingly, we're becoming more beholden to the processes we've automated.
Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon
#80lol /r/antiwork…