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I lasted three minutes at Amazon

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Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#111

Post by ge96 »

amyjess wrote: post #72
hoten wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've been seeing some weird things people saying "reset capitalism" like what are you saying?

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#112

Post by germinalphrase »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #61
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…

That's... not an anecdote? Also, fun math question: if they have 1MM workers, and hire 500k every year, what is their turnover rate?

The number I heard reported recently was 150 percent a year, but I don’t have a source handy for that claim.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#114

Post by listenallyall »

crooked-v wrote: post #78
poulsbohemian wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cute sentiment but wrong. These are skills, it's not Uber where you can simply choose to be a driver tomorrow without prior training. Lots of people simply cannot do these jobs, further, lots who might be able to are put off by the months/years of necessary training.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#115

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

908B64B197 wrote: post #74
nexuist wrote: post #45

Earlier 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…

> 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.

A union could choose to not seek promotions-based-on-seniority as part of its negotiated contracts, if its membership actually wanted that.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#116

Post by eco »

idontwantthis wrote: post #24

I 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.

While they usually seem to have started off fairly sincere, /r/antiwork like many of the subreddits dedicated to telling stories about ridiculous behavior in others seems to have quickly changed into more of a place where people practice creative writing. /r/TalesFromTechSupport, /JUSTNOMIL, /r/AmITheAsshole, /r/MaliciousCompliance, and many others.

The stories can be fun but under no circumstances should anyone take what is written at face value.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#117

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

908B64B197 wrote: post #70
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

> you are just as replaceable and the interview process is only there to filter out the bad candidates That's one way of running a tech company but what you'll end up with is going to look more like one of those comically bad bodyshops that's used for outsourcing. These have a turnover so high it's almost impossible to find someone with more than two years of experience. And, well, the results speak for themselves. T…

> That's one way of running a tech company

at least as far as TFA is concerned, it's not really about "a tech company", but a shipping/receiving/warehouse facility.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#118

Post by haroldp »

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…

The perfect representation of the corporate version of The Castle or The Trial has to be the orientation scene from the Hudsucker Proxy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS42yIDQX6s&t=6s

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#119

Post by germinalphrase »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #52
Bostonian wrote: post #41

Earlier 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…

I have a relative that’s an appraiser, and he’s basically been scratching by for decades.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#120

Post by kcplate »

floatingatoll wrote: post #7
johnny35 wrote: post #4

Systematizing and optimizing every detail of operations to create as large of a pool as possible of positions requiring the least possible skill, reducing the cost of turnover, training, and management complexity... seems to be externalizing a heavy toll on mental health. Regulation can tackle many cases of "socialized losses, privatized gains" but I am at a loss to understand how we can mitigate this one.

The one golden rule at Amazon is to externalize all costs that are paid by use of a human being’s labor and time. Regulations don’t stand a chance of moving quickly enough to keep up with Amazon’s innovation budget. The only way to counter that is worker unions, which can make specific and timely demands that Amazon treat workers more humanely. If workers unionize, Amazon has to stop externalizing the cost of labor.

Five years ago my daughter worked for Amazon in a fulfillment center for a few weeks. From her experience I developed a theory—Amazon expects a steady stream of new hires, figuring most will leave within a month. The job is low skill enough that that a new hire can hit a baseline throughput expectation (the stated goal is of course higher) within a day or two. Aggressive management demands probably pushes that baseline up pretty much until a few days before the eventual burnout.

The ones that stay long term are those people willing to overlook a shit job, aggressive output measuring, and draconian management. Those folks generally aren’t beating the union drum within the org as loud as the transient 30 day folks. Unions have trouble finding purchase because organizers are fighting that turnover and the folks motivated to unionize don’t have the patience to get there.

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