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I lasted three minutes at Amazon

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Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#121

Post by germinalphrase »

Waterluvian wrote: post #46
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.

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.

Why does UBI follow a lack of useful labor? A dominant ideology in the US is that it is unjust to take from the skilled, so those without useful skills should simply be left to their struggles.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#122

Post by throwaway55421 »

Reddit is one of, if not the single least reliable source of information on the Internet.

You are looking at algorithmic feeds which propagate only information which has the majority vote. Not only that, but a majority vote of a community which becomes more radical as any opposition or moderates are pushed out.

Point a microphone at a speaker and crank the gain. That awful feedback noise is Reddit.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#123

Post by nextos »

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…

I have had similar induction experiences at some supposedly great academic institutions. The irony is that I am accepting a much lower pay at academia to, among other things, avoid experiencing this nonsense.

Dysfunctional organizations are something horrible we should punish as a society. They are an enormous waste of resources. I am surprised this Amazon department so dysfunctional, since the company as a whole is doing quite well.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#125

Post by tyingq »

ebiester wrote: post #73
999900000999 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The "Drug Free Workplace Act" does not require drug testing.

There are drug testing requirements for specific jobs/industries that are safety and security related.

https://www.samhsa.gov/workplace/legal/federal-laws/safety-s...

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#126

Post by tharkun__ »

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…

This is completely anecdotal and local but I am so with you there.

We have had really great experiences with tradespeople in one way and also incredibly bad with others.

A lot electrical work is required to be done by an electrician here. But what do you do when you have the electrician come out for a quote, you have the manufacturers manual opened to the page with the specs and the electrician can't make sense of it?

The specs clearly stated that the appliance needed multiple separate lines, including min wire gauge and the double pole breaker amperage. I knew I didn't have enough space in the panel for the required double poles. That's part of the reason I called the guy in the first place. And then he tells me it's no problem, the existing wire is sufficient and I can just order the appliance and he's gonna 'hook it up'. Unbelievable!

It took me quite some time of repeating (in different ways) all the info presented in the manual to get him to call his boss, read out the manual multiple times, telling me various half truths, being made to call his boss again and relay the parts of the specs he left out to arrive at the final answer.

The only thing that guy would've been good for is changing alight fixture, which is something you are required to hire an electrician for here. Where I grew up that is something an electrician will not even consider giving you a call back about if you were to try and hire him.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#127

Post by jnwatson »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #90
hhmc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what workforce size/turnover do you run into the issue that you might churn through your entire countrywide hiring pool?

There was a new article a few months ago about Amazon being worried about that very thing. So they're aware of it but corporate America has an ace up their sleeve they can always rely on: work visas. Politicians aren't going to say no when Amazon wants to import guest workers. Amazon done it for the white collar workers for decades, no doubt they'll be quite happy to do it with their blue collar workforce too.

It doesn’t scale. Even if they took 100% of the current US work visas, that would cover less than a third of their current hiring.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#128

Post by smt88 »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #99
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.

Most of the top posts have very similar construction: Employee: I can't come in today for a very good reason. Boss (rudely): You have to come in or you're fired. Employee: I quit. +1000 karma

Why do you think this doesn't happen often enough to fill a subreddit?

There are billions of workers around the world, tens of millions using reddit.

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#129

Post by poulsbohemian »

germinalphrase wrote: post #119
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…

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

I can’t speak to what it’s been like in the past, but this summer there were appraisals for basic houses being picked up for $2K. We’re so short of appraisers in our area that they are coming from the other side of the state - and it seems to be worth their wile $$$. On average they are running $800/ house… could it be that the AMS is taking all the money and the appraiser doesn’t get much? Maybe?

Re: I lasted three minutes at Amazon

#130

Post by wpietri »

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…

I can't help but think about POSIWID (the purpose of the system is what it does). This is not obvious for the stated purpose of the system. So what's the actual purpose?

Part of it's to make people feel powerful, like the person who gloried in busting people taking time off. Part of it's clearly conformance to plan, where people are rewarded for marking items in a list done, whether or not they were effective. And I'm sure there are executive metrics that hit targets, no matter how many unmeasured things get worse.

What else to people see?

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