Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

After price update, Amazon Prime members call Amazon Music “unusable”

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 50 posts

Re: After price update, Amazon Prime members call Amazon Music “unusable”

#21

Post by throwaway46829 »

acquiremoney wrote: post #19
ozzythecat wrote: post #16

Having worked at Amazon for well over a decade, here’s more or less what happened: 1. Product, in alignment with directors and VPs, have an overarching 3-5 year vision document 2. The document talks about “customer obsession” and a 2025 vision for “delighting customers” 3. Document has mostly fluff ideas, written by some MBA grad, on an H1B visa, who is feeling pressure to deliver a grand vision. Both to get promoted…

How is being on h1 relevant here? Visa or no visa people will act according to incentives designed by company. P.S I am on H1 visa. For sure I am offended.

I'd act differently if the worst that could happen from failing to deliver/someone thinking I had was being kicked out of the country rather than just unemployment, it's about sticks not carrots

Re: After price update, Amazon Prime members call Amazon Music “unusable”

#22

Post by bananarchist »

acquiremoney wrote: post #19
ozzythecat wrote: post #16

Having worked at Amazon for well over a decade, here’s more or less what happened: 1. Product, in alignment with directors and VPs, have an overarching 3-5 year vision document 2. The document talks about “customer obsession” and a 2025 vision for “delighting customers” 3. Document has mostly fluff ideas, written by some MBA grad, on an H1B visa, who is feeling pressure to deliver a grand vision. Both to get promoted…

How is being on h1 relevant here? Visa or no visa people will act according to incentives designed by company. P.S I am on H1 visa. For sure I am offended.

You're right to be offended but it honestly wouldn't surprise me if sponsoring tech companies rely on the implicit threat of deportation to extract performance just as non-sponsoring yet immigrant-reliant industries like food production do.

Re: After price update, Amazon Prime members call Amazon Music “unusable”

#23

Post by renewiltord »

acquiremoney wrote: post #19
ozzythecat wrote: post #16

Having worked at Amazon for well over a decade, here’s more or less what happened: 1. Product, in alignment with directors and VPs, have an overarching 3-5 year vision document 2. The document talks about “customer obsession” and a 2025 vision for “delighting customers” 3. Document has mostly fluff ideas, written by some MBA grad, on an H1B visa, who is feeling pressure to deliver a grand vision. Both to get promoted…

How is being on h1 relevant here? Visa or no visa people will act according to incentives designed by company. P.S I am on H1 visa. For sure I am offended.

Remember this when people ask for a software engineer union. The people standing to your right and left will be like this.

Put them all together to advocate together and think of what they will want done with you.

They've already got the angle to exploit you on lined up. And secretly, this is what they think. So what happens when you give them the power?

Re: After price update, Amazon Prime members call Amazon Music “unusable”

#24

Post by ozzythecat »

acquiremoney wrote: post #19
ozzythecat wrote: post #16

Having worked at Amazon for well over a decade, here’s more or less what happened: 1. Product, in alignment with directors and VPs, have an overarching 3-5 year vision document 2. The document talks about “customer obsession” and a 2025 vision for “delighting customers” 3. Document has mostly fluff ideas, written by some MBA grad, on an H1B visa, who is feeling pressure to deliver a grand vision. Both to get promoted…

How is being on h1 relevant here? Visa or no visa people will act according to incentives designed by company. P.S I am on H1 visa. For sure I am offended.

> How is being on h1 relevant here? Visa or no visa people will act according to incentives designed by company.

> P.S I am on H1 visa. For sure I am offended.

Most of these PMs are Indians on H1Bs. The incentive designed by the company is extracting a certain output, under specific work conditions, and it requires bringing employees to the US, at scale, and having their visa situation hanging over their head.

If you’re offended that Amazon is able to do that, at scale - I don’t fault you.

If you’re offended that I’m openly discussing this, then I would say I don’t agree with censoring what’s in fact reality.

So many questionable decisions were made, at least during my time at Amazon, because of a cut throat environment of fear. I had 1:1s where Indian employees would cry about the situation they find themselves in, where they often have to agree or do things they don’t want to do, out of fear of losing their job and having to relocate back to India.

Re: After price update, Amazon Prime members call Amazon Music “unusable”

#25

Post by Rebelgecko »

andrewnicolalde wrote: post #3
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Now if they can just bring back two day shipping Prime might be worthwhile.

Did Amazon actually drop this? I haven’t used prime in a very long time but this was pretty much the only reason I bothered.

When I've whined to their support about late packages, they've told me that "two day" just refers to the time my order spends actively in transit, NOT the time between when I place my order and receive the item. So if the item doesn't leave the warehouse for 5 days (to batch it with another order I placed, wait for shipping costs to cheaper on a certain day, or whatever) and then they send the item and it comes 2 days later they've still fulfilled their sacred oath. That would be considered 2 day shipping, not 7 days.

Re: After price update, Amazon Prime members call Amazon Music “unusable”

#26

Post by clnq »

acquiremoney wrote: post #19
ozzythecat wrote: post #16

Having worked at Amazon for well over a decade, here’s more or less what happened: 1. Product, in alignment with directors and VPs, have an overarching 3-5 year vision document 2. The document talks about “customer obsession” and a 2025 vision for “delighting customers” 3. Document has mostly fluff ideas, written by some MBA grad, on an H1B visa, who is feeling pressure to deliver a grand vision. Both to get promoted…

How is being on h1 relevant here? Visa or no visa people will act according to incentives designed by company. P.S I am on H1 visa. For sure I am offended.

Whether this is offensive or not, I have definitely seen worker visas used to exploit employees. And visa employees dealing with much more insanity than nationals. Sometimes it's overt, sometimes it happens in a proverbial boiling frog kind of way by the visa holding employee having to satisfy more and more inane manager expectations. But not being able to easily walk away from a company is not good.

Re: After price update, Amazon Prime members call Amazon Music “unusable”

#27

Post by olyjohn »

unethical_ban wrote: post #7
PaulHoule wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They quit trying to get me packages in 2 days sometime in the pandemic despite being just a few hours away from a fulfillment center where some relatives work. Oddly around the same time shipping seemed to speed up from other retailers like Best Buy, Target, Adorama, etc. I buy things from Japan on Ebay and get them more quickly than packages from AMZN. Every other retailer sees shipping as a way to impress me, AMZN…

Two day shipping expected and several hours away from a fulfillment center! Wow. I agree not to pay prime if they can't deliver. That said, I get 0/1/2 day delivery most of the time, but I live in a city.

I was kinda surprised when I dumped Prime. Most stuff still has free 2-3 day shipping on it. I think Amazon has shot themselves in the foot, and their own vendors are making Prime not worth paying for.

Re: After price update, Amazon Prime members call Amazon Music “unusable”

#28

Post by olyjohn »

filoleg wrote: post #13
TingPing wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All shipping for me is 2 day. They probably just don't explicitly promise it for all regions.

Yeah, it seems to be very regional. Here is my personal experience over the past year. In downtown Seattle/SLU area (aka "Amazon rainforest", due to that whole area having a very heavy concentration of Amazon offices), most packages take around 2 days. In Atlanta area (midtown and closeby sorta-suburban areas like Little Five and Edgewood), most packages take between same-day to 1-2 days (usually a bit less time than…

If you're in Seattle, you're probably getting packages from like Kent or Everett. I don't see how they could afford a warehouse anywhere near the city.

Re: After price update, Amazon Prime members call Amazon Music “unusable”

#30

Post by Gigachad »

xg15 wrote: post #11

So to get this right, am Amazon Prime membership will get you basically Spotify's free tier, while you need Prime + additional $9 a month to get service equivalent to Spotify Premium?

For all the complaining about Spotify in this website, they are still by far the best music streaming service.
Post reply on HN