141–150 of 178 posts
Speaking as a developer at Amazon.com, what contractors? I've never met any, and I only have heard of one who left a while ago. Edit later: Developer contractors at least. I mean, sure, cleaning staff are contractors/temps.
I mean, sure, cleaning staff are contractors/temps. Obviously people like that don't deserve any kind of job security and should be fired annually. /sarcasm
This is poor practice no matter who you are.
> In this terrible economy, I am grateful for the work Seattle's unemployment rate is 4%, which is basically optimal and near what it was before the recession. https://www.google.com/search?q=seattle+unemployment+rate Seattle real-estate has almost completely rebounded. http://www.zillow.com/local-info/WA-Seattle-home-value/r_160... People may not realize it yet, but the recession is over. If Amazon values the work t…
People may not realize it yet, but the recession is over. Nobody wants to "realize" it. It makes for a better narrative if we're still in the throes of depression. "In this tough economy..." It's easier to rationalize negative things in your life if you can attribute them to things outside your control, like the economy.
Yes, there are laws that prevent you from employing a temp for an extended period of time. It's somewhere around a year; I forget exactly, but it's a law that attempts to protect temps from indefinite temp status. It's supposed to compel the company to hire that temp if they really want them.
There are also laws that prevent you from hiring a temp back within some period of time, so the company doesn't just skirt the issue by firing-then-hiring the temp with a one week break in the middle.
The reason a good temp isn't hired has nothing to do with benefits. Benefits aren't really that expensive relative to a knowledge worker salary.
The reason is because FT headcount is one kind of expense and contractors are another. The budget for FT head is very difficult to drop (it's called layoffs) and actually grows every year because of raises. Contractors are part of slosh money (e.g., "program spend").
So departments are told: "You can have a head budget of $XX and a program budget of $YY." The implicit understanding is that $XX will hold or grow across budget planning (i.e., "We won't make you drop your head budget unless we're actually doing layoffs or moving teams out of your department") and that the $YY can fluctuate.
Departments can generally spend the $YY any way they see fit, and often times, they need workers, so... temps. And if the company is financially stable (which I assume Amazon is), $YY doesn't drop that much so you end up with a long time with enough $YY to keep temps on for a long time, but there isn't enough faith in needing the department at that larger size to increase $XX enough.
I've also seen a lot of temps hang around for a year then get let go because there were just mediocre. Good enough to be productive, not bad enough to go recruiting again, and definitely not good enough to go use a bullet on fighting for increasing $XX. I'm not saying the OP is that case, but I'm sure we've all seen the mediocre temp (or FT) worker hang on.
EDIT: I should add that I'm not at a large company any more. Co-founded a second startup. Woohoo!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that it is nothing any CEO would act on of itself but.. I suspect the point was to put enough personal context into the complaint to provoke sympathy, provoke noise, get it widely read and even hopefully get it across the CEO's desk at some point where the author's thesis will at least fleetingly get considered. At that point, gathering information to test whether the temp system is a net loss or a net gain c…
Calling it a "thesis" is awfully generous. It really doesn't matter if it accomplishes the same, but I have a hard time believing that the author was so deliberate. The simpler explanation is that he was just emotional and complaining about perceived unfair treatment. Sympathy can lead to action, but provoking sympathy on an irrelevant point can lead to action you never expected. It might simply lead to finding the m…
I didn't get 'emotional', I thought the OA was actually quite measured and well written. The audience isn't Mr Bezos of course.
What I did get was annoyance at the lack of quality in the process. I agree that the author has not established that the lack of quality arose from the hiring policy. If the first manager had not been reassigned, would things have been better?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
re: "management people" That is part of the problem. You will often find that the skills it takes to climb the corporate ladder are not the same as the skills it takes to be a good manager. Management in bigger companies tends to be littered with well connected but incompetent people who are really good at bullshitting and 'looking the part'. This doesn't apply to every manager, but it is common enough that you are a…
The problem boils down to that managers are rewarded by their upper-managers for doing things that make the upper-managers happy, and are rarely rewarded for doing things that make their TEAM BETTER. So as a result, most managers practice schmoozing the management hierarchy, and not at all about making more effective teams. And then guess which one they get better at? (hint: the one they do more of) And then which on…
Any sufficiently large organisation becomes an ecosystem.
To succeed inside that ecosystem might damage the ecosystem itself in the wider world, but that doesn't matter in the short term to those inside it. At a certain size the ecosystem seems invulnerable and everlasting, and eclipses the wider world for those inside it.
This happens not just in corporations, but in any other social grouping I've seen, including governments, politics, and academia. It's very hard to avoid when any significant number of people are involved.
> In this terrible economy, I am grateful for the work Seattle's unemployment rate is 4%, which is basically optimal and near what it was before the recession. https://www.google.com/search?q=seattle+unemployment+rate Seattle real-estate has almost completely rebounded. http://www.zillow.com/local-info/WA-Seattle-home-value/r_160... People may not realize it yet, but the recession is over. If Amazon values the work t…
Given the razor thin margins that Amazon runs with, I am not surprised. This is a company that is struggling to make any money even after people bought hundreds of Billions of dollars worth of stuff from them. They are bound to cut corners to stay alive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is why I'm trying to figure out what, specifically, is being objected to. I'm getting the sense that there is a context beyond the article that I am not familiar with, which is fair enough, I suppose, but I don't see anything in the article to suggest that this employment was in any way unusual or exploitative, at least, not as I understand it.
I think you're looking for points to argue on and prove your superior understanding of economics and fair labor, and in the process brushing away important points and ignoring the insights of peoples' comments. You've asked for more context, so here's what I have that is not talked about in the article. Leading up to 2006-2007 and the financial crisis, these entry level jobs were salaried positions with standard bene…