Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#111

Post by maximus-decimus » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 4:12 AM UTC

ROTMetro wrote: post #107

maximus-decimus wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? Basically Bezos is able to make money while treating his employees better than competition and paying them more than competition... and I should be mad because he could pay them more if he wanted?

Where do they pay more than the competition for the same physicality of the job, and same injury risk, same pushing workers past what is safe? Show me a single business that has the same STATISTICALLY accurate (not your current 'seat of the pants' assessment) work (that means includes physicality of the job, you know, like resulting in workers peeing in soda bottles because they can't get a bathroom break without it…

I don't have stats, but the parent was arguing that even if you assume what I said is true, he still wouldn't use Amazon because somebody who makes more money should pay more, but their competitor doesn't have to because they're poor.

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#112

Post by crossroadsguy » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 4:19 AM UTC

kshacker wrote: post #85

nivenkos wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for us Europoors. Joining meetings at Seattle time (like 7-8pm CET), meanwhile you're being paid less than half of what the American engineers earn at the same level. But they know there's so few options in Europe so they set the salaries according to "local market conditions".

Same for us in Bay Area with 7 AM calls to talk to our euro brethren. It is not all rosy. And with the on call shift (when on call, not every week) going till 6:30 pM, sometimes it is 12 hour work days by design. on the other hand, they don't bug us much during the day with micro management so it is not all bad.

Hehe. 12 hours!

In India it’s routine (in fact standard) for US companies to have the Indian on-call person for 24x7 on-call. Rarely companies have follow the sun policy. Very few! Definitely not Ubers and Amazons.

And Indian managers are the enforcers of this - it’s probably one of the only significant USP these managers have “I’ll get it done by same engineers at the lower Indian rates“.

US HR and leadership wash their hands off the problem - “oh, we give you full ownership, you should decide and own this” :)

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#113

Post by GoldenMonkey » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 4:27 AM UTC

Danieru wrote: post #64

ignoramous wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's actually not stupid. It’s genius. Not if the secret's out, one would imagine?

The secret has been out for over a decade. Yet Amazon still get new hires.

It’s pretty well known in tech. I never respond to amazon HR. Been doing that for 5 years now.

They are running out of ppl to hire. Now, to figure out how to short amazon… maybe they last another 5 years… before they just implode.

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#114

Post by GoldenMonkey » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 4:34 AM UTC

yrgulation wrote: post #59

I absolutely wouldnt mind waiting an extra day or two for my package if it means better working conditions for warehouse and software workers at amazon. I wouldnt mind if bezos earned a little less either. For now tho i stopped using it all together.

Already happening without better conditions. Amazon prime delivery is so unreliable now. I live 1/2 mile from the distribution center. And 1 out of 3 packages are always late. Sometimes a week late.

Quality and reliability are declining rapidly.

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#115

Post by emptysongglass » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 5:17 AM UTC

RestlessMind wrote: post #110

lamontcg wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. You're doing the same work. It is fair to get paid the same for the same work.

I live in Silicon Valley and had to pay a plumber 150USD just to visit and fix a small problem. Do you pay a plumber in your area 150USD (in local currency) for 30min of work? If not, why not?

Yes in Denmark it can be even higher than this. So Danes are being compensated (it's actually much less than SV programmers: I'm getting a take home of 81k a year for senior) but are paying more for plumbers.

This is one hundred percent a problem of exploitation and cultural expectations and needs to change.

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#116

Post by ben_w » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 8:24 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #109

UweSchmidt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello Neoclassical Economics: Humans are rational actors in an ideal market, in which supply and demand is rationalizing out anything bad . Is that really the world we live in? Have you met rational humans? Are we living in ideal markets? Truth is, bad situations of all sorts are springing up and remaining in place long-term. A closer look at each individual issue (as done in this thread) reveals complex factors that…

You seem to be confusing the definition for "moral" with the definition for "ethical".

Despite my A-level in philosophy, I have no idea what the difference between those might be. Every example sentence I just thought of, I can substitute "moral" for "ethical" or vice versa without changing the meaning.

I then googled just in case I might have missed something, but it says "ethical" is "relating to moral principles or the branch of knowledge dealing with these", so again…

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#117

Post by ben_w » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 10:58 AM UTC

nivenkos wrote: post #103

soulofmischief wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that Indian workers are held hostage due to threat of deportation / returning home. European remote workers still live at home and have much more job mobility.

European workers face the same threat in the USA...

When we're in the US, sure; but the implication of your previous comment was that this was remote work.

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#118

Post by ben_w » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 12:46 PM UTC

Der_Einzige wrote: post #81

pjc50 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We had specific projects where we easily burned out dozens of engineers "Amazon" is named after the rainforest, and like the rainforest, developers are an infinite resource that you can burn down forever and there will never be any consequences .. until somehow you run out. Really the only solution to this is for people to withdraw their labour - not just unionization but refusing to work for them in the first plac…

I straight up refuse to do phone interviews with them and force them to move me directly to an onsite (which I won't study for) just so that I can waste their engineers time and maybe have a tiny chance of stroking my ego by getting a FAANG offer. No FAANG offer yet, but by my calculations, Amazon has wasted 5 digit sums on assesing me. Bezos made it personal with how he treated my partner while they worked for him,…

I sympathise, but wasting 5 digits of Bezos' paper net worth, is like someone trying to take revenge on most people here by a dime.

"But for me, it was Tuesday", as the trope is called.

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#119

Post by paulryanrogers » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 12:54 PM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #97

paulryanrogers wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people pay plumbers the same in SF as they do in Charlotte? As an employee I want to be paid the highest that anyone else is paid for the same work. More so if the value generated is the same regardless of location. Yet I can understand employers wanting to help maintain sustainable communities, even where cost of living is high. Governments too want some control over their currencies and its value.

I don't desperately need to have understanding for governments or corporations. They can all take care of themselves without my help.

My point is it's a collective concern too. Because without coordinating all prices globally there will be variance in costs of living. Which could price out lower valued jobs from certain areas entirely.

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#120

Post by ridgered4 » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 2:16 PM UTC

Max-Ganz-II wrote: post #25

I stopped using Amazon for shopping about two years ago, because of how they treat warehouse staff. I never thought to work at Amazon, because I heard from multiple colleagues, former employees, that Amazon is profoundly metric based; then the stories such as this, about burning out staff, and about the fake PIP process, began surfacing.

I've been pretty dismayed that sometimes when I buy products elsewhere the seller often just buys them off amazon and then ships them to me, basically defeating my whole effort.