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An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

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Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#171

Post by wildwood »

pisarzp wrote: post #36

I'll try to play devil's advocate role. "One day that all changed. Our experienced team leader was transferred to a different department" It looks like the main problem was not Amazon's practices, just poor performance of the manager. However, we cannot blame Amazon for not giving managerial position to one of the contractors, when they have experienced internal candidate for this position. People get bored and like…

I can almost guarantee that the 11-month max is Amazon's policy response to the Microsoft permatemps lawsuit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp - scroll down to the Vizcaino v. Microsoft section.

Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#172

Post by wildwood »

smsm42 wrote: post #96

I'm confused as for why one would let go a successful employee that worked for 11 months just not to let them work for 12th. Is there some regulation there that significantly changes the cost structure and forces this behavior? Is the change of the cost structure so great that it actually exceeds the cost of constant retraining and the risk of a team completely disintegrating like we witness in the OP article? We're…

If the workers are being classified as contractors, then it's important to have an arbitrary cut-off that limits how long they can work at your company. Otherwise some people can get kept on as contractors indefinitely, when they should have been re-coded as full-time employees.

Of course, this isn't a limit on length of employment, just a limit on the length of someone's employment as a contractor. Plenty of companies use more of a "contract to hire" approach, and make a decision whether or not to convert employees to full time at the end of the contract.

Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#173

Post by wildwood »

bane wrote: post #104

What's the deal with the precise 11 month figure? Is that a Washington State legal thing or some bizarre arbitrary Amazon thing. Seems downright stupid for a skilled position IMHO.

They're contractors. Treating contractors like they're full-time employees, without giving them full-time benefits, can get a company sued, not to mention dinged by the IRS for back payroll taxes.

One way to keep the contractors separate is to only have them employed for a limited time, usually in stints of less than a year.

Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#174

Post by thisisnotatest »

Kapura wrote: post #76
Jormundir wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not judging the company on a few internet articles, they're judging the company on the immoral hiring practices they use. Even if it's not for the entirety of the company, it is still significant. Obviously they pay tech workers well, they have to in order to get them to work there. They would have a very difficult time contracting tech employees, because there are so many alternative places to work. A perfec…

So you're saying that this company, which is playing by the rules (in that they aren't breaking any laws with their hiring practices), ought to make a move away from the practices that made them a hundred-billion dollar company because you feel that it's immoral. Do you see how that might look somewhat idealistic and, dare I say, foolish? I never supported the 'Occupy' protests mainly because you can't influence a co…

Off-topic, but > I never supported the 'Occupy' protests mainly because you can't influence a corporation by yelling at it. Sitting in front of those banks in NYC or wherever didn't actually change shit. You know why? Because businesses are not in the business of making people happy.

I don't think a single Occupy protester on Wall Street believed that they would get one of these too-big-to-fail financial institutions to change voluntarily by them "yelling at it." They were trying to shine the spotlight on what they felt the real problem was, and change the national discourse, probably with the long term political goal of changing the laws to change the incentive structures of those businesses.

Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#175

Post by smsm42 »

wildwood wrote: post #172
smsm42 wrote: post #96

I'm confused as for why one would let go a successful employee that worked for 11 months just not to let them work for 12th. Is there some regulation there that significantly changes the cost structure and forces this behavior? Is the change of the cost structure so great that it actually exceeds the cost of constant retraining and the risk of a team completely disintegrating like we witness in the OP article? We're…

If the workers are being classified as contractors, then it's important to have an arbitrary cut-off that limits how long they can work at your company. Otherwise some people can get kept on as contractors indefinitely, when they should have been re-coded as full-time employees. Of course, this isn't a limit on length of employment, just a limit on the length of someone's employment as a contractor. Plenty of compani…

Yes, I know this model - the company I work for has been using it quite successfully to hire candidates in some cases. But usually it is clear if the candidate is good or not in 2-3 months, so a limit at 11 months and firing successful workers because they reached 11 months and then hiring untrained workers for the same position seems strange. So I wondered what causes such behavior.

Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#176

Post by smsm42 »

flaviusb wrote: post #158
smsm42 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying the markets are unfair. I'm saying that's what exploitation theory assumes (which theory I am in no way supporting or endorsing) - the base for "exploitation" theory is that the market price diverges from the supposedly "fair" price, and the difference is the measure of "exploitation". This presupposes that a) "fair" price is known and b) it is different from market price.

Two points: 1) The general (non-Marxist) idea is not that 'the market price is unfair, so we should set different prices ourselves', but rather that the market isn't magic, and does not appear ex nihilo, but is impacted by many things. Some of those things (such as law about hiring, firing, welfare, safety, and so on) can materially affect the negotiation in a way that is patently not fair. For example, if unions had…

>>> can materially affect the negotiation in a way that is patently not fair.

Here you have to define what "fair" means. One of the definitions would be using extra-market coercion to influence the price - see unions example - is not fair, since it uses forceful coercion to benefit one side. However, unions often claim they need the coercion to reach "fair" prices since otherwise it is "unfair". So what is "fair" here? How you find out if voluntary agreement of two people is "fair" or not?

>>>> we have to destroy capitalism and abolish wage slavery.

Since the only other alternative that we've seen so far is non-wage slavery (at least until we find enough people that agree to work for free that we can create non-scarcity economy) this makes this definition of "fair" rather unappealing. The problem here is that voluntary structures tend to become markets, and calling non-voluntary arrangements "fair" has to rely on notion of fairness of those who apply coercion to support the non-voluntary nature, which very soon devolves into very peculiar understanding of "fairness".

Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#177

Post by wpietri »

WalterBright wrote: post #80
wpietri wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is part and parcel of current corporate theory. The mantra of "increase shareholder value" really means "make the investors happy", which currently means "make the quarterly number look great". Combine that with a giant primate dominance hierarchy, where the only goal is to please the bigger monkeys, and idiocy like this is basically inevitable. This isn't the only way to run companies, but it's the only way mos…

> which currently means "make the quarterly number look great". Corporations with high P/E ratios are the counterexample to this, and Amazon in particular has a very high P/E.

Can you name some more long-running exceptions?

Amazon is an outlier in American corporate culture. Its founder and very active CEO is somebody who double-majored in CS and EE. My explanation of them is that Bezos never was indoctrinated with MBA dogma, and instead runs his company like an engineer. He's been lucky enough (and skillful enough) that Amazon has always done well enough that his investors have never pushed for a "real" CEO.

So for me, Amazon is proof twice over for my theory that MBA dogma isn't even very good for business. Not only are they doing well in the long term by not giving a crap about quarterly numbers, but they don't have serious competitors because typical execs don't even get how they're being run over.

Re: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

#178

Post by Filligree »

saalweachter wrote: post #168
Filligree wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So.. hold on. If the companies have no profits, and investors get no return. ..why would you want to invest?

Hypothetically you are betting on future profits. Historically, business ventures like Amazon have had two phases: a fast growth phase, and a long, stable, profitable phase. You don't expect profits while the business is still growing. You expect them to plow the profits back in to make it grow more. As long as companies can maintain absurd year-over-year growth, investors are willing to pretend that the company need…

Then it'll be interesting to see what happens if they hit their stable phase, and proceed to give out no dividends whatsoever.
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