I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento • Hacker News Board

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#21

Post by brownbat » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

frereubu wrote: post #3

As David Runciman has pointed out in his book How Democracy Ends and on the Talking Politics podcast - https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/blog/2017/71-how-demo... - if you could only ask one question of someone you'd never met before, which would give you the best possibility of guessing whether they'd voted for Brexit, it would be whether they went to university (Remain) or not (Leave). He argues that, in the UK…

That University disconnect is powerful and cuts across issues.

I remember hearing a freshman lawmaker talk about transitioning from other fields into politics. The first thing campaign advisers did was cut all references to advanced degrees from her website, replacing them with stories about how her grandfather was a farmer.

30 Rock's Duffy--a caricature of someone unrelatable--described his politics as "Fiscal liberal, social conservative" in one throwaway joke.[0]

I thought it was pretty clever at the time, but the college-educated writers of 30 Rock and I probably underestimated the relatability of Duffy's position.

I read a political attitudes survey a few years later that contrasted beliefs of constituents with representatives. It found that Republican constituencies are far more sympathetic to large government programs and redistribution than their reps, and Democratic constituencies are far more supportive of morality-based restrictions and social regulations than their reps would suggest.

Maybe most of the population is far more like Duffy, but education operates as a filter, making you either passionate about fiscal responsibility from econ classes, or passionate about social freedom and tolerance from liberal arts classes, or some mix of both.

That is likely to cause some friction.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/30ROCK/comments/88ztl8/dennis_duffy... He naturally meant liberal in the American sense.

[1] I've done a quick review of political attitudes lit and sadly can't find the study at the moment, will update if I find it and would welcome anyone pointing me the right direction if this sounds familiar.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#22

Post by seraphsf » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:35 PM UTC

conorh wrote: post #10

I had read a few of these negative articles about Amazon fulfillment centers and then a guy we know working the counter at our local pizza place got a job at one of them. That made me change my mind and doubt the reporting after talking with him. The pay was much better better, the benefits if he transitioned to full time were much better, and he was really excited about a program Amazon has to cover tuition after (I…

Reminds me of the classic Nicholas Kristof article, “Two Cheers for Sweatshops”. (http://archive.is/W6ABE) The gist of which is, a job can be ‘not good’ from the perspective of the privileged but still ‘much better than the alternatives’ from the perspective of the people who take that job.

If the employer of a “sweatshop job” is not coercing or lying to its employees, then I have a hard time faulting the employer directly. We may still want systemic change to create more options and more equity for employees, but the “sweatshop” (that pays more than alternatives and which employees freely choose) is not the villain in this story.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#23

Post by Guest42 » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

the8472 wrote: post #19

locallost wrote: post #14

> or that workers somewhere in Iceland (360,000) have been required to work around a fallen co-worker. But neither of these things, if they happened, would be proof that working conditions in Luxembourg or Iceland are appalling. They would however be proof that working conditions in a company in Iceland are appalling.

Not really, since they are single events you don't know anything about the frequency and how it compares to the frequency in other locations. The law of large number causes unusual events to happen every day, which means the more globally your news operates the more freak events you can accumulate. Your town newspaper regularly reporting that someone had to work next to a corpse would be concerning. BBC world news re…

"The weak law of large numbers states that the sample average converges in probability towards the expected value"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#24

Post by locallost » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

the8472 wrote: post #19

locallost wrote: post #14

> or that workers somewhere in Iceland (360,000) have been required to work around a fallen co-worker. But neither of these things, if they happened, would be proof that working conditions in Luxembourg or Iceland are appalling. They would however be proof that working conditions in a company in Iceland are appalling.

Not really, since they are single events you don't know anything about the frequency and how it compares to the frequency in other locations. The law of large number causes unusual events to happen every day, which means the more globally your news operates the more freak events you can accumulate. Your town newspaper regularly reporting that someone had to work next to a corpse would be concerning. BBC world news re…

I wish this was the only report about Amazon's poor working conditions. But it's not true, is it?

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#25

Post by m0zg » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

I (and people I directly worked with) have been interviewed a couple of times by what one would call "mainstream press". Once by a NY Times columnist and another time by TechCrunch.

The resulting articles bore very little semblance to what we said, omitted crucial facts, and contained the kinds of exaggerations that neither I nor any of the people interviewed would ever make. I'm talking "breaking the laws of physics" kind of exaggerations, and making it look like we said things that not only aren't true now, but will never be true in the future, which is something that would be immediately obvious to a technically competent person in our field of work.

Nothing changes one's view of the press quite as readily as being a part of the news. I'd wager the majority of what you see and read is handpicked BS made to fit an agenda, and outright lies to drive traffic aren't as infrequent as you think. If you think the tech press is any different, you're naive. There's really no incentive structure currently in place for reporting to be factual and balanced. You always get the behavior you reward.

I now always try to "read between the lines", like I would back in the Soviet Union when reading Pravda.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#26

Post by Spooky23 » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

hogu wrote: post #13

iamtheworstdev wrote: post #4

John Oliver did not say that Amazon had an employee die. John Oliver started off talking about Amazon and then switched the discussion to the companies trying to keep up with Amazon (in the order fulfillment business) which is where said death occurred. These competitors apparently have far worse employee treatment than Amazon but claim they have to in order to keep prices down due to Amazon's efficiency.

I believe the specific incident is xpo logistics https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/21/business/preg... For example, last October, a 58-year-old woman died of cardiac arrest on the warehouse floor after complaining to colleagues that she felt sick, according to a police report and current and former XPO employees. In Facebook posts at the time and in recent interviews, employees said supervisors told them to…

A relative worked in a big bank in the 80s where a vendor CE died of a heart attack while doing maintenance on a mainframe at 6AM.

Directed by operations management, security did a “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for” move, rebuffed first responders, who shrugged and left. Employees in the data center were directed to go about their business. They rolled the guy around for most of the day until someone told a bigshot of sufficient stature to override the lunacy of the production control people.

Given sufficient empowerment and toxic enough culture, people are capable of anything.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#27

Post by nova22033 » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:46 PM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #25

I (and people I directly worked with) have been interviewed a couple of times by what one would call "mainstream press". Once by a NY Times columnist and another time by TechCrunch. The resulting articles bore very little semblance to what we said, omitted crucial facts, and contained the kinds of exaggerations that neither I nor any of the people interviewed would ever make. I'm talking "breaking the laws of physics…

Were you quoted by name?

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#28

Post by CM30 » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:48 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #15

brownbat wrote: post #5

I especially liked the points about how often we vary our criticism of journalism based on the topic. Reminded me a lot of Gell Mann amnesia, which I catch myself suffering from a little too often: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

This is great, we all do this too. Even when you try not to you’re still bombarded with ‘news’ all the time and can only invest so much cognitive effort to each. So we end up deferring so much of common knowledge to news sites. Only a small percentage of those are trained journalists with time and budgets.

Honestly, most trained journalists make similar mistakes, simply because they're not people with experience in a field or industry.

Even assuming they're 100% honest about their intentions and trying to minimise factual errors overall (which isn't always the case), it's still a person/people at an organisation doing research into something they're not experts in and trying to distill their findings down to a level understandable by their publication's audience. Usually with limited time and a limited budget.

By definition they will make mistakes, and probably quite a lot of them too. Just like a software engineer would if they were told to write an article on astrophysics or molecular biology without any real experience in either field.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#29

Post by the8472 » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:49 PM UTC

locallost wrote: post #24

the8472 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, since they are single events you don't know anything about the frequency and how it compares to the frequency in other locations. The law of large number causes unusual events to happen every day, which means the more globally your news operates the more freak events you can accumulate. Your town newspaper regularly reporting that someone had to work next to a corpse would be concerning. BBC world news re…

I wish this was the only report about Amazon's poor working conditions. But it's not true, is it?

No, the article has multiple arguments.

One is reporting on extremely unusual things (working next to corpses), which hopefully don't happen in amazon facilities more regularly than in any other facility but due to amazon's size even a low probability of such a thing happening on any particular day means it's eventually going to happen in one of their facilities.

Another is that the undercover reporters come from an environment where what's considered normal or even better-than-averagee in manual labor jobs would seem outrageous if someone demanded it from them in their regular jobs.

Combining unusual cherry-picked events with their own perception tinted with nightmare vision goggles leads to biased reporting that may not necessarily reflect the experience of most workers.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#30

Post by hackermailman » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 7:50 PM UTC

seraphsf wrote: post #22

conorh wrote: post #10

I had read a few of these negative articles about Amazon fulfillment centers and then a guy we know working the counter at our local pizza place got a job at one of them. That made me change my mind and doubt the reporting after talking with him. The pay was much better better, the benefits if he transitioned to full time were much better, and he was really excited about a program Amazon has to cover tuition after (I…

Reminds me of the classic Nicholas Kristof article, “Two Cheers for Sweatshops”. ( http://archive.is/W6ABE ) The gist of which is, a job can be ‘not good’ from the perspective of the privileged but still ‘much better than the alternatives’ from the perspective of the people who take that job. If the employer of a “sweatshop job” is not coercing or lying to its employees, then I have a hard time faulting the employer…

I saw a documentary once on a slum in Kampala, where they interviewed a guy living in the slum who's job it was to clean out the public toilets there. He claimed it was one of the 'best jobs', because he was paid on time, given a uniform/gloves to wear instead of having to buy one himself, set his own hours, and the labor was not back breaking agricultural labor in the open sun all day. He also remarked he was able to contribute to his community in a positive way by keeping it clean, something all the other residents rewarded him for with various tips as thanks for his service since they had to use those toilets everyday. Wasn't the response I expected.