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My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

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Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#231

Post by netfire »

iandanforth wrote: post #196

Serious question, isn't this what unions are for?

Unions seem like a good solution on the surface, but it seems like many unions quickly degrade into organizations focused more on self-preservation and expansion than looking after the interests and well-being of their members.

It seems like it also gets ugly, with unions not only striking for better pay and benefits, but also protesting and demeaning individuals and companies who aren't using union labor or putting in policies that work must be done by union workers that could easily be done by others at a much cheaper rate or with much less effort. ("Let's get a union electrician in here to run this extension cord")

I'd be more in favor of unions if it were done completely on a volunteer and donation basis, instead of with mandatory dues, paid leadership and policies that demonize those who choose not to join the union or people that choose not to use union labor.

An alternate solution would be to put laws in place that stops employers from preventing their employees from voicing concerns about policies and treatment publicly. (while still allowing employers to protect intellectual property rights) I'd argue that all these stories about the treatment of former Amazon employees will have more of an effect on Amazon, its hiring efforts and its policies than having a union threatening a strike would.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#232

Post by rthomas6 »

radiorental wrote: post #217
s3nnyy wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might sound crazy but on a software engineering salary, you can retire before 50 if you get used to spending little on food, transportation and shelter. My most favorite online resource on how to live frugally is this: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/how-i-became-financially-i... .

I've never understood the logic of giving up the things you enjoy in life to gain time in the future to enjoy life. I'm all for frugal but life isn't a dress rehearsal.

It makes more sense if you buy into the concept of hedonic adaptation [0], which I do. The gist is that your happiness is not influenced as much as you think by your standard of living, but rather by changes in that standard. Absent of changes, your happiness will return to around its baseline level, and this is true for both positive and negative changes. So if that is actually true, it's possible to have a significantly lower cost of living and the same level of happiness. Thinking long term, why wouldn't someone want that? In terms of life satisfaction, you lose almost nothing in exchange for a long period of increased freedom.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#233

Post by Thriptic »

outside1234 wrote: post #202
erikb wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the amount of emotional stress of the worker is mostly irrelevant to the manager. It only becomes a problem when the company gets bad press like from that article, or when the productivity of the team drops so much that he can't project success to his managers and peers. Our goal as workers can't be to tell our managers about our emotional stress (which he doesn't care about), but showing him alternatives th…

one thing: as a lead, i can tell you that managers are just as abused often times as the worker. that's where this pressure on the worker comes from: there is systematic top down hierarchical pressure applied that works almost like hydraulics. A sociopath like Bezos only has to beat down his 6 reports into accepting impossible goals (for a normal working schedule) and they will beat down their aggregate 48 reports an…

shit flows down hill

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#234

Post by hwstar »

toothbrush wrote: post #195
yummyfajitas wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India is a better bet. 10.5 hours away means they are nearly on the opposite schedule, price is better (wages only marginally, but Europe has lots of other costs) and you aren't stuck dealing with insane euro labor laws.

Insane euro labour laws are what help to keep us workers from breaking down here. Honestly, it's really a godsend.

Not insane at all. Those laws are rational, especially the Working Time Directive.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#235

Post by TTPrograms »

radiorental wrote: post #217
s3nnyy wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might sound crazy but on a software engineering salary, you can retire before 50 if you get used to spending little on food, transportation and shelter. My most favorite online resource on how to live frugally is this: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/how-i-became-financially-i... .

I've never understood the logic of giving up the things you enjoy in life to gain time in the future to enjoy life. I'm all for frugal but life isn't a dress rehearsal.

You slip that word "time" in there like it's secondary to the expenses that apparently are required to "enjoy life", but being able to buy time to spend how you like is pretty damn valuable to a lot of people.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#236

Post by no1youknowz »

lordnacho wrote: post #6

Looking at this story (the wider Amazon story) it seems to me a lot of the value is getting extracted from employees in a sort of creeping way. So you might go to an interview where the manager says there's pager duty now and again, but it's not too intense. You get on the job, and it's a whole lot more intense than expected. You can't leave because you've just turned down a bunch of other offers and moved towns. You…

I've turned down plenty of offers whenever the subjects come up.

There is a pager that rotates

There are meetings after office hours

There is a night-shift that rotates

There is support that everyone is expected to do

There is no training paid for by the company

There is no advancement in career (small company)

There is no payrise for the next N years

All of these things are a huge RED flag for me and I move on to another interview.

Seriously, no thanks!

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#237

Post by drzaiusapelord »

erikb wrote: post #81
lordnacho wrote: post #6

Looking at this story (the wider Amazon story) it seems to me a lot of the value is getting extracted from employees in a sort of creeping way. So you might go to an interview where the manager says there's pager duty now and again, but it's not too intense. You get on the job, and it's a whole lot more intense than expected. You can't leave because you've just turned down a bunch of other offers and moved towns. You…

I think that's what happens in most companies all the time, all around the planet. But the reason is not evil management and it's not a result of planned activity. Management is also hard. They also have to deliver too much with too little budget at hand. The only difference is that they earn more money and they often don't have to pull the team out of the B.S. themselves on weekends and late night hours. They are na…

I think you're overstating the case a little here. Instead of seeing everyone as a victim its fair to place blame somewhere and to discuss real solutions. Its obvious to me that if we had mandatory overtime pay for tech workers a lot of this toxic culture would dry up. Managers would push back onto senior leadership the real costs of working undermanned teams this hard. There would suddenly be a financial incentive to do things right and/or hire more people. Right now, there isn't. So of course, the organization just pushes people around. Why wouldn't it? There's really nothing stopping it.

Why aren't tech workers talking about overtime pay? That's the elephant in the room here. Everything about this situation screams 'underegulated industry.' Shame that techies themselves, let alone management, are usually far-right leaning. I think their political views are paying them a huge disservice right now.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#238

Post by hwstar »

outside1234 wrote: post #205

Ok, so Amazon is a turd of an employer. The question in my mind is how do we stop this abuse? Do we (as workers) put out a letter that asks for net average 40 hour weeks and ask companies to sign on to it? Do we keep naming and shaming like this? Or?

You write your state assembly person, state senator, federal congressperson, and federal senators and state that you want labor law reform similar to the European Working Time Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive for exempt employees. It enough people applied pressure to elected officials, this could be a reality.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#239

Post by VikingCoder »

imgabe wrote: post #223
enraged_camel wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. In most states companies can fire you for any reason, or even no reason. And if there is a reason, they aren't obligated to disclose it.

Except when you're fired without cause, you can collect unemployment, which costs the company money. So they usually either need cause - which means documenting poor performance for several months - or they have to gain more money than unemployment costs by letting you go i.e. layoffs. If you're creating value for the company, even if it's not the extreme 80 hours per week value they want, it still makes more financi…

We're moving you from a level 6 engineer to a level 3 engineer, with reduced pay and benefits. We don't think you're contributing at the level we hired you at. Your job has also been relocated to ISIS-controlled territory in Syria. And you need to learn COBOL. And your job now requires 85% time travel on small, yellow, inflatable boats that leak somewhat.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#240

Post by vfclists »

pjc50 wrote: post #82
mattmanser wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's happening across the world at the moment isn't it? Doesn't seem to be linked to the demise of unions. Admittedly, there needs to be a new version of unions, the next evolution. We need the next Marx to bring the pendulum back.

demise of unions The demise of unions is also a general phenomenon across the western world. It's not helped by the migration of lots of factory industries to parts of the world without strong unions and with plenty of hungry workers. Ultimately unions have only one effective negotiating tool: the strike. And if it's easy to replace striking workers, it's not an effective tool. It's also very disruptive (in the bad s…

Strking is no different from a seller refusing to sell if the buyer can't meet their price. The difference is that corporations are able to get the press on their side because the press depend on them for the advertisement income.

In respect of London's striking transport workers. The reason is simple, both London Transport and the rail networks are monopolies, so customers have no option.

Imagine if Tesco workers went on strike. Shoppers would go to Sainsbury's, Asda (Walmart), Morrison etc. Both managers and workers both lose if they strike. In the case of London Transport and the Rail Networks, commuters have no where to go and both strikers and management know that.

In a case where the service was not a monopoly the management would try to come to an agreement because of the competitors waiting in the wings. LT and the unions can both play hardball because the commuters are captive.

You can't always blame striking unions for LT's issues.

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