My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#241

Post by imgabe » Wed, Aug 19, 2015, 3:58 PM UTC

VikingCoder wrote: post #239

imgabe wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Eh, paid time to learn COBOL, then leave for a cushy job maintaining legacy bank systems. OSHA will definitely have some questions about why programming for a web retailer requires travelling on leaky inflatable boats.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#242

Post by bkeroack » Wed, Aug 19, 2015, 4:00 PM UTC

s3nnyy wrote: post #159

nogridbag wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I chose a similar route because of perks and pay. My only fear is this choice hurting my future employment when I'll likely be discriminated due to age. I would imagine having Google or Facebook on my resume would surely make getting a job at age 50+ much easier.

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... .

Retirement is mainly appealing to those who don't like what they do for a living.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#243

Post by exodust » Wed, Aug 19, 2015, 4:04 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #181

The Nightly Show (with Larry Wilmore) talked about this the other day and while it is a comedy show I was a little surprised at what the guests said about it. The "This isn't going to stop anyone from ordering from Amazon" statements were to be expected and honestly, are any of us going to stop? But the one thing they did touch on that I hadn't even considered was a general sentiment of "They make boatloads of money…

And why are we hearing the story from the wife?

Should we presume the man had any editorial control?

"Honey, I think it will sound better if it comes from you."

My sympathy meter is barely flinching on this one sorry.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#244

Post by radiorental » Wed, Aug 19, 2015, 4:06 PM UTC

rthomas6 wrote: post #232

radiorental wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 signific…

I could not agree more. However, I will make the distinction between perceived happiness and experience.

Put very simply: over a 10 year period I could invest in a BMW or flights back to Europe to visit family. I will spare no expense giving our parents time with their grandchildren before it's too late.

I'm more than happy to drive my POS '04 Mazda 6.

When I read 'to live frugally so as to retire at 50' I see a lot of lost experiences that can enrich both now and later.

Find the right job and enjoy life now.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#245

Post by hwstar » Wed, Aug 19, 2015, 4:07 PM UTC

hwstar wrote: post #238

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.

Boilerplate to use to write your senators and congresspersons:

In light of the recent allegations of employee mistreatment at Amazon.com, maybe it is time to redefine what an exempt employee is under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

I would like to propose changes similar to the European Working Time Directive if 1993. Here is the link with more details:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:320...

Labor law in the US must be harmonized with the rest of the developed world.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#246

Post by yarrel » Wed, Aug 19, 2015, 4:07 PM UTC

VikingCoder wrote: post #239

imgabe wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hello constructive dismissal!

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#247

Post by bkeroack » Wed, Aug 19, 2015, 4:08 PM UTC

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.

There's a great moment in the documentary about Joan Rivers[1] before she died (was killed, basically). Sitting in her opulent, probably immensely expensive Manhattan penthouse apartment, in the middle of a discussion about how much money she has to make to stay afloat, she said something to the effect of: "Sure I could live carefully and it would be easy, but who wants to live carefully?".

The point being, if you enjoy your lifestyle, and you really enjoy working hard (she defined herself by her work, so there was no other option to her), what is the point of frugality? Why amass a huge bank account just to die and leave it to someone else[2]?

1. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1568150/

2. Some might argue that one ought to save so one's children can get a nice inheritance. I'm not convinced that it's helpful for offspring to get (or expect) a big windfall that they don't have to work for. I suspect some people have an ulterior motive: they use a large inheritance as a way of blackmailing children into taking care of them in their old age. I find that distasteful.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#248

Post by wfo » Wed, Aug 19, 2015, 4:08 PM UTC

saiya-jin wrote: post #147

apexkid wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for not saying that its better than a brothel of Bangladesh and China. It was clear in what context I have written my comment. Your argument can be qualified as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

well, his (valid) point is, that arguably most of this planet inahbitants would do anything possible to get a job like that, for even half the income. which is true. just we in IT and developers in particular are in these days amazingly spoiled, full of this feeling that we are some engineer++, more clever, and generally better than say construction engineers (or any other for that matter). back home we have a saying…

With this attitude, so long as there are people worse off you never have a right to complain; if more people believed the way you do we would all race to the bottom into functional slavery, because, hey, some people are actual slaves, or dying on the street, or permanently disabled who am I to complain about working for 3 cents a year? Some people would kill for that job.

Luckily almost nobody outside of weird extremist libertarian communities on the internet that you find odd pockets of on HN and such believe this.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#249

Post by radiorental » Wed, Aug 19, 2015, 4:09 PM UTC

TTPrograms wrote: post #235

radiorental wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I live a modest life by US standards. My point is that both Quality and Experience of life change over time. Backloading time to the second half comes at an irrecoverable cost.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#250

Post by grecy » Wed, Aug 19, 2015, 4:10 PM UTC

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…

My former company (a telco) offered me an amazing "promotion". Way more responsibility, way more accountability, AND formally on-call off hours and weekends. The schedule was vague, but it looked like roughly one week in three I couldn't be more than 30 minutes from the office, had to respond all the time, etc.

All of this for the amazing salary raise of zero dollars and zero cents over my existing salary! Needless to say I no longer work there - but they found someone else to do it.