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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

#261

Post by muraiki »

deskamess wrote: post #214
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…

There is no recourse for this because IT workers do not have to be (legally) paid overtime. Remove that legality and enforce overtime to be paid at 1.5x regular wage, and you should see a better workplace and higher employment. I think productivity numbers will also be realistic (lower). The legality of uncompensated overtime drives me crazy. There is a lot that practitioners in our profession have yet to learn - val…

Something that I was impressed by when I interviewed at my current job was not just that the company said that they value work-life balance, but that they demonstrated it: they pay time-and-a-half for overtime specifically in order to dissuade management from ever having us work overtime. And in the year I've been here we've had one period where we could optionally work overtime, but we've had no mandatory overtime.

I didn't appreciate how great of a boon this was until I learned more about what it's like to work at other companies. Overtime isn't just about making more money, it's also about having realistic expectations of workers and not burning them out.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#262

Post by venomsnake »

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.

So I both have opportunity to code and kill people from ISIS? And that is somehow a demotion?

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#263

Post by ryandrake »

lrvick wrote: post #74
byuu wrote: post #40

I have a four-week rotation on-call where I work. Pretty much the same workload as discussed in the article with it. Calls and text messages at 3am, can't be more than 15 minutes away from an internet connection (remote desktop software on Android is a godsend.) While it doesn't feel unbearable, and pays fairly well (at least for the area I'm in), it definitely has completely destroyed my sleep schedule. I no longer…

You CAN quit. We are in an industry where you have to dodge recruiters trying to tackle you on your way to get coffee if you have any technical skill. Recruiters that represent companies capable of paying your mortgage and some probably well needed vacations. Personally I have folded companies, quit jobs, and turned away opprotunities that represented substantially more than I make now. People have called these choic…

Your assessment of the tech employment market is overly rosy. OP can quit and possibly find another tech job. Chances are, it won't be noticeably different from his/her current job in terms of working conditions, compensation, or benefits. Of course there are rare outlier counter-examples, just in case someone wants to "prove" me wrong.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#264

Post by kamaal »

bkeroack wrote: post #247
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.

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 en…

>>Some might argue that one ought to save so one's children can get a nice inheritance.

Why would you not do that if you can. Having money gives your kids access to good education and freedom to stay away from a lot of crap poor kids have to deal with every day. Plus there is no advantage greater in life than getting a good head start over other people. A lot of people spend a big part of their lives just to get a decent start. Look up to this phenomenon called red queens race.

>>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.

That's a wrong way of looking at inheritance. Imagine what you could do in your free time if you had all the money in the world. Sure you could spend it away on wrong things. But you can also work on whatever you want and make a more meaningful difference through your work.

>>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.

Without money, you won't be able to take care of yourself. Also you would largely become a burden on your already financially stressed children. At least by having money you are saving them the financial struggle to see you through your old age.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#265

Post by worklogin »

no1youknowz wrote: post #236
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 an…

oncall and support are instant turnaways? How do you get employed in IT?

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#266

Post by kamaal »

bkeroack wrote: post #242
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... .

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

That's a wrong way of looking at retirement. You having a job is dependent on many reasons beyond your own interest. Age related discrimination is quite common in our industry, recessions happen every 8 years or so, companies shut down, a person can have major illness, or disability.

There are many reasons why you may not be able to do what you like, let alone doing it for a living.

Being prepared for such things in the future not only saves you from all the trouble, it saves your family too.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#267

Post by Devthrowaway80 »

kelukelugames wrote: post #215
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?

I turned down my Amazon offer saying you are stock vesting plan is unfair. The recruiter's comeback was "We are all leaders here!" At least I tried.

> "We are all leaders here!"

As a Amazon refugee, that is the funniest fucking thing I've read all day. We're all cowering, downtrodden, abused leaders here!

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#268

Post by imgabe »

VikingCoder wrote: post #258
imgabe wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

OSHA. In Syria. Right.

I ignored that part because it's plainly hyperbole. There are no commercial flights to Syria at this time, as there generally aren't to any active war zone. Even if a company wanted to send an employee there, they couldn't.

Plus it's not going to look good when you bring up the email ordering you to go to a war zone where the company has no business interests or even an active office during your wrongful termination suit.

So, obviously, that was an exaggeration for effect, yes?

If you want to keep coming up with excuses for why employees need to put up with bullshit from companies, by all means, knock yourself out. The more suckers there are taking the shit jobs, the less competition there is for the better jobs.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#269

Post by toyg »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #135
krzyk wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What labor laws do you find insane?

I heard the daily complaints from a person attempting to handle restructuring at a major UK bank. Let me emphasize that the restructuring was ordered by parliament, who also happened to own most of the bank. Various difficulties: - Work councils get input in whether you can lay someone off - it's a far cry from at-will employment. - Pretty insane laws surrounding pregnancy - you have give a pregnant woman the option…

> parliament, who also happened to own most of the bank

Ok, so that's RBS then. For the record, that bank embodies everything that's wrong with the UK banking system: huge, completely out of control before the crash, totally sclerotic internally, top-down managed, etc etc. Think of anything bad about banks you've ever heard; RBS is it.

> - it's a far cry from at-will employment.

And thank god for that. This island is still in Europe (at least until next year), and in Europe we have this old-fashioned notion of workers' rights, including basic respect for human beings. Firing people from one day to the next is barbaric, especially in huge organizations like RBS where you can probably give anyone a chance in some other department.

> - Pretty insane laws surrounding pregnancy

Honestly, sir, a bit of decency is called for. Do you really think people would get pregnant just to get some time off? We are not talking about benefit scroungers, these are middle-class workers for whom a kid is a big deal, financially and psychologically. I honestly don't see anyone getting "strategically pregnant" just to gain some time.

Btw, pregnancy laws came about because employers were being complete dicks, firing female employees as soon as they got pregnant. They would then have the gall to show up in church and talk of human values they clearly knew nothing about.

> In contrast India is pretty easy

Well done you for exploiting the reserve army of labor, that time-honored tradition of mean ruling classes. You are a shining beacon of progress to all of us. Have a good day, sir.

Re: My husband needed therapy after working for Amazon

#270

Post by kd0amg »

Linell wrote: post #227
Tloewald wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can achieve financial independence in: 33 * Cost of Living / (Salary - Cost of Living) Assuming for simplicity 3% real interest on investments once you stop working (which is close enough if you're trying to get out of the rat race quickly), and potentially infinite lifespan. So if your cost of living is $10k and you earn $100k you get: 330,000 / 90,000 -> less than four years. Great theory. I don't want to live…

Check out /r/financialindependence on Reddit one day. While some people go the route of eating oatmeal and tuna every day, there are plenty of routes to financial independence that don't involve living a life devoid of nice things. It's less about never working again and more about having the freedom to choose what you want to do -- whether that's work for yourself without worrying about paying rent or working full t…

I wouldn't even call my life as a grad student "devoid of nice things."
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