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Public protest against Amazon

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311–320 of 525 posts

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet if you compare a Californian and a New Yorker to a Russian like myself, you can safely bet that both will smile more and be less direct in conversations due to the cultural differences.

You haven’t met many New Yorkers have you?

You haven't met many Russians, have you? :)

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#312
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's always been the argument to people who are on the fence about Amazon: "I've heard some bad things, but haven't seen it in my department". Amazon, and the people that work on the "good" teams never seem to be terribly concerned about horrific reports, and I frequently wonder why that is. In companies I've worked for, had I heard about people crying at their desk and being forced to choose between their child's…

That's because Amazon doesn't work like a cohesive monolithic organization. Two teams that seat next to each other may have complete different cultures and ways of working. By design, Amazon is an aggregator of many small "startups" with different budgets, different issues, different approaches to solving problems. The connecting tissues are the leadership principles, the infrastructure, the resources, the mobility a…

Exactly. I work at a very similar place on the East Coast -- very startup like culture unified by leadership principles. I had one so-so experience, followed by an absolutely horrible experience, followed by two terrific experiences. For the bad experience, I worked weeks on end, lots of times throughout the night trying to deliever, in many cases, unreasonable feature requests all while trying to maintain production systems. Sometimes dysfunction happens. You live in an imperfect world with imperfect people. In the end, sticking through and using the horrible experience to learn and grow ended up paying off long term.

Bezos has corporate principles that led to his success. Many people respect that. I personally do no -- I lose respect for any man who cheats on his wife, no matter the reason, but I digress that what he does do in the business world has worked with immeasurable success.

(My final random point -- I find it kind of ironic that a man who stresses so much that his leadership team have skilled writing and memos instead of powerpoints let his security team autogenerate a security bulletin about a serious docker CVE. I mean it's very obvious to me that this was written by a bot https://aws.amazon.com/security/security-bulletins/AWS-2019-... -- I think it's a tad tacky to be using a bot to generate your security bulletins)

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#313
post #83

Amazon employee here, though I do not speak for the company. At any big company, your management chain is the #1 influence on the quality of your culture. My experience at Amazon has been extremely positive, but then my org head is a great guy, so it's all been in line with my expectations. I've also left critical feedback through the Amazon Connect survey for my immediate manager and not suffered for it. That manage…

That's always been the argument to people who are on the fence about Amazon: "I've heard some bad things, but haven't seen it in my department". Amazon, and the people that work on the "good" teams never seem to be terribly concerned about horrific reports, and I frequently wonder why that is. In companies I've worked for, had I heard about people crying at their desk and being forced to choose between their child's…

As a former employee, it’s more that there’s only so much you can do in that situation. I didn’t have any ability to impact the situation other than advocating for good practices, helping people I know manage their careers, and giving truthful feedback for managers (being able to since I wasn’t in a “bad” team).

I didn’t want to paint an unrepresentive picture for people that might prevent them from pursuing legitimately good opportunities. Ultimately, this rubs some people the wrong way because they feel it’s the same as covering up issues. I definitely saw a lot of incredulity that I, and others could even have a good experience.

If it’s my truthful experience at Amazon that it was generally a good job and I didn’t see much of any of this stuff personally, what would you have me do?

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was recently offered a job by a software company, work from home, paid monthly. I presently work in metal fabrication. Not only was their offer $30,000 below my current income, their deal was I front cash for expenses and submit claims monthly. Is this standard in the software world? Because from my perspective there’s only one possible answer to paying expenses out of pocket and having to claim them back: No.

> Is this standard in the software world? This is standard in every world. Corporate credit cards are usually reserved for senior executives or people who travel/entertain a lot (e.g. sales reps). Cash advances aren't a thing outside of small companies.

And corporate credit cards aren't blank checks. Employees will generally have to pay back any spend on their corporate card that is not approved as an expense.

It may prevent the employee from holding the bag if the company goes bust. But some "corporate cards" are issued by banks in a way that makes the cardholder jointly liable.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reference-- that's $318,160 more than Jeff Bezos' salary. That's insane. How is a union able to pay that much to their leader on the one hand, yet completely unable to help defend this Amazon employee against an abusive manager? If journalists focused on developer unions for even a fraction of the time they spend criticizing Amazon, I'd bet we'd have some blogs that sound just as damning as the one the author has…

The bulk of Bezos's compensation is all in his equity.

Sure, but that's because the company is doing better. If it stagnated then he would only make base salary. If the union does their job poorly the Union leader still gets paid.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#317
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Canada too have similar system called LMIA based Temporary closed work permit for skilled professionals. But the employee's permanent residency is not at the mercy of the employer in this case and it's fast too, in some cases within 4 months ! I have some experience with how LMIA is not perfect, but I was excited when the administration was openly considering copying it ~18 months ago, because it's hard to imagine…

LMIA seems like a balance. In LMIA, the employer is made to test the local labour market before applying for a visa, rather than an LCA in which the USCIS trusts the employer's word.

The LCA process also forces the employer to test the labor market first. It's all theater, and based on 20 year-old business practices (you have to publish your job ad in a major newspaper and some other places, of which one option is to have it be read out loud by a local radio station!), but it's not like you can skip through that process. How does LMIA compare here?

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was recently offered a job by a software company, work from home, paid monthly. I presently work in metal fabrication. Not only was their offer $30,000 below my current income, their deal was I front cash for expenses and submit claims monthly. Is this standard in the software world? Because from my perspective there’s only one possible answer to paying expenses out of pocket and having to claim them back: No.

Are you actually paying cash? Assuming you're using a credit card, and assuming your company isn't looking to defraud you, using a card with decent cash back makes it a nonissue and "fronting the cash" for expenses is just a way for you to get a kickback from your credit card company for using them as a payment processor for work expenses. (And kind of a net positive relative to if you had a company credit card where…

I do not possess a credit card for ideological reasons.

I do have two debit cards, one Visa and one MasterCard, for redundancy.

I see what you are saying and it makes sense. I’m just ideologically opposed to the use of consumer credit for regular / recurring / general living expenses.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manager: I have altered the deal, pray I do not alter it further. Basically.

Say what you will about Darth Vader, but he was a pretty effective manager.

The first scene in Return of Jedi is literally Vader telling someone: "I am here to put you back on schedule."
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