Bye, Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: Bye, Amazon

#311

Post by dghughes » Mon, May 04, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

bob33212 wrote: post #189

nicoburns wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very few people would have the courage to walk away from big sums of money purely on principle. On the contrary, bucketloads of people do this all the time. The world would be a better place if more people did.

Warren Buffet's has a famous quote about time being the only valuable thing he has. Once you have enough money to cover food/housing/healthcare/transportation it seems stupid to spend a lot of your time helping an organization that you don't like, even if they are paying you well. What is impressive here is that he make his decision public. Plenty of people have moral issues with their company and just say that they…

Time certainly is valuable.

Six years ago I was cut to part-time but a year before that I got a raise. The raise wasn't a fortune just double minimum wage in my region. But after my hours were cut I was making essentially minimum wage with a few benefits (my country has socialized medical system).

There I was not really financially bad I had a lot of savings and a job. But going from 20 hour days, shift work, sometimes overnight, to four hour week days it felt like retirement.

I was loyal because I was at the company since day one. I ran network cable, set up equipment when the building still didn't have power or heat yet. But I didn't see the company was Theseus it was the same company but its bones were replaced many times over.

Anyway time for yourself is great intuitively people know it. But until you get to experience it you don't understand how much you're missing.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#312

Post by eightysixfour » Mon, May 04, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

__s wrote: post #292

schnischna wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why people work hard to acquire skills, to be able to work in better jobs. I have never run a warehouse, but I suspect that many of the strange seeming rules are in place because people otherwise try to exploit the system (like getting paid for smoking on the toilet for hours on end). It may seem inhumane, but perhaps it makes it possible to give people jobs who don't deserve automatic trust. Such people exist…

My father works at a warehouse. I've worked in flooring These are jobs where people work together. Everyone knows who's the slacker & who gets shit done In flooring the owner would stop by for 10 minutes at smoke breaks & listen to gossip to get an idea of what's going on. He'd shuffle people's schedules around so that he could figure out who was the common denominator of trouble. For the most part there was very lit…

Unfortunately that's incredibly hard to scale. I've seen many construction companies hit the growth wall thinking that they could grow using that model instead of building process.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#313

Post by vorpalhex » Mon, May 04, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

_qwfv wrote: post #304

vorpalhex wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of my friends who work at Amazon warehouses have college degrees. Quite a few of my friends who work in dead end jobs also have college degrees, and they have them in the things you'd expect: the fine arts, intricate degrees on languages or theory, and other non-profitable skills. A degree does not equal a job, even if your college recruiter would like to tell you differently. > And by all means, if you are cap…

When people say the workers are incapable, some folks mean that there are systemic problems with capitalism (particularly in the US). The workers don't have a deficiency, the system is designed to keep them where they are.

That seems a spectacular claim that will require spectacular evidence to support it. I realize it's a very trendy statement, but it does not appear supported by the data[^1].

[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

Re: Bye, Amazon

#314

Post by ubermonkey » Mon, May 04, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #2

> I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers Assuming this is the real true reason (I would trust Tim, but you never know, so just being explicit here), it takes huge balls to do something like this. The economic loss has to be somewhat taken in relation to your total wealth (e.g. if you lose $1M by quitting but you already have $10M+ in the bank, it's not as hard as if you had zero in the bank), but still... V…

Seriously great move by Tim. He has power and celebrity (of a sort), so he's likely insulated from any real blowback here, but it definitely makes Amazon looks very, very shitty.

Well, shittier.

Anyway, this is what a principled tech leader looks like.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#315

Post by mtrower » Mon, May 04, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #168

globular-toast wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give an inch and they take a mile. You could pay a McDonalds worker all you like and he'll still just try to get away with doing less work.

It really depends on the person; for a lot of McJobs, the people doing them never really pursued the job; they wanted / needed A job, any job. They work for money, not for love of the job. I mean you can learn to love a job, but that kind of loyalty has to be earned - by good pay, working conditions, career opportunities, and being valued. But there's too many jobs now - Amazon warehouse employee being one of them -…

Underpaid, undervalued, exceedingly stressful, and often poorly managed at the shift level. Turnover and variable quality in co-workers aside, there's intense pressure on shift management to cut labor, such that stores are usually understaffed for the workload. Work throughput expectations don't change, however...

I'm not sure what the answer to this is (McDonalds Corp will just introduce more automation if they have to raise wages, and a lot of people will go from stressful, low paying jobs to no jobs at all). But I don't think this occupation is in a good place.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#316

Post by jacamera » Mon, May 04, 2020, 2:26 PM UTC

dandare wrote: post #242

> Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st-century capitalism is done. I am really tired of all these off-hand attacks on capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system. It is characterized by private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. If you prefer a centralized or shared economy, that is fine, although I was born in a communist country and I bet you have no idea what you wish for.…

It's incredibly frustrating that "21st-century capitalism" has become a shorthand for the anti-free market clusterfuck of a system that we've ended up with. The ignorance displayed by so many people blaming "capitalism" makes me feel like things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#317

Post by tcbawo » Mon, May 04, 2020, 2:26 PM UTC

tafox wrote: post #256

CalRobert wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the challenge with large mortgages and heath care requirements taking away people's moral agency. Maybe that's the idea.

I had a boss that would try to bully employees into buying expensive cars they couldn't afford, just so they had too much debt and he could exploit them... because they could no longer afford to quit. One might be disappointed how effective this technqiue can be. Now imagine you have car payments, a mortgage, and a family to feed.

I have always advised friends and acquaintances never to tell an employer about a new house or car purchase. The less tied down you seem, the better off you are in negotiations!

Re: Bye, Amazon

#318

Post by Pfhreak » Mon, May 04, 2020, 2:27 PM UTC

moduspol wrote: post #291

miked85 wrote: post #6

> I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right? Including this bit is interesting. So he is accusing Amazon of being both sexist and racist in addition to treating workers poorly.

I'm sure they're working as fast as they can to automate these folks out of jobs so that someone else can be blamed for being sexist and racist by employing them. And then the new employer can be the "villain of the month" on HN.

Employing someone is not a gold star that entitles you to treat workers however you'd like. One cannot excuse terrible/racist/sexist treatment of workers with, "at least they were employed."

Re: Bye, Amazon

#319

Post by azernik » Mon, May 04, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

adamc wrote: post #202

lkramer wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think there are higher skilled people trying to exploit the system? I suspect the real difference here is developers are in higher demand. If we feel the checks becomes to unfair, we can go look for a different job. If a warehouse worker doesn't like his smoke breaks being monitored, there is little recourse, someone else can be hired who will accept these condition out of desperation for a job.

Your explanation seems off to me. Why would lower demand necessarily imply there was someone suitable who was desperate? It seems like your explanation suggests that the pool of "suitable" would be larger, i.e., the job is less skilled. I think it is definitely true that less skilled workers have bad options, because, by definition, they are easily replaced. More highly skilled workers can end up in this situation, t…

Low or high demand are always relative to supply. So think "high supply" rather than "low demand".

Re: Bye, Amazon

#320

Post by throw_m239339 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #2

> I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers Assuming this is the real true reason (I would trust Tim, but you never know, so just being explicit here), it takes huge balls to do something like this. The economic loss has to be somewhat taken in relation to your total wealth (e.g. if you lose $1M by quitting but you already have $10M+ in the bank, it's not as hard as if you had zero in the bank), but still... V…

I am glad he said it so that people here can't claim it is not happening.

I'm also glad he is making clear these policies come from the top at Amazon so that people can't claim that Bezos knows nothing about that and isn't involved in any of this.

These are the most important things to me. People with principles are rare these days. And people here can't just spin these stories into something else now.