'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#361

Post by vimacs2 » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 1:41 AM UTC

strken wrote: post #341

vimacs2 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but you are being disingenuous if you think that the outrage on Activision is even remotely comparable to the backlash against feminism in gaming. There is also no actual objective problem that feminism has caused to gaming that gamers can point to and I would argue that the vehement backlash against it is as driven by the "invasion of political activists into the hobby" as Anita Sarkeesean and other feminist pu…

Bobby Kotick has a PR department, strong incentives not to antagonise the community he sells to, and enough power within his company to fire anyone who does. Activists have an incentive to be as incendiary as possible to gain media attention, smaller PR departments if any, and little to no control over what other activists say. It's an unfortunate reality that if my local supermarket fires a bunch of workers for tryi…

I mostly agree except for the fact that I don't really think the gaming community are that dangerous to antagonise for a company at all considering that Activision and EA together are some of the most hated companies in both the gaming community and the world in general yet sell the most games.

It's not about the medium or even the message here. It's all about the product. As long as you control the product, it doesn't matter how much grumbling gamers do under their breath, they will still fork over their cash.

Activists on the other hand do not have a product to offer. Instead they make you think uncomfortable thoughts and try to get you to reconsider or reflect on your viewpoints or biases. That's a lot harder than buy and consume product. That's a difference that even god-tier PR is not going to easily be able to overcome.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#362

Post by NateEag » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 1:51 AM UTC

ActorNightly wrote: post #320

marricks wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon warehouses have a far, far, higher turn over rate than other warehouses, probably because the conditions are so cruel. It’s really sad how many people get super invested in defending mega corporations. I hope it’s just employees trying to move up but you never know. https://labor411.org/411-blog/warehouse-worker-turnover-rate...

>Amazon warehouses have a far, far, higher turn over rate than other warehouses True >probably because the conditions are so cruel. Ugh, thats the crap I am talking about in the last sentence of my original post. There is nothing wrong with high turnover at a minimum wage manual labor job. Amazon hires seasonal workers that happily work overtime for $30 and then quit. Nobody is making a career out of being a warehous…

> Nobody is making a career out of being a warehouse associate.

Um.

I worked a warehouse one summer in college.

A whole lot of my coworkers were, in fact, making a career out of it.

It was a crappy career compared to the easy, high-income gig I was working towards in software development, but it was a career, nonetheless.

I currently work with someone who was career warehouse until he caught a lucky break and was able to move into white collar work.

(Interestingly, his last warehouse job before going white collar was with Amazon, after several others, and he said it was by far the best warehouse to work in.)

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#363

Post by Ankintol » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 1:51 AM UTC

impendia wrote: post #274

eeeeehhhhh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew this was going to be posted. I've been thinking about this post for a decade now and I can't help but feel that, although it does reflect part of reality, the Gervais Principle is overly cynical in my opinion, and those who adopt the view will have it compounded by confirmation bias because it is partially true. The things described happen at toxic organizations but the author leaves no room for honest positiv…

> Where does that leave people like doctors who earnestly help their patients? Not a doctor, but a college professor. I love my job, take pride in it, and work hard at it. But I think of myself as working for my students, my collaborators, and my immediate colleagues. I pay little attention to my university as a whole, don't view it especially positively, haven't learned how to work its bureaucracy, and feel little l…

Just as a note, the article specifically lays out that you are only a loser in a pure economic sense, you have not maximized monetary profit and have chosen to prioritize something else. Not an idiot at all :)

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#364

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 1:59 AM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #356

rgblambda wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Where does that leave people like doctors who earnestly help their patients? Making positive contributions to society doesn't change the fact that you're being exploited. It's become increasingly clear that Doctors (at least where I'm from) have low pay early in their careers, unsafe working conditions, and have almost no life outside of work. On top of that they have a stressful job involving interacting with membe…

Given the fact that nowadays doctor is mostly a rote memorization educational path, I often wonder if increasing the number of doctors but reducing hours and somewhat pay would be an overall improvement. Both me and my girlfriend were majors of our promotions and had more than enough in the way of academic achievement to become doctors, but the insane workload was a very effective deterrent.

Australia has tried to get some of the way there with Nurse Practitioners.

I'm in Tasmania, so here's the a PDF from the Tasmanian Department of Health Services explaining what a Nurse Practitioner can do, including prescribing some medication and interpreting diagnostic test

https://www.dhhs.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/6408...

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

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Post by hda2 » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 2:03 AM UTC

alienthrowaway wrote: post #311

cecida wrote: post #43

Imagine being worth 185 billion dollars and still obsessing about your workers advocating for better pay and conditions? What a miserable existence that must be. Bezos has always struck me as a man who cares about nothing else only his own personal wealth and success. There is no joy in his life.

> What a miserable existence that must be. Bezos has always struck me as a man who cares about nothing else only his own personal wealth and success. On the contrary, he is probably very happy with the way things are. You may be buying into the "Just World fallacy"; there are plenty of people you may find despicable who are leading happy, fulfilling lives, by their standards. I think the antipathy towards workers a c…

There's a meaningful distinction between happy and comfortable. He might lead a very comfortable life but I have to agree with GP that he doesn't /seem/ to be a very happy person.

Of course, I (and you) say this from the position of people who don't know the man in person. It's all baseless backbiting.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#366

Post by chmod775 » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 2:11 AM UTC

ActorNightly wrote: post #300

scubbo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unionization is messing with the free market, which never leads to good outcomes historically There are definitely some true, fair, and pertinent points in your comment (though, to be clear, they're not strong enough to actually make a compelling point, and I still disagree with your conclusion and position), but this is just nonsense. Every single social welfare program is "messing with the free market", and while…

>Every single social welfare program is "messing with the free market" I mean, saying that a human life is worth something so you can't just treat people as expendable labor is "messing with the free market" technically, but thats a very low boundary. Social welfare addresses the lower tiers of income, specifically to aid people in basic needs of housing, food, healthcare and education. Those people aren't putting an…

> Didn't work for France very well, not going to work for US.

Right. Living in France sucks! /s

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

#367

Post by sp332 » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 2:15 AM UTC

argc wrote: post #194

As a current AWS employee, I can say I'm proud to be working for AWS (at least my organization) but incredibly embarrassed to be working for Amazon. I had written a much more scathing comment about the Amazon side of the business but I'm not sure what is allowed under hacker news's community guidelines.

Just check https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

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Post by Matticus_Rex » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 2:23 AM UTC

james4k wrote: post #332

ActorNightly wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exploit is a loaded word. Employment is fully at will. And again, 3% unemployment rate.

"At will" is incredibly loaded. Employment is necessary for survival.

Employment at Amazon is not.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

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Post by Frondo » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 2:25 AM UTC

ActorNightly wrote: post #327

moate wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that "workers can't band together to make demands" somehow is in opposition to "market forces" and not ITSELF a market force is how we got into this mess in the first place. It's like saying "people are boycotting product x because they disagree with company policy " isn't allowed because "cancel culture is messing with the free market".

Unionization is by far more than "workers banding together to make demands". Unions have things like the ability to force someone to join a union and pay dues. From the point of view of the union, you ofcourse want that in order to stop the union from loosing power to non union members. And also, if you think that unions are market forces because they represent the interest of workesrs, so are anti union measures bec…

> Unions have things like the ability to force someone to join a union and pay dues

Not in the US, not since 1947. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 banned closed shops:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop#United_States

It's literally the first line of that section.

Re: 'Fake' Amazon workers defend company on Twitter

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Post by notriddle » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 2:45 AM UTC

stonogo wrote: post #251

KittenInABox wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that happen in perpetuity for every generation growing up in technology? We want to shield our children from the rest of the internet, and so children grow up with an internet framed for them. Then, as they grow, they are forced to deal with the concept of the internet not being framed anymore and may therefore have some time in their teenage to young adult years where they may be susceptible to shit like eg…

It's much easier to just pick someone to frame everything for you than it is to develop critical thinking skills. I would wager the majority of people from any generation wind up choosing the former, even if it's not a conscious choice. I don't think it's something people 'grow out of' by default.

Critical thinking is not enough. You can’t derive the actual working conditions at Amazon, or off-camera information about a police killing, from first principles. Someone has to be on the ground observing it, and you need to know whether they’re telling the truth or not.