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Public protest against Amazon

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Re: Public protest against Amazon

#371

Post by bigtunacan »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #99
ownagefool wrote: post #14

I had a manager that took over from a previous person when I was working remote. There were a few issues, but the one that stands out is they flew me down to London for a week, set me up in a hotel, and had me take taxis back and fourth to the office and expense food etc. After returning home, he rejected my expenses because of variance of costs of the taxis, despite me pointing out that I was using the stipulated ve…

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.

Yes. Fronting your expenses and then getting reimbursed after is pretty normal practice. Every employer I've had has done this with the exception of certain major purchases like airfare where the company has just purchased it for me directly, but some employers I had to front large costs like that as well.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#372

Post by throwawaymjabba »

throwawaymjabba wrote: post #323
nojvek wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well amazon hires a ton of H1Bs. When they let go, they have to go to back to their country unless they can find another company to sponsor their H1B. So people go to extreme lengths and managers can get away with anything. I’m super grateful for Microsoft to help me with my green card. However my life there was miserable and my manager frequently asked us to work weekends. Pagerduty was hell and I once came home at…

Ex Indian h1b here. Here are some of the things I experienced that finally ended up with me throwing away everything and come back to India. 1. Was working on a project without issues. Ex manager forced me to go back to India 3 times over a 9 month period. Every time my ex manager tells me to go back, I get ready packing and then he tells me stay for 3 more months. On the 3rd time, I said I am resigning. Now my manag…

One more point I forgot to add. They delayed my green card till the last moment. I am not saying I am entitled to it, but they should tell me if they won't do it. I ask my manager and he would say we will start the process next month for sure. It continued for about 13 months. Finally they started. But by now green card applications as well visas from Indians were getting a lot of scrutiny from USCIS. Mine got denied and went for appeal and got approved finally. Took over 10 months just for the whole thing and got approved just 30 days before visa expiry. Applied for visa extension as soon as possible, got RFE on that also and spent another 4 months in uncertainty.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#373

Post by ardy42 »

plainOldText wrote: post #177
rmrfrmrf wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...which is pennies compared to tech CEO salaries.

You're right, but please consider this: unions leaders are paper shufflers, bureaucrats, whereas tech CEOs are doers, risk takers and innovators; big difference.

> You're right, but please consider this: unions leaders are paper shufflers, bureaucrats, whereas tech CEOs are doers, risk takers and innovators; big difference.

There's actually not a big difference, after one factors out the remarkable level of spin you've worked into your characterizations.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#374

Post by freewilly1040 »

amzn_throwaway7 wrote: post #335

The author of the article posted their Amazon user name, so I decided to look them up. I'll start with raw data, and then inject my own thoughts: * The author is the bottom contributor on his team by a large margin. Their few contributions are primarily configuration changes and pixel pushes. * The author hasn't made any contributions since last August, likely due to a leave of absence * The author's manager has rece…

Not doing much to help Amazon’s image by bringing up a lack of weekend contributions as a negative.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#375

Post by eropple »

Mirioron wrote: post #307
setquk wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a similarly horrible person many years ago. I was doing on call support for a bunch of Linux machines. Literally it was him and me left because the moment I started the other two engineers bailed. One went to work packing salad because it was a better job (big warning!) and the other one had a breakdown. So didn't get paid properly, argued mileage down to the mile, the clients and him constantly gave me…

Couldn't you have taken him to small claims court?

Court takes time. Court takes money, or at the least incurs opportunity costs. And court takes emotional reserves. People in dire straits don't necessarily have enough of any of those things, and that is why people like the described get away with shit.

(Labor advocacy programs help balance the scales a little, if only because your advocate is predisposed to believe you and help you navigate the options available to you. But they're fairly thin on the ground in the UK and the US.)

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#376

Post by amzn_throwaway7 »

freewilly1040 wrote: post #374
amzn_throwaway7 wrote: post #335

The author of the article posted their Amazon user name, so I decided to look them up. I'll start with raw data, and then inject my own thoughts: * The author is the bottom contributor on his team by a large margin. Their few contributions are primarily configuration changes and pixel pushes. * The author hasn't made any contributions since last August, likely due to a leave of absence * The author's manager has rece…

Not doing much to help Amazon’s image by bringing up a lack of weekend contributions as a negative.

Not at all implying that is negative, just saying that it contradicts the story of being forced to work weekends.

EDIT: I've gone ahead and just removed that point from my original post. Just because his manager asked him to work weekends, doesn't mean he did. I sure as hell wouldn't.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#377

Post by eropple »

skookumchuck wrote: post #271
stronglikedan wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm of the mind that only good comes of it. It's very therapeutic and who cares what they think anymore. Besides, that's one of the few things that no one faults you for - it's almost expected. I highly recommend it.

When your date starts trash-talking their ex, they'll do it to you, too. When a prospective employee trash-talks their former employer, they'll do it to you, too. No hire.

Strongly disagree, and I've got hiring evidence on my side (former subordinates going to work for friends, and said subordinates didn't know of the relationship) after airing some pretty reasonable grievances when I hired then and when they worked with me.

Of course, there's a scale. "I don't like their tech decisions"--yeah, that's an eyebrow raise, unless there's some real meat there. But I'm never going to judge somebody poorly for saying plainly that they felt disrespected or mistreated at a job, because it's happened to me too.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#378

Post by freewilly1040 »

amzn_throwaway7 wrote: post #376
freewilly1040 wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not doing much to help Amazon’s image by bringing up a lack of weekend contributions as a negative.

Not at all implying that is negative, just saying that it contradicts the story of being forced to work weekends. EDIT: I've gone ahead and just removed that point from my original post. Just because his manager asked him to work weekends, doesn't mean he did. I sure as hell wouldn't.

You're not fooling anyone with this, and it's really unethical* to post personal information about the guy here. You should really consider deleting your post.

Edit:

* And, as others have noted, extremely unwise for you personally. This post is at the top of Hack News and you've used your privileges as an Amazon employee to leak information about someone suing the company.

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#379

Post by amztawy_1190 »

Sounds terrible and hope justice prevails. I’m not familiar with the case but in case anyone wondering or caring, I work for AWS and never heard of any similar cases in any of the teams I’m working with. It’s a big company and there are some bad bosses apparently. I wouldn’t have taken that approach personally even if I was in his shoes but I’m not in his shoes and don’t know all the facts. I hope this gets resolved but this is far from my own experience (3 years in AWS as a Sr SDE)

Re: Public protest against Amazon

#380

Post by canttestthis »

amzn_throwaway7 wrote: post #349
dodobirdlord wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, it bears keeping in mind that the tool that you are likely using does not report activity on any parts of the codebase that you personally don't have permission to view. Also, many teams keep codebases out of the standard code store, either in alternative self-managed version control systems or on GitHub.

I had considered that. This is common in AWS or Lab126, but I've never seen that be the case in Retail. Edit: Missed the part about permissions, that's totally possible, but at least in publicly visible contributions, he is way behind his teammates.

The more I hear about Retail the more it seems like its a bad place to be.
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