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Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

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Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#41

Post by nivenkos »

satellites wrote: post #20
ozzythecat wrote: post #6

> The same Times investigation reported the company “intentionally limited upward mobility for hourly workers,” according to David Niekerk, a former Amazon HR Vice President. It’s not just for hourly workers. I was actively coached on holding promotions as a carrot. My leadership team would commit to unrealistic dates, taking input and estimates from dev teams but hand wave it. Amazon applies pressure on L7 and L6 so…

> And the Indian devs work their ass off out of fear of getting PIP’d and with their work authorization, they lose their job means they have to leave the country. This matches what I saw at Nike. Though it was a bit less extreme, it was the same dynamic. Indian-born workers got paid half what the American-born workers did for the same SWE jobs. And Indian workers couldn’t complain or push back against unrealistic exp…

Same for us Europoors.

Joining meetings at Seattle time (like 7-8pm CET), meanwhile you're being paid less than half of what the American engineers earn at the same level.

But they know there's so few options in Europe so they set the salaries according to "local market conditions".

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#42

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

nivenkos wrote: post #41
satellites wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the Indian devs work their ass off out of fear of getting PIP’d and with their work authorization, they lose their job means they have to leave the country. This matches what I saw at Nike. Though it was a bit less extreme, it was the same dynamic. Indian-born workers got paid half what the American-born workers did for the same SWE jobs. And Indian workers couldn’t complain or push back against unrealistic exp…

Same for us Europoors. Joining meetings at Seattle time (like 7-8pm CET), meanwhile you're being paid less than half of what the American engineers earn at the same level. But they know there's so few options in Europe so they set the salaries according to "local market conditions".

>Joining meetings at Seattle time (like 7-8pm CET),

In which country are you? We Europoors usually have labor laws to protect us from having to work so late. Where I live we have core working hours in our contract, 10:00 to 16:00, any work requests after that are voluntary for the employees. Is that not something you can use to push back on this?

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#43

Post by pembrook »

Max-Ganz-II wrote: post #25

I stopped using Amazon for shopping about two years ago, because of how they treat warehouse staff. I never thought to work at Amazon, because I heard from multiple colleagues, former employees, that Amazon is profoundly metric based; then the stories such as this, about burning out staff, and about the fake PIP process, began surfacing.

Not shopping at Amazon because the company is big enough to get media attention is a bit silly.

Do you know what the working conditions are like at any of the million non-Amazon warehouses?

Of course not, there’s no media attention for Bob’s fulfillment in Wichita, Kansas.

Here’s the truth: your friendly neighborhood warehouse down the street likely pays its employees far less, with far worse benefits, less safe facilities, and similar turnover.

It shouldn’t be the job of consumers to police labor practices—we’re really bad at it and only care if the company is big enough to get NYT coverage.

This is the role of government and law. If we really care about conditions for workers, we need to focus our attention there.

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#44

Post by HyperSane »

ozzythecat wrote: post #10
HyperSane wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an incredibly stupid way to run a company.

It’s actually not stupid. It’s genius. If you can do it at scale without damaging the company’s reputation, you’ve won the lottery. You make big promises to employees, maybe give a carrot to a very select few. Everyone else will either accept the long hours and grueling culture or they’ll leave, and if they leave, they’ll go before their RSU compensation vests. So the other thing you do is weigh compensation heavily…

You will eventually run out of people to screw over.

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#45

Post by pjc50 »

ozzythecat wrote: post #6

> The same Times investigation reported the company “intentionally limited upward mobility for hourly workers,” according to David Niekerk, a former Amazon HR Vice President. It’s not just for hourly workers. I was actively coached on holding promotions as a carrot. My leadership team would commit to unrealistic dates, taking input and estimates from dev teams but hand wave it. Amazon applies pressure on L7 and L6 so…

> We had specific projects where we easily burned out dozens of engineers

"Amazon" is named after the rainforest, and like the rainforest, developers are an infinite resource that you can burn down forever and there will never be any consequences .. until somehow you run out.

Really the only solution to this is for people to withdraw their labour - not just unionization but refusing to work for them in the first place.

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#46

Post by esarbe »

How is the US - as a society - okay with companies like Amazon abusing their employees, deny them union representation while paying them a starvation wage?

These companies abuse the total breakdown of the US's social security network; the US made it so bad that people are actually forced to work in such conditions. Together with the almost total dismantling of the unions in the US, this leaves low skilled workers no way to fight back.

It's not as bad in jobs were you need to have even a little training and need to invest in your workers. But in Amazon's case the brutality of this system is laid bare.

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#47

Post by _wolfie_ »

Max-Ganz-II wrote: post #25

I stopped using Amazon for shopping about two years ago, because of how they treat warehouse staff. I never thought to work at Amazon, because I heard from multiple colleagues, former employees, that Amazon is profoundly metric based; then the stories such as this, about burning out staff, and about the fake PIP process, began surfacing.

I try to avoid it where possible, but for international shopping the options are sadly bit limited. It's pretty hard getting Japanese literature (in Japanese) shipped into tiny country in the east Europe. amazon.co.jp works reasonably well.

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#48

Post by christophilus »

LatteLazy wrote: post #23

I'm always amazed how little people know about how companies operate. Amazon does the same thing as many many companies and is treated as news. People are shocked that they are profit seeking, that they do barely legal but legal things, that they don't actively knowingly pay their workers more than they have to etc.

Yeah. My brother worked at a Husqvarna warehouse for a few months. It was the most depressed I’ve ever seen him.

I’ve chatted with my dad about Amazon working conditions, and he retorted with tales of his own days in un-conditioned factories and warehouses in Oklahoma in the 1980s.

There are a lot of crappy jobs out there. Those of us who have found enjoyment and balance are fortunate.

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#49

Post by prakhar897 »

ozzythecat wrote: post #10
HyperSane wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an incredibly stupid way to run a company.

It’s actually not stupid. It’s genius. If you can do it at scale without damaging the company’s reputation, you’ve won the lottery. You make big promises to employees, maybe give a carrot to a very select few. Everyone else will either accept the long hours and grueling culture or they’ll leave, and if they leave, they’ll go before their RSU compensation vests. So the other thing you do is weigh compensation heavily…

But it’s not. You can see here now that everyone is aware of these bad practices by amazon. This means less people apply and even lesser accept the position. This leads to more time and resources taken for hiring and giving higher wages eventually to compete.

You can see that even though amazon mass hires candidates, they still have to shell out more salaries than say Google and Microsoft. It’s easier to fix bad salary+good wlb reputation (by increasing salary) than fixing good salary + bad wlb reputation (idk how they can even do it).

Re: Amazon’s attrition costs $8B annually according to leaked documents

#50

Post by Bayart »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #42
nivenkos wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for us Europoors. Joining meetings at Seattle time (like 7-8pm CET), meanwhile you're being paid less than half of what the American engineers earn at the same level. But they know there's so few options in Europe so they set the salaries according to "local market conditions".

>Joining meetings at Seattle time (like 7-8pm CET), In which country are you? We Europoors usually have labor laws to protect us from having to work so late. Where I live we have core working hours in our contract, 10:00 to 16:00, any work requests after that are voluntary for the employees. Is that not something you can use to push back on this?

Labour laws do not apply if you're freelancing, which you have to do most of the time for US companies.
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