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Amazon worker chat app to ban words such as “union”, “pay raise”, “slave labor”

theintercept.com

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Re: Amazon worker chat app to ban words such as “union”, “pay raise”, “slave labor”

#441

Post by edmundsauto »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #307
edmundsauto wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does an article about lifting allowed working hours for teenagers in a fast food joint equate to children working in coal mines?

Think about the law they are gonna pass next, its only 1 step away. Also, as long as it's not a literal coalmine you see no risks to children? If it's a factory instead, then we are in the clear?

No, I don't think the next step is passing laws to enslave children in coal mines. I am not advocating for child labor at all - just discussing the topic at hand, which in GP's comment was saying this link provided an example of children being made to work in coal mines. It was explicitly not.

I do not advocate for children's labor, but I also do not advocate for taking things to extremes in order to make a point. If you feel it's problematic for children to be allowed (not forced - allowed) to work in fast food, we can have that discussion. But talking about it as the missing link for returning to 19th century slave labor conditions, or the conditions currently in China is misleading and not worthy of a conversation.

Re: Amazon worker chat app to ban words such as “union”, “pay raise”, “slave labor”

#442

Post by edmundsauto »

kevingadd wrote: post #330
edmundsauto wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does an article about lifting allowed working hours for teenagers in a fast food joint equate to children working in coal mines?

Fast food joints are not safe. You can get seriously injured working a fryer or grill, and a 16 year old is less likely to be able to operate those things safely. Keep in mind also that a 16 year old is almost certainly going to school, so they will be working while already tired. I say this as someone who started working at age 14: Children should not be allowed to work most jobs until they are much older than that.

These same arguments can be applied to other activities, like driving a car. I do support treating teenagers with more agency than children, so while I don't support letting 5 years olds work in McDonalds, I honestly don't see a problem with 16 year olds doing it.

Yes, the risk is higher than for a 25 y.o., but as someone who started working at age 15 - there are also rewards in experience, money, and figuring your own shit out. Nothing taught me about life like working.

Re: Amazon worker chat app to ban words such as “union”, “pay raise”, “slave labor”

#443

Post by notch656a »

deltaonefour wrote: post #440
notch656a wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So taking the same test among the high IQ group getting a 95 gets you a C This is the source of your confusion. Your whole argument about the curve centers around the flawed and bizarre presumption that the curve has to center around a C. It doesn't always work that way, I don't think you understand some curves are different including the median score possibly being an 'F'. You're depending on some standardized cur…

>Your whole argument about the curve centers around the flawed and bizarre presumption that the curve has to center around a C. It doesn't always work that way That's where they usually center the curve. This is where MOST schools set the average. It's not bizarre it's actually bizarre if a school doesn't do this. There is no requirement for this to be the case JUST LIKE there's no requirement to grade people off of…

Clutch those pearls harder. Your program wasn't more difficult because it was more selective. Stubbornness is refusing to believe difficulty can remain constant across varying degrees of selectivity of cohorts. You're making the assertion it can't, I'm simply calling bullshit on your unsupported and specious claim.

Re: Amazon worker chat app to ban words such as “union”, “pay raise”, “slave labor”

#444

Post by Nasrudith »

grapeskin wrote: post #174
Firmwarrior wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say that coders as an industry are destroying the road behind us, since there isn't really a road between "warehouse worker" and "software engineer", unless someone has the knack for coding (in which case there's a very clear and well-paved road within the company between those roles) I think the best solution is to empower workers via unions or whatever else. It should be impossible for workers to get gro…

Massive salaries for programmers won’t last forever. Most people here on HN are self-taught; it’s a skill a large number of motivated people can pick up. Eventually, large corporations will feel comfortable lowering wages once they have a secure grip on the market, and the tools programmers today made will be used against the next generation. It’s no different from millennials resenting boomers for burning economic b…

Massive salaries will exist so long as there are 10x and 100x workers and throwing more bodies at a bottleneck scales horribly. Given the normal curve holds for skill distributions companies who look for bulk cheap unicorns will always be disappointed.

Remember all of those failed multimillion dollar coding contracts? They were from factory style management trying to apply it to coding. Reality slapped the fools upside the head enough times via absolute fiascos. Even if we take conspiratorial economics as a given we already know how this will end. History indicates their hubris will bring themselves only ruin, just like the legacy rust belt manufacturers.

Also how the hell will programming tools used by programmers be used against them? That is a shallow appeal to horror. Even if machine learning became good enough to automate the low end of the programming market that would only raise their salaries even higher. It is not an easy machine learning problem to solve at all. Esoteric, obscure, and highly complex skills which can make businesses have never come cheaply.

Re: Amazon worker chat app to ban words such as “union”, “pay raise”, “slave labor”

#445

Post by Nasrudith »

ericd wrote: post #344
Firmwarrior wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say that coders as an industry are destroying the road behind us, since there isn't really a road between "warehouse worker" and "software engineer", unless someone has the knack for coding (in which case there's a very clear and well-paved road within the company between those roles) I think the best solution is to empower workers via unions or whatever else. It should be impossible for workers to get gro…

Better than unions would just be increasing labor scarcity at the low end of skills. Protectionism in the form of a carbon tax with border adjustment would help quite a bit, I think.

Artificial scarcity is a terrible way to generate wealth, and a carbon tax would disappoint given economies of scale in shipping are because per kilogram they are overwhelmingly efficient.

Re: Amazon worker chat app to ban words such as “union”, “pay raise”, “slave labor”

#446

Post by Nasrudith »

banannaise wrote: post #381
adriand wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not compelling and it’s not true. In fact most people are inherently good, and enjoy being generous and helpful. Let’s consider this within the context of tech workers specifically. The existence of an enormous open source software community and huge crowd-built resources like Stackoverflow are two examples that demonstrate the willingness of tech workers to contribute, free of charge, to each other and to the w…

One of the truly unfortunate things about modern capitalism is that making money and doing good for the world are more or less mutually exclusive. There's little money to be made helping people, and even when you find an exception, it often gets quickly overwhelmed by grift.

Sounds like your definition of good is set far too restrictive to be "also a sacrifice madr without any benefit to themselves" as opposed to just "improving the situation" if you think they are mutually exclusive.

Does the sin of making money wash away the virtue of creating a COVID-19 vaccine?

Re: Amazon worker chat app to ban words such as “union”, “pay raise”, “slave labor”

#447

Post by Nasrudith »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #419
ars wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh. There WAS a tornado shelter. And they went there. But tornado shelters can't survive direct hits (which are rare). Are you interested in the facts of the case, or just criticizing anything and everything?

If it's underground, how is there a direct hit... did the tornado Tunnel down?

You are thinking fallaciously in terms of absolutes. Any shelter is better than nothing against a tornado breaking your bones with thrown debris or outright impailing you with a 2x4. A shelter which would suffer only minor damage indirectly but would collapse on a direct hit is superior to nothing.

Re: Amazon worker chat app to ban words such as “union”, “pay raise”, “slave labor”

#448

Post by zeepzeep »

saeranv wrote: post #401
zeepzeep wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird how the hard working people that don't like their job get paid close to nothing and the software people enjoying their jobs get rich. I'm lucky that I could turn my hobby into a well paying profession, but it's kinda weird...

One of the more compelling framings for democratic socialism to me, is the idea of taking profits from companies and using it to radically raise wages of people with "undesirable" jobs: janitors, garbage-men, warehouse workers. There's no market pressure to do so (not without unions!) but can be regulated.

universal basic income addresses this problem too, but differently and with less paperwork

Re: Amazon worker chat app to ban words such as “union”, “pay raise”, “slave labor”

#449

Post by deltaonefour »

notch656a wrote: post #443
deltaonefour wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Your whole argument about the curve centers around the flawed and bizarre presumption that the curve has to center around a C. It doesn't always work that way That's where they usually center the curve. This is where MOST schools set the average. It's not bizarre it's actually bizarre if a school doesn't do this. There is no requirement for this to be the case JUST LIKE there's no requirement to grade people off of…

Clutch those pearls harder. Your program wasn't more difficult because it was more selective. Stubbornness is refusing to believe difficulty can remain constant across varying degrees of selectivity of cohorts. You're making the assertion it can't, I'm simply calling bullshit on your unsupported and specious claim.

>Clutch those pearls harder. Your program wasn't more difficult because it was more selective.

I never claimed such. I only know the hardness relative to another school I went too. That's as far as the anecdotal evidence goes for MY individual school. Still, we're not even talking about our respective schools anymore, I don't even care for that. I'm talking about a generality.

The numbers illustrate a generality that is axiomatically true. I'm not going to restate it, but I think you know already that it's true.

Re: Amazon worker chat app to ban words such as “union”, “pay raise”, “slave labor”

#450

Post by deltaonefour »

MockObject wrote: post #437
deltaonefour wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many have it. Much less people have the aptitude for quantum physics which is way harder. Programming is so easy that even as a teenager you have sufficient background to learn it. I assure you that as a teenager, it's very unlikely you had any aptitude for quantum physics or any of the hard mathematics required to understand general relativity.

That's funny, because I loved quantum physics and general relativity so much that I majored in physics, not computer science. I didn't find QM very hard, either. Having done both, I wouldn't say one is harder, only that QM requires more prerequisite knowledge, and I didn't have that as a teen. I find doing advanced math relaxing and meditative during commutes. That's aptitude. It's probably much the same aptitude as…

Ok. then you're an exception.

But let me put it this way. Much much much much much More people have done programming since they were teens but much less have done QM. You will find tons of examples of programmers and relatively few people who know QM or advanced mathematics.

That's the dichotomy I'm talking about. Programming is easy. QM requiring pre-requisite knowledge is part of what makes it so much harder.

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