Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness' • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#71

Post by VLM » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 1:55 PM UTC

nicpottier wrote: post #48

panacea wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empathy redundancy detected! "Yes, you are a mechanical turk in the strictest sense of the word, being dispatched by your hand scanner to go find something and put it in a cart, but it isn't hard work, just a bit boring." Would you like to be a permanent 'mechanical turk'? As in... you had zero choice in the matter and no chance to change things ever? That's not 'a bit boring'... that's soul crushing (and I mean 'sou…

The employees aren't in jail, they aren't slaves, they have choice. I worked there, it wasn't that bad. The article is sensational.

"they have choice."

My take on reading numerous articles on the topic is the design of processes and management style is oriented around removing all possible choices from the employees as a stereotypical primate dominance ritual. Agree, disagree?

A management style designed to make people unhappy so they leave.

I have worked at places with call centers where this was a stated goal... pay after 4 years is excellent, of course working conditions procedures and policies are specifically designed so no one lasts longer than 6 months. There is a HN blindness to this because it takes a programmer a couple months to get up to speed so managing Ruby programmers this way would be pretty idiotic, but for low skill jobs where actual training is about a day, getting rid of them before they get too expensive is a "valid" although inhumane management technique.

My gut level guess is something like they don't pay benefits of any sort for the first 90 days, so management goals and bonuses are oriented around making people so uncomfortable that almost all of them are gone by 89 days.

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#72

Post by jrochkind1 » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 1:59 PM UTC

throwaway1979 wrote: post #70

thelettere wrote: post #50

I worked at an Amazon warehouse in Texas as a seasonal employee about a month ago. It was an absolutely miserable experience - and I say that as someone who has worked plenty of low-end manual jobs. I only lasted a month. Shifts were 10 hours and had two 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch. The floor is large and there is no cafeteria, so it usually was more like a 15 minute break after you walked over to the brea…

Wow ... this story reminds me of Marshall Brain's Manna story. I don't understand how much money a company would lose if they changed the hours to 3 or 4 hours per person. Fine, they'd double or triple their workforce and have to deal with more HR/paperwork. But the costs don't increase. This makes me wonder if the reason is not cost but control. If company X is the only thing in your life, you will likely be a more…

Dude, how about this line from the OP Guardian article? It kind of is Manna...

> A handset told him what to collect and put on his trolley. It allotted him a set number of seconds to find each product and counted down. If he made a mistake the scanner beeped.

> "We are machines, we are robots, we plug our scanner in, we're holding it, but we might as well be plugging it into ourselves", he said.

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#73

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 2:00 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #72

throwaway1979 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow ... this story reminds me of Marshall Brain's Manna story. I don't understand how much money a company would lose if they changed the hours to 3 or 4 hours per person. Fine, they'd double or triple their workforce and have to deal with more HR/paperwork. But the costs don't increase. This makes me wonder if the reason is not cost but control. If company X is the only thing in your life, you will likely be a more…

Dude, how about this line from the OP Guardian article? It kind of is Manna... > A handset told him what to collect and put on his trolley. It allotted him a set number of seconds to find each product and counted down. If he made a mistake the scanner beeped. > "We are machines, we are robots, we plug our scanner in, we're holding it, but we might as well be plugging it into ourselves", he said.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#74

Post by VLM » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 2:01 PM UTC

sentenza wrote: post #63

Mikeb85 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you like to be a permanent 'mechanical turk'? As in... you had zero choice in the matter and no chance to change things ever? That's not 'a bit boring'... that's soul crushing (and I mean 'soul' in a non-religious sense). Studies have shown that sort of stress causes heart disease over 'good stress' (you're manning the Very Important controls). You have choice. To work there or not to. By the way, welcome to…

No. With current economic circumstances, many have the choice to work there or to not work at all. In construction jobs you have steadily-changing tasks and work in fresh air/the sun. It might be more physically straining, but it is certainly healthier for your body and mind than working as a human robot at Amazon. Also: Nobody is complaining that working at Amazon is not the greatest job on the planet. The scandal i…

"The scandal is that it would take so little effort on the part of Amazon to significantly improve the working experience."

I have observed bait n switch as a labor force management technique... lure in "good" workers by promising awful pay and benefits not, but 4 years in its pretty awesome. Then make actual conditions, procedures, and policies such that everyone is fired or quits by 6 months in.

Used to see this a lot for health insurance. Nobody gets insurance for first 90 days, coincidentally everyone is fired for cause or quits in disgust less than two months in.

A business can save a lot of money that way. Not saying its right, just explaining why a business would intentionally boost their turnover rate or refuse to make the simplest change to lower their turnover rate. Its not a bug, its a performance eval oriented bonus rewarded feature.

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#75

Post by emilga » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 2:11 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #66

emilga wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the problem of grasping, can you please comment on this video [1]? Instead of making a robot "hand", they have filled a balloon with ground coffee beans. "Grasping" and "ungrasping" then simply becomes sucking air out of, and pushing air into the balloon. Is there some downside to this that I'm not seeing? [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKOI_lVDPpw

"Is there some downside to this that I'm not seeing?" Most real world engineering problems boil down to long term reliability. Its just assumed you'll get your statics and dynamics correct and all that basic stuff, the actual brain power burned on the job is designing stuff that actually works 1M times and tolerates every component being 5% off the exact value or whatever. I think this would be a huge headache in the…

Thanks. I did not know this.

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#76

Post by krstck » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 2:14 PM UTC

throwaway1979 wrote: post #70

thelettere wrote: post #50

I worked at an Amazon warehouse in Texas as a seasonal employee about a month ago. It was an absolutely miserable experience - and I say that as someone who has worked plenty of low-end manual jobs. I only lasted a month. Shifts were 10 hours and had two 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch. The floor is large and there is no cafeteria, so it usually was more like a 15 minute break after you walked over to the brea…

Wow ... this story reminds me of Marshall Brain's Manna story. I don't understand how much money a company would lose if they changed the hours to 3 or 4 hours per person. Fine, they'd double or triple their workforce and have to deal with more HR/paperwork. But the costs don't increase. This makes me wonder if the reason is not cost but control. If company X is the only thing in your life, you will likely be a more…

That's not actually better for the employees, unless they're just part-time students looking for a side job. You can't support yourself or a family on 4 hour shifts a day. Also, and I never actually directly dealt with the paperwork of hiring so I can't confirm this, but it's my understanding that it is actually more expensive to hire someone new than give a current employee more hours due to now having to provide benefits for two people.

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#77

Post by eli_gottlieb » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 2:15 PM UTC

nicpottier wrote: post #52

panacea wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The employees aren't in jail, they aren't slaves, they have choice." Care to outline the choice they have (you forgot the "s", as belies your worldview)? What are the choices outside of jail, slavery or the work conditions described in the article? I suspect that many of them can't get another job and they need to feed themselves or dependents like children. "The article is sensational." If you disagree with the art…

Fuckwit? Asshole? Seriously? You can disagree, that's cool, we can have different opinions, but aren't we supposed to strive to a slightly higher level of discourse on HN? You don't know me, so lay off the ad-hominem, this isn't the forum for it. We apparently disagree on what kinds of choices people have in the Midwest. We are coming from different places in our experience, and I happen to think I hold the edge on t…

>You can disagree, that's cool, we can have different opinions, but aren't we supposed to strive to a slightly higher level of discourse on HN?

I would prefer to strive for a slightly higher level of actual empathy and morality on HN rather than tolerate the "Fuck you, got mine" attitude you're displaying.

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#78

Post by eli_gottlieb » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 2:27 PM UTC

radical_blogger wrote: post #11

at least the british press still cares enough about the average british worker to write an article like this. The american press would only write an article like this if such conditions disparately impacted minority race workers. Pretty soon the british press will do the same. It just gets worse and worse. I see no light at the end of the tunnel. The citizens of america do not even ask the right questions.

Shut up and get out. We're not putting up with your racist insinuations.

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#79

Post by eli_gottlieb » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 2:33 PM UTC

pirateking wrote: post #12

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goddamnit, why do the nasty predictions for the future have to arrive early while the nice ones are always late?

Salvation is always just around the corner, but we are walking around a rotating platform struggling to even just keep the corner in sight.

Salvation is easy. All you have to do is decide that "good" > "bad". The perverse attraction to misery and toil I observe in people, in this fucking thread, that's what pisses me off. What's with this idolatry?

Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'

#80

Post by RyanMcGreal » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 2:40 PM UTC

csmuk wrote: post #16

ck2 wrote: post #9

Average people get all upset about unions when they see them applied to jobs that don't seem too too demanding. But places like Walmart and Amazon are exactly why unions should exist, to counterbalance the inhumane over-optimization and maltreatment of people. Amazon could probably make work less toxic by hiring 10% more people, but that would make things cost a few cents more.

Yes and no. This subject somewhat angers me. Yes people like Walmart and Amazon workers need protection form maltreatment. Definitely. This should be built into the law though, not into unions. And no because the existing unions don't really protect people. If you look at RMT, Unison and NUT they regularly pop up just to cause trouble. From a perspective of people having to consume services offered by their staff reg…

> This should be built into the law though, not into unions.

Who do you think is going to get these protections built into the law? Who do you think has been responsible for getting the protections we do have built into the law? It's unions. They're not perfect (no organization of people ever is), but they're a hell of a lot better than an alternative economy in which unions don't exist, all workers are atomized and disorganized and the public policy dialogue is entirely dominated by what large corporations want you to think.