701–710 of 721 posts
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> I think Amazon's stock vesting schedule for ICs is reasonable considering the sizable hiring bonus (iirc ~$20k for new graduates) One can get this bonus basically everywhere else in the area with similar sized companies. Hell, I got way more than that 8 years ago. The vesting schedule is diabolical: > 5% 1st yr, 15% 2nd yr, then 20% every 6 months coupled with the turnover rate: http://www.slate.com/content/dam/sla…
I think it's brilliant. If you live in Seattle and know anyone who's a mid-level corporate employee at Amazon, you should notice that it's a great way of selecting talent who are committed to the company and who will stick around. Also, contracts are re-negotiated every two years, so if you chain them up, you're getting a pretty significant annual payout.
The other reason to consider carefully before going there is they sometimes try to scare people by enforcing non-competes. So what are you going to do, deliver papers? Here's a recent article - https://www.geekwire.com/2017/business-personal-amazon-web-s...
edit - here's an example of layoffs in seattle https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-laying-o...
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I don't know about Amazon workers but Costco workers are dang happy as far as I can see. Always jovial, joking, and teasing with each other. They seem to form good friend networks there working side by side and stuff.
> but Costco workers are dang happy as far as I can see. Always jovial, joking, and teasing with each other. They seem to form good friend networks there working side by side and stuff. That margin is Amazon's opportunity. /s https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/706779-your-margin-is-my-op...
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And that's why people deride unions. It's a defence mechanism.
...why would a defence mechanism for worker health be something people deride?
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Costco (retail) appears to treat their employees much better - much higher base wages, regular increases in wage, benefits, etc. Also know a past Costco corporate employee and only had a positive impression.
Retail positions are different than warehouse positions. It's like how UPS drivers make bank, but the guys who load the trucks break their backs for scratch (even with union representation!).
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At least one reason is that the stock has done so well. A typical software engineer hired 4 years ago is incredibly well compensated at Amazon because of this. Consider a mid-level software engineer hired 4 years ago, on April 16 2014, with a salary of $100k. A typical stock grant at hiring for a mid-level software engineer in 2014 might be $400k over 4 years, backloaded so most of it comes at the end; on April 16 20…
Are those numbers real? As in, does (did?) Amazon really do $400,000 in stock grants for routine (I don't mean that to sound harsh, I just mean "not as a super-exceptional process to land a world-famous developer") software engineer hires? If they are, holy shit. I thought the meteoric rise in housing prices around here was almost entirely due to the influx of people compounded by this region's seeming inhospitable a…
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I understand that viewpoint,and even agree with it mostly on a person to person level, but if the government didn't have these laws why would it be any better. When people tried to negotiate with companies without the states involvement, the companies used violence to try and get their way. Corporations aren't moral agents and can't be treated as such
the companies used violence to try and get their way And that's exactly where we need the state, in order to protect us from violence. I'd just like there to be limits on the scope of its authority. Corporations are just groups of people.
If they're going to be treated like people then go all the way, but until then they need to be regulated to prevent the worst of their excesses that have been played out again and again
Is this worth it? Is this worth having the ability to pick between 10,000 different toasters via internet and have them delivered to your doorstep in 2 days? Sometimes I look at society as a complete organ, with a hypothetical ability to make cohesive decisions for itself. And I think, it is making extremely self-destructive choices. All for the sake of satisfying the urge to buy more, at lower prices, with more conv…
> Sometimes I look at society as a complete organ, with a hypothetical ability to make cohesive decisions for itself. And I think, it is making extremely self-destructive choices. One of my favorite philosophical thought experiments! I'd argue that that society is an organism comprised of several governments/companies which act as the organs . I usually observe each organ making decisions to optimize its use of money…
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the companies used violence to try and get their way And that's exactly where we need the state, in order to protect us from violence. I'd just like there to be limits on the scope of its authority. Corporations are just groups of people.
Corporations may be groups of people but they don't get treated like people. There's no corporate death penalty for companies that end up killing people. There's no corporate jail to remove companies that can't behave out of society for a set amount of time. There's fines that seem to never be greater than the profit the companies earn from breaking the law and it just becomes a cost of business. If they're going to…
Corporations may be groups of people but they don't get treated like people
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More competition has not lead to better conditions for workers. We are currently at such a low level of employment that economists don't know what the natural level of employment is anymore and this is still happening to employees. You're argument that "they would have had it worse" assumes that that Amazon wouldn't have employees these people if they were only making billionaires instead of people worth 100s of bill…
> More competition has not lead to better conditions for workers. We are currently at such a low level of employment that economists don't know what the natural level of employment is anymore and this is still happening to employees. 95% extreme poverty to 5%, much higher life expectancy, exponential wealth growth and low unemployement. Your first sentence plainly contradicts reality 100%. > You're argument that "the…
To your point about "trickle down doesn't work". Where is your evidence that it does work? The trickle down theories have been going on for at least a hundred years when it was horse and sparrow and we haven't seen improvements to the average person from it. The largest improvements have come from labor rights having to physically fight companies for it ~100 years ago, and the post war boom when tax rates on the top income levels were at their historical highs. Since trickle down economics started getting pushed into the economy and tax rates have been continually lowered for the richest, we've seen conditions for everyone not in tech or finance stagnate or go down.
Additionally the US government expenditures are not a black hope that wealth and goods are tossed into. They stimulate the economy as well, although I will agree that much of it is comically inefficient
For your point about regulations I'm not sure how explain my feelings on it eloquently, but yes those massive regulations exist and end up squeezing out the smaller players. What they have become though is just another tool for large corporations to keep competition out while not changing their behavior much. We end up having regulations to keep the environment clean that make it impossible for small manufactories to run profitably but still don't keep pollution gone. Those regulations are bad and I can't point to the government as a good solution on how to get good regulations, but I do believe that they get it right sometimes where if it's left up to corporations there will always be a race to the bottom and we will get no protections