Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 113 posts

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#91

Post by random314 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #72
random314 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must point out that it is disingenuous to look at USA in isolation when discussing capitalism. USA increased shareholder wealth within it's borders by exporting misery and poverty to Latin America. So you need to look at USA+Latin America, Chile etc in totality. Moreover eastern Bloc countries and Cuba had severe trading restrictions imposed on them by usa making their economic survival difficult. Cuba, iran and NK…

Ok, forget about the US. Is there any non-capitalist country doing as well as, say, Ireland?

Of all the capitalist countries you could pick you picked Ireland? With a higher per capita income than USA. Sounds less than random. If Capitalism is such magic why not pick Haiti? Its a small country with a primary trading partner - capitalist USA!

Is China capitalist or communist? That's the country that has lifted most people out of poverty.

If you really want to pick a typical capitalist country - pick India. It is a country that is clearly democratic and capitalist and represents several 17% of the worlds population. I can pick a dozen eastern bloc countries that were better off in the 80s than India is today.

If you are looking for clear A/B test examples where 2 exactly similar populations existed and one was treated with capitalism and the other with socialism, then you wont find any. The only one that comes remotely close is Latin America compared with Cuba - because both regions had similar economic and geographic status. One set of countries were treated with capitalism and Cuba was treated with communism. Cleary Cuba did much better than Latin America, but this only yields a sample size of one and it would be overreaching to generalize.

I find the whole debate around capitalism vs communism a red herring. Western Europe and USA have enjoyed great wealth because of historic reasons. Western Europe, thanks to colonization of Asia and Africa. USA - thanks to free slave labor and effective colonization of Latin America in the 20th century and geographic safety in the world wars.

Eastern Europe and Russia had limited colonial resources to plunder and had been ravaged by the 2nd World war. They did not have access to Marshall plan funds to rebuild after World war unlike Western Europe. Moreover they were a small bloc of countries that had to trade within themselves because of economic blockade by NATO. Considering the extremely tough circumstances they had mixed results. Romania did well, Poland not so much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Socialist_Repub... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_People%27s_Republic#Eco... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Soviet_Socialist_Rep...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Cuba

Cuba, in particular, has heavy sanctions to this day.

While capitalist countries like Singapore (dictatorship), Malaysia and Hong Kong (colony) did well, some did not (Pakistan) and other countries in the immediate American sphere of influence did extremely badly. Haiti, Nicaragua, Chile etc.

If anything that can be concluded from this, it is

- Being independent is good for a countries economy. Colonization or pseudo-colonization via capitalistic banana republics can be devastating - India, Haiti etc.

- Trade embargoes can ruin a countries economy. Except Cuba, almost all countries are ruined by it - NK, Iraq, Iran etc.

- Socialist welfare states can work and avoid terrible poverty and exploitation of workers. Scandinavia, Cuba, Communist Romania etc.

- USA strongly prefers dictatorships as trading partners-Chile, Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Haiti, Nicaragua etc.

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#92

Post by nickpsecurity »

xt00 wrote: post #33

Let’s say the workers unionize as the guy they interviewed suggests, what is the result? Basically they will push to change the system so that people don’t have to work as hard, it’s harder to fire people and have a seniority system. It’s quite possible that it would be better for the workers in that case but I do wonder if amazon could bypass a lot of these issues by just saying that people can’t work more than say…

"Basically they will push to change the system so that people don’t have to work as hard, it’s harder to fire people and have a seniority system."

Costco is a union company that's like a walk-in version of Amazon warehouse invented before Amazon. They pay workers well, give them bonuses, and so on. Company makes around $100 billion a year.

If trying to imagine unionized Amazon, walk into a Costco noting how the workers perform and at what stress levels. Better yet, if about vote with your wallet, just buy stuff from Costco and similar companies instead of Amazon to maintain and create more great jobs.

My company is a union company, too. We outperform the competition. They try to poach us all the time, too. The contract allows management to take action against lazy or disobedient employees if they can prove it. Their continued employment is totally due to terrible, ineffective management. All they gotta do is write their name on a piece of paper they present to those workers several times to fire them. Instead, they write up good, compliant workers over technicalities but ignore bad workers that argue back more. The lazy, weak managers get stuff done on paper that way. Although very common in union shops, I virtually never see anyone talk about the management angle on bad employees hard to get rid of.

The other issue is managers backing friends/family, who they buy drugs from, sleep with, and so on. Lots of political backchanneling over the most ridiculous stuff in these big companies. The sales teams are even crazier most of the time but theyre professional bullshitters with incentives to be aggressively outgoing. So, no surprise Im always hearing crazy stories about ex-employees. ;)

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#93

Post by ABCLAW »

Alex63 wrote: post #75
n4r9 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a general criticism of the system. Highlighting Amazon's particular behaviour is useful as a demonstration of how/where the system fails, and may produce short term wins if it incentivises amazon to stop being inhumane.

I sincerely don't want to oversimplify your argument, but it seems like the logical end-point would be a global socialist/communist society. Is that your desired/intended outcome?

What...?

You get a more functional labour economy by having labour able to access better opportunities. If there's a killer sales agent that won't apply for my sales position because Amazon is dunking him with 14 hour days repeatedly, no one benefits besides Amazon.

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#94

Post by Alex63 »

ABCLAW wrote: post #93
Alex63 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sincerely don't want to oversimplify your argument, but it seems like the logical end-point would be a global socialist/communist society. Is that your desired/intended outcome?

What...? You get a more functional labour economy by having labour able to access better opportunities. If there's a killer sales agent that won't apply for my sales position because Amazon is dunking him with 14 hour days repeatedly, no one benefits besides Amazon.

I agree, and I would not want to see regulation or laws that prevent labour access to other opportunities. But asking people to work overtime for specific reasons/period doesn't prevent them from looking for other opportunities. That seems like a straw man.

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#95

Post by oh_sigh »

Kaveren wrote: post #21
oh_sigh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming some data hasn't been delicately fudged in order to anonymize the source. Maybe he worked there between August 2016 and September 2017. Maybe is a Navy, not AF veteran. Maybe he isn't a he at all. Who knows?

Isn't that worse than just not revealing personal information at all? Fudging dates could be quite bad in particular if it were to become apparent that policy changes were made after the supposed time period. I don't find that the military information was valuable, it could've easily been left out, and the veteran question the author posed could have still been asked if it were rephrased.

Yes, when it comes to anonymizing a source, releasing no information is always better than releasing any information, even if that information is a mix of truths and falsehoods. But, releasing a mix of truths and falsehoods or less specific/more generalized truths can only be equally as bad as releasing all specific truths, but it may turn out to be much better. Saying your tenure was September 2016-August 2017 might match 20 people at the company, one of which is your source. Fudging your tenure to August 2016-September 2017 might match 20 people, but not your source. Saying your tenure was 2016-2017 might match 1000+ people, including your source.

There are trade offs in all of these methods, but I don't see them as being particularly wrong if you want to provide color to your story without materially affecting it, and can be confident that you aren't helping to identify your source.

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#96

Post by oh_sigh »

pbalau wrote: post #16
oh_sigh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming some data hasn't been delicately fudged in order to anonymize the source. Maybe he worked there between August 2016 and September 2017. Maybe is a Navy, not AF veteran. Maybe he isn't a he at all. Who knows?

What if there is somebody else that matches the made up details?

If you have a beef with this person, and set it up so your statements seem like they are coming from them, then you are playing with fire. If the person is very adamant that they weren't the leaker, the next question might be "well, who could leak and have a motivation to make their details look like this person's?", which may point to you.

If it is just a coincidence that the details of your fudging match a specific person, then they can still deny it. I don't know, but the point of all this is to protect a source, not to protect a random person who might be implicated by bad luck and punished illegally by bad actors.

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#97

Post by barney54 »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #92
xt00 wrote: post #33

Let’s say the workers unionize as the guy they interviewed suggests, what is the result? Basically they will push to change the system so that people don’t have to work as hard, it’s harder to fire people and have a seniority system. It’s quite possible that it would be better for the workers in that case but I do wonder if amazon could bypass a lot of these issues by just saying that people can’t work more than say…

"Basically they will push to change the system so that people don’t have to work as hard, it’s harder to fire people and have a seniority system." Costco is a union company that's like a walk-in version of Amazon warehouse invented before Amazon. They pay workers well, give them bonuses, and so on. Company makes around $100 billion a year. If trying to imagine unionized Amazon, walk into a Costco noting how the worke…

I don’t know. Costco is a different business. There workers aren’t focused on customer support. The Costco workers don’t hate the customers but they don’t go out of their way to help customers like I have seen Walmart workers do for example.

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#98

Post by nickpsecurity »

barney54 wrote: post #97
nickpsecurity wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Basically they will push to change the system so that people don’t have to work as hard, it’s harder to fire people and have a seniority system." Costco is a union company that's like a walk-in version of Amazon warehouse invented before Amazon. They pay workers well, give them bonuses, and so on. Company makes around $100 billion a year. If trying to imagine unionized Amazon, walk into a Costco noting how the worke…

I don’t know. Costco is a different business. There workers aren’t focused on customer support. The Costco workers don’t hate the customers but they don’t go out of their way to help customers like I have seen Walmart workers do for example.

It's probably their policy or culture, not union-related. Publix (employee-owned) and Kroger (union) are in that space. Their management orders them to go out of the way for customers even with losses on some stuff. It's a customer loyalty strategy. Costco just has to do enough to keep a member. They have good service at mine, though.

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#99

Post by krapp »

Alex63 wrote: post #73
sergiosgc wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to indirectly change: > 1. Most customers choose to buy from the seller with the lowest price. By setting a floor for the lowest operational cost, defining such basic concepts as: 1. Maximum work schedule (12h/day mandatory is not acceptable); 2. Minimum wage. If every seller must abide by the same rules, the market is fair. Costs won't be absurd and no worker will work under medieval conditions. I know cost…

Both your proposals seem likely to result in increased automation, thereby reducing overall employment. To be clear, I'm not saying it's a good thing that some people feel they have to work a 12+ hour day, but isn't it better that they have that choice than that their job is automated out of existence? Also, if you mandate higher costs for suppliers (through limited hours and minimum wages) then you will create incen…

>but isn't it better that they have that choice than that their job is automated out of existence?

Their job is going to be automated out of existence anyway, so the choice is between being paid less, or being paid more, until it is.

Re: The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

#100

Post by Kephael »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #92
xt00 wrote: post #33

Let’s say the workers unionize as the guy they interviewed suggests, what is the result? Basically they will push to change the system so that people don’t have to work as hard, it’s harder to fire people and have a seniority system. It’s quite possible that it would be better for the workers in that case but I do wonder if amazon could bypass a lot of these issues by just saying that people can’t work more than say…

"Basically they will push to change the system so that people don’t have to work as hard, it’s harder to fire people and have a seniority system." Costco is a union company that's like a walk-in version of Amazon warehouse invented before Amazon. They pay workers well, give them bonuses, and so on. Company makes around $100 billion a year. If trying to imagine unionized Amazon, walk into a Costco noting how the worke…

Amazon is a non-union company and they have almost single-handedly destroyed physical retail in the Western world. Amazon has created immense value for consumers and shareholders, Jeff Bezos would not be the richest person in the world if Amazon was not good at what they do. Costco hasn't innovated in decades, if it all.
Post reply on HN