The Challenge of Working At Amazon 396
An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times has a lengthy exposé on the working conditions within Jeff Bezos's Amazon. "Even as the company tests delivery by drone and ways to restock toilet paper at the push of a bathroom button, it is conducting a little-known experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is acceptable." Over 100 current and former employees were interviewed for the article, and they painted a picture of a demanding and punishing workplace that people tolerate in exchange for the ability to create. "In contrast to companies where declarations about their philosophy amount to vague platitudes, Amazon has rules that are part of its daily language and rituals, used in hiring, cited at meetings and quoted in food-truck lines at lunchtime. Some Amazonians say they teach them to their children." Of course, this attitude causes problems for people whose lives don't allow them extreme levels of effort: "The mother of the stillborn child soon left Amazon. 'I had just experienced the most devastating event in my life,' the woman recalled via email, only to be told her performance would be monitored 'to make sure my focus stayed on my job.'"
Slavery 2.0 Rocks!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Slavery 2.0 Rocks!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't mistake the legality of quitting with the ability to quit: Many families do not have the savings to miss a single paycheck. Work them hard enough, make sure they can't take time off to interview for a new job, dismantle the social safety net, and you have wage slavery.
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Many families do not have the savings to miss a single paycheck.
That's a problem of money management, not lousy employers. America might not have the best social net, but if a family has no income, they can get welfare long enough to find another job.
Re:Slavery 2.0 Rocks!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
you are wrong.
speaking as someone who is out of work, savings near 0 (been out a long time) and there is essentially no social support. I can't meet my expenses on unemployment, not even close. and when unemployed, you cannot find a new place to live; they all insist you are currently employed! catch 22.
I know what I'm talking about. I'm in that role. you are simply ASSUMING and you are, quite frankly, wrong and talking out of your ass.
america will crush you and you can't expect the US to support its people when they are down and out. why the fuck do you think there ARE homeless people!!! dammit.
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Apparently, at least 3% cannot.
You can't look at the 3% number and say that. You also have to look at how long they've been unemployed. Plenty of people quit their job, take a vacation, then start looking for another one. Sometimes people just enjoy their unemployment checks for a while after getting laid off. Some people are literally crazy. Other times, people get fired and need to look for a job. It would be weird, and probably unhealthy, if the unemployment rate were zero.
You have to look at the unemployment rate, and also the leng
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Apparently, at least 3% cannot.
No. About 5% is considered "full employment" because it is normal for about 1 out of 20 people to be between jobs. If the unemployment rate goes below ~5%, it means that employers are struggling to fill positions, and may need to raise pay to attract more people into the workforce.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Slavery 2.0 Rocks!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon appears to pay white collar workers (the subject of this article) fairly well [glassdoor.com]. If you cannot afford to keep a family of 4 on $9,000 per month, then you're doing it wrong. Yes, Seattle housing has gotten more expensive - but you can still find hundreds of houses for sale [johnlscott.com] that would have 3+ bedrooms (so little Johnny and little Mary can have their own rooms), 2+ bathrooms, and are standalone homes - and are available for under $500,000 (meaning about a $2,000/month mortgage - should be simple for a monthly income of $9,000).
If the typical white collar Amazon worker cannot afford to feed their kids and pay a mortgage AND put away 10% of their income every month - then they really need some basic budgeting skills and self-control.
Re: Slavery 2.0 Rocks!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Basic conservative American "I've got mine" reasoning. This country is saddled with far too many who think like that. It's been holding back progress for generations, particularly since Reaganomics took hold.
Total inability to put yourself in another's shoes, the notion that what's important to them should be all that's important to anyone, an utter lack of appreciation of how much worker productivity gets siphoned off for the wealthy, and of course a visceral hatred for the idea that anybody should be
Re: Slavery 2.0 Rocks!!! (Score:3)
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That's a modest proposal
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I'm not aware of a single country (no, not even the most socialist in Europe) in which the social safety net will help you if you quit .
Invariably, the rules for getting unemployment benefits are "you get this if and only if you are made redundant" (not, as opposed to quitting or being fired for misconduct).
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Who needs drones and robots when you can control the humans to do your bidding.
If you can quit and go work elsewhere, then it is not slavery.
Ahhh yes. The simpleton Libertarian view. What happens when almost every workplace is like this? circa late 1800's to early 1900's. Then you have no where to go. Laughing out loud hard at your simplistic view of the world. In addition, your head must be shaped like a phallus.
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What happens when almost every workplace is like this? circa late 1800's to early 1900's. Then you have no where to go.
That would be an excellent point if this was 1910 and we were talking about coal mining or meat packing. But it isn't and we aren't.
The software company I work for is great. It's filled with people who quit other companies because their working conditions sucked. Wages aren't top-tier but I gladly trade compensation for a genuinely pleasant work environment.
My brother in law went to work for Amazon, lured by a large paycheck. He immediately hated the culture and quit after a week. He happily works for Starb
Re:Slavery 2.0 Rocks!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
No, this happened before. They called it Enron, and exactly the same corporate attitude about 'culling everybody all the time' to force all the workers to work like rabid weasels was in place. There was even a movie about it which is quite good. "Enron- The Smartest Guys In The Room"
Youtube appears to be trying to sell it outright, so no link, but I'm sure you can find it (I actually own it on DVD, that's how good it was)
I could give you an Amazon link? ;) http://www.amazon.com/Enron-Th... [amazon.com] $8.14 for the DVD.
This is sort of what you get with Googles and Amazons and such barging around. I can instantly give you that video for $8.14, but everybody now has to play by their rules to keep up. You can't do another 'marketplace' or 'internet' that's nicer to work at, the crazy people will just eat you for lunch, so it's increasingly impossible to work at all unless you want to work in this kind of way.
Anyway, Enron existed and was just like that and held all California for ransom because they could, it was an arbitrage opportunity. Once arbitrage opportunities come up for Amazon, they'll not only seize them but seize them harder and faster than anybody else because that's the culture. Look at the recent big Amazon Prime Day. That's what you get but only after they kill everything else that can do what they do.
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> No, this happened before.
No, it did not. You are holding up Enron and comparing it to a slavery relationship (which is the nature of this part of the thread). How the fuck did this get upvoted? Oh, it's just anti-corporate and that's enough? Sigh.
Re:Slavery 2.0 Rocks!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can quit and go work elsewhere, then it is not slavery.
Hmmmm. Even if the pay and conditions elsewhere are not better than where you are?
Technically, you are not a slave unless you are legally someone else's property. But owning human property in the form of slaves has a downside. They represent a big investment, so you need to keep them healthy. That means reasonable shelter, board and lodging, clothes, some form of medical help when needed... it all adds up.
Today the wealthy have discovered that it pays much better to leave the "slaves" free. That way shelter, board, lodging, clothing, and medical care are their problem, not yours.
Exactly as modern imperialists have discovered that it's a mug's game to invade countries and take them over. Then, as Colin Powell memorably noted, you own them - and you're responsible for governing them. It pays better to stay outside their borders, lend their governments money, get them hopelessly in debt, and force all their citizens to work for you at rock-bottom pay for the rest of their lives. Followed by their children and their grandchildren.
Isn't finance wonderful?
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"It pays better to stay outside their borders, lend their governments money, get them hopelessly in debt, and force all their citizens to work for you at rock-bottom pay for the rest of their lives".
See, for example, Joseph Stiglitz' explanation here:
http://www.theguardian.com/bus... [theguardian.com]
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Who needs drones and robots when you can control the humans to do your bidding.
If you can quit and go work elsewhere, then it is not slavery.
It's the "go to work elsewhere" part that can often be the sticking point. Especially if your definition of "elsewhere" doesn't include raising a family as a McDonald's burger flipper.
some bosses are sociopaths (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, we joke about it, but there are a few there who truly are devoid of empathy, far beyond being mere assholes.
I was contracting on a poorly-managed death-march project, where my job was basically to work night and day to make up for the product manager's lack of planning. (I willing accepted this, because I needed money, and they were desperate, and we came to terms that I was willing to accept: $$$ cha-ching.)
Then 1 day I had a really off day and got very little done. I got reamed for it the next day, dude was literally screaming at me that "that was no excuse" that I "needed to focus and not make excuses" and so on. Well, I'm sorry, but I tried, I really did. But man, all day I just couldn't seem to get work done no matter how hard I tried. I still remember the date, too: 9/11/2001.
Motherfucker.
Re:some bosses are sociopaths (Score:4, Insightful)
I got reamed for it the next day, dude was literally screaming at me that "that was no excuse" that I "needed to focus and not make excuses" and so on
When people yell at you, don't accept it. Remain calm. Say, "As soon as you are ready to calm down and act like an adult, we can discuss this." That will make him really mad, but eventually he'll calm down.
At that point, be sure to listen to his concerns, and promise to work hard, or whatever. Then of course, work hard, but don't let people act like screaming toddlers around you.
Re:some bosses are sociopaths (Score:4, Insightful)
I got reamed for it the next day, dude was literally screaming at me that "that was no excuse" that I "needed to focus and not make excuses" and so on
When people yell at you, don't accept it. Remain calm. Say, "As soon as you are ready to calm down and act like an adult, we can discuss this." That will make him really mad, and then he'll fire you on the spot.
Fixed that for you.
Re:some bosses are sociopaths (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed. I remember you well, and we live daily with the shame you brought our organization. You were given one minor task, and could not redeem even that. Though it was a day of infamy, it could have been 1000 times greater and more harrowing to America if you had only followed the example of great martyrs Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi (peace be upon them!).
That you blame the warrior-poet Osama Bin Laden's "lack of planning" for your own incompetence is great heresy! We had doubts about recruiting a Lebanese, softened by Germany, but none of us could even have imagined such an off day as to be subdued by American civilians and lose one of our great weapons, the United Airlines Flight 93. Fortunately, the day was carried by your betters who are now in Paradise.
There will be no honor for the now-anonymous coward Ziad Jarrah, nor for his traitorous Jew-loving cousin Ali! May Allah curse your family for generations.
How it's supposed to work... (Score:2)
I would never work for Amazon - I accept lower pay in exchange for work/life balance. But for those people for whom money is more important, Amazon provides them with that opportunity. To each their own.
...and to those who didn't know what they were getting into when they started working at Amazon, that's their own fault. Amazon's working conditions are pretty well-known.
Re:How it's supposed to work... (Score:4, Insightful)
The question is whether society is supposed to set things up so only these guys win everything.
That's what rules are for. Since the days of soot-covered London it's always been like this. Hell is what you make it and society is always drawn in the colors of the biggest hell it can get away with, and always will be.
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Well one of the big issues is that we currently get the worst of all worlds. Sometimes the 'middle road' is not the best way.
Whatever your political views, each side does offer a 'good life' in its vision.
The left/progressive way is rather standard and easy to see as good based on the way most of us live and been educated. Stable lifetime employment and a good safety net with rules to ensure improving standards. Again, that's the theory :)
In the case of the 'free market', the idea is that you'd give your al
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Are they the only ones that win? Do they win everything?
My neighbor across the street has a house about the same size as mine. He buys a new BMW or Mercedes every year; I get 3-4 years out of my Ford. He has a top-of-the-line MotoGuzzi - I ride a mid-line Honda. He and his family vacation in Barbados - I make due with Cabo San Lucas and Hawaii. He's at work right now (and nearly every Saturday, and many Sundays), and I'm at home, relaxing with some music, the cats, and Slashdot.
Did he win everything?
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This is how the labour market is supposed to work.
I would never work for Amazon - I accept lower pay in exchange for work/life balance. But for those people for whom money is more important, Amazon provides them with that opportunity. To each their own. ...and to those who didn't know what they were getting into when they started working at Amazon, that's their own fault. Amazon's working conditions are pretty well-known.
This is all well and good, but the executives at places like Amazon have the ear of government policymakers. Sure, it's not slavery if you can quit...but it is when everywhere else can act the exact same way.
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Sure, it's not slavery if you can quit...but it is when everywhere else can act the exact same way.
That argument doesn't work in civilized world, as creating the 'everywhere else' places to work is anyones freedom.
Re:How it's supposed to work... (Score:5, Interesting)
"This is how the labour market is supposed to work".
Unfortunately, that is literally true. Read those original 18th-century and 19th-century economists like Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, etc. They had it all worked out that wages - the price of labour - would be forced down to the minimum that would support life (plus a little extra to let the next generation of workers be born and brought up). Any attempt to pay more would inevitably makes matters still worse.
In the 20th century it looked, for a while, as if things would turn out differently. But maybe not.
It doesn't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
We are a vendor who works on a lot of high profile jobs that Amazon can't handle in-house. We work 40 hour weeks and our median employee retention is about 10 years. We also pay well and definitely know how to speak our mind when we think something is wrong, even sticking to our guns against anyone else if we can defend our position.
Every. Single. Amazon. Employee. that comes to our office asks if we're hiring or know who is. I've never seen anything like it in my life. Every single employee is working on their exit strategy. And it's not some utopian meritocracy where the best remain the weak are purged. They're losing their best employees who are creative and smart because going into a 10 hour long meeting where everyone feels not just encouraged but required to criticize an idea isn't productive it's just everybody feeling they have to provide input or look like they're slacking. Sorry but sometimes something is good but Bob in accounting feels like he needs to add his 2 cents to be a contributor. Nothing is worse in a meeting than people who don't actually have anything to contribute feel mandated to speak up and derail a meeting because that's one of the 12 commandments.
And for a process supposedly based on data, it ignores the largest data point that has been validated with over a 100 years of research: after 40 hours your employees aren't contributing anything. In knowledge based economies it's even lower, after about 30 hours you're just killing time.
The model that they're chasing is the Chinese School system. What that accomplishes is cramming and metric pleasing but what it fails to accomplish is actual innovation and progress because all of your energy goes into satisfying the grading system not taking risks and giving your brain 2 seconds to step back and absorb what it's working on. There's no time walk around a problem when you're barely keeping up with your workload.
Toyota figured that out with their NUMMI plant. They learned that if you push employees too far and you simply reward quantity over quality you end up with shit product.
All Amazon is going to have in a few years is Type A assholes who are willing to kill themselves and they'll have no creatives, no inventors and nobody who actually is innovating. They'll have people who happily work 100 hour weeks to reduce the delay after clicking "Buy Now" and nobody coming up with the next Kindle.
Re:It doesn't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
And for a process supposedly based on data, it ignores the largest data point that has been validated with over a 100 years of research: after 40 hours your employees aren't contributing anything. In knowledge based economies it's even lower, after about 30 hours you're just killing time.
Just quoting this part, but the rest of your post is a worthwhile read, too--I'd mod it up if I had points.
I've seen a lot of people who "work 80+ hour weeks" it's pretty rare that any of them are doing even 30 hours of productive work most of the time. In some cases they're such a mess that they're breaking things and moving things backwards. It's one thing to have a crunch and work double for a week or two or three. Sometimes it happens, and in many cases you can even be productive for it. But when people try to sustain it, it breaks things. Where I am, QA are expected to stop you from working if you've been on shift more than 12 hours and are touching hardware. Or even if you look tired. And if it's friday and there's a big task that has to get done? Sometimes the best thing you can do is send everybody home-- stuff gets broken on friday afternoons and weekends when everybody's tired and in a hurry.
The Challenge of Working At Amazon (Score:2, Funny)
Anacondas? [youtube.com]
Amazon's Self-Reinforcing Decline in Hires (Score:5, Interesting)
When you treat people like robots, the general level of need to keep over-indoctrinating on "company policy" becomes even larger as the word gets out and you primarily get 2nd rate people filling the shoes of those who left.
Eventually you get a dumbed down workforce, because the truly creative types can find a more enjoyable creative experience in companies that value their skilled people.
Re:Amazon's Self-Reinforcing Decline in Hires (Score:5, Interesting)
Not necessarily. The trouble with this situation is a bit like Uber: it preys upon people who've lost all perspective.
One woman in the article was said to spend her own money hiring someone in India to do data entry so she could get more personally done. At her own expense.
That will become first common, and then obligatory. It becomes a situation where you (not the guy in India) keeps the stock options, and you're totally an Amabot as far as your belief system, so you go hungry because you're spending all your money subcontracting out so that you can radically outperform everybody else. There's clearly no rule against it and it doesn't hurt the company so that becomes the new normal.
It becomes a game of only the craziest, most kool-aid drinking people competing directly with each other to bring new value to Amazon, and the cost of this is not taken out of the consumer (they free-ride) but out of these executives and white-collar workers. It becomes easier for them to expect the same from the blue-collar guys who haven't been replaced by robots, and again the customer doesn't pay for that, they free-ride.
It produces a situation where if you intend to compete against Amazon you have to be batshit insane AND have all the network effects Amazon has. So bye-bye Wal-Mart, they are absolutely toast now that this new monster has eclipsed them. Amazon has worked out how to Wal-Martize people's minds, not just their hometowns.
They will continue to deliver better value to the consumer than say Wal-Mart, but it's still a cancer on society unless everybody's living on a basic income and ability to work no longer matters at all. In the absence of that, this is basically corporate trade war on all of society.
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Could you expound on Uber?
Re:Amazon's Self-Reinforcing Decline in Hires (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, a bit. Uber's the same thing. It's designed to make maximum use of crazy people and force the others to live up to that standard or be fired.
I'll define 'crazy Uber people' not as 'danger to customers', but 'people who are bringing more value in terms of vehicle, skill and desire to please, than they are getting back in pay and benefits'. So the crazy Uber person is the one who keeps buying a new Lexus or whatever, vacuums their car three times a day and busts their ass to outperform all the other Uber drivers, so they can continue to win out over anybody else seeking to be a driver.
The key factor is that they are giving more than they get back, in the belief that they're cornering some kind of market or buying in to something important.
If you make a business that relies on people like this, you can demolish anybody else because you've worked out how to get voluntary unpaid labor, like the Amazon exec who was said to use her own money to hire subcontractors to do more. As long as there are people who are willing to do that, the market breaks and Amazon/Uber get to do what Wal-Mart did in small towns, break the back of other market participants so they can't break even or continue.
Another way to be a crazy Uber person is to put more depreciation and wear and tear on your car than you can afford to repair (or replace). It's easy to be crazy in these ways. It's externalities which are easy to overlook. These Amazon/Uber business models are designed to leverage that kind of crazy as hard as possible, and kick out everybody who's not willing to lose (one way or another) on the deal. Psychology is useful in getting people to buy into this stuff.
As they say, a cult.
Loss of perspective... (Score:2)
... also applies to the ever spiraling price of a house. People pay more because other people do, and they all end up desperate to hold a job to service their ever-growing debt. Thus it becomes the new normal.
The only way to stop it is to not participate, and get others to stop participating. It's daunting to convince people against what almost all of their peers are telling them right now, but I think it can snowball, and get easier over time.
We can fix it this way, or wait for the bloody, destructive
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Actually, their problem extends beyond the bad reputation; its a bit of a self perpetuating cycle.
They've erected significant barriers in the interview process to avoid hiring lower performers, but they have a pretty high turnover. As a result, I suspect that they're grossly understaffed (a manager as much as admitted it when I interviewed there a couple years ago). So if you manage to navigate the hiring gauntlet, you're setting yourself up for long hours and high stress. Pay is pretty good (tho not parti
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Define understaffed. This, too, is working as intended. That's how it's SUPPOSED to be.
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Article summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Key points I heard:
- Midlevel mgmt can make their salary over again year upon year via bonuses and stock performance. (Implied: senior mgmt and up has it better)
- Tech workers are expected to pay for their own desks, cellphones, travel on their "competitive salary"
- It's regarded as reasonable to line up ambulances to cart away hourly workers who collapse than improve their working conditions
- Standard office joke: Work comes first, life second and searching for the balance is against company policy
- People weep openly at their desks, men exit conference rooms in shame, covering their faces so as to hide their tears
- Anonymous feedback on employee performance is encouraged
- Everyone is encouraged to confront every (non-manager) about sub-perfect ideas
- Amazon is proud of being unreasonable in their demands
Sounds like a toxic hell hole unless you're in the ruling class, then at least the money is good while it consumes your life.
Re:Article summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite possibly it'll be the ultimate thing which buries the company though. Toxic workplaces tend to be very good at ultimately pursuing bad ideas that sink them, because they eventually drive away anyone who might have the drive to try and fix or oppose them. Drone delivery might be the first sign of that with Amazon. Plus - we haven't seen the fallout of a genuine crash in cloud hosting yet, and there's a lot of business being built on the idea that Amazon will always exist. Inject some genuine uncertainty and you have to wonder if they're in a position to deal with that.
Work/life balance is extremely important. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Work/life balance is extremely important. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would they want healthy, long-term employees? Someone who has worked in the same place for a long time expects raises.
Instead they accept a high employee turnover and keep wages at entry-level.
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If you find that this is the case, the employees you have aren't very good and perhaps you are better off bringing in a new batch to see if you can get some better prospects. On the other hand, if you have a high turnover rate, you're going to end up lacking the kind of institutional knowledge that makes maintenance of existing code bases much easier or that allows you to refine
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If you find that this is the case, the employees you have aren't very good and perhaps you are better off bringing in a new batch to see if you can get some better prospects. On the other hand, if you have a high turnover rate, you're going to end up lacking the kind of institutional knowledge that makes maintenance of existing code bases much easier or that allows you to refine your products over the years.
While I completely agree with you, and I think it's a good business decision and a good moral decision to hold on to people, the reality is that the economic advantages are not that significant in a cut-throat environment.
And that's what Amazon's entire business model is: be cheaper than everyone else. Buy from us, put your local stores out of business -- you can get anything here, and it's probably cheaper.
Well, take a moment and consider where such a philosophy gets us. In consumer goods, that attit
They're sorting for "the right" employees (Score:3)
While I don't disagree with you, there are people who thrive in an environment like Amazon's. Now, most other people would consider the people who are successful at Amazon as "assholes" and I think they'd be right.
It doesn't sound like Amazon is shy about telling prospective employees what it's like to work there, so, to a certain extent, there shouldn't be any surprises for their employees when they're working there. That doesn't mean that it's not shameful to harass/punish employees when they have unexp
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Want healthy, long-term productive employees?
Well, no, not really.
Open secret (Score:2)
The comments in this thread [reddit.com] are good.
Amazon (Score:5, Interesting)
The exception was a guy whose company had been bought by Amazon, who had the look of desperation, and all but said, "DO NOT WORK HERE." I was only practice-interviewing, but I took the hint.
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Interestingly enough, everybody in Amazon today received a letter from Jeff Bezos, saying that Amazonians can escalate the issue directly up to him if they encounter any situations described in the NYT.
Here's another take on this article: https://www.linkedin.com/puls [linkedin.com]
A phycopathic work environment (Score:3)
Sounds like a someone with absolutely no ethics thought up some of that.
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i spent a minute delving through my greet roots to figure out what phycopathic meant, but came up short.
Re:A phycopathic work environment (Score:4, Funny)
read literally, it would mean "feeling like algae" (phykos/phycos=seaweed + pathos=feeling).
Like Microsoft in early days but more organized (Score:2)
When I read the article, it reminded me of my interviews at Microsoft (Winter of 1985) with regards to the attitude that they had towards employees and work.
One of the things that I remember being told was that the Microsoft average employee peaked at 25 and left the company at 28 (with a suitcase of cash) to form their own business (or live on a beach). I was being hired to give my all for five years and then take a break. There was a lot of talk about supporting employees to help them work at this pace.
You guys give "Anonymous Coward" a bad name (Score:2)
Get some help for your Microsoft issues.
Sadly (Score:2)
Do not worry though, America has exported this mentality just like its exported its food pyramid.
Very few upsides unless you make it to the exec suite.
Can anybody explain how thos works? (Score:5, Interesting)
I could easily imagine having this degree of commitment to a job if I was working in a World War 2 fighter-plane factory, and it was a case of "build hundreds of these things every month or the Nazis will win". Or if I was in the team working on a rocket that delivers a giant hydrogen bomb that will deflect an incoming asteroid of dinosaur-killing proportions.
The woman worked four days and nights straight selling gift cards!
Anonymous denunciations and self-criticism [wikipedia.org] have been lifted straight from the playbooks of Chairman Mao and David Koresh. So this management abuse of employees, and their willingness to suck it up comes across as some kind of cult that works on the gullible, desperate and greedy, after the relentless Darwinian firing process has sieved out everybody else.
Is that anywhere close to the truth? I'm sure I would have walked in under a month and I'm genuinely puzzled as to why anybody else wouldn't.
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It's nearly a "You have to be there" situation (Score:3)
Cult members have a difficult time leaving too and they usually have a way out.
Dogs can break free of their electric fence too... or when the fence is off they can do so easily... yet both situations work quite well at keeping the dog policing it self.
Modern Psychology is powerful enough to get many people to enslave themselves. It's not perfect, but it only needs to work well enough on enough people. Once caught up in such a situation, it has to be difficult to escape - and since it requires a deeper unde
"Challenge", a politically correct word for "Hell" (Score:2)
Judging by the information in the article, it sounds like Amazon is High School all over again. People sniping at each other to increase their status, the politically connected get protected, cliques banding together for survival, etc.. The only difference is the lack of life outside of the environment. Sounds like hell to me....
Seems true (Score:2)
I've known quite a few people at Amazon and Lab126 and no one ever has anything but horror stories to tell. Usually they couldn't wait to get out of there.
Don't like unions? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because this is how you get unions.
Interesting Issue (Score:2)
No. 13 Disagree and commit sounds like Engineering (Score:3)
Instead, Amazonians are instructed to “disagree and commit” (No. 13) — to rip into colleagues’ ideas, with feedback that can be blunt to the point of painful, before lining up behind a decision.
This is how things work in the REAL engineering world. (By REAL I mean industries when things fail people die and companies go bankrupt like shipping, aerospace, structural engineering, power generation, etc.)
We need to be brutal when reviewing designs and analysis becuase Mother Nature doesn't care how good you think your calculations are. Sure some people get their feelings hurt but if can't take it then you should get out of the business. I am thankful when someone finds a flaw in something I did because that could kill people.
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No, you need to be accurate and complete. Painful/brutal is totally optional.
You need to ensure a drone doesn't kill someone. You can accomplish that through quite a few methods. Being a dick is unnecessary.
Biased Article (Score:2)
American Employment and labor participation (Score:3)
There are some of us who have attained financial independence and refuse to play this game. What we are seeing with the labor participation rate is two components. Those which are truly unemployable, and those which refuse to play the game with the current rule set because they are financially independent and
chose to work on things which are personally rewarding such as open source software.
These are reasons the labor participation rate is so low. The only way to change it is to go back to the way employment was structured in the early to mid 20th century, implement a universal basic income, or cull the citizenry which cannot sustain themselves. Historically, the latter option was chosen (War Famine, Disease). Let's hope that the middle option occurs, as due to global competition, the first option may not be viable.
Here's the gist of this whole article. (Score:4, Insightful)
As a side note, with a wife and 4 children I am surprised he hasn't gotten divorce papers.
Most companies that value their employees understand the need for downtime, relaxation, family obligations and a flexible work schedule. It is clear that the only thing Amazon cares about is employees that are working..and working...at whatever cost. If you are not ok with that then you are not a 'Super star' , regardless of how good you can code or solve problems.
So again if you are not into the idea of pleasing your employer above anything else - then Amazon is not for you. It is clear that the "kind of company that amazon wants to be" is a company filled with people with no other life or personal committments and void of health issues (or family members that are ill). Again, since Bezos has a rather large family - it's amazing that things like 'paid maternity leave' doesn't exist at Amazon.
And then this quote, "he(Bezos), was able to envision a new kind of workplace: fluid but tough, with employees staying only a short time and employers demanding the maximum". So it appears that you really aren't supposed to retire at amazon. Work a little while - then leave. So if retiring at a company with 401k and stock options racked up (or with any kind of pension) is what you seek - then Amazon is not for you. If Amazon is not in it for the long haul with its employees then why should the employees return any kind of favors?
The truth often has 2+ sides. (Score:3)
Take the idea that people are too conflict averse. I absolutely agree with that. But the danger is when beating the other guy starts to become an end in itself. Having mutual respect and support is also important. I've had really productive work relationships that were full of heated arguments, but respect enabled us to see when we were both right (or wrong) and were just arguing past each other.
The solution to a false dichotomy (creative conflict vs. mutual respect) isn't to choose the other side; it's to find a way to do both.
Or take the boast that standards are "unreasonably high". That makes no sense. It's illogical to be proud of anything that's "unreasonable", because "unreasonable" equals "irrational". It shows a defect in thinking. Now I really like the idea of being more data driven; people make too many decisions based on their "guy" (aka personal prejudices); it's just lazy, emotional decision making. But data doesn't make you infallible, and covering up your failures with an illogical slogan is just as lazy and emotionally driven.
The thing is being a contrarian has its advantages; when all the other investors are selling, you're buying, and that tends to give you an edge. But it's not the same as knowing what you are doing. Ultimately both the conventional and contrarian choice in a false dichotomy is wrong.
The culture at Amazon strikes me as only superficially rational, and I expect in the long run they'll pay the price.
Look, someone is successful... Kill him. (Score:3, Interesting)
All this is.
Do they talk about business culture in failing companies? Because that would be more interesting. I don't see it.
Mostly they investigate successful companies and then shit talk whatever they're doing that makes the place work.
As to the poor woman with the stillborn child... anyone that can't spot the pathos being injected into the story there is blind.
In the old Roman days, if you were being taken to court you could hire children... typically orphans... or unmarried women... often prostitutes... to cry at your trial. The presumption by the jury would be that they were your children and the woman was some family relation. And by having them crying openly in court... you could influence the jury because they'd feel sorry for the children and crying woman... and thus go easy on you.
This tactic in rhetoric of attempting to play on the heart strings of the minds judging a situation is a very old one. And its frankly an offensive one.
I'm sure there are people that work really hard at Amazon and I'm sure the company does their best to get the most value out of people as possible. But no one has to work there. You're not a slave. You sent your resume to Amazon. You talked with the HR rep over the phone. You went to an interview and did your best to make them want to hire you.
So... no one forced you to be there. Amazon is not breaking any law. And while there are a few sob stories in there, the majority of the employees seem very happy.
It is typical of the NYT to run a story of "Look, someone is successful - KILL HIM"... its what they do. But I'd think more readers would be aware of it by now.
Its one of the reasons the NYTs is losing national clout despite trying very hard to remain relevant. They're biased. All news you could say is biased... but the editors are biased as well. One of the great things about the internet is that you can do version tracking on articles.
You see an article published on a Saturday night... it changes on Sunday... It changes again on Monday... The author changes on tuesday. This happens all the time on their site. No declaration that anything changed. No declaration of why.
Just presenting the story as if it was always X from the start. When clearly there is evidence that it changed many times.
The NYTs is not the only site that does that. But its the only major news source I know of that does it as commonly or completely. I expect that from Buzzfeed or Gawker or something. But when the NYTs starts playing by the same rules... they become the same.
You are not only what you do but what you don't do.
Re: (Score:2)
They cry at their desks because it's their job not to be amazing, but to drain the most money as possible out of society across the largest possible market (not on any one transaction but making it up on volume) while delivering as little as possible in return.
These guys are not Google or Apple, who are largely convinced they're messiahs bringing the best things to the world in their respective ways. These are the ones who need to design a new box that slices up worker hands while costing 0.02% less in mate
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That makes sense. I do spend more time searching.
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Prime Music is even worse. I added a song to my library. It says it is there, but it isn't. And I can't remove it and add it again because while I can pull up a track through searching and see that it is in my library, I can only remove it from my library from within my library. But it isn't there, so I can't remove it. Can't play it, can't remove it, can't re-add it. This has happened multiple times.
I'd been trying it out as a possible replacement for other streaming services mainly because I already pay f
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Until the economy is restructured such that you have no ability to chose not to participate. Which seems to be the goal of the very comfortable private-jet 0.2%
sPh
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
i make less than what i could have made if i had chosen to be a workaholic and never see my kids. there is a price for every lifestyle you choose
Oh so you are "not a team player" or some other bullshit term they'll use to describe the desire to actually have a life. Reminds me of the boss where I used to work. I'm surprised the guy doesn't sleep there. He works something like 60-80 hours a week (salaried, varies). He has been divorced, twice. His latest ex-wife considered taking him back and changed her mind after about a week. Turns out, when you're in a committed relationship with a woman, she wants you to spend time with her. He has two da
Re: lots of lower paying jobs available (Score:2, Insightful)
When I mention that I do not like to work more than 40 hours a week, I am dismissed and never hear anything again.
What I am saying is that your advice is worthless.
Re: Euphemism from hell (Score:2)
Yeah you start your own company for the ability to create.
You work for a company for a pay check every coue of weeks.
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no, dumbass. if you want to create moon bots you don't start your own comapny, you get a steady gig at one of those brass button firms on the kickstered.
Re:Euphemism from hell (Score:4, Insightful)
"...in exchange for the ability to create." I hate this phrase! People work awful jobs for Amazon in exchange for the money!
this requires further examination. Amazon doesn't "create" *anything*. This is MBA-style creation, like creating new marketplace opportunities or new regional expansion initiatives. I'm not impressed.
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don't underestimate the amount of engineering required for the logistical infrastructure amazon has built. even apart from their gargantuan supply chains of physical goods, they also broker incredible amounts of computing resources. even if you don't like amazon, the chances are high that a company you do like uses the AWS "cloud" heavily, or even exclusively.
Re:White collar workers? (Score:5, Informative)
if you finished reading the post (let alone the article), you would see that the article is about the corporate offices, not the warehouses.
Correct Title (Score:4, Funny)
"The Challenge of working for Pricks"
Fixed.
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Did you read the article? It's very specifically about the desk jobs, not the warehouses.
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. There are many possible ways of defining "middle class", but job security is not one of them - never has been. There used to be a time when middle class people enjoyed a lot more job security than they do now - but that's true of everyone.
Apart from politicians and those who are in a position to blackmail politicians, almost everyone nowadays has to worry about losing their job.
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So only those with corporate parachutes are middle class (those who don't care about losing their job)? You seem retarded.
No. I haven't had to worry about losing my job since my late 20s, since, by then, I'd built up enough savings that I could live for a year or more without working. Most of my colleagues spent all their money and would have been screwed if they were sacked.
Knowing I can now live for a decade without having to work is always useful when an employer wants to screw me around.
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have NO IDEA how fortunate you are. Or how bad things can be.
During the Great Recession, some people were unemployed for THREE YEARS or more. The Obama Administration had to extend and re-extend unemployment benefits for people. Quite a few of them finally found jobs, but at substantially less pay. So you'd better hope that you really can live for 10 years without a paycheck. And that that "10 years" isn't coming from your retirement savings.
It's not enough to have a really good skill set or be willing to move about the country like a migrant farm worker. Sometimes you don't know the right people in the right places, have the "perfect" match of skills or cannot manage to live on 120,000 Rupees a year.
Or worse. you could be over 40.
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
You have NO IDEA how fortunate you are. Or how bad things can be.
Oh, yes. Because I saved money rather than spent it, I'm 'fortunate'.
No, I saved it because I have a middle-class attitude. And I have that attitude because I've seen exactly how bad things can be when you live paycheck to paycheck.
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Of course, I won't change your mind about your superiority; - you have an attitude, all right, but it's not "middle-class" - I'd go so far to say it's lacking in class entirely.
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, saving money rather than spending it isn't "fortunate", it's prudent.
On the other hand, you can't save income if you don't receive it anymore than you can benefit from a tax cut when you have no income to tax. A lot of people out there don't receive it now and some never will. Sometimes they work 2 or more jobs and still don't receive as much as some of us can do working only one job.
I've always had a savings attitude. I haven't always been rich. I've seen jobs come and go, and often with uncomfortably long gaps between them. I repair when I can, and I forgo the "Always Low Price" cheap junk in favor of more expensive things that will last, when I can. And keep well away from the stuff that's neither low-priced nor durable.
When I do well, I do enviably well. When I don't, I get reminded not to sneer at those who are less fortunate.
My co-workers consider me one of the best in the business, my broker thinks I'm better than average at investing. I don't live in an overly-expensive house or own a luxury car. But I've felt the pain and expect to feel more.
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, yes. Because I saved money rather than spent it, I'm 'fortunate'.
Fortunate on 2 counts actually.
First You made more than you needed to live. Many people at or below the poverty line don't have extra money to set aside.
Second, Evidently, nothing substantially unpleasant ever actually happened. When you had your six months or whatever living expenses saved away, you weren't laid off, and then fell off your front porch, wiping out your savings one hospital trip, and then some, and THEN finding yourself unable to work for several months... because no matter how much you set aside, there's always the chance that something bigger will hit you. You were fortunate that nothing bigger than you saved for ever hit you.
I too have your savings attitude, and I think its extremely prudent. It lets you absorb life's little hits without it being a big deal. But I don't pretend for a second that I haven't been fortunate that life hasn't thrown a bigger hit than I can absorb.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:BBC Panorama filmed the slave conditions (Score:5, Insightful)
The warehouse work is like slavery, just short of a whip - except they now use virtual whips to get their slaves straightened out.
Sure, there's a little perk called a slaves wage, after-all, they need them to be fed in order to do the miles of walking per day.
A written expose here. [mcall.com]
It seems the highly 'exceptional' people in Jeff Bezos' circle have re-invented Taylorism, which is an abiding disregard for the well-being of workers. This indifference and disregard is called "scientific". Efficiency is something to be squeezed out of people second by second, the long-term effects be damned.
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Having worked in a factory, shovelling oily hunks of metal from one bin to another, I laugh whenever anyone claims Amazon's warehouse work is 'slavery'. I'd have jumped at a job like that, if I'd had the option at the time.
The people who think it's awful have clearly never done a real, hard, manual job in their lives.
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The future of work is automation doing everything humans aren't required for. Amazon is one of the last great industrial-era corporations, and will die when local manufacturing makes the whole concept of a middleman between manufacturers and users obsolete.
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Depends. If you don't have to work to live (your Star Trek replicator future) then let 'em entertain themselves by trying to be the awesomest of sauces. People devote as much effort to running up and down a field and kicking a ball, and nobody seems to mind.
If this defines how people are compelled to live in order to exist in society, we have a problem.
There's two solutions and only one of them requires muzzling Amazon and its like. The other solution is making sure that working this way is optional and tha
Re: (Score:2)
Specifically, it's the 'people must work and compete or they deserve to STARVE!' mindset that creates a problem.
If you discount that, Amazon gets a lot more freedom to do what they want without harming society.
More about Amazon: (Score:5, Insightful)
A few links to stories that say that's a good decision:
Dear Amazon interns, some advice from an old man who has been at Amazon way too long. [reddit.com] Quote: "Amazon's work-life balance is awful."
Inside Amazon's Kafkaesque performance-improvement plan [gawker.com]
Inside Amazon's Bizarre Corporate Culture [gawker.com]
Glassdoor Reviews of Amazon [glassdoor.com]
Amazon Is a Time Thief, by an Amazon Employee. [gawker.com]
Working for Amazon Sounds Utterly Soul Crushing. [gizmodo.com]
Life in an Amazon Warehouse: Fear and Efficiency at 35 Orders Per Second [gizmodo.com]