Slashdot Mirror
The Challenge of Working At Amazon
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.'"
Who needs drones and robots when you can control the humans to do your bidding.
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.
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.
I interviewed with Amazon, everyone seemed rather depressed. Most people there had joined right after college, so they didn't realize there were better options.
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.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"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.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
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 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.