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.'"
Multiple times a year I get hit up by recruiters for Amazon. After reading this I'm not going to even entertain the thought of working there.
Who needs drones and robots when you can control the humans to do your bidding.
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
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.
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.
Anacondas?
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Unless something changes, this is the future of work in general. Front-facing productivity gains not backed by innovation, but backed by people working hellish hours as they compete with other people elsewhere working hellish hours. The line between work life and home life has been vaporized. Expecting responses to emails after midnight is sad. Paying for your own cell phone and travel expenses to deal with those hours is wrong and not a productivity gain at all.
"Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk." Amazon is not going to war, they're doing business. It's not life and death, it's a store that sells books, dildos and almond meal. If you're working at Amazon and sacrificing seeing friends and family, crying at your desk at 11 p.m., is it worth doing so for a store that sells books, dildos and almond meal?
There are people out there that genuinely enjoy that level of work and that lifestyle, but for every one who does, I'd argue that there are twenty who do not. People willing to work those hours should be running their own business. At least you have the potential to be rewarded properly for your sacrifice.
The picture from the sign at the picnic saying "HAVE FUN!" is hilarious. Feels more like a reminder than anything.
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.
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.
So surprised this gets overlooked by so many. Want healthy, long-term productive employees? Make sure their LIVES are good. What happens outside of work will influence work quality much more than anything inside work, especially these cult-like attitudes. And realizing that 'work isn't everything', despite the blow to the CEOs ego, will go a long way to improving the whole system.
This has been known for some time.
The comments in this thread are good.
Because the people who wrote it were able to sabotage the people that have opposing opinions. Freedom from politics my ass.
"The internal phone directory instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another’s bosses. Employees say it is frequently used to sabotage others."
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 materials and surviving delivery 0.007% better than the previous design, and if you can do that by GOD that will be the box to use! And they don't care how many white collar guys they go through doing it. In fact they'll fire all the white collar guys who didn't do something like that last month.
They don't care about your video. You must want something that's not as important as, say, lining up more shows for this video service or coming up with a better way to get people to buy it.
Somebody would have to make an argument that customers need to spend less time searching or less time going over the watch list. Maybe your time as a customer is better spent looking at newer things you could buy from them, so the watch list is supposed to be not appealing to fool with. Is buying new stuff more streamlined? Then it's working as designed.
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."
> if you actually have to worry about losing your job, you aren't middle class
So only those with corporate parachutes are middle class (those who don't care about losing their job)? You seem retarded.
That makes sense. I do spend more time searching.
Yeah you start your own company for the ability to create.
You work for a company for a pay check every coue of weeks.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
if you finished reading the post (let alone the article), you would see that the article is about the corporate offices, not the warehouses.
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.
Sounds like a someone with absolutely no ethics thought up some of that.
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.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
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. What I didn't get was a sense of organization or where they wanted to go; I was being interviewed for hardware design and I got the feeling that they knew they were on top of the world and destined to be there forever, but didn't have a vision as to where they were going/taking the industry.
Over the years, it seems like Microsoft changed and became more corporate and relaxed but Bezos and Amazon are making this into much more of a cult(ure) with solid plans and expectations. I'm not surprised with their focus on results they are the successful company that they are and I'm not surprised that their employees are burning out and are bitter.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
"...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.
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.
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.
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 unexpected personal challenges and tragedies.
The good thing about all this is that Amazon is taking the assholes out of the workforce.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
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.
The world doesn't care. They will keep buying from this company, just like they keep buying from the Walmarts, Apples, and others that have no problem killing others or driving them to suicide to make a buck. Its all business for them and its all about how much they can personally gain before the ride is over for them in the job.
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.
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.
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.
"... for a bowl of rice a day"
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.
"The Challenge of working for Pricks"
Fixed.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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....
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.
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.
... 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 revolution that will ensue when people are pushed past the breaking point.
Did you read the article? It's very specifically about the desk jobs, not the warehouses.
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 that you don't have to work, to live and spend and sleep under a roof. In that case, Amazon's actually helping the world go around, by increasing efficiencies of things.
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.
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 for Prime so why not use it, but the quality just isn't there at this point.
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.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Because this is how you get unions.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Get some help for your Microsoft issues.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I have been employed in companies that had numerous employees who did not expect to put forth effort or thought in their work. Often they show some concern for the appearance of their task but could care less about the flow of work or have any expectations about thinking while working or trying to make things better for the employer. It seems that the greatest cause of attracting or keeping that kind of worker is either an unwillingness to pay well or an inability to give meaningful raises. The usual path of events is that the employer's greed eventually leads to the failure of the company. Right now bank clerks seem to be suffering a dose of this due to the use of debit cards. Many people now have no reason to visit a bank as the automated deposits and withdrawals by debit card have seen bank clerks being laid off in droves. So we see a situation in which a typical bank clerk knows full well that their days are numbered and any type of real effort may be absent from the clerks.
Even more fell off the roles altogether. Over 1,000,000 more dropped off the roles than found employment. It sounds like planning for long-term unemployment of more than 3 years is the right thing to do...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
There are more and more obvious homeless/destitute people there than I have seen in L.A.
This begs the question of how on earth unemployment rates are calculated, or are they merely plucked out of the butt of whoever publishes them.
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.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Middle income and middle class are not the same thing.
The middle class was the professional class of doctors, lawyers, and business owners between the truly wealthy and everyone else. They didn't have to worry about job security since they were the owner/proprietor. They had high incomes but not enough to qualify as "wealthy". Today, they would be the 91 to 98% bracket (perhaps even the 95 to 98% bracket).
It was useful for politicians to conflate middle income and middle class and so the terms have become mostly interchangeable in the united states.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The other engineers I work with are some of the smartest and best I've met in my career (i've worked at several other large companies), and there is certainly an overall goal of excellence. Feedback and discussion is strongly encouraged, but I've never seen anyone break down into tears at work. The leadership principles cited are accurate, but my experience with them has been seemingly more in line with their original intentions.
Their sampling seems biased to those who have left the company, either voluntarily or forced, which suggests to me there may be a negative bias. If you ever saw this comic: http://www.bonkersworld.net/im... , you may understand Amazon operates many independent divisions, I suspect the experience of employees varies by division. I don't know if NYT sought out particular opinions, but they only gave a sentence or two to those veterans they encountered with a positive experience - literally this line:
"Some veterans interviewed said they were protected from pressures by nurturing bosses or worked in relatively slow divisions".
It seems like focusing on those experiences wouldn't have made as sensational of an article though.
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.
If you plan on retiring at forty and make $100k+/year, it's amazing what you can do even without risky investments. I see $10k houses all over the US. Buy one with 2 months salary, spend another 3 months making it very nice. Food is very inexpensive if you know how to cook (the poorest people on earth eat the best food provided they know how to cook), so watch a youtube cooking video every night and practice making something new. I guarantee that within a year, you'll be able to cook gourmet meals. Get roommates and live like you did in college.
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.
"On June 2, a warehouse employee contacted OSHA to report the heat index hit 102 degrees in the warehouse and 15 workers collapsed."
How shitty does a warehouse job have to be before you approve of people complaining about its shittiness?
I'm pretty sure they aren't talking about the people working in the warehouses. That's a large group of people that do work in offices and would qualify as white collar workers to anyone that gave it a moment's thought.
If you have a family and that is more important to you than work, i.e. you want to be a husband/father/wife/mother first, you want to work to live instead of live to work, you care about your health and well-being, hate office politics (despite Bezos' claim to avoid red tap and politics, it is clear that things like Organization Level Review and Anytime Feedback Tool are clearly motivated and created simply for favorites and politics) then Amazon is not for you.
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?
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
And then they didn't extend it before the last mid term election, because letting people fall off the rolls entirely substantially improve the Department Of Labor job numbers, heading into the election. This is a common practice, for the party with executive authority, when heading into mid terms.
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.
No idea where in the U.S. you are living that you get paid in Rupees, but given the current exchange rate, that's like $1,843/year. I assume you must be in the U.S., since you are citing the Obama administration and its unemployment benefits practices. You're not going to be living on that, even in Detroit, even with 10 roommates.
No, you are lucky because you have that much money to begin with. Millions of people work harder than you and want to save as you do, but can't - no fault of their own; they aren't born into the right upper-class mob of people to have access to those opportunities.
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.
Don't trust any concentration of power.
Your second option has always been available, but you have to make a few sacrifices like not living in a major city. Move out to the country and you can buy your own land for a couple hundred dollars and live as inexpensively as one could in rural Kenya. And thanks to modern technology, you can retain all your modern conveniences (computer, electricity, lights, hot running water, flushable toilets) for not a lot more money
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.
The unemployment rate in Seattle is about 3%
Not according to the BLS; they say it's 50% higher than that (Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA Metropolitan Statistical Area: 4.5%):
http://www.bls.gov/web/metro/l...
Of course, those numbers are also deflate, due to people falling off the eligibility rolls:
http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welc...
Amazon could make it waaaaay more economical to run a welfare state and feed starving mouths, if they chose to do so. If you can get a video delivered for a little over $8 it's evidence you have really done amazing (ha!) things in streamlining distribution, inventory and so on. I'm willing to bet that even with the huge economies of scale we see in things like government food stamp services, Amazon could do all that at half the overhead.
If you went for universal programs such as UBI so the administrative overhead went away, you'd be getting even closer to the largely automated systems Amazon has perfected. Basically, though Amazon is stealing the opportunity for meaningful work, they're also a possible model for super-efficient ways to implement distribution and supply networks (say food, fuel, clothing etc.) and are likely doing way better than the government is.
You could leverage that distribution network to wipe out starvation, homelessness, very cheaply. If you wanted.
I want some of what you're smoking.
I don't think that the average person in the USA is making 100K or more a year.
And I'd advise looking at the neighborhoods those $10K houses are in. You'd probably want to spend another $50K on a security system.
It's true you can cook well using inexpensive ingredients, but poor people are rather famous for being malnourished, often while being overweight and diabetic. Just because rice and potatoes are cheap doesn't mean that it's healthy to live on nothing but rice and potatoes.
why the fuck do you think there ARE homeless people!!! dammit.
Mostly?
Drug addiction and mental illness? Personal choice to live in areas of the country with housing shortages due to zoning resulting in building out instead of up? Lack of crowbars in Detroit to engage in squatting? Unwillingness to start a small business? Fear of risk taking?
We aren't actually bulldozing large numbers of houses under, and our population (even with illegal immigration) isn't growing as quickly as available housing, so it's not like the housing doesn't exist.
I was born into a poor family, couldn't even afford a TV until I was in my teens in the mid 90s, and I was instantly made middle class shortly after graduating from my nearly free state Uni during the recent recession. I had my pick of the litter when it came to jobs, I was flooded with companies wanting immediately to hire me into the top 20% of local incomes. Yay for programming.
I ended up holding off and turning down several jobs in 2008 because I really wanted a local job near family. The best part is I didn't need to do any job hunting, they came to me. Calling my phone, sending me mail.
In America, You just described "upper middle class" (professional class; doctors, lawyers, engineers).
There's also "middle class" and "lower middle class".
Life is not for the lazy.
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.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Class isn't only, or even primarily, about money. Read Fussell: Class.
Is it really likely that something good and beautiful can be created by people working under this kind of regime? A cheaper role of toilet paper that gets to your house really fast...is that what some of our smartest people want to devote their lives to? Increasingly we let technology companies drive culture, and I can't help but think that nothing truly beautiful and valuable will come out of people working in conditions like this. It is a lie we tell ourselves as we look at attractive devices and use amazing software...in the case of Amazon and companies like it, these things are born of bad soil. Beyond just not wanting to buy anything through Amazon, I don't want this kind of company in my city (Seattle).
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.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Brutal - direct and lacking any attempt to disguise unpleasantness.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Not just Amazon. Most big companies are that way to varying degrees. I remember hearing from some folks who worked at Apple around the turn of the century that one of the big things that Steve Jobs did when he returned to Apple was jerking a knot in a lot of people for such behavior. But even in companies that aggressively try to combat it, you'll still find a fair amount of politics lying just beneath the surface, ready to turn a great workplace into a hostile work environment at the drop of a hat.
I don't think any big company can be completely free of such problems, if only because nobody can monitor everything that's going on, and it is hard to avoid occasionally hiring the sort of person who feels that the best way to get ahead is to pull somebody else back. With that said, if you're running a company, there are some common sense things you can do to minimize the damage it causes:
HR policies:
Manager training:
Vacation policies:
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
> 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.
Sounds like you've led a boring and uneventful life. I feel sorry for you.
Not incorrect English, but incorrect heading capitalization. Still it isn't half as bad as "Are Right, A Lot". I don't know which is worse there—the completely baffling heading or the total load of crap below it.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Oops. Missed a comma after "still". My bad.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Yeah, I get that. Totally optional. You can disguise unpleasantness as long as that doesn't prevent the message from getting across.
Sometimes its better to be brutal. Sometimes, it doesn't even work to not be brutal. But most people would prefer that their errors get pointed out softly.
I mean, "How does your design handle failure condition X" is not brutal. But there are definately other ways to phrase the issue that are.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Former Amazon SDE II here, spent just over a year and a half working for them.
What you just said is EXACTLY what makes it so hard. It really is, other than the intentionally unrealistic workload, an amazing place to work. Decisions are made based on data. You can be wrong, and everyone can disagree with you, but if you've built up enough reputation capital, nobody will stop you from spending it how you want (because they're secretly hoping you're wrong, or because they think you're right but don't want to attach their reputations to yours). And then, if you turn out to be right, great!
You'll get code reviews so good, it ruins you for anywhere else. It's expected that the review takes as long as the coding. You're given time for, and expected, to create design documents for anything that'll take more than a day or two to code. If you're working on something you haven't tried before, you can just request, and get, a Principal Engineer review of your design, and come out knowing that what you have is solid. You work right on the hardware (or virtuals) your code is running on. There's so much logging and metrics (ensured by the code review process) that most bugs are trivial to solve.
Until you hit another department. Then, you're faced with asking people already working 80-hour weeks if they can help you out. You'd better have something to trade, or have fun waiting 3 months for them to make a tiny API change. And you'll be getting shit from your manager the whole time. You can ask your manager to talk to theirs, and that might get things done--it's about 50/50. When it does, great, the other team just hates you forever, hopefully you never have to deal with them again. When it doesn't, well... maybe you can try working with another team. Don't let it block you, and no, it won't be explicit enough that you can just tell your manager they're going back on their word.
Anyway, yeah. It's the only time I've ever properly experienced "software engineering". I'll be chasing that dragon for a while, trying to find it outside an environment where working a 112-hour week is just something that happens.
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.
I came in here to mention Taylorism, but you beat me to it. There's a great episode of The Secret Life of Machines about the evolution of the modern office, and it goes into some depth about Taylor and the problems with scientific management.
YouTube video of that episode.
It looks like people have an issue with my use of brutal. By brutal I mean valuing being honest and direct and not avoiding these to save someone's feelings. I don't mean you have to be a jerk about it. But if someone is wrong or you think they are wrong you then you need to be persistent about it until you are satisfied.
I work in aerospace as well. And I value peer reviews with people that actually look for flaws rather than a rubber stamp.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
"I mean, "How does your design handle failure condition X" is not brutal. But there are definately other ways to phrase the issue that are."
That can be brutal if it is during a large design review and you didn't consider that mode. But it's still necessary. If you have a culture of not doing that you are going to hurt someone.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I got a threatening letter from their legal department sent to myself with a copy sent to the HR department of my new employer.
This was all in California, where non-competes aren't valid, but obviously AMZN's lawyers already knew that. (else they'd be some pretty useless lawyers)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Seriously, what happened with the Fire Phone? Does no one say the idea was horrible?
I really love this attitude that seems so prevalent now. Rather than blowing your money like a teenager as most do until they're in their forties, you practiced commendable fiscal restraint and maturity and put some aside. You have every right to feel good about your achievement.
The response? "You fucking entitled criminal you! How dare you, when there are people who have LESS than you? What privilege!"
I've had a gutsful of people with bullshit attitudes like this. Can we just get on with the nuclear war already? I'm happy to take the first mushroom cloud myself if it'll get the ball rolling.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
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.
I hope this culture doesn't bleed out into the work culture at large in the vicinity of Amazon HQ. I've already dealt with enough hyper-aggressive (former) Microsoft culture that has escaped into the wild. Separately, the job boards here are so overwhelmed with Amazon job listings that I've often wished for a special "block Amazon job listings" feature. I now see that this is likely caused as much by turnover as it is by growth with the company.
The terms are meaningless.
It's much clearer to say poverty, low income, middle income, high income, and wealthy.
Everyone from low income to high income (i.e. over 80% of the citizens) is "middle class" these days. Only those in poverty and who are wealthy don't qualify. And by wealthy- I don't mean people who have to work ever. People who make over $400,000 a year self describe as middle class while people who make $40,000 also self describe as middle class.
If almost everyone is middle class, then no one really is middle class.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Safety on the job is a huge focus to keep us from physical harm. What about the psychological hazards?
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
I'm in the UK, have worked for a company that was taken over by Amazon. It was pretty horrendous, metrics, continuous tension and shouting. I wouldn't work there again, and, I won't be asked, anyway.
In addition, because of their tax avoidance and now this, I'm buying less and less from and looking for an alternative to EC2. I'm aware that this will cost UK jobs, but I feel that I don't want to see any company like this in the future of the UK. Shame, because it's an inventive company and doesn't need all this shouting and screaming.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Not to sound cold, but would your saving get you through for 3 years? I know mine wouldnt.
Well, I appreciate the sentiment. Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of suicide as I have responsibilities, although I am pleased to say this does not include dependents.
So tell me, why do you - with the gravitas that comes with a five-digit-uid - feel that recommending my suicide is a better option that lacerating me with a cogent counter-argument?
In all honesty do I come across as someone who cannot be reasoned with?
More importantly, is my anger at what I perceive as the undoing of the last shreds of meritocracy in Western society so terribly hard to countenance that I must be put to death as punishment for speaking of it?
If so then I rightly want no part of your world, Sir.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
"After reading this I'm not going to even entertain the thought of working there."
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. Quote: "Amazon's work-life balance is awful."
Inside Amazon's Kafkaesque performance-improvement plan
Inside Amazon's Bizarre Corporate Culture
Glassdoor Reviews of Amazon
Amazon Is a Time Thief, by an Amazon Employee.
Working for Amazon Sounds Utterly Soul Crushing.
Life in an Amazon Warehouse: Fear and Efficiency at 35 Orders Per Second
The fact that you don't see describing your mode as brutal as a problem shows you're a bit of a jerk... Sorry, we need to be brutal here, as it's the mode you prefer.
That is all.
damn right. i never understand how these bullies end up on the top without someone kicking their teeth in first. if some exec started blowing up at me he'd be eating out of a tube the rest of his life.
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 understanding to really grasp, outsiders will be clueless in their judgements of the victims.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
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.
Inflation will take your 10 years, and chop it down to one year and a half. And from the stress, medical bills will take over and consume the residual.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Monitoring productivity in employment can mean just viewing daily or weekly reports and graphs with regard to an employee's output. Just about every employer does it nowadays where IT work is involved and a measurable quantity of processing is needed. HOWEVER. Machine processing and reports very seldom take into consideration the special circumstances of the individual employee. I mean let's face it, when a Manager, Regional Manager or Territory Manager goes over the figures, they're looking at graphs and numbers and there's nothing to reflect the individual employee's circumstance and that's what Macro-management is about. Like in the case of the pregnant worker, there are going to be factors that people and machines should take into consideration. People working in environments where their daily work load is doled out to them via machine reports then tend to regard the people those reports represent as parts of a machine and not people. Even coworkers could possibly become like that in a sort of automated sense that doesn't challenge your sense of right and wrong and stimulate creative thinking in all employees (including Management) instead of focusing on linear productivity from the people who in that sense are parts of the machine. So when the data reflects by some means the individual circumstances of the employee so that those checking the reports or even an automated analysis process is aware that there are special considerations to be taken into account and flags them for a person to know about, then maybe people will *break* out of that *I'm a part of this machine process and I've got to deal with this other part's low performance by either repairing it or replacing it* mode of thinking. We're the most wonderful invention that Mother nature has ever created so far on this planet (better yet, we're tied for first with all the other life and natural processes here). We're incredibly adaptable and flexible and can wrap our magnificent brains around a variety of complex tasks that still baffles even the best of our combined technologies. So when we ignore that, we're really turning our back on the greatest of our potential contribution to a company as an employee. That same idea is ultimately responsible for us regarding parts of the process merely as other parts rather than people. So sometimes those aspects befall employees like our poor pregnant lady here who feels defensive as a result and rightfully so. This however does not represent the overall mandate of the company or Amazon as a matter of fact because it is a side effect of process rather than policy. How do companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter overcome such hurdles? By allowing their employees creative time (during their breaks) and by having a stimulating environment that keeps their minds from going into autopilot. The truth is that we're less when we work on autopilot because our brains are the result of a constantly changing environment. So the problem is likely not policy but rather process and the side effects thereof. But by talking about it, we become aware of the problem and learn not to misidentify it and maybe the company in question then can deal with it better rather than being branded a bad employer by it which wouldn't work out well for that poor lady, or the company either. It's about keeping people so that they remain people while doing their jobs and that means cases in dealing with our fellow employees require us to think rather than running on autopilot. As far as real-time monitoring and that being shared with other employees? I don't agree with that just the same as I don't agree that civilians should be allowed to do it to other civilians in their home space (save hospital, elderly home or legal incarceration where lives may be at stake). In a company I think that monitoring means that Management has access to reports generated by the process groups that employees work under and that should be humanized so that the employee does not become a mere number. A Pregnant Woman is not a number and I think that Amazon knows that and most people do. They just have to get out of that autopilot way of thinking that can arise from productive process. Brian Joseph Johns
Note to Keith Ketzle (the freckled Texan triathlete with an M.B.A. quoted in the article).
Your assertion, “Conflict brings about innovation;” is (a.) not true and (b.) makes you sound a bit like you've been lobotomized.
I found this illuminating:
https://dcgmentor.wordpress.co...
Nothing to see here -- move along now...
If I was going to do this, I'd buy a house in a very rural area. A lot of rural areas are in decline as the large mechanized farms means it takes less people to farm, so unless there's some other industry to fall back on (logging, mining, tourism, proximity to a major interstate, etc.) there really isn't a purpose anymore for these small rural towns. The upside would be that I would also have some land to grow a garden and living in the countryside would be rather serene. The downside is that I'd probably still need some income, even if only part time, and the reason the place is cheap in the first place is that there are no jobs to be had. Oh, and the lack of high speed internet.
I haven't had to worry about losing my job for the last 15 years. It's never taken more than a month to find a job as a software developer.
"If you can't DEFEAT them, INSULT them" --Bania Gandhi
Fasting/roaming half-naked in streets are cheap tools/tricks used by Bania Gandhi to INSULT (not defeat) British regime during India's struggle for Independence;
Casteism
Tax Corporate Revenues, Not Profits;
https://wh.gov/ijhBs
Casteism
Unlike Capitalism, Globalization is Zero-sum.
https://wh.gov/ijhBs
Casteism
You cannot survive/succeed in corporate world unless you're a sociopath
Casteism
dog eating dog world
Casteism
Bingo; You made my day;
Casteism
Teach toddlers how to become a sociopath;
http://www.lovefraud.com/2013/...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...
And stop importing sociopaths from India;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...
Casteism
One of the few bright lights in a financially miserable decade has been low inflation, So I wouldn't worry too much there. Although things did start climbing again a year or 2 back.
But you did point out a double-whammy. When you're living off savings, you're probably not only spending interest/dividends that you'd otherwise re-invest, you're likely bleeding principal, thus reducing future income in an accelerating spiral. Unless you've got enough assets exclusive of home and auto that the income on assets alone is sufficient. Probably about $2Million or so, depending on your expected standard of living. Which is more than you're likely to sock away working for 10 years on the average US job.
And, as you also pointed out, in America your likelihood of having insurance in the event of medical issues arising has been very dependent on having a job. At least until recently.
So, he said, "kill yourself", in response to your "kill everyone, me first" and he's the one with no cogent agument?
To your original point, there is alot of anger and resentment building. The generation that started working in the late 90's was too late for everything.
Every job I've had was full of stories about how we used to get raises, or used to get bonuses, or used to have spectacular parties at work. We get the 1.5% raises, $10 gas cards, and potluck pitch-ins.
We've put in the time an energy at the bottom, only to see the top lopped off or have the door barred. For every person who had parents who enabled them to start a debt-free life (or, maybe an Uncle... Uncle Sam). There are 10 who got shit on by life and struggled on. It does breed resentment, especially when your told that you made wrong decisions. Often, there was no decision to be made.
Hopefully our society can redress these issues while they are only angry rumblings. The young and hard working want things to get better, but there are alot of old and bitter who like things the way they are and will do anything, even elect Trump, to keep it that way.
Cheap storage VM.
Inflation on services, education, healthcare, and housing has been out of control. Even food can fluctuate wildly.
Cheap storage VM.
So, he said, "kill yourself", in response to your "kill everyone, me first" and he's the one with no cogent agument?
Are you telling me, with a straight face, that you cannot see a difference between the two concepts?
Your disagreement with the sentiment is no basis to dismiss it as a nonsense.
To your original point, there is alot of anger and resentment building. The generation that started working in the late 90's was too late for everything.
I haven't heard it put that succinctly before, but yes, I was one of those people and there's plenty of anger here.
Every job I've had was full of stories about how we used to get raises, or used to get bonuses,
This was also my experience. Everything was always better 'before'.
That's not the nub of it though. I'm pretty liberal, which to me means 'live and let live' but that's just not in fashion any more. Those who have always wanted to interfere in peoples lives now seem to have the power to do so quite effectively. We also can't discuss facts a lot of the time because of this stinking 'right to not be offended' mindset.
Progressives are gaining even more power and they want to give away even more money belonging to other people. The world feels used up to me. I'm sick of the Human race; what we've become and what we're becoming next. The people with the power are, as you say, quite happy with the status quo. We will not get our shit together, we will fight each other, AGAIN.
As always, the entire biosphere and the beautiful forms of life we have on this planet will suffer along with us when we do.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
I, too was born into a poor family - but no grades, no matter how good, could make college affordable to me, and no degree will ever make me acceptable to employers, no matter no good I program. You don't know how lucky you are not to be the subject of prejudice.
Don't trust any concentration of power.
long story short , my mother did not allow us to study , so over a working live starting at 14 , if a job went against my believes ( not religeos ) i found another job , ( a bit like tesla , who after digging ditches for a while , because his employer cheated him ( edison )! in my case this has meant that i am now qualified in 3 trades , and one kind employer trained me to manage small firms . i did not complain , try to tell my bosses how to run their firms , if not happy i quit . found great employers as well ! two in particular , when i was 19 , 40 years later we are still mates , i can never thank them enough !
the power of men in charge of words over men in charge of machines surpasses all wondering S WEIL