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Debate Over Amazon Working Conditions Goes Back Years
Nerval's Lobster writes: This weekend, The New York Times published a lengthy report about working conditions for white-collar workers at Amazon. Describing the e-commerce giant as a "bruising workplace," the report paints a picture of a Darwinian environment. But criticism of Amazon's working conditions actually goes back years. In The Everything Store, a book-length account of Amazon by Bloomberg BusinessWeek reporter Brad Stone, the Amazon of yesteryear is indeed described as an aggressive place in which Bezos pushed employees relentlessly. So is Amazon a terrible place to work? On Quora and Glassdoor, current employees suggest that the company presents its workers with interesting challenges, and that the culture is fast-paced. While there are complaints about the hours and workload, many don't seem Amazon-specific: The world is filled with tech pros struggling to achieve work-life balance in the face of incredible goals on tight deadlines. Many cite issues with the company's frugality—its lack of perks vis-à-vis Google or Microsoft. After the report was published Jeff Bezos wrote a memo to employees that reads in part: “The article doesn’t describe the Amazon I know or the caring Amazonians I work with every day. But if you know of any stories like those reported, I want you to escalate to HR. You can also email me directly at jeff@amazon.com. Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.”
Hit pieces on big companies are typically very unbiased and notoriously accurate. The full story has been told. Just accept that you are evil.
Prediction: Everyone currently working there will be too scared to give feedback, and Bezos will conclude or at least claim, there's no problem.
If you don't like the working conditions then form your own business and work for yourself. It's that simple.
It's nice how complex problems have such simple answers. "If you don't like how much you pay in rent, then buy a house". "If you don't like your low pay, then get a job making more money". "If you can't hold down a job because your car keeps breaking down, then buy a new car".
The answer is easy, implementation, not so much.
I work on cutting edge, genuinely innovative stuff that solves important real world problems (water network monitoring and leak location). I'd never want to work in an environment like this though. It's unnecessary, the company benefits at my expense.
I'm disabled so probably couldn't do it anyway, and wouldn't want to work in an environment that excludes people who work the way I do (at a sensible pace, good work life balance).
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
it turns everyone in the company into an informer. Enron used this approach, it worked so well.
Lots of people start profitable companies that have great working environments but that takes talent- I guess if your vision was to create BorgMart from the beginning there isn't much hope.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Listen I do not know Bezos as a person, and there's got to be several (dozen) layers of buffer between him and HR. But usually (not always mind you, but usually) when Management makes one of these general announcements to escalate your concerns to HR after publicity like this, that's just a quiet way of trying to find out which muhfuhs snitched to the Press. And anyone who actually falls for the trap is made an example of to the rest of the division/company. Again, I don't know Bezos; he may have actually been honestly trying to solve the problem when he made that statement. But that doesn't mean the rest of the management/command staff is as honest and forgiving as he is.
The danger to Amazon from all this is that a culture of assholishness is going to chase away their talented employees. It sounds to me that they've done a good job at extracting the most out of the people they have. Now they need to take steps to keep their best people, and keep them happy enough to at least remain productive. If the culture worked as Amazon says, the employees in this article would be making their complaints to the superiors of their heartless bosses, not to the New York Times. Bosses like those described in the article do far more harm to a company than the loafers playing solitaire. Their heads should be the first to roll, which is what Bezos is basically saying, which is exactly the right response.
As a former employee, this article really changed my view of the NY Times. I guess I expected more from such a well-known, established news source. But, this lengthy "expose" was clearly written by two authors with an agenda, and to what end? Readership?
I loved my time at Amazon.com. Yes, it was challenging. My time there forced me to grow as an engineer when I knew I was at risk of stagnation. But, I worked very reasonable hours (~7am-4pm, by choice to avoid traffic) and only very rarely (once very few months on average, typically leading up to Black Friday before all our deployments were locked down) worked nights of weekends. I traveled twice for Amazon - and had no trouble expensing the flight, hotel, meals, and transportation to/from the airport. I never saw anyone cry at their desk. Everyone who worked there was very civil.
I left for opportunity more than anything - an opportunity to both advance my career and be closer to my family on the east coast.
But yeah, I really have to wonder why the NY Times is busting Amazon's balls. I feel like a dope for not being more suspicious of them before now.
If you don't like the working conditions then form your own business and work for yourself. It's that simple.
Most people do. That is what people I have known who have worked at Amazon and the article have said. The average time of employment there is 18 months. By that time, people have either taken their experience and put it on a resume to get a better job, or been chewed up and spit out by the review process. Anybody treating Amazon like a career, that isn't in some very lucky position, will be in for a rude surprise when they either burn out of are let go. Treat is like a stepping stone from the beginning, and it might work out for you.
Seems like the IT version of the Church of Scientology, except for spitting people out instead of signing them up for a billion years.
Don't forget hiring a lawyer, an accountant, an accounts manager to make sure you get paid, an HR department to make sure everyone does their job, and finally developers to do all that work you were going to do on your own but now you're just too busy being the boss of all these people to do it yourself.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
But if you know of any stories like those reported, I want you to escalate to HR. You can also email me directly at jeff@amazon.com. Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.”
. . . but probably best to do so anonymously, or with someone else's email account. We all know how large companies love whistle blowers.
I can't tell if the OP is being sarcastic or not. Just like poor people just need to stop being so poor.
well said
people who paint complex issues as simple choices are merely revealing their ignorance of the topic, their propagandized state, and/ or their low iq
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
http://www.newyorker.com/humor...
SEATTLE (The Borowitz Report)—Saying that he was “horrified” by a New York Times article recounting callous behavior on the part of Amazon executives, company founder Jeff Bezos warned today that any employees found lacking in empathy would be instantly purged.
In an e-mail to all Amazon employees issued late Sunday evening, Bezos said that the company would begin grading its workers on empathy, and that the ten per cent found to be least empathic would be “immediately culled from the herd.”
To achieve this goal, Amazon said that it would introduce a new internal reporting system called EmpathyTrack, which will enable employees to secretly report on their colleagues’ lack of humanity.
The system will allow Amazon employees to grade their co-workers on a scale from a hundred (nicest) to zero (pure evil), resulting in empathy-based data that will be transmitted directly to Bezos.
Then, through a new program called Next Day Purging, any employee found lacking in empathy will be removed from the company within twenty-four hours of Bezos’s termination order. “We can’t be the greatest retailer in the world unless we are also the kindest,” Bezos wrote in his e-mail. “So my message to all Amazonians is loud and clear: be kind or taste my wrath. Love, Jeff.”
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Why is it complex? Just don't work for them There are literally tens of thousands of other companies that you can work for.
Oh, and of course, I forget what every other person who tries to start a company forgets: Marketing. Your salesperson probably can't build a webpage or do SEO or design a slick brochure to hand out to prospects. Better hire someone to do those too.
Better move fast, your seed money is burning.... wait, what do you mean you don't have half a million dollars in savings from your last job to throw at this one?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. I am anonymizing some details too, to make people not quite identifiable.
This has been going on for a while, and it hits developers too. A friend of mine programmed there for years, on the retail side. Things weren't quite that bad for him originally, but as time went by, pressure keep adding, teams were pitted against each other, and things like family and health were seeing as secondary. Team X did all this stuff, so we have to work even longer hours to compete with them! Taking sick days was seen as letting the team down, so people worked through everything. One time a cold was worse than a cold. Going untreated, it turned to bronchitis, then pneumonia. By the time he did go to a doctor, permanent damage was done.
I wish he had quit before that, but having worked there for a while, he had an unwarranted sense of loyalty for the company. Now he can't even go on a trip without bringing medical equipment, because his lungs are shot. No amount of pay and stock options is worth that, but he didn't know the price he was paying until it was done.
I've only seen one place that created more stress, and it's a huge hedge fund that happens to be run a bit like a personality cult for his founder.
Putting the health of employees and their family first is a big thing for me now. A lax work from home policy, no fear of review trouble for too many sick days in a crunch. Coming to work sick should not be something to be proud of, but ashamed of, as the most you can accomplish is to get your team mates sick! Same thing for working long hours. A coworker of mine used to do weekend marathons, where he'd make major changes. Guess where all the bugs came from? Marathons where a lot was produced, but most of it was shit.
It's the wrong culture, and Amazon has managers working there, right now, that keep that culture running. Jeff should just fire the hell out of them, because they are doing him no favors. Stories get around, and that's why, when Amazon calls trying to hire very senior people. Many of us say no.
The answer is easy, implementation, not so much.
True, but the problem given by the OP isn't the real issue that people should be taking away from the article. The issue is not a mass of people suffering for long periods of time in a horrible business environment. Amazon is not the sort of working conditions that one can put up with for years on end. Unless you can consistently out preform everybody else in your group without stress while they work at burn out levels, you will eventually burn out or be let go. Friends that have worked there say that the average time of employment there is about 18 months. Amazon is just burning through people as fast as they can because there are plenty of people to burn through. Not bad if you are looking for some contacts and something to put on a resume to get a better job, but not a career possibility no matter how much you can put up with a bad work place.
about 4 years ago now I guess. I thought Steve was exaggerating about Amazon, or trying to be humorous (or both), but now in hindsight I think he was probably being accurate.
The rant
"Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager. He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon's retail site. He hired Larry Tesler, Apple's Chief Scientist and probably the very most famous and respected human-computer interaction expert in the entire world, and then ignored every goddamn thing Larry said for three years until Larry finally -- wisely -- left the company. Larry would do these big usability studies and demonstrate beyond any shred of doubt that nobody can understand that frigging website, but Bezos just couldn't let go of those pixels, all those millions of semantics-packed pixels on the landing page. They were like millions of his own precious children. So they're all still there, and Larry is not.
Micro-managing isn't that third thing that Amazon does better than us, by the way. I mean, yeah, they micro-manage really well, but I wouldn't list it as a strength or anything. I'm just trying to set the context here, to help you understand what happened. We're talking about a guy who in all seriousness has said on many public occasions that people should be paying him to work at Amazon. He hands out little yellow stickies with his name on them, reminding people "who runs the company" when they disagree with him. The guy is a regular... well, Steve Jobs, I guess. Except without the fashion or design sense. Bezos is super smart; don't get me wrong. He just makes ordinary control freaks look like stoned hippies.
So one day Jeff Bezos issued a mandate. He's doing that all the time, of course, and people scramble like ants being pounded with a rubber mallet whenever it happens. But on one occasion -- back around 2002 I think, plus or minus a year -- he issued a mandate that was so out there, so huge and eye-bulgingly ponderous, that it made all of his other mandates look like unsolicited peer bonuses."
where do you live? is it easy for you to move? do you have children and school concerns? is your spouse or significant other ready to move on a whim? are you yourself ready to pack all your shit sever your ties and try to find a new place you like as much as your current one?
what job do you work in? is it "tens of thousands" of other companies who would employ you? i guess you must be a short order cook or truck driver, careers like programming for example are niche: if you program web front ends you don't jump to OS programmer for example
do you have enough money to cushion the transition period form one job to the next? can you afford ancillary costs associated with the move?
how is the new job? the boss's personality? your work team, your work environment? job perks? business outlook of the new business sector?
if you aren't moving, how far away is the new job if you aren't moving? is the commute different (train/ car)? traffic jams? length of time commuting?
this is off of the top of my head. there are dozens more top level categories and thousands of specific concerns to each person
it is is EXTREMELY complex
you are either trolling and faking ignorance of something this obvious, or you are a genuine moron
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I can't tell if the OP is being sarcastic or not. Just like poor people just need to stop being so poor.
There's nothing wrong with being poor. Stop treating the poor like there's something wrong with them.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
The sad thing is that when I moved here twenty years ago, you could be a developer and work normal hours. That was also about the time that Microsoft was settling down and stopped firing developers that didn't work sixty+ hours a week. Every development job I've had the past decade has just taken eighty hours for granted. They just assume when you're hired that you'll do. Where I work now, our CEO is a former SVP of Amazon. He requires "hundreds," as he calls it. That's sixteen a day weekdays and ten each day on weekends. Only a few people quit when it was announced 13 months ago since we were promised we would only have to do it until 1.0 was released. We still haven't released, and the scope for 1.0 keeps increasing. Now it looks like we're not going to be finished until the end of November. I hope we finish then, because I want to go home for Christmas. We haven't allowed vacation time in nearly a year so I didn't get to do that last Christmas.
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."
Working for Amazon Sounds Utterly Soul Crushing.
Life in an Amazon Warehouse: Fear and Efficiency at 35 Orders Per Second
Inside Amazon's Kafkaesque performance-improvement plan
Inside Amazon's Bizarre Corporate Culture
Amazon Is a Time Thief, by an Amazon Employee.
Is Amazon an unpleasant place to work? Quote: "Based on my experience, I agree with what everyone has said about the company being a horrible place to work."
Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace
Glassdoor Reviews of Amazon
maybe you're in a band with your best buds and you can't move and break up the band
maybe you love surfing and you have to be near a warm beach with waves
etc., etc.
or maybe you're a useless, low intelligence internet troll who has to work for a company that allows tor or proxies
does the last problem sound familiar?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Word to the wise... Yes, CEOs can listen, and do listen.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
But there is, they are poor.
i worked one of there warehouses its ok if you need some quick cash. the pay is decent the issue is of course they work you long hrs where talking 12+ 6 day weeks so you will quickly tire of not having a life. as for treatment the only issue i had was them unable to tell me from another employee with the same initials and getting yelled at for his mistakes. otherwise the experience was not a bad one.
Absolutely true. Although there are practical issues with being too poor. Like being homeless or unable to eat.
Having said that, being somewhat poor is not necessarily an unhappy situation. Once you get beyond survival and have some creature comforts, it only really starts becoming a happiness problem when you are forced to deal with a large disparity.
In other words, people become unhappy with less if they are constantly shown things that other people have that they don't. This is also why many relatively richer (but still not actually "rich") people look down on poor people. There is a disparity that they have come up on top of, and they feel superior for it.
However, anyone who has things can tell you that First World problems can make you just as unhappy as being poor which seems ridiculous on the surface, but has everything to do with a feeling of *relative* inadequacy or poverty. You might have a nice home, decent education, and a relatively promising future, but if you're bullied or isolated socially, or just depressed, you could end up suicidal or even homicidal.
There are rich people who would have lived longer and happier lives if they'd been born poor.
I think what OP meant is that life isn't a bowl of cherries. You can work at a job you don't like if it pays well, or you can look for an alternative
What qualifies as an alternative depends on your political philosophy:
1) Quit the job you have and find another (or start your own company)
2) Try to change your work conditions by negotiating with your employer
3) Force change by forming a union and giving the employer an ultimatum
4) Force change by overthrowing the government and taking control of all means of production
5) Something else...
At Jeff's level I'm sure it's all daisies and unicorns. I imagine they just hang around all day dipping their balls in gold and getting hand jobs from their hand job robots. They'd probably be stunned to learn that down in the trenches there's not a hand job robot to be seen, and exposed balls are going to get kicked, not dipped in gold.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Everything is wrong with being poor. That's why I prefer to live in the 21st century, and not, say, in the 15th century. But for a very large part, it's not the poor's fault.
Ezekiel 23:20
The g factor isn't, though.
Ezekiel 23:20
Those with few --- if any --- choices left to them.
Workers said they were forced to endure brutal heat inside the sprawling warehouse and were pushed to work at a pace many could not sustain. Employees were frequently reprimanded regarding their productivity and threatened with termination, workers said. The consequences of not meeting work expectations were regularly on display, as employees lost their jobs and got escorted out of the warehouse. Such sights encouraged some workers to conceal pain and push through injury lest they get fired as well, workers said.
During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. Those who couldn't quickly cool off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals. And new applicants were ready to begin work at any time.
An emergency room doctor in June called federal regulators to report an "unsafe environment" after he treated several Amazon warehouse workers for heat-related problems. The doctor's report was echoed by warehouse workers who also complained to regulators, including a security guard who reported seeing pregnant employees suffering in the heat.
In a better economy, not as many people would line up for jobs that pay $11 or $12 an hour moving inventory through a hot warehouse. But with job openings scarce, Amazon and Integrity Staffing Solutions, the temporary employment firm that is hiring workers for Amazon, have found eager applicants in the swollen ranks of the unemployed.
Inside Amazon's Warehouse: Lehigh Valley workers tell of brutal heat, dizzying pace at online retailer [2011]
This time last year, online retailer Amazon.com had ambulances parked outside its Breinigsville warehouse complex on hot days, with emergency medical personnel ready to take workers suffering from heat injuries to nearby hospitals.
Today, Amazon warehouse workers say the facility is refreshingly cool when it's hot and muggy outside. The company recently installed 40 roof-top air conditioners in its 615,000-square-foot warehouse, part of a $52 million investment in cooling its warehouses around the country.
The dramatic change comes nine months after an investigation by The Morning Call revealed difficult working conditions in the Lehigh Valley facility. Workers interviewed said they were pushed to work at dizzying rates in brutal heat. The heat index, a real-feel measure that considers heat and humidity, surpassed 100 degrees in the warehouse multiple times last year and sometimes exceeded 110, according to reports filed with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The company installed temporary air conditioning units last year after federal workplace safety regulators began inspecting the facility. But workers said parts of the warehouse, particularly its upper levels, remained unbearably hot even after the temporary air conditioning was installed.
Amazon gave water, fruit and popsicles to workers on hot days and relaxed its attendance rules on some days to let workers leave early, though they would lose pay.
The Morning Call obtained warehouse building permits using Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know Law. Those reveal that Amazon first sought permits to install temporary air conditioning last July, several weeks after warehouse workers and an emergency room doctor who treated some of them for heat stress complained to federal regulators about conditions...and a contractor sought permits to install permanent air conditioning in early March.
21/2 months before Bezos announced at an annual shareholders meeting May 24 that the company [was]
This concept that one should be forced into all-or-nothing between work and a life is truly something out of a fictional dystopia. One should not be expected to sacrifice hearth and home for basic financial security. The belief this is reasonable is evidence of something very wrong with this world. The concept that employees should be functional serfs is another piece of said evidence.
And yes, real world decisions can be tough. But here's something to consider: Something is very wrong when you have to give up a major positive in another aspect of your life just to have a minor one financially. Or that in a capitalist society that we except that employers are entitled to uncompensated time and effort. It's capitalism for all private commerce, or it isn't capitalism at all.
Buying a house is cheaper than renting where I live. If you have no credit or bad credit, just get one credit card that you pay the balance in full every month and you easily hit 750+ credit rating. That's what I did anyways, and my credit score was 822 when I applied for a mortgage, and I'm not rich or anything.
Wouldn't surprise me if new employees are "asked" to post positive reviews...
Perl Programmer for hire
It's the warehouse employees who get shit on the most. While I'm sure there are issues in the office, the warehouse employees are expected to meet ever rising quotas at the cost of safety - the only way to meet some of the quotas is to ignore safety rules. Employee death or injury is not unheard of. While the top tier might not be driving for these metrics, they don't have the right people keeping a hold of the reigns at the lower level.
I guess that's why Amazon invented the cloud as a successful business model (as opposed to esoteric gedanken experiment which was IBM or even Rackspace) and NYTimes invented they myth that there are "real" journalists as opposed to bloggers. NYTimes will ruthlessly smear anyone if there is red meat in it and then when they are done chewing, they'll go out and do leveraged buyout of smaller papers... all the under the guise of fighting for social justice while supporting dictators abroad and the most corrupt of the politicians at home.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
No one believes they're trapped in a cult until they get out.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
We haven't allowed vacation time in nearly a year
And, that is now the new normal at Seattle tech companies. When I first moved here seven years ago, I asked how to notify the company of planned vacation time. I couldn't find it in the HR system. I got screamed at for using the word "notify" rather than "request." Our HR director called me "an arrogant little sh--" for that. Because she also bitched at my boss, he told me no vacation time for one year. The jerk was serious. I thought at first he was kidding. Since then, I haven't been allowed to take more than one day in a row or more than two total days in a quarter off. It sucks to see all of the developers not be allowed vacation while nontechnical employees almost always take their entire four weeks off each year. From what I've seen and heard from friends, there are definitely two classes of employees in most Seattle companies.
how is the new job? the boss's personality? your work team, your work environment? job perks? business outlook of the new business sector?
This is a big one that keeps people from leaving abusive relationships. How can you be sure the next place will be better? Of course, you can't be sure.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
" Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.”
Sounds like all that's happened is that Amazon has found a new firing offense.
so you don't mind if i come over and kill you and take your stuff
social darwinism is the failure of applying the rule of the jungle to human society
the simple fact is, we make the rules in human society, and we can enforce anything we want. we can use the spear as you say, to enforce basic fairness. and we do, and we shall. ever hear of a revolution?
human morality, basic right and wrong, has nothing to do with survival of the fittest in a darwinian sense. darwinian is: strongest guy kills second strongest guy and fucks all the women. we don't actually agree with that model, and we use the spears to go *against* your derivative ignorant wanna-be tough guy crap
to follow your "thinking", there wouldn't be any morality or right and wrong
you're the problem, your derivative, ignorant, amoral thinking. you are, genuinely, objectively, based on the words you have written here, a low intelligence loser
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm reminded of this video (53 seconds, NSFW): "Simple Explanations" (or, 'How to get bitches on a boat')
Even though I might be accused of being a communist, I think this kind of practice should be against the law.
Don't forget hiring a lawyer, an accountant, an accounts manager to make sure you get paid, an HR department to make sure everyone does their job, and finally developers to do all that work you were going to do on your own but now you're just too busy being the boss of all these people to do it yourself.
Do you want MBAs? Because this is how you get MBAs.
"If you can't hold down a job because your car keeps breaking down, then buy a new car".
The answer is easy, implementation, not so much.
Alice Cooper said it best:
I can't get a girl 'cause I don't have a car.
I can't get a car 'cause I don't have a job.
I can't get a job 'cause I don't have a car.
So I'm looking for a girl with a job and a car,
And a house, with cable!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
europe, land of free healthcare and cheap college and four weeks vacation, has much higher happiness and are richer societies
america, land of "get cancer and lose your house" and "become a slave under a crushing loan if you want an education" and "work 70 hours to barely tread water, vacation? lol" is less happy and poorer
because a true meritocracy, which conservatives apparently love, requires a level playing field, which means removing most of the problems of where you start in life: rich or poor (healthcare and education), as the determination of your fate
what conservatives policies really get us (whether they know it and not admit to it, the plutocrats, or simply don't know it, the propagandized morons) is classism: rich, you do fine. poor, die early and work your ass off and do *not* get ahead, as the fable promises
oh sure, you *should* work hard and get ahead. a proper society is a meritocracy. but since reagan the middle class is on a long term decline due to the plutocrat loving policies we get. the policies conservatives support means: if your daddy is rich, you'll get a cushy job due to connections and coast through life. impossible to fail no matter how hard you fuck up. and if your poor, work your ass off and lose everything due to one problem in life, the kind we all encounter
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Holy crap!... that's ignorant. I could replace every instance where you said "liberal / millennial" with "conservative middle age white people" and make the same argument.... Laziest demographic I've ever worked with. They refuse to learn anything (technical skills, cultural literacy, how not to suck at life, etc), complain non stop about things they don't understand and expect the world to bend over backwards for them and their selfish beliefs. I just can't F-ing believe the hypocrisy..
the most entitled people on this planet are conservatives: they are entitled to a society that be preserved according a mythological superior conservative past that never actually existed, and they are entitled to dictate to you how to run your private social life. "small government!" ... unless it has to do with who you marry or how you plan your births
meanwhile they get angry at entitlements like: healthcare, education, housing, clothing, food. because someone is poor. of course, if you are poor, it is 100% because of your own life failures, never what the society structures your possible life choices as: "put food on the table but be buried in a payday loan"... your poor life choices! pfffft
it's a pathological hateful creed, and it's quite pathetic so many losers can have their buttons pushed on these issues and vote for plutocrat agendas. they're just ignorant tools. just look at the hoopla over abortion and planned parenthood right now: "ignore the economy, war drums, police misconduct, social inequality, healthcare problems... some lady is going to remove a blob in her body that is just as alive as 20 year old!"
i am pro-life! they say. except if there is a war to fight or a convict to execute or they ran from a cop or they want housing, food, clothing, an education, then fuck them... but i'm pro-life, really!
perennial conservative wedge issue, used to deliver the morons to vote for the plutocrat agenda which keeps us all mired. dependable useful fools for a cause which keeps us all poor
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
requires "hundreds," as he calls it. That's sixteen a day weekdays and ten each day on weekends.
I once worked at a company that learned the hard way that if you make it official policy that exempt employees work long hours, the judge can find that they were not exempt after all, and are owed overtime retroactively for a great many years. Fun times.
The line between "cultural pressure to work long hours to deliver" and "official policy mandating long hours" is an important line.
ow it looks like we're not going to be finished until the end of November. I hope we finish then, because I want to go home for Christmas. We haven't allowed vacation time in nearly a year so I didn't get to do that last Christmas.
You know you're all going to be fired once you ship, right? Call me cynical, but I've seen the pattern many times before. Change jobs now, the cake is a lie.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's not necessary to read all the articles above to know that Amazon is an abusive or incompetent company. There is abuse on many Amazon web pages. For example, see the web page for this book: Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto.
That page shows a little information and then pushes visitors to buy other books. My opinion: Either Amazon is extremely abusive, or extremely incompetent.
There are plenty of other examples. Amazon allows sellers to abuse customers. Some items list low prices that attract visitors, but the shipping charge is extremely high.
There are more than 5,000 comments on the New York Times article: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace
People don't resent the rich nearly so much as the guy next door, especially if he comes from a different cultural background. If a bricklayer lives next door to a bricklayer, and the neighbor has two new cars parked out front, bricklayer #1 is going to be miffed, and this has been proved repeatedly. Nothing drives spending like keeping up with the Kapinskies.
If you don't like poverty, stop being poor.
Oh man, we had no idea. We should all do that, then everyone will be rich.
The ultimate laugh is that OP has probably complained about shitty ISP service, or other "simple"-to-beat monopolies.
Go die. And get a third world country on your next ovarian lotto draw.
Damn! Where is my mod points when I need them? Great post! :)
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
Long term the question will be about having products, stock sitting in the US under a US brand with all the taxes, local costs or just going China direct.
From the factory in China, book printer, CD, Blu ray (region code allowed shipping?), on demand from what was the 'back catalogue", toys. Digital while you wait if an option.
Delivery can be done by private or government postage contractors locally around the world. Robots to pack the products in China. No staff issues as all skilled staff just repair or expand robot use.
Long term its just a slow count down to worlds best packing robots, regional tax shelters and who has the better engineering staff on site to accept products in, hold, sort, ship to international delivery hubs.
The US brands had all the advantages in terms of language, trust, branding, banking, shipping locations, local gov support.
The staff costs, storage, sorting, shipping and handling price via the US is getting interesting.
How can the US win? Bilateral trade deals that lock out China long term?
It will be interesting to see where Western publishers, designers and artists go if China/Germany can offer a better deal. Is a brand between the Western publishers and the consumer really needed or can they go for their own great regional logistics from the factory?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Worked there for less than 2 years. The known bad orgs (that I knew about) are Kindle and AWS. Kindle is worse. Luckily, I only had brief contact with them.
There were times when the pager went off at 2AM and you have to respond (or else your manager would get paged). Gotta deal with it one week out of ~6, but 8 hour days otherwise. Other than that, the managers were pretty annoying about cross-examining people for no good reason on a regular basis.
Left after I found a job that matched salary. The org I was in did not work on anything particularly new or interesting so I didn't feel like sticking around (or putting in extra hours to make myself look good).
I've lived in six states in fifteen years. No I don't have children, but maybe I'm just a responsible person.
Something is very wrong when you have to give up a major positive in another aspect of your life just to have a minor one financially
At what point in history did this even become an option?
So amazon is hiring that bottom 30% of the population?
Regarding perks. I've always been suspicious of the IT companies that offer man-child tier tastes such as nurf toys or endless candy bars and lounge chairs. The best workers are 40 years old, show up at 8am, take an hour lunch, and leave at 6 pm. And anyways we all know a lot office workers are lazy in general, though some of that is from Dilbert-ish stagnation of corporate stuff.
what is wrong with any of what you said? Personal items are distracting, eat on lunch, don't do that thing where you talk and gab for an hour then come back to your desk hungry, etc
Panorama: Amazon's Truth Behind the Click BBC Documentary
To achieve this goal, Amazon said that it would introduce a new internal reporting system called EmpathyTrack, which will enable employees to secretly report on their colleagues’ lack of humanity.
Brilliant. I suggest hooking employees up to a steampunk polygraph machine and asking them what they'd do if they found a turtle lying on its back. Just don't ask them about their mother...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I ordered Transformers the other week and all I got was Amazon Prime
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
The vast majority of the poor are not homeless and are not starving. They are more thankful for what they have than are the rich, and don't resent them as much as they fear the prospect of being homeless or starving. The stress of common poverty is being one minor illness away from the lost income and expense that could get them evicted, or worse.
One can't stop being poor by singular choice. One can make a series of choices that might lead to a better quality of life, but there are no guarantees.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Why is it complex? Just don't work for them There are literally tens of thousands of other companies that you can work for.
Where in there did he say you needed to sell the house and move to another state? Is Amazon the only employer in town? Do you live in a company town?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Really, then why is the American tax payer responsible for giving billions in tax subsidies to corporations that make billions in profits? Take your head out of your ass Potsy...
Yeah because sweat shop warehouses are a sign of a strong business model...
Carry greater weight of you weren't an Anonymous Coward, as such just a fucking troll with too much time your hands...
Move to Somalia hippie.
That kind of treatment is actually illegal where I live. It would open the employer up to a whole world of legal hurt.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Yes, paid from a common pool that is larger and more inclusive then any insurance pool can ever be. It's the best way to pay for healthcare.
Cheap storage VM.
Imagine you struggled to pay for collage and ended up with some cc or cell phone dings on your credit. Maybe you even got an eviction. Maybe you were really unlucky and a relative "stole" your identity when you were a kid and you don't want to file a police report to send your Uncle to jail.
It's 10 time easier to start with nothing vs. starting in the hole
Cheap storage VM.
Everything is a risk to benefit ratio, the less risk adverse will be able to take advantage of new opportunities more easily, the less risk adverse will be less likely to rush into situations with obscure pitfalls. Some people live to head into new, challenging situations in far off towns and new jobs, others never make it out of their mother's basements.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
While I agree with the general sentiment of your post, you paint a very one sided picture. The liberal elite are just a entitled and are also plutocrats. They also use hot button issues to manipulate your vote and are pervasively invading your private life.
The problem isn't just conservatives or liberals, its the current state of partisan politics. From your gung-ho hate of one party, I'd bet you vote liberal every time, regardless of who is on the ticket.
Case and point, the Obama presidency. He is a totalitarian president if there ever was one. He furthered the republican and democrat agenda while keeping the focus on less important divisive issues.
I would say the answer to the situation is voting for a third party, but that is a joke. That leads me to the conclusion that the U.S. political system is broken beyond repair. As a result, I've been looking for jobs overseas.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
Based on your first sentence alone, it is just as likely that you are unable to hold a job for more than a year or two as it is that you are a responsible person.
That is a false comparison. Most people I know who work in radio do so because they are drawn to something about it, whether it's the music or the other people or simply working in a studio with all of the equipment. So making whatever sacrifices about working conditions or pay tends to be an informed and willing choice. I suspect few, if any, people working in Amazons warehouses are doing so because they love working in a warehouse.
Employment, being a contractual situation (because SCOTUS has repeatedly said so), is about a mutual, reciprocal exchange of value. If the value Amazon is attempting to extract from their employees is not reasonably commensurate with they are paying, then Amazon is deficient in holding up their side of the agreement. If the conditions under which the employees are working are unreasonably onerous or unrealistically sustainable by an average person, then Amazon is not only deficient, they are willfully so, which under contract law, puts them even more in the wrong.
Exactly. Also in a system like the one in the United States the ones at higher monetary risk for the insurance companies are the poor. They can't afford to go to doctor as frequently, they work in more physically oriented jobs exposing them to greater risk for injury, and they have less collateral in case of default. All this means that if you are poor you will be called upon to pay higher premiums to insurance companies than a rich person, and these are the people who can least afford it.
In essence, healthcare in the United States is a system of the poor subsidizing the rich through higher premiums. The logical solution to this is to shift the costs to taxation. It has the benefit of ensuring that more poor people get the medical attention they need instead of waiting to get a checkup on that heart pain they've been having.
This kind of preventative care reduces the cost of health care to everyone, while at the same time freeing up much needed capital for poorer families to invest and better their situation. For instance they can make sure that their car doesn't break down thus costing them their job.
Does this mean that rich people will have to drop more into the pot? Sure, but these are services that required for a healthy population, and I would much rather have the rich subsidizing the poor than the other way around.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
meanwhile they get angry at entitlements like: healthcare, education, housing, clothing, food.
Nobody is angry at entitlements but many are getting angry at people who recieve publicaly paid benefits who come to feel they are entitled to those benefits without earning them. If you want healthcare, education, housing, clothing, food, the military will give you 3 hots and a cot, tuition assistance, GI bill, health, dental and a strong work ethic.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I see a lot of posts blaming the "left-leaning liberal progressive New York Times" for this whole thing, but the reality is that there are really awful companies to work for out there. I would love to work on something like AWS -- it's super-interesting to a systems management nerd like myself. Here's the problem; I'm 40 and have a wife and 2 little kids that I'd like to see every now and then. Most older techies I know who either have no children or a very understanding spouse would have no problem in an environment like this. The younger folks are a little more enthusiastic about working 80+ hour weeks, simply because they have fewer commitments outside of work and haven't seen that every place doesn't operate like this.
The problem with both SV startups, and apparently, huge companies that haven't shaken the startup culture, is that they can't run on burned-out employees and starry-eyed newbies fueling their operations forever. I'll bet that's one of the reasons Google re-orged -- potential acquisitions of other companies that don't want to buy into the free food, free services, nerf toy techie preschool culture. I work in an environment that has almost no expectation of crazy hours, and we get things done. I and most of my colleagues are on the older side, have a lot of experience in our field, and don't usually have to work nights and weekends to fix problems. In the 8 years I've been here, I've had to work one very extended day, one weekend day, and was dispatched twice with less than a week notice to fix a mess halfway around the world. Given my salary and the insane flexibility the job offers me, I can live with that level of extra work. When it starts becoming constant because managers refuse to say no to their higher-ups, then that's another story.
Another problem is that techies promoted into management can fail spectacularly at this job. I'm a lead on a small team, and I -know- it's not my primary skill. People I've seen that get promoted into management because they're good workers either adapt, or their subordinates suffer greatly. My goal is to not be the a**hole or ineffective boss, plain and simple, because I've worked for a bunch. That said, even if you don't have a people problem, corporate policies like stack ranking are stupid. One complaint I do have about our company is that they're a big "trailing trend follower" when it comes to HR. We did stack ranking for a few years after Jack Welch promoted it as the greatest thing, and lost a lot of good people before it stopped -- try telling top performers in a 4 or 5 person team that one of them has to get a bad review. We're finally starting the first inklings of waking up to realize that offshoring development isn't producing results -- I expect that to take another couple of years. And of course, we're jumping on board the Google open office trend, years after implementation elsewhere, despite everyone's pleas to the contrary.
There's good and bad in every workplace, and a good workplace for a 23 year old new grad is not necessarily the right fit for a 45 year old mom or dad.
a blob is not a human life
it could be, someday
but it isn't when it is removed
it's just a fucking blob
but it's the only way conservatives understand life: in the abstract
actual human life, like the life of the mother who can't take care of a baby now and won't be able to love it, or a starving actual child, or a young man sent off to a moronic war: there's no empathy there from conservatives. "poor life choices!" "entitlements!" conservatism is just a form of degradation of basic human empathy. there's no care or love. pro-life my ass
you mean pro-birth, not pro-life
once the baby is in the world: fuck him. starve to death, freeze, don't get an education, die from an easily treatable condition, die in a moronic war, shoot first ask questions later, go to death row, get shot running from police brutality: fuck you, just die already. that's "pro-life" conservatism
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"i'm against abortions because it's done by government men in black helicopters"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
north korea is a totalitarian state. by calling obama a totalitarian, you merely announce yourself as a fucking moron who doesn't even understand the words he uses
not a baseless insult: if you think the obama presidency is anything remotely near the concept of totalitarianism, you are simply, objectively, a dumb person who doesn't understand what the fuck he is talking about
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
yeah, like old people
what a moron
the bogeyman of the "welfare queen" is an old lie that conservatives use to justify a point of view where you are actually denying desperate assistance to people who genuinely need it
but you don't care about actual facts, you decide based on your stereotypical weak minded hate
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In what regards isn't Obama totalitarian? Universal healthcare, increased unemployment benefits, secret courts, countless military engagements, prosecution of whistle blowers, spying on citizens, signing unprecedented numbers of executive orders; everything this president has done is a step towards a larger more oppressive government. There is one exception. He reserved the right of the states to control marijuana distribution and regulation.
The US government itself is becoming a totalitarian oligarchy. The fault here rests on all three branches of government and not solely on the executive branch. This article equates us to an oligarchy: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-.... The totalitarian part is still a work in progress but we are making huge strides. Take a look at Camden New Jersey, or what happened after the Boston Marathon bombing.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
"Just let us train you to kill people and we'll feed you. We will even pay you to do so and educate you in ways to kill people with stuff you didn't know existed."
You don't see anything wrong with that "work ethic"? No wonder there's millions of people who fucking hate America.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
like i said, you have no fucking clue what you are talking about
if you play so fast and loose with these definitions, and do not understand the massive difference between an actual totalitarian state like north korea, and germany or japan, for example, only because you can criticize them in the same fashion as you do the usa, it simply means you are a simpleton who is talking about subject matter you just don't fucking understand. really
there is no proportionality or reason on your thinking. you equate fuck ups with entire ideologies. you point to affairs, twist the meaning and the import, then paint things in a retarded propaganda fashion. like fucking universal healthcare, which the majority of modern democracies use, you call that totalitarian! fucking moronic
i pity you, i really do. to live in such a dimwitted low wattage skull. you're a hysterical propagandized retard, that's all you are on this subject matter. you're just embarrassing yourself. it's pretty sad that people can be such pathetic clueless pieces of shit
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The point at which failing to feed and shelter all became a choice. It all ties together. No aspect of this economy is capable of being independent of any other any more.
I'm the OP, and I agree with your point. You knew more about Gawker than I.
I'm pretty sure I would have handed in my resignation the next day. Life's too short to put up with an abusive sociopath as a boss and coworkers who create a hostile work environment. That's simply inexcusable behavior, period.
And as much as I hate to say it, have you ever thought about forming a union? Because it sounds like your company is precisely the sort of abusive company whose workers are most in need of that sort of protection.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Again you resort to name calling instead of covering any of my logical fallacies. Foremost, why don't you explain your definition of totalitarianism to me. Last I checked it was the government's intrusion into every aspect of its populations life. Government run healthcare would fall into that category.
To be considered a totalitarian government two things need to be considered, economic and social control by the governing body. Economically, there isn't a business sector in the US that isn't taxed directly, subsidized or has a direct regulatory agency. As for social freedoms, on this side we are not as bad but are working fervently to give are freedoms to the government. We already have things like free speech zones. We let ourselves be assaulted at airports by government thugs. All of our phone conversations, text messages and emails are available to the government. Some states are tracking all vehicle and individuals movement through the stingray program and traffic cameras. Yet the biggest aggression against our freedoms are the secret courts and the witch hunt for terrorism.
I will reiterate one of my examples, the Boston Marathon bombing. The show of police force after the bombing was unprecedented anywhere in the country. Citizens where not allowed outside, ATV's rolled through the streets and cops went door to door looking for the bombers. I do not agree with what the bombers did in the slightest, but Boston became a police state in the flash of an eye.
Looking at what you've written, all I can conclude about you is that you are a very angry person who doesn't want to have an open discussion about the state of politics in the US. You are so engrossed in partisan politics you can't see the forest from the trees. If you could grow up, calm down and write an intelligent rebuttal that doesn't include name calling, I'd be hugely impressed. Until then, stew in your hateful, angry little world.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
so germany is a totalitarian state? uk? canada? france? japan?
just because of universal healthcare?
you know, all of the modern democracies with robust rights for their citizens?
are we a totalitarian state because we have government run police? government run fire houses? the police are literally the essential ingredient to run a police state. so why aren't you hysterically pissing in your pants over the fact we have government run police genius?
how about we go to a "capitalist" system with those? don't pay your police bill, no 911 answer. don't pay for fire, we let your house burn. that sound better than what we have?
healthcare is the same
all of our social and economic peers have figured this out. by trying to be "capitalist" about a system which is a natural monopoly, like police and fire, we pay 10x-1,000x what other modern countries pay for healthcare, for lower quality care. all we do is funnel money to financial parasites. it's not capitalist. it never will be capitalist. like fire service. like police. look up "natural monopoly" and educate your ignorant ass
do you think? or do you regurgitate the word "totalitarianism" like a trained monkey herp derping to alex jones? without even fucking understanding what the fucking word means
as for the insults, your "understanding" of what totalitarianism is renders you a complete moron on the topic. again, not an insult: an accurate objective appraisal of the quality of your words, to be so fucking ignorant about what totalitarianism really is and describing the usa as such, just because we don't want to pay fucking insane sums for our fucking healthcare
you are a propagandized retard. really. you do not fucking understand anything you are fucking herp derping about. i have no respect for you. you've earned my disrespect by your words being so fucking DUMB
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The UK is most certainly on its way to a police state. France, Japan and Canada, while socialist, respect individuals rights more than the UK and US. Saying anyone with government run healthcare is totalitarian is such a far stretch of what I said, you show you didn't even read it or didn't understand it.
Not everything the US does makes it totalitarian, but the political spectrum is just that, a spectrum. While we are not a true totalitarian government, we most certainly are in that area of the spectrum.
As for your idiotic remarks, you must be a troll. I gave you a clear definition of totalitarianism and how the US fits into that category. You picked one example and harped on it over and over. Even more so you picked a bad example. I never said government run healthcare is bad or that state run police and fire is bad. Totalitarian means everything under government control including healthcare, fire and police, so I added that to my long list of examples because it is important to note the US government has their hands in everything, ie definition of totalitarianism.
I would say you are an idiot suffering from "smartest man in the room" syndrome, but judging by the continuous, superfluous, idiotic crap that continues to spew out of you, I'm leaning more towards troll, and as such, this conversation is over. Grow up and take your head out of your ass.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
i'm not a troll. i am bothered by propagandized morons ruining public discourse in this country
you. have. no. fucking. clue. what. totalitarianism. is
really. objectively accurate statement. for you to use that word in the context of american politics renders you an ignorant joke. that is objectively true, not a baseless insult
analogy: your definition of totalitarian is like me calling you a pedophile because you hugged a kid once
if you want to sound intelligent and matter to reality, use words that actually mean things. or continue to bark "totalitarian" like a low intelligence propagandized moron herp derping to alex jones. your choice
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You have not provided one example to the contrary, nor, in all the back and forth, added any intellectual input into the conversation. You continue to digress the discussion into the simple argument of "I don't agree with you so you are clearly wrong." You seem to have no knowledge of the subject, or the definition of the word in question, and I'm even beginning to doubt your mental capacity to control your own bowels. You are a waist of space and in all likelihood are just a meat popsicle. Please walk into oncoming traffic to free us of your pestilence.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
this isn't a conversation. i don't respect you. you are a moron. my "contribution" is to tell you to shut the fuck up until you actually know what a fucking word is before you use it, you dumb useless fuck. i don't owe you anything, i'm not your father. i'm not here to hold your hand and dance with you until your dim watted brain registers what the fuck you obviously don't understand. it is your fucking job to understand a fucking concept before you open your ignorant pie hole and spout mental diarrhea. so do that, you fucking retard
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So many big words. It must be hard having your intellect. To always be the smartest man in the room, how do you deal with the pressure? Seriously, how does a man of your intelligence function from day to day? I figured you would've accidentally strangled yourself on a shoe lase long ago.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
i'm not that smart. there is plenty i don't know
i'm just smarter than you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it