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It's almost as if Amazon is being criticised for offering the jobs in the first place, and instead they are being saddled with the entire burden of the issues h

It's almost as if Amazon is being criticised for offering the jobs in the first place, and instead they are being saddled with the entire burden of the issues homeless people face. I think that is unfair. What Amazon agreed to do is essentially look the other way on issues which employers usually see as reasons to not hire. It is very clearly seasonal work and there are many benefits to doing that work which might lead to more reliable jobs in the future.

cpncrunch 11y ago
Agreed. It sounds like the homeless shelters might need to do more to help people who have shift-work. It might not be ideal to work at night, but it certainly beats living on the street and begging IMHO.
cfcef 11y ago
Ethical entanglement: if you try to make a problem slightly better, then by not fixing it entirely you are now to blame. Happens all the time: http://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ http://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethi...
- golemotron 11y ago
  I came here to post that. Thank you.
- rkho 11y ago
  Thanks for posting this.
- cubano 11y ago
  Sounds like exactly what I go through every time I've fixed a malware-laden computer at whatever house I seem to be hanging out at nowadays. Everyone seems to have a laptop that "won't boot" or something...I've had to stop cleaning them for this very reason.
  - beachstartup 11y ago
    people still do this? this is really still a thing? i thought we all agreed to stop doing this years ago. doctors, lawyers, accountants, plumbers, electricians, mechanics have figured this out, i have faith that we can too. it's really not difficult. please stop doing free tech work for people. there is something in the human condition which will cause them to be 1. ungrateful and upset with the results of your help 2. ironically, ask for more free work 3. blame you for their own fuckups 4. have set expectations that you'll do more of it on demand. worst of all, you cheapen the entire concept of technology work. be the change you want to see in the world.
    - cubano 11y ago
      I don't know if it still "a thing" or not, but I try to help friends and such who may be going thru rough times or whatever, and I enjoy fixing broken things that people have given up on. Maybe it reminds me of myself and the help I've received after people gave up on me. But like I said, the fallout of it often reminds me of the parent post.
    - ehnto 11y ago
      Stopped doing websites for friends and loved ones a long time ago. Feature creep is even more of an issue when the value of your time is not quantified in some way for the client.
      - dh997 11y ago
        Yup. Buddy deals are the best way to waste your time, lose money and damage relationships.
    - afarrell 11y ago
      I actually kinda wish I did tech support for my grandmother. She's a nurse and I occasionally call her for things. However, my father used to be a sysadmin and seems to have things set up such that she doesn't need help with anything.
    - dh997 11y ago
- SilasX 11y ago
  Yep, you beat me to it. It's like a variant on the old joke[1]: "You must be a profiteer." 'Sure, I guess I count as one. How'd you know?' "Well, you learned about the immense, tragic problem of homelessness, and apparently your first thought was, wow, awesome, a cheap labor force I can use to cut costs!" 'Hm, okay, fair enough. You must be a philosopher then.' "Yes! You're right! How'd you know?" 'Well, because homelessness has been around for ages, and appears to be intractable, and you've been unable to make any real progress on it, and yet when I offer homeless people an alternative to their current state, and some of them take it, somehow, the whole problem is all my fault." [1] https://www2.bc.edu/~radinr/Management_Humor/jokes.htm https://www2.bc.edu/~radinr/Management_Humor/jokes.htm
  - bottled_poe 11y ago
    Yes, yes, very good. But seriously, if you are paying your employees below minimum wage, then one of the following must be true: -Your business doesn't make enough income, possibly a sign of a bad business model; or -You are intentionally paying your employees as little as possible, which I see as profiteering. Perhaps there are other reasons?
    - afarrell 11y ago
      Do you feel the same way about Goodwill?
      - vkou 11y ago
        Goodwill's a non-profit. Despite their earning statements, Amazon is only a 'non-profit' on paper.
        jonah 11y ago
        Goodwill may technically be a "non-profit" but they're hardly altruistic.
        SilasX 11y ago
        Right, that's exactly a paradox/error that the Copenhagen critique elucidates: two groups have (basically) the same effect on the world (providing the opportunity to have regular work to do in exchange for money), but you only rebuke one of them, since they're doing it for profit. I can think of logical reasons to justify distinguishing them, but I rarely see such reasons made explicit. (One reason might be that there's a greater incentive to cut corners on worker treatment when you're for profit rather then just doing it out of the goodness of your heart, but that would justify at most tighter oversight, not moral condemnation of doing the thing at all, as we normally see.)
- dpweb 11y ago
  As noble as the attempt may be, you still have to use your head - if you're really trying to help people. There's a tendency to say, hey its something, its better than nothing.. Not necessarily. Not an expert but it makes perfect sense that seasonal jobs are not well suited for homeless people, for the reasons the article mentions - they don't have schedule flexibility (when they can get a bed!) others have, not to mention that they really need permanent jobs. Even more so than another type of seasonal worker - the high school or college student living at home. Good for Amazon if they're doing it for the right reasons, but you still need to do it right. There's more at stake than the typical corporate pet project. These people are (sadly) incredibly vulnerable. Taking swipes at it and failing can have serious consequences.
- pyre 11y ago
  The flip side is (e.g.) promising one thing, but delivering another then claiming it's "better than nothing" so nobody should complain.
- pron 11y ago
  That is not at all the case. If you try to solve a problem but only do it partially, no one blames you. If you try to make a profit by benefitting from a problem, then you have some moral responsibility, maybe not for the problem's existence, but for the people you benefit from. So the claim isn't involvement => blame, but profit => increased responsibility, which doesn't seem so outrageous. The issue of mutually beneficial exploitation is a big problem in ethics[1]. People who say it's OK, subscribe to what's known as the "non-worseness claim", but many don't. That post you linked to is a shallow, uneducated piece that completely ignores the vast discussion on the topic in ethics literature[2]. Another thing is that even with the most generous interpretation, and even if you do subscribe to the non-worseness claim and find it ethically positive, in most such mutually-beneficial exploitation cases, no one is really trying to solve the problem, just to make the best of a bad situation. That is not bad per se, but let's not pretend Amazon is "trying to solve" the problem of homelessness. [1]: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/#4 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/#4 [2]: And that is a charitable description. It reads like an article about the motion of celestial bodies written today by someone who is completely unaware that physics has been an active discipline for centuries, and may have a thing or two to say about the subject. I don't expect everyone to be an expert on everything, and it's great that non-experts write about matters they've only recently been introduced to (as this can help others), but I find it hair-pullingly frustrating when people write about something by trying to deduce from first-principles without so much as googling to see if perhaps there has been some serious treatment of the subject before. It is doubly frustrating when it is those ignorant (though perhaps well-intentioned) articles are the ones that get referenced and discussed. It's like those texts actively erase knowledge.
  - diskcat 11y ago
    Could you be any more conceited and self-satisfied? All you do is say that the poster is uneducated, but have made zero attempt in educating him, other readers or advancing any argument against what was posted. so tell me, if i was in a desert and somebody is really thirsty, why is it unethical for me to sell him some water?
    - pron 11y ago
- gadders 11y ago
  AKA No good deed goes unpunished.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  The reason nothing improves in government IT. If you try to fix the problem, you are now responsible for all parts not fixed. If you do nothing, then someone long gone is still to blame.
aharonovich 11y ago
Totally. Leave it to socialists to attack someone who had actually tried to help the poor. The worst thing about homelessness is said to be that some people fall into poverty over bad luck, and if they would only get a break they can pull out. So that's what amazon did - have them a brake. Even with a seasonal job, I'm sure some of them pulled themselves out of poverty.
- randyrand 11y ago
  Definitely a trend that socialists talk the most about helping people but conservatives are the ones you'll more likely find getting their hands dirty. IDK why.
  - siquick 11y ago
    I've rarely seen this trend, personally...
    - enraged_camel 11y ago
      Yeah, not sure what the parent is smoking but it sure does sound amazing. Conservatives are known for their "fuck you, got mine" mentality, powered by the belief that if you're poor, it's your own damn fault.
      - bittercynic 11y ago
        It'd be tough to find good data on the topic, but the "fuck you, got mine" mentality seems to be sprinkled around fairly randomly among privileged people. Political leanings are often inherited and don't seem to correlate with that attitude.
  - true_religion 11y ago
    If I had to guess it's because socialists believe that everyone should bear the cost of helping the financially disadvantaged, whereas conservatives believe that its up to each individual to decide of they should help someone (beyond such things as emergency/military services which are socialist but have been enshrined into our view of government). So a socialist who wants to help the homeless will spend their time fighting the government to fund to social services. Does political action count as "getting your hands dirty"? Well I'm not one to decide.
biomene 11y ago
Amazon doesn't offer jobs to help people. It offers jobs because it sees an opportunity to make money. Homeless people are probably cheaper than other workers, and are probably just as productive, thanks to Amazon's discipline enforcing measures.[1] --- [1] This article has a pretty decent write-up of what it's like to work for Amazon: https://angryworkersworld.wordpress.com/2015/12/20/welcome-to-the-jungle-working-and-struggling-in-amazon-warehouses/ https://angryworkersworld.wordpress.com/2015/12/20/welcome-t...
- cbd1984 11y ago
  "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." — Adam Smith Of course, he also said: "No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged."
  - roymurdock 11y ago
    Sorry, I meant to upvote you but the mobile layout foiled me once again.
- FussyZeus 11y ago
  But it is work, to those who would otherwise not have any. It's very easy to say "you shouldn't work there, that job is terrible" when you're not the one spending nights in a park.
  - biomene 11y ago
    I think that what you are saying is that these people are so miserable that they have no other choice but to take the rare jobs that they are offered, no matter how terrible. If so, I totally agree with you. I would just like to take a moment to wonder at the shitness of our world where the best we can do for those who have been deprived of everything is to ask them to break their backs so the extravagantly wealthy can make a bit more money.
GavinMcG 11y ago
> It is very clearly seasonal work Then why is it that (FTA) "Amazon told Schwartz it would offer temporary-to-permanent positions at its distribution warehouses"? I saw zero criticism of Amazon for offering the jobs in the first place. It's the failure to follow through and provide the promised stability.
- sfa_aok 11y ago
  Thank you for this. I don't understand why other posts are so heavily weighted with arguments of "Oh, so they didn't solve the homeless problem, so now the whole problem is their fault?" Amazon either took advantage of the scheme, or rushed in - maybe even with the best of intentions - without thinking through or committing to what was actually required to make it a success.
  - Pyxl101 11y ago
    > It's the failure to follow through and provide the promised stability. What evidence is there of failure to follow through? Temporary-to-permanent does not mean someone is guaranteed a permanent position, it means they have a chance at it. The permanent positions might be relatively small in number, and highly competitive, so some workers will not get it. Who is most likely to be interviewed by a newspaper and have an axe to grind? The article would be more informative if it shared data about what percentage of workers were hired as temps, and how many full time positions were expected to be hired afterward, and how many of the homeless hired as temps made it into full time, and so on. Without that information, the article is just an anecdote from a person or two. The nature of temp work is that it's not permanent, and no one hired into a temp job should have the disillusion that they will definitely get a permanent one. Temporary-to-permanent work means that there's a chance to stay on if you're good - you're not definitely going to get fired, nor do you definitely get to stay.
pyre 11y ago
I'm not seeing Amazon "criticized for offering jobs". Instead I see a list of very specific issues that arose from this arrangement: 1. Amazon may (or may not) have promised that the jobs were temporary-to-permanent rather than just seasonal. 2. Amazon did not have a clear feedback mechanism so that they could improve the program. 3. It sounds like Amazon only gave a week's notice to put this job fair together (something usually takes a month). From the article: > He said it’s normal for companies to face these questions when they first hire homeless workers. But he said what counts is that they keep trying and learning. I would hardly expect to find that tidbit in an article that was attempting to lay the entire blame for the worldwide problem of homelessness at the feet of Amazon... for hiring a few homeless people from Seattle.
- Houshalter 11y ago
  The article isn't that bad, although it has a negative tone against Amazon when they are really trying to do a good thing. Some of the comments are blaming Amazon, and in the past I have seen a lot of hate on Amazon and other companies that employ a lot of unskilled workers. Hell there was an article just the other day that blamed a lot of Silicon Valley companies like Uber for poverty, which makes no sense at all.
  - kriro 11y ago
    I think the hate on Amazon is fairly justified. Working conditions for their fulfillment workers suck and there's a pretty poisoned atmosphere (Amazon Poland for example).
- gregjwild 11y ago
  Agreed. The problem with companies getting involved in social issues is that social issues take a degree of tact, planning and prior-research. You can't just wade in and play with peoples lives. Good on them for trying - and I hope they don't feel burned by it - but there's a reason public entities and charities are better placed to addressed these kinds of problems, even if they're not well resourced for it. Hopefully they'll continue to refine how they approach it.
rmc 11y ago
> It is very clearly seasonal work They shouldn't have implied there was a change of permanency.
gregjwild 11y ago
I don't think that's the case - the article clearly points out how enthusiastic the people involved were at first. To me it feels more focused on a lack of proper planning by Amazon for just how hard it is. Things like most of the work being night-shifts is definitely indicative of a lack of prior-research.
crispyambulance 11y ago
Amazon is not doing this for the benefit of homeless folks. They're in it for the cheap labor and tax breaks, which is fine except that the social safety net in the USA is full of holes. No one negotiated to keep homeless shelters open so that the workers could actually DO nigh-shift work. No one counseled the workers on the financial implications of "seasonal work" and how small of a grain of salt to take when a company says the temp work "might" become permanent. I don't blame Amazon, but I do think they were at least naive about the scope of the project and the chance for success given the circumstances of homeless people.

cpncrunch 11y ago

Agreed. It sounds like the homeless shelters might need to do more to help people who have shift-work. It might not be ideal to work at night, but it certainly beats living on the street and begging IMHO.

cfcef 11y ago

Ethical entanglement: if you try to make a problem slightly better, then by not fixing it entirely you are now to blame. Happens all the time: http://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ http://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethi...

golemotron 11y ago
I came here to post that. Thank you.
rkho 11y ago
Thanks for posting this.
cubano 11y ago
Sounds like exactly what I go through every time I've fixed a malware-laden computer at whatever house I seem to be hanging out at nowadays. Everyone seems to have a laptop that "won't boot" or something...I've had to stop cleaning them for this very reason.
- beachstartup 11y ago
  people still do this? this is really still a thing? i thought we all agreed to stop doing this years ago. doctors, lawyers, accountants, plumbers, electricians, mechanics have figured this out, i have faith that we can too. it's really not difficult. please stop doing free tech work for people. there is something in the human condition which will cause them to be 1. ungrateful and upset with the results of your help 2. ironically, ask for more free work 3. blame you for their own fuckups 4. have set expectations that you'll do more of it on demand. worst of all, you cheapen the entire concept of technology work. be the change you want to see in the world.
  - cubano 11y ago
    I don't know if it still "a thing" or not, but I try to help friends and such who may be going thru rough times or whatever, and I enjoy fixing broken things that people have given up on. Maybe it reminds me of myself and the help I've received after people gave up on me. But like I said, the fallout of it often reminds me of the parent post.
  - ehnto 11y ago
    Stopped doing websites for friends and loved ones a long time ago. Feature creep is even more of an issue when the value of your time is not quantified in some way for the client.
    - dh997 11y ago
      Yup. Buddy deals are the best way to waste your time, lose money and damage relationships.
  - afarrell 11y ago
    I actually kinda wish I did tech support for my grandmother. She's a nurse and I occasionally call her for things. However, my father used to be a sysadmin and seems to have things set up such that she doesn't need help with anything.
  - dh997 11y ago
SilasX 11y ago
Yep, you beat me to it. It's like a variant on the old joke[1]: "You must be a profiteer." 'Sure, I guess I count as one. How'd you know?' "Well, you learned about the immense, tragic problem of homelessness, and apparently your first thought was, wow, awesome, a cheap labor force I can use to cut costs!" 'Hm, okay, fair enough. You must be a philosopher then.' "Yes! You're right! How'd you know?" 'Well, because homelessness has been around for ages, and appears to be intractable, and you've been unable to make any real progress on it, and yet when I offer homeless people an alternative to their current state, and some of them take it, somehow, the whole problem is all my fault." [1] https://www2.bc.edu/~radinr/Management_Humor/jokes.htm https://www2.bc.edu/~radinr/Management_Humor/jokes.htm
- bottled_poe 11y ago
  Yes, yes, very good. But seriously, if you are paying your employees below minimum wage, then one of the following must be true: -Your business doesn't make enough income, possibly a sign of a bad business model; or -You are intentionally paying your employees as little as possible, which I see as profiteering. Perhaps there are other reasons?
  - afarrell 11y ago
    Do you feel the same way about Goodwill?
    - vkou 11y ago
      Goodwill's a non-profit. Despite their earning statements, Amazon is only a 'non-profit' on paper.
      - jonah 11y ago
        Goodwill may technically be a "non-profit" but they're hardly altruistic.
      - SilasX 11y ago
        Right, that's exactly a paradox/error that the Copenhagen critique elucidates: two groups have (basically) the same effect on the world (providing the opportunity to have regular work to do in exchange for money), but you only rebuke one of them, since they're doing it for profit. I can think of logical reasons to justify distinguishing them, but I rarely see such reasons made explicit. (One reason might be that there's a greater incentive to cut corners on worker treatment when you're for profit rather then just doing it out of the goodness of your heart, but that would justify at most tighter oversight, not moral condemnation of doing the thing at all, as we normally see.)
dpweb 11y ago
As noble as the attempt may be, you still have to use your head - if you're really trying to help people. There's a tendency to say, hey its something, its better than nothing.. Not necessarily. Not an expert but it makes perfect sense that seasonal jobs are not well suited for homeless people, for the reasons the article mentions - they don't have schedule flexibility (when they can get a bed!) others have, not to mention that they really need permanent jobs. Even more so than another type of seasonal worker - the high school or college student living at home. Good for Amazon if they're doing it for the right reasons, but you still need to do it right. There's more at stake than the typical corporate pet project. These people are (sadly) incredibly vulnerable. Taking swipes at it and failing can have serious consequences.
pyre 11y ago
The flip side is (e.g.) promising one thing, but delivering another then claiming it's "better than nothing" so nobody should complain.
pron 11y ago
That is not at all the case. If you try to solve a problem but only do it partially, no one blames you. If you try to make a profit by benefitting from a problem, then you have some moral responsibility, maybe not for the problem's existence, but for the people you benefit from. So the claim isn't involvement => blame, but profit => increased responsibility, which doesn't seem so outrageous. The issue of mutually beneficial exploitation is a big problem in ethics[1]. People who say it's OK, subscribe to what's known as the "non-worseness claim", but many don't. That post you linked to is a shallow, uneducated piece that completely ignores the vast discussion on the topic in ethics literature[2]. Another thing is that even with the most generous interpretation, and even if you do subscribe to the non-worseness claim and find it ethically positive, in most such mutually-beneficial exploitation cases, no one is really trying to solve the problem, just to make the best of a bad situation. That is not bad per se, but let's not pretend Amazon is "trying to solve" the problem of homelessness. [1]: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/#4 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/#4 [2]: And that is a charitable description. It reads like an article about the motion of celestial bodies written today by someone who is completely unaware that physics has been an active discipline for centuries, and may have a thing or two to say about the subject. I don't expect everyone to be an expert on everything, and it's great that non-experts write about matters they've only recently been introduced to (as this can help others), but I find it hair-pullingly frustrating when people write about something by trying to deduce from first-principles without so much as googling to see if perhaps there has been some serious treatment of the subject before. It is doubly frustrating when it is those ignorant (though perhaps well-intentioned) articles are the ones that get referenced and discussed. It's like those texts actively erase knowledge.
- diskcat 11y ago
  Could you be any more conceited and self-satisfied? All you do is say that the poster is uneducated, but have made zero attempt in educating him, other readers or advancing any argument against what was posted. so tell me, if i was in a desert and somebody is really thirsty, why is it unethical for me to sell him some water?
  - pron 11y ago
gadders 11y ago
AKA No good deed goes unpunished.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
The reason nothing improves in government IT. If you try to fix the problem, you are now responsible for all parts not fixed. If you do nothing, then someone long gone is still to blame.

aharonovich 11y ago

Totally. Leave it to socialists to attack someone who had actually tried to help the poor. The worst thing about homelessness is said to be that some people fall into poverty over bad luck, and if they would only get a break they can pull out. So that's what amazon did - have them a brake. Even with a seasonal job, I'm sure some of them pulled themselves out of poverty.

randyrand 11y ago
Definitely a trend that socialists talk the most about helping people but conservatives are the ones you'll more likely find getting their hands dirty. IDK why.
- siquick 11y ago
  I've rarely seen this trend, personally...
  - enraged_camel 11y ago
    Yeah, not sure what the parent is smoking but it sure does sound amazing. Conservatives are known for their "fuck you, got mine" mentality, powered by the belief that if you're poor, it's your own damn fault.
    - bittercynic 11y ago
      It'd be tough to find good data on the topic, but the "fuck you, got mine" mentality seems to be sprinkled around fairly randomly among privileged people. Political leanings are often inherited and don't seem to correlate with that attitude.
- true_religion 11y ago
  If I had to guess it's because socialists believe that everyone should bear the cost of helping the financially disadvantaged, whereas conservatives believe that its up to each individual to decide of they should help someone (beyond such things as emergency/military services which are socialist but have been enshrined into our view of government). So a socialist who wants to help the homeless will spend their time fighting the government to fund to social services. Does political action count as "getting your hands dirty"? Well I'm not one to decide.

biomene 11y ago

Amazon doesn't offer jobs to help people. It offers jobs because it sees an opportunity to make money. Homeless people are probably cheaper than other workers, and are probably just as productive, thanks to Amazon's discipline enforcing measures.[1] --- [1] This article has a pretty decent write-up of what it's like to work for Amazon: https://angryworkersworld.wordpress.com/2015/12/20/welcome-to-the-jungle-working-and-struggling-in-amazon-warehouses/ https://angryworkersworld.wordpress.com/2015/12/20/welcome-t...

cbd1984 11y ago
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." — Adam Smith Of course, he also said: "No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged."
- roymurdock 11y ago
  Sorry, I meant to upvote you but the mobile layout foiled me once again.
FussyZeus 11y ago
But it is work, to those who would otherwise not have any. It's very easy to say "you shouldn't work there, that job is terrible" when you're not the one spending nights in a park.
- biomene 11y ago
  I think that what you are saying is that these people are so miserable that they have no other choice but to take the rare jobs that they are offered, no matter how terrible. If so, I totally agree with you. I would just like to take a moment to wonder at the shitness of our world where the best we can do for those who have been deprived of everything is to ask them to break their backs so the extravagantly wealthy can make a bit more money.

GavinMcG 11y ago

> It is very clearly seasonal work Then why is it that (FTA) "Amazon told Schwartz it would offer temporary-to-permanent positions at its distribution warehouses"? I saw zero criticism of Amazon for offering the jobs in the first place. It's the failure to follow through and provide the promised stability.

sfa_aok 11y ago
Thank you for this. I don't understand why other posts are so heavily weighted with arguments of "Oh, so they didn't solve the homeless problem, so now the whole problem is their fault?" Amazon either took advantage of the scheme, or rushed in - maybe even with the best of intentions - without thinking through or committing to what was actually required to make it a success.
- Pyxl101 11y ago
  > It's the failure to follow through and provide the promised stability. What evidence is there of failure to follow through? Temporary-to-permanent does not mean someone is guaranteed a permanent position, it means they have a chance at it. The permanent positions might be relatively small in number, and highly competitive, so some workers will not get it. Who is most likely to be interviewed by a newspaper and have an axe to grind? The article would be more informative if it shared data about what percentage of workers were hired as temps, and how many full time positions were expected to be hired afterward, and how many of the homeless hired as temps made it into full time, and so on. Without that information, the article is just an anecdote from a person or two. The nature of temp work is that it's not permanent, and no one hired into a temp job should have the disillusion that they will definitely get a permanent one. Temporary-to-permanent work means that there's a chance to stay on if you're good - you're not definitely going to get fired, nor do you definitely get to stay.

pyre 11y ago

I'm not seeing Amazon "criticized for offering jobs". Instead I see a list of very specific issues that arose from this arrangement: 1. Amazon may (or may not) have promised that the jobs were temporary-to-permanent rather than just seasonal. 2. Amazon did not have a clear feedback mechanism so that they could improve the program. 3. It sounds like Amazon only gave a week's notice to put this job fair together (something usually takes a month). From the article: > He said it’s normal for companies to face these questions when they first hire homeless workers. But he said what counts is that they keep trying and learning. I would hardly expect to find that tidbit in an article that was attempting to lay the entire blame for the worldwide problem of homelessness at the feet of Amazon... for hiring a few homeless people from Seattle.

Houshalter 11y ago
The article isn't that bad, although it has a negative tone against Amazon when they are really trying to do a good thing. Some of the comments are blaming Amazon, and in the past I have seen a lot of hate on Amazon and other companies that employ a lot of unskilled workers. Hell there was an article just the other day that blamed a lot of Silicon Valley companies like Uber for poverty, which makes no sense at all.
- kriro 11y ago
  I think the hate on Amazon is fairly justified. Working conditions for their fulfillment workers suck and there's a pretty poisoned atmosphere (Amazon Poland for example).
gregjwild 11y ago
Agreed. The problem with companies getting involved in social issues is that social issues take a degree of tact, planning and prior-research. You can't just wade in and play with peoples lives. Good on them for trying - and I hope they don't feel burned by it - but there's a reason public entities and charities are better placed to addressed these kinds of problems, even if they're not well resourced for it. Hopefully they'll continue to refine how they approach it.

rmc 11y ago

> It is very clearly seasonal work They shouldn't have implied there was a change of permanency.

gregjwild 11y ago

I don't think that's the case - the article clearly points out how enthusiastic the people involved were at first. To me it feels more focused on a lack of proper planning by Amazon for just how hard it is. Things like most of the work being night-shifts is definitely indicative of a lack of prior-research.

crispyambulance 11y ago

Amazon is not doing this for the benefit of homeless folks. They're in it for the cheap labor and tax breaks, which is fine except that the social safety net in the USA is full of holes. No one negotiated to keep homeless shelters open so that the workers could actually DO nigh-shift work. No one counseled the workers on the financial implications of "seasonal work" and how small of a grain of salt to take when a company says the temp work "might" become permanent. I don't blame Amazon, but I do think they were at least naive about the scope of the project and the chance for success given the circumstances of homeless people.