7 ms·

Amazon workers sleeping in tents

128 points by mbgaxyz 10y ago

koolba 10y ago
Why are these people working for Amazon if it's so bad and what would they be doing if it were not for Amazon? It's not like they're conscripting workers in the dead of the night and shackling them to the warehouse. I'm not saying there shouldn't be labor rules, work week hours, etc, but if they're not breaking any laws what's the big deal? Every few months we see articles about programmers working at $SILICON_VALLEY_BIG_CORP that lives in a van outside the office or sleeps under his desk at night. The worker is usually a combination of frugal and nutty. What's the difference between that and this?
- SolaceQuantum 10y ago
  Just because they may have nothing else doesn't mean it's not deplorable.
- throwaway729 10y ago
  From the article: > He added that he had opted to stay in a tent as it was easier and cheaper than commuting from his home in Perth, although his camping equipment had disappeared by Friday afternoon.
  - tedunangst 10y ago
    See? Problem solved. Now he gets to go home and everything is better.
  - gsnedders 10y ago
    For those with no idea about the geography of this part of the world: it's about a 30 minute drive down the motorway, and from memory congestion only gets particularly bad further south on it at rush hour, so even at rush hour it won't be that much longer. Of course, the big difference with the programmer under the desk is the programmer is unlikely to be earning minimum wage. Anyone 25 and over, working 60 hours a week at minimum wage, is earning £432/week. If we assume they're working those hours or on vacation all year, their take home pay is £355/week. If we assume fuel costs of ~£4.50 each way, then if they're working five days a week that's ~13% of their income, or if six days ~15%.
- adevine 10y ago
  Yeah, why don't they just get a job paying twice as much where they don't have to sleep in a tent? Silly peasants. And how is a Google software engineering making six figures, sleeping in a van in 68 degree California, any different from a minimum wage worker sleeping in a tent in a field in the middle-of-winter Scotland?
  - koolba 10y ago
    > Yeah, why don't they just get a job paying twice as much where they don't have to sleep in a tent? Silly peasants. And how is a Google software engineering making six figures, sleeping in a van in 68 degree California, any different from a minimum wage worker sleeping in a tent in a field in the middle-of-winter Scotland? If the circumstances are so dire that the worker has no other choices for employment, the alternative is no employment at all. That's the baseline comparison point for whatever job Amazon is providing and the worker always has that option as well. Amazon is not a charity, it's a for-profit company, and arguably by building the warehouse and providing jobs it's doing more long term good than a charity would by handing out sandwiches. Comments like yours bring to mind the phrase "No good deed goes unpunished". Would they be better off with no jobs at all?
    - adevine 10y ago
      I'm kind of amazed by the basest level of empathy that seems to be missing among many in our industry. I'm not even arguing what the right solution is - that is certainly debatable. But given how good we have it as software engineers, when someone's best option is to sleep in a tent for their work, and we comment "how is that any different from someone making twenty times as much voluntarily choosing to live in a van?", it sounds awful close to "Let them eat cake."
      - berntb 10y ago
        I am not an economist but Krugman is, a left leaning one at that which spent a large time arguing against Bush/Trump. And he is arguing a similar position: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/1997/03/in_praise_of_cheap_labor.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/19... (This is getting close to politics, a really tiresome subject which happily is banned right now on HN.)
- paulddraper 10y ago
  I appreciated the suggestion given elsewhere for the title "Amazon gives jobs to local homeless population"
olalonde 10y ago
Alternative title: "Amazon gives jobs to local homeless population". But seriously, I fail to see how this is on-topic on HN other than Amazon being a tech company.
- theptip 10y ago
  Haha, was just about to post this. From what I hear, it's very hard to get a job if you're homeless, so this is a good thing. Imagine the outrage if the opposite narrative were being reported; "Amazon refuses to employ homeless people". There's no suggestion that they are paying below the minimum wage, so I think singling out Amazon is quite disingenuous, regardless of how in vogue it is to bash the quality of their work environment. If there is a story here, it is that there aren't enough homeless shelters in Fife right now, or that the minimum wage is too low; this has nothing to do with Amazon.
jdiez17 10y ago
It's hard to take this article seriously when all the evidence they have is a 30 second video with a dramatic shot of two tents.
- blablabla123 10y ago
  It's hard to take Amazon seriously given this series of revelations. Probably not everything is true but we all know they have low ethical standards...
  - agf 10y ago
    I agree with what you're saying about "low ethical standards" -- many large companies fall into that bucket -- but you responded to a comment asking for more evidence with a reference to a "series of revelations" but no link, or even specific mention of you're talking about. "We all know" is also not the greatest argument; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
    - blablabla123 10y ago
      The commentor didn't ask for more evidence but just stated he believe there's not enough without stating why. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance Is the Amazon PR unit active here? ;)
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    What I know of Amazon, and why I no longer shop there. 1. They treat their engineers terribly. 2. They treat their fulfillment center employees terribly. Either Bezos is tone deaf, or just doesn't care. Either way, voting with my wallet.
    - Falling3 10y ago
      I've had it in the back of my mind for months that I need to get away from Amazon for the reasons you've listed. How have your shopping habits changed since ditching Amazon? Did you go back to more conventional stores or are there any online marketplaces that you've found to fill some (obviously nowhere near all) of the Amazon-sized hole?
blablabla123 10y ago
WTF...
nathantotten 10y ago
Say what you will about the conditions at places like Foxconn in China, but at least they provide food and shelter. I wonder if there is an opportunity for western companies to build factories on a smaller scale to Foxconn where employees live on campus. Wages could be low, but with basic services provided it could be a chance for low wage earners to save up some money. The costs might be too high for it to work on that scale though.
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  A few years ago my wife was working for an airline in the Middle East, and they provided accommodation for all crew. They had a few buildings in various places around the city (some right in the city centre, some further out), and provided regular buses between the buildings, HQ and the city centre (for buildings outside). Inside the buildings were apartments that housed up to three people, everyone had their own private bedroom and bathroom. The quality of the buildings was fairly good, not luxury but not cheap. You could also opt to receive a stipend if you wanted to find your own accommodation, but it was a bit low to get something of the same quality.
- kogepathic 10y ago
  > to build factories on a smaller scale to Foxconn where employees live on campus I was recently in South Korea and was surprised to see that there were a lot of large apartment buildings around Seoul which appeared to be employee dormitories from previous decades (1980s I believe). Some even still said Samsung and LG on the side. However, I don't think this concept would work in Western society. The cultures between Asia and the West are very different. It's common for several generations to live in the same house in China/Japan/Korea, but this isn't the case in the West. I agree it would make sense to build dormitories, from a transportation and economic perspective it makes perfect sense. Economies of scale. But people in the West don't want to move to live near the factory/warehouse. They want to have a social life, and dorm life really doesn't facilitate having a social life.
  - amonette 10y ago
    Many Samsung buildings in Seoul are simply regular apartments - Samsung and other chaebols (family-controlled megaconglomerates) have divisions in many more sectors of the domestic economy than one sees in the rest of the world. In particular, in South Korea Samsung manufactures a large portion of the country's automobiles, and developed and owns much of the residential real estate.
dvdcxn 10y ago
I worked for an Amazon fulfilment centre in Scotland, I don't want to say too much on the matter, as it'd be quite negative. It's suffice to say, this does not surprise me in the slightest.
- threatofrain 10y ago
  Doesn't that imply that Scotland's inadequate legal and social structures leave them to <hope> that Amazon behaves in a morally generous way? Let's say that Amazon starts paying their workers more. Should the workers of Scotland then go to sleep, comfortable underneath the blanket of Amazon's incidental moral generosity? Shouldn't the workers of Scotland, if they have the ear of their fellow countrymen, move to change the legal and social structure in which Amazon is only one of many members? What about the company that behaves cruely but isn't big enough to reach the news like Amazon does? This is why I don't have faith in moral narratives.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    I think you intended this comment as snark, but the irony of it is that Scotland is today part of the UK, but was almost --- and will likely be within the next few years, as a result of Brexit --- an independent country precisely because its citizens don't agree with the policies set in England on its behalf. Scotland is quite a bit more liberal than the rest of the UK; it does indeed see more of its future in the social democracies of northern Europe.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - laingc 10y ago
      I don't think it's unnecessarily pedantic to ask people to refrain from using the word "liberal" in the American sense when referring to countries in which the original sense of the word is retained. When it comes to regulation of the labour market, Scotland is decidedly less liberal than England.
ukoki 10y ago
This is hardly Amazon's problem: If the minimum wage is not liveable, MSPs such as the one criticising Amazon in the article should work to increase it.
- stefantalpalaru 10y ago
  Amazon is getting tax cuts because it's creating a few jobs. Maybe it's time we realize that people don't need these terrible jobs in order to survive. They need water, food and shelter - all of which there's an overabundance of, in developed countries. An unconditional basic income would put a swift end to these abuses.
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  It's absolutely partly Amazon's problem. They're highly profitable, and they could choose to pay a living wage (other companies do), but they do not. I don't understand this impulse to absolve companies of all responsibility save from things they are legally mandated to do.
  - a3n 10y ago
    The only reason most companies pay a living wage is because they have to, to attract enough employees. Amazon pays as little as it does because it can. Almost the entire employment age population is qualified to work in a warehouse (I've done it). There is almost no competition for employees at that level, they're everywhere. People who can code and run huge network operations are relatively rare, so they're paid a lot; it's competition for scarce employees. It has nothing to do with responsibility. If Google could pay minimum wage it would. Not defending Amazon, just pointing out that they're paying the least they have to, just like Google is paying the least they have to.
  - cortesoft 10y ago
    So some poor guy who works for a company that doesn't make as much money as amazon doesn't also deserve a living wage? Wages are about supply and demand. There is enough supply of the caliber of workers that amazon needs willing to work at minimum wage to fill their demand for workers. If we think that amazon is making too much profit, and should distribute it more, then we should tax them more; that way, the benefit can spread to more people and not just the lucky ones who happen to work at amazon.
lostlogin 10y ago
>I focus very heavily, especially in peak times, on associate experience. Why do they call their workers that? I also can't imagine how much I'd hate working for minimum wage in a warehouse for an alleged 60 hours a week with a DJ playing. It doesn't sound all that fun.
djsumdog 10y ago
Amazon is the new Wal-Mart. I stopped shopping at Wal-Mart around 2008 I think. I stopped shopping at Amazon after returning to the states. The real price of low prices is too high.
- themckman 10y ago
  Where and how do you shop now?
stefantalpalaru 10y ago
This is politics and therefore verboten! Time for a few more users to be sent to Hades, I say!
zatkin 10y ago
Let me describe my experience with the application process. I did not accept the job. I applied to be an Amazon Fulfillment Specialist (or whatever they're called) back when I was without a job in Silicon Valley a few months ago. I applied online and got the job offer without any interview at all whatsoever. They asked me to attend a 'training session' in a conference room at a nearby hotel. When the doors opened, there were tables lined up on the perimeter of the conference room with a small projector in the middle that illuminated the Amazon logo on the screen. In one corner, people started lining up to get their photo taken and were also given a piece of paper with their name and other information like a candidate number. After you had your photo taken, you had to take a seat at one of the tables which had a swab stick for a drug test as well as some other paperwork for the drug test (like a consent form). The presenter was a real prick because when people asked him questions he would be very assertive and act as if people were wasting his time trying to get through the slideshow, which described their work ethics and talked more about the job. At some point we got to the drug test part which involved the presenter slowly going step by step through the process and checking to make sure we were all in sync. Once we were done, we put the drug test into some kind of bag and were free to go. Overall, the process was horrendous and really showed that Amazon just wants anyone and everyone to become part of their fulfillment center. It doesn't surprise me that people would sleep outside of the fulfillment center given how smooth sailing the hiring process is, if it's anything like what I went through. It's meant to be open and 'friendly' to anyone without any recent drug usage.
- JakeTheAndroid 10y ago
  Is this a direct position with Amazon? I did contracting for Apple (working at their facilities with direct Apple employees) and this sounds like the experience I had there. No interview, low wages, strict work environment, and everyone made me feel like I was wasting their time, even when I had a relevant question to my job. We had "required" overtime a couple times a month, meaning I had to be at the facility by 5 am on a Saturday. it was miserable, and the pay was crap. I took it because I was in between jobs, and it would at least keep a tech company on my resume.
- BurningFrog 10y ago
  I'm not sure I understand the complaint here. Is it really that this job is too easy to get?
Tempest1981 10y ago
How is this different than Brandon living out of a truck in a Google parking lot? (Ignoring the separate issue of whether Amazon is a good/bad place to work.) http://www.geekwire.com/2015/this-google-employee-lives-in-a-truck-in-the-companys-parking-lot-to-save-money-on-rent/ http://www.geekwire.com/2015/this-google-employee-lives-in-a...
- ronocod 10y ago
  I would imagine a software engineer at Google is earning a lot more than £7.35 an hour, and could easily move into a better place to live if they wanted to.
  - lucaspiller 10y ago
    If you are earning £7.35 an hour, assuming 37.5 hours a week, that is £1,076.11 per month after taxes. Zoopla has quite a few properties to rent in Dumfirmline for under £500 per month [0] - it isn't SF prices. I'd take a guess and say that the people doing this are seasonal workers who live further away. It's not worth relocating for a few months, and commuting for 2 hours per day isn't nice (from Edinburgh during rush hour it could easily take over an hour to get to Amazon's warehouse), so this is their choice. [0] http://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/property/dunfermline/?price_frequency=per_month&price_max=500&q=Dunfermline%2C%20Fife&results_sort=newest_listings&search_source=home http://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/property/dunfermline/?price_...
  - UK-AL 10y ago
    You can easily get a apartment share for minimum wage in that part of the country.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    > I would imagine a software engineer at [popular internet company] is earning a lot more than £7.35 an hour Not necessarily. Depends on the location and the experience. There are places where the pay would be in this range and the rent would be half of that. 1/10th costs of living of the valley is nothing extraordinary.
- 10y ago
matz1 10y ago
Government failure to provide cheap housing ?
- MichaelApproved 10y ago
  It's not the governments job to provide welfare to companies by subsidizing the labor force. Government should provide infrastructure and safety nets. The employer should provide sufficient payment for the employee to use the resources without needing special government subsidies. If a full-time employee needs government subsidies then the company is not paying enough.
  - matz1 10y ago
    To me, Its the goverment job to provide welfare to its citizen, this include cheap or free housing, regardless what the job situation is.
iopuy 10y ago
Someone very close to me works at a newly constructed Amazon fulfilment center. She was told she would be a "sortation expert" and when she arrived was told her job had changed and she would now be the person loading trucks with packages that weigh up to 49 pounds... Not ideal considering she weighs 110 pounds bit whatever, she has agreed to the job. The shady stuff is how they schedule workers. Only 4 hours a day "so your muscles are fresh" according to a supervisor. They also mysteriously had no work to do on Thanksgiving so everyone was sent home (so they didn't have to pay time and a half we later learned). But the next couple days after they we absolutely slammed. Also they reward employees that are forced to stay late with $5 swag gift cards for the Amazon store, not Amazon. It's seasonal and temporary so it's not a huge deal but I couldn't imaginr working for a company like that permanently.
- n0b0dythere 10y ago
  I know it's a "bonus" but that swag Amazon store card strikes me as being quite familiar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip
- naner 10y ago
  The 4 hour days for truck loading may not be unusual. I worked for ups loading trucks many years ago after high school. Aside from a 15 minute break, we were lifting boxes non stop and it was very fast paced an grueling. They paid a lot more per hour than other jobs (you were only working 20 hrs a week) and after a few months I was in the best shape of my life. It was a pretty good job for a high school kid at the time. The other stuff still sounds shady though, when I got the ups job I knew what I was getting into.
- userbinator 10y ago
  I suspect the "up to 49 pounds" is some sort of legal limit on the amount of weight a healthy adult is expected to be able to carry.
  - cperciva 10y ago
    It is. (Or rather, 50 lbs is; I'm guessing someone rounded down here.) You probably see this most often when traveling: Normal checked suitcases must be at most 50lbs. (Typically up to 70lbs is allowed if you pay an extra fee, but the bag then needs a "HEAVY" sticker, which alerts ground crew to handle it carefully to avoid injuries.)
throwaway420 10y ago
I don't like this article because it seems like a purely emotional appeal. To be sure, there's a lot of people who have said that Amazon is a shitty place to work: not just in entry level jobs, but even as a well-educated 6 figure software engineer. I would not choose to work for Amazon unless I was desperate, period. It seems too corporate and too micromanaged a place to work and the few good things about working there that I've heard like small teams don't outweigh all of the negatives. That being said, Amazon isn't a government entity that is responsible for your housing and they have no right to tell you where to sleep at night. Look at this section of the article in particular. > One worker, who did not wish to be named, was reluctant to speak to The Courier but did describe the firm as a “poor employer” and criticised working practices at the Fife site. He added that he had opted to stay in a tent as it was easier and cheaper than commuting from his home in Perth, although his camping equipment had disappeared by Friday afternoon. This is a guy took the best job that was available to him (even though it's far away from his house) who is doing this by choice for a period of time as he believes that this decision benefits him the most. I don't see anything wrong with this. I feel bad for him if his stuff got stolen because of the extra media attention there: the reporter was probably intending to do something nice for them and it might end up backfiring. But really, what can Amazon do about this? For that one example, that's a guy that already has a home but chooses not use it out of convenience. If they offered seasonal workers some extra resources and facilities (say use of the parking lot to sleep in safer at night) to make their lives easier, they'd instantly be accused of exploiting workers and there would be images of tent cities on the news every night trying to make them look bad.
- s_kilk 10y ago
  > But really, what can Amazon do about this? They could pay their workers a living wage and not treat them like dogs.
  - briandear 10y ago
    Supply and demand.
    - 10y ago
skookum 10y ago
Given all the handwringing on HN in the last month about fake/biased news, it's ironic to see so many comments latching onto this story with "well duh, we always knew Amazon was a terrible employer, and here's more proof!" I'm not going to try to defend Amazon - it certainly has many employment issues both in the FCs and at HQ. But this story specifically is virtually content-free. Most of it's content is to be found in the first sentence: "At least three tents have been spotted in woodland beside the online retail giant’s base just off the M90 in Dunfermline in recent days" and then later it emerges that they managed to find one occupied tent whose occupant was using the tent to avoid commuting from his home. The rest of the article strings together innuendo and rehashes talking points to try to build the desired narrative and mental picture of a tent city full of freezing, starving Amazon FC workers. A truthful headline would have been "An Amazon worker sleeps in a tent near Dunfermline site to avoid long commute", but then that would neither have sparked the same moral outrage nor garnered the same number of clicks.
- AWildDHHAppears 10y ago
  Dontcha know!? "Fake News" is what the other guys read. For us, it's Social Justice!
- edderly 10y ago
  > He added that he had opted to stay in a tent as it was easier and cheaper than commuting from his home in Perth, although his camping equipment had disappeared by Friday afternoon. Perth and the Dunfermline site are roughly 30 miles apart, on public transport the trip would take roughly 2 hours. Sounds like a great idea castigate an employer in a semi-rural area with piss poor public transportation.
  - CydeWeys 10y ago
    Honestly, you're never going to have good public transportation in rural areas. There simply isn't the density to support it. It's a given that efficient transportation in such areas happens via car, which is a huge problem if you're working a job at a place like an Amazon warehouse that doesn't pay enough money to be able to easily afford a car. Some potential future network of public transportation provided via self-driving cars excepted.
adolph 10y ago
One tent seen and two others reported. Is this fake news?
UK-AL 10y ago
Minimum wage in that part of the country could easily get an apartment share.
pjc50 10y ago
Now is the winter of our discount tents. (sorry)
pascalxus 10y ago
We need to do more to make low cost housing legal. By allowing more low cost alternatives, builders could create low cost housing or rentable units, so people wouldn't have to camp in tents. This is a problem nationwide, too many regulations are stifling housing innovation.
- ctdonath 10y ago
  Here we have the consequence of trying to solve poverty by making it illegal. Having raised the standard of living so high, on the notion of ending bad conditions by simply prohibiting them, we now have to reverse regulations so people can live as they can at their level.
  - pascalxus 10y ago
    Regulating away "bad conditions" doesn't get rid of the cost for it. It merely eliminates your choice in the matter, forcing everyone to upgrade. It's like, if you outlaw all car designs that don't have leather seats - all the sudden, everyone gets leather seats in their car, but they're still paying extra for it, whether they like or not. that's what regulation does in the housing markets, but much more extreme.
kome 10y ago
I have a friend that works at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Tracy, California: she works 60h a week. Amazon should be made accountable.
20years 10y ago
This is not Amazon's fault. This instead is the choice of the worker. He is choosing to work for Amazon and is choosing to sleep in a tent because he does not want to make the long commute back to his house. All his choices, not Amazon's. Edit: to clarify, I am not advocating that Amazon is a stellar employer. My opinion of how they treat their workers and handle the interviewing process is actually very poor. I however do not see the decisions this particular worker is making is Amazon's fault.
zackmorris 10y ago
I just bought $250 worth of about a dozen Christmas presents from Amazon. Assuming $20 per item, I'd like to know how much goes to wages (I'm guessing less than $1). If it may not significantly raise prices to double wages, I'd like to know why companies are so reluctant to do so. It seems illogical when customers would generally pay more to know they aren't ripping someone off. Short of that, I recommend that we stop pointing the finger at these large multinational corporations. They are incentivized at every level to skirt the law as close as possible to maximize profits. Historically the only thing that ever changed that was pressure from the demand side (unions, consumer protection programs, lawsuits, legislation, etc etc). Off the top of my head, a fairly straightforward way to effect change might be to get every worker signed up in a time-wage union. Pick a target wage for every employee and have them go home at the end of the day a few hours early by however much their wage is short. Women earning 75% of men would leave at 3:00 instead of 5:00. For every firing, send one or more employees who have a lot of savings or are thinking of changing jobs home with them as leverage. The core of the issue is that currently labor is undervalued against capital which is self-evidently incorrect since time is priceless but we can always print more money. I would even argue that as we approach full automation, labor has been devalued to such a degree that it no longer makes sense to measure it against the inherent worth of a person's life. The inevitable conclusion is that at some point labor will not have enough value to support a minimum quality of life and we’ll move to a non-labor form of compensation. We already do it in various forms for the bottom half of earners and it’s only a matter of time before that fraction becomes the majority.
- prostoalex 10y ago
  > I'd like to know how much goes to wage Amazon annual revenue: $107 bil R&D annual expense (where engineering compensation is typically stuffed): $12.5 bil General expense (everybody else's compensation): $20 bil
Buge 10y ago
Why is it bad that they're sleeping in tents? I've heard homeless people say that it's extremely hard to find a job while homeless. If Amazon is willing to give homeless people a chance at a job, that's a good thing. There are people working for Google living in their cars/campers/motorhomes. There are posts about how people intentionally choose to live in tents and enjoy it. http://mashable.com/2013/06/11/homeless-entrepreneur-thomas-backlund http://mashable.com/2013/06/11/homeless-entrepreneur-thomas-... https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1a8sjz/hi_i_am_a_guy_who_lived_in_a_tree_on_public_land/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1a8sjz/hi_i_am_a_guy_...
n0b0dythere 10y ago
This post it only 2 hours old, more comments than anything else already by far, why has this suddenly dropped (hidden) to the 2nd page?
throwaway420 10y ago
Is it just me, or has this post dropped from the front page suspiciously quickly? In just 2 hours it went from #1 to the second page I think. I'm trying to notice these things more and more because we're seeing this "fake news" meme being pushed a lot recently and there have been accusations of bias on HN by the admins before. Supposedly, as part of the ranking algorithm at HN, there's a "flame war" detection feature that drops controversial items off of the front page quickly unless they're explicitly allowed to exist there. Having this feature in place is great for the admins as it gives them plausible deniability in terms of bias when items get ranked lower quickly, but not so good for users if it's inconsistently applied and the topics they see are for all intents and purposes controlled and guided towards certain viewpoints. You can see my previous post in this thread: I'm not even a fan of this article! I'm even saying this as somebody who (I think fairly reasonably) defended and criticized Amazon in my response. I don't fear anything from this article however and things can be gained by talking about this issue.
- sctb 10y ago
  This post got a lot of user flags (it currently appears as [flagged]) and was also penalized by the software flamewar detector. It wasn't touched by moderators.
  - throwaway420 10y ago
    That it wasn't touched by mods was exactly my point. This feature that's ostensibly a "flame war detector" is effectively admins exercising editorial control over content if overriding it is inconsistently applied.
    - sctb 10y ago
      I'm not sure I see this as distinct from the standard moderation penalties that we do actively apply regularly. And when users ask in those cases we say we've done so (https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dang%20penalty&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dang%20penalty&sort=byPopulari...). Another way of putting this is that plausible deniability isn't valuable to us. We're clear on what this site is for, and we're open about how moderation practices are intended to support that. Though we can't be perfect, we do actively strive to avoid bias that would take us away from the goals of the site and of the community.

128 points by mbgaxyz 10y ago

Why are these people working for Amazon if it's so bad and what would they be doing if it were not for Amazon? It's not like they're conscripting workers in the dead of the night and shackling them to the warehouse. I'm not saying there shouldn't be labor rules, work week hours, etc, but if they're not breaking any laws what's the big deal? Every few months we see articles about programmers working at $SILICON_VALLEY_BIG_CORP that lives in a van outside the office or sleeps under his desk at night. The worker is usually a combination of frugal and nutty. What's the difference between that and this?

SolaceQuantum 10y ago
Just because they may have nothing else doesn't mean it's not deplorable.
throwaway729 10y ago
From the article: > He added that he had opted to stay in a tent as it was easier and cheaper than commuting from his home in Perth, although his camping equipment had disappeared by Friday afternoon.
- tedunangst 10y ago
  See? Problem solved. Now he gets to go home and everything is better.
- gsnedders 10y ago
  For those with no idea about the geography of this part of the world: it's about a 30 minute drive down the motorway, and from memory congestion only gets particularly bad further south on it at rush hour, so even at rush hour it won't be that much longer. Of course, the big difference with the programmer under the desk is the programmer is unlikely to be earning minimum wage. Anyone 25 and over, working 60 hours a week at minimum wage, is earning £432/week. If we assume they're working those hours or on vacation all year, their take home pay is £355/week. If we assume fuel costs of ~£4.50 each way, then if they're working five days a week that's ~13% of their income, or if six days ~15%.
adevine 10y ago
Yeah, why don't they just get a job paying twice as much where they don't have to sleep in a tent? Silly peasants. And how is a Google software engineering making six figures, sleeping in a van in 68 degree California, any different from a minimum wage worker sleeping in a tent in a field in the middle-of-winter Scotland?
- koolba 10y ago
  > Yeah, why don't they just get a job paying twice as much where they don't have to sleep in a tent? Silly peasants. And how is a Google software engineering making six figures, sleeping in a van in 68 degree California, any different from a minimum wage worker sleeping in a tent in a field in the middle-of-winter Scotland? If the circumstances are so dire that the worker has no other choices for employment, the alternative is no employment at all. That's the baseline comparison point for whatever job Amazon is providing and the worker always has that option as well. Amazon is not a charity, it's a for-profit company, and arguably by building the warehouse and providing jobs it's doing more long term good than a charity would by handing out sandwiches. Comments like yours bring to mind the phrase "No good deed goes unpunished". Would they be better off with no jobs at all?
  - adevine 10y ago
    I'm kind of amazed by the basest level of empathy that seems to be missing among many in our industry. I'm not even arguing what the right solution is - that is certainly debatable. But given how good we have it as software engineers, when someone's best option is to sleep in a tent for their work, and we comment "how is that any different from someone making twenty times as much voluntarily choosing to live in a van?", it sounds awful close to "Let them eat cake."
    - berntb 10y ago
      I am not an economist but Krugman is, a left leaning one at that which spent a large time arguing against Bush/Trump. And he is arguing a similar position: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/1997/03/in_praise_of_cheap_labor.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/19... (This is getting close to politics, a really tiresome subject which happily is banned right now on HN.)
paulddraper 10y ago
I appreciated the suggestion given elsewhere for the title "Amazon gives jobs to local homeless population"

olalonde 10y ago

Alternative title: "Amazon gives jobs to local homeless population". But seriously, I fail to see how this is on-topic on HN other than Amazon being a tech company.

theptip 10y ago
Haha, was just about to post this. From what I hear, it's very hard to get a job if you're homeless, so this is a good thing. Imagine the outrage if the opposite narrative were being reported; "Amazon refuses to employ homeless people". There's no suggestion that they are paying below the minimum wage, so I think singling out Amazon is quite disingenuous, regardless of how in vogue it is to bash the quality of their work environment. If there is a story here, it is that there aren't enough homeless shelters in Fife right now, or that the minimum wage is too low; this has nothing to do with Amazon.

jdiez17 10y ago

It's hard to take this article seriously when all the evidence they have is a 30 second video with a dramatic shot of two tents.

blablabla123 10y ago
It's hard to take Amazon seriously given this series of revelations. Probably not everything is true but we all know they have low ethical standards...
- agf 10y ago
  I agree with what you're saying about "low ethical standards" -- many large companies fall into that bucket -- but you responded to a comment asking for more evidence with a reference to a "series of revelations" but no link, or even specific mention of you're talking about. "We all know" is also not the greatest argument; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
  - blablabla123 10y ago
    The commentor didn't ask for more evidence but just stated he believe there's not enough without stating why. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance Is the Amazon PR unit active here? ;)
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  What I know of Amazon, and why I no longer shop there. 1. They treat their engineers terribly. 2. They treat their fulfillment center employees terribly. Either Bezos is tone deaf, or just doesn't care. Either way, voting with my wallet.
  - Falling3 10y ago
    I've had it in the back of my mind for months that I need to get away from Amazon for the reasons you've listed. How have your shopping habits changed since ditching Amazon? Did you go back to more conventional stores or are there any online marketplaces that you've found to fill some (obviously nowhere near all) of the Amazon-sized hole?

blablabla123 10y ago

WTF...

nathantotten 10y ago

Say what you will about the conditions at places like Foxconn in China, but at least they provide food and shelter. I wonder if there is an opportunity for western companies to build factories on a smaller scale to Foxconn where employees live on campus. Wages could be low, but with basic services provided it could be a chance for low wage earners to save up some money. The costs might be too high for it to work on that scale though.

lucaspiller 10y ago
A few years ago my wife was working for an airline in the Middle East, and they provided accommodation for all crew. They had a few buildings in various places around the city (some right in the city centre, some further out), and provided regular buses between the buildings, HQ and the city centre (for buildings outside). Inside the buildings were apartments that housed up to three people, everyone had their own private bedroom and bathroom. The quality of the buildings was fairly good, not luxury but not cheap. You could also opt to receive a stipend if you wanted to find your own accommodation, but it was a bit low to get something of the same quality.
kogepathic 10y ago
> to build factories on a smaller scale to Foxconn where employees live on campus I was recently in South Korea and was surprised to see that there were a lot of large apartment buildings around Seoul which appeared to be employee dormitories from previous decades (1980s I believe). Some even still said Samsung and LG on the side. However, I don't think this concept would work in Western society. The cultures between Asia and the West are very different. It's common for several generations to live in the same house in China/Japan/Korea, but this isn't the case in the West. I agree it would make sense to build dormitories, from a transportation and economic perspective it makes perfect sense. Economies of scale. But people in the West don't want to move to live near the factory/warehouse. They want to have a social life, and dorm life really doesn't facilitate having a social life.
- amonette 10y ago
  Many Samsung buildings in Seoul are simply regular apartments - Samsung and other chaebols (family-controlled megaconglomerates) have divisions in many more sectors of the domestic economy than one sees in the rest of the world. In particular, in South Korea Samsung manufactures a large portion of the country's automobiles, and developed and owns much of the residential real estate.

dvdcxn 10y ago

I worked for an Amazon fulfilment centre in Scotland, I don't want to say too much on the matter, as it'd be quite negative. It's suffice to say, this does not surprise me in the slightest.

threatofrain 10y ago
Doesn't that imply that Scotland's inadequate legal and social structures leave them to <hope> that Amazon behaves in a morally generous way? Let's say that Amazon starts paying their workers more. Should the workers of Scotland then go to sleep, comfortable underneath the blanket of Amazon's incidental moral generosity? Shouldn't the workers of Scotland, if they have the ear of their fellow countrymen, move to change the legal and social structure in which Amazon is only one of many members? What about the company that behaves cruely but isn't big enough to reach the news like Amazon does? This is why I don't have faith in moral narratives.
- tptacek 10y ago
  I think you intended this comment as snark, but the irony of it is that Scotland is today part of the UK, but was almost --- and will likely be within the next few years, as a result of Brexit --- an independent country precisely because its citizens don't agree with the policies set in England on its behalf. Scotland is quite a bit more liberal than the rest of the UK; it does indeed see more of its future in the social democracies of northern Europe.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - laingc 10y ago
    I don't think it's unnecessarily pedantic to ask people to refrain from using the word "liberal" in the American sense when referring to countries in which the original sense of the word is retained. When it comes to regulation of the labour market, Scotland is decidedly less liberal than England.

ukoki 10y ago

This is hardly Amazon's problem: If the minimum wage is not liveable, MSPs such as the one criticising Amazon in the article should work to increase it.

stefantalpalaru 10y ago
Amazon is getting tax cuts because it's creating a few jobs. Maybe it's time we realize that people don't need these terrible jobs in order to survive. They need water, food and shelter - all of which there's an overabundance of, in developed countries. An unconditional basic income would put a swift end to these abuses.
CydeWeys 10y ago
It's absolutely partly Amazon's problem. They're highly profitable, and they could choose to pay a living wage (other companies do), but they do not. I don't understand this impulse to absolve companies of all responsibility save from things they are legally mandated to do.
- a3n 10y ago
  The only reason most companies pay a living wage is because they have to, to attract enough employees. Amazon pays as little as it does because it can. Almost the entire employment age population is qualified to work in a warehouse (I've done it). There is almost no competition for employees at that level, they're everywhere. People who can code and run huge network operations are relatively rare, so they're paid a lot; it's competition for scarce employees. It has nothing to do with responsibility. If Google could pay minimum wage it would. Not defending Amazon, just pointing out that they're paying the least they have to, just like Google is paying the least they have to.
- cortesoft 10y ago
  So some poor guy who works for a company that doesn't make as much money as amazon doesn't also deserve a living wage? Wages are about supply and demand. There is enough supply of the caliber of workers that amazon needs willing to work at minimum wage to fill their demand for workers. If we think that amazon is making too much profit, and should distribute it more, then we should tax them more; that way, the benefit can spread to more people and not just the lucky ones who happen to work at amazon.

lostlogin 10y ago

>I focus very heavily, especially in peak times, on associate experience. Why do they call their workers that? I also can't imagine how much I'd hate working for minimum wage in a warehouse for an alleged 60 hours a week with a DJ playing. It doesn't sound all that fun.

djsumdog 10y ago

Amazon is the new Wal-Mart. I stopped shopping at Wal-Mart around 2008 I think. I stopped shopping at Amazon after returning to the states. The real price of low prices is too high.

themckman 10y ago
Where and how do you shop now?

stefantalpalaru 10y ago

This is politics and therefore verboten! Time for a few more users to be sent to Hades, I say!

zatkin 10y ago

Let me describe my experience with the application process. I did not accept the job. I applied to be an Amazon Fulfillment Specialist (or whatever they're called) back when I was without a job in Silicon Valley a few months ago. I applied online and got the job offer without any interview at all whatsoever. They asked me to attend a 'training session' in a conference room at a nearby hotel. When the doors opened, there were tables lined up on the perimeter of the conference room with a small projector in the middle that illuminated the Amazon logo on the screen. In one corner, people started lining up to get their photo taken and were also given a piece of paper with their name and other information like a candidate number. After you had your photo taken, you had to take a seat at one of the tables which had a swab stick for a drug test as well as some other paperwork for the drug test (like a consent form). The presenter was a real prick because when people asked him questions he would be very assertive and act as if people were wasting his time trying to get through the slideshow, which described their work ethics and talked more about the job. At some point we got to the drug test part which involved the presenter slowly going step by step through the process and checking to make sure we were all in sync. Once we were done, we put the drug test into some kind of bag and were free to go. Overall, the process was horrendous and really showed that Amazon just wants anyone and everyone to become part of their fulfillment center. It doesn't surprise me that people would sleep outside of the fulfillment center given how smooth sailing the hiring process is, if it's anything like what I went through. It's meant to be open and 'friendly' to anyone without any recent drug usage.

JakeTheAndroid 10y ago
Is this a direct position with Amazon? I did contracting for Apple (working at their facilities with direct Apple employees) and this sounds like the experience I had there. No interview, low wages, strict work environment, and everyone made me feel like I was wasting their time, even when I had a relevant question to my job. We had "required" overtime a couple times a month, meaning I had to be at the facility by 5 am on a Saturday. it was miserable, and the pay was crap. I took it because I was in between jobs, and it would at least keep a tech company on my resume.
BurningFrog 10y ago
I'm not sure I understand the complaint here. Is it really that this job is too easy to get?

Tempest1981 10y ago

How is this different than Brandon living out of a truck in a Google parking lot? (Ignoring the separate issue of whether Amazon is a good/bad place to work.) http://www.geekwire.com/2015/this-google-employee-lives-in-a-truck-in-the-companys-parking-lot-to-save-money-on-rent/ http://www.geekwire.com/2015/this-google-employee-lives-in-a...

ronocod 10y ago
I would imagine a software engineer at Google is earning a lot more than £7.35 an hour, and could easily move into a better place to live if they wanted to.
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  If you are earning £7.35 an hour, assuming 37.5 hours a week, that is £1,076.11 per month after taxes. Zoopla has quite a few properties to rent in Dumfirmline for under £500 per month [0] - it isn't SF prices. I'd take a guess and say that the people doing this are seasonal workers who live further away. It's not worth relocating for a few months, and commuting for 2 hours per day isn't nice (from Edinburgh during rush hour it could easily take over an hour to get to Amazon's warehouse), so this is their choice. [0] http://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/property/dunfermline/?price_frequency=per_month&price_max=500&q=Dunfermline%2C%20Fife&results_sort=newest_listings&search_source=home http://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/property/dunfermline/?price_...
- UK-AL 10y ago
  You can easily get a apartment share for minimum wage in that part of the country.
- user5994461 10y ago
  > I would imagine a software engineer at [popular internet company] is earning a lot more than £7.35 an hour Not necessarily. Depends on the location and the experience. There are places where the pay would be in this range and the rent would be half of that. 1/10th costs of living of the valley is nothing extraordinary.
10y ago

matz1 10y ago

Government failure to provide cheap housing ?

MichaelApproved 10y ago
It's not the governments job to provide welfare to companies by subsidizing the labor force. Government should provide infrastructure and safety nets. The employer should provide sufficient payment for the employee to use the resources without needing special government subsidies. If a full-time employee needs government subsidies then the company is not paying enough.
- matz1 10y ago
  To me, Its the goverment job to provide welfare to its citizen, this include cheap or free housing, regardless what the job situation is.

iopuy 10y ago

Someone very close to me works at a newly constructed Amazon fulfilment center. She was told she would be a "sortation expert" and when she arrived was told her job had changed and she would now be the person loading trucks with packages that weigh up to 49 pounds... Not ideal considering she weighs 110 pounds bit whatever, she has agreed to the job. The shady stuff is how they schedule workers. Only 4 hours a day "so your muscles are fresh" according to a supervisor. They also mysteriously had no work to do on Thanksgiving so everyone was sent home (so they didn't have to pay time and a half we later learned). But the next couple days after they we absolutely slammed. Also they reward employees that are forced to stay late with $5 swag gift cards for the Amazon store, not Amazon. It's seasonal and temporary so it's not a huge deal but I couldn't imaginr working for a company like that permanently.

n0b0dythere 10y ago
I know it's a "bonus" but that swag Amazon store card strikes me as being quite familiar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip
naner 10y ago
The 4 hour days for truck loading may not be unusual. I worked for ups loading trucks many years ago after high school. Aside from a 15 minute break, we were lifting boxes non stop and it was very fast paced an grueling. They paid a lot more per hour than other jobs (you were only working 20 hrs a week) and after a few months I was in the best shape of my life. It was a pretty good job for a high school kid at the time. The other stuff still sounds shady though, when I got the ups job I knew what I was getting into.
userbinator 10y ago
I suspect the "up to 49 pounds" is some sort of legal limit on the amount of weight a healthy adult is expected to be able to carry.
- cperciva 10y ago
  It is. (Or rather, 50 lbs is; I'm guessing someone rounded down here.) You probably see this most often when traveling: Normal checked suitcases must be at most 50lbs. (Typically up to 70lbs is allowed if you pay an extra fee, but the bag then needs a "HEAVY" sticker, which alerts ground crew to handle it carefully to avoid injuries.)

throwaway420 10y ago

I don't like this article because it seems like a purely emotional appeal. To be sure, there's a lot of people who have said that Amazon is a shitty place to work: not just in entry level jobs, but even as a well-educated 6 figure software engineer. I would not choose to work for Amazon unless I was desperate, period. It seems too corporate and too micromanaged a place to work and the few good things about working there that I've heard like small teams don't outweigh all of the negatives. That being said, Amazon isn't a government entity that is responsible for your housing and they have no right to tell you where to sleep at night. Look at this section of the article in particular. > One worker, who did not wish to be named, was reluctant to speak to The Courier but did describe the firm as a “poor employer” and criticised working practices at the Fife site. He added that he had opted to stay in a tent as it was easier and cheaper than commuting from his home in Perth, although his camping equipment had disappeared by Friday afternoon. This is a guy took the best job that was available to him (even though it's far away from his house) who is doing this by choice for a period of time as he believes that this decision benefits him the most. I don't see anything wrong with this. I feel bad for him if his stuff got stolen because of the extra media attention there: the reporter was probably intending to do something nice for them and it might end up backfiring. But really, what can Amazon do about this? For that one example, that's a guy that already has a home but chooses not use it out of convenience. If they offered seasonal workers some extra resources and facilities (say use of the parking lot to sleep in safer at night) to make their lives easier, they'd instantly be accused of exploiting workers and there would be images of tent cities on the news every night trying to make them look bad.

s_kilk 10y ago
> But really, what can Amazon do about this? They could pay their workers a living wage and not treat them like dogs.
- briandear 10y ago
  Supply and demand.
  - 10y ago

skookum 10y ago

Given all the handwringing on HN in the last month about fake/biased news, it's ironic to see so many comments latching onto this story with "well duh, we always knew Amazon was a terrible employer, and here's more proof!" I'm not going to try to defend Amazon - it certainly has many employment issues both in the FCs and at HQ. But this story specifically is virtually content-free. Most of it's content is to be found in the first sentence: "At least three tents have been spotted in woodland beside the online retail giant’s base just off the M90 in Dunfermline in recent days" and then later it emerges that they managed to find one occupied tent whose occupant was using the tent to avoid commuting from his home. The rest of the article strings together innuendo and rehashes talking points to try to build the desired narrative and mental picture of a tent city full of freezing, starving Amazon FC workers. A truthful headline would have been "An Amazon worker sleeps in a tent near Dunfermline site to avoid long commute", but then that would neither have sparked the same moral outrage nor garnered the same number of clicks.

AWildDHHAppears 10y ago
Dontcha know!? "Fake News" is what the other guys read. For us, it's Social Justice!
edderly 10y ago
> He added that he had opted to stay in a tent as it was easier and cheaper than commuting from his home in Perth, although his camping equipment had disappeared by Friday afternoon. Perth and the Dunfermline site are roughly 30 miles apart, on public transport the trip would take roughly 2 hours. Sounds like a great idea castigate an employer in a semi-rural area with piss poor public transportation.
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  Honestly, you're never going to have good public transportation in rural areas. There simply isn't the density to support it. It's a given that efficient transportation in such areas happens via car, which is a huge problem if you're working a job at a place like an Amazon warehouse that doesn't pay enough money to be able to easily afford a car. Some potential future network of public transportation provided via self-driving cars excepted.

adolph 10y ago

One tent seen and two others reported. Is this fake news?

UK-AL 10y ago

Minimum wage in that part of the country could easily get an apartment share.

pjc50 10y ago

Now is the winter of our discount tents. (sorry)

pascalxus 10y ago

We need to do more to make low cost housing legal. By allowing more low cost alternatives, builders could create low cost housing or rentable units, so people wouldn't have to camp in tents. This is a problem nationwide, too many regulations are stifling housing innovation.

ctdonath 10y ago
Here we have the consequence of trying to solve poverty by making it illegal. Having raised the standard of living so high, on the notion of ending bad conditions by simply prohibiting them, we now have to reverse regulations so people can live as they can at their level.
- pascalxus 10y ago
  Regulating away "bad conditions" doesn't get rid of the cost for it. It merely eliminates your choice in the matter, forcing everyone to upgrade. It's like, if you outlaw all car designs that don't have leather seats - all the sudden, everyone gets leather seats in their car, but they're still paying extra for it, whether they like or not. that's what regulation does in the housing markets, but much more extreme.

kome 10y ago

I have a friend that works at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Tracy, California: she works 60h a week. Amazon should be made accountable.

20years 10y ago

This is not Amazon's fault. This instead is the choice of the worker. He is choosing to work for Amazon and is choosing to sleep in a tent because he does not want to make the long commute back to his house. All his choices, not Amazon's. Edit: to clarify, I am not advocating that Amazon is a stellar employer. My opinion of how they treat their workers and handle the interviewing process is actually very poor. I however do not see the decisions this particular worker is making is Amazon's fault.

zackmorris 10y ago

I just bought $250 worth of about a dozen Christmas presents from Amazon. Assuming $20 per item, I'd like to know how much goes to wages (I'm guessing less than $1). If it may not significantly raise prices to double wages, I'd like to know why companies are so reluctant to do so. It seems illogical when customers would generally pay more to know they aren't ripping someone off. Short of that, I recommend that we stop pointing the finger at these large multinational corporations. They are incentivized at every level to skirt the law as close as possible to maximize profits. Historically the only thing that ever changed that was pressure from the demand side (unions, consumer protection programs, lawsuits, legislation, etc etc). Off the top of my head, a fairly straightforward way to effect change might be to get every worker signed up in a time-wage union. Pick a target wage for every employee and have them go home at the end of the day a few hours early by however much their wage is short. Women earning 75% of men would leave at 3:00 instead of 5:00. For every firing, send one or more employees who have a lot of savings or are thinking of changing jobs home with them as leverage. The core of the issue is that currently labor is undervalued against capital which is self-evidently incorrect since time is priceless but we can always print more money. I would even argue that as we approach full automation, labor has been devalued to such a degree that it no longer makes sense to measure it against the inherent worth of a person's life. The inevitable conclusion is that at some point labor will not have enough value to support a minimum quality of life and we’ll move to a non-labor form of compensation. We already do it in various forms for the bottom half of earners and it’s only a matter of time before that fraction becomes the majority.

prostoalex 10y ago
> I'd like to know how much goes to wage Amazon annual revenue: $107 bil R&D annual expense (where engineering compensation is typically stuffed): $12.5 bil General expense (everybody else's compensation): $20 bil

Buge 10y ago

Why is it bad that they're sleeping in tents? I've heard homeless people say that it's extremely hard to find a job while homeless. If Amazon is willing to give homeless people a chance at a job, that's a good thing. There are people working for Google living in their cars/campers/motorhomes. There are posts about how people intentionally choose to live in tents and enjoy it. http://mashable.com/2013/06/11/homeless-entrepreneur-thomas-backlund http://mashable.com/2013/06/11/homeless-entrepreneur-thomas-... https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1a8sjz/hi_i_am_a_guy_who_lived_in_a_tree_on_public_land/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1a8sjz/hi_i_am_a_guy_...

n0b0dythere 10y ago

This post it only 2 hours old, more comments than anything else already by far, why has this suddenly dropped (hidden) to the 2nd page?

throwaway420 10y ago

Is it just me, or has this post dropped from the front page suspiciously quickly? In just 2 hours it went from #1 to the second page I think. I'm trying to notice these things more and more because we're seeing this "fake news" meme being pushed a lot recently and there have been accusations of bias on HN by the admins before. Supposedly, as part of the ranking algorithm at HN, there's a "flame war" detection feature that drops controversial items off of the front page quickly unless they're explicitly allowed to exist there. Having this feature in place is great for the admins as it gives them plausible deniability in terms of bias when items get ranked lower quickly, but not so good for users if it's inconsistently applied and the topics they see are for all intents and purposes controlled and guided towards certain viewpoints. You can see my previous post in this thread: I'm not even a fan of this article! I'm even saying this as somebody who (I think fairly reasonably) defended and criticized Amazon in my response. I don't fear anything from this article however and things can be gained by talking about this issue.

sctb 10y ago
This post got a lot of user flags (it currently appears as [flagged]) and was also penalized by the software flamewar detector. It wasn't touched by moderators.
- throwaway420 10y ago
  That it wasn't touched by mods was exactly my point. This feature that's ostensibly a "flame war detector" is effectively admins exercising editorial control over content if overriding it is inconsistently applied.
  - sctb 10y ago
    I'm not sure I see this as distinct from the standard moderation penalties that we do actively apply regularly. And when users ask in those cases we say we've done so (https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dang%20penalty&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dang%20penalty&sort=byPopulari...). Another way of putting this is that plausible deniability isn't valuable to us. We're clear on what this site is for, and we're open about how moderation practices are intended to support that. Though we can't be perfect, we do actively strive to avoid bias that would take us away from the goals of the site and of the community.