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Disclaimer: I work for AWS, but my opinions are my own. I don't think you have much to worry about if you're a WF employee. Amazon actually treats their emplo
by illumin8 9y ago
Disclaimer: I work for AWS, but my opinions are my own.
I don't think you have much to worry about if you're a WF employee. Amazon actually treats their employees very well. In my experience here, I've never seen any of the things the NY times article talked about, either on my team or any other team I've interacted with. People have a healthy work/life balance (40-50 hours a week), get paid very well (definitely above average, and probably in the top 25% of industry), and in general they are concerned with long-term employee sustainability, rather than letting employees burn out and quit.
I know that there are some stories about bad experiences in the fulfillment centers, but keep in mind that those positions are temporary seasonal work by unskilled labor. That's a completely different environment than full time employees work in.
- scotchio 9y agoI mean to be fair, most of the jobs at WF stores ARE unskilled labor though.
- illumin8 9y agoNot true. I know several people that have good careers at WF and would be offended by the fact that you think they are unskilled. Seasonal workers in the FCs literally get only 4 hours of training and are then filling orders. That's the pure definition of unskilled, and a far cry from a pastry chef at WF.
- opportune 9y agoThat's not what unskilled means in this context. It just means that they are easily replaceable and not specialized. You can have respect for people as individuals while recognizing that the job they do could be done by just about anybody (the definition of unskilled)
- illumin8 9y agoA pastry chef is unskilled?
- opportune 9y agoHow many employees at WF are pastry chefs and how many are in stocking, orders, cleaning, and manning the register?
- ethbro 9y agoI feel like at least half of the average grocery store staff I see are skilled: butchers, fishmongers, cheese and wine managers, and pasty or bakers. Proportion varies with class of grocery: BiLo obviously having fewer than WF. There's the checkout counter and stock in the back, but I feel like the employed-during-the-day crew definitely has career opportunities.
- illumin8 9y agoThank you for saying this. WF needs a half dozen unskilled workers to stock shelves, and about 6 dozen skilled laborers in the trades you mentioned. Do you think a 21-day dry-aged steak can be made by someone that just showed up during a high school job fair with zero training? Would you eat it?
- j2bax 9y agoA pastry chef is to WF what an AWS engineer is to Amazon.
- magic_beans 9y agoIt's not that pastry chef's are unskilled, but they are very easily replaceable. It's really difficult for culinary school grads to find work because of the influx.
- illumin8 9y agoNot true. It's very hard for restaurants to find skilled cooks nowadays because the salaries they are willing to pay are not high enough. When an artisanal pastry chef can open their own business, setup a Stripe account, and make six figure income, you know a restaurant only willing to pay $45K for a skilled chef is going to have a problem...
- scotchio 9y agoWhat I mean is you don't necessarily need a college education to work in any of their departments. Not trying to be offensive
- emodendroket 9y agoSo the people stocking the shelves and operating the registers are all highly skilled labor?
- PeterisP 9y agoIIRC the definition of unskilled labor is one requiring less than a year of training.
- pikzen 9y agoOh well, you know a dozen people working at Whole Foods that have good careers, guess the literal thousands of people working in the stores, filling the shelves, being cashiers, etc., usually being the first ones to be thrown away, overworked and overpressured don't exist then. Only white collar jobs matter after all. Enjoying your ivory tower I hope?
- naravara 9y agoOur proclivity to treat all “unskilled labor” as if the people doing them are trained monkeys is one of the reasons customer service in large retail stores is so often horrible. If you treat your people like valuable members of society/your organization they will develop and improve on the actual skills that an unskilled job needs, like anticipating problems, knowing when an how to escalate issues, being warm to customers, being knowledgeable about the business and your products, and hustling when needed. If your treat your people like disposable chattel then they’ll show up to punch a clock, check the boxes, and get out as soon as possible.
- omegaham 9y agoWhen comparing price to customer service, price wins every time. We can say all we please that we want great customer service, but we vote with our wallets, and our wallets say "Save $5 per trip to interact with the trained monkeys." Thus, we have Walmart.
- naravara 9y ago>When comparing price to customer service, price wins every time. This is very much a cultural problem that stems from treating service workers as subhuman and undeserving of a decent wage. And the price difference is hardly as high as $5 per trip. Even places with really high minimum wages don't get that bad. It's more like a few extra cents, barely noticeable. Where the savings on payroll at the bottom are going is usually payroll further up the chain. Some stores have much better customer service than others, like Whole Foods and Costco (just to cover both sides of the pricing models), and they seem to be doing all right.
- emodendroket 9y ago> I know that there are some stories about bad experiences in the fulfillment centers, but keep in mind that those positions are temporary seasonal work by unskilled labor. That's a completely different environment than full time employees work in. But probably more similar to most jobs in a grocery store than a software engineering position.
- kesselvon 9y agoI mean keeping an ambulance outside the doors to a warehouse because its cheaper than cooling it is a tad inhumane.
- ice109 9y agosource?
- Chaebixi 9y agoIt took literally two seconds to find: https://www.google.com/#q=amazon+ambulance+warehouse https://www.google.com/#q=amazon+ambulance+warehouse https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/inside-amazons-very-hot-warehouse/ https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/inside-amazons-ver... > In a lengthy and heavily reported article, The Call said a warehouse employee contacted the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on June 2 to report that the heat index in the warehouse had reached 102 degrees, and that 15 workers had collapsed. The employee also said workers who were sent home because of the heat received disciplinary points. > Eight days later, the paper said, an emergency room doctor at a local hospital saw enough Amazon employees suffering from heat-related injuries to call OSHA and report “an unsafe environment.” > So many ambulances responded to medical assistance calls at the warehouse during a heat wave in May, the paper said, that the retailer paid Cetronia Ambulance Corps to have paramedics and ambulances stationed outside the warehouse during several days of excess heat over the summer. About 15 people were taken to hospitals, while 20 or 30 more were treated right there, the ambulance chief told The Call.
- 9y ago
- opportune 9y agoYes, but fulfillment center employees are likely much more comparable to whole foods employees than software developers, in terms of education, job responsibilities, ease of replacement, etc. So that's probably who we should be looking at anyway
- nissimk 9y agoThere's one key difference that the retail employees are interacting with customers whereas the distribution center employees are hidden away in the factory. Not sure how important this difference will be, but it could definitely influence the company's behavior.
- dx034 9y agoI think working in a grocery store is more similar to working in a distribution centre than at AWS. Highly paid engineers are usually treated well, unskilled/low-skill labour often not (not implying that this is the job OP does, but many in WF will be low-skilled).
- Accacin 9y ago> People have a healthy work/life balance (40-50 hours a week) 40-50 hours of work a week isn't healthy.
- dx034 9y agoWhy not? The important part is commute. 50hr work week in a job you like with a reasonable commute is no problem for your health. 30hr/week in a job you don't like with 2.5hr in traffic each day is much less healthy.
- neon_electro 9y agoSays what research?
- sidlls 9y agoUnless all 50 hours are compensated, 10 of them at 1.5-2x base pay, the person working them is getting ripped off. Every one of my friends in engineering (actual engineering, e.g. civil, aerospace, etc.) positions get at least 1.5x for any hour over 40 they work in a week. In fact "unpaid overtime" is something I hadn't heard of for an engineering position prior to working in software. It's almost like workers in this industry are competing to see how much they can let themselves be exploited.
- eppsilon 9y agoIn the US, software developers are exempted from the law requiring 1.5x pay for overtime. Not sure it matters if they're salaried instead of hourly to begin with though.
- sidlls 9y agoThis is in the US and they're all salaried. Their overtime is computed as a function of the equivalent hourly rate, biweekly pay, etc.
- 9y ago
- cowsandmilk 9y ago> keep in mind that those positions are temporary seasonal work by unskilled labor What do you think most Whole Foods employees are?
- needlessly 9y agookay, so its fine to treat unskilled labor and temp workers poorly? Gotcha.
- nebula 9y agoI know that there are some stories about bad experiences in the fulfillment centers, but keep in mind that those positions are temporary seasonal work by unskilled labor. The tone of your writing suggests that you are OK with treating these people badly. If a company treats some set of its workers badly, what stops them from treating other employees the same way? In this case, they may treat SW engineers well because there is a lot of demand for engineers, and they have to be treated well to retain good folks. That is not comparable to the good culture that OP claims WF has.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- illumin8 9y agoHave you ever worked a minimum wage food service or warehouse job before? I have, and believe me, it's hell. I spent my high school years working as a cook at KFC. Hot summer days spent making $3.35 an hour standing over pressure cookers full of 400 degree hot oil and lifting 50 pound baskets of deep fried chicken out of them. You get a 15 minute paid break every 4 hours, and a mandatory 30 minute unpaid break for lunch. I'm not saying its ok to be inhumane or break laws and treat your workers like cattle. I'm just saying that if you've never worked at a minimum wage unskilled job before, you probably don't realize how much it can be hell, just due to the nature of the work. The same thing can be said for lots of labor like farming, construction work, mining, etc.
- computerex 9y agoWhat the hell is your point? That amazon treats unskilled labor in fulfillment centers less badly than KFC? Amazon has earned itself a reputation for being frugal/fostering a poor work life balance. You countered by saying that those stories only apply to seasonal "unskilled labor" in fulfillment centers. I am of the opinion that amazon should treat all of their employees well. OP is concerned about the impact amazon's culture will have on WF, which is apparently known for treating its employees really well (these employees would fall under the "seasonal unskilled labor" under your definition).
- nilved 9y ago> Disclaimer: I work for AWS, but my opinions are my own. > I don't think you have much to worry about if you're a WF employee. Amazon actually treats their employees very well. Normally when people say Amazon abuses their employees, they aren't talking about AWS.
- FormerAMZN 9y agoI am, and do, talk about AWS. They treat their employees horribly. Disclaimer: Former AWS
- jerrylives 9y ago>I know that there are some stories about bad experiences in the fulfillment centers, but keep in mind that those positions are temporary seasonal work by unskilled labor But keep in mind poor non-tech people are trash and you can treat them like it!
- krapp 9y ago>but keep in mind that those positions are temporary seasonal work by unskilled labor. That's a completely different environment than full time employees work in. Some positions are temporary seasonal labor, but Amazon employs people full time in their fulfillment centers as well, and they work hard trying to convert the former into the latter. Where I am (near Austin, TX), Amazon is running a campaign to recruit UT students with the promise of "tuition assistance." The way they treat their FC employees has nothing at all to do with their relative skill level, educational background or expected tenure. They've also been pushing 60 hour mandatory overtime for over a month for some shifts and they pay well under the cost of living for the area in which they operate, and I expect that represents the general treatment of the majority of Amazon employees, because there are far more of them at the bottom of the pyramid than the top. I don't doubt the engineers are doing well, though. They probably get chairs to sit in and everything.
- j2bax 9y ago> I know that there are some stories about bad experiences in the fulfillment centers, but keep in mind that those positions are temporary seasonal work by unskilled labor. This might be one of the more tone deaf things I've read on HN in recent memory.
- illumin8 9y agoPlease see my other comment. I've worked a $3.35/hr. minimum wage food service job before and it's hell. If you took 1,000 average citizens and threw them into minimum wage food service, factory, or warehouse work, I would completely expect a good percentage of them to burn out and quit within a couple days. Unskilled jobs are just too hard and require too much effort for too little salary to make them acceptable to a lot of people. This doesn't mean they are inhumane; it means we've grown accustomed to easy, white-collar jobs and are fairly divorced from the reality of hard, physical labor these days.
- j2bax 9y agoAny job that would cause a good percentage of people to 'burn out and quit within a couple days', would fall into the category of inhumane for me.
- illumin8 9y agoFair enough, but keep in mind that in the 1800s, parents often made their young children work 16 hour days in the sun farming for them. Child labor, under harsh conditions. We've grown accustomed to a much easier life now, but it was not always like this.
- computerex 9y agoIs there a point you are trying to make that's relevant to this discussion? I have read a few of your comments on this thread and I just can't for the life in me figure out what point you're trying to make.
- uji 9y agoI don't think this is completely true. I was with AWS for 3 years as SW engineer and was working around 12 hours until I decided to switch. AWS has pretty messed up softwar services with lot of technical debt. Rather than fixing these, AWS relies on oncall (pager duty) to mitigate production issues. My team use to get 200 pages a week.
- dpark 9y agoI've heard similar stories from several AWS engineers who were looking to leave or recently left. I can believe that pieces of AWS have good culture, because AWS is a large set of services and it's inevitable that it's not 100% consistent across the entire organization. But I also fully believe that parts of AWS are "duct taped together and on fire" because I've heard it from multiple sources. I've never had anyone in person tell me that Amazon was a good place to work unless they were trying to recruit me.
- FormerAMZN 9y ago100% agree.
- illumin8 9y agoI've worked here for a year and have never seen that. I'm sure there are a few bad managers, as there would be in any company with 350K+ employees, but Amazon really tries to take a data driven approach to employee retention. If you think they don't know this causes burnout and aren't trying to optimize for long-term employee sustainability, you're underestimating their management talent.
- foobarbazetc 9y agoI'm sure this is true but you sound exactly like Uber employees who come on here and say they've never seen any of the issues.
- jorblumesea 9y agoIt's interesting to hear these stories, because when I was looking for a job, naturally I talked to all my friends that had worked at Amazon at one point. Out of maybe 6 people, 4 had some pretty negative things to say. These are all career SDEs/SW/SDETs, but on very different teams and divisions. I once had a coworker that walked into the building, and said that morale was so low people would start crying when they were paged. Gave back his signing bonus and resigned immediately. Completely anecdotal stories obviously. Not saying you're wrong, but you may be the outlier?
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago> Amazon actually treats their employees very well. Do you mean the software developers who work on Lake Union or the many lower skilled people who work in Amazon's fulfillment centers...like people who would work in a grocery store... > I know that there are some stories about bad experiences in the fulfillment centers, but keep in mind that those positions are temporary seasonal work by unskilled labor. That's a completely different environment than full time employees work in. People who work at Wholefoods aren't software developers making top bucks.
- dba7dba 9y agoI surely hope you are correct for the sake of the workers of WF, but... If you work for AWS, you are either software engineer or linux/network admin. And that means you bring high value to Amazon. So yes, Amazon would treat you well. But as you go further down the value chain, your treatment will get exponentially worse. And I can't imagine cashiers and stockers being viewed as high value makers by Amazon.
- tfont 9y ago40-50 hours a week is NOT a healthy work/life balance. Nice try buddy.
- nunez 9y ago50 hours per week really isn't that bad if you're getting paid well for it