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Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

• notheguyouthink 9y ago
  Are Amazon's margins razor thin? I'm trying to understand what compels them to be so toxic in their work environment. Especially compared to the people I know who work at Costco, I struggle to understand why Costco treats employees so well, and Amazon treats their employees so poorly. It's really sad, regardless.
  • zitterbewegung 9y ago
    Yes, a famous quote by Bezos is "Your margin is my opportunity". Also, he runs the company the same way. A lot of capex for Amazon is reinvesting in the company.
    • aylmao 9y ago
      Exactly. If there's money to re-invest, there should be money to treat employees at least decently.
      • mistermann 9y ago
        Unless the public can somehow get politicians to govern according to their desires, the way the world actually is, rather than how it should be, will continue to be defined by alpha leaders like Jeff Bezos and Xi Jinping.
        • aje403 9y ago
          The public does not know how the world is
      • StaticRedux 9y ago
        On the other side of the coin, if they hadn't spent the money on reinvesting, they wouldnt be the size they are now or employ as many people. (This is not saying they shouldn't treat employees better, just that the reason they employ so many people in the first place is bc of reinvesting and expanding to more areas. It's not as simplistic as, 'if they have the money they should spend it on people instead of business')
        • toomuchtodo 9y ago
          If you can't grow your business to be a monstrosity without treating your employees like slaves, your business should not exist.
          • 80386 9y ago
            I work at an Amazon warehouse. I'd rather be able to do that and write code on the side than be unemployed and have to live with my parents in the middle of nowhere. My parents don't even have an internet connection.
            • deleted 9y ago
              [deleted]
            • aylmao 9y ago
              That's the problem with the current labour market. A job sounds almost like a favor, because it's better than nothing, but workers (should) have rights too. There will always be someone who has less and is therefore satisfied with less, and companies will capitalize on that to offer the bare minimum to get the job done. Ultimately the person who'd do the job for more gets no job, the person doing the job for less doesn't get a fair compensation, and the only party benefiting is the company.
              • 80386 9y ago
                Right, it's hard to get even a crappy job. Except at an Amazon warehouse. There were relatively few hoops to jump through, and I don't think I even had to interview for it. (Well, "crappy". Aside from the low pay and bad hours, it's alright. I haven't seen any of the abuses that get talked about, although I'm sure they happen elsewhere.) Over half of new hires quit or get fired - I'm not sure which, but probably both - in their first two months, and they mostly hire for 20 hrs/wk part-time schedules. So it's not hard to see why Amazon is an easy place to find work at. I've applied to a few hundred jobs in my life, ranging from software development to slinging lattes, and Amazon is the only company that's ever even given me an offer. Most of my male friends are in similar positions: they're pretty smart, but they can't get anything better than FC, retail, truck driver, that sort of thing. (Truck driver was, in terms of pay, the best outcome I know of, but that was one guy and he killed himself over it last year.) The impression I get from my (generally more successful) female friends is that the only things that matter nowadays are networking and credentials, and most public job postings are only put up as formalities.
    • nostromo 9y ago
      I see this quote often, but it hasn't really panned out for Amazon in practice. I see other large tech companies (Google, Apple, Facebook) with these huge profit margins every quarter, year after year. Amazon has never made a dent in any of them, nor made a sizable profit themselves, despite all of that "opportunity." Perhaps he's not speaking of tech but of retail, in which case the margins of companies like Walmart are already incredibly tight.
      • zitterbewegung 9y ago
        I'm sorry I was unclear but the reason Amazon is purported to have low profits is due to the massive capital expenditure that they do year over year. Hypothetically they could turn a profit when they want to.
  • ProAm 9y ago
    This is how you get your Amazon Prime same day/two day delivery.
    • aylmao 9y ago
      I'm pretty sure they could still offer this service and treat employees well. Implying Amazon _needs_ to be like this is largely turning a blind eye to the problem.
      • ProAm 9y ago
        I agree, but Amazon maximizes their profit by using these conditions. They eek out profit margins by using human sacrifices.
    • babygoat 9y ago
      If that’s true, then charge us more and be a real human.
      • aylmao 9y ago
        Thing is they don't need to. They could just tap a bit into their huge revenues before re-investing them in making planes or making huge acquisitions.
      • progval 9y ago
        If you have Amazon Prime, you can choose to have a longer delay (ie. the same as non-Prime consumers) when selecting shipment options.
        • babygoat 9y ago
          My choices will not improve the conditions of warehouse workers.
  • dawnerd 9y ago
    I’m wondering the same. It’s not like amazon is deeply discounting anything like they used to. Often cheaper to buy stuff at the big box stores - or at least the same price.
    • jonknee 9y ago
      But they bring the products to your door...
      • dawnerd 9y ago
        So do Walmart/Target/bestbuy all with free shipping... I fail to see the point of that comparison really.
      • Lionsion 9y ago
        > But they bring the products to your door... That's being presented as some giant perk nowadays, but I don't really get the appeal. You're buying something sight-unseen and hoping what you'll get in a few days will match the mental images formed from the pictures. You can't size up the item in person, you don't get an excuse to leave the house, and you have to wait longer. If you don't like it, you have to go through the hassle of boxing it up, printing forms, and finding a post office.
        • jonknee 9y ago
          Depending on where you live it's a big pain to get to a store (rural people need to go far while in the city traffic makes going across town a huge pain). Not to mention not having to wait in a checkout line. I actually looked at my Amazon order history, it's beyond boring: soap that was out of stock last time I was at a physical store, washing machine cleaner, an OXO cutting board and a cheese grater, Anker USB charger, etc. I would never choose to go to a store and compare for any of these items and was quite happy to have them show up downstairs. If I do need to return I just print off a piece of paper and take the same box back downstairs (from my perspective way easier than having to go back to a store and wait in line).
  • kelukelugames 9y ago
    Bezos. Jeff Bezos is the reason why Amazon treats workers they way they do. Compared to other tech giants, Amazon is incredibly anti-employee. Look at how their stocks vest. I worked at Microsoft during Balmer's reign. The founder/CEO's attitude dictates the work culture. And causes harm if it's bad. I live in Seattle and often hear this joke: Being an Amazon customer is the best. An investor is great. An employee not so much. I worked at Amazon in 2005 and was a customer before that. But I can't support Bezos anymore because he negatively impacts how people are treated. It's not on par with Nike's sweatshops in the 90s, but I still canceled Prime and stopped buying things from Amazon.
    • gorbot 9y ago
      Not all employees are treated poorly. Yeah, the stock vest is back loaded, but they typically give cash upfront, which you could just turn around and buy stocks with..
      • aylmao 9y ago
        > which you could just turn around and buy stocks with. Which just benefits the company even further? Edit: if you downvote please reply. How will I correct my stance if I get no feedback? I'm not sure why I'm getting down voted. Edit: Thanks for the comments. I did assume this meant Amazon stock. Didn't think my comment sounded so combative until I was told.
        • timdorr 9y ago
          If you're buying AMZN on the market, that's coming from other investors, not the company itself. It's already sold that stock (the IPO was back in 96) and benefited directly from it at that time.
          • greedo 9y ago
            Well, increased buying of AMZN would drive the price higher, and ostensibly, this percolates up to Amazon and it's employees.
  • rando444 9y ago
    Costco employees interact with customers.. Having a healthy interaction with customers is important, and treating employees well goes a long way in helping grow a customer base. Customers will never interact with the person that boxes their amazon shipment. Those individuals are not seen as people, but just a necessity to continue operations.
    • j45 9y ago
      Costco (retail) appears to treat their employees much better - much higher base wages, regular increases in wage, benefits, etc. Also know a past Costco corporate employee and only had a positive impression.
      • jonknee 9y ago
        Retail positions are different than warehouse positions. It's like how UPS drivers make bank, but the guys who load the trucks break their backs for scratch (even with union representation!).
        • j45 9y ago
          There are warehouse positions in Costco as well. Costco seems to skirt labour laws a little less than other retailers.
        • foxyv 9y ago
          I worked at UPS as a package sorter/loader/unloader. The money was great and the part time position offered pretty good health and dental benefits. Only issue was the job was hard on my health. Weird hours and repetitive motion can tear your body to shreds if you let it. But the hours were consistent and there were plenty of opportunities to make extra money during the holidays.
      • jquery 9y ago
        Best teenage job I ever had. They treated us with respect and the pay was exceptional for the job, you could live a middle class lifestyle on it. Sundays they paid time and a half. They also had great holiday events, with a very memorable Christmas party I still cherish. I wish more retailers would treat their employees so well. EDIT: it does go to the top. The CEO resisted investor pressure to reduce wages and perks. Mad respect to him for treating his employees like people instead of cogs.
  • ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago
    Would be interesting to know whether it's a local problem or happens in other Amazon warehouses too. I'm fortunate enough to have worked in the USA, Canada and the UK and out of the three, I've found culturally, coworkers in the UK seem to be more afraid of the what the boss will say all the time and there's a lot of micro management going on. This is just anecdotal of course on my experiences and I would like to know if this happened in Amazon's warehouses elsewhere.
    • walshemj 9y ago
      They seem to (from overhearing covos on the train that serves the warehouse near MK) employ a lot of eu migrants from the poor countries that are used to abusive management an don't know their rights. It was also implied that there had been capture of first level supervisory positions who played favorites.
  • sremani 9y ago
    Retail in general is thin-margin. That is why you see Amazon try out all sorts of things from cloud to videos, because their core is so thin margin, that any non-core looks more like an opportunity rather than spreading out resources, say in contrast to a Google or Facebook, who have solid cores high margins.
    • aylmao 9y ago
      AWS has pretty good margins afaik. They have the money to make huge acquisitions and invest in planes, drones, etc. They have the money to treat their employees decently.
      • jonknee 9y ago
        And I doubt the AWS staff is peeing in bottles to make their numbers.
    • dv_dt 9y ago
      But their pricing hasn't been best-possible for a while now. I've been more and more frequently finding better prices through other venues.
      • sol_remmy 9y ago
        That's because big box retailers are shipping at a loss: i ordered something from Home Depot that was $10 and got free shipping, 3-4 days too. For the same cost as the in-store item. No way is that profitable for them They're all okay losing money in the short temp to capture online consumers
        • dv_dt 9y ago
          Are small sellers on ebay selling at a loss too?
  • opencl 9y ago
    Meanwhile they shove all of their software developers into one of the highest cost of living cities in the world and pay them six figure salaries.
    • lr4444lr 9y ago
      You would think Amazon would be a pioneer in remote IT work, wouldn't you...
    • umanwizard 9y ago
      Maybe it's changed since I lived there, but I don't really think Seattle is "one of the highest cost of living cities in the world". It is (or was) quite a bit cheaper than NYC or SF, for example.
      • bhandziuk 9y ago
        Seattle might not be the most expensive city to lie in but it is right up there. Same price as LA accoring to this data: https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/compare/los-angeles-vs-seattle https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/compare... And depending on how you break this list down (Exclude Bermuda from North American cities,bundle Bellevue/Seattle, Brooklyn NYC) it's in the top 10 https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/region_rankings.jsp?title=2018&region=021 https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/region_rankings.jsp?ti...
        • FireBeyond 9y ago
          Then again, it's quite a bit higher... "Cost of a gallon of gas in Seattle: $2.40"... try $3.79 this weekend.
          • bhandziuk 9y ago
            I bet those gas prices are fixed to some point in time. Might be too much work to keep up to date gas prices but not instantaneously update other parameters.
      • 9y ago
  • IncRnd 9y ago
    Take a look at the operating margins for international(negative), NA(barely positive even), and AWS. Graphs for this are shown here: https://www.recode.net/2018/2/1/16961598/amazon-jeff-bezos-record-profit-11-quarter-q4-2017-earnings https://www.recode.net/2018/2/1/16961598/amazon-jeff-bezos-r... This is also in the article: The e-commerce giant posted a record profit of $1.9 billion during the last three months of 2017, marking the 11th straight quarter of positive net income for Jeff Bezos’s company. About $789 million of that can be attributed to a tax benefit resulting from President Trump’s tax plan. But even without the benefit, the profit number would have been the largest in the company’s history.
  • qudat 9y ago
    > Are Amazon's margins razor thin? They don't make any money on distributing products.
  • j45 9y ago
    The measure of innovation and progress is how a society treats it's most vulnerable members. With Amazon, it's hard to imagine all the smart people that are being paid well, and used indirectly to squeeze the folks on the "factory floor", however unintentional.
  • geodel 9y ago
    So I need a replacement for broken GPS cradle mount. Can I get at Costco?, no, but I can buy a new GPS for a couple hundred. At Amazon I can buy this 6 dollar item and bundled with few more low price items I can get it delivered for free. Costco has far fewer SKUs and sell in bulk only high quality and price items. So they can afford to pay well because they only entertain customers which are spending far more for fewer high selling items and not few dollar obscure replacement parts.
  • gist 9y ago
    Why is the assumption when articles like this are published that this is representative of what it's like working in an Amazon warehouse?
  • wnevets 9y ago
    > I'm trying to understand what compels them to be so toxic in their work environment. Their warehouse employees are extremely replaceable and amazon knows this.
    • s73v3r_ 9y ago
      That shouldn't be an excuse for anyone with a shred of humanity or decency.
      • pnathan 9y ago
        and so? it's a power inequity and the mid-1800s into the early 1900s were marked by the workers who were treated like this struggling to take power back to force via the law better treatment. We mostly call those people "socialists" or "the labor movement" today.
  • TaylorAlexander 9y ago
    In kingdoms and corporations, the more you keep from the masses, the more can go to the king. I think the fundamental reason we need democracy (at work and in civil society) is that humans have a hard time resisting riches for themselves even at the expense of others. Since these workers have no power at Amazon, they can’t effect the changes necessary to improve things. Incidentally a workers union could help here, though I think we’ve made it hard for those to thrive.
  • pacaro 9y ago
    It’s worth recognizing also that the fulfillment part of the business has only one way to impact bottom line, by always cutting costs. We often talk about the importance of working for a profit center not a cost center within a business. Amazon fulfillment is a great example of this.
  • bluedino 9y ago
    Same as Walmart.
  • hathawsh 9y ago
    What's mysterious for me is just how much less Costco charges for staples than Amazon does. For example, for Honey Bunches of Oats cereal, Costco charges $0.15 per ounce (if you buy it locally), while Amazon charges $0.52 per ounce. Sometimes Costco even cuts 25% off that price. Bezos has a very long way to go if he wants to conquer that market! https://www.costco.com/Post-Honey-Bunches-of-Oats-with-Almonds%2C-48-oz.-.product.100368247.html https://www.costco.com/Post-Honey-Bunches-of-Oats-with-Almon... https://smile.amazon.com/Honey-Bunches-Oats-Almonds-14-5-Ounce/dp/B001EPQV1W https://smile.amazon.com/Honey-Bunches-Oats-Almonds-14-5-Oun...
    • manigandham 9y ago
      Amazon is about convenience and variety first, followed closely by price. If you want to drive to Costco and buy the bulk-version of the few choices they have then yes they will be much cheaper.
      • Lionsion 9y ago
        > Amazon is about convenience and variety first, followed closely by price. If you want to drive to Costco and buy the bulk-version of the few choices they have then yes they will be much cheaper. I feel like that's pretty revisionist. For a very long time, shopping at Amazon was about price first, variety a close second, and convenience a very distant third. I doubt so many people would have developed a habit of shopping there so much if the advantages were truly "convenience and variety" first. Amazon's prices have gotten much less competitive the last several years, which has disrupted the value proposition that caused many people to choose it.
        • manigandham 9y ago
          You don't have to revise history to say that it's true today. They definitely had a price advantage for a long time because internet commerce didn't have sales tax and they gained a massive following by the time that was legislated away. I find it hard to believe that free 2 day shipping and free customer-first returns did not sway opinions though since it basically pushed the entire industry forward.
  • jxramos 9y ago
    I don't know about Amazon workers but Costco workers are dang happy as far as I can see. Always jovial, joking, and teasing with each other. They seem to form good friend networks there working side by side and stuff.
    • Lionsion 9y ago
      > but Costco workers are dang happy as far as I can see. Always jovial, joking, and teasing with each other. They seem to form good friend networks there working side by side and stuff. That margin is Amazon's opportunity. /s https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/706779-your-margin-is-my-opportunity https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/706779-your-margin-is-my-op...
      • jxramos 9y ago
        what sort of margin are we talking about and how does it translate to gross margin? Margin of comfort, of happiness?
  • abandonliberty 9y ago
    Warehouse employees at Amazon are a stop-gap measure, and will only exist as long as they're more efficient than robots on a given task.
  • pascalxus 9y ago
    It all starts with Bezos. But, look at all the engineers who work there with stockholmes syndrome. Most of Amazon's Glassdoor reviews are like 3,4 and 5 stars, then when you read the actual comments for those 5 star reviews, you see the horror that is amazon.
  • noelsusman 9y ago
    They're less than razor thin. They generally lose money every time they sell you something. This has become less true over time with the explosion of third party sellers, but it's still generally true. The revenue from Amazon Prime subscriptions does not cover the costs of providing benefits to Amazon Prime subscribers. Costco has a different target market than Amazon. They target relatively well off people who can afford the upfront cost of a membership and have the capital to buy goods in bulk. That customer base places a relatively high value on customer service.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• Cenk 9y ago
  Link to original story (as far as I can tell) at The Sun (urgh), it has more photos: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6055021/rushed-amazon-warehouse-staff-time-wasting/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6055021/rushed-amazon-warehous...
• LinuxBender 9y ago
  Doesn't this affect more than the employees? If they are peeing in a bottle, shouldn't they sanitize their hands after touching their package so they can safely handle our packages? Should I be inspecting the inner contents using a black light?
  • matte_black 9y ago
    They shouldn’t be pissing in a bottle period, they should be taking a break, they are just scared to. No one is forcing them to pee in a bottle.
    • LinuxBender 9y ago
      Oh I totally agree. I'm just suggesting that perhaps this also affects the recipients of the packages.
      • matte_black 9y ago
        You know how many nasty germs a package comes in contact with even before an Amazon employee touches it and long after it’s shipped? Trillions, with a t.
        • LinuxBender 9y ago
          I don't think that makes it safer to touch the package after peeing in a bottle. Employees are required to wash their hands after using the restroom. I believe that state law may even require it.
        • maxerickson 9y ago
          Trillions of germs, probably not so many nasty ones.
    • opencl 9y ago
      Oh sure they're not forcing them to pee in a bottle, they just fire anyone who doesn't hit the performance quotas, which just happen to be barely attainable by somebody who takes no breaks.
• ggregoire 9y ago
  How long before Amazon replaces all the warehouse workers with machines? 5 years?
  • aylmao 9y ago
    If they're going to be replaced by robots soon, isn't that a good reason to not fear spending on them, since they are a short-term cost?
    • IncRnd 9y ago
      Nope. That's exactly why money isn't spent on people. There is no reason for Amazon to invest in them. I'm not a fan of people thinking they will lose their job for taking breaks, but why would Amazon invest money in something that may go away in 5 years? They'll invest in the R&D of the replacement.
      • aylmao 9y ago
        I see what you mean, and I hope you mean it in the "playing devils advocate" kind of way, because implying the most reasonable thing to do is what makes most business sense is what's unfortunately wrong in this country.
        • arez 9y ago
          *world
        • IncRnd 9y ago
          Yes, most definitely I was pointing why Amazon's calculus is to not invest in people. I was not saying that people should be worked like cogs in a machine, where you try to go on the cheap without oil for as long as possible.
    • dingo_bat 9y ago
      Why spend more if you can spend less?
• Pezmc 9y ago
  If everything is based on performance metrics alone, surely there's a feedback loop here? Employee A starts peeing in a bottle, so their performance numbers go up, then at the end of the week they have better performance numbers and everyone else's targets are increased to be more inline with employee A. So more people start using bottles and taking shortcuts and the problem just increases over time!
  • jld 9y ago
    That's capitalism for you.
  • 80386 9y ago
    Performance metrics are standardized across all Amazon FCs, so no.
  • progval 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
  • NoodleIncident 9y ago
    http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
• Demoneeri 9y ago
  I don't understand how managers at amazon can believe this is okay and that it won't blow off in their face.
  • isostatic 9y ago
    They're really taking the piss.
  • dspillett 9y ago
    > I don't understand how managers at amazon can believe this is okay They probably don't. They have stringent targets for their team to meet in order to get their bonus (or not get promoted over, or not get moved to a worse area, or...). The pressure is passed down the chain. > and that it won't blow off in their face. Maybe they expect to have moved on before that happens? Or simply feel that have no choice because of that downwards pressure and not being able to afford to risk losing the job (a morally corrupt job pays the mortgage better than no job at all does).
• atrexler 9y ago
  Long-haul truckers have been doing this for decades for the same reason-- they don't have time to pull over and use the restroom-- and no one is upset about that. I'm sure there are many industries, white and blue collar, where similar norms are expressed. Edit to add: I'm not endorsing the practice in any industry at all, just pointing out that its not a unique problem to Amazon. My comment would have been better phrased "why aren't more people upset about that?" It IS still definitely a problem!
  • jrochkind1 9y ago
    wait, you're sure there are many industries, white and blue collar, where workers routinely pee in bottles as a job requirement? Really? In the U.S.? You're pretty sure about this, eh? Many industries? I'd be curious to hear an example of one industry where "white collar" workers routinely pee in bottles as a job requirement, official or unofficial.
    • java_script 9y ago
      Is pro gaming a white collar industry?
      • creep 9y ago
        Lol, are jokes not allowed on HN? Geeeeez you guys.
        • niroze 9y ago
          Jokes get you downvotes here, I tried to make a joke and everyone took it seriously. It is like talking to a bunch of toddlers sometimes, where a sense of humor doesn't exist and everything is taken literally.
    • rebel 9y ago
      Not the parent comment but I have heard that it is fairly common among UPS/FedEx drivers. I do agree the notion sounds pretty outlandish. To play devil's advocate, I would say it is likely more common than many people would initially expect.
• Consultant32452 9y ago
  What's so special about Amazon in comparison to the Chinese factories where those goods are manufactured? Are we just upset because these people are geographically closer? Or is it nationalism; Americans/Westerners are too good for such treatment? Racism?
  • hueving 9y ago
    That's whataboutism. There are people in terrible conditions all over the world that US citizens can do little about. When it happens in the country where we can vote on laws and candidates, we can do something about it. So it's important to focus on those cases and set an example.
    • Consultant32452 9y ago
      Sounds like your answer is nationalism. We could just as easily be talking about laws and candidates who want to improve our trade agreements such that workers in China, Mexico, etc. get better working conditions. I don't particularly like the conditions at Amazon either, but I see it as the obvious result of globalism. When 70% of the world lives on less than $10 per day, what we call decent conditions is really a fantasy. We're not likely to get away with our relative standard of living forever. Eventually we'll average out.
      • geodel 9y ago
        > When 70% of the world lives on less than $10 per day, This too looks like optimistic number to me. More than half of Indians are living on <2 dollar a day. And this number is before automation takes away better paying labor jobs which are about 300-400 dollars a month.
      • hajile 9y ago
        This question pops up all the time with UN human rights inspectors. When they're about to show up for inspection, everyone puts on their smiley faces and pretends they aren't basically slaves. After they are gone, it's back to work. The modus operandi is to keep them from seeing. If that doesn't work, bribe. If that doesn't work, blackmail. If that doesn't work, kill and try again with the next person. There's a further problem. Even with slave prices for goods, it's still often cheaper for companies to build factories on the continent because shipping is so expensive. Raise the wages and the company moves away at which point, there are no jobs at all. So you dictate that the company must stay there no matter what and the price of goods goes up. Since people have a finite amount of money, they will purchase fewer things and maybe won't buy that particular product at all. Do you now dictate that the consumer buys? It is very easy to turn people into slaves by trying to prevent people from turning into slaves. Solutions are seldom simple and idyllic. Choose the good when possible, but usually, you just choose the best of the worst.
• curtis 9y ago
  How does this compare to other warehouse jobs? My impression is that warehouse jobs almost universally suck.
• TaylorAlexander 9y ago
  My fear is that the future of work for most people is not unemployment, but shitty jobs like this. My feeling is that in order to avoid this and prosper, the people need to own the robots that do all the work (Marxism heyy). If robots provide huge productivity gains, then they will provide those gains for their owners. If it’s the big corporations that own them, they will see the gains. But as long as people are treated like machines, they will be left out of this prosperity. Instead, if the people own the machines collectively, then they can enjoy the productivity gains themselves as a group. What do you all think of this?
  • netsharc 9y ago
    Shitty jobs is already spreading. Uber driver, Deliveroo biker, and their hundreds of copycats, all of them where "you're not an employee, you're a contractor".
    • wombatpm 9y ago
      Wait until the realize that the strip-club model of independent contractor would allow them to charge their contractors for the privilege of working in their environment.
  • monetus 9y ago
    In the absence of strong incentives to start employee owned businesses, I don't see the problems that creates those jobs being assuaged...
  • noonespecial 9y ago
    But I do already own some of the robots. I have Amazon stock in my 401k. That's what "the people owning the robots" looks like. What you're getting at is that there are many people right now who are too poor (and are going to be too poor) to ever own any part of the robots. This century's great debate is forming up to be whether or not we should give them some anyway even though they can't "earn" it for whatever moving value of earn society is currently accepting.
    • 9y ago
• coldtea 9y ago
  "Changing the world", one bottle at a time...
  • geodel 9y ago
    Or maybe it is beta testing of new Amazon SBS aka Simple Bottle Storage®.
• asimpletune 9y ago
  This is totally normal
• JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  Typical retail. You're given goals that continue to get higher and higher. Some places give you a handful of goals but the math doesn't work out so you can't ever reach them all simultaneously. This is by design so that they justify paltry raises and/or firings. The only way to play the system is to stay aligned with whatever your immediate report feels are the ones to focus on.
• bertil 9y ago
  Amazon in general, like Uber, considers that warehouse employees and driver are just a needed adjustment until robots take over. They have the consideration that Google/Waymo has for the people filling in “Is this a Stop sign” Catpcha. Thinking of it as sweat labor is not false, but it won’t convince the company change. If you think of it that way, you understand better how Amazon product managers and engineers are OK with the treatment. Also part of that vision: those employees benefit from constant iteration of the work conditions, from Bezos’ initial suggestion to get knee pad to help filling in boxes (rapidly replaced by the far better option to get tables). All the pain is just a step in the process that has not been automated yet, and the “handful” of people “temporary” suffering now are just there to provide training data for the order of magnitude more orders to come when running around, climbing on step-ladders, will be automated. And, in fairness, a lot of it has, or is about to: Amazon has robots to carry shelves around, raising platforms, etc. They are generally not used at scale yet, but teams are actively working on it. I’m not saying that to justify the company’s callous take, or pain their plan as a delusional grandeur, but to explain how the stress is part of the process: to reveal what hurts. As far as I can tell, all employees, especially desk-dwellers, are asked to do shifts in the warehouse to build some empathy. It’s far from perfect and seem to hide the reality of family life for the de-facto full-time workers -- but accusing Amazon of having inhumane condition is missing the dynamic angle to it. I believe there is a massive mis-match between how employees see their service and the efforts so many employees are putting in; I’m not convinced that you can reach automation faster by having humans run around and learn from their mistake. I would be a lot more comfortable with the experiment is participants where excited by the perspective of automation rather than working poor, but I’m not in charge of the company, so it’s hard to grasp exactly what could be done. I believe that warehouse employees with more free-time, more initiative and the ability automate themselves would automate faster than what Amazon is currently doing, but that’s just speculation.
  • djhworld 9y ago
    > you understand better how Amazon product managers and engineers are OK with the treatment. Or do they really care?
    • 9y ago
• truculation 9y ago
  What's the typical walking time to the toilet in a large warehouse? Where do the relevant employees keep the bottles (e.g. are they attached to their legs underneath trousers? If not how do they avoid CCTV?) Are break periods mandatory or optional?
  • brandonmenc 9y ago
    A bathroom break in a large factory or warehouse can easily take twenty minutes after factoring in the transit time.
  • didibus 9y ago
    Ya, I do believe a FC warehouse job sucks pretty bad, but for some reason, this particular article seems strange. The journalist is clearly trying to find sensationalist material for his book. I'm not sure how much I can trust his sources.
    • truculation 9y ago
      That may well be but my questions are genuine questions (I'm curious).
  • krapp 9y ago
    >What's the typical walking time to the toilet in a large warehouse? I work in one of the largest FCs in the network and even when I've had to walk up or down flights to find a bathroom that was empty (only one per side per floor, and one toilet) I didn't pass the ten minute limit before getting flagged for time off task. Although it is annoying having fifteen minutes of a thirty minute break be taken up by walking to and from the breakroom, and the expectation of having to arrive early enough to scan into a Kiva on time, pod gaps or no. I don't doubt at all that this happens, though, or that Amazon drives some people to this kind of behavior. I think it depends on the facility and the management.
• _bxg1 9y ago
  Just one of the reasons I avoid giving Amazon money.
  • BtBfs 9y ago
    I've started cutting my Amazon usage too. It's difficult because I've become dependent but I can cut the delivery part for most products.
    • _bxg1 9y ago
      I pretty much only use Amazon as a fallback, when I need to buy something that I just won't find in any other store, online or brick-and-mortar.
• chiefalchemist 9y ago
  Obviously, I wouldn't call this slavery. But in terms of the effect on the employees, it's __in some ways__ getting close. Do we have a word for this type of relationship between worker and company? There's something wrong when we (at least in the USA) are said to be approaching but workers (albeit in the UK) can't stop to pee. All this at the hands of the richest man in the world?
  • progval 9y ago
    > Do we have a word for this type of relationship between worker and company? Exploitation of labour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour
    • chiefalchemist 9y ago
      Ok. But that's more or less a verb. How about a noun? Words matter. We need a word.
  • geodel 9y ago
    > Do we have a word for this type of relationship between worker and company? It is 'Welcome to world beyond circlejerk of some highest paid software workers in top 5-10 tech firms'
• tomc1985 9y ago
  Why aren't more people on Amazon's ass for pushing their people so hard? This sounds preventable simply by setting production standards to be in line with the environment provided. Yes, there are important bits in here about tech. But this sounds like a classic case of management abuse
• saint_abroad 9y ago
  It seems they don't allow warehouse workers "degraded mode" with "performance targets based on previous worker performance." If a storage array were rebuilding I think most engineers would cut it some slack. Not meaning to be flippant but I guess the difference is that with stateless processing you get disposable machines. Reminds me of Moon (film).
• checkdigit15 9y ago
  > Another said: "The target grows every year." Whenever I see examples of impossible-to-meet goals I'm reminded of reminded of this classic "I Love Lucy" bit [0] with the chocolates on the conveyor belt. "Speeeed it up a little!" [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NPzLBSBzPI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NPzLBSBzPI
• nickthemagicman 9y ago
  Why dont they just wear Adult Diapers and really improve their productivity?
• amyjess 9y ago
  I have a friend who used to work at a fulfillment center. In December, she took a week of medical leave. Last month, they retroactively denied her leave and then fired her for having a negative UPT balance. She'd worked there for years. It's an awful, abusive company, and even though Trump's reasons for going after Amazon are the wrong reasons, I hope he successfully gets them shut down anyway.
  • balls187 9y ago
    She wasn't covered by FMLA?
    • amyjess 9y ago
      I don't know the details. She also told me that a couple of her other coworkers got fired the same way, and she and a couple of her ex-coworkers were talking about how it's something Amazon does periodically. Apparently that's how they cull people management doesn't like if they don't have a real reason to fire them. Edit: Here's a writeup by somebody else this almost happened to. https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/harassing-the-sick https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/harassing... Edit again: Another https://www.reddit.com/r/amazon/comments/5pegzc/amazon_wrongful_termination_of_employment/ https://www.reddit.com/r/amazon/comments/5pegzc/amazon_wrong...
• menacingly 9y ago
  I tend to personally view things from the owner's point of view. I also know that once the popular narrative has bitten down on the story of a successful company running slave factories, they won't let go. Whether these are exaggerated or isolated cases doesn't matter, there will be story after story until Amazon makes some show of changing practices. However, I know there's another side. At some point, a company the size of Amazon begins consuming all available oxygen. I don't know what the tipping point is, but I know workers in some areas have about as much choice in where to work as I do in cable providers. That's obviously undesirable, because without a competitive labor market, Amazon is in practice able to treat employees however they choose, because the one emergency brake built into the loop is gone. I wish there were some simple way to codify regulations about employee treatment once you become as powerful as a small nation that don't also encumber 150-employee plastic tubing manufacturers. At that level, pure laissez faire is desirable to me, because you do have options as an employee, and no reasonable case can be made that you've got to bog down your employer in a regulatory mess. Then, once you've got some single digit of the GDP in resources, you can be expected to operate with increased oversight and expectations, as a tax for the opportunity cost your mere presence visits upon other firms. If that inhibits growth of megacorps... well, that's OK.
  • Spooky23 9y ago
    A big part of this problem is that the warehouse operations people de-risk the impact and accountability for these problems to the bodyshops that fulfill these roles. Companies like Amazon love temporary workforces because they have big capital investments in fulfillment centers that they cannot walk away from, and an employee workforce would attract union mobilization. IMO, the way to attack this is to increase the cost of temporary employment by taking away tax and other privileges. There should be a cost borne by the employer for the flexibility of temporary workforces. That would discourage the practice at companies like Amazon and have a lesser impact on SMB.
    • wombatpm 9y ago
      There already is. They pay more on an hourly basis for temporary workers. The body shop gets their cut first. Body shop charges $17/hr, pays $13/hr
• wenc 9y ago
  It seems that everyone is assuming that the allegations in the article are true, and are commenting based on that assumption. But are they true? Can someone corroborate? p.s. the reason I ask is because things are often more complex than a simple narrative would have you believe, and it's worthwhile thinking about what's actually going on rather than just taking in a narrative without questioning it.
  • 11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
    Moreover, Amazon is a global company with 500,000+ employees. Painting the entire company with this brush is poor analysis. If this portrayal is representative of this distribution center, it could be the result of a general manager whose incentive bonuses motivate him/her to be strict about how pickers spend their time and grant strikes even for legitimate medical excuses. Or it could be true that all of Amazon is this way. In that case, however, this one circumstance is insufficient to draw that conclusion.
    • sn41 9y ago
      I suspect it is a pervasive part of Amazon's work culture. They bought Whole Foods, IIRC, and there were news articles about how that went: http://www.grubstreet.com/2018/02/whole-foods-inventory-system-reportedly-making-employees-cry-at-work.html http://www.grubstreet.com/2018/02/whole-foods-inventory-syst...
      • wenc 9y ago
        The problem identified in the article seems to point to the OTS inventory system, which was a Whole Foods initiative. Amazon doesn't seem to know much about it (which may partly be the problem), but it isn't evidence against Amazon per se.
  • hackandtrip 9y ago
    Even if the bottle story could be an hyperbole, the work conditions for manual work are well known to be sub standard. Italian news [0] already got some articles where employers criticize the conditions. Nothing like peeing in a bottle, but the problem remains and all the comments made here are still valid. [0]: https://it.businessinsider.com/due-dipendenti-amazon-raccontano-linferno-del-centro-di-smistamento-di-piacenza/ https://it.businessinsider.com/due-dipendenti-amazon-raccont...
• partiallypro 9y ago
  I've never heard stories like this, but I have heard stories (there's a distribution center a few miles from where I live) of workers stealing sex toys from bins and using it in the bathrooms at work. This is both sexes. Amazon treats their floor employees horribly, but (and this is good/bad) are hiring people from low rungs of society, so they probably feel they -can- take advantage of these people. They are sometimes the only job in town.
• gaius 9y ago
  One company I worked for 10 years ago (as an engineer) had signs up in the call centre telling staff there not to pee in the bins. Apparently this is a common thing in call centres. This is in the UK.
• Jach 9y ago
  What do the women warehouse workers do?
• chandmk 9y ago
  I used to work in a factory floor. Having a job at this factory used to be one of the nice things in the town. For the fear of being driven to work too much, workers refused to increase the thru-put beyond a union limit. They used that as a tool for bargaining for more pay. Observing bathroom breaks became the responsibility of supervisor. There were many missed daily targets, which became a regular discussion point. But in the end the entire thing was pushed too far. This, coupled with the top management inability to run the factory at a reasonably profitable state, finally lead the shut down. Ultimately it ended up hurting the workers more than the top management. Majority of top management found jobs elsewhere, and most of the workers ended up not having any jobs. This story merely reflects the constant struggle we are witnessing for generations.
• laythea 9y ago
  Hang on a second. Isn't the magical quality about life, is its ability to adapt? If the world is becoming full of this kind of job, we need as individuals to reject it, and adapt to other forms of income. Off course, if you let the corporations treat us like this, they will. And they are not at fault. It is us at fault for accepting it. We must not accept these forms of income. Easier said than done, I know. But, who said it was easy? Its like being in an abusive relationship. If you accept it, it will continue!
  • marrone12 9y ago
    Not everyone has that kind of luxury. If you have hungry kids and a late car payment you sometimes just need a pay check.
    • laythea 9y ago
      I did not mean it like that. Jobs at all levels, have many options. A warehouse level job is very transferable. I know, because I spent years doing it. Also, if your in that role, you can more easily move to different industries than say a Phd major is a specific subject. My point remains, it is up to the individual.
  • leggomylibro 9y ago
    Of course, it's so easy - there's no apprehension of the fallout from your decisions, no lingering self-doubt, no fear that maybe you contribute to the problem and self-advocacy might amount to petulance, no implicit duress from the question of where your food and shelter will come from. I guess it might not be a bad metaphor, but I gotta say, your advice seems facile and sort of in poor taste from my point of view. You're exhorting people to stand up and say 'this is not okay', but that additional burden shouldn't have to be borne solely by the people who are already shouldering the worst of the situation's negative externalities, should it?
    • laythea 9y ago
      Please see my reply below.
• zealsham 9y ago
  Did we ever get pass the slave era?
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• xivzgrev 9y ago
  Amaazon says bathroom breaks are not timed. That is probably true. But that is not what the article is alleging. Rather they need to reach a certain productivity level within a given time period, and using the bathroom counts against that apparently. And if goals are set based on previous employee performance than what if that person also skipped bathroom breaks? Maybe total breaks should be timed over a longer period of time. So if today you need to shit your lungs out that's ok then it averages out with more normal breaks over the next few weeks.
• bitmapbrother 9y ago
  You may want to check the seal on your next order of Mountain Dew from Amazon.
• rodionos 9y ago
  Here's the largest Nescafe plant in the world, located in Southern Russia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzxjMxKUvIg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzxjMxKUvIg Check out some of the jobs on offer: 18:15 - the coffee tasting job 22:30 - the optical controller job The latter one is crazy. The video doesn't make it clear why it's not automated.
• nabla9 9y ago
  That's the future of the low paid work. US poultry workers wear diapers on job over lack of bathroom breaks – report https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/12/poultry-workers-wear-diapers-work-bathroom-breaks https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/12/poultry-work...
• noir_lord 9y ago
  I stopped buying from Amazon a few years ago, the constant background noise of the way they treat their staff. When I was young I worked in warehouses and it was hard, tiring work but the management by and large treat you like a human being. We occasionally use Amazon at work (not my choice) and very often I can get a better price for something from aria, scan or ebuyer anyway.
• rland 9y ago
  Is this worth it? Is this worth having the ability to pick between 10,000 different toasters via internet and have them delivered to your doorstep in 2 days? Sometimes I look at society as a complete organ, with a hypothetical ability to make cohesive decisions for itself. And I think, it is making extremely self-destructive choices. All for the sake of satisfying the urge to buy more, at lower prices, with more convenience. I wonder how much of the stuff in those warehouses is utter garbage that gets bought and used just once.
  • Dylan16807 9y ago
    We can have both. Amazon isn't going to implode if they pay some extra pennies for reasonable working conditions.
    • tonyedgecombe 9y ago
      I don't think we can, companies like Amazon can't stop thinking about costs, it's in their DNA, it's what they live and breath. Distribution is all about margins, if you can't keep costs low then you are toast, they are always utterly miserable places to work.
      • Panoramix 9y ago
        You can force them to give provide conditions, or else they have to pay monumental fines / managers go to prison, etc. They will get the point.
        • 794CD01 9y ago
          Is the point to use robots? Because I'm pretty sure they already know that.
      • Pyxl101 9y ago
        The only way to make reasonable business decisions is to think about costs in any company.
    • 9y ago
• zelon88 9y ago
  > Amazon said it didn't time workers' toilet breaks... That means they set really high targets for middle-managers and then let them get creative with the rules. > ...and set its performance targets based on previous worker performance. That means they cherry pick their best performing employees and set global standards based on the top n%. > The company said it provided coaching to help people improve... That means they write people up when they can't meet performance standards or quotas. > ...and used "proper discretion" when it came to sick leave and absences from work. And that means they write people up when they don't show up. > The company also said it provided on-site occupational health and physiotherapy support... They do that because real doctors and PCP's are way more costly to the insurance plan. > as well as legal,... That's when HR puts together a meeting with a lawyer who tells you quitting is stupid because of the NDA. > ...financial,... That's when an employee asks for a raise and HR sends them to a meeting with a financial consultant who tells them "You don't really need a raise, you need a budget!" > ...and workplace guidance. That's where they teach you not to drink water so you can meet your quotas.
  • perseusprime11 9y ago
    According to Bezos, there are two types of decisions- 1) type 1 - where Bezos does not time workers' toilet breaks, and 2) type 2 - where he lets middle managers to create their own rules. It's always Day 1 :)
    • iopuy 9y ago
      I'm not sure I understand this comment. Day 1? What are you referencing?
      • krapp 9y ago
        "It's always day one" is of Amazon's corporate slogans - I think it's something Jeff Bezos personally came up with. It's supposed to mean that every day is a learning experience... or something.
      • kelnos 9y ago
        It's a Bezos thing. The idea is that every day is "Day 1". Just because you or your company has been around for years and years or that you've hit a major milestone, you can't rest on your laurels. You need to approach every day as "Day 1" with regard to your attitude toward innovation and moving quickly.
• rectang 9y ago
  We can't. Labor and capital need each other, but they are forever at odds. Good wages and working conditions can only be won through negotiating from strength. Modern America favors capital. Elections have consequences.
  • nordsieck 9y ago
    > Modern America favors capital The universe favors capital because capital is more mobile than labor.
    • vm 9y ago
      This is changing in the software world. Software gives "labor" more scalability and leverage than ever before.
      • rectang 9y ago
        This is one of the reasons I feel good about contributing to open source. It boosts the prospects of at least some workers, while at the same time offering great value for employers, for industry, and for society at large.
      • vm 9y ago
        I was referring to software developers having greater leverage in the labor market. Writing useful software gives developers higher economic output for their labor than we’ve had in history. It also creates unique mobility opportunities for remote developers. It is changing the capital vs labor dynamic. This is true for a narrow part of the labor market, which is why I put quotes around the word labor. Can’t edit my earlier comment but felt I should clarify.
    • rectang 9y ago
      That sounds like a king justifying the divine right of kings... The effect of mobility is offset by there being more workers than owners. These outcomes are not inevitable.
• bb101 9y ago
  Bezos realistically has about 30 to 40 years to enjoy his position in the world and then will go the way of everyone else. If one believes in karma, in a future life he may yet get to experience the fruits of the world he helped to create.
• himom 9y ago
  I’m curious how far away bathrooms can be and how building codes come into play.
  • jws 9y ago
    They have palette shifting robots running around the warehouse. They should just put a port-a-potty on one and let the workers summon it with a Dash button.
• otakucode 9y ago
  I am honestly quite surprised that Amazon warehouses haven't experienced a wave of workplace shootings. They're really a recipe for how to construct a place primed for them. During the 1990s there were several high-profile workplace shootings at US postal offices. Originally everyone presumed it was just isolated incidents, mentally ill people, etc. But in the years that followed, once people had calmed down and the situation could actually be analyzed, the truth was quite different. The shootings had a cause. Those post offices had paired human beings with automated machines and slowly increased their expectation of performance of the humans to match the machines. They cut breaks, they expected humans to keep up with the machines (the machines would sort mail, for example, and kick out things its OCR scanners couldn't recognize for a human to deal with), and they made it clear that the humans weren't valuable employees... they were an annoying inefficiency in the system that hadn't been optimized away yet. That puts people under immense pressure. And while some people might be able to handle immense pressure, it is fundamentally incorrect to expect large groups of people to handle it. Large groups will have people who will crack. This is as certain as gravity, and those who seek to ignore it just as ludicrous.
• stillsut 9y ago
  If you work in a latino painting or landscaping crew, tough guy stuff like this is expected and socially enforced. Or say Alaskan fishermen. It's one of tradeoffs you make for an uber-bule-collar job. But these jobs also have benefits that others don't have: when you leave the job site, you don't have to think about the job (like teachers do) and your skills and experience don't lose relevance (like IT) and you don't have to suffer fools (like service staff). But yeah - the notable tradeoff for these jobs is you get valued (and devalued) by your physical productivity and reliability.
• amelius 9y ago
  Perhaps I'm missing something, but why don't Amazon's well-paid office workers (e.g. IT workers) show more solidarity?
• thomasjudge 9y ago
  Well I for one am going to stop ordering bottles from Amazon..
• joeschmoe3 9y ago
  How similar is an amazon and a factory job from the past?
• basseq 9y ago
  Let's say Amazon leadership is appalled at these conditions. Management by metric is working insofar as it goes, but you really didn't know how bad it was several layers down. How would an organization identify something systemic like this? E.g., identifying that unexpected consequences had popped up and you'd created an environment where people were afraid even to speak up?
• cbhl 9y ago
  Having to go down four flights of stairs to go to a bathroom is ridiculous. I wonder if this is an unexpected side-effect of automating warehouses. Normally, bathrooms are required by OSHA, but the relevant code appears to dictate only the number of bathrooms required by the number of employees on a site[0]. Adding bathrooms to a building is an expensive retrofit; I can't imagine this situation getting better without regulation. My inclination would be to try and lobby congress to require bathrooms within X feet of employees on every floor, or require Y bathrooms per Z square feet of space. (But what about edge cases? What do construction workers do in high rises?) [0] https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2017-title29-vol5/xml/CFR-2017-title29-vol5-sec1910-141.xml https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2017-title29-vol5/xml/CFR-...
• tapatio 9y ago
  Do what you gotta do to get ahead, including sleeping on the factory floor.
• baxuz 9y ago
  Lol USA 🇺🇸
  • dang 9y ago
    Please don't do this here.
• moreorless 9y ago
  Amazon warehouse workers should consider moving to China and work at the factories where they will be treated better.
• ataggart 9y ago
  I'm curious to know these workers' next best employment option, the one they're forgoing to work at an Amazon warehouse.
• kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  None of these people work for Amazon. They are all Integrity Staffing employees. It is up to IS to follow federal labor laws and Amazon's hands are "clean".
• JWLong 9y ago
  Okay, people here need to get out of their bubbles. This is the same with most warehouse/assembly line jobs. Folks here are shitting on Amazon because it's relevant to their everyday lives. Walmart does the same stuff. I worked in one of their warehouses, loading trucks for a summer. These situations are not the exception.
• Karishma1234 9y ago
  I have a very simple solution for this. Whenever people checkout on Amazon give them an option to tip people in the originating warehouse.
• TheForumTroll 9y ago
  Wow, keep this up and soon working for Amazon will be as bad as making iPhones!
• hnbits 9y ago
  er
• hnbits 9y ago
  Meanwhile in Jeff Bezos's bank account: https://finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=1043298&tc=7 https://finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=1043298&tc=7
• fruitzome 9y ago
  I peed in bottles (while driving) for fear that I would miss the date I was driving to (and already late). Maybe I should write an article on brutal conditions of city living and online dating to get people to feel sorry for me. If you don't want a job at Amazon's shit hole warehouse, then why the fuck do you go in everyday? At least their putting your dumbass to meaningful production sinve obviously you are too stupid to work anywhere else.
• RandomCSGeek 9y ago
  The main issue is with demand-supply difference. There are too many people out there in need of blue collar jobs, and this means companies like Amazon have a chance to push the criteria to get the job much higher, as long as it's legal. This happens in other sectors too. Here in India, there's oversupply of candidates in almost every field, with the exception of those which require highly specialised/costly knowledge(eg: PhD in AI, neurologist), so a lot of companies exploit people by making them work for long hours and at a very low salary.