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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
by kelukelugames 8y 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 8y agoNot 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 8y 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 8y agoIf 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 8y agoWell, increased buying of AMZN would drive the price higher, and ostensibly, this percolates up to Amazon and it's employees.
- aylmao 8y agoNot trying to be combative! Just providing a counter argument. Although it doesn't directly and immediately benefit a company, doesn't having lots of buy interest keep the stock price high, which _is_ beneficial for the company in general?
- timdorr 8y agoYep, you're totally right. I was only distinguishing on direct benefits (cash flow). There are certainly many more indirect benefits to performing well on the stock market.
- schwarzmx 8y agoThey didn't say to buy Amazon stocks.
- mistersquid 8y agoI did not downvote you, but I will speculate that the single question does present as somewhat confrontational and, depending on mood, might have been interpreted as combative. If I understand your meaning and if your post's "confrontational" mood is/was the issue, you might have cast your post declaratively instead of interrogatively. For example, > Using compensation to buy stocks would benefit the company even further even though the company may unfairly exploit its employees. This would run counter to the employee's own interests. Or something along those lines. Recasting questions as statements sometimes reduces the rhetorical signals which can be interpreted confrontation. EDIT: Remove double quotes; add emphasis. Clarify last sentence. Use past perfect in first sentence. Recast second sentence.
- kelukelugames 8y agoThat's a poor argument. I've gotten offers from many tech giants. They all included a sign-on cash bonus. Often much bigger than Amazon's. Amazon's total offer was usually about 100k lower. Sometimes more. Amazon SWEs still earn hundreds of thousands of dollars. So being treated poorly and paid less is relative. In Amazon's defense, I have friends who enjoy working there. The MBAs especially love it. Again, it's not like anyone is stuck in some Nike sweatshop from 1974.
- isostatic 8y agoWhite collar jobs are somewhat different than. We have choice, we have power. The best bet for amazon warehouse employees, and delivery drivers, would be to unionise. This would lead to either 1) More investment in robotics, taking away menial jobs 2) Better conditions for shelf-stackers. Both are good -- as a society we should not be making people work when the work could be done by robots.
- acdha 8y agoI disagree only in the assessment that unionization isn’t also good advice for people with desk jobs. The C-level sees us as expensive workers who need to be treated better but still an expense rather than peers.
- crankylinuxuser 8y agoRoboticization is great for the long-term, Star Trek style economy. It's the Bell Riots and Sanctuary Districts I'm worried about.
- krapp 8y agoOf course... Star Trek's economy didn't run on robots, it ran on magic wish boxes that would defy the laws of physics in the real world. Which is why I suspect when it comes to Star Trek's future, we'll get to the dystopia, but not the utopia.
- aquadrop 8y ago
- gourou 8y ago> Amazon is incredibly anti-employee They prefer calling it 'customer-centric' > Amazon, Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- prklmn 8y agoApple complains Amazon's US site is selling fake products http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37715531 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37715531
- Lionsion 8y ago> They prefer calling it 'customer-centric' If they'd like to be actually customer-centric, they can start by implementing a search that doesn't rank counterfeit products with a single 5-star review over real ones with 5000 reviews and an average rating of 4.9. I feel like Amazon's reputation for being "customer-centric" doesn't actually reflect their current practices, but instead it leans heavily on past reputation (when their competitors were worse) and a convenient return policy that papers over problems.
- nasredin 8y agoNext you gonna ask for something crazy like "sort by number of reviews" and "consistant UI on product pages"? The technology is not there yet man!
- faster 8y agoI'm not ignoring your point, but I use a Chrome extension to sort by number of reviews. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sortem-for-amazon/mdndolfmfhghpecjangdinmnccngfiha https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sortem-for-amazon/...
- dpeck 8y ago| 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. The ever-increasing home price in the Seattle area seems to indicate it isn't bad enough to stop them from working there.
- hueving 8y agoBecause home prices in Seattle are dictated by the quality of the Amazon employee's work environment.
- knuththetruth 8y agoWell, him and the people higher up the food chain that enable him. Tech workers at Amazon could organize to prevent this kind of mistreatment of warehouse employeees. If the AWS team alone walked off the job in protest, the resulting panic and media coverage would squeeze Amazon to improve.
- staticassertion 8y agoSad to see this post downvoted when it seems obvious. If you work for Amazon as a developer make this issue known. Few people have as much power to impact the company as a group of developers - we all know what a pain in the ass it is to hire. I'd never work at Amazon knowing how it treats its workers. Given the market we're in I don't get why others would - if you work for Amazon you should be able to jump ship for another good company.
- knuththetruth 8y agoPart of what they’re so highly compensated for is also to turn a blind eye to the poor people who suffer under these conditions, to ignore the abuse that undergirds their work.
- staticassertion 8y agoI don't think they compensate so much better than other similar companies. Their vesting cycle sucks too.
- debt 8y agoBezos’ great business leadership is exalted and his methods picked apart and adopted throughout Amazon. But I do wonder how insightful, clever or useful those methods are when towards the edges of his empire people work in constant fear and pee in bottles to survive.
- ghostbrainalpha 8y agoI don't know about that joke anymore. Being an Amazon customer used to be great, but the deliveries are bordering on ridiculously horrible now. I order something on Prime, then it doesn't show up when I expect it to, I get no notification of any delays, and then when I log in to see what's going on they have changed the original expected date so I can't even see what I was originally promised unless I took a screen shot. This has been the case on 2 thirds of my deliveries over the past 3 months. And I'm not even going into the sham that is 3rd party selling.
- j45 8y agoDeliveries are not done by Amazon where I live - it's usually 3rd party.
- kmonsen 8y agoThat doesn't really change anything. The customer interaction is with Amazon and they own it including paying for it either with Prime or directly.
- isostatic 8y agoThose third parties likely owe pretty much their entire business to amazon. When a company can't exist without a specific client, is it really a third party?
- j45 8y agoI think delivery companies may vary - in my area, some deliveries are still completed by the national mail, major couriers, however small (and often incompetent) carriers are starting to. The reason for my comment was that my experience receiving a shiny package doesn't really overlap with what employees are being put through. Both reflect poorly on Amazon, the conversation about employees is a valid on it's own as there are avenues with Amazon to already complain about poor delivery and have a recourse.
- lostapathy 8y agoI'm seeing this as well - and ironically, I live within walking distance of an Amazon fulfillment center. The scummiest part, though, is that when packages get completely lost, half the time I can't request an automatic refund, I have to work with a customer support rep to get it issued. Realistically, it should be completely automated. If Amazon knows my package was lost (in my most recent case, it never even shipped!) not issuing the refund automatically is anti-consumer greed.
- aqme28 8y agoHow does their stock vest?
- mistersquid 8y agoAmazon offers a RSU vesting schedule of 5%, 15%, and 40% over 4 years. [0] [0] https://www.quora.com/Amazon-offers-a-RSU-vesting-schedule-of-5-15-and-40-over-4-years-Doesnt-this-vesting-schedule-create-strong-incentives-to-manage-out-non-exceptional-performers-by-their-second-year-as-a-matter-of-policy https://www.quora.com/Amazon-offers-a-RSU-vesting-schedule-o...
- isostatic 8y agoLike this? https://www.amazon.com/Ferrecci-40-Mens-Black-DRAPPER/dp/B07957LXZB https://www.amazon.com/Ferrecci-40-Mens-Black-DRAPPER/dp/B07...
- jld 8y agoIt's backloaded. 5% of the stock grant vests in year 1, 15% in year 2, and then 40% on year 3 and 4. The argument is that they have a demanding work culture which people want to leave after a year or two, but are then incentivized to stay to earn out the bulk of their grant, or alternatively that they promise huge grants knowing that many people will not get to the point where they are collecting the bulk of it.
- losteric 8y agoFWIW: I think Amazon's stock vesting schedule for ICs is reasonable considering the sizable hiring bonus (iirc ~$20k for new graduates). Stock grants are intended to reflect an employee's ownership in the company, and rapidly increase with tenure. That said... Amazon is definitely not human-oriented. Leadership within established business units is brutally efficient, with far too much faith in their metric goals. Ask any engineer about HR's survey tool, I think that's a prime example of cultural decay within Amazon. Amazon used to be "customer obsessed" with a strong engineering culture... these days the cultural values are "maximize revenue, minimize costs".
- decebalus1 8y ago> I think Amazon's stock vesting schedule for ICs is reasonable considering the sizable hiring bonus (iirc ~$20k for new graduates) One can get this bonus basically everywhere else in the area with similar sized companies. Hell, I got way more than that 8 years ago. The vesting schedule is diabolical: > 5% 1st yr, 15% 2nd yr, then 20% every 6 months coupled with the turnover rate: http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/business_insider/2013/07/28/turnover_rates_by_company_how_amazon_google_and_others_stack_up/payscale1.gif.CROP.article568-large.gif http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/business_inside... I can't imagine anyone rational and with reasonable technical skills thinking this is a good enough incentive to join the company.
- rossbmiller 8y agoI think it's brilliant. If you live in Seattle and know anyone who's a mid-level corporate employee at Amazon, you should notice that it's a great way of selecting talent who are committed to the company and who will stick around. Also, contracts are re-negotiated every two years, so if you chain them up, you're getting a pretty significant annual payout.
- Aunche 8y agoThat works in theory, but in practice, Amazon still has shitty employee retention. Top software talent is a seller's market. Most people who have the choice would choose Facebook, Google, or Microsoft over Amazon because Amazon is stingier.
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoIs is all on Bezos or does the way we structure society also affect why people are willing to endure this treatment?
- dimal 8y agoWhen you have $100B, you're one of the people structuring society.
- partiallypro 8y agoPeople I am friends with in management make a lot of money, with great stock options and bonuses; floor workers are the people that get crapped on. If you're in logistics, you're making a killing, and generally have a good work life. So I'm told. Same applies to Alexa and AWS teams.
- kajumix 8y agoJudging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there, given the market for software engineers. Amazon is a highly successful company with significant anticipate growth still to come. All that success doesn't come without talent. So maybe not stupid, maybe just irrational? Tech companies in general, and Amazon in particular, are highly data driven and people are constantly challenged to make design choices and decisions based on data--they are being constantly asked for hard evidence on why a certain choice is better than another. In a way they are optimizing for rational people in their recruitment. Could it be that they are more rational than average? Could it be that they are qualified to look at their work experience and weigh it against the compensation, and make the choice to instead go work for Microsoft, or one of the many tech companies around the Seattle area? Maybe they are all just masochists? (Disclosure: I am a software engineer in AWS, and I love my job. Sorry, can't speak for non-tech jobs. Opinions are my own.)
- laythea 8y agoDoes the treatment outlined in the article apply to just warehouse workers or does this policy apply to software engineers/office bods also? (pee in a bottle etc?)
- Sea_Wulf 8y agoThere have been reports of toxic management [0] and at least one suicide attempt over the years [1], which indicates that the problem is not purely on the warehouse floor. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-... [1] http://fortune.com/2016/11/29/amazon-employee-suicide-attempt/ http://fortune.com/2016/11/29/amazon-employee-suicide-attemp...
- FilterSweep 8y ago> Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there This is sparing the employer at the expense of the employee. Employee's employment status is.....far more sticky.