8 ms·

Are you suggesting that by winning in ecommerce and cloud computing they're gaining a monopoloy on jobs? Seems like a stretch. There have always been and proba

by wmfiv 8y ago

Are you suggesting that by winning in ecommerce and cloud computing they're gaining a monopoloy on jobs? Seems like a stretch. There have always been and probably always will be unpleasant jobs. I watched 6 guys replace the roof of my neightbor's house yesterday in Houston. It was 100 degrees on the ground so I'd imagine it was intensely unpleasant working 8 hours on the ashphalt shingle roof. Does that make the roofing business exploitive? Should we all abandon our roofs?

0xmohit 8y ago
When I worked at Amazon we had to run around the warehouse, bc if our pick rate fell below a certain number we stopped getting paid. There were bottles & bins full of piss at odd points, bc you were penalised for toilet breaks. A co-worker attempted suicide on-site bc of the stress Source: https://twitter.com/OwennnThomas/status/1007957414577090560 https://twitter.com/OwennnThomas/status/1007957414577090560 If this isn't exploitation, I'm not sure what it would be.
- some_account 8y ago
  So why do people work there? There are other jobs I'm sure. Why support this treatment?
  - 0xmohit 8y ago
    Don't question a monopoly that is exploiting. Instead question those being exploited. Slow claps.
    - some_account 8y ago
      You can question Amazon all you want. As long as there are workers choosing their jobs, they are going to continue hiring people. It's like the meat packing industry... People die there in big numbers, but it just continues.
      - walterbell 8y ago
        There is a well known history of organized labor ("workers") improving working conditions via labor law.
      - andyidsinga 8y ago
        The meat packing industry has a rather interesting history around organized labor - and for a period of time - that organization improving pay and conditions. see: http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/250/meat-packing.html http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/250/meat-packing.html
    - cabaalis 8y ago
      This is a forum. Maybe things aren't always straightforward. It doesn't hurt to ask questions, it does hurt to silence them.
      - s73v3r_ 8y ago
        No, it does hurt to blame the victims.
        cabaalis 8y ago
        To state "It's off limits to ask the people involved why they continue to put themselves in such a horrible situation" is unscientific. Nobody is blaming anyone by asking a question.
        s73v3r_ 8y ago
        "Nobody is blaming anyone by asking a question." That's not true. Many times people use the "asking questions" as a ruse to do just that, and erode support for these people by saying it's their own fault for being exploited. And, quite frankly, I don't care one iota why they stay; there is exactly zero legitimate reason for them to be treated like that. Bezos should be so ashamed of himself that he would be unwilling to show his face in public.
    - Eire_Banshee 8y ago
      Is it not reasonable to do both? Like, amazon is exploitative, sure, but if its so bad that the employee is gonna kill themselves... maybe take a step back and re-evaluate if the job is worth your life?
  - TremendousJudge 8y ago
    getting a job isn't easy for everyone
    - some_account 8y ago
      Still, there are more choices than Amazon. I think it's just easier to blame Amazon than for people to make different choices.
      - prolikewh0a 8y ago
        You should blame the exploiter, not the person being exploited. Quit shilling for a company that treats most of their workforce like garbage.
        some_account 8y ago
        I'm from sweden, we don't have Amazon here and also our laws would not allow them to treat people badly. :)
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        knuththetruth 8y ago
        Well, then wish Swedish-style social democracy for us all, but maybe where the Marxists get to win out in the 70s.
        nojvek 8y ago
        This. America has a lot of humane integrity over time. We are no longer a nation for the people by the people. Countries like Sweden, Norway, Switzerland get it. You don’t plow over your citizens in the name of capitalism. But then, America has always been like that. A harsh truth of the human condition. A nation of people who have it because they were born to the right parents, and some who will toil their entire lives in questionable conditions because they got delt a bad card.
  - prolikewh0a 8y ago
    This is the easy way out of putting the blame where it actually should be. It's not easy for a lot of people to find jobs. It's not easy to go weeks without pay while you apply, wait for drug tests to come back, go through initial onboarding, and then wait 2-3 weeks for your first paycheck. The fault is not with the person being exploited, it's with the exploiters.
  - luddaite 8y ago
    Certainly the lack of jobs is partially due to all the businesses that Amazon puts out of business by leveraging all of their AWS money to out compete companies in unrelated markets?
  - hrktb 8y ago
    > Why do people work there ? That’s a great question and I’m sure the answer would be interesting. Assuming most people working there to be unreasonable or illogical would be unfair to then. > There are other jobs I’m sure Or is there ? What’s the criteria for “other job” ? How do they look for it, when, on what terms ? If that many people are just stuck there, I think it’s just not a “I just quit and go work for some other 9 to 5 job tomorrow” situation.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - thaumaturgy 8y ago
    Because our country has a number of a systemic issues right now that are all contributing to this situation. Let's step back and take a broader view at some of them. 1. College is expensive. Outside of the trades and a few other exceptions, a college degree used to be the best way for young people or unskilled laborers to get into higher-paying, more stable jobs. That math doesn't work out so well anymore, and there are continuing efforts to further increase the individual cost of a college degree. The percentage of college graduates in the U.S. has risen only a few points since the late 70s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_... 2. Lack of affordable health care is preventing a lot of people from opting out of the job market. If you have any kind of illness that requires regular treatment, or even if you're worried about getting bankrupted by an injury, then you're forced to look for employers offering company health insurance, even if the pay is crap. Amazon offers health insurance for their full-time employees: http://www.amazondelivers.jobs/about/benefits/ http://www.amazondelivers.jobs/about/benefits/. As long as there isn't a sensible, publicly-supported health care system in the US, companies will be able to exploit this to get and retain workers at a net discount. 3. Rising housing costs in many urban areas are further squeezing a lot of people. 4. Upside-down tax structures and other financial incentives (like the ones described in this article) are further moving a lot of money from the poor to the rich. These factors together are creating a de facto peasant class, and massive companies like Amazon are doing their level best to ensure that it stays that way. It is a really good deal for Amazon when they can work this system well enough to get the public to subsidize their employees' food costs (https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/04/21/1634237/many-amazon-warehouse-workers-are-on-food-stamps https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/04/21/1634237/many-amazon-...). Remember when the Silicon Valley big-wigs colluded to create a non-competitive job market for tech employees (http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/ http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/)? And out of that lawsuit, the tech workers got just $5k on average. That was a fantastic deal for the companies. So if you're a low-skilled worker, that doesn't leave you a lot of options on the table. You hear Amazon advertising (via some staffing firm) for warehouse positions in your area, it sounds like they'll hire anybody, you've heard the work conditions are bad but you figure it'll be temporary, and hey, health insurance, if you're lucky enough to be considered a full-time employee by the company. Fix health insurance, and more people would get into the trades. Fix education, and more people would get a degree. Fix housing, and people would be less desperate for crappy work. Fix regulation, and communities would get a lot wealthier. Unfortunately, none of that appears to be happening anytime soon, because there's a long line of people willing to argue against any of those things for one ideological reason or another, because the situation hasn't gotten quite bad enough, quite fast enough, for them to see anything wrong with it.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Because there aren't any jobs. And quite frankly, I honestly do not care if there are other jobs or not. That kind of treatment is completely unacceptable, and there is zero legitimate reason for Amazon to treat them that way.
- godzillabrennus 8y ago
  Crazy working conditions but the economy is roaring. These folks should be able to find better jobs doing truck driving or a variety of other blue collar work if they try. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/04/26/truck-driver-shortage-raises-prices/535870002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/04/26/truck-driver...
  - CodeCube 8y ago
    Not to be cliche, but you need to check your privilege here. Firstly, "these folks" would clearly have a better job if they could get one. You assume they're not trying ... or you assume it's as simple to find a job as it is for someone in our industry.
- wmfiv 8y ago
  I'm not saying their workplace is great. I'm just saying it's not directly tied to their success. They run large logistics warehouses. That's just hard physical labor where you're paid based on production. A great big portion of the food you eat is also picked under those conditions.
jimmy1 8y ago
Average roofer pay is 18.53, average amazon warehouse pay is 13.50. Good roofers in a hot market (currently) can get well over 20. There seems to be this bubble of thinking on HN that hard labor jobs don't pay well. The reality is they pay more than your average IT Support job. They are in demand because they can't find people willing to do the work. Another example is electricians. Some electrician companies are so desperate for skilled electricians that they are paying their retirees to come out of retirement and still allowing them to keep pension benefits. Another one is plumbing, etc.
- wmfiv 8y ago
  Absolutely. This is a sign that the system is working. Amazon doesn't have a monopoloy on jobs that allows it to pay dramatically under market for warehouse workers. Roofing especially in a hot climate is harder more demanding work than a warehouse job. And it pays considerably more.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    Huh? Roofing pays a premium because it is a crap entry level job that is hard to staff with reliable workers. The labor force is generally limited to younger able bodied men with transportation who are willing to do seasonal work. Amazon can recruit almost anyone to do picking and can get value even from the people whom they purge.
  - prolikewh0a 8y ago
    >Roofing especially in a hot climate is harder more demanding work than a warehouse job. Have any evidence of this or is it purely anecdotal? Many warehouses aren't air conditioned, especially Amazon ones. https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-2011-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-2011-9 > Amazon kept paramedics in the parking lot of the warehouse to treat employees who were fainting, suffering from dehydration, or exhaustion.
    - tfehring 8y ago
      Still anecdotal, but I’ve personally done roofing (for a portion of a summer) and worked in a warehouse (for a year and a half including 2 full summers). Roofing was worse, but not by that wide of a margin - just in terms of physical exhaustion, the warehouse work I did was much closer to roofing than to, say, retail or food service. Then again, while the warehouse I worked in had much less stringent metrics than Amazon’s, there were other factors that may have made it worse overall.
themagician 8y ago
Jobs can be unpleasant and still decent. 6 guys, 8 hours? Seems reasonable. The Amazon way would be 4 guys working 16 hours, but I’m rotating shifts so that you don’t have to pay OT, but knowing that the rotation is such that people won’t leave the job site. And when somone goes 1-minute over their 15 minute break they are fired and replaced on the spot. Amazon treats people as inanimate objects completely devoid of humanity.
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  This is so true. Amazon had people camping outside in tents in the UK
maym86 8y ago
> Should we all abandon our roofs? What are you talking about? You've moved the conversation away from a specific discussion of Amazon's practices to an anicdote. Unpleasant does not equal exploitative. Amazon is unpleasant and exploitative.
- dang 8y ago
  You've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. The site guidelines ask you not to do that (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). We actually ban accounts that won't stop using HN this way, because it's destructive of the intellectual curiosity this site exists for. It's fine to comment on a politicized topic, of course. What's not fine is to use HN primarily for political arguments—regardless of which politics you favor. If you'd review the rules and please fix this, we'd appreciate it. Also, please don't be uncivil in comments here, even when another comment is wrong or annoying. ("What are you talking about?" is the sort of nasty elbow that can and should just be edited out of a post.)
  - maym86 8y ago
    > You've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Not really. It's an ongoing discussion sparked by the number of articles that appear on the front page that are deeply related to the economics of the tech industry. It interests me. If genuine comments responding to articles from a particular and consistent point of view are unwanted I can stop. Everytime I log in something like this is at the top of the front page. Even now this is there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17804202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17804202 I understand your concerns and as it's not my platform fair enough. Will do better. > If you'd review the rules Will do > please don't be uncivil in comments here Fair and noted.
    - dang 8y ago
      I appreciate the polite response very much. The issue isn't this discussion or any one discussion, it's the pattern of using HN primarily for political arguments. The test here is that word 'primarily'. This is the only way we've found to draw a line that fairly balances the concerns: that on the one hand many on-topic stories have political aspects, but on the other hand political flamewars will burn everything up if you let them... so we can't let them. I've posted other explanations of our thinking about this, in case it's of interest: https://hn.algolia.com/?amp;sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20primarily%20line https://hn.algolia.com/?amp;sort=byDate&dateRange=all&am....
anoncoward111 8y ago
I make $34,000 a year sitting in an air conditioned office talking to people on the phone all day. When I see people doing manual labor, I am truly surprised at the abuse people are willing to take to pay their rent and feed their family
- nevir 8y ago
  Many of them don't have the options that you do.
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
    I'm reasonably certain that union construction workers make more than I do
- servercobra 8y ago
  What do you do?
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
    Customer service for a solar panel company. When somebody wants to receive a quote or more information or schedule an appointment for an estimate to sketch out the details of putting a solar panel system on their house, they get patched through to me. I love this job a lot more than my old sales jobs which involved needless travel, quotas, pressures, and lots of layoffs!
- edm0nd 8y ago
  I mean most hard labor and construction type jobs, while they are doing manual labor, they are making way more than you so the trade-off is most definitely worth it.
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
    Totally agree, but physical labor causes permanent damage. I would rather cut my expenses and make less doing easier work, but that's just me. Furthermore, the world needs physical work until robots replace us all!
8ytecoder 8y ago
The new prevailing sentiment is that concentration of corporations - Walmart, Amazon and other large chains - in pretty much every industry is what is keeping the wages depressed. It's mind-boggling even for economists that the unemployment rate is a mere 4% and yet the wages haven't appreciated meaningfully (there's only a marginal increase so far).
- redler 8y ago
  It appears that “full employment” means the lowermost slice of employed workers are sloshing around at the bottom of the barrel with a few giant monopsonist-type employers paying economically efficient wages — with enough “price discovery” in that “market” (cycling of subsistence workers with few options as individuals in and out of jobs) to make it balanced from the perspective of any one large employer.
geofft 8y ago
> There have always been and probably always will be unpleasant jobs. That "probably" is doing a lot of work there. I'd wager a bunch of us are on this website because we want to make changes in the world. We're not excited about computers because they pay well, we're excited about computers because they let us do cool things. We're not interested in disrupting entrenched industries because we are bored and want to amuse ourselves, we're interested in disrupting entrenched industries because we think we can do better. And when we say better that implies that we have a sense of good and bad and how to incrementally get closer to good. So what is the world we want to build? We, humanity collectively, control whether there will be unpleasant jobs. No god told us, "Thou shalt build roofs in 100-degree weather or pay the consequences." We control what jobs exist. There are people working on robotics, right? I can imagine a world where nobody works 8 hours in 100-degree weather on an asphalt roof any more. And whether I call that job "exploitative" is pretty irrelevant to whether we're getting closer to that world. There have always been unpleasant jobs, yes. Whether there will be is up to us.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

by wmfiv 8y ago

0xmohit 8y ago

When I worked at Amazon we had to run around the warehouse, bc if our pick rate fell below a certain number we stopped getting paid. There were bottles & bins full of piss at odd points, bc you were penalised for toilet breaks. A co-worker attempted suicide on-site bc of the stress Source: https://twitter.com/OwennnThomas/status/1007957414577090560 https://twitter.com/OwennnThomas/status/1007957414577090560 If this isn't exploitation, I'm not sure what it would be.

some_account 8y ago
So why do people work there? There are other jobs I'm sure. Why support this treatment?
- 0xmohit 8y ago
  Don't question a monopoly that is exploiting. Instead question those being exploited. Slow claps.
  - some_account 8y ago
    You can question Amazon all you want. As long as there are workers choosing their jobs, they are going to continue hiring people. It's like the meat packing industry... People die there in big numbers, but it just continues.
    - walterbell 8y ago
      There is a well known history of organized labor ("workers") improving working conditions via labor law.
    - andyidsinga 8y ago
      The meat packing industry has a rather interesting history around organized labor - and for a period of time - that organization improving pay and conditions. see: http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/250/meat-packing.html http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/250/meat-packing.html
  - cabaalis 8y ago
    This is a forum. Maybe things aren't always straightforward. It doesn't hurt to ask questions, it does hurt to silence them.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      No, it does hurt to blame the victims.
      - cabaalis 8y ago
        To state "It's off limits to ask the people involved why they continue to put themselves in such a horrible situation" is unscientific. Nobody is blaming anyone by asking a question.
        s73v3r_ 8y ago
        "Nobody is blaming anyone by asking a question." That's not true. Many times people use the "asking questions" as a ruse to do just that, and erode support for these people by saying it's their own fault for being exploited. And, quite frankly, I don't care one iota why they stay; there is exactly zero legitimate reason for them to be treated like that. Bezos should be so ashamed of himself that he would be unwilling to show his face in public.
  - Eire_Banshee 8y ago
    Is it not reasonable to do both? Like, amazon is exploitative, sure, but if its so bad that the employee is gonna kill themselves... maybe take a step back and re-evaluate if the job is worth your life?
- TremendousJudge 8y ago
  getting a job isn't easy for everyone
  - some_account 8y ago
    Still, there are more choices than Amazon. I think it's just easier to blame Amazon than for people to make different choices.
    - prolikewh0a 8y ago
      You should blame the exploiter, not the person being exploited. Quit shilling for a company that treats most of their workforce like garbage.
      - some_account 8y ago
        I'm from sweden, we don't have Amazon here and also our laws would not allow them to treat people badly. :)
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        knuththetruth 8y ago
        Well, then wish Swedish-style social democracy for us all, but maybe where the Marxists get to win out in the 70s.
        nojvek 8y ago
        This. America has a lot of humane integrity over time. We are no longer a nation for the people by the people. Countries like Sweden, Norway, Switzerland get it. You don’t plow over your citizens in the name of capitalism. But then, America has always been like that. A harsh truth of the human condition. A nation of people who have it because they were born to the right parents, and some who will toil their entire lives in questionable conditions because they got delt a bad card.
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  This is the easy way out of putting the blame where it actually should be. It's not easy for a lot of people to find jobs. It's not easy to go weeks without pay while you apply, wait for drug tests to come back, go through initial onboarding, and then wait 2-3 weeks for your first paycheck. The fault is not with the person being exploited, it's with the exploiters.
- luddaite 8y ago
  Certainly the lack of jobs is partially due to all the businesses that Amazon puts out of business by leveraging all of their AWS money to out compete companies in unrelated markets?
- hrktb 8y ago
  > Why do people work there ? That’s a great question and I’m sure the answer would be interesting. Assuming most people working there to be unreasonable or illogical would be unfair to then. > There are other jobs I’m sure Or is there ? What’s the criteria for “other job” ? How do they look for it, when, on what terms ? If that many people are just stuck there, I think it’s just not a “I just quit and go work for some other 9 to 5 job tomorrow” situation.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- thaumaturgy 8y ago
  Because our country has a number of a systemic issues right now that are all contributing to this situation. Let's step back and take a broader view at some of them. 1. College is expensive. Outside of the trades and a few other exceptions, a college degree used to be the best way for young people or unskilled laborers to get into higher-paying, more stable jobs. That math doesn't work out so well anymore, and there are continuing efforts to further increase the individual cost of a college degree. The percentage of college graduates in the U.S. has risen only a few points since the late 70s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_... 2. Lack of affordable health care is preventing a lot of people from opting out of the job market. If you have any kind of illness that requires regular treatment, or even if you're worried about getting bankrupted by an injury, then you're forced to look for employers offering company health insurance, even if the pay is crap. Amazon offers health insurance for their full-time employees: http://www.amazondelivers.jobs/about/benefits/ http://www.amazondelivers.jobs/about/benefits/. As long as there isn't a sensible, publicly-supported health care system in the US, companies will be able to exploit this to get and retain workers at a net discount. 3. Rising housing costs in many urban areas are further squeezing a lot of people. 4. Upside-down tax structures and other financial incentives (like the ones described in this article) are further moving a lot of money from the poor to the rich. These factors together are creating a de facto peasant class, and massive companies like Amazon are doing their level best to ensure that it stays that way. It is a really good deal for Amazon when they can work this system well enough to get the public to subsidize their employees' food costs (https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/04/21/1634237/many-amazon-warehouse-workers-are-on-food-stamps https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/04/21/1634237/many-amazon-...). Remember when the Silicon Valley big-wigs colluded to create a non-competitive job market for tech employees (http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/ http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/)? And out of that lawsuit, the tech workers got just $5k on average. That was a fantastic deal for the companies. So if you're a low-skilled worker, that doesn't leave you a lot of options on the table. You hear Amazon advertising (via some staffing firm) for warehouse positions in your area, it sounds like they'll hire anybody, you've heard the work conditions are bad but you figure it'll be temporary, and hey, health insurance, if you're lucky enough to be considered a full-time employee by the company. Fix health insurance, and more people would get into the trades. Fix education, and more people would get a degree. Fix housing, and people would be less desperate for crappy work. Fix regulation, and communities would get a lot wealthier. Unfortunately, none of that appears to be happening anytime soon, because there's a long line of people willing to argue against any of those things for one ideological reason or another, because the situation hasn't gotten quite bad enough, quite fast enough, for them to see anything wrong with it.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  Because there aren't any jobs. And quite frankly, I honestly do not care if there are other jobs or not. That kind of treatment is completely unacceptable, and there is zero legitimate reason for Amazon to treat them that way.
godzillabrennus 8y ago
Crazy working conditions but the economy is roaring. These folks should be able to find better jobs doing truck driving or a variety of other blue collar work if they try. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/04/26/truck-driver-shortage-raises-prices/535870002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/04/26/truck-driver...
- CodeCube 8y ago
  Not to be cliche, but you need to check your privilege here. Firstly, "these folks" would clearly have a better job if they could get one. You assume they're not trying ... or you assume it's as simple to find a job as it is for someone in our industry.
wmfiv 8y ago
I'm not saying their workplace is great. I'm just saying it's not directly tied to their success. They run large logistics warehouses. That's just hard physical labor where you're paid based on production. A great big portion of the food you eat is also picked under those conditions.

jimmy1 8y ago

Average roofer pay is 18.53, average amazon warehouse pay is 13.50. Good roofers in a hot market (currently) can get well over 20. There seems to be this bubble of thinking on HN that hard labor jobs don't pay well. The reality is they pay more than your average IT Support job. They are in demand because they can't find people willing to do the work. Another example is electricians. Some electrician companies are so desperate for skilled electricians that they are paying their retirees to come out of retirement and still allowing them to keep pension benefits. Another one is plumbing, etc.

wmfiv 8y ago
Absolutely. This is a sign that the system is working. Amazon doesn't have a monopoloy on jobs that allows it to pay dramatically under market for warehouse workers. Roofing especially in a hot climate is harder more demanding work than a warehouse job. And it pays considerably more.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Huh? Roofing pays a premium because it is a crap entry level job that is hard to staff with reliable workers. The labor force is generally limited to younger able bodied men with transportation who are willing to do seasonal work. Amazon can recruit almost anyone to do picking and can get value even from the people whom they purge.
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  >Roofing especially in a hot climate is harder more demanding work than a warehouse job. Have any evidence of this or is it purely anecdotal? Many warehouses aren't air conditioned, especially Amazon ones. https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-2011-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-2011-9 > Amazon kept paramedics in the parking lot of the warehouse to treat employees who were fainting, suffering from dehydration, or exhaustion.
  - tfehring 8y ago
    Still anecdotal, but I’ve personally done roofing (for a portion of a summer) and worked in a warehouse (for a year and a half including 2 full summers). Roofing was worse, but not by that wide of a margin - just in terms of physical exhaustion, the warehouse work I did was much closer to roofing than to, say, retail or food service. Then again, while the warehouse I worked in had much less stringent metrics than Amazon’s, there were other factors that may have made it worse overall.

themagician 8y ago

Jobs can be unpleasant and still decent. 6 guys, 8 hours? Seems reasonable. The Amazon way would be 4 guys working 16 hours, but I’m rotating shifts so that you don’t have to pay OT, but knowing that the rotation is such that people won’t leave the job site. And when somone goes 1-minute over their 15 minute break they are fired and replaced on the spot. Amazon treats people as inanimate objects completely devoid of humanity.

anoncoward111 8y ago
This is so true. Amazon had people camping outside in tents in the UK

maym86 8y ago

> Should we all abandon our roofs? What are you talking about? You've moved the conversation away from a specific discussion of Amazon's practices to an anicdote. Unpleasant does not equal exploitative. Amazon is unpleasant and exploitative.

dang 8y ago
You've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. The site guidelines ask you not to do that (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). We actually ban accounts that won't stop using HN this way, because it's destructive of the intellectual curiosity this site exists for. It's fine to comment on a politicized topic, of course. What's not fine is to use HN primarily for political arguments—regardless of which politics you favor. If you'd review the rules and please fix this, we'd appreciate it. Also, please don't be uncivil in comments here, even when another comment is wrong or annoying. ("What are you talking about?" is the sort of nasty elbow that can and should just be edited out of a post.)
- maym86 8y ago
  > You've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Not really. It's an ongoing discussion sparked by the number of articles that appear on the front page that are deeply related to the economics of the tech industry. It interests me. If genuine comments responding to articles from a particular and consistent point of view are unwanted I can stop. Everytime I log in something like this is at the top of the front page. Even now this is there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17804202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17804202 I understand your concerns and as it's not my platform fair enough. Will do better. > If you'd review the rules Will do > please don't be uncivil in comments here Fair and noted.
  - dang 8y ago
    I appreciate the polite response very much. The issue isn't this discussion or any one discussion, it's the pattern of using HN primarily for political arguments. The test here is that word 'primarily'. This is the only way we've found to draw a line that fairly balances the concerns: that on the one hand many on-topic stories have political aspects, but on the other hand political flamewars will burn everything up if you let them... so we can't let them. I've posted other explanations of our thinking about this, in case it's of interest: https://hn.algolia.com/?amp;sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20primarily%20line https://hn.algolia.com/?amp;sort=byDate&dateRange=all&am....

anoncoward111 8y ago

I make $34,000 a year sitting in an air conditioned office talking to people on the phone all day. When I see people doing manual labor, I am truly surprised at the abuse people are willing to take to pay their rent and feed their family

nevir 8y ago
Many of them don't have the options that you do.
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  I'm reasonably certain that union construction workers make more than I do
servercobra 8y ago
What do you do?
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  Customer service for a solar panel company. When somebody wants to receive a quote or more information or schedule an appointment for an estimate to sketch out the details of putting a solar panel system on their house, they get patched through to me. I love this job a lot more than my old sales jobs which involved needless travel, quotas, pressures, and lots of layoffs!
edm0nd 8y ago
I mean most hard labor and construction type jobs, while they are doing manual labor, they are making way more than you so the trade-off is most definitely worth it.
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  Totally agree, but physical labor causes permanent damage. I would rather cut my expenses and make less doing easier work, but that's just me. Furthermore, the world needs physical work until robots replace us all!

8ytecoder 8y ago

The new prevailing sentiment is that concentration of corporations - Walmart, Amazon and other large chains - in pretty much every industry is what is keeping the wages depressed. It's mind-boggling even for economists that the unemployment rate is a mere 4% and yet the wages haven't appreciated meaningfully (there's only a marginal increase so far).

redler 8y ago
It appears that “full employment” means the lowermost slice of employed workers are sloshing around at the bottom of the barrel with a few giant monopsonist-type employers paying economically efficient wages — with enough “price discovery” in that “market” (cycling of subsistence workers with few options as individuals in and out of jobs) to make it balanced from the perspective of any one large employer.

geofft 8y ago

> There have always been and probably always will be unpleasant jobs. That "probably" is doing a lot of work there. I'd wager a bunch of us are on this website because we want to make changes in the world. We're not excited about computers because they pay well, we're excited about computers because they let us do cool things. We're not interested in disrupting entrenched industries because we are bored and want to amuse ourselves, we're interested in disrupting entrenched industries because we think we can do better. And when we say better that implies that we have a sense of good and bad and how to incrementally get closer to good. So what is the world we want to build? We, humanity collectively, control whether there will be unpleasant jobs. No god told us, "Thou shalt build roofs in 100-degree weather or pay the consequences." We control what jobs exist. There are people working on robotics, right? I can imagine a world where nobody works 8 hours in 100-degree weather on an asphalt roof any more. And whether I call that job "exploitative" is pretty irrelevant to whether we're getting closer to that world. There have always been unpleasant jobs, yes. Whether there will be is up to us.

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