14 ms·

What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

432 points by pinewurst 8y ago

walrus01 8y ago
Well that's not creepy at all. Tweets read like they're written by a PR agency. Never known a near-minimum-wage warehouse worker who answers tweets with turns of phrase like "On the contrary..."
- beamatronic 8y ago
  How could any professional in this day and age think that this could possibly work?
  - zeusk 8y ago
    The cheapest bid agency that Amazon would hire, clearly.
    - slowmovintarget 8y ago
      That'd be chatbots, Bob.
      - kalleboo 8y ago
        For this use case, Mechanical Turk seems cheaper
  - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
    You should see the scale of similar manipulation efforts that exist on Reddit. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of accounts that completely overtake a sub to drive a certain viewpoint. Any decently intelligent person can see what’s going on but I’m afraid there is a large number of people who are non the wiser. I’ve seen this sort of social manipulation on a grand scale across numerous large online publications with yahoo news being the worst offender.
    - elp 8y ago
      Some of the posts I've seen here pushing serverless or AWS are not far off this.
- rectang 8y ago
  It's like they're all wearing the happy helmets from Ren and Stimpy's "Happy Happy Joy Joy". Are there similar PR initiatives within Amazon engineering aimed at us?
  - camtarn 8y ago
    From my experience - not particularly, but unless you work at AWS and get media training, Amazon engineers are heavily discouraged from discussing the company on social media. My contract also explicitly forbid me from talking about any technologies in use within the company, up to and including programming languages. That might just be an artifact of the time and place that I was hired, though, as the company definitely grew much more open over the years. I've been out of Amazon for nearly three years (after working there for eight) and I still find myself reflexively being nervous about what I say!
- Applejinx 8y ago
  I live in Vermont, running an open source Patreon project that isn't designed to maximize capital. I know lots and LOTS of minimum wage or near-minimum-age people, and a good selection of much wealthier people. Right now I'm substantially below minimum wage as a sole proprietor, but managing it. Obviously I cannot hire in these conditions, so I don't. I see NO correlation between that and intelligence, verbal proficiency, articulateness: indeed, if you're smart enough to recognize the obvious purpose of the exercise you'll self-edit until you sound even more like a PR agency, lest you have to return to picking boxes full-time rather than getting to compose tweets for part of your time. One caveat: if you're poor and desperate, your bandwidth will be taxed (see 'Scarcity: a talk for people too busy to attend talks'). That doesn't compromise people so badly that they appear unintelligent and uneducated, though, and if it's your job to seem glib and intelligent you'll work at it. tl:dr; do you seriously assert that poor people are too stupid to write and speak well? I sure hope not.
  - walrus01 8y ago
    No, what I was trying to say is that an average actual non astroturfing warehouse worker wouldn't answer questions like a trained PR lackey. Read the tweets, the sentence structure, phrasing and uniformity in writing styles between supposedly distinct individuals is obvious.
    - Applejinx 8y ago
      What do you think Amazon's requirements are for this paid position, and do you think they would be sloppy and tolerant of bad performance here and nowhere else? Anybody doing this is already a good speaker and writer, and understands what's expected of them. Otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to do it. Again, I know large numbers of poor people who are perfectly capable of this erudition. If you've got a masters in English Literature, it's probably this or Wal-Mart or death.
saudioger 8y ago
This is very clearly dirty.
Hysterisis 8y ago
For some reason I get a Hyperion vibe from these tweets.
- pas 8y ago
  Could you elaborate on this?
dmead 8y ago
This is really fascinating. I want to know about the culture of the person who authorized this. They seemed to be lacking essential cultural norms for north america. Some questions I'd start asking are: -Have they ever been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder or some type of high functioning autism? -Are they from a third world country? Do they lack social norms we'd typically associate with people's attitudes about working in a factory? -This this real life? It's such a damaged artifact of modern de-industrialization. I really need to know why this is a thing...
- Applejinx 8y ago
  I diagnose Amazon itself, as a corporate person, with borderline personality disorder :)
downrightmike 8y ago
Maybe they get a whole 5 minutepee break if they tweet when they clock in?
redleggedfrog 8y ago
If you're taking anything on twitter seriously, then there is a problem. There is no signal in that noise.
- Scoping_dindus 8y ago
  It's completely coincidental that its got a 22B mkt cap, you're so right. Just noise!
  - cognivore 8y ago
    Ah, I see you've learned quite well from them!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
praptak 8y ago
Do they engage in conversations that would make it possible to tell a human from a chatbot?
krapp 8y ago
>Their most frequent topics of conversation are how they get bathroom breaks, the pleasant temperature of the warehouses, the excellent benefits and suitable wages, friendly management and how the job isn’t monotonous or tiring at all. In other words, they took a list of everything everyone complains about, and just decided to refute them point by point in the most condescendingly Orwellian way possible, rather than fixing them, because "disagree and commit" and I guess "frugality uber alles." Sounds about like Amazon, yep.
- darawk 8y ago
  ...it sounds like they did fix them? People used to complain about not getting bathroom breaks and unpleasant temperatures. Either they're lying, or they did fix those things and are informing people of it.
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    > it sounds like they did fix them On what basis? All we have is PR talking points presented, deceptively, as genuine opinions of real employees. That doesn't seem like evidence.
    - danaris 8y ago
      Maybe the bots have infiltrated HN, too?
      - dang 8y ago
        Please don't go there, unless you have evidence. Internet discussions don't do well after this card is played. This is in the site guidelines btw: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - darawk 8y ago
      If you're accusing them of lying, that's fine. But what you claimed was that these are just talking points "instead of" fixing the issues. So, they are claiming they fixed the issues. Are you claiming they are lying about that?
contingencies 8y ago
One year in @PR. Prostituting my soul, perfecting narcissism, ethics isn't a word in my dictionary.
kizer 8y ago
They’re not chatbots - the replies are too specific and organic in some of the tweets I read. I’m guessing Amazon told these workers that someone would convey their general sentiments on their behalf. That or this is satire, I hope.
- thrownblown 8y ago
  i'm with satire, or counter marketeering
- jancsika 8y ago
  They could even source the sentiments through Mechanical Turk.
- bkor 8y ago
  My observation: The article doesn't say that it is automated, just that they're drones (meaning: always behaving the same way). I assume they hired a few people to do this (optionally through some other company). It seems like they got a few standard responses and they need to stick to that. Might be e.g. in Manilla or somewhere in India. Reasoning is that they really stay to the script. The responses are so similar, normally you'd try to tweak it more so it is more natural. I noticed for outsourced stuff they tend to stick more to the script no matter if it makes sense or not. It's up to the manager to notice that the something needs to be tweaked.
tomnipotent 8y ago
This is standard social media PR - fail to see what the issue is. Brand ambassadors that promote the business have been common for a very long time. Nothing to see here.
- DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
  Remember when we used to call them shills instead of “brand ambassadors?” Good times. Now we have this Brave New World PR doublespeak that reflects the dehumanizing nature of working on the floor at Amazon a bit too well.
  - dlgeek 8y ago
    The difference is a shill hides their affiliation. These accounts are all clearly marked as being from Amazon. How is it any different from the various $Airline_Cares accounts on twitter that reply to customer complaints about bad service?
    - jancsika 8y ago
      One of the "Ambassadors" responses from the article: > "I can safely say that none of MY ideas have panned out anywhere near what Jeff Bezos has accomplished." The most one can hope is that this is a bona fide Tweet from an employee who-- for whatever reason-- desires to self-deprecate in a completely voluntary, unremunerated defense of the company they work for during their off time. Because if this is a PR drone posting self-deprecating statements in the name of an actual employee that's pretty humiliating behavior.
- rectang 8y ago
  You're probably right. Maybe the distinction is that Amazon has gotten a lot of bad press about its warehouses so the cognitive dissonance felt by the observer is more pronounced.
heroprotagonist 8y ago
I wonder if the recruiters for these “totally optional roles” are the sort who would also provide helpful reminders that wearing 15 pieces of flair is just the bare minimum. > Look, we want you to express yourself, okay? Now if you feel that the bare minimum is enough, then okay. But some people choose to wear more and we encourage that, okay? You do want to express yourself, don't you? -- Office Space, 1999 I can almost feel the soul leeching sensation behind the forced cheerfulness. Though that could be a bit of projection if these are PR people pretending to be workers instead of workers acting as PR people. But it's still disturbing in a more direct way than news reports about workers peeing in bottles to help shave time to hit performance targets.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  On the upside, I recently learned that the actual restaurant chain that inspired that bit quietly did away with flair after the movie came out. /apropos of nothing
  - mtmail 8y ago
    That was TGI Friday's according to http://mentalfloss.com/article/61686/20-things-you-might-not-know-about-office-space http://mentalfloss.com/article/61686/20-things-you-might-not...
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  You seem very disturbed about a hypothetical situation you made up.
userbinator 8y ago
I'm not even disturbed. I'm just very puzzled that there are people who would think these messages were anything but pure PR propaganda. It's so blatantly obvious to me. ...and it might just be my unfamiliarity, but "FC Ambassador" just reminds me of football more than anything else. That part of their branding isn't working, if they're trying to get into the minds of people who aren't familiar with the company.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  You’d be surprised what people will believe. I once commanded 11m Facebook fans. It was surprisingly easy to convince a certain percentage of people to do whatever you tell them to do. Some people are so gullible blind and stupid that it makes you lose some faith in humanity when you see how easily manipulated they can be.
- fcthrowaway 8y ago
  "FC Ambassador" is Amazon jargon. An FC is a fulfillment center, and an ambassador is an L1 associate who's gone through training for coaching new hires... or something like that. They don't really have added responsibilities where I am. I've heard the role is a bigger deal in distribution centers.
FC_Associate 8y ago
These accounts certainly seem like they are being directed or encouraged by corporate. I know quite a few of the ambassadors at the warehouse where I work and I don't think any of them would post these kind of responses on Twitter without some kind of direction from above. Also, in case there is confusion with the term "ambassador", from my understanding this is mostly an internal title for associates who lead some training sessions for new hires. It doesn't come with any pay or benefit increases, it's just a nice thing to do if you like training new hires and want an occasional break from your normal duties. These aren't really meant to be outward facing brand ambassadors, at least that's been my understanding. Disclosure: I work at an Amazon warehouse.
- jancsika 8y ago
  Someone above wrote this: > People get bathroom breaks, but those count against your rate, and people do sometimes get written up for taking them, although that's as much a matter of Amazon encouraging ruthlessness in management as anything. I know of one anecdotal story of a worker who was apparently written up for the time it took them to clean up after their own nosebleed. Does this ring true to you?
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
    I'm so glad I canceled my Amazon membership. I don't want anyone working in these conditions. My items can wait a few days to ship
    - tjr225 8y ago
      Last year, for some reason, I was so emotionally invested in an interview at Amazon I was researching their leadership principles and such like some sort of bootlicking rube. I'm very glad I didn't get that job. Whatever Jeff Bezos' vision is matters not to me, and I can't wait until America decides to put community and quality before convenience and cheapness (I may wait forever, I know). I suppose the reason I was so invested was the idea that if I had that job on my resume, I could get a job anywhere. Doesn't seem like a good reason to do something.
anonytrary 8y ago
I don't think the ground workers at Amazon: 1. Care about tweeting about their company. 2. Talk like that. However, I think this could be real if: 1. Amazon has some incentive program that basically allows workers to take on a "marketing assignment" for some sort of bonus. If so, how is this different than contriving good reviews about your restaurant on Yelp? 2. Amazon has developed or is paying for third party software that lets their PR people quickly manage and create activity on multiple Twitter accounts from a central interface.
- FC_Associate 8y ago
  1. Care about tweeting about their company. I feel the same way. I know a lot of warehouse associates are active on some of the Amazon Instagram pages, but that's mostly just silly pictures and activities. I don't think anyone would post such detailed responses on their own when they aren't being paid.
- krapp 8y ago
  >Amazon has some incentive program that basically allows workers to take on a "marketing assignment" for some sort of bonus. I haven't heard of any such program, but if it existed, I guarantee Amazon wouldn't offer a bonus for it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - fcthrowaway 8y ago
    They wouldn't offer a bonus. They'd offer entry into a drawing for an Amazon gift card. But I haven't heard of any such program either, nor of any attempt to get us to run PR for them, other than occasionally sending out emails asking us to review Amazon on Glassdoor. (IME, most FC associates never check their Amazon email accounts, so they wouldn't see that.)
    - FC_Associate 8y ago
      For some reason my station never even offers Amazon gift cards during contests, it's usually Subway, Starbucks, Target, or occasionally a Visa prepaid card. And I'm fairly certain most associates at my station aren't even aware they have an @amazon email address so they definitely aren't checking it. Nice to see another L1 around here.
chriselles 8y ago
In Amazon’s early days(pre Twitter obviously) there were plenty of warehouse workers who could have written far better tweets that sound less Borg Collective-y
- forapurpose 8y ago
  What do you mean? Are you saying that Amazon warehouse employees were treated better back then? What makes you say that?
  - chriselles 8y ago
    It was pretty hard(physically) back then, even before simple tilt tray sortation equipment. Everything was manual. And zero air conditioning in the first early generation distribution(now fulfilment) centres. Hiring, even in distribution(fulfilment) operations, had quite a high hiring bar. This was done to help develop the near future Human Resources capacity of the company. So we had an inordinately high % of Amazon Associate stock pickers with undergraduate and graduate degrees. Quite an eclectic and quirky bunch of quite over educated folks doing a lot of manual labor trying to get the orders out the door and not drown in them. It was a much much smaller company back then. We were just trying to survive the never ending need to get customer orders out te door and “average up” with each new hire. Intellectual capacity per person was quite high, but our operational execution would be far lower than what is achieved today. We were failing/learning as we were going. More exploration, less exploitation(in the process sense). Exploitation as an employee wasn’t a problem in the early days from my perspective. We all knew what we were getting into. 100% commitment and acting like an owner. As headcount exploded, individual understanding of Amazon’s mission, ethos, etc declined as it become more job-like, and less purposeful. Growth rate compelled hiring more specialists and less multi-purpose generalists....who could write non Borg Collective like Tweets. I guess what I’m saying is the culture in the early days was more like a pirate ship full of idiosyncratic individualist buccaneers than Borg.
bhauer 8y ago
I'm fairly certain these are satire and not actually affiliated with Amazon at all. Just the bio alone seems to give it away: https://twitter.com/fc_ambassador/with_replies https://twitter.com/fc_ambassador/with_replies Maybe only this one is satire? Hard to tell which level of galaxy brain this is.
- kilovoltaire 8y ago
  That one certainly seems like satire, but the ones in the article do not, e.g. https://twitter.com/AmazonFCCarol https://twitter.com/AmazonFCCarol
- supermdguy 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure that one's satire, probably in response to this article. I looked at a few others in the search results, and they didn't seem to be satire.
- brandoncordell 8y ago
  They've updated the article and Amazon has acknowledged these employees are getting paid for this.
forapurpose 8y ago
People talk about blockchain and ML/AI as the revolutionary technologies of the day, but I think public manipulation via the Internet (social media at least, probably more) may turn out to be more significant. Is it real and does it work? Undoubtedly, there are people who believe it works and invest a lot of resources in it, from businesses to political movements to governments (Russia and China, for example). We can see that disinformation can be effectively spread, and it seems hatred and other things as well. Arguably, we can see it to a degree in Facebook's and Google's (and others') valuations. We discuss it, from a different perspective, on HN regularly. But what are the technical details of this new tool: In what situations does it work and in what does it not? How powerful is it? How much does it cost? How does it work on a detailed level? What are the key components of this machine? Is anyone talking - we know it's done widely, so it seems that information about this technology should be available. (I'm not asking for speculation - we have heard plenty of that - I'm looking for actual technical knowledge.) Another way of looking at it: Perhaps it's analogous to the Creel Commission - innovations in manipulation via a new communication technology. For example, how did Amazon and others turn around Seattle's new tax so quickly and effectively? IIRC, it was widely supported and then public opinion reversed itself in a matter of months.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  I believe Snowden shined a light at some of the disinformation programs that are operated by the govt. I know for a fact these types of campaigns exist on a regular basis on a grand scale.
  - pdkl95 8y ago
    https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
erkose 8y ago
This isn't limited to Amazon and Twitter. I see similar "pleasantries" posted about Netflix on Reddit.
Amabot1902 8y ago
Of late Amazon has been working hard internally to improve its company image. There are frequent emails about reviewing Amazon on glass door, they also provide images of the Amazon smiley and encourage employees to use this as a background on their social media profiles. They encourage employees to follow and retweet the Amazon news handle on Twitter. So this one does not seem organic and is part of Amazon drive to improve the image about working culture, definitely pr.
agwa 8y ago
Let's say you're a company with a serious PR problem about the working conditions in your warehouses. You set up 15 Twitter accounts claiming to be employees of your warehouses. You make sure the accounts are laughably bad at concealing the fact that they are shills, with cookie-cutter bios and responses that are obviously canned talking points. This ensures that the accounts are discovered and written up by various publications, and the articles widely shared. The articles, while laughing at how transparently phony the accounts are, inevitably mention that you are now offering tours of your warehouses (which makes you sound trustworthy since you're not hiding anything), and embed the Tweets that say you pay more than other companies in your industry and offer medical benefits. (Since this information is falsifiable (capable of being proven false, but not necessarily false) it's credible even though it's coming from a shill account.) You've probably not made anyone's opinion of you worse (you look more stupid than malevolent), but you've gotten your message in front of eyeballs and it might make some people think better of you.
- jakobegger 8y ago
  It's amazing how well this works despite being obvious propaganda. I felt my own opinion on Amazon Fullfilment Centers change as I read the article. One thing that makes propaganda like this so effective is that journalists generally do not bother to verify any propaganda claims (eg. does Amazon really pay 30% more?), so even if they write articles making fun of you they still repeat your message.
  - jancsika 8y ago
    Can you explain a little about what you felt changing in your opinion here? What I got out of it was that Amazon had previously been dehumanizing their workers to the point that the PR drones have to now overtly brag about complying with OSHA laws.
    - adventured 8y ago
      The questions it prompts are pretty straight forward. Does Amazon actually pay ~30% better now than their competitors (or anything close to that)? Do they offer dental, vision and healthcare coverage for all employees? If those things are true, then I think better of Amazon because of it. I would have guessed none of those things were true otherwise. The media and essentially all comments online proclaim that Amazon employees are being tortured horrifically on a daily basis and paid absolute bottom tier wages across the board. Those articles and opinions have, to one degree or another, tilted my opinion of Amazon in a negative manner. Can anyone here speak to if those positive things are true and or mostly true? I have no idea. I'd think better of Amazon if they were.
floatingatoll 8y ago
If someone wanted to prove how social networks can be used to manipulate the stock market, this would be an excellent mechanism for doing so. Set up a bunch of droid bots for your competitor and then watch the press eat them alive.
fipple 8y ago
What would be really classic is if this was funded by Microsoft to sicken Amazon’s white collar workforce and make them more easily poachable.
eksemplar 8y ago
Had anyone ever done a piece of investigative journalism on the actual conditions at Amazon? A company that big will have some terrible managers, and the fact that it’s not discovering those easily, is problematic, but that doesn’t mean the entire company is rotten. I’m a manager in a Scandinavian municipality, and because I work with lean and efficiency I get to see all sides of our operation. I’ve seen departments run so badly that employees were crying every day, and it took HR a year to fix it. I’ve seen departments where sleeping with the boss was the main road to a pay-raise. Hell one of our senior managers who sleeps with employees at the Christmas party, still works for us because nobody wants to step up in public. Some departments have 30% sickleave while others have 2%. That doesn’t mean the overall working conditions are bad at the municipality. In fact we score 9/10 in employment satisfaction. This in itself is a bit of a problem though, because it’s higher than it should be, but that’s another story. when you employ hundreds of thousands, you’re bound to have some really bad stories among them. Amazon may be all bad, and I could easily have missed the story that actually did the research, but I simply haven’t seen one.
- alxlaz 8y ago
  Thing is, all those department managers -- the good ones and the bad ones -- are working under the same hierarchy and, eventually, under the same people. When there's just one or two isolated cases of pricks who are quickly booted, that's an accident, but when this is business as usual, it's company culture. Every department is one promotion, lateral move, sabbatical or resignation away from being ran by a maniac. So there's no solace in the idea that well, as long as you're in the right team, it's pretty good. It's as if all of it were rotten. Besides, this has made it to the press more than once, so it's not like even the most disconnected senior management team wouldn't know about it. It's known, it's been known for years, and since nothing appears to have happened for years, it's a pretty safe bet that this is just how the company is ran. That's the kind of rot that spreads easily.
- keithwinstein 8y ago
  > Had anyone ever done a piece of investigative journalism on the actual conditions at Amazon? Sure, see https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-... for one example.
sidcool 8y ago
It has been proven time and again that if a company is doing well financially, their internal people policies are not paid attention to. All the people centric PR that companies dish out is simply another strategy to make more money without employee revolt. Having said this, it's not completely company's fault. The financial system judges companies solely on their profits and future outlook, not employee happiness and well being.
Moodles 8y ago
My brother actually worked in an Amazon warehouse for awhile and indeed it sounds like a dreadful work environment (although I am comparatively spoiled in software engineering and my brother hasn’t actually worked in similar jobs in warehouses for other companies, so it’s hard to judge from his experience alone if it’s an Amazon thing or just these kinds of jobs in general). However (and I’m bracing for impact here), I don’t quite understand why everyone hates on Amazon that much for this. They don’t force anyone to work there. Indeed my brother found a new job after two years. It’s a bit like getting mad at San Francisco landlords for charging so much: you can get mad at them, but it’s really our fault for agreeing to pay. Or people getting mad at how much athletes get paid. They get paid a lot because we agree we pay to watch them. Amazon have shit working conditions because people agree to work there for what they pay. All of these things are literally just trades. If we don’t like it, don’t trade with them.
- sireat 8y ago
  The answer lies in unequal bargaining power, public shaming/awareness is the best we can do. There's the added irony of Mr. Bezos publicly the richest man in the world having his workers hold their pee. Amazon will not care about its least protected workers until Amazon feels the backlash in lowered sales. If your locality has Amazon warehouse as the largest employer your options are quite limited. It is similar to having a coal mine in 19th century(or recycling center in 21st century China) being the largest employer. Nice to have a job at first, but black lung is not so nice after a while. The conditions do not have to be that bad, Costco has proven that. Other FAANGs get less flack in this regard because they outsource all the menial/routine jobs(Facebook and Google outsource a lot of horrible MTurk like jobs) and they do not need as many of them. PS I had 2 friends who worked at the Amazon UK Warehouse a few years back. They only lasted 6 months before the repetitive injuries took their toll. And it was pretty much impossible to have a day off.
  - Moodles 8y ago
    > If your locality has Amazon warehouse as the largest employer your options are quite limited. As the only employer, right? (Of the kind that doesn't ask for much different qualifications ofc.) Not largest. And in practice I'm skeptical of how often this is the really case. My brother isn't particularly specifically qualified in any trade but even he had options once he started working. And even then in this hypothetical town where Amazon is the only employer, you could say well, of all the rich companies at least Amazon is giving jobs to people. What's everyone else doing? Aren't they more morally culpable? Does any company even owe anyone a job anyways? It seems to me that the government should do more to help these people have more of a fighting chance of bargaining in the world by training them in schools, etc. > Other FAANGs get less flack in this regard because they outsource all the menial/routine jobs(Facebook and Google outsource a lot of horrible MTurk like jobs) > Amazon will not care about its least protected workers until Amazon feels the backlash in lowered sales. Truth.
regul8 8y ago
Ok, so who’s pointing a gun at anyone’s head and saying you HAVE TO WORK at an Amazon fulfillment center? This isn’t slavery, it’s free will. Slavery, at least in civilized countries, ended CENTURIES ago! I could delve deeper into the psychology that leads to feelings of entrapment, but I won’t. As humans, we need to get over ourselves. Work is hard. Life is hard. But it can be rewarding too, so long as you stop playing the victim.
- somebodythere 8y ago
  Workers are allowed to criticize and push back against poor working conditions. That's how the labor market is supposed to work. If workers are just expected to sit there and take what is given, then capital holds all the cards.
- bkor 8y ago
  > Work is hard. Life is hard. Why not ensure work isn't too hard, nor life, nor going to the doctor. And then not just for you, but for everyone. > But it can be rewarding too, so long as you stop playing the victim. That's blaming people for the situation they are in without knowing what caused it. Maybe the causes should be addressed.
- bgie 8y ago
  Economic freedom only starts at middle class and above. (Like when your family can risk $300.000 for your online book store) For the poor, you are free to choose your boss (and agree to obey thus sign away your freedom) or sink deeper into poverty and eventually starve to death... Though there is no gun involved, I would not call this freedom. But a kind of freedom which (thankfully) still exists is the freedom to reach out to others. So why would you oppose people that use their freedom to push back against obvious mistreatment (in this case by spreading the word)?
EasyTiger_ 8y ago
> I can safely say that none of MY ideas have panned out anywhere near what Jeff Bezos has accomplished. I am more than happy, though, to continue working here, at BFI4, in WA. I receive a (more than fair) wage and work with some really good people. Making history, every day. Blink twice if you need help
- flattone 8y ago
  Is BTIYNH code for "conform, they're watching. We need to get out of here."
- the_af 8y ago
  > "Dear Lisa - As I write this, I am very sad. My ideas have not panned out LIKE THOSE OF MIGHTY JEFF BEZOS, WHO ALSO PAYS US VERY WELL. Sincerely, WAREHOUSE WORKER"
Applejinx 8y ago
Shit, if I was an Amazon warehouse worker and had the chance to get paid the same except SOME of my workload was sitting down and shilling for Amazon on twitter, I would jump (well, sit) at the chance. It's a different kind of demanding, more like being a commercial writer, probably more open to people who are damn good commercial writers and happen to be working as a picker in an Amazon warehouse. It'd be like getting paid as a picker but being paid to have breaks and worker rights. I don't think it's illegal to do this, but it is as manipulative as it's possible to be. Therefore that's probably just what's happening there: if you can write and shill effectively on Twitter there's a chance that you get to do that and pretend to yourself that it's a break or rest period. Very Amazonian.
- krapp 8y ago
  >Shit, if I was an Amazon warehouse worker and had the chance to get paid the same except SOME of my workload was sitting down and shilling for Amazon on twitter, I would jump (well, sit) at the chance. They probably wouldn't let you sit down, unless you were shilling on your lunch break. Amazon has a policy against their warehouse workers sitting down while on the job, not even HR is allowed to sit when they're staffing the front. You can squat though, and I've tried to get around it by sitting seiza.
  - nasredin 8y ago
    >>>Seiza is the Japanese term for one of the traditional formal ways of sitting in Japan I am surprised there's no workplace shootings in Amazon warehouses a la USPS.
    - mrguyorama 8y ago
      There's not enough time
- saudioger 8y ago
  There's no way they're actually writing this stuff. At best they're real employees allowing a company to tweet on their behalf.
quickoats 8y ago
Title missing verb. Statement with a question mark?
prolikewh0a 8y ago
Why aren't these being banned from Twitter as "inauthentic"? They're clearly propaganda tools and are coordinated disinformation campaigns. Are there two sets of rules here?
shadowtree 8y ago
And they say AI will not destroy jobs. Automated astro turfing and PR. Cutting out the middle-man, going straight from sender to consumer. No need for "news".
_zachs 8y ago
I'm not an Amazon shill, look at my post history. I don't understand all of this press. If you don't like your job working at Amazon, quit. If the conditions are terrible, release proof to the public, so other people don't even start working there. Wash, rinse, repeat, and Amazon will either change the supposed working conditions or hopefully fail. Why do we need so much press on both sides for such a non-issue?
- vkou 8y ago
  Because the job of the press is disseminating this proof to the public. Shouting into a void doesn't actually get you anywhere.
- brynjolf 8y ago
  It shows you are a product of the valley. Some people. Can't just quit their job, if they do their lives implode and does so fast.
- nickthemagicman 8y ago
  That's so bougouis of you. Believe it or not most people dont work jobs just for kicks. It's their survival. And they can't just get job training to get a new job because they don't have the time or money. The python of capitalism has cinched itself around their neck. This is like 50% of America too believe it or not.
- derptron 8y ago
  "Just get a new job!" Said the software engineer.
ggm 8y ago
1) did Amazon Australia use an intermediate labour hire agency or directly employ it's new warehouse workers. And, how does this compare to ICT staff. 2) does or does not bezos oppose collective bargaining and unions? 3) is it true that German and possibly Italian state and federal labour laws were successfully used to secure improved working conditions including the right to collective bargaining? 4) has Amazon at any time, including the present used "fire the bottom two" forms of ranked performance management?

432 points by pinewurst 8y ago

Well that's not creepy at all. Tweets read like they're written by a PR agency. Never known a near-minimum-wage warehouse worker who answers tweets with turns of phrase like "On the contrary..."

beamatronic 8y ago
How could any professional in this day and age think that this could possibly work?
- zeusk 8y ago
  The cheapest bid agency that Amazon would hire, clearly.
  - slowmovintarget 8y ago
    That'd be chatbots, Bob.
    - kalleboo 8y ago
      For this use case, Mechanical Turk seems cheaper
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  You should see the scale of similar manipulation efforts that exist on Reddit. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of accounts that completely overtake a sub to drive a certain viewpoint. Any decently intelligent person can see what’s going on but I’m afraid there is a large number of people who are non the wiser. I’ve seen this sort of social manipulation on a grand scale across numerous large online publications with yahoo news being the worst offender.
  - elp 8y ago
    Some of the posts I've seen here pushing serverless or AWS are not far off this.
rectang 8y ago
It's like they're all wearing the happy helmets from Ren and Stimpy's "Happy Happy Joy Joy". Are there similar PR initiatives within Amazon engineering aimed at us?
- camtarn 8y ago
  From my experience - not particularly, but unless you work at AWS and get media training, Amazon engineers are heavily discouraged from discussing the company on social media. My contract also explicitly forbid me from talking about any technologies in use within the company, up to and including programming languages. That might just be an artifact of the time and place that I was hired, though, as the company definitely grew much more open over the years. I've been out of Amazon for nearly three years (after working there for eight) and I still find myself reflexively being nervous about what I say!
Applejinx 8y ago
I live in Vermont, running an open source Patreon project that isn't designed to maximize capital. I know lots and LOTS of minimum wage or near-minimum-age people, and a good selection of much wealthier people. Right now I'm substantially below minimum wage as a sole proprietor, but managing it. Obviously I cannot hire in these conditions, so I don't. I see NO correlation between that and intelligence, verbal proficiency, articulateness: indeed, if you're smart enough to recognize the obvious purpose of the exercise you'll self-edit until you sound even more like a PR agency, lest you have to return to picking boxes full-time rather than getting to compose tweets for part of your time. One caveat: if you're poor and desperate, your bandwidth will be taxed (see 'Scarcity: a talk for people too busy to attend talks'). That doesn't compromise people so badly that they appear unintelligent and uneducated, though, and if it's your job to seem glib and intelligent you'll work at it. tl:dr; do you seriously assert that poor people are too stupid to write and speak well? I sure hope not.
- walrus01 8y ago
  No, what I was trying to say is that an average actual non astroturfing warehouse worker wouldn't answer questions like a trained PR lackey. Read the tweets, the sentence structure, phrasing and uniformity in writing styles between supposedly distinct individuals is obvious.
  - Applejinx 8y ago
    What do you think Amazon's requirements are for this paid position, and do you think they would be sloppy and tolerant of bad performance here and nowhere else? Anybody doing this is already a good speaker and writer, and understands what's expected of them. Otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to do it. Again, I know large numbers of poor people who are perfectly capable of this erudition. If you've got a masters in English Literature, it's probably this or Wal-Mart or death.

saudioger 8y ago

This is very clearly dirty.

Hysterisis 8y ago

For some reason I get a Hyperion vibe from these tweets.

pas 8y ago
Could you elaborate on this?

dmead 8y ago

This is really fascinating. I want to know about the culture of the person who authorized this. They seemed to be lacking essential cultural norms for north america. Some questions I'd start asking are: -Have they ever been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder or some type of high functioning autism? -Are they from a third world country? Do they lack social norms we'd typically associate with people's attitudes about working in a factory? -This this real life? It's such a damaged artifact of modern de-industrialization. I really need to know why this is a thing...

Applejinx 8y ago
I diagnose Amazon itself, as a corporate person, with borderline personality disorder :)

downrightmike 8y ago

Maybe they get a whole 5 minutepee break if they tweet when they clock in?

redleggedfrog 8y ago

If you're taking anything on twitter seriously, then there is a problem. There is no signal in that noise.

Scoping_dindus 8y ago
It's completely coincidental that its got a 22B mkt cap, you're so right. Just noise!
- cognivore 8y ago
  Ah, I see you've learned quite well from them!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

praptak 8y ago

Do they engage in conversations that would make it possible to tell a human from a chatbot?

krapp 8y ago

>Their most frequent topics of conversation are how they get bathroom breaks, the pleasant temperature of the warehouses, the excellent benefits and suitable wages, friendly management and how the job isn’t monotonous or tiring at all. In other words, they took a list of everything everyone complains about, and just decided to refute them point by point in the most condescendingly Orwellian way possible, rather than fixing them, because "disagree and commit" and I guess "frugality uber alles." Sounds about like Amazon, yep.

darawk 8y ago
...it sounds like they did fix them? People used to complain about not getting bathroom breaks and unpleasant temperatures. Either they're lying, or they did fix those things and are informing people of it.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > it sounds like they did fix them On what basis? All we have is PR talking points presented, deceptively, as genuine opinions of real employees. That doesn't seem like evidence.
  - danaris 8y ago
    Maybe the bots have infiltrated HN, too?
    - dang 8y ago
      Please don't go there, unless you have evidence. Internet discussions don't do well after this card is played. This is in the site guidelines btw: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - darawk 8y ago
    If you're accusing them of lying, that's fine. But what you claimed was that these are just talking points "instead of" fixing the issues. So, they are claiming they fixed the issues. Are you claiming they are lying about that?

contingencies 8y ago

One year in @PR. Prostituting my soul, perfecting narcissism, ethics isn't a word in my dictionary.

kizer 8y ago

They’re not chatbots - the replies are too specific and organic in some of the tweets I read. I’m guessing Amazon told these workers that someone would convey their general sentiments on their behalf. That or this is satire, I hope.

thrownblown 8y ago
i'm with satire, or counter marketeering
jancsika 8y ago
They could even source the sentiments through Mechanical Turk.
bkor 8y ago
My observation: The article doesn't say that it is automated, just that they're drones (meaning: always behaving the same way). I assume they hired a few people to do this (optionally through some other company). It seems like they got a few standard responses and they need to stick to that. Might be e.g. in Manilla or somewhere in India. Reasoning is that they really stay to the script. The responses are so similar, normally you'd try to tweak it more so it is more natural. I noticed for outsourced stuff they tend to stick more to the script no matter if it makes sense or not. It's up to the manager to notice that the something needs to be tweaked.

tomnipotent 8y ago

This is standard social media PR - fail to see what the issue is. Brand ambassadors that promote the business have been common for a very long time. Nothing to see here.

DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
Remember when we used to call them shills instead of “brand ambassadors?” Good times. Now we have this Brave New World PR doublespeak that reflects the dehumanizing nature of working on the floor at Amazon a bit too well.
- dlgeek 8y ago
  The difference is a shill hides their affiliation. These accounts are all clearly marked as being from Amazon. How is it any different from the various $Airline_Cares accounts on twitter that reply to customer complaints about bad service?
  - jancsika 8y ago
    One of the "Ambassadors" responses from the article: > "I can safely say that none of MY ideas have panned out anywhere near what Jeff Bezos has accomplished." The most one can hope is that this is a bona fide Tweet from an employee who-- for whatever reason-- desires to self-deprecate in a completely voluntary, unremunerated defense of the company they work for during their off time. Because if this is a PR drone posting self-deprecating statements in the name of an actual employee that's pretty humiliating behavior.
rectang 8y ago
You're probably right. Maybe the distinction is that Amazon has gotten a lot of bad press about its warehouses so the cognitive dissonance felt by the observer is more pronounced.

heroprotagonist 8y ago

I wonder if the recruiters for these “totally optional roles” are the sort who would also provide helpful reminders that wearing 15 pieces of flair is just the bare minimum. > Look, we want you to express yourself, okay? Now if you feel that the bare minimum is enough, then okay. But some people choose to wear more and we encourage that, okay? You do want to express yourself, don't you? -- Office Space, 1999 I can almost feel the soul leeching sensation behind the forced cheerfulness. Though that could be a bit of projection if these are PR people pretending to be workers instead of workers acting as PR people. But it's still disturbing in a more direct way than news reports about workers peeing in bottles to help shave time to hit performance targets.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
On the upside, I recently learned that the actual restaurant chain that inspired that bit quietly did away with flair after the movie came out. /apropos of nothing
- mtmail 8y ago
  That was TGI Friday's according to http://mentalfloss.com/article/61686/20-things-you-might-not-know-about-office-space http://mentalfloss.com/article/61686/20-things-you-might-not...
erikpukinskis 8y ago
You seem very disturbed about a hypothetical situation you made up.

userbinator 8y ago

I'm not even disturbed. I'm just very puzzled that there are people who would think these messages were anything but pure PR propaganda. It's so blatantly obvious to me. ...and it might just be my unfamiliarity, but "FC Ambassador" just reminds me of football more than anything else. That part of their branding isn't working, if they're trying to get into the minds of people who aren't familiar with the company.

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
You’d be surprised what people will believe. I once commanded 11m Facebook fans. It was surprisingly easy to convince a certain percentage of people to do whatever you tell them to do. Some people are so gullible blind and stupid that it makes you lose some faith in humanity when you see how easily manipulated they can be.
fcthrowaway 8y ago
"FC Ambassador" is Amazon jargon. An FC is a fulfillment center, and an ambassador is an L1 associate who's gone through training for coaching new hires... or something like that. They don't really have added responsibilities where I am. I've heard the role is a bigger deal in distribution centers.

FC_Associate 8y ago

These accounts certainly seem like they are being directed or encouraged by corporate. I know quite a few of the ambassadors at the warehouse where I work and I don't think any of them would post these kind of responses on Twitter without some kind of direction from above. Also, in case there is confusion with the term "ambassador", from my understanding this is mostly an internal title for associates who lead some training sessions for new hires. It doesn't come with any pay or benefit increases, it's just a nice thing to do if you like training new hires and want an occasional break from your normal duties. These aren't really meant to be outward facing brand ambassadors, at least that's been my understanding. Disclosure: I work at an Amazon warehouse.

jancsika 8y ago
Someone above wrote this: > People get bathroom breaks, but those count against your rate, and people do sometimes get written up for taking them, although that's as much a matter of Amazon encouraging ruthlessness in management as anything. I know of one anecdotal story of a worker who was apparently written up for the time it took them to clean up after their own nosebleed. Does this ring true to you?
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  I'm so glad I canceled my Amazon membership. I don't want anyone working in these conditions. My items can wait a few days to ship
  - tjr225 8y ago
    Last year, for some reason, I was so emotionally invested in an interview at Amazon I was researching their leadership principles and such like some sort of bootlicking rube. I'm very glad I didn't get that job. Whatever Jeff Bezos' vision is matters not to me, and I can't wait until America decides to put community and quality before convenience and cheapness (I may wait forever, I know). I suppose the reason I was so invested was the idea that if I had that job on my resume, I could get a job anywhere. Doesn't seem like a good reason to do something.

anonytrary 8y ago

I don't think the ground workers at Amazon: 1. Care about tweeting about their company. 2. Talk like that. However, I think this could be real if: 1. Amazon has some incentive program that basically allows workers to take on a "marketing assignment" for some sort of bonus. If so, how is this different than contriving good reviews about your restaurant on Yelp? 2. Amazon has developed or is paying for third party software that lets their PR people quickly manage and create activity on multiple Twitter accounts from a central interface.

FC_Associate 8y ago
1. Care about tweeting about their company. I feel the same way. I know a lot of warehouse associates are active on some of the Amazon Instagram pages, but that's mostly just silly pictures and activities. I don't think anyone would post such detailed responses on their own when they aren't being paid.
krapp 8y ago
>Amazon has some incentive program that basically allows workers to take on a "marketing assignment" for some sort of bonus. I haven't heard of any such program, but if it existed, I guarantee Amazon wouldn't offer a bonus for it.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- fcthrowaway 8y ago
  They wouldn't offer a bonus. They'd offer entry into a drawing for an Amazon gift card. But I haven't heard of any such program either, nor of any attempt to get us to run PR for them, other than occasionally sending out emails asking us to review Amazon on Glassdoor. (IME, most FC associates never check their Amazon email accounts, so they wouldn't see that.)
  - FC_Associate 8y ago
    For some reason my station never even offers Amazon gift cards during contests, it's usually Subway, Starbucks, Target, or occasionally a Visa prepaid card. And I'm fairly certain most associates at my station aren't even aware they have an @amazon email address so they definitely aren't checking it. Nice to see another L1 around here.

chriselles 8y ago

In Amazon’s early days(pre Twitter obviously) there were plenty of warehouse workers who could have written far better tweets that sound less Borg Collective-y

forapurpose 8y ago
What do you mean? Are you saying that Amazon warehouse employees were treated better back then? What makes you say that?
- chriselles 8y ago
  It was pretty hard(physically) back then, even before simple tilt tray sortation equipment. Everything was manual. And zero air conditioning in the first early generation distribution(now fulfilment) centres. Hiring, even in distribution(fulfilment) operations, had quite a high hiring bar. This was done to help develop the near future Human Resources capacity of the company. So we had an inordinately high % of Amazon Associate stock pickers with undergraduate and graduate degrees. Quite an eclectic and quirky bunch of quite over educated folks doing a lot of manual labor trying to get the orders out the door and not drown in them. It was a much much smaller company back then. We were just trying to survive the never ending need to get customer orders out te door and “average up” with each new hire. Intellectual capacity per person was quite high, but our operational execution would be far lower than what is achieved today. We were failing/learning as we were going. More exploration, less exploitation(in the process sense). Exploitation as an employee wasn’t a problem in the early days from my perspective. We all knew what we were getting into. 100% commitment and acting like an owner. As headcount exploded, individual understanding of Amazon’s mission, ethos, etc declined as it become more job-like, and less purposeful. Growth rate compelled hiring more specialists and less multi-purpose generalists....who could write non Borg Collective like Tweets. I guess what I’m saying is the culture in the early days was more like a pirate ship full of idiosyncratic individualist buccaneers than Borg.

bhauer 8y ago

I'm fairly certain these are satire and not actually affiliated with Amazon at all. Just the bio alone seems to give it away: https://twitter.com/fc_ambassador/with_replies https://twitter.com/fc_ambassador/with_replies Maybe only this one is satire? Hard to tell which level of galaxy brain this is.

kilovoltaire 8y ago
That one certainly seems like satire, but the ones in the article do not, e.g. https://twitter.com/AmazonFCCarol https://twitter.com/AmazonFCCarol
supermdguy 8y ago
I'm pretty sure that one's satire, probably in response to this article. I looked at a few others in the search results, and they didn't seem to be satire.
brandoncordell 8y ago
They've updated the article and Amazon has acknowledged these employees are getting paid for this.

forapurpose 8y ago

People talk about blockchain and ML/AI as the revolutionary technologies of the day, but I think public manipulation via the Internet (social media at least, probably more) may turn out to be more significant. Is it real and does it work? Undoubtedly, there are people who believe it works and invest a lot of resources in it, from businesses to political movements to governments (Russia and China, for example). We can see that disinformation can be effectively spread, and it seems hatred and other things as well. Arguably, we can see it to a degree in Facebook's and Google's (and others') valuations. We discuss it, from a different perspective, on HN regularly. But what are the technical details of this new tool: In what situations does it work and in what does it not? How powerful is it? How much does it cost? How does it work on a detailed level? What are the key components of this machine? Is anyone talking - we know it's done widely, so it seems that information about this technology should be available. (I'm not asking for speculation - we have heard plenty of that - I'm looking for actual technical knowledge.) Another way of looking at it: Perhaps it's analogous to the Creel Commission - innovations in manipulation via a new communication technology. For example, how did Amazon and others turn around Seattle's new tax so quickly and effectively? IIRC, it was widely supported and then public opinion reversed itself in a matter of months.

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
I believe Snowden shined a light at some of the disinformation programs that are operated by the govt. I know for a fact these types of campaigns exist on a regular basis on a grand scale.
- pdkl95 8y ago
  https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

erkose 8y ago

This isn't limited to Amazon and Twitter. I see similar "pleasantries" posted about Netflix on Reddit.

Amabot1902 8y ago

Of late Amazon has been working hard internally to improve its company image. There are frequent emails about reviewing Amazon on glass door, they also provide images of the Amazon smiley and encourage employees to use this as a background on their social media profiles. They encourage employees to follow and retweet the Amazon news handle on Twitter. So this one does not seem organic and is part of Amazon drive to improve the image about working culture, definitely pr.

agwa 8y ago

Let's say you're a company with a serious PR problem about the working conditions in your warehouses. You set up 15 Twitter accounts claiming to be employees of your warehouses. You make sure the accounts are laughably bad at concealing the fact that they are shills, with cookie-cutter bios and responses that are obviously canned talking points. This ensures that the accounts are discovered and written up by various publications, and the articles widely shared. The articles, while laughing at how transparently phony the accounts are, inevitably mention that you are now offering tours of your warehouses (which makes you sound trustworthy since you're not hiding anything), and embed the Tweets that say you pay more than other companies in your industry and offer medical benefits. (Since this information is falsifiable (capable of being proven false, but not necessarily false) it's credible even though it's coming from a shill account.) You've probably not made anyone's opinion of you worse (you look more stupid than malevolent), but you've gotten your message in front of eyeballs and it might make some people think better of you.

jakobegger 8y ago
It's amazing how well this works despite being obvious propaganda. I felt my own opinion on Amazon Fullfilment Centers change as I read the article. One thing that makes propaganda like this so effective is that journalists generally do not bother to verify any propaganda claims (eg. does Amazon really pay 30% more?), so even if they write articles making fun of you they still repeat your message.
- jancsika 8y ago
  Can you explain a little about what you felt changing in your opinion here? What I got out of it was that Amazon had previously been dehumanizing their workers to the point that the PR drones have to now overtly brag about complying with OSHA laws.
  - adventured 8y ago
    The questions it prompts are pretty straight forward. Does Amazon actually pay ~30% better now than their competitors (or anything close to that)? Do they offer dental, vision and healthcare coverage for all employees? If those things are true, then I think better of Amazon because of it. I would have guessed none of those things were true otherwise. The media and essentially all comments online proclaim that Amazon employees are being tortured horrifically on a daily basis and paid absolute bottom tier wages across the board. Those articles and opinions have, to one degree or another, tilted my opinion of Amazon in a negative manner. Can anyone here speak to if those positive things are true and or mostly true? I have no idea. I'd think better of Amazon if they were.

floatingatoll 8y ago

If someone wanted to prove how social networks can be used to manipulate the stock market, this would be an excellent mechanism for doing so. Set up a bunch of droid bots for your competitor and then watch the press eat them alive.

fipple 8y ago

What would be really classic is if this was funded by Microsoft to sicken Amazon’s white collar workforce and make them more easily poachable.

eksemplar 8y ago

Had anyone ever done a piece of investigative journalism on the actual conditions at Amazon? A company that big will have some terrible managers, and the fact that it’s not discovering those easily, is problematic, but that doesn’t mean the entire company is rotten. I’m a manager in a Scandinavian municipality, and because I work with lean and efficiency I get to see all sides of our operation. I’ve seen departments run so badly that employees were crying every day, and it took HR a year to fix it. I’ve seen departments where sleeping with the boss was the main road to a pay-raise. Hell one of our senior managers who sleeps with employees at the Christmas party, still works for us because nobody wants to step up in public. Some departments have 30% sickleave while others have 2%. That doesn’t mean the overall working conditions are bad at the municipality. In fact we score 9/10 in employment satisfaction. This in itself is a bit of a problem though, because it’s higher than it should be, but that’s another story. when you employ hundreds of thousands, you’re bound to have some really bad stories among them. Amazon may be all bad, and I could easily have missed the story that actually did the research, but I simply haven’t seen one.

alxlaz 8y ago
Thing is, all those department managers -- the good ones and the bad ones -- are working under the same hierarchy and, eventually, under the same people. When there's just one or two isolated cases of pricks who are quickly booted, that's an accident, but when this is business as usual, it's company culture. Every department is one promotion, lateral move, sabbatical or resignation away from being ran by a maniac. So there's no solace in the idea that well, as long as you're in the right team, it's pretty good. It's as if all of it were rotten. Besides, this has made it to the press more than once, so it's not like even the most disconnected senior management team wouldn't know about it. It's known, it's been known for years, and since nothing appears to have happened for years, it's a pretty safe bet that this is just how the company is ran. That's the kind of rot that spreads easily.
keithwinstein 8y ago
> Had anyone ever done a piece of investigative journalism on the actual conditions at Amazon? Sure, see https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-... for one example.

sidcool 8y ago

It has been proven time and again that if a company is doing well financially, their internal people policies are not paid attention to. All the people centric PR that companies dish out is simply another strategy to make more money without employee revolt. Having said this, it's not completely company's fault. The financial system judges companies solely on their profits and future outlook, not employee happiness and well being.

Moodles 8y ago

My brother actually worked in an Amazon warehouse for awhile and indeed it sounds like a dreadful work environment (although I am comparatively spoiled in software engineering and my brother hasn’t actually worked in similar jobs in warehouses for other companies, so it’s hard to judge from his experience alone if it’s an Amazon thing or just these kinds of jobs in general). However (and I’m bracing for impact here), I don’t quite understand why everyone hates on Amazon that much for this. They don’t force anyone to work there. Indeed my brother found a new job after two years. It’s a bit like getting mad at San Francisco landlords for charging so much: you can get mad at them, but it’s really our fault for agreeing to pay. Or people getting mad at how much athletes get paid. They get paid a lot because we agree we pay to watch them. Amazon have shit working conditions because people agree to work there for what they pay. All of these things are literally just trades. If we don’t like it, don’t trade with them.

sireat 8y ago
The answer lies in unequal bargaining power, public shaming/awareness is the best we can do. There's the added irony of Mr. Bezos publicly the richest man in the world having his workers hold their pee. Amazon will not care about its least protected workers until Amazon feels the backlash in lowered sales. If your locality has Amazon warehouse as the largest employer your options are quite limited. It is similar to having a coal mine in 19th century(or recycling center in 21st century China) being the largest employer. Nice to have a job at first, but black lung is not so nice after a while. The conditions do not have to be that bad, Costco has proven that. Other FAANGs get less flack in this regard because they outsource all the menial/routine jobs(Facebook and Google outsource a lot of horrible MTurk like jobs) and they do not need as many of them. PS I had 2 friends who worked at the Amazon UK Warehouse a few years back. They only lasted 6 months before the repetitive injuries took their toll. And it was pretty much impossible to have a day off.
- Moodles 8y ago
  > If your locality has Amazon warehouse as the largest employer your options are quite limited. As the only employer, right? (Of the kind that doesn't ask for much different qualifications ofc.) Not largest. And in practice I'm skeptical of how often this is the really case. My brother isn't particularly specifically qualified in any trade but even he had options once he started working. And even then in this hypothetical town where Amazon is the only employer, you could say well, of all the rich companies at least Amazon is giving jobs to people. What's everyone else doing? Aren't they more morally culpable? Does any company even owe anyone a job anyways? It seems to me that the government should do more to help these people have more of a fighting chance of bargaining in the world by training them in schools, etc. > Other FAANGs get less flack in this regard because they outsource all the menial/routine jobs(Facebook and Google outsource a lot of horrible MTurk like jobs) > Amazon will not care about its least protected workers until Amazon feels the backlash in lowered sales. Truth.

regul8 8y ago

Ok, so who’s pointing a gun at anyone’s head and saying you HAVE TO WORK at an Amazon fulfillment center? This isn’t slavery, it’s free will. Slavery, at least in civilized countries, ended CENTURIES ago! I could delve deeper into the psychology that leads to feelings of entrapment, but I won’t. As humans, we need to get over ourselves. Work is hard. Life is hard. But it can be rewarding too, so long as you stop playing the victim.

somebodythere 8y ago
Workers are allowed to criticize and push back against poor working conditions. That's how the labor market is supposed to work. If workers are just expected to sit there and take what is given, then capital holds all the cards.
bkor 8y ago
> Work is hard. Life is hard. Why not ensure work isn't too hard, nor life, nor going to the doctor. And then not just for you, but for everyone. > But it can be rewarding too, so long as you stop playing the victim. That's blaming people for the situation they are in without knowing what caused it. Maybe the causes should be addressed.
bgie 8y ago
Economic freedom only starts at middle class and above. (Like when your family can risk $300.000 for your online book store) For the poor, you are free to choose your boss (and agree to obey thus sign away your freedom) or sink deeper into poverty and eventually starve to death... Though there is no gun involved, I would not call this freedom. But a kind of freedom which (thankfully) still exists is the freedom to reach out to others. So why would you oppose people that use their freedom to push back against obvious mistreatment (in this case by spreading the word)?

EasyTiger_ 8y ago

> I can safely say that none of MY ideas have panned out anywhere near what Jeff Bezos has accomplished. I am more than happy, though, to continue working here, at BFI4, in WA. I receive a (more than fair) wage and work with some really good people. Making history, every day. Blink twice if you need help

flattone 8y ago
Is BTIYNH code for "conform, they're watching. We need to get out of here."
the_af 8y ago
> "Dear Lisa - As I write this, I am very sad. My ideas have not panned out LIKE THOSE OF MIGHTY JEFF BEZOS, WHO ALSO PAYS US VERY WELL. Sincerely, WAREHOUSE WORKER"

Applejinx 8y ago

Shit, if I was an Amazon warehouse worker and had the chance to get paid the same except SOME of my workload was sitting down and shilling for Amazon on twitter, I would jump (well, sit) at the chance. It's a different kind of demanding, more like being a commercial writer, probably more open to people who are damn good commercial writers and happen to be working as a picker in an Amazon warehouse. It'd be like getting paid as a picker but being paid to have breaks and worker rights. I don't think it's illegal to do this, but it is as manipulative as it's possible to be. Therefore that's probably just what's happening there: if you can write and shill effectively on Twitter there's a chance that you get to do that and pretend to yourself that it's a break or rest period. Very Amazonian.

krapp 8y ago
>Shit, if I was an Amazon warehouse worker and had the chance to get paid the same except SOME of my workload was sitting down and shilling for Amazon on twitter, I would jump (well, sit) at the chance. They probably wouldn't let you sit down, unless you were shilling on your lunch break. Amazon has a policy against their warehouse workers sitting down while on the job, not even HR is allowed to sit when they're staffing the front. You can squat though, and I've tried to get around it by sitting seiza.
- nasredin 8y ago
  >>>Seiza is the Japanese term for one of the traditional formal ways of sitting in Japan I am surprised there's no workplace shootings in Amazon warehouses a la USPS.
  - mrguyorama 8y ago
    There's not enough time
saudioger 8y ago
There's no way they're actually writing this stuff. At best they're real employees allowing a company to tweet on their behalf.

quickoats 8y ago

Title missing verb. Statement with a question mark?

prolikewh0a 8y ago

Why aren't these being banned from Twitter as "inauthentic"? They're clearly propaganda tools and are coordinated disinformation campaigns. Are there two sets of rules here?

shadowtree 8y ago

And they say AI will not destroy jobs. Automated astro turfing and PR. Cutting out the middle-man, going straight from sender to consumer. No need for "news".

_zachs 8y ago

I'm not an Amazon shill, look at my post history. I don't understand all of this press. If you don't like your job working at Amazon, quit. If the conditions are terrible, release proof to the public, so other people don't even start working there. Wash, rinse, repeat, and Amazon will either change the supposed working conditions or hopefully fail. Why do we need so much press on both sides for such a non-issue?

vkou 8y ago
Because the job of the press is disseminating this proof to the public. Shouting into a void doesn't actually get you anywhere.
brynjolf 8y ago
It shows you are a product of the valley. Some people. Can't just quit their job, if they do their lives implode and does so fast.
nickthemagicman 8y ago
That's so bougouis of you. Believe it or not most people dont work jobs just for kicks. It's their survival. And they can't just get job training to get a new job because they don't have the time or money. The python of capitalism has cinched itself around their neck. This is like 50% of America too believe it or not.
derptron 8y ago
"Just get a new job!" Said the software engineer.

ggm 8y ago

1) did Amazon Australia use an intermediate labour hire agency or directly employ it's new warehouse workers. And, how does this compare to ICT staff. 2) does or does not bezos oppose collective bargaining and unions? 3) is it true that German and possibly Italian state and federal labour laws were successfully used to secure improved working conditions including the right to collective bargaining? 4) has Amazon at any time, including the present used "fire the bottom two" forms of ranked performance management?