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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 t

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.
- java_script 8y ago
  A funny memory is how the right-wing mocked this article relentlessly, before Jeff Bezos was bad in their minds. I can't wait for Alex Jones et al to become advocates for warehouse workers all of a sudden.
  - jrowley 8y ago
    It's weird, you'd think they want to support 'blue collar' workers, like warehouse workers...
brtknr 8y ago
Yup, google BBC documentary on Amazon warehouse workers too, it reveals the terrible working conditions, albeit it’s a couple of years old. Edit: in fact, it’s available here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/UQATFbLvIHk https://youtu.be/UQATFbLvIHk
- cookiecaper 8y ago
  Don't overlook that these filmmakers are heavily incentivized to create a dramatic story. No one will watch a film that says "Yep, it's a pretty normal warehouse, and they even pay a little more than their peers", and the filmmakers certainly won't win respect or accolades for putting out such a piece. This is a well-known problem with any "reality-based" programming; the incentives of the documentarians are primarily to provide an exhilarating narrative.
  - shady-lady 8y ago
    > This is a well-known problem with any "reality-based" programming Panorama isn't a "reality-based" programme. It's an undercover investigative programme. The problem with "reality-based" programming is that some scenes are completely falsified or exaggerated (with the knowing assistance of the show 'participants'). Most of them even have to put a disclaimer at the end of the show saying as much. Notwithstanding that every produced show is going to have some slant to a point, to classify the linked video as "reality-based" is completely and utterly disingenuous.
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
The side of Amazon that works in offices and makes good money also has a reputation as a bad place to work, compared to other major tech companies. See the "Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk" article from the NYT a few years back. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-... Anecdotally, as you say, that does seem to depend a lot on your department--good local management can make a lot of difference--but you don't see anywhere near that many horror stories coming out of Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. It does seem that Amazon, as a company, is less concerned about the welfare of its white-collar employees. And if they don't mind abusing their highly paid, highly skilled knowledge workers, I would be amazed if they gave a single fuck about their unskilled laborers.
- sharkweek 8y ago
  I live in Seattle and thus a notable percentage of my social circle works for Amazon corporate. None of them love working at Amazon, and only a few like it there, but most are pretty miserable. I think the stock performance is keeping most of them there with how Amazon’s vesting schedule tends to be heavily backloaded. One guy did comment that he loves the scale of the things he’s working on, which I guess I get, but he always complains about the overall culture.
- Applejinx 8y ago
  That's the way to get the warehouse workers to comply. Arguably it's BETTER (certainly more effective) if it's that way all the way up the chain, because you'll get buy-in if the lower rungs see that the upper rungs of the latter are pushing themselves just as hard or harder. If Jeff Bezos cries at his desk, into his apparently meaningless kabillions of dollars, because he just CAN'T quite keep up with what he expects of himself, that would be the final piece of the puzzle. I would suggest that's not impossible: it'd fit the pattern. At that point the question you ask isn't 'is this fair or are the people getting exploited'. Instead you ask 'are all these people crazy? Do we need to have some kind of intervention?' The key point here is that you can't assume the situation is designed to abuse lowly workers and coddle management. I think a key innovation at Amazon is, everyone cries at work and/or dies in harness, no exceptions. It's fair to talk about whether that's acceptable. From all the horror stories, and from my understanding of business, they manage to extend the abuse as high up as possible, and it might go a lot higher than you think. The goal is to make a company full of desperate, last-ditch warriors that try to destroy all competition to their last dying frothing breaths: again, no exceptions. Should all society work like this? I think that's debatable, but allow an Amazon to do it and they'll steadily kill everything else, and that's the intention.
Applejinx 8y ago
Bear in mind that being really crazygonuts evil is a weakness: it's a vulnerability, begging for legislation or boycott. There's absolutely not a direct correlation between evil and profitability, unless maybe you're a banker. Amazon's a storefront. They have to serve two masters, one of which is the customer. The other is their reputation among capitalists and rivals. On the one hand they must promise to deliver better prices and choices than other storefronts, all while assuring customers that they have happy workers and aren't doing anything horrifying. On the other, they must continue to convince Wall Street and possible rivals that they're the most brutal tyrants on the block and will inevitably kill and devour ALL competitors, all the more because they don't pay dividends and earn people money based on their expansion alone. Amazon's designed to use psychology to get all employees working like Spartans. If you see this behavior in a sports team, or in open source, typically you go 'hey, cool' and approve of the fierce eagerness to strive. It's part of the human experience and can be used in many ways. If it's used to condition warehouse workers to accept a situation where they're compensated, but driven to efficiencies that kill a percentage of them, that raises the question of what's the responsibility of those managers. To run a group of humans at those levels of output requires coddling them to some extent, and 'giving them the choice' to walk away (but if you're compensating them even a little better than usual they'll get used to it and resist walking away, even at their own peril: especially if they're thinking Spartan) This desire to perform and be part of a team isn't something imposed on humans by evil corporations. It's a natural human tendency, which is why Amazon's strategies work. What Amazon does is exploit that as hard as they're allowed to do. Offering the chance to shill for part of your shift, and offering this only to an elite who're able to do it effectively, is a really clever social exploit. Will it continue to be allowed? Maybe. It's very much the kind of thing that's bending 'the rules' for their benefit, and to do it properly you kind of have to be Amazon. Remember that the whole purpose of the exercise is to further crush any competitors, including those who might have marginally better labor practices… or buy and destroy anything that might have better labor practices, for instance Whole Foods. It's fair to argue that turning employment into a monoculture in which everything out there works this way (thus foul and no fouler, we hope) is a bad thing to do.
- windows_tips 8y ago
  >Offering the chance to shill for part of your shift, and offering this only to an elite who're able to do it effectively, is a really clever social exploit. Will it continue to be allowed? Maybe. It's very much the kind of thing that's bending 'the rules' for their benefit, and to do it properly you kind of have to be Amazon. That strategy or similar has been going on for a long time, Amazon isn't doing something unseen before and they are probably just copying it from what they've seen. I've seen a local utility run an ad featuring claimed employees talking about their employer/company in a positive on television. I've also seen similar ads from an oil industry company, and others.
yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
> 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. That's not another story at all, it completely undermines your point. "We can't be doing so bad because we score well on this metric (oh BTW this metric is obviously being gamed somehow)" does not convince me that you're actually doing okay at all.
draw_down 8y ago
Yes?

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.

java_script 8y ago
A funny memory is how the right-wing mocked this article relentlessly, before Jeff Bezos was bad in their minds. I can't wait for Alex Jones et al to become advocates for warehouse workers all of a sudden.
- jrowley 8y ago
  It's weird, you'd think they want to support 'blue collar' workers, like warehouse workers...

brtknr 8y ago

Yup, google BBC documentary on Amazon warehouse workers too, it reveals the terrible working conditions, albeit it’s a couple of years old. Edit: in fact, it’s available here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/UQATFbLvIHk https://youtu.be/UQATFbLvIHk

cookiecaper 8y ago
Don't overlook that these filmmakers are heavily incentivized to create a dramatic story. No one will watch a film that says "Yep, it's a pretty normal warehouse, and they even pay a little more than their peers", and the filmmakers certainly won't win respect or accolades for putting out such a piece. This is a well-known problem with any "reality-based" programming; the incentives of the documentarians are primarily to provide an exhilarating narrative.
- shady-lady 8y ago
  > This is a well-known problem with any "reality-based" programming Panorama isn't a "reality-based" programme. It's an undercover investigative programme. The problem with "reality-based" programming is that some scenes are completely falsified or exaggerated (with the knowing assistance of the show 'participants'). Most of them even have to put a disclaimer at the end of the show saying as much. Notwithstanding that every produced show is going to have some slant to a point, to classify the linked video as "reality-based" is completely and utterly disingenuous.

PhasmaFelis 8y ago

The side of Amazon that works in offices and makes good money also has a reputation as a bad place to work, compared to other major tech companies. See the "Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk" article from the NYT a few years back. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-... Anecdotally, as you say, that does seem to depend a lot on your department--good local management can make a lot of difference--but you don't see anywhere near that many horror stories coming out of Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. It does seem that Amazon, as a company, is less concerned about the welfare of its white-collar employees. And if they don't mind abusing their highly paid, highly skilled knowledge workers, I would be amazed if they gave a single fuck about their unskilled laborers.

sharkweek 8y ago
I live in Seattle and thus a notable percentage of my social circle works for Amazon corporate. None of them love working at Amazon, and only a few like it there, but most are pretty miserable. I think the stock performance is keeping most of them there with how Amazon’s vesting schedule tends to be heavily backloaded. One guy did comment that he loves the scale of the things he’s working on, which I guess I get, but he always complains about the overall culture.
Applejinx 8y ago
That's the way to get the warehouse workers to comply. Arguably it's BETTER (certainly more effective) if it's that way all the way up the chain, because you'll get buy-in if the lower rungs see that the upper rungs of the latter are pushing themselves just as hard or harder. If Jeff Bezos cries at his desk, into his apparently meaningless kabillions of dollars, because he just CAN'T quite keep up with what he expects of himself, that would be the final piece of the puzzle. I would suggest that's not impossible: it'd fit the pattern. At that point the question you ask isn't 'is this fair or are the people getting exploited'. Instead you ask 'are all these people crazy? Do we need to have some kind of intervention?' The key point here is that you can't assume the situation is designed to abuse lowly workers and coddle management. I think a key innovation at Amazon is, everyone cries at work and/or dies in harness, no exceptions. It's fair to talk about whether that's acceptable. From all the horror stories, and from my understanding of business, they manage to extend the abuse as high up as possible, and it might go a lot higher than you think. The goal is to make a company full of desperate, last-ditch warriors that try to destroy all competition to their last dying frothing breaths: again, no exceptions. Should all society work like this? I think that's debatable, but allow an Amazon to do it and they'll steadily kill everything else, and that's the intention.

Applejinx 8y ago

Bear in mind that being really crazygonuts evil is a weakness: it's a vulnerability, begging for legislation or boycott. There's absolutely not a direct correlation between evil and profitability, unless maybe you're a banker. Amazon's a storefront. They have to serve two masters, one of which is the customer. The other is their reputation among capitalists and rivals. On the one hand they must promise to deliver better prices and choices than other storefronts, all while assuring customers that they have happy workers and aren't doing anything horrifying. On the other, they must continue to convince Wall Street and possible rivals that they're the most brutal tyrants on the block and will inevitably kill and devour ALL competitors, all the more because they don't pay dividends and earn people money based on their expansion alone. Amazon's designed to use psychology to get all employees working like Spartans. If you see this behavior in a sports team, or in open source, typically you go 'hey, cool' and approve of the fierce eagerness to strive. It's part of the human experience and can be used in many ways. If it's used to condition warehouse workers to accept a situation where they're compensated, but driven to efficiencies that kill a percentage of them, that raises the question of what's the responsibility of those managers. To run a group of humans at those levels of output requires coddling them to some extent, and 'giving them the choice' to walk away (but if you're compensating them even a little better than usual they'll get used to it and resist walking away, even at their own peril: especially if they're thinking Spartan) This desire to perform and be part of a team isn't something imposed on humans by evil corporations. It's a natural human tendency, which is why Amazon's strategies work. What Amazon does is exploit that as hard as they're allowed to do. Offering the chance to shill for part of your shift, and offering this only to an elite who're able to do it effectively, is a really clever social exploit. Will it continue to be allowed? Maybe. It's very much the kind of thing that's bending 'the rules' for their benefit, and to do it properly you kind of have to be Amazon. Remember that the whole purpose of the exercise is to further crush any competitors, including those who might have marginally better labor practices… or buy and destroy anything that might have better labor practices, for instance Whole Foods. It's fair to argue that turning employment into a monoculture in which everything out there works this way (thus foul and no fouler, we hope) is a bad thing to do.

windows_tips 8y ago
>Offering the chance to shill for part of your shift, and offering this only to an elite who're able to do it effectively, is a really clever social exploit. Will it continue to be allowed? Maybe. It's very much the kind of thing that's bending 'the rules' for their benefit, and to do it properly you kind of have to be Amazon. That strategy or similar has been going on for a long time, Amazon isn't doing something unseen before and they are probably just copying it from what they've seen. I've seen a local utility run an ad featuring claimed employees talking about their employer/company in a positive on television. I've also seen similar ads from an oil industry company, and others.

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago

> 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. That's not another story at all, it completely undermines your point. "We can't be doing so bad because we score well on this metric (oh BTW this metric is obviously being gamed somehow)" does not convince me that you're actually doing okay at all.

draw_down 8y ago

Yes?