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This article indicts Amazon of the following cruelties: - Expects workers to work compensated overtime during a busy period - Tracks worker performance - Exp

This article indicts Amazon of the following cruelties: - Expects workers to work compensated overtime during a busy period - Tracks worker performance - Expects people to take only their scheduled breaks, and writes them up if they're MIA for 30+ minutes - Requires workers to show up and work during their scheduled work hours The humanity! And this poor guy, working a non-specialized manager position attainable with just a high school degree, was only paid a meager $80,000 a year! More seriously though: the caterwauling over Amazon's cruel and unusual work conditions is getting a little long in the tooth. I had more sympathy when it's peeing in bottles and passing out from heat exhaustion, but if the above is extent of the complaints now...get over it?

neuronflux 8y ago
> after I finished serving in the Air Force Reserves in 2014, but then decided to go to graduate school for business administration > My salary was $80,000, which is on the higher end. They gave me more because I said I wouldn’t accept anything less, since I had a master’s.
- throwaway5752 8y ago
  I don't the your part you've quoted undercuts the point at all. If I have a PhD in the area of algebraic topology, I do not expect to get out of band comp for teaching middle school math. If the job only requires a high school diploma, then that's a great salary in most areas.
  - Waterluvian 8y ago
    Here's the crappy thing. We should pay you more to teach middle school math if you're a remarkably better teacher than the rest. In high school some of my favourite teachers were there mostly as a semi-retirement job. My favourite was a retired Intel architect who taught grade 10 electrical engineering. I would have been spoiled rotten if we were able to consistently attract those kinds of teachers.
    - chickenfries 8y ago
      It's pretty well agreed on HN that you get what you pay for, and anyone who complains about being unable to hire good developers simply just isn't compensating well enough. Why on earth would you not want to pay a better qualified teacher more? You must think that teaching is easy because the math is not complicated, yet most of the people who say this would loathe the idea of teaching for a living.
      - tonyarkles 8y ago
        > Why on earth would you not want to pay a better qualified teacher more? Maybe I'm misreading what the parent said (and got downvoted like crazy for). My interpretation of it was an indictment of the teachers unions, where someone who comes in with a background like his teacher had (serious industry experience) is going to get bottom of the barrel pay because of the lack of seniority etc. I absolutely think someone with that kind of experience should be able to make good money as a teacher, even if they're teaching grade 10 physics. There's also some amazing teachers who came into the career through the traditional path that should be making way more than they are.
      - Spooky23 8y ago
        Compensation once adequate doesn’t yield directly in performance for higher level tasks. Teachers apply knowledge, experience and work in a way that magically makes you smarter and informed. Their effectiveness is a measure of their skill and the students. The argument against the unions is bunk — paying a premium for a math PhD to teach high school is probably pretty dumb... experience makes you effective at teaching trigonometry, not PhD expertise in math. Go to any catholic school and you’ll see woefully unpaid teachers doing an amazing job — because the parents and therefore the students are very motivated. The discussions about developers are similar. You need to overpay for people in a few metros... but you can pay a lot less for skilled people all over the place. The wacky salaries in industry have more to do with control and investors than the actual work.
        Retric 8y ago
        Pay is not just about increasing performance it also increases retention. Retaining your best performers is harder than the people doing the minimum. Once you get to the point where the people with 10+ years are the unmotivated people not putting in the effort to find a better job you slowly enter a death spiral.
  - Retric 8y ago
    A role that requires say 15 years of experience but no collage degree still needs to pay well. Education is often substituted for experience, but the X years of X years or a masters have real value.
  - random314 8y ago
    Where did you find information that specifies that the area manager job at the Amazon warehouse only requires a high school diploma? Please be as specific as possible with your citation.
- smileysteve 8y ago
  I know a pm that earned his JD and is a member of the bar, he was making less than that. In a number of industries, having your mba and being a manager doesn't put you over $80k. Masters even in relevant subjects don't necessarily put your salary that high in industries including teaching, shipping and logistics, warehousing, factory production.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
krapp 8y ago
>More seriously though: the caterwauling over Amazon's cruel and unusual work conditions is getting a little long in the tooth. I had more sympathy when it's peeing in bottles and passing out from heat exhaustion, but if the above is extent of the complaints now...get over it? Just because the article doesn't explicitly mention peeing in bottles or passing out from heat exhaustion doesn't mean those problems no longer exist, and I don't see any claim that the article somehow comprises "the extent of" complaints about Amazon.
- laretluval 8y ago
  If the guy witnessed those things he would have reported them in this interview. He didn’t, so it probably didn’t happen.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- cloakandswagger 8y ago
  I'm commenting on the article that was posted, which describes the "human cost" of Black Friday. I'm asserting that the complaints presented in the article don't sound like some excruciating human cost, it just sounds like...a job. That the source was tangentially involved in the military makes it even more comical. A job that requires its workers to be screamed at, put through torturous physical conditioning and possibly blown up by bombs, but I guess that's nothing compared to working a 10 hour shift in a warehouse.
  - tomjakubowski 8y ago
    I don't get it. Why the sarcasm? That the person who has worked through ostensibly "torturous" military working conditions, is now complaining about their private sector job, only strengthens their complaints in my eyes.
    - mbrumlow 8y ago
      It could also bring in question the current skill level of our armed foecses. If a manager job makinking 80k a year with the major complaints bring -- taking orders -- giving orders -- bening on feet for 14 hours -- and no real designated lunch time, then I am not sure how well our armed foecses are going to do in a actual war -- which is sort of what we keep them around for... Or Vox is just a flame bait instablishment who has a nack at finding people who like to complain about stuff because -- feelings.
hnphillipj 8y ago
Hey, it's in to criticize tech companies. That's not to say there aren't problems, but most people get outraged at whatever society tells them to get outraged at in that moment. No thoughts of their own. This place is mostly a safe haven from that. Now, it will be interesting to see how soon Amazon workers unionize and how that'll play out.
grardb 8y ago
How could you possibly come to that conclusion? > The military is known for being a bastion of sexism, but I had a worse experience at Amazon. > . . . the managers do not get any sort of break or lunch. Most of us just never ate. Everyone is on their feet for 12 hours a day. > Associates got a 30-minute lunch break, two 15-minute breaks, and an additional 15 minutes of “time off tasks.” Working 12 hours per day with a total of only 1 hour of break time, split into three smaller breaks – and all tracked to the minute? And no lunch for managers? > The associates work 10 hours a day, the managers 14 to 18. It’s mandatory overtime, the hours are not voluntary, and they are all on your feet. Do you really think this is acceptable? To be honest, I'm quite sick of the general attitude on HN towards Amazon. I get that it's convenient and usually cheaper than its competitors. But let's not pretend that the way they do business is morally acceptable. It isn't. This is absurd. Instead of trying to convince yourselves that it's Not That Bad, why not vote with your dollars and support businesses that treat their employees better? From what I can tell, most people reading HN have the means to do so. (Edited to better follow HN guidelines.)
- umanwizard 8y ago
  > (Bring on the downvotes, Prime members.) Wasn't gonna downvote you until I got to this line.
- stochastic_monk 8y ago
  You make good points, but accuse the gp of not reading the article and talk about post scoring, both of which are against guidelines.
  - Stratoscope 8y ago
    And this too: > I'm quite sick of the average HN commenter's attitude towards Amazon. Which is a bit insulting, as there is no "average HN commenter." We are all individuals and deserve to be treated as such.
- hedvig 8y ago
  I don't know that its specific to Amazon but more generally comes from a core ideology of abiding by concepts of free market rules to the exclusion of concepts of humanity.
basic1 8y ago
Capitalism has failed.
- umanwizard 8y ago
  Can you point to many examples of non-capitalist societies where conditions are better for most people than in the United States? From my perspective, capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system in history. By what metric has it “failed” ? Because the bottom few percent live in shitty conditions? Before capitalism, the bottom 90% of people were illiterate subsistence farmers.
  - random314 8y ago
    Cuba vs Haiti
    - umanwizard 8y ago
      Yes Haiti is poorer than Cuba. I was asking if there is any non-capitalist society doing as well as the United States. Not the shittiest, poorest example of a technically capitalist society that you can find.
      - random314 8y ago
        You can also compare life expectancy in Cuba with life expectancy in the USofA. Cuba with all kinds of trade embargoes and a history of poverty has better life expectancy than USA. Moreover, if, for arguments sake, you pick the most powerful capitalist state for comparison - I should also be free to pick the weakest capitalist state to balance things out.
  - jhbadger 8y ago
    The problem lies in the definition of "capitalist". Certainly there are numerous countries that by a variety of metrics have a better quality of life than the US (longer life expectancy, fewer percentage impoverished, smaller degree of economic inequality, and so on). The Scandinavian countries are the classic example, but most of Western Europe, Australia, Japan, are as well. Capitalism vs socialism is a continuum, and it looks like the best place is somewhere in the middle.
ricardoreis 8y ago
This article indicts Amazon of the following cruelties: It seems we were reading different articles, then. In any case your synopsis provides a very skewed representation of what the article actually said.
Spooky23 8y ago
How many minutes are you off task per day?
heptathorp 8y ago
Don't forget that this time of year is now ruined for this manager. But not enough to stop them from shopping on Amazon during Black Friday and contributing to those human costs. "I boycott Prime Day, but I do shop on Amazon during Black Friday. I feel bad about it, but at the same time, I don’t think me not shopping will get Amazon to change its practices."
- dre85 8y ago
  I also found that to be an awesome little tidbit. Just human nature I guess... "I wish it wasn't like this! But it's the most convenient so click click click!"
- ams6110 8y ago
  I deliberately do not shop anywhere on Black Friday, and avoid it as much as possible between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The whole orientation of the Christmas holiday around untempered consumerism seems obscene to me.
Quarrelsome 8y ago
you get in trouble if you need to piss. You work 6 days a week for 10 hours a day on your feet. These are working conditions of developing nations. WE'VE BEEN HERE, it doesn't work. Why the fuck are they still subjecting people to this shit? I thought we were better than this.
random314 8y ago
>This article indicts Amazon of the following cruelties: You posted a completely false list of complaints after this > And this poor guy, working a non-specialized manager position attainable with just a high school degree, was only paid a meager $80,000 a year! This is a misleading statement focused on hiding the fact that the area manager being interviewed has an MBA. Moreover the manager never complained about his salary. He complained about how he was forced to fire hourly workers and had to be on his feet for 14 hours a day for several weeks unless he was willing to be fired.

neuronflux 8y ago

> after I finished serving in the Air Force Reserves in 2014, but then decided to go to graduate school for business administration > My salary was $80,000, which is on the higher end. They gave me more because I said I wouldn’t accept anything less, since I had a master’s.

throwaway5752 8y ago
I don't the your part you've quoted undercuts the point at all. If I have a PhD in the area of algebraic topology, I do not expect to get out of band comp for teaching middle school math. If the job only requires a high school diploma, then that's a great salary in most areas.
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  Here's the crappy thing. We should pay you more to teach middle school math if you're a remarkably better teacher than the rest. In high school some of my favourite teachers were there mostly as a semi-retirement job. My favourite was a retired Intel architect who taught grade 10 electrical engineering. I would have been spoiled rotten if we were able to consistently attract those kinds of teachers.
  - chickenfries 8y ago
    It's pretty well agreed on HN that you get what you pay for, and anyone who complains about being unable to hire good developers simply just isn't compensating well enough. Why on earth would you not want to pay a better qualified teacher more? You must think that teaching is easy because the math is not complicated, yet most of the people who say this would loathe the idea of teaching for a living.
    - tonyarkles 8y ago
      > Why on earth would you not want to pay a better qualified teacher more? Maybe I'm misreading what the parent said (and got downvoted like crazy for). My interpretation of it was an indictment of the teachers unions, where someone who comes in with a background like his teacher had (serious industry experience) is going to get bottom of the barrel pay because of the lack of seniority etc. I absolutely think someone with that kind of experience should be able to make good money as a teacher, even if they're teaching grade 10 physics. There's also some amazing teachers who came into the career through the traditional path that should be making way more than they are.
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      Compensation once adequate doesn’t yield directly in performance for higher level tasks. Teachers apply knowledge, experience and work in a way that magically makes you smarter and informed. Their effectiveness is a measure of their skill and the students. The argument against the unions is bunk — paying a premium for a math PhD to teach high school is probably pretty dumb... experience makes you effective at teaching trigonometry, not PhD expertise in math. Go to any catholic school and you’ll see woefully unpaid teachers doing an amazing job — because the parents and therefore the students are very motivated. The discussions about developers are similar. You need to overpay for people in a few metros... but you can pay a lot less for skilled people all over the place. The wacky salaries in industry have more to do with control and investors than the actual work.
      - Retric 8y ago
        Pay is not just about increasing performance it also increases retention. Retaining your best performers is harder than the people doing the minimum. Once you get to the point where the people with 10+ years are the unmotivated people not putting in the effort to find a better job you slowly enter a death spiral.
- Retric 8y ago
  A role that requires say 15 years of experience but no collage degree still needs to pay well. Education is often substituted for experience, but the X years of X years or a masters have real value.
- random314 8y ago
  Where did you find information that specifies that the area manager job at the Amazon warehouse only requires a high school diploma? Please be as specific as possible with your citation.
smileysteve 8y ago
I know a pm that earned his JD and is a member of the bar, he was making less than that. In a number of industries, having your mba and being a manager doesn't put you over $80k. Masters even in relevant subjects don't necessarily put your salary that high in industries including teaching, shipping and logistics, warehousing, factory production.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

krapp 8y ago

>More seriously though: the caterwauling over Amazon's cruel and unusual work conditions is getting a little long in the tooth. I had more sympathy when it's peeing in bottles and passing out from heat exhaustion, but if the above is extent of the complaints now...get over it? Just because the article doesn't explicitly mention peeing in bottles or passing out from heat exhaustion doesn't mean those problems no longer exist, and I don't see any claim that the article somehow comprises "the extent of" complaints about Amazon.

laretluval 8y ago
If the guy witnessed those things he would have reported them in this interview. He didn’t, so it probably didn’t happen.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
cloakandswagger 8y ago
I'm commenting on the article that was posted, which describes the "human cost" of Black Friday. I'm asserting that the complaints presented in the article don't sound like some excruciating human cost, it just sounds like...a job. That the source was tangentially involved in the military makes it even more comical. A job that requires its workers to be screamed at, put through torturous physical conditioning and possibly blown up by bombs, but I guess that's nothing compared to working a 10 hour shift in a warehouse.
- tomjakubowski 8y ago
  I don't get it. Why the sarcasm? That the person who has worked through ostensibly "torturous" military working conditions, is now complaining about their private sector job, only strengthens their complaints in my eyes.
  - mbrumlow 8y ago
    It could also bring in question the current skill level of our armed foecses. If a manager job makinking 80k a year with the major complaints bring -- taking orders -- giving orders -- bening on feet for 14 hours -- and no real designated lunch time, then I am not sure how well our armed foecses are going to do in a actual war -- which is sort of what we keep them around for... Or Vox is just a flame bait instablishment who has a nack at finding people who like to complain about stuff because -- feelings.

hnphillipj 8y ago

Hey, it's in to criticize tech companies. That's not to say there aren't problems, but most people get outraged at whatever society tells them to get outraged at in that moment. No thoughts of their own. This place is mostly a safe haven from that. Now, it will be interesting to see how soon Amazon workers unionize and how that'll play out.

grardb 8y ago

How could you possibly come to that conclusion? > The military is known for being a bastion of sexism, but I had a worse experience at Amazon. > . . . the managers do not get any sort of break or lunch. Most of us just never ate. Everyone is on their feet for 12 hours a day. > Associates got a 30-minute lunch break, two 15-minute breaks, and an additional 15 minutes of “time off tasks.” Working 12 hours per day with a total of only 1 hour of break time, split into three smaller breaks – and all tracked to the minute? And no lunch for managers? > The associates work 10 hours a day, the managers 14 to 18. It’s mandatory overtime, the hours are not voluntary, and they are all on your feet. Do you really think this is acceptable? To be honest, I'm quite sick of the general attitude on HN towards Amazon. I get that it's convenient and usually cheaper than its competitors. But let's not pretend that the way they do business is morally acceptable. It isn't. This is absurd. Instead of trying to convince yourselves that it's Not That Bad, why not vote with your dollars and support businesses that treat their employees better? From what I can tell, most people reading HN have the means to do so. (Edited to better follow HN guidelines.)

umanwizard 8y ago
> (Bring on the downvotes, Prime members.) Wasn't gonna downvote you until I got to this line.
stochastic_monk 8y ago
You make good points, but accuse the gp of not reading the article and talk about post scoring, both of which are against guidelines.
- Stratoscope 8y ago
  And this too: > I'm quite sick of the average HN commenter's attitude towards Amazon. Which is a bit insulting, as there is no "average HN commenter." We are all individuals and deserve to be treated as such.
hedvig 8y ago
I don't know that its specific to Amazon but more generally comes from a core ideology of abiding by concepts of free market rules to the exclusion of concepts of humanity.

basic1 8y ago

Capitalism has failed.

umanwizard 8y ago
Can you point to many examples of non-capitalist societies where conditions are better for most people than in the United States? From my perspective, capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system in history. By what metric has it “failed” ? Because the bottom few percent live in shitty conditions? Before capitalism, the bottom 90% of people were illiterate subsistence farmers.
- random314 8y ago
  Cuba vs Haiti
  - umanwizard 8y ago
    Yes Haiti is poorer than Cuba. I was asking if there is any non-capitalist society doing as well as the United States. Not the shittiest, poorest example of a technically capitalist society that you can find.
    - random314 8y ago
      You can also compare life expectancy in Cuba with life expectancy in the USofA. Cuba with all kinds of trade embargoes and a history of poverty has better life expectancy than USA. Moreover, if, for arguments sake, you pick the most powerful capitalist state for comparison - I should also be free to pick the weakest capitalist state to balance things out.
- jhbadger 8y ago
  The problem lies in the definition of "capitalist". Certainly there are numerous countries that by a variety of metrics have a better quality of life than the US (longer life expectancy, fewer percentage impoverished, smaller degree of economic inequality, and so on). The Scandinavian countries are the classic example, but most of Western Europe, Australia, Japan, are as well. Capitalism vs socialism is a continuum, and it looks like the best place is somewhere in the middle.

ricardoreis 8y ago

This article indicts Amazon of the following cruelties: It seems we were reading different articles, then. In any case your synopsis provides a very skewed representation of what the article actually said.

Spooky23 8y ago

How many minutes are you off task per day?

heptathorp 8y ago

Don't forget that this time of year is now ruined for this manager. But not enough to stop them from shopping on Amazon during Black Friday and contributing to those human costs. "I boycott Prime Day, but I do shop on Amazon during Black Friday. I feel bad about it, but at the same time, I don’t think me not shopping will get Amazon to change its practices."

dre85 8y ago
I also found that to be an awesome little tidbit. Just human nature I guess... "I wish it wasn't like this! But it's the most convenient so click click click!"
ams6110 8y ago
I deliberately do not shop anywhere on Black Friday, and avoid it as much as possible between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The whole orientation of the Christmas holiday around untempered consumerism seems obscene to me.

Quarrelsome 8y ago

you get in trouble if you need to piss. You work 6 days a week for 10 hours a day on your feet. These are working conditions of developing nations. WE'VE BEEN HERE, it doesn't work. Why the fuck are they still subjecting people to this shit? I thought we were better than this.

random314 8y ago

>This article indicts Amazon of the following cruelties: You posted a completely false list of complaints after this > And this poor guy, working a non-specialized manager position attainable with just a high school degree, was only paid a meager $80,000 a year! This is a misleading statement focused on hiding the fact that the area manager being interviewed has an MBA. Moreover the manager never complained about his salary. He complained about how he was forced to fire hourly workers and had to be on his feet for 14 hours a day for several weeks unless he was willing to be fired.