6 ms·

Why does anyone work there? What a nightmare.

aphextron 7y ago
>Why does anyone work there? What a nightmare. Money. Lots and lots of money. Amazon also operates at a scale unimaginable for most of us, which I imagine is enough of an interesting problem for some people to look past everything else.
- pacala 7y ago
  Therein lies the problem. As the machine scales larger and larger, the cogs at the bottom have worse and worse conditions. Almost as if 'software is eating the world' is not the key to unlock Utopia, as techno-optimists would have you believe.
  - Frost1x 7y ago
    I think technology certainly is a key to a more 'Utopian' (desirable) society. The underlying problem is how we leverage the technology. If technology is simply used to displace and concentrate wealth and power through private ownership without adequately sharing the benefits of growth in technology with everyone (reduced labor, more free time to pursue personal goals, etc.) then yes, it absolutely isn't helping (basically the situation we have now). Can a Star Trek like economy ever exist? I'd love to be apart of one, but it seems unlikely given many underlying human behaviors.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    It was always that way. It used to be that nobility lived the good life at the expense of the peasants. Now we have replaced nobility with educated office workers. And the system is set up that if you are part of the top x percent you will never have to see how the bottom lives. They are well hidden.
    - pacala 7y ago
      Not at this scale. Not at the scale where the nobility lives in NYC/SF/Shanghai and the peasants live in a different state or even overseas.
      - Ididntdothis 7y ago
        There are plenty of peasants in the places you mentioned. You just don’t see them. Who do you think provides all the basic services?
        pacala 7y ago
        Correct. The point is that the peasant mass center, so to speak, is today more distant that it's ever been.
        Ididntdothis 7y ago
        Why do you think it’s different now? The wealthy have always lived in a few places from where they could dominate the whole country.
  - aphextron 7y ago
    >Almost as if 'software is eating the world' is not the key to unlock Utopia, as techno-optimists would have you believe. I'm starting to agree with this as well. It used to be that organizations were made up of vast bureaucracies with a thinking, breathing, human being at every level making decisions. Institutions could be imposing and callous, but there was always a "flexible" human element to things. They never had the level of completely monolithic, soulless, hyper-optimized determinism that modern technologically driven corporations have become. Google was the pioneer here, with their default customer service stance of "go away, we don't care, there's another billion where you came from". But more and more the world has become an automated meatgrinder with no room for people beyond their immediate economic utility. The machines alone determine your worth as a human being, and unsupervised, uncaring algorithms can make or break your entire life.
- d1zzy 7y ago
  And how much of Amazon's money or scale comes from their existing business/labor practice? Sometimes I feel people want the cake and eat it too... When was the last time a perfectly moral company with extremely friendly labor practices grew to the success and size of Amazon?
PopeDotNinja 7y ago
If you figure out how to find an employer without issues, please let me know.
- tjr225 7y ago
  Just because no company is perfect doesn't mean some aren't worse than others.
- xiphias2 7y ago
  Pre-2008 Google was like that. I had the pleasure to work there at those times. We couldn't imagine how lucky we were to be able to work there. Sadly it changed a lot with the aggressive growth of number of employees compared to the slightly slower revenue growth.
- jasonv 7y ago
  I think the issue is that most of the companies on that list are re-shaping economies at planet scale. Maybe it's fair to object to participating in that.
chrisseaton 7y ago
They pay extremely well, don't they? And a huge number of people just don't care about these issues like you do.
- grumple 7y ago
  They are on the lower end of big tech salaries. And the vast majority of their employees are warehouse workers, and they are paid very poorly.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    > the lower end of big tech salaries This is for most people a life-changing fortune.
    - munk-a 7y ago
      People should balance their concerns when taking a job like the relative pay, stress, work/life balance and ethics of the employer (if that's a thing you care about). Amazon loses pretty big on relative pay & ethics. Also, as a general note "be humble oh employee for the gift you receive from your benevolent overlord" is a big part of the philosophy that's utterly breaking America right now - we need less of it.
      - Anon1096 7y ago
        Why should you be the one to make that decision? I'm sure workers, especially highly skilled Amazon engineers, have the capacity to decide for themselves that Amazon isn't some evil company Hacker News paints them to be. And their warehouse workers are paid well relative to the position.
        munk-a 7y ago
        Sorry, to clarify, I'm not the one making that decision. Each person should weight that themselves - but I wanted to highlight that it is a decision we're all empowered to make. Given how often the refrain "the market will decide" is repeated... well, this is how the market decides. Ideally the government would also be willing to step in and make sure ethical business practices are in place but they're out for lunch.
Frost1x 7y ago
Unless you have stable enough finances not to work, there are only so many positions many people are qualified for. I think people forget just how precarious the ever growing precariat class is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat I suspect is the future of employment for everyone without organized labor fighting back for their own interests.
empath75 7y ago
I interviewed for a job there paying more than 2x my current salary in total comp, and I'm already making a lot of money.
the_jeremy 7y ago
It seems hard to find an ethical, large tech company. Amazon? Mistreats warehouse workers. Microsoft? Antitrust, baked-in telemetry. Facebook? Privacy, cambridge analytica. Capital One / credit card companies? Profiting off financial illiteracy / people in need. Apple? Anti-competitive app store practices. Google? Ban people with no visible justification or reasoning, no customer support, benefits off lack of privacy for ads. Oracle? Sleazy vendor lock-in. Comcast? Too many to list.
- pram 7y ago
  To be fair though, if you're working at Oracle or Comcast in particular you're probably not under any delusions about their ethics or morality. ;P
- munk-a 7y ago
  If by large tech company you mean one of the largest ten out there then yea - but widen that field a bit and you'll find some good ones. And, I feel like this is sort of what we get as a society and marketplace that doesn't value ethical or enforce business practices. There is no penalty for acting unethically and there is a profit penalty for acting ethically - so the top performing companies are likely to be those that decided to ignore ethics and pursue the dollar. Google, for a while, was an exception to this rule by pure luck - they so fully dominated search when it was just becoming a thing you could actually monetize that they had bails of money they could use to operate ethically and at a large scale... but they've since course corrected to be an unethical as anyone else.
- snakeboy 7y ago
  Can't we at least mostly agree that mistreatment of workers is clearly a more tangible bad offense than most of those?
  - the_jeremy 7y ago
    https://www.newsweek.com/apple-samsung-and-microsoft-linked-child-labor-abuse-claims-417313 https://www.newsweek.com/apple-samsung-and-microsoft-linked-... https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/19/18681845/facebook-moderator-interviews-video-trauma-ptsd-cognizant-tampa https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/19/18681845/facebook-moderat... If we're going on "what is the most offensive thing I can point to about a company", it seems like Facebook and most hardware suppliers have that beat.
whoopdedo 7y ago
Lack of choice, perhaps. A $15/hr job in a warehouse where they treat you like crap vs a $9/hr job in food service where they also treat you like crap vs leaving your home, friends, and family and moving somewhere that has better jobs.

>Why does anyone work there? What a nightmare. Money. Lots and lots of money. Amazon also operates at a scale unimaginable for most of us, which I imagine is enough of an interesting problem for some people to look past everything else.

pacala 7y ago
Therein lies the problem. As the machine scales larger and larger, the cogs at the bottom have worse and worse conditions. Almost as if 'software is eating the world' is not the key to unlock Utopia, as techno-optimists would have you believe.
- Frost1x 7y ago
  I think technology certainly is a key to a more 'Utopian' (desirable) society. The underlying problem is how we leverage the technology. If technology is simply used to displace and concentrate wealth and power through private ownership without adequately sharing the benefits of growth in technology with everyone (reduced labor, more free time to pursue personal goals, etc.) then yes, it absolutely isn't helping (basically the situation we have now). Can a Star Trek like economy ever exist? I'd love to be apart of one, but it seems unlikely given many underlying human behaviors.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  It was always that way. It used to be that nobility lived the good life at the expense of the peasants. Now we have replaced nobility with educated office workers. And the system is set up that if you are part of the top x percent you will never have to see how the bottom lives. They are well hidden.
  - pacala 7y ago
    Not at this scale. Not at the scale where the nobility lives in NYC/SF/Shanghai and the peasants live in a different state or even overseas.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      There are plenty of peasants in the places you mentioned. You just don’t see them. Who do you think provides all the basic services?
      - pacala 7y ago
        Correct. The point is that the peasant mass center, so to speak, is today more distant that it's ever been.
        Ididntdothis 7y ago
        Why do you think it’s different now? The wealthy have always lived in a few places from where they could dominate the whole country.
- aphextron 7y ago
  >Almost as if 'software is eating the world' is not the key to unlock Utopia, as techno-optimists would have you believe. I'm starting to agree with this as well. It used to be that organizations were made up of vast bureaucracies with a thinking, breathing, human being at every level making decisions. Institutions could be imposing and callous, but there was always a "flexible" human element to things. They never had the level of completely monolithic, soulless, hyper-optimized determinism that modern technologically driven corporations have become. Google was the pioneer here, with their default customer service stance of "go away, we don't care, there's another billion where you came from". But more and more the world has become an automated meatgrinder with no room for people beyond their immediate economic utility. The machines alone determine your worth as a human being, and unsupervised, uncaring algorithms can make or break your entire life.
d1zzy 7y ago
And how much of Amazon's money or scale comes from their existing business/labor practice? Sometimes I feel people want the cake and eat it too... When was the last time a perfectly moral company with extremely friendly labor practices grew to the success and size of Amazon?

PopeDotNinja 7y ago

If you figure out how to find an employer without issues, please let me know.

tjr225 7y ago
Just because no company is perfect doesn't mean some aren't worse than others.
xiphias2 7y ago
Pre-2008 Google was like that. I had the pleasure to work there at those times. We couldn't imagine how lucky we were to be able to work there. Sadly it changed a lot with the aggressive growth of number of employees compared to the slightly slower revenue growth.
jasonv 7y ago
I think the issue is that most of the companies on that list are re-shaping economies at planet scale. Maybe it's fair to object to participating in that.

chrisseaton 7y ago

They pay extremely well, don't they? And a huge number of people just don't care about these issues like you do.

grumple 7y ago
They are on the lower end of big tech salaries. And the vast majority of their employees are warehouse workers, and they are paid very poorly.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > the lower end of big tech salaries This is for most people a life-changing fortune.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    People should balance their concerns when taking a job like the relative pay, stress, work/life balance and ethics of the employer (if that's a thing you care about). Amazon loses pretty big on relative pay & ethics. Also, as a general note "be humble oh employee for the gift you receive from your benevolent overlord" is a big part of the philosophy that's utterly breaking America right now - we need less of it.
    - Anon1096 7y ago
      Why should you be the one to make that decision? I'm sure workers, especially highly skilled Amazon engineers, have the capacity to decide for themselves that Amazon isn't some evil company Hacker News paints them to be. And their warehouse workers are paid well relative to the position.
      - munk-a 7y ago
        Sorry, to clarify, I'm not the one making that decision. Each person should weight that themselves - but I wanted to highlight that it is a decision we're all empowered to make. Given how often the refrain "the market will decide" is repeated... well, this is how the market decides. Ideally the government would also be willing to step in and make sure ethical business practices are in place but they're out for lunch.

Frost1x 7y ago

Unless you have stable enough finances not to work, there are only so many positions many people are qualified for. I think people forget just how precarious the ever growing precariat class is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat I suspect is the future of employment for everyone without organized labor fighting back for their own interests.

empath75 7y ago

I interviewed for a job there paying more than 2x my current salary in total comp, and I'm already making a lot of money.

the_jeremy 7y ago

It seems hard to find an ethical, large tech company. Amazon? Mistreats warehouse workers. Microsoft? Antitrust, baked-in telemetry. Facebook? Privacy, cambridge analytica. Capital One / credit card companies? Profiting off financial illiteracy / people in need. Apple? Anti-competitive app store practices. Google? Ban people with no visible justification or reasoning, no customer support, benefits off lack of privacy for ads. Oracle? Sleazy vendor lock-in. Comcast? Too many to list.

pram 7y ago
To be fair though, if you're working at Oracle or Comcast in particular you're probably not under any delusions about their ethics or morality. ;P
munk-a 7y ago
If by large tech company you mean one of the largest ten out there then yea - but widen that field a bit and you'll find some good ones. And, I feel like this is sort of what we get as a society and marketplace that doesn't value ethical or enforce business practices. There is no penalty for acting unethically and there is a profit penalty for acting ethically - so the top performing companies are likely to be those that decided to ignore ethics and pursue the dollar. Google, for a while, was an exception to this rule by pure luck - they so fully dominated search when it was just becoming a thing you could actually monetize that they had bails of money they could use to operate ethically and at a large scale... but they've since course corrected to be an unethical as anyone else.
snakeboy 7y ago
Can't we at least mostly agree that mistreatment of workers is clearly a more tangible bad offense than most of those?
- the_jeremy 7y ago
  https://www.newsweek.com/apple-samsung-and-microsoft-linked-child-labor-abuse-claims-417313 https://www.newsweek.com/apple-samsung-and-microsoft-linked-... https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/19/18681845/facebook-moderator-interviews-video-trauma-ptsd-cognizant-tampa https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/19/18681845/facebook-moderat... If we're going on "what is the most offensive thing I can point to about a company", it seems like Facebook and most hardware suppliers have that beat.

whoopdedo 7y ago

Lack of choice, perhaps. A $15/hr job in a warehouse where they treat you like crap vs a $9/hr job in food service where they also treat you like crap vs leaving your home, friends, and family and moving somewhere that has better jobs.