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I have a long-time friend who tried to get an Amazon Warehouse job after relocating to a new city for his SO’s career. Given all of the negative press he assume

I have a long-time friend who tried to get an Amazon Warehouse job after relocating to a new city for his SO’s career. Given all of the negative press he assumed they’d be desperate for employees and he could walk right into the job. It turns out those jobs are highly competitive in the area because they paid relatively well and had good benefits. The hourly rate alone doesn’t tell the full story. Many more typical warehouse jobs are truly hourly jobs with minimal or no benefits. He said a lot of them tried to hire people for less than full time to avoid having to provide benefits. For all of the negative press, it sounded like the Amazon Warehouse was the place to be if you wanted a decent warehouse job with benefits in his area.

tester756 5y ago
who would've thought that vocal minority on twitter does not reflect reality for all, cuz at the end of the day Amazon hires above milion ppl So, just to add another opinion I've seen only positive comments (sample size around 3) about working in Amazon's warehouse in Poland
- snypher 5y ago
  3 more anecdotes isn't going to make the data any better :)
  - treeman79 5y ago
    It makes 3 points better. Just needs a few thousand more!
    - drewcoo 5y ago
      Actually, more noise makes the data worse.
    - Rexxar 5y ago
      The problem is not the number of points but the sampling method. It should be properly randomize to be useful.
dukeyukey 5y ago
Not the US, but 2 of my siblings have worked in Amazon warehouses in the UK and it's the same story. The pay is decent, the work is simple (if physically taxing), and plenty of overtime is available. Only downside is the warehouses tend to be outside bus/train routes so getting there without a car is an arse, but Amazon set up shuttle buses to compensate for that.
salawat 5y ago
>He said a lot of them tried to hire people for less than full time to avoid having to provide benefits. There needs to be naming and shaming of those that perpetuate this practice. I know retailers (Tractor Supply) for cashiers. If you're doing warehouse work, you are part of the logistics backbone, you deserve not to have your chain jerked around. Arguably, no one should be getting their chain jerked around, but I'll call it a win to purge this pathological HR hacking from another business layer.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  > There needs to be naming and shaming It's probably easier to name and promote the few places that don't do the "39.5hr week".
  - leesalminen 5y ago
    I thought the cutoff was 29.5 hours, otherwise they would have to offer health insurance due to the Affordable Care Act. I haven’t worked those types of jobs in 10+ years but that’s how it was back then at least.
    - h2odragon 5y ago
      My wife worked at lowes for years, and they were serious about the ".5", even. they reported to the IRS that they'd sell us health insurance for $90/mo for a family plan; but then all they could actually sell to us was a $400/mo each plan; and we never did figure out that one... before her health deteriorated to the point she had to quit that job.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > There needs to be naming and shaming of those that perpetuate this practice. Government, by tieing things that should be universal to mandates to employers who employ a person for a certain number of hours in a week. Which, in addition to promoting this kind of behavior as a cost/utility optimization, encourages a feudal lord-servant relationship between employers and employees rather than a capitalist market-exchange relationship, and necessarily (even ignoring the effect of the optimization incentives) assures that what should be universal is instead limited to a narrower fully-employed class. If the government provides the benefit universally and taxes to cover the costs, the perverse incentives to limit employment and further narrow access to the intended general benefit is eliminated. Naming and shaming the people who follow the incentives government creates is pointless; name and shame the government for setting up the broken system of incentives. Any other target is just a perpetual game of whack-a-mole.
clajiness 5y ago
Found the Amazon exec.
Retric 5y ago
A relative worked at Amazon’s warehouse, he described it as slightly above average pay for the area with above average benefits. However, the job really sucks, injuries are common, and turnover is high at least in VA. There is a huge range of warehouse jobs including many with a lot of paid downtime, the easier the job the less they can pay.
- strombofulous 5y ago
  Serious question, how do you injure yourself in an Amazon warehouse? I thought there wasn't any heavy machinery or other dangerous machines. Is it just from too much walking?
  - saynay 5y ago
    Aren't they lifting and moving packages? All sorts of muscle strains possible from that. Especially if there is little downtime for rest throughout the day.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Amazon calls their warehouse staff “industrial athletes” in internal docs. https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/2/22465357/amazon-industrial-athlete-warehouse-worker-wellness-pamphlet https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/2/22465357/amazon-industrial... > Amazon tells its warehouse employees to think of themselves not as overworked cogs in an enormous, soul-crushing machine, but as “industrial athletes,” and to prepare their bodies for that experience like someone training for a sporting event, according to a pamphlet obtained by Motherboard. The comparison is a troubling euphemism for a company whose workers have almost double the amount of serious injuries as the rest of the warehousing industry and who reportedly are often unable to take bathroom breaks. > The pamphlet tells employees that some of them will walk up to 13 miles throughout the course of the day, burning an average of 400 calories an hour. It also suggests all sorts of ways to help workers prepare for the athlete life, including changes to their diets and sleep schedules and making sure they’re not dehydrated throughout the day by keeping an eye on the color of their urine. It also suggests that employees buy shoes “at the end of the day when [their] feet are swollen” to avoid tightness and blisters — advice that will be familiar to distance runners or multi-day hikers.
redisman 5y ago
Software engineers (including me) tend to forget what the labor market is like outside our own bubbles. Most people can’t do things we take for granted like hop to a better paying job when they get bored/unhappy.
- dukeyukey 5y ago
  A close friend and I were talking about this the other day. We both have well-paid tech jobs and recruiters coming out the wazoo, but our partners are both minimum wage service workers. It's making us both gradually move leftwards in our politics.

tester756 5y ago

who would've thought that vocal minority on twitter does not reflect reality for all, cuz at the end of the day Amazon hires above milion ppl So, just to add another opinion I've seen only positive comments (sample size around 3) about working in Amazon's warehouse in Poland

snypher 5y ago
3 more anecdotes isn't going to make the data any better :)
- treeman79 5y ago
  It makes 3 points better. Just needs a few thousand more!
  - drewcoo 5y ago
    Actually, more noise makes the data worse.
  - Rexxar 5y ago
    The problem is not the number of points but the sampling method. It should be properly randomize to be useful.

dukeyukey 5y ago

Not the US, but 2 of my siblings have worked in Amazon warehouses in the UK and it's the same story. The pay is decent, the work is simple (if physically taxing), and plenty of overtime is available. Only downside is the warehouses tend to be outside bus/train routes so getting there without a car is an arse, but Amazon set up shuttle buses to compensate for that.

salawat 5y ago

>He said a lot of them tried to hire people for less than full time to avoid having to provide benefits. There needs to be naming and shaming of those that perpetuate this practice. I know retailers (Tractor Supply) for cashiers. If you're doing warehouse work, you are part of the logistics backbone, you deserve not to have your chain jerked around. Arguably, no one should be getting their chain jerked around, but I'll call it a win to purge this pathological HR hacking from another business layer.

h2odragon 5y ago
> There needs to be naming and shaming It's probably easier to name and promote the few places that don't do the "39.5hr week".
- leesalminen 5y ago
  I thought the cutoff was 29.5 hours, otherwise they would have to offer health insurance due to the Affordable Care Act. I haven’t worked those types of jobs in 10+ years but that’s how it was back then at least.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    My wife worked at lowes for years, and they were serious about the ".5", even. they reported to the IRS that they'd sell us health insurance for $90/mo for a family plan; but then all they could actually sell to us was a $400/mo each plan; and we never did figure out that one... before her health deteriorated to the point she had to quit that job.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> There needs to be naming and shaming of those that perpetuate this practice. Government, by tieing things that should be universal to mandates to employers who employ a person for a certain number of hours in a week. Which, in addition to promoting this kind of behavior as a cost/utility optimization, encourages a feudal lord-servant relationship between employers and employees rather than a capitalist market-exchange relationship, and necessarily (even ignoring the effect of the optimization incentives) assures that what should be universal is instead limited to a narrower fully-employed class. If the government provides the benefit universally and taxes to cover the costs, the perverse incentives to limit employment and further narrow access to the intended general benefit is eliminated. Naming and shaming the people who follow the incentives government creates is pointless; name and shame the government for setting up the broken system of incentives. Any other target is just a perpetual game of whack-a-mole.

clajiness 5y ago

Found the Amazon exec.

Retric 5y ago

A relative worked at Amazon’s warehouse, he described it as slightly above average pay for the area with above average benefits. However, the job really sucks, injuries are common, and turnover is high at least in VA. There is a huge range of warehouse jobs including many with a lot of paid downtime, the easier the job the less they can pay.

strombofulous 5y ago
Serious question, how do you injure yourself in an Amazon warehouse? I thought there wasn't any heavy machinery or other dangerous machines. Is it just from too much walking?
- saynay 5y ago
  Aren't they lifting and moving packages? All sorts of muscle strains possible from that. Especially if there is little downtime for rest throughout the day.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Amazon calls their warehouse staff “industrial athletes” in internal docs. https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/2/22465357/amazon-industrial-athlete-warehouse-worker-wellness-pamphlet https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/2/22465357/amazon-industrial... > Amazon tells its warehouse employees to think of themselves not as overworked cogs in an enormous, soul-crushing machine, but as “industrial athletes,” and to prepare their bodies for that experience like someone training for a sporting event, according to a pamphlet obtained by Motherboard. The comparison is a troubling euphemism for a company whose workers have almost double the amount of serious injuries as the rest of the warehousing industry and who reportedly are often unable to take bathroom breaks. > The pamphlet tells employees that some of them will walk up to 13 miles throughout the course of the day, burning an average of 400 calories an hour. It also suggests all sorts of ways to help workers prepare for the athlete life, including changes to their diets and sleep schedules and making sure they’re not dehydrated throughout the day by keeping an eye on the color of their urine. It also suggests that employees buy shoes “at the end of the day when [their] feet are swollen” to avoid tightness and blisters — advice that will be familiar to distance runners or multi-day hikers.

redisman 5y ago

Software engineers (including me) tend to forget what the labor market is like outside our own bubbles. Most people can’t do things we take for granted like hop to a better paying job when they get bored/unhappy.

dukeyukey 5y ago
A close friend and I were talking about this the other day. We both have well-paid tech jobs and recruiters coming out the wazoo, but our partners are both minimum wage service workers. It's making us both gradually move leftwards in our politics.