7 ms·

How Amazon's behavior here, clearly mandated as official corporate policy, is not an instant class action lawsuit demonstrates how far we are in our "late stage

How Amazon's behavior here, clearly mandated as official corporate policy, is not an instant class action lawsuit demonstrates how far we are in our "late stage capitalism" and economic slaves, not free, not by half.

andybak 3y ago
> demonstrates how far we are in our "late stage capitalism" and economic slaves, not free, not by half. I'm not sure what earlier periods of history you're comparing it to that were utopian in comparison but I am fairly certain they were pretty limited in range both geographically and temporally.
- capableweb 3y ago
  If you instead move laterally and look at other "modern" countries, instead of temporally, it's easy to see how the working class and more is getting exploited in the US.
  - trgdr 3y ago
    Ehh if you look at other "modern" countries you see workers being paid half as much. Not to say that the US is any sort of paradise, but there are definitely tradeoffs that favor either direction.
    - capableweb 3y ago
      I don't think there is any value in just comparing salaries across countries, but I'm sure you already know this. Make it more interesting by add in life expectancy or something else, salary is just a number that doesn't matter much unless you start including other numbers too.
      - kortilla 3y ago
        This is a discussion about worker pay. Salary is the metric.
        markus92 3y ago
        I'd say PPE is. Getting paid 5k to spend 4k on rent is pretty similar to getting paid 2k and spending 1k on rent (all else being equal).
        andybak 3y ago
        > PPE Personal protective equipment?
        capableweb 3y ago
        > This is a discussion about worker pay. Salary is the metric. Disagree, the discussion is about much more than just a metric of salaries. Even if you consider the discussion to only be about salary, doesn't it matter how much of that salary you have to spend on things like health insurance VS other places? As that'd eat from your salary (or not).
      - Firmwarrior 3y ago
        I'd rather work one year at Amazon than 5 years at a nice European country in a walkable city, and that's how the numbers pan out if you're saving for retirement
        capableweb 3y ago
        I'm guessing you're a US-native then? Where this salary/work obsession seems a lot stronger than around here (South-West Europe). My impression is that you work in order to do what you really want later, while we tend to focus on getting a job that pays enough to survive + bit more, but still allows us to do the things we want now, rather than later at/around retirement. Insert story about The Businessman and The Fisherman
        Firmwarrior 3y ago
        You aren't sitting on a beach playing guitar with your friends if you get a tech job in Germany, you're doing the same boring pain-in-the-ass dead-end work either way. Just with less threat of being randomly fired or mistreated, which isn't even particularly intimidating or stressful when you're sitting on an enormous nest egg
        capableweb 3y ago
        Since you avoided the question, I'm guessing I was spot on :) And I'd guarantee you that someone who worked five years for a average German company definitely has incurred less mental stress than someone working one year for Amazon, on average. But I also recognize that it's hard to see the difference between the two cultures if you only have the experience of one of them, and the "hard working pays off" system is so heavily ingrained.
        Firmwarrior 3y ago
        I think you need to go touch grass, or at least check out some real numbers and think about them https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/berlin-metropolitan-region https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/berlin-... https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/san-francisco-bay-area?city=7158 https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/san-fra... How many years are you going to have to save up to retire at $240k/year vs $80k/year, do you think? Would you rather grind 10 months a year until you're too old to do anything but sit around and watch TV, or would you rather grind 12 months a year for 5-10 years and then do whatever you want for the rest of your life?
    - cool_dude85 3y ago
      This is true in one very specific industry, computer programming. Maybe being a doctor too but HN doesn't cater so much to that crowd. In others, wages are pretty comparable.
      - danaris 3y ago
        It's not even true in programming, unless your comparison point is not "the US tech sector", but specifically "Silicon Valley". Out here in the rest of the US, tech salaries are still somewhat higher, broadly speaking, than other professions, but they're much lower than they are in SV and related west-coast areas. And when you're talking about tech worker salaries outside the tech sector, the effect is even stronger.
    - bitwize 3y ago
      They're being paid half as much but they're much better off because world-class health care and education are effectively free. And if they have a job it's much harder to fire them and leave them twisting in the wind.
    - albert180 3y ago
      Try again and compare Purchase Power lol. And comparing it to Western Europe already 50% of that larger salary disappear
  - School-Cotton 3y ago
    The U.S. is not really a “modern country”. It’s not fair to compare it to functioning Western European democracies.
- bsenftner 3y ago
  I'm not comparing this against history, this is clearly illegal behavior, yet no legal professionals will touch it because Amazon has just so much money to throw at their legal defense it is not possible to combat their clearly illegal behavior.
- suoduandao3 3y ago
  There was a brief moment in North America where almost every worker belonged to a union but employers hadn't figured out offshoring yet. The adjustment definitely was hard on American workers, but the fact that it came with a huge benefit to developing country workers is conspicuously overlooked by most of the 'late stage capitalism' narrative.
ballenf 3y ago
In earlier times, they'd just fire you without any kind of PIP process. Are you saying that PIP vs. immediate firing is worse?
- cool_dude85 3y ago
  In many jobs "in earlier times" there were for-cause clauses negotiated into contracts and you could not be fired without management proving that you had done something wrong, even after you had been through a negotiated disciplinary process.
- danaris 3y ago
  In some ways, yes. Firing you immediately for bullshit reasons is something you can potentially take to court, and also make a solid case for unemployment payments due to unfair termination. If they put you on a PIP, and then claim that you're failing to meet it, even if they're lying through their teeth, that makes it much harder to prove that their actions were unfair or illegal. Suddenly it's no longer a "person said, faceless company said;" it's "person said, faceless company had months of documented (if falsified) evidence to back up their position". Unless you are savvy enough to start documenting everything, which is a) hard to know you need to do, b) hard to know how to do effectively, and c) kind of exhausting even if you can get it right. To a large extent, the PIP process is there to cover Amazon's ass and make sure that your firing sticks. And all that is if you don't just get frustrated and fed up with being constantly told you're failing to meet expectations that either you are, in fact, meeting, or no actual human could ever meet.
  - NBJack 3y ago
    This reminds me of the big piece years ago talking about employees crying at their desks from the pressure. People joked about it, and to be fair, it wasn't that common. Reality is, you wanted to find a conference room or the bathroom for that. Let's not forget that in order to use said documentation legally later, you would potentially run the risk of violating company policy on confidential information disclosure.
- JohnFen 3y ago
sumtechguy 3y ago
Late stage? This is SOP for many large companies going back decades. The tech companies are just sort of new to it and gave it a new name. Many companies in the 70s/80s/90s famously had their 10% culling every year. Microsoft called it stack ranking. This is hardly new and is fairly commonly done in many industries. The book name escapes me but the CEOs loved it about how it touted this very thing to do. Is it the 'right thing', no. But is something you should expect from companies. They are not your friend or buddy or partner, no matter what lies they tell you. They are the people who pay you to do work. In the past 15-20 years the tech world has been sheltered from it. If you could code you could make decent money. That part is starting to stabilize as more people can do it. The supply is catching up with the demand. 'Late stage capitalism' is a catch all term for 'the parts of the economic world I think are bad'. If you ignore the curves the curves will remind you that supply and demand exist in all models. Also lawsuits do not happen 'instantly' someone has to pay for the lawyers to make it happen. You have to make sure the law is on your side. You also have to make sure the judicial system is on your side. A class action lawsuit is not a cheap thing someone does in their spare time. Oh and if you mess up you run the risk of ruining your law practic and the political estabilisment going after you.
- g-b-r 3y ago
  I did know about Microsoft (in the 90s), and I think many companies took inspiration from them; do you have older examples?
  - sleepybrett 3y ago
    invented at ge
    - sumtechguy 3y ago
      Pretty much all of the big banks did it too.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 3y ago

andybak 3y ago

> demonstrates how far we are in our "late stage capitalism" and economic slaves, not free, not by half. I'm not sure what earlier periods of history you're comparing it to that were utopian in comparison but I am fairly certain they were pretty limited in range both geographically and temporally.

capableweb 3y ago
If you instead move laterally and look at other "modern" countries, instead of temporally, it's easy to see how the working class and more is getting exploited in the US.
- trgdr 3y ago
  Ehh if you look at other "modern" countries you see workers being paid half as much. Not to say that the US is any sort of paradise, but there are definitely tradeoffs that favor either direction.
  - capableweb 3y ago
    I don't think there is any value in just comparing salaries across countries, but I'm sure you already know this. Make it more interesting by add in life expectancy or something else, salary is just a number that doesn't matter much unless you start including other numbers too.
    - kortilla 3y ago
      This is a discussion about worker pay. Salary is the metric.
      - markus92 3y ago
        I'd say PPE is. Getting paid 5k to spend 4k on rent is pretty similar to getting paid 2k and spending 1k on rent (all else being equal).
        andybak 3y ago
        > PPE Personal protective equipment?
      - capableweb 3y ago
        > This is a discussion about worker pay. Salary is the metric. Disagree, the discussion is about much more than just a metric of salaries. Even if you consider the discussion to only be about salary, doesn't it matter how much of that salary you have to spend on things like health insurance VS other places? As that'd eat from your salary (or not).
    - Firmwarrior 3y ago
      I'd rather work one year at Amazon than 5 years at a nice European country in a walkable city, and that's how the numbers pan out if you're saving for retirement
      - capableweb 3y ago
        I'm guessing you're a US-native then? Where this salary/work obsession seems a lot stronger than around here (South-West Europe). My impression is that you work in order to do what you really want later, while we tend to focus on getting a job that pays enough to survive + bit more, but still allows us to do the things we want now, rather than later at/around retirement. Insert story about The Businessman and The Fisherman
        Firmwarrior 3y ago
        You aren't sitting on a beach playing guitar with your friends if you get a tech job in Germany, you're doing the same boring pain-in-the-ass dead-end work either way. Just with less threat of being randomly fired or mistreated, which isn't even particularly intimidating or stressful when you're sitting on an enormous nest egg
        capableweb 3y ago
        Since you avoided the question, I'm guessing I was spot on :) And I'd guarantee you that someone who worked five years for a average German company definitely has incurred less mental stress than someone working one year for Amazon, on average. But I also recognize that it's hard to see the difference between the two cultures if you only have the experience of one of them, and the "hard working pays off" system is so heavily ingrained.
        Firmwarrior 3y ago
        I think you need to go touch grass, or at least check out some real numbers and think about them https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/berlin-metropolitan-region https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/berlin-... https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/san-francisco-bay-area?city=7158 https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/san-fra... How many years are you going to have to save up to retire at $240k/year vs $80k/year, do you think? Would you rather grind 10 months a year until you're too old to do anything but sit around and watch TV, or would you rather grind 12 months a year for 5-10 years and then do whatever you want for the rest of your life?
  - cool_dude85 3y ago
    This is true in one very specific industry, computer programming. Maybe being a doctor too but HN doesn't cater so much to that crowd. In others, wages are pretty comparable.
    - danaris 3y ago
      It's not even true in programming, unless your comparison point is not "the US tech sector", but specifically "Silicon Valley". Out here in the rest of the US, tech salaries are still somewhat higher, broadly speaking, than other professions, but they're much lower than they are in SV and related west-coast areas. And when you're talking about tech worker salaries outside the tech sector, the effect is even stronger.
  - bitwize 3y ago
    They're being paid half as much but they're much better off because world-class health care and education are effectively free. And if they have a job it's much harder to fire them and leave them twisting in the wind.
  - albert180 3y ago
    Try again and compare Purchase Power lol. And comparing it to Western Europe already 50% of that larger salary disappear
- School-Cotton 3y ago
  The U.S. is not really a “modern country”. It’s not fair to compare it to functioning Western European democracies.
bsenftner 3y ago
I'm not comparing this against history, this is clearly illegal behavior, yet no legal professionals will touch it because Amazon has just so much money to throw at their legal defense it is not possible to combat their clearly illegal behavior.
suoduandao3 3y ago
There was a brief moment in North America where almost every worker belonged to a union but employers hadn't figured out offshoring yet. The adjustment definitely was hard on American workers, but the fact that it came with a huge benefit to developing country workers is conspicuously overlooked by most of the 'late stage capitalism' narrative.

ballenf 3y ago

In earlier times, they'd just fire you without any kind of PIP process. Are you saying that PIP vs. immediate firing is worse?

cool_dude85 3y ago
In many jobs "in earlier times" there were for-cause clauses negotiated into contracts and you could not be fired without management proving that you had done something wrong, even after you had been through a negotiated disciplinary process.
danaris 3y ago
In some ways, yes. Firing you immediately for bullshit reasons is something you can potentially take to court, and also make a solid case for unemployment payments due to unfair termination. If they put you on a PIP, and then claim that you're failing to meet it, even if they're lying through their teeth, that makes it much harder to prove that their actions were unfair or illegal. Suddenly it's no longer a "person said, faceless company said;" it's "person said, faceless company had months of documented (if falsified) evidence to back up their position". Unless you are savvy enough to start documenting everything, which is a) hard to know you need to do, b) hard to know how to do effectively, and c) kind of exhausting even if you can get it right. To a large extent, the PIP process is there to cover Amazon's ass and make sure that your firing sticks. And all that is if you don't just get frustrated and fed up with being constantly told you're failing to meet expectations that either you are, in fact, meeting, or no actual human could ever meet.
- NBJack 3y ago
  This reminds me of the big piece years ago talking about employees crying at their desks from the pressure. People joked about it, and to be fair, it wasn't that common. Reality is, you wanted to find a conference room or the bathroom for that. Let's not forget that in order to use said documentation legally later, you would potentially run the risk of violating company policy on confidential information disclosure.
JohnFen 3y ago

sumtechguy 3y ago

Late stage? This is SOP for many large companies going back decades. The tech companies are just sort of new to it and gave it a new name. Many companies in the 70s/80s/90s famously had their 10% culling every year. Microsoft called it stack ranking. This is hardly new and is fairly commonly done in many industries. The book name escapes me but the CEOs loved it about how it touted this very thing to do. Is it the 'right thing', no. But is something you should expect from companies. They are not your friend or buddy or partner, no matter what lies they tell you. They are the people who pay you to do work. In the past 15-20 years the tech world has been sheltered from it. If you could code you could make decent money. That part is starting to stabilize as more people can do it. The supply is catching up with the demand. 'Late stage capitalism' is a catch all term for 'the parts of the economic world I think are bad'. If you ignore the curves the curves will remind you that supply and demand exist in all models. Also lawsuits do not happen 'instantly' someone has to pay for the lawyers to make it happen. You have to make sure the law is on your side. You also have to make sure the judicial system is on your side. A class action lawsuit is not a cheap thing someone does in their spare time. Oh and if you mess up you run the risk of ruining your law practic and the political estabilisment going after you.

g-b-r 3y ago
I did know about Microsoft (in the 90s), and I think many companies took inspiration from them; do you have older examples?
- sleepybrett 3y ago
  invented at ge
  - sumtechguy 3y ago
    Pretty much all of the big banks did it too.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
3y ago