The tone of your writing suggests that you are OK with treating these people badly. If a company treats some set of its workers badly, what stops them from treating other employees the same way? In this case, they may treat SW engineers well because there is a lot of demand for engineers, and they have to be treated well to retain good folks. That is not comparable to the good culture that OP claims WF has.
I'm not saying its ok to be inhumane or break laws and treat your workers like cattle. I'm just saying that if you've never worked at a minimum wage unskilled job before, you probably don't realize how much it can be hell, just due to the nature of the work. The same thing can be said for lots of labor like farming, construction work, mining, etc.
The economic/social situation of people force them into these jobs. Just ignoring this and accepting it as reality is ridiculous. This can be said of any of such social behaviours. In some cultures, the violence on women is countered by the logic that they were wearing certain kind of dress and nobody is forcing them to do this etc ..
There are certain values in society that we should try to fight for. They may seem idealistic in current perspective, but nevertheless we should strive for them to make progress inch by inch. Brushing them off under the pretext of "nobody forced them" is not right.
I remember reading a story about a 19th century company that literally put chains on the doors to prevent workers from leaving the building. When a fire broke out, dozens died. Today we don't allow that type of behavior, and for good reason. The reason that you can move elsewhere to get a better job is because society has worked to ensure the prevalence of said good jobs, and I hope it continues to do so.
But probably more similar to most jobs in a grocery store than a software engineering position.
Just a tad, but the financial analysis told us inhumanity was the right direction to move in. /s
I haven't seen any articles about the working conditions at warehouses in years, have you? In the mean time, they've opened dozens more warehouses.
(The latest was the NYT article which was about office jobs and which is a whole discussion in its own right.
https://www.google.com/#q=amazon+ambulance+warehouse
https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/inside-amazons-ver...
> In a lengthy and heavily reported article, The Call said a warehouse employee contacted the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on June 2 to report that the heat index in the warehouse had reached 102 degrees, and that 15 workers had collapsed. The employee also said workers who were sent home because of the heat received disciplinary points.
> Eight days later, the paper said, an emergency room doctor at a local hospital saw enough Amazon employees suffering from heat-related injuries to call OSHA and report “an unsafe environment.”
> So many ambulances responded to medical assistance calls at the warehouse during a heat wave in May, the paper said, that the retailer paid Cetronia Ambulance Corps to have paramedics and ambulances stationed outside the warehouse during several days of excess heat over the summer. About 15 people were taken to hospitals, while 20 or 30 more were treated right there, the ambulance chief told The Call.
In a giant warehouse managed by a company with > 100k employees, things are not changed that quickly...
I wasn't a contract product picker either, I'm a Paramedic that helped staff the on-site medical clinic, which exists mostly for workers comp paperwork and the occasional emergency. (in 6 months, I responded to 2 actual medical emergencies.)
The warehouses were not overheating even in the Texas sun, we didn't have an ambulance sitting outside, and people weren't passing out. I'm not sure what was up with the one in the story but it definitely sounds like more of an exception than the rule. But that story of that warehouse just keeps coming up.
Some positions are temporary seasonal labor, but Amazon employs people full time in their fulfillment centers as well, and they work hard trying to convert the former into the latter.
Where I am (near Austin, TX), Amazon is running a campaign to recruit UT students with the promise of "tuition assistance." The way they treat their FC employees has nothing at all to do with their relative skill level, educational background or expected tenure. They've also been pushing 60 hour mandatory overtime for over a month for some shifts and they pay well under the cost of living for the area in which they operate, and I expect that represents the general treatment of the majority of Amazon employees, because there are far more of them at the bottom of the pyramid than the top.
I don't doubt the engineers are doing well, though. They probably get chairs to sit in and everything.
This might be one of the more tone deaf things I've read on HN in recent memory.
Today has taught me that HN has a pretty fierce anti AMZN bias, and it shows. I have 4K+ karma, and am sharing my honest opinion and experiences working for AMZN for the last year. Next time, I just won't participate. This community has gone downhill pretty seriously in the last few years... No big loss.
If it speaks volumes, those volumes are more about this being a tech-industry biased forum than anything else. We don't really talk about the fast food industry and it's working ccondition nearly as much (though, even so, the whole industry is often used as a shorthand for terrible working conditions even when discussing other things.)
Your idea that the fact that HN talks about Amazon more than the fast food industry is anti-Amazon bias and not tech-industry focus is interesting, but not particularly plausible. (Especially given that plenty of that talk is positive.)
I once had a coworker that walked into the building, and said that morale was so low people would start crying when they were paged. Gave back his signing bonus and resigned immediately.
Completely anecdotal stories obviously. Not saying you're wrong, but you may be the outlier?
> I don't think you have much to worry about if you're a WF employee. Amazon actually treats their employees very well.
Normally when people say Amazon abuses their employees, they aren't talking about AWS.
Do you mean the software developers who work on Lake Union or the many lower skilled people who work in Amazon's fulfillment centers...like people who would work in a grocery store...
> I know that there are some stories about bad experiences in the fulfillment centers, but keep in mind that those positions are temporary seasonal work by unskilled labor. That's a completely different environment than full time employees work in.
People who work at Wholefoods aren't software developers making top bucks.
I've never had anyone in person tell me that Amazon was a good place to work unless they were trying to recruit me.
40-50 hours of work a week isn't healthy.
Every one of my friends in engineering (actual engineering, e.g. civil, aerospace, etc.) positions get at least 1.5x for any hour over 40 they work in a week. In fact "unpaid overtime" is something I hadn't heard of for an engineering position prior to working in software. It's almost like workers in this industry are competing to see how much they can let themselves be exploited.
1. If nothing else, engineers are considered a learned professional.
2. They probably make over $100,000 per year.
3. They may hit the executive exemption.
In some cases these employers' contracts require them to pay overtime to employees that work on the contract project, but generally that isn't the case. They pay overtime because of the historical evolution of the industry and the expectations and dynamics of the employer/employee relationships.
If you treat your people like valuable members of society/your organization they will develop and improve on the actual skills that an unskilled job needs, like anticipating problems, knowing when an how to escalate issues, being warm to customers, being knowledgeable about the business and your products, and hustling when needed.
If your treat your people like disposable chattel then they’ll show up to punch a clock, check the boxes, and get out as soon as possible.
We can say all we please that we want great customer service, but we vote with our wallets, and our wallets say "Save $5 per trip to interact with the trained monkeys."
Thus, we have Walmart.
This is very much a cultural problem that stems from treating service workers as subhuman and undeserving of a decent wage.
And the price difference is hardly as high as $5 per trip. Even places with really high minimum wages don't get that bad. It's more like a few extra cents, barely noticeable. Where the savings on payroll at the bottom are going is usually payroll further up the chain.
Some stores have much better customer service than others, like Whole Foods and Costco (just to cover both sides of the pricing models), and they seem to be doing all right.
Seasonal workers in the FCs literally get only 4 hours of training and are then filling orders. That's the pure definition of unskilled, and a far cry from a pastry chef at WF.
There's the checkout counter and stock in the back, but I feel like the employed-during-the-day crew definitely has career opportunities.
Enjoying your ivory tower I hope?
But keep in mind poor non-tech people are trash and you can treat them like it!
If you work for AWS, you are either software engineer or linux/network admin. And that means you bring high value to Amazon. So yes, Amazon would treat you well.
But as you go further down the value chain, your treatment will get exponentially worse. And I can't imagine cashiers and stockers being viewed as high value makers by Amazon.
What do you think most Whole Foods employees are?
Gotcha.
I don't think you have much to worry about if you're a WF employee. Amazon actually treats their employees very well. In my experience here, I've never seen any of the things the NY times article talked about, either on my team or any other team I've interacted with. People have a healthy work/life balance (40-50 hours a week), get paid very well (definitely above average, and probably in the top 25% of industry), and in general they are concerned with long-term employee sustainability, rather than letting employees burn out and quit.
I know that there are some stories about bad experiences in the fulfillment centers, but keep in mind that those positions are temporary seasonal work by unskilled labor. That's a completely different environment than full time employees work in.