Let's Talk Amazon

I'm sure most here have read the New York Times article by now.

So, what's your take? Is it truthful? Do you care? Will it change your spending habits?

Can u summarize the article for me\us?

Oh man, I'm terrible at summarizing something without injecting a little of my own opinion.

I'll try with: Working at Amazon = Bad idea.

Though I'm sure it's worse if you're blue rather than white collar (mainly because you likely have other employment options).

www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/in...-workplace.html?_r=0

OFF TOPIC: We've got a large Amazon warehouse set to open about 15-20 mins from my house (town just south of us). I wonder if this article will do much to impact their bottom line. Regardless, and again a whole other topic, but it makes me sick when cities give incentives to companies. kxan.com/2015/07/21/san-marcos-to-vote-on-amazon-warehouse/

One of my housemates works for Amazon in their warehouse. He said the only part of this he sees is they always want to get shit done right away. Like they start working on a project before they even finish planning the project. Other than that its a regular workplace.

Having read the article I can tell you that Amazon's attitude towards employees, that they're expendable assets they can over-work and easily replace, seems common among a lot of larger companies since the recession.

I read the article, which IIRC was aimed more at the abuse of their white-collar staff. Thinks from the boss like, "I don't GAS about your mom's cancer," and from the employees, "At least one person was crying after every meeting I was in." The comments ran from, "Hang the 1%," to, "I work at Amazon, and it's no different than any other job."

Here's Jeff Bezos' take on this: www.theonion.com/article/jeff-bezos-assu...hr-working-100-51121
(Note: yes, I've heard of The Onion)

I figure it's like any other company where the employees (some of them, anyway) are sitting on a big pile of lucrative options.

The article is on white collar work, but there are a number of similarish stories from blue collar warehouse work. The famous thing with the amazon warehouse with no air conditioning.

Yeah, the article is about white collar work, but like I mentioned, I figure the blue collar has it worse, so when I see white collar is bad...

Looking around Austin, there are companies and start-ups coming in all the time (plenty through corporate welfare). However, I don't see any that are blue collar. The white collar sector is being served fine with plenty of options, but what about the 'other side of the tracks'? A city contains more than one type of citizen. This amazon warehouse going up down the street is going to be great for the blue collar population...at least I hope so...they don't have many choices...

In the end though, white or blue collar, being treated like shit is a problem. If this stuff shakes out to be true I may cancel my account. Amazon doesn't sell anything I can't get elsewhere. No one needs to be miserable so I can save $5-10 on a boardgame or book.

I see a lot of reactions to this which are like "IT jobs are just like that." I don't really think that's a great response. It's still fucked up to treat workers this way industrywide.

You go to work for a place, and you know the culture when you sign up, you get what you paid for. Around here, Amazon has a hub 20 minutes away. I've known 3 people that work there and they said that the work is hard as hell, it's like a sweat shop. That said, they start at like 15$/hour, so it's not like they're getting McDonald's pay for their labor.

2 couldn't handle it. One is still there, and now he is looking at buying a house. The two that couldn't handle it are entitled cunts to begin with, who hate work and love to blame everyone for their shitty situation. The third is an alpha-female who works her ass off at every job, and raises her two kids by herself because her piece of shit ex-husband thought that fucking a 19 year old was better for him than taking care of his kids. So, without Amazon, she would be in deep shit instead of looking to buy her first home at 26.

Seems to me that by shopping with Amazon, I'm supporting local jobs, keeping Kentucky money in Kentucky. If Amazon disappeared, that's several thousand families who may lose their homes. So, while it sucks that the company pushes them hard, the pay is much higher than commensurate labor input (factories around here are like 11-13$ an hour) and more importantly, being black isn't a disqualifying trait like a lot of other places around here.

www.amazon.jobs/location/hebron-ky
Lots more jobs, too.

So, I'll keep supporting the shit out of them, buying as much as I can from them.

Man, I'd sure never want to work in an environment like that. I do work for a pretty large corporation, but the culture is much more reasonable than that. Don't get me wrong: like anywhere else you learn to dread hearing from Human Resources, you may find that a longtime colleague is no longer with the company simply by being unable to find their e-mail address, etc. But this whole "e-mail in the middle of the night, then texts if you don't reply" thing would not fly.

All that said, this sounds like it's just a larger example of the high pressure culture that one sees in the consulting corporations like Accenture and PricewaterhouseCoopers. New consultant employees are like newborn sea turtles scrambling across the sand toward the water: some will make Partner, but most will burn out well before then. And everybody knows that going in.

Because so many other companies depend on the logistics, auditing, and process design work of those big consulting firms it would be difficult to be a "clean" consumer of the type that Mr. White alludes to up top. One may choose to do business only with those corporations that regularly top the Best Place to Work lists, but even those companies depend on the 80 hour work weeks of their white collar consultants from PwC, Accenture, etc.

Personally, I figure that nobody twisted the Amazon workers' arms to work there and nobody forces them to stay. If they're being compensated better at Amazon than they would be elsewhere then that probably explains their staying there despite the grueling conditions. If they're not receiving better compensation, better training, or better something then I don't see how the Amazon employment model will last.

FWIW, the whole "always on" is not Amazon only. I get calls all hours of the night, emails, etc. It's the curse of being an international man of mystery LOL..but seriously, getting in that mindset is a huge step up when it comes to your career. Being the guy who answers at 11PM on a Saturday night is the difference between making that deal or losing it to the guy who would pick up.

Just my 2c...

There is a joke about how Amazon is automating their warehouses and replacing the workers with robots that can get the needed item and put in a package to ship. The joke is that robots will NEED air conditioning in order to function, The humans don't get much now I suppose.

Computers need A/C, robots do not.

Trust me, I sold them for 10 years.

Has anybody else here looked into Jet.com as an alternative to Amazon? There was some buzz over at BGG due to it having a good $10 off your first purchase of $35 deal.

It's a membership club site like Costco or Sams Club where you pay a yearly fee. It's a direct competitor to Amazon and beats them slightly on price. Free shipping on most things and free returns too.

You can signup for a free membership trial (no auto-charge) and try it out. Just picked up Mansions of Madness for $37 total after the $10 off. Great deal, but selection isn't amazing.

I try not to buy stuff from Amazon, I try my best to support local brick and mortar stores. I'm worried than one day the only real stores will be women's clothing stores. It's already mostly that way. On occasion there is a book I really want but generally it's from a third party seller... which I don't totally understand but I believe means that I'm buying it from some store that is linked through Amazon to get to buyers. There are other places to go.

I've never used Amazon for anything other than music or books. Never for games. I always buy my games locally (either Starlit Citadel or Strategies and Games on Main) once in a blue moon I have to order the game from some other on line retailer but that's rare and it's never Amazon.

I've heard rumblings about their shitty treatment of employees for years now and try to avoid that. But really - when I'm buying plastic mini's that probably came from kids in China - well, it's hard to get to serious about this stuff. But I don't want to give up entirely which I think is too tempting when so much shit is wrong. So I try to hang on.