Amazon making Wal-Mart look like a model employer?

[DonMoose]

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-alle ... full.story

I already avoid Wally World for this kind of abuse. Now Amazon (any any affiliates fulfilling orders via an Amazon warehouse) is off my list.

[tele caster]

Wow, talk about slave labor. Great article.

[LeftyStrat]

It's not just the warehouse employees. I worked as a developer for Amazon for two years (which is the minimum, otherwise you have to pay back your relocation expenses and signing bonus).

One week out of the month I would have to carry a pager. When the pager went off (at 9:00 PM, 3:00 AM, 6:00 AM, or 2:00 PM), you had fifteen minutes to get on the Net and put the ticket into "Work-In-Progress" state, or the page would escalate to your boss, then his boss, on up the ladder.

During that week when you were on "primary", you couldn't do anything. Even risking a trip to the grocery store with my family might mean I couldn't get back to the house in time to answer a page. I would have to drop them off at the grocery store, go home, and then wait for them to call me.

I'm a heavy sleeper, so I would have to turn the pager volume all the way up, which meant it woke up my wife and kids.

My health started to suffer, as well as that of my wife and kids. It was so bad that on my two year anniversary, I quit, even though I hadn't found another job.

It was especially frustrating, because as an engineer, I like to fix things that are broken, but Amazon wouldn't let us fix some of the problems, because apparently it was cheaper to throw flesh at the problem than solve it.

[LeftyStrat]

I left out one story that will give you an idea of what Amazon is like.

They hired a well known developer away from Microsoft, but after a short time the developer resigned, stating Amazon's lack of respect for an employee's personal life.

This was sort of a black eye, so a high up Amazon contacted him to try and convince him that Amazon really did care about employee's personal life. The developer noted on his blog that the caller id came from Amazon headquarters, and then stated, "If Amazon cares so much about our personal life, why are you calling me from your office at 11:30 PM on a Saturday night?"

True story.

[DonMoose]

Amazon wouldn't let us fix some of the problems, because apparently it was cheaper to throw flesh at the problem than solve it.

More likely that those broken things were choices made by someone on Mahogany Row, and admitting they need fixing would be seen as a challenge to that PHB's intelligence/integrity/competence.

Corporate butt-covering is too often the answer to why things are as f'd up as they are.

[David Root]

Amazon is now off my list too.

They are just inviting a criminal and civil lawsuit if (when) someone dies on the job in that heat.

If I were a shareholder I'd be on their case bigtime for risking my investment.

[Reeltarded]

Umm.. It doesn't work that way.

In my experience, it's not owners who change things like this, it's people not buying the stuff and the company flounders. It's cheaper to pay off than to change procedeures.

You'd have to be a pretty big dog to change a company like Amazon from doing something you don't like. It would take running them out of business, then a foreign owned company would come in and kill the next same thing using the same business model.

This is what happens when you have politicians talking about free-trade, and labor laws, when there are no tarrifs on junk that is dumped on our markets..

People also live cheaper too.. without rudely competitive prices, many poor people would be living much poorer. You can't really attack it from one angle without tipping it over from another.

[DonMoose]

Amazon recently announced installation of A/C at that facility and others ($2.4M worth).

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon ... 2011-09-23

[LeftyStrat]

Amazon wouldn't let us fix some of the problems, because apparently it was cheaper to throw flesh at the problem than solve it.

More likely that those broken things were choices made by someone on Mahogany Row, and admitting they need fixing would be seen as a challenge to that PHB's intelligence/integrity/competence.

Corporate butt-covering is too often the answer to why things are as f'd up as they are.

Definitely it was some of that. But it was also the fact that Amazon's growth is at such a fast pace, that managers will say, "We can't spend any cycles on that system because it is due to be replaced in six months."

Then two years later the system is still in place. But yeah, "Arrogant Intelligence" is probably more rampant at Amazon than it used to be at Microsoft. That arrogance has cost MS, and it will eventually catch up with Amazon. The turnover rate is really high. After working there two years, I was senior to half the employees.

Chew um up and spit them out.