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Comment by breischl | Hacker News Reader

Oh my gawd, a 2% match? Doesn't that violate some UN human rights convention?! </s>

It's reasonable to compare their comp package to their competitors, especially if you're considering working there. But calling the tax-advantaged retirement plan that gives you free money "brutal" is just whinging.

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I get a 5% match with a group RRSP at work and I'm at a small non-profit company. Most tech companies don't even offer an RRSP in Canada.

That's surprising. Here in the US non-profits aren't allowed to match at all.

> That's surprising. Here in the US non-profits aren't allowed to match at all.

I'm not sure that's correct. I'm at a 501(c)3 in Boston and receive a 401k match up to 6%, fully vested at each monthly grant. According to this[1] IRS doc it looks like 401(k) plans and matching can be used by any non-governmental employer.

1. http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p4484.pdf

No. Non-profits in the US can match whether it's a 401(k) or a 403(b).

Not correct. Source: work for a non-profit with a matching 401(k) program.

No, it isn't. We're not serfs. If they have shitty benefits, they should be called on it.

Love to know the actual reason for this coordinated attack on Amazon. What's about Seattle based software companies and irritated established interests? /(a big) wink

There have been whisperings about Amazon's work culture for many years. I know I've read complaints from tech employees on social media for the longest time. I've also seen several articles about their warehouse employees and what they go through.

I think the reason you're seeing so many articles about it recently is that there is "blood in the water." And people love to bandwagon in the media in general, but in tech media especially.

I do think Amazon's work culture deserves some discussion, but will agree that at some point there is only so much you can say about it before you have to move on. Bringing up the 401K in particular just seems like a "me too!" article, with nothing specific to add to the discussion (i.e. this could have been a footnote in a full article on the topic).

The CEO (and other executives) coming out and saying "everything is wonderful at Amazon, I never see anyone upset!" (paraphrasing) only added fuel to the fire as it seemed so totally out of touch almost to the point of being laughable. That's what turned this from a small fire into a raging one (plus they love to try and humble CEOs).

> Love to know the actual reason for this coordinated attack on Amazon.

Going out on a limb here -- because it has a pretty bad work environment compared to other similar companies?

But it wasn't really 'good' journalism. Counter points from Amazon employees were compelling and raised good objections.

I think NYTimes is worried about losing its entirely unearned special social perch in context of distribution channels and e-markets.

It really was good journalism, by all acceptable definitions of that term. Just because a number of engineers report never being treated that way, that doesn't negate the hundreds of data points that the Times used in the piece, which were all approved by Amazon ahead of time.

I've heard the Times interviewed hundreds of people. NOT that the hundreds of people all said the same thing. Unless you have some confirmation of that, I suspect the quotes in the article are the result of cherry-picking.

That's not how newspaper editing works. No one is going to prove to you the editor's logic that went into selecting those interviews and that they are indeed representative (how could you ever fully quantify that?), but to suggest otherwise means that you're doubting every article ever published by any newspaper.

Well, most press about things I have direct experience with is either outright wrong or extremely misleading, so how can I trust the press on things I don't have direct experience with? I'm not sure doubting every article ever published by any newspaper is such a bad idea.

I'll take my own experience working at Amazon for 2 years and knowing dozens of hundreds of Amazon employees over blind faith in the Times's editors.

I think one of the big lessons of this experience is that there isn't such a thing as a unified Amazon culture and experience, since there are so many and numerous experiences to the contrary. You can look at the hundreds of negative reviews posted on this site and anonymous gists published to see that this really is across groups and not present in a mere dozen of cherry-picked articles by the Times. My own interviewing experiences have been fairly negative as well and the burnout and long working hours stories that I've seen published by other software engineers are in line with my friends' experiences working for AWS. Your mileage obviously varies.

Amazon is widely recognized to have a horrible work culture. Microsoft, for all its evils, does not (or at least didn't, before stack ranking). I know a bunch of people from both places, and the latter group was much happier. Tellingly, when the Microsofties got sick of their work, none of them left for Amazon. None of them.

This is easily verified. A search on my LinkedIn account for previous employer Microsoft / current employer Amazon brings up 832 results (you may get more or less, depending on your LinkedIn connections.) I get 578 results going the other way.

I think Amazon is the source of this attack on Amazon. :)

Sometimes one company becomes the whiping boy for the bad behavior of the majority - and if your hitting major publishers where it hurts its a good idea not to give them any ammunition.

Amazon just have to hope that Rupert Murdoch doesn't go after them

People are jumping on because it's a hot topic right now.

A few years ago it was stack ranking at MS.

One reason for the attacks on Amazon: they are coming from the New York Times.

Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post -- a significant competitor to the NYT.

The NYT is in the happy position of damaging a competitor while generating clicks.

It's personal, in other words.

That's a copout. Just because Bezos buys one large newspaper now means that any other newspaper presenting a well-documented expose of the company with hundreds of their own employees talking about systemic issues is invalid?

right because the NYT article was the first time something came out about amazon.

from an engineer https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/3ce0s8/dear_amazon...

some stuff about the FC workers

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_...

battles in germany with unions http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/16/us-amazon-com-germ...

Instead of downvoting you may want to reflect on the fact that an actual story [1] got buried in 'Tech' section of the paper of record and the hear-say attack piece on Amazon went straight to front page. Front page of NYTimes is a very (very) politically hot space, don't you think? /another big wink ;)

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/technology/engineers-alleg...

Instead of innuendo - why not just state who you think is behind this and what evidence you have?

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