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Comment by kpil | Hacker News Reader

How could that be?

I stopped buying from Amazon after reading about how they treat their warehouse employees.

To me, Amazon just represents monopolistic corporate greed, with no aspiration of caring even just a little bit about anything else.

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I spent four years writing software for those warehouse associates. Spent a lot of time inside those behemoth buildings, met a lot of good people and worked pretty much every job for at least a few hours.

The thing to remember is that warehouse jobs suck everywhere. Amazon just happens to be a large employer. And overall, if I had to work in a warehouse I'd prefer to work in an Amazon one.

Now, if you want to hate on how Amazon treats human beings, go read up on the delivery drivers. A year on developing that software led me to quit.

> The thing to remember is that warehouse jobs suck everywhere.

Keep telling yourself that if it helps you sleep. I mean, sure, they're not the most glamorous. But what sets Amazon apart is how, as with their other operations, they've "streamlined" things, being "data-driven." By all accounts I've read, in an Amazon warehouse you're truly a number, with metrics gathered and ruthlessly analyzed. They've streamlined the recruiting/hiring process too, so there's a line of people around the block waiting to take your job the moment you slip up.

I did some warehouse work as a teenager. I wasn't a number. I was fresh meat in a violent, snide culture where there weren't any coherent processes or data. I'm a tough bloke, so one-armed Wally and angry Floyd did not ruin my summer. But if I were to go back into a warehouse again, I'd much rather have metrics and a data-driven system of accountability that applies to everyone. It beats an unstructured tyranny where overhead lighting is deliberately broken so cruel stuff can happen in dark corners.

So you're saying the choices are postmodern dystopia, or being beaten by your coworkers. Methinks there's some ground between.

Agreed! It's why immigrants in low-paying, low-skill jobs press so hard for their children to get as much formal education as possible. Even two years of community college is enough to gain more control (and income!)

I'm pretty sure what he was trying to say is that, as bad as Amazon's warehouses may be, his experience was worse, and, perhaps, that back in the day, warehouses were worse.

What conclusion you or the OP choose to draw from that is a different question.

Why put quotation marks around "data-driven" and "streamlined"? They are data-driven. People who do their jobs well get recognition, and the guys who show up and put in a half-assed day are asked to leave.

The jobs are designed to be doable with 5 minutes of training by anyone off the street. But they offer 40-hour weeks at above-average wages for untrained labour, with set expectations that can be met. Many sites offer after-work classes for in-demand skills to help people get better jobs. They have medical staff on-site in case of injuries, water stations everywhere to help keep people hydrated, safety rules and regulations they follow very carefully.

Most warehouse jobs do not offer those things.

>there's a line of people around the block waiting to take your job the moment you slip up.

Recruiting is typically handled by outside firms, at most sites I saw. They don't want to fire people, because hiring people costs money. Even if initial training takes 5 minutes, it takes a week or more to get good at the job, which means every time they fire someone, they lose money on labour efficiency while a new person gets up to speed.

I have some criticisms of the company after my time working there- including some that, as you said, gave me trouble sleeping at night. None are related to the way warehouse associates are treated.

NOt really. My mom worked in a warehouse for years and enjoyed it. It's hard labour but it was a good job and she liked it.

It was also a union job with decent pay/benefits and seemingly less of a grind than the Amazon FCs.

Part of the reason Amazon is so successful and highly regarded is the degree to which they exploit their warehouse employees. This exploitation results in customer orders being stocked and shipped quickly and in costs being reduced. Amazon is obsessed with the customer, remember, not the employee.

This, in general, is important to remember - especially if you're planning on being employed by Amazon, or doing business by them. Amazon will do anything* to make the customer experience better - and that means getting maximum efficiency out of every link in the supply chain by pushing vendors, publishers and employees to their limits.

Life can be quite nice as a developer, if you've got a manager who understands that developer efficiency can be cultivated by not putting on undue pressure. But if you're in any role with a single metric which can be ruthlessly optimized, expect that to happen.

* Anything except sacrifice the Long-Term Projects. As a former Amazon site developer, I've been incredibly pissed off about the Amazon website and apps degrading the customer experience in order to aggressively push Prime, Amazon Music, Amazon Mom/Student, etc. There's some stuff on there bordering on dark patterns, and it goes against everything that was drilled into us devs over the years.

I think you mean; They will do anything to make money.

Selling assorted junk from China and some books with a minimum of friction for the customer is just aligned with that goal.

I see Amazon as a company that wants to give a great service to humans but their humans in Warehouses aren't up to the task. I predict in a decade a large part of their warehouse will be automated for the labor heavy skills.

There is an inherent desire to enslave to leverage work off automation. Robots would be perfect slaves for corporations.

Whoever makes electric muscles and sells it at scale is going to be the next billionaire.

True. Look at assembly lines in automobile industry. Robotic arm companies are already making billions.

I work in an automated Amazon facility - robots carry the bins around to human associates who do the Moravec's Paradox - ridden work requiring fine motor skills and quick visual acuity (those bins can be very messy) or the simple labor that wouldn't be cost effective for a machine that probably costs more than my car (such as pushing juice carts around the facility.)

The problem is, humans are up to the task - if you push them hard enough. A robot isn't going to be more cost effective than that for a long time to come. Given Amazon's culture, I'm not certain they would replace their human workforce en masse even if they could, as long as meat remains fundamentally cheaper.

> 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.

https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/inside-amazons-ver...

Because it's cheaper and more efficient to have them onsite.

Also because dehydration and injuries are a problem in fulfillment centers, especially during high volume or high heat.

Why should dehydration be an acceptable problem ? i can understand heat and not using air-conditioning, but even soldiers in hot countries manage to stay hydrated.

Because people often don't realize how much water they need.

Soldiers die all the time during training exercises, let alone actual deployment. Dehydration is definitely a cause: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2362942/Soldiers-mar...

Where in all of this did you get that someone saw it as an "acceptable problem"? Hell, where did you get that dehydration isn't a problem for soldiers?

I grew up in Texas. Literally everyone I knew, and absolutely everyone who did manual labor, was familiar with the dangers of the dehydration+heat combo. It still happened all the time, despite being common knowledge.

Show me a warehouse actively preventing workers from getting water and I will join the moral outrage. But "dehydration happens in a warehouse during a heatwave" is an obvious consequence, not a shocking fact.

Amazon doesn't actively prevent workers from getting water - in fact, they're quite clear about dehydration being a problem.

However, the job is designed to push people to the limit, so dehydration being a problem is clearly acceptable to Amazon in the abstract. In the facility where I work, depending on where you are, it can be a long enough walk to the nearest water fountain that you risk getting written up for being off task if you water too often, because Amazon is "frugal" with things like that.

Most people don't blacklist corporations for bad behavior.

I don't get it either. Probably the last 4 or so things I've purchased on Amazon have not actually been shipped to me. I hate using it and try hard to avoid it these days.

That's extremely hard to believe, just because it's such an unusual complaint. You generally get something in the mail, even if it's a Chinese counterfeit. There must be a logical explanation -- what do you think is contributing to the problem?

Not an original author, but had it several times as well. Example one - tracking number was plain fake. Amazon refunded after I've contacted them through A-Z guarantee. Example two - tracking number was ok, but order was delivered to Florida, instead of California, with no comment from seller. Amazon refunded through A-Z guarantee.

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