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Comment by kelukelugames | Hacker News Reader

Yes please. I would love an amazon alternative, because I want to support a company that values its employees better. I started by letting my prime subscription expire.

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What leads you to believe Target is better to it's employees than Amazon?

That's a good question. I live in Seattle and have heard many negatives about Bezos and Amazon culture. Especially from SWEs who have worked at both Amazon and other tech companies. I also have gotten offers from Amazon, and they are on the low end.

I haven't heard complaints about Target. So I could be wrong, but I hope competition includes competition for talent, which means better treatment of employees.

IDK about the people in warehouses, but regular Target store employees are not treated badly. I mean, it's a low hourly wage job so the expectations are low, but I didn't dislike working there. They were happy to train me across multiple teams and work with my schedule. That said, it highly depends on the branch's general manager.

They do make you watch anti-union propaganda during orientation though.

One example: they raised their minimum wage to $11 an hour and are on track to bump it to $15 by 2020.

I still have Prime, but I understand what you're saying.

I might be in the minority here but I feel like Amazon still has better selection in products than Jet/Walmart/Target.

I think if they want to succeed they need to have a lot more products, and have them all in stock.

Example: Yesterday I was looking for a Motorola phone. When I type it in Amazon I get G, G Plus, E, E Plus, X, Nexus 6, Z, G4 Play, Z Play, Z2 Play etc. All in stock, and with 2 day prime shipping.

Then I type it into Target.com and it has G, G Plus and a bunch of E models. Many were limited quantity.

It's stuff like that that personally makes me stick with Amazon for now.

They have large selection and because third party vendors can store their items in Amazon and fulfillment centers and get it shipped via prime. Unless Target also does that, Amazon will always have a much larger selection of items (like 1000 types of iPhone X cases).

Walmart offers third party selling but not as streamlined and its not shipped by Walmart. Just another ebay store.. If you have a problem with an order, you deal with Amazon and not the vendor.

I have friends who work at HQ and others that were laid off during the myriad rounds they had a few years ago. It would be safe to say that their warm/fuzzy corporate culture has been completely changed with their current CEO Brian Cornell. It's a numbers game at this point. Not saying it's a bad thing when you're fighting for survival, but to say they value their employees well and that Amazon doesn't, isn't necessarily founded in reality. In fact many former Target employees I know have either gone on to start their own rep companies that work with or go to work directly for Amazon. Which should tell you something.

I'd rather support a company that treats its customer's private data better.

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