Amazon Workers Facing Firing Can Appeal to a Jury of Their Co-Workers
bloomberg.com
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Since the employee is being fired (deprived of something), they are "the accused" and "the burden of proof lies with the accuser". All the charges that are presented must be presented in such a way as to be challenged. Allowing the manager the last word -- and not allowing the employee to even be aware of what was said -- indicates that accusations are being made without being challenged.
The selection of jurors -- three non-managers or one manager -- seems strange in part because it recognizes a hierarchy of people and in part because it involves such a small number of people. The validity of a jury hinges in part on a certain notion of the equality of people -- we don't have juries of 12 ordinary people or 2 senators in the United States because we don't expect that senators are "more just" than ordinary people. It's hard to see why expecting managers to be "more just" is any more reasonable.
The purpose of the stated policy isn't to be "more just" it's to ensure management can control the outcome.
Well, the employee is depriving the employer of something as well. That's why they are in this arrangement: they believe it to be mutually beneficial, and thus agree to deprive themselves of something good, in exchange for something better. The problem this system seems to attempt to solve is where the employer is not aware of what they're getting in return for being deprived of that employee's compensation.
Given that the employer is trying to get rid of the employee, this assertion seems questionable.
Employment is not a right, and a job not the possession of the employee (it's rather the other way around,) and employers in the US can in most cases terminate an employee without demonstrating any cause at all. This isn't a "real" court and jury system, so the rules of that framework don't actually matter here.
The purpose of this is not to find fact and arbitrate fairly, it's to discourage employees from engaging in lawsuits against Amazon.
Article 23.
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Does the employee have a right to unconditionally (employment law and preexisting agreements notwithstanding) continue depriving the employer of his compensation? That seems, to me, completely unjust. Not only is this unjust to employers, but it is hostile to prospective employees as well: How many companies that you've worked for would hire you if they knew they could never let you go? How many of them would avoid giving raises because they would be expected to continue that scale of compensation until you're dead?
In this case, Amazon has chosen to implement something modeled on a judicial process, and that's where it's relevant to talk about burden of proof and who is depriving whom of what.
This would make sense except this article suggests that employees are not given a proper chance to actually present what they do give in return. Rather they spend the whole process defending accusations from their manager.
> She wasn’t invited to watch her boss’s presentation, and he got the last word.
In court, the accused does not get kicked out whenever the accuser is speaking. They should at least have the right to hear what is being said about them and be given the same time to both give a rebuttal and present their achievements and contributions.
One reason for this is that the big thief at the top -- the king -- benefitted by limiting the take of all the intermediary little thieves. The other reason is that the king had more to tax when the commercial sector was bustling and efficient -- but this meant contracts needed to be honored and private property respected.
Would Bezos benefit from justice at the level of rank and file management? Even if all that resulted was higher retention, then yes. Justice and rule of law doesn't have to extend to every level of an organization to make a difference.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't see this seemingly happen with multiple people across multiple Amazon development centers.
This place is toxic and puts way too much power in the hands of the managers, and the net result is that the managers have their favourites, and that the engineers are nothing but puppets, and that engineers are busy back-biting each other, and the managers enjoy the shit show from the sidelines. Despite not having any moral high-ground, all managers in an org review every reportee in that org with absolutely zero fairness, there's no integrity whatsoever, from what I've heard.
And I'd be lying if I said this _thinking_ didn't take it roots right at the very top of the management hierarchy (...according to employees I've spoken to).
What a hilariously counterproductive policy, obviously people that just barely exceed the incompetent-enough-to-fire low water mark are going to be given glowing reviews, then pawned off on some other team.
> I'd be lying if I said I didn't see this seemingly happen with multiple people across multiple Amazon development centers.
All the people I know at Amazon in Seattle consistently get home after 7pm most nights, and a handful of those people come in on the weekends for 10 to 12hrs to fix mundane bugs that aren't in need of immediate fixing. Amazon's high pressure work culture encourages this terrible practice of burning the candle from both ends, but Amazon definitely doesn't create quality products on the first try in part due to this.
I've always had an atypical (read: not traditionally competitive) background, both for schools and jobs. As a result, I've found universities and firms that are willing to take a chance on me the best. They are great for me because the tacit agreement is "I know I don't meet the traditional standards, but I'll work hard to prove I'm worth it. And if I'm not, I know you'll fire me." No one ever says it, but it's the strategic system that underlies this.
In short, Amazon offered me a job and a salary no other tech company would have. Not even close. I've had to work nights and weekends not on Amazon, but just on teaching myself the tech to do my job (I'm a data scientist who could barely code when I started). And I'm not doing bad. I'm not a genius, but I'm valuable enough. Once I get all my stock and a promotion, I might look at a 40-hour type company. On the other hand, my team is pretty fun, so I don't know.
I can't speak on everyone at the company, but the campus is basically empty at the times I leave at 7-8 (which isn't often and usually happens when I show up at 11-12). My own building is 95% cleared out by 6pm on a daily basis.
Not saying what you hear isn't true, but it's definitely appears to be the exception rather than the rule from my experience.
When your stressed out by work, interviewing just piles on the stress and can decrease performance.
- Reasonable work-life balance. In my 3 years here, there have only been a few "crunch times" the whole team has had to work weekends. We viewed it as a failure in planning and conducted a post-mortem to understand what went wrong.
- Nice people. Honestly, I've never experienced poor treatment like that which was highlighted in this article and the NYT exposé. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but in my experience, Amazon has no singular culture. It's more like a federation of start-ups with distinct cultures; if one team isn't a good fit for you, it's pretty easy to switch.
- Competitive pay. This is partly due to timing (the coincidental soaring of the stock price when I joined), but in general, my experience has been that Amazon offers strong stock compensation.
- Fascinating, hard problems. Pick _any_ specialty within software engineering or data science, and there's a team within Amazon at the forefront. I'm always learning, and I never feel like the smartest guy in a room. I get to work on "moonshot" projects that few other companies would have the resources to finance or the risk tolerance to stomach.
I'm not writing this comment to brag or imply my experience is representative of everyone at Amazon. This is just one perspective to even out the chorus of voicing saying it's a terrible place to work. In my experience, it's the polar opposite.
Amazon is not for everybody, and not everyone figures out how to identify bad teams and avoid them, and they have a bad time.
But if you have decent EQ, some backbone, and good technical skills, you can work on solving really hard problems with awesome peers that disproportionately do the right thing without being asked (because we cluster together).
> I've stayed for the following reasons:
The parent puts the question before the quote so that might be a bit confusing
It suggests that the employee is on trial, but you can't be on trial if your performance is poor because poor performance is not a crime. Yes, I'm sure everyone involved understands academically that it's not, but reading the article, the comments here, I think the internalized intuition at work is casting this as a matter of justice.
Hiring, retention and firing are not mechanisms to enforce some sort of justice, they're about ensuring that employment is mutually beneficial.
It's extremely hard for someone looking at being fired to have this kind of detached view of it, especially if you're already inclined to view the world in terms of justice, but you shouldn't because it will mess with your head. The first thing you want to do if you leave a job for any reason is move on, not feel like you've been exiled or ostracized. And if you come into an interview with a chip on your shoulder, that makes it significantly harder to get a new job and move on.
And this is not just a problem employees have, many managers are prone to criminalize employees who don't do well or hold grudges against people. That leads to capricious behavior and corrosive office politics, and you do not want them in leadership roles.
You have been in the army so during your time you were employed and the UMJC is a legal system is it not?
UCMJ is absolutely a legal system, and it deals with punishments for criminal actions. Most of the UCMJ is regular criminal law[1] covering everything from arson to rape to petty theft. (For non-Americans: criminal law is generally legislated and enforced at the state level, but military bases are under US jurisdiction.)
The UCMJ does elevate some bad performance to criminal status: sleeping on guard duty, malingering, disrespect to officers, etc. But the UCMJ says those things are crimes and punishes them as crimes, though it's far less dramatic than it sounds.[2]
Employment contracts in the US are generally "at will," so the remedy your employer has if you're not doing your job is to fire you. Your remedy if you don't like your job is to quit.
For either side to be subject to a tort (getting sued) there has to be a breach of contract, which means there was a contract you signed or at least discussed with your employer. For you to be subject to criminal penalties, you usually have to have intentionally caused harm to someone.
So if you're a salaried employee, have you ever signed a contract guaranteeing some level of performance? In any of the cases we're discussing, are people being sued for monetary damages? It happens; if you're an actor you have to complete some number of shows, but most 9 to 5 jobs aren't like that.
If there's no contract where an employee is promising a level of performance, their performance is not even a civil case, let alone a criminal case.
And that's where my claim that it's wrongheaded to put this in terms of justice. It's simply not the case that doing a bad job is something that we'd normally put someone on trial for. While courts are good at dispassionately hearing evidence and so forth, non-lawyers don't view trials dispassionately! They view them as a morality play where the righteous vanquish the wicked, which is completely inappropriate.
[1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/subtitle-A/part-I... [2]: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-an-article-15-3354...
It doesn't seem inherently unreasonable to have some process to let an employee argue that they were not given a reasonable chance to meet the demands of the job or that they actually were meeting the demands of the job and for the firing manager to argue that they were given a reasonable chance to meet the demands of the job and still were not meeting it.
Hearing the argument of your accuser and being given time to rebut with evidence contradicting it is a critical part of a justice system.
And best practice is to have an appeal stage so you can appeal the verdict to a manger completely outside of your reporting chain.
People are claiming that workers' rights should be limited to the same extent that employers' rights are limited (i.e. that either party can end the relationship at any time and without any specific reason) so as to avoid giving excess power to one party or the other.
That's right, the workers. The workers should have the excess of power in all circumstances. The only reason we have weekends and the "40" hour work week is because of workers and left wing movements. Corporations would have never let such happen, and are historically against the worker & only in favor of raking in profit at the expense of labor.
Edit: point proven, HN doesn't care about labor rights and prefers rights for corporations over the actual workers who make the corporation.
There is plenty of room for disagreement among people who accept that workers should have rights -- for example, what should the rights be, how should those rights be balanced against the rights of management, etc.
The person who owns the business has decided that this is the process by which he wants employees vetted because they do not have the time to personally oversee every decision.
See, you've actually moved the goalposts here and you may not have realized it.
That is not comparable to two employees with different responsibilities.
I mean, no one would come right out and say that, because it's a pretty stupid thing to say. There are, however, plenty of actions that have that outcome, without having the optics of coming right out and saying that you're favoring employers over employees. Being friendly to "job creators" and all that.
While many companies in the US can fire an employee for "no reason" that doesn't mean ANY reason or any process. If the company has a process that isn't fair, an employee could potentially sue over that. Granted other factors come into play but if a company sets up a system like this they still have to do it fairly, a judge could potentially decide the process is unfair.
You can fire people for no reason, but firing them for a reason via a process still requires it to be somewhat "fair".
It is weird how that works. Granted like anything to challenge it in court you need to prove a lot, but it is still a thing.
And to be clear I don't know if the boss just getting the final say as in the above example would qualify.
Side note since you mentioned "firing". The article's title ("facing firing") may unintentionally overstate what Amazon's appeal process is actually appealing.
Based on the text, Amazon's "appeal process" is to challenge the status of being put on PIP - the Performance Improvement Plan. It isn't to appeal a firing. (Although I understand that some see that as no difference if a PIP is ~99% equivalent to getting fired eventually.)
If the employee wants to keep working (at least temporarily) for Amazon, he/she doesn't need to appeal. What a successful appeal does is let them work without PIP targets hanging over their head.
I've never heard of a PIP actually succeeding (an employee improving to the satisfaction of their manager) so it delays the inevitable, perhaps allowing the employee to quit and find another job before their fired. It's definitely meant to avoid a wrongful dismissal lawsuit but I think that almost never works; either the employee is going to sue or they're not, "being given a chance to improve" isn't going to change that.
If there are explicit goals or metrics to be measured, which I have seen in many cases, it's pretty clear what needs to be done to clear it. If they don't meet those goals, and they're attainable (e.g. other people in the same role are performing that well on average), it's a pretty clear defense for a lawsuit.
The whole place was a clown show that I was unhappy at anyway, so while I entertained the idea of taking them to court, when I realized the PIP is basically an elaborate attempt to defend against wrongful termination cases I ultimately just found a much better job.
The biggest thing is to ensure that the targets in the PIP are both realistic and measurable. All too often I've seen people being asked to meet a bar far higher than is possible (and not even met by top achievers at a company) and with no real way to measure it other than "if I think you're doing good enough".
Yeah, it's a silly game where everyone has to pretend there's a chance you can "succeed". When in reality it's "rather than firing you and dealing with severance and lawsuits, we'll keep paying you for a few months while you find a new job, and then we'll agree that you voluntarily resigned". An employee who doesn't realize that is going to have a bad time, and would in fact be better off fired.
>[A]n employer may terminate its employees at will, for any or no reason ... the employer may act peremptorily, arbitrarily, or inconsistently, without providing specific protections such as prior warning, fair procedures, objective evaluation, or preferential reassignment ... The mere existence of an employment relationship affords no expectation, protectible [sic] by law, that employment will continue, or will end only on certain conditions, unless the parties have actually adopted such terms.
No specific reason needs to be given. And this is important. Neither side should be beholden to the other. Employees are not beholden to their employer to stay any length of time, and neither should employers be beholden to the employees to keep them employed indefinitely.
Now, no matter what, there is going to be a power imbalance. Currently, the power lies mostly with the employers. Employees are generally replaceable. You can find someone else to do a similar job.
So its symbolic in one sense - sure you can quit, but you can't do it without fallout.
And most non-competes are unenforceable as it prevents people from making a living.
As usual, there's a system in place and lofty rules about 'right to work' but it functions only for the well-off. The entitled if you will.
The vacation/sick pay issue is more of a grey issue as it's mostly a matter of company policy than any legal issue.
The deets may vary around the edges depending on the state (excluding CA which has strong anti-non-compete)
/* I used to practice employee-side employment law.
While there are plenty of workers who don't really have any recourse, I'd imagine highly paid tech workers can afford enough of a lawyer's time for them to draft a scary letter.
If your payroll damages are low and your case is solid, you might find a bleeding-heart lawyer to help you because attorney's fees are often included in the employee's damage award.
Though, in some states punitive damages may be available as well. (Sadly, not in Washington State where I used to practice)
Under such circumstances the rules of natural justice must still be observed: most significantly, a fair hearing with rights of reply, and an unbiased adjudicator.
Failure to adhere to those rules is the basis of an appeal to a real court.
The problem with a system like Amazon's (or internal appeal processes other private companies use) is that they are often so blatantly biased towards management that their results would be legally meaningless in the context of a trial. It makes me wonder why they bother at all.
I'd agree, except it really doesn't doesn't cost anything to appeal.
The appeal seems more like a cultural evaluation to see if they can go to another team or not. Not so much a real chance to keep your job.
Working under a manager who wanted you gone... that's a recipe for disaster anyway. Unless your manager has done something that warrants his termination, workers would be better off just finding another role in the company or finding a new job.
Most terminations, in my experience, have been due to poor cultural fit... not job performance. Unless someone is grievously slacking at work, generally speaking the only time someone gets fired is when they fail to build rapport with their boss and coworkers. That being the case, a "trial" like this seems like a good way to see if the worker just has a conflict with his boss, or if he's really a pain in the ass to work with.
PIPs exist entirely to build documentation to fire the employee
Except this article suggests that those the interviewee spoke with who won the appeal were kept in their current position with the current manager.
The article clearly doesn't go into the process beyond what's on surface. When I participated both the manager and the employee wrote an initial document that would be shared with each other. These documents are the basis for the presentation. The employee had time to go through the manager's document and rebut each of the points their turn (as did the manager), so it seems slightly disingenuous to suggest that neither party has access to the other's claims.
During each parties presentation, they would go through the document and bring in supplemental evidence (which the other doesn't have access to).
The format I went in was: Employee presents their document -> Employee rebuts manager's document / Q&A -> Manager presents their document -> Manager rebuts other presentation / Q&A
The panel then has the option to bring back the employee for additional questions.
I'd be interested if/how the ordering of the presentations affected the panel.
The manager isn't present during the employee's presentation either though, and I'd imagine it would devolve into a circus if both parties are present during both presentations and able to interrupt/rebut directly. (Might also not be beneficial to the employee)
Could it become a circus? Yes, if procedural ground rules are not well-defined and enforced by the moderator of these sessions. One of these should be the obvious "don't interrupt each other while one side is speaking".
I know these aren't supposed to be formal legal proceedings by design, but if the parties cannot question each other -- or even hear what the other has to say! -- then there seems to be a strict upper bound to the degree of "truth" that a jury could uncover during this process.
EDIT: I didn't notice your disclaimer when I wrote this; I absolutely did not mean to give off the impression that you or your colleagues @ Amazon didn't take your responsibilities as appeal committee members seriously or didn't do your job properly. Hopefully you didn't take it that way, but re-reading this thread made me want to clarify.
I have done "attends" in the UK but in order to do this I needed to be trained and accredited even to be allowed into the meeting to observe and not as some one with the power to make decisions!
Since when did companies become "justice systems"?
If you've been marked for firing, obviously management has a poor perception of you. Sure, your coworkers can vouch for you and stop the firing, but to management you're still a marked man or woman. You might still have your job, but you're probably looking at poor performance reviews and no raises for a few years. I know very few people who've ever dug themselves out of a situation like that.
You'd be far better off to just leave for another company and start fresh.
I agree that continuing to work with a manager who wants to fire you doesn't really work for anybody.
So, yeah, a formal check-in before a firing at the very least gives an employee time to start getting things in order before being completely out of a job, if you disagree with the assessment and don't trust your manager to give you a fair shot, and you can't make the case to the rest of management to give you a shot elsewhere within the company. And that's better than that same manager being able to fire you with zero notice.
[0] and from the opposite side of the desk, it should also be acknowledged that there are also some crappy employees out there who will let their performance degrade to sub-replacement-level.
The trick is to find the places where mid- and upper-management will see a manager using a lot of PIPs as a poor reflection on that manager. Likely they're hiring poorly, motivating poorly, coaching poorly...
And, it could be that your PIP "end date" and your vesting schedule coincidentally line up so that if you don't succeed in your PIP, you miss your vesting date, you might be more motivated to try and stay.
"Management" is not a unified collective. Your immediate manager has a poor perception, yes, but other managers probably has no opinion at all.
However, why not hire an independent mediation firm to judge? Why put current employees in a position of taking sides? It seems like the unfairness cited in the article would be nearly unavoidable as relationships and reputations between the judges, the bosses and the employee would all be put to the test.
I do think a mediator could accomplish these goals. While the conflicts of interest might not be reduced to zero, it's likely that the pool of mediators will have more degrees of separation from the managers and therefore will reduce conflicts. (Whereas the normal employees that are on the jury have to consider the very real implications of their actions if they contradict what an important manager says.)
Meaningful investigations/mediations or tribunals tend to produce surprises, and tend to generate precedent.
There’s no way a company would subject itself to that scrutiny.
I think the mediators would actually have to show that they saved the jobs of some valuable employees from getting fired to get continued business.
If they have a 90+% company win rate then the experiment probably isn't productive.
Yeah, there's two sides to it though. On one hand, its very, VERY common when an employee isn't performing that the problem is incompatible team/manager (it might be incompatible with the company, but often its a localized problem).
On the other hand, I've also worked at companies that -always- assumed the problem was the employee/team relationship, and critically incompetent employees would linger around and waste the time of several teams before they were canned, which was an obvious outcome to anyone who had worked with said employee. In one case of a company being way too nice, some dude I worked with took almost 2 years before being fired, when NO ONE wanted to work with him. Imagine how many things we could have done with the 150k+ a year he was paid during that whole ordeal...
I have tried to help some one in this situation but they did not get anyone else involved until its to late - other wise it could have been fixed.
Sure but you shouldn't consider the 150k+ on its own; you should compare it against all the goood employees who would've been fired in a different system that you ended up saving.
I like to think that it's better to keep one bad person than to fire good people for no reason but I admit that may be more an emotional stance than a logical one. And let me also say that by bad person I mean one who isn't technically able to do well, not one who is a jerk.
So you lose a lot of people by keeping a bad apple, too. In the example I gave above, at least 4-5 people I know for a fact quit over them before they were dealt with.
Well this is why I tried to specify only keeping people who were performing poorly not because they were unpleasant to work with. Do people quit because they feel like their coworkers aren't smart or hard working enough?
Yes, especially if the not smart not hard working people get paid more than you do. Very demoralizing.
It's elected by employees and can't be fired by the employer as long as elected. They are the opposite to the members of the board.
Don't know if something like that exists in the US.
I just know when people get fired, the "Betriebsrat" can save the.
And if you're not happy with their decision, you can appeal to a higher administrative court, with professional judges.
- The employer appoints a meeting, with a formal convocation. The meeting can only happen 5 days at least after this letter (has to be a signed letter)
- the employee can come to the meeting, and is often expected to, with a union representative. If there is no union representative in the company because of its size, the employer has to provide an official list of representative available for this purpose in the city.
- During the meeting, the employer explains all the issues. At this point, if the employer provides the slightest hint that the firing decision is already made, the procedure is not valid anymore.
- After the meeting the employer has to wait 2 days before they can notify the firing decision (or not). At this point, the employee has a termination period that can be between 1 and 3 months (often 3 months for developpers).
If at any point the procedure is not valid, the firing is effective anyway, but the employee can appeal to the Prudhommes court, a special court composed of employers and union representative. The employee can not be reinstated in their job, but can get some compensation money.
I understand why that presumption exists though, because blaming the manager is an obvious strategy for an underperforming employee to follow. Bonus points for alleging violating some protected status.
I understand the comment is snarky, but it's really quite absurd in my mind that this is an actual headline, instead of it being a bad joke (which I guess it kind of is). Because it's not even your "peers." It's mainly still just upper management trying to put on a facade of peer judgement.
"What if we brought the court of employment law into Amazon? Wow, wouldn't it be great for Amazon? It'd cost less, move faster, and be more fair! Oh and the employee too, because whatever is good for Amazon is good for everyone!"
It's the similar to how some school district replace superintendents with CEO's and then blush when cost-cutting and sexual harassment kick in [1].
Unthinkipng, these prganizatibs replicate the trappings and rituals of the seemingly successful without understanding why they're successful; doing so in the faith that a new world is right around the corner if they just believe hard enough.
Right under the surface, of course, is our collective loss of faith in society, and thus the impetus to award public power to private entities. Handing over healthcare, our rights, our freedoms in the "hopes" that companies will govern us "better" than our elected government. From a single modern republic to multiple feudal realms: the reality of Libertarianism realized.
[1] http://graphics.chicagotribune.com/chicago-public-schools-se...
Somebody I worked with was fired. He wasn't doing much work and seemed to devote most of his days to manipulating his image. He was not just "managing up", in fact if he were better at that maybe he could have survived longer. What he did especially well was molding perception of peers.
Maybe tops ~3 people working closest with him knew he was full of shit. But in very far breadths of the organizational tree, he spread the word that he was the guy to talk to on the team, pulling all the weight. If you asked most of his colleagues to this day, they would probably tell you he was a productive to high-performing contributor, which he was not.
I think this is actually how he got the job in the first place. He schmoozed far and wide in company X, then more productive employee lands a gig at company Y, where I worked, and he greased the wheels through social connection to also go there. I suspect he collected stock options at some pretty good places over the years doing this.
At a certain level in a company, playing golf with the client is the job, as it closes the deal.
(For management workers, I favor a similar process but that would require some changes to labor law to be fully protected. You could still have a union without that, but it's not going to be one that has the same recognition.)
Seems quite silly to use this as an example for why those of us who are not serial killers shouldn't have unions. But I guess serial killers ruin EVERYTHING.
It reminds me a little about how every time a new package manager comes out, the peanut gallery all chimes in with "well why don't we just use OS packaging?"
Package managers and justice systems hard-enforce legibility in a way that completely breaks the second the landscape does. You have to do the hard work of making a new one. Getting by with what you have only increases the workload on the already-busy humans. There are Debian packages for various extremely well-used Ruby gems. But somebody got motivated enough to do that work.
Similarly, if you introduce the wrong system of justice into a human social regime, it creates all kinds of perverse incentives. The task of preventing bad outcomes from perverse incentives then gets compounded onto the few extremely busy people that have to juggle being cops along with their existing jobs.
This advice is more valid in our current, exceedingly tight, labor market and less so when unemployment goes up again (be prepared for a longer search, network more aggressively, and have a longer emergency fund runway).
ie. it's likely we believe the odds to be low, because it's not something people talk about.
Nonetheless, glad to hear you survived a PIP.
I will also admit that the PIP did point out some attitude problems (I had been getting a bit surly), and so I did genuinely attempt to correct that. It's something I do struggle with at times.
Getting out of that pit is genuinely hard. One of the companies I worked for back in the day was abusive, and it took me a very long time to get out. I eventually mustered up enough confidence to leave, but I stayed for ages even after I realized the company was toxic.
The PIP ended up because his manager left the company. He was assigned to a new manager who worked in a different location. So the manager-employee relationship became a remote-relationship for them. He played his cards very well with the new manager and got himself out of PIP.
Nonetheless, it took that guy's career years to recover. Everyone around except this new manager still saw him as incompetent. He is still paid as an entry-level engineer.
Also I don't find the concept of the "jury" that generous either. In fact it's pretty weird and seems like it could become extremely political. There's the fact that the person advocating your dismissal is potentially the boss of the people advocating that you stay, which creates a pretty severe conflict of interest. There's a potential factor that a team needs to downsize, and by advocating you not being on a PIP the members of the jury risk themselves being put on the PIP. And of course there's all sorts of problems with whether you're well-liked or not by people in the office for reasons not relevant to your work
This is a common parenting trick to get your kids to do something like eat vegetables (would you rather have broccoli or green beans?).
Source: I work at Amazon.
I hear this often, but as a counterpoint, the last time i looked, at the companies i've worked, the PIP success rate was closer to 50%.
(and those that succeeded did not have meaningfully higher attrition rates, etc)
Like anything, i guess it depends on your company's real underlying goal. IE if you really are trying to get people to perform better vs just trying to make a paper trail to get rid of them.
Just sounds weird and broken.
From a Covey or Drucker style of leadership...
If the Manager interviewed and hired the Employee, then the default assumption is that the Manager failed to "lead" and train the Employee.
If the Manager inherited the Employee (via re-org) and is cleaning house, then that's a different circumstance. But still not an excuse for lazy leadership.
You might have a disagreement with a co-worker, and next thing you know, you are getting live feedback, behind your back. And then after that... you are begging to not get fired. Someday, the jury and appeal process might get automated through WorkDay as well. Sounds fun!
Bezos is an investor in WorkDay and Amazon uses this 360 feature. Other companies use it too. See also: https://blog.impraise.com/360-feedback/the-amazon-controvers...
Not to mention the vast resource cost of these programs. Amazon has hundreds of thousands of employees, what if every single employee that was set to be fired made an appeal? How many thousands of man hours would that chew up?
Lastly, and probably the most important is that lasting tension with boss figures. If an employee challenges a boss and they win, that boss is going to forever have a grudge against them. I'd think that could be fixed by if you win an appeal, you are automatically transferred under a new boss that isn't allowed to view your previous work history at the company.
Again this is good in theory, but changes would need to be made for this to be an effective system. Bravo on Amazon for installing this type of plan though. As much hate as Amazon gets for running what are basically sweat shops in their warehouses(I know, I've been in them, it's soul crushing), at least they are in some small part giving employees a voice. Then again, this could be a rigged system for all we know and it's just to save face.
Given that replacing a developer could easily cost 50k or more, even if only 10% of the appeals were successful you'd still be looking at saving a huge amount of money.
If I worked for Amazon, I'd want no part in the process. Bad situations end best when everyone cuts their losses quickly.
In my experience, the best way to get rid of someone is to offer a generous severance period. In theory, the person can take a long vacation or get two paychecks for a few months.
While there, I was told to do many things that I think are not a valuable use of my time. I pushed back on many, and attempted to keep productive. It was very frustrating and stressful.
Eventually the stress came to a head and I vehemently told my boss that I thought the task I was being told to do was idiotic. I requested to go home for the day sick for mental health reasons, as I was unable to cope with the stress that moment.
My boss refused to let me leave for the day and continued arguing with me. The discussion then obviously went too far and I said "I would like to kill [someone who is my friend at Amazon]." I meant it only as an expression of the intensity of how much I was upset. The friend I mention knows this also and would confirm this if asked. I was just freaked out and stressed beyond my capacity to deal.
My boss forced me to go back to work after this exchange. After 4 hours he then came and got me and took me to a meeting with HR and security. They accused me of threatening to kill my coworker ( which is a horrible misunderstanding ) I explained clearly that I meant no such thing, and pointed out that I asked to and needed to leave for mental health, and they didn't care.
They said I have to go home at that point and would be forbidden from returning to work for 2 weeks. This upset me further. I assumed I would never be returning and was being fired. I pleaded with them to just give me the day off as requested and they refused. They forced me to stay home for a week.
I went home and told my wife what happened. She had just passed the first trimester of her pregnancy. She saw the doctor about the pregnancy 2 days previous and the baby was perfectly healthy and there were no problems.
After learning what happened to me at work, she was so stressed over it that she started bleeding later that day. If I was fired at that moment I would lose my house and be homeless in Seattle; I didn't have the funds to endure that.
She had a miscarriage 2 days later as a result of the stress and worrying. She nearly bled to death. My child died because of Amazon's reckless disregard for mental health.
Amazon did allow me to return to work after a week. I went back to my job and had to continue working for the same manager responsible for my child dying for another 4 months.
During that time I told anyone who would listen at Amazon what happened.
Eventually HR approached me and told me I could not keep telling people and they would fire me if I do.
They gave me the following four choices: 1. Quit of my own accord and tell whomever I want ( no severance ) 2. Continue talking about it at work and get fired 3. Stop talking about it and retain my job ( my performance was high and I had recent great reviews; they had no other issue with me ) 4. Accept a severance of $30,000 and leave the company peaceably ( layoff )
I chose option 4 and started my own startup ( carbonstate.com ) I only had enough funds to run my startup for a year, and have not made any money on my product. I have since had to rejoin the industry to pay bills.
The facts:
- you resisted and refused to do many things asked of you by management, OK, but you can't expect that to go over well - you asked to leave instead of dealing with a purely work dispute - you mentioned your mental health and killing someone in the same day - you returned to work and publicly blamed your manager for something incredibly horrific (the death of your child) that they likely didn't even cause (the link between stress and miscarriage is - at best - tenuous [1])
I'm sure you're not a bad person or anything along those lines, I just want to emphasize how a change in approach could likely improve your life. I was curious how you've handled other situations, and I saw in your comment history that you've been fired multiple times. I'd really recommend looking inward and not blaming others for everything.
[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/pregnancy-week-...
I agree that I cannot directly prove the causation. Both my wife and myself feel this is the cause and I think it is reasonable.
There are clear reasons for why people do as they do, and blaming oneself is not the proper solution. My general belief is that care must be taken to understand how to interact with people in a way that they understand, since accurate communication is not an easy task.
It's not always worth openly pushing back on job requests. It sounds like you are honest to the point of self-sabotage.
I wish you and your wife well.
At Amazon it is encouraged to strive for the highest quality despite the tension created. I actually object to their suggested methods in that regard. I think it is better to have social cohesion both within and between teams, but that is not how you are trained at Amazon to deal with things.
I was encouraged to push back on things that I did not feel productive. It wasn't done out of a desire to rebel, but to do as was desired of me. My personal preference is to just do the best I can to keep stress down and accept things for the sake of happiness of everyone rather than make a big deal of anything.
I've done this too. However, you have to be prepared to walk or be prepared to buckle down and do the work. At the end of the day, they are paying you to do what they want you to do.
> I said "I would like to kill [someone who is my friend at Amazon]."
Sure, maybe you said it in a moment of passion, but there is no way in hell they can just let that slide.
> During that time I told anyone who would listen at Amazon what happened.
Also, no chance in hell that a company is going to continue letting you do this, and in many cases you would be fired on the spot.
This is 100% on you, and sure, due to stress, but your story showed that Amazon was actually a lot more forgiving than many companies would be.
I agree that they cannot let such a statement slide, and that is why I said it, because nothing else I said in the week before this was acted on. I was ignored in every other plea for some sort of intervention. My manager could, though, have simply asked me if I meant that and I would have explained that, no, I was just upset. We could have walked over to the person I was even referring to and worked it out immediately on the spot. I told him about when I came back to work and he was sad and had no hard feelings towards me.
I agree no company would allow it. They would look for a legal way to get rid of anyone saying such things. I told them as much. That said, listing that as the reason for termination is not legal. I did do my job in a professional sense. Freely sharing what I believe to people who listen is free speech. You cannot legally be fired for your opinions that do not affect your work; at least not as the listed reason.
I could have simply been terminated with no cause listed. That they did not due that is great; but it was not out of any caring for me. That is simply the way the company works; which I agree is a good thing.
The worst part is that my story is not unique. The level of stress and resulting poor mental health is, in my opinion, very high there. I don't think they are doing what is necessary to improve that. ( despite trying )
Your employer is not obligated to enable or allow you to be spending your work day complaining about them instead of working under the guise of "free speech".
That is something that has been true at nearly every company I have worked at. Amazon is not different in that regard, at least not on the teams I was involved with there.
There are a lot of social events at Amazon. I did not spend my work time approaching random people at their desks to mouth off to them. That would be weird and stupid. I simply shared it with people during social conversations at social events where we are encouraged to interact with others.
During social events, I am quite sure that free speech covers what I say.
And in these cases, when challenged, they have been found to have the right to do so.
Free speech rights regard the ability of the government to restrict your speech, not your employer.
Free speech rights also do not come with "freedom from consequences of such speech".
I'm generally on your side here, but that statement is absolute bullshit. Your employer also has the right of free association, and can choose to no longer associate with someone who states they wish they could commit violent acts against their coworkers, regardless of how serious those statements are.
That is why most states are "at-will", meaning that they don't need to list any reason. I am not saying that they could not fire me; they certainly could have. They simply cannot list the reason officially as "because you told people about this event that happened and gave your opinion on it".
If they said "we believe the employee is violent and threatening" that would be a valid reason. I am not. I may get upset and stressed but I have never laid a hand on anyone in my life. There is no evidence to support the claim that I am violent, because it isn't true.
There are also more complex things going on here than just whether or not I can be fired and they can "get away with it". The real issue is that they don't want anyone to know what happened because it makes them look bad.
For that, it actually doesn't matter if I am a raving lunatic or not. The simple fact is they want to cover up the whole situation and make it go away. That is the worst part of all of it.
We've had a tasks over the years that were lame/boring/whatever. My response to my developers is always the same, "Somebody has to do it. That somebody could be 'Jenkins'. I give you every Friday afternoon for L&D. Hint hint."
Also, actively refusing to do work that needs done isn't the best approach. Voice your opinion, then do the work. Repeat until your manager gets the hint. If he doesn't, find another job (because the manager isn't doing his job, and nobody should spend their career working for somebody not doing their job).
As a result of that, he was unable, I believe, to see the extreme stress I was under despite me telling him I was in the week leading up to what happened.
His huge mistake was to ignore my plea to take the day off to feel better and be able to handle the situation. Had he done so I believe everything that happened could have been avoided.
I do believe the manager is at fault and caused the situation by this, but I don't think it makes him a terrible person or anything. I respect him as trying to do his job.
Boring is not so much what was stressing me; the stress was due to silly things holding up the approval of code that saves the company tens of thousands of dollars per week. I had production ready code that was being delayed by styling complaints. ( white space on blank lines )
Code review that improves code I am all for. Code review that holds up valuable fixes for weeks for silly reasons is not good and makes me feel upset.
I did continue to do the work, and voice my complaints, it just eventually got to the point I couldn't handle the stress, so I talked to my manager to ask how to move forward. He did nothing to really relieve my stress and just ordered me to do it anyway ( which I did; even under all the stress )
After reading your account, I agree completely. I spent nearly 6 years at Amazon, and I know how it can get.
> I did continue to do the work, and voice my complaints, it just eventually got to the point I couldn't handle the stress, so I talked to my manager to ask how to move forward. He did nothing to really relieve my stress and just ordered me to do it anyway ( which I did; even under all the stress )
This comment isn't aimed at you, but at anyone who may find themselves in similar circumstances: leave work immediately for the day. What would happen if you came down with food poisoning or started coughing uncontrollably? You'd leave without a second thought. Do so in this circumstance - send the "I'm not feeling well, heading home" email and get the fuck out of the situation that is causing the uncontrollable stress. Get some perspective and address the situation the next day.
Realize that we have one very biased viewpoint with some very broad claims that cannot be verified.
He "was told to do many things that [he thinks] was not a valuable use of [his] time". Not his call. He doesn't get to allocate his time to parts of the project he feels "deserves" his attention. In some regards, it feels a little arrogant.
And he pushes back on them. He _creates_ the very stress he is decrying here. His capacity to deal seems to be quite low.
And then he asked for a day, blew up, then got two weeks. He apparently was told he was going to be on leave for two weeks, but assumed he was being fired. And since, in his mind, he's always right, that's the mindset he went home with.
He blames his wife's miscarriage on his manager. Because "she was so stressed" over it. Let's ignore how this guy seems to turn everything into a life or death struggle. Stressing himself out so much at work that he gets a 2 week furlough, the stresses out so much during the furlough, that the shorten it to a week.
And despite claiming earlier that being fired at that moment would leave him homeless in the street, a mere 4 months later, he acquired enough capital that a $30k severance was enough of an addition so he could work his startup for a year. 4 months. From homeless to having a year's worth of backup.
And apparently was able to find a job. Which he probably could have done 16 months ago as well.
When someone's life is crisis after crisis and nothing ever seems to be their fault, you really have to wonder just how biased their views are.
I mean, he's down to essentially blaming not wanting to follow Amazon's style guidelines on causing his wife to miscarry. How about this? Don't want your code held up on styling complaints? Follow the fucking guidelines. Regardless if you like them or not. Those guidelines are for company-wide consistency, not anyone's personal preference. And if those guidelines are what he was complaining about, it's no wonder he's had 8 jobs in 17 years. He's so goddamn convinced that only he knows the one true color of the bike shed, that anyone who disagrees must be wrong.
And it doesn't matter just how good that person is at other things. If the minute you ask something of them that they disagree with, they shut down, you just can't work like that. Discussion is fine. Disagreement, to a degree, is fine. But when a decision is made, it needs to be executed.
If one of your team members is under obvious stress - and is asking to leave for the day - fucking let them leave for the day.
If you don't do that - if you continue to poke at someone who's obviously having a hard time - then yes, you're a dill-hole.
I think there should be some concern for a person's mental health. And sometimes I think people should be allowed to take a day off just because they can't mentally cope at work.
I don't think that every claim of such is valid. If someone comes up to me and says the government radio signals are causing his brain to fill up with wrongthink, he may be under "obvious stress", but it's a problem solely on his end. He doesn't need a mental health day, he needs a psychologist.
And that's an extreme example.
I mean, look at the guy, he took a two week furlough and found a way to make that stress him out. Everything stresses him out. You can't not stress him out.
Regardless, if an employee comes to me so stressed out they can’t work, and asks to take an afternoon, I’m sending them home. I might very well start the PPI process as they’re driving home, if I thought the situation was unrecoverable.
I requested style guidelines to be put in place and would be happy to follow them. Amazon does not have style guidelines for the code in place. It was and is legacy code with no documented styling. The style I used was a modern proper one. The style complaints were arbitrary and came from a junior engineer. They were not based on mature reasoning or proper practice.
I readily agree that I could have just said "I don't care" and lowered my stress level significantly. The stress was partially my own fault. I don't disagree with this. This is a big reason why I started my own company rather than immediately returning to another "corporate job". I needed to recover such that I can do my job without anything remotely like this happening.
Based on my past experiences, if you are forced to stay home at all, you are very likely getting fired. The reason I wasn't is less to do with them telling the truth, and more to do with the fact that the projects I was working on had high dollar value for them and they wanted me to keep working.
I started my company with around $35k on hand. I did not have any more money than that. My co-founder also contributed some of his money as well to cover expenses during the year. We lived frugally. There is no hidden saved up money here that I had to make it work. I am still broke to this moment because of this.
I have a lot of experience in the industry; it is not significantly hard to find a place that will hire me. Finding a job that is a good fit is more difficult.
Whatever guidelines I am presented with I follow.
It might serve you to consider that you don't have sufficient information to cast the sort of judgements you are on me.
You control the entire story here. We only have the information you have provided in this post and only your post history to judge your character.
But I prefer to separate the facts of the matter from the opinions. You said the style complaints were arbitrary. Style is arbitrary. Arguing for "mature reasoning" or "proper practice" is subjective. As long as there isn't anything really out there, most styles are fairly reasonable.
But they let you go anyway afterwards. You're so convinced of your necessity, but ignore the very real fact that they existed before you were hired and continue to exist after you get fired.
I didn't want to make the assumption that that $30k was effectively your only money. But still, they would have offered you a severance 4 months ago had they planned on letting you go as well. What else changed in those 4 months?
Do you find it odd that for some reason you cannot fit in any job you take? I find it hard to believe that all 8 companies you've worked for have been that bad.
It might serve you to consider that we are hardly the best judge of our own character. We have a great ability to rationalize everything we do and no one thinks they are the villain. Remove your ego from your story and actually look at it objectively. Ignore how you felt, see what you've done. Would you hire that guy?
You explicitly admitted mental health issues to your boss and threatened to kill someone at work. Regardless of context, just think about the implications of that a few times over in your head. Your manager's only fault in this was taking an entire 4 hours to get security involved.
Miscarriages happen, even in healthy circumstances. It just does. Pregnancy is a much more precarious process than popular culture makes it out to be, where women just sit around demanding ice chips and pickles at odd hours for nine months. There are still a lot of fatal conditions that can affect mother and/or child at any point in the process, even after birth.
The way I coped was by telling myself that if all it took was enough stress while still in the comforts of the womb, our child wasn't ready to survive the rigors of life outside of it. If not my boss, it would have been a random pathogen, allergen or schoolyard bully just the same.
It is similar to saying "hey I'd like to have sex with that hot actor". Saying that does not mean you will go rape the actor. It is just a feeling. Feelings don't equate to action.
I agree action had to be taken; I have no problem with them reacting. My problem is that I had to go to that level to be paid attention to. My stress was absurdly high before this happened, and I communicated it was repeatedly and received no help. When I finally said "I can't take it" I was ignored.
I agree it could have potentially happened without the stress. Despite that the stress definitely triggered whatever the cause was immediately. That was very clear. The doctors did though claim there were zero problems 2 days previous. Usually miscarriage does not occur past the first trimester when all other signs are good.
This is part of the problem.
"I feel like I want to kill John" is absolutely, utterly, undeniably a threat. Management knowing/not knowing your relationship with John is irrelevant. Your claim is that "because I didn't say, 'with a gun, at lunch time' it's not a threat" isn't particularly proof to your point.
> It is similar to saying "hey I'd like to have sex with that hot actor". Saying that does not mean you will go rape the actor. It is just a feeling. Feelings don't equate to action.
Is not particularly equivalent. You changed the meaning from consent to non-consent in defending it - "have sex with" became "rape". If you had said "Hey, I feel like I want to rape that actor", it is not unrealistic to think that, should you have access to that person, that rape is out of the question. Just like you didn't say "Hey, I feel like I want to talk to John" (consensual) versus "I feel like I want to kill John".
I think your repeated inability to understand this is perhaps at the root, or a significant part, of the issue, and I say this sincerely. The lack of empathy you show to that situation, 'how ridiculous is it? they should have known I didn't feel like killing him', is troubling.
I talked to several of them about it afterwards. I asked if they felt that I was being threatening at all. All of them said they understood what I was going through, that it was clear I was extremely stressed and was flipping out. Each of the people I asked said they did not believe I had any intent to kill my coworker, or even that I said it as any sort of threat. In context it was heard as me simply losing control after saying I couldn't handle it and had to leave immediately.
Note that this is the only time in my career I ever actually asked to leave because I couldn't handle a situation. I only even asked because I was very worried I would be fired if I walked out on my own. I have walked out when necessary at others jobs and there was no issue, but that is not the way Amazon is. At least it was not that way on my team.
Typically if an argument at work appears, I would just continue hashing it out till its done and go back to work. This situation was unusual.
Do you think it possible that any of them may not have told you that they felt threatened, imminently or otherwise, even if they had?
Do you think it reasonable for management to take issue with such a thing?
In the opposite situation, what do you would think might happen to management, or the employer, _had_ you later assaulted that person?
Asking (telling) you to leave until the situation changes is the "safest" (even if it turns out to be un-necessary) approach.
I say this not to wish you ill. You seem like a sincere, passionate person. If anything, it seems that your biggest challenge might be processing other people's perceptions of situations. It's an important, though not always easy, skill to develop. I myself have had challenges with processing social cues, or determining what is appropriate or not.
Yes, I considered that someone in the group did feel very threatened and either didn't want to speak to me about it, or that one of the people I did speak to was scared to admit it. It's possible, but the people I spoke with seemed very genuine. If people took issue I believe it was a logical issue not a "I feel threatened" problem.
If management is going to have a cow about this, they really should step in a lot sooner and not have allowed it to get to this point. The whole problem is that management doesn't care enough to setup an environment where stuff like this can't happen.
I said this to HR and security, and I will repeat it: If I wanted to hurt someone as everyone is implying, I wouldn't have said anything about it and would have just done so. It's not logical. I was well aware people would flip out when I said it, and I wanted something to be done to resolve the situation. My statement was more a cry for help than anything.
If anyone actually legitimately thought there was any actual concern I would hurt the person, they shouldn't have allowed me back into the building at all for a long period. I was allowed back in a week later and easily had the access to hurt the person had I intended in any way to do so. I had and still have no such intent. I consider the person to be my friend.
Time does not remove the pain I feel. I will continue to feel it. My wish is for large companies to behave better and not force situations on employees that cause things like this to happen. Especially not to software engineers just trying to do our job.
I agree that the company and everyone involved is just trying to resolve the situation and follow policy. That is not enough. People need to have humanity and compassion. At no point did anyone apologize for the pain I went through. At no point did I receive a personal letter from Jeff Bezos that he was sad it happened. I don't think Jeff cares at all. I don't think the company cares.
Perhaps it is all my fault. I don't think so. I'm no dummy. A lot of things indicate the situation could have been avoided had many people involved acted differently. There is blame on all sides. I can own up to not being perfect. I made mistakes. I was terribly upset. I've grown from it. It still hurts though.
I don't think my problem is an inability to see other perspectives. I can readily see them and explain them. The problem is that with tons of people around no one ever actually tried to actually resolve any of the tension. I know it is yucky to get involved in tense situations, but just letting them grow beyond control is bad and hurts people.
Your boss handled this horrifically. And had many many opportunities to defuse and de-escalate before it got to the state it did.
And that is entirely his fault, not yours.
That's why I suggested you think about the implications a few times-- it wasn't the only thing you said in that context. Some random actor isn't within reach of your impulsivity, so there is less of a perceived threat.
The equivalent of what you said was "I am having trouble controlling my impulses. Hey I'd like to have sex with [female coworker]." Still not only inappropriate for work, but it changes the tune to one that might have come from the mouth of John Hinckley, Jr.
> I agree it could have potentially happened without the stress. Despite that the stress definitely triggered whatever the cause was immediately. That was very clear. The doctors did though claim there were zero problems 2 days previous. Usually miscarriage does not occur past the first trimester when all other signs are good.
I don't disagree that the stress was the catalyst, but don't read so much into the doctors' status reports. They're always going to be tempered because they don't want to be stressors themselves. You're latching on to that to continue blaming your boss.
Everything could have progressed fine until birth, where physical complications happen, tears occur, sepsis sets in and you lose wife and/or child. Or one/both contracts MRSA after a c-section. Or eclampsia. Or pneumonia. Or goes anaphylactic from dairy in the formula. I've witnessed them all. Thankfully everyone recovered, but it was still harrowing.
The risks of pregnancy are always downplayed.
Whether it is for nomination for employee of the month
or being acquitted in a workplace tribunal
the most introverted people have to go out of their way to let people know how productive and beneficial they've been, and that is a losing proposition
It'd be a "great" way to rat out those who support people deemed unfit...
From elsewhere:
Bezos defended Amazon in a fireside chat with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner on Tuesday evening, saying he was “very proud of our working conditions and I am very proud of our wages that we pay.”
He's proud of it. He's proud of the return to the workhouse. He's proud of rolling back workplace protections. He's proud of paying a pittance. He's proud of it all. Or is he oblivious?
[citation needed]
https://www.waterstones.com/book/hired/james-bloodworth/9781...
There's one source. Please don't buy if from Amazon. Read it, find more of your own sources, and if you disagree, please come back and we can have an adult discussion. Amazon warehouses are run like gulags. Need to go to the toilet? That's one demerit. Call in sick? One demerit. Be off sick without calling in? Three demerits. When you get to six you're fired. If I had an employer pull that on me, I'd walk on day one, and so would you. We're not weak. We're not vulnerable. They know who they need to recruit in order to do this.
They pick areas full of people desperate for work. They go to places where they know they will have an effectively endless supply of desperate, vulnerable, fearful people that they can pay a pittance to while they exploit them. It's their strategy. That's how you can exploit people and use them, and their actions are not accidental.
I upvoted you for engaging; what I have to say is very unpopular and most people just blank it and move on. Thank you.
> Amazon warehouses are run like gulags.
You can't have an adult discussion when coming from rhetoric like this.
Don't get me wrong - it's tedious, exploitative, exhausting work and I don't doubt any of the horror stories are true, but Amazon is also just a business like any other, and most of those stories are exceptions, not the rule. Amazon aren't drug dealers or vampires, they'll hire anyone who applies and passes a drug screen, and they'll work everyone as hard as they legally can. They're not as evil as you describe for the simple reason that being as evil as you describe would be bad business.
Most of what sucks about working in an Amazon warehouse is normal for a lot of low wage and blue collar work in the US. Just look into what long haul truckers have to do to make ends meet sometimes.
and they'll work everyone as hard as they legally can
They sure do. They take care (mostly) to stay on the side of legal. I'm not saying what they're doing is illegal (although some of their anti-union activities sure do come close!). Just grotesque and horrible.
Amazon employees too many people to effectively hire based on a strategy of exploiting only the "desperate, vulnerable and fearful,"
I disagree. They put their warehouses where there are large pools of desperate, vulnerable people. They do that because they want to employ those people. A great deal of effort is put into planning where to put those warehouses. They know what they're doing. They know that they're going to get employees who will put up with urinating in bottles because going to the toilet will get them fired. There's evidence that this is the case. You say it's not the case, but then what do you say about the evidence? Is that evidence manufactured? Are people doing it for the fun of urinating in bottles? If you're going to argue that it's not that strict, you need to deal with that evidence. There is a lot out there suggesting it's a horrible place to work, and workers saying it's worse than other warehouse jobs they've had (which would imply that your claim it's simply typically bad, as minimum wage jobs tend to be, isn't true).
It does remind me of an anecdote: Early in my career, I worked for Western Digital. They had a headquarters campus in a smaller city in Orange County. When I was there, they started growing. We didn't have the parking space, and people ended up having to park pretty far away up a hill. People were grumbling quite a bit about it, and it had a negative effect on morale to not be able to find a spot in the morning or coming back from lunch. At one of the quarterly "employees ask questions of the CEO" things, someone asked what was being done about the parking problem. The response, from the person who has a reserved parking space, came, "I wasn't aware there was a parking problem."
The protests outside his shareholder meetings might also clue him in.